Spot on, Alex, childish is the word for it. The man's a moron.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
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Spot on, Alex, childish is the word for it. The man's a moron.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
You need to read more books.Quote:
Originally Posted by fb0252
Beginning to lose my faith in humanity at the post condemning White Noise and Mice and Men on the previous page.
White Noise is one of the best things written post-war...
i can only give my personal opinion. there's zero accounting for taste, as they say. if u think white noise is the best whatever u think, so be it. after 60 pages I abandoned my usual perseverance with mediocre writing and found good cause to practice my basketball toss with WN right into my kitchen dumpster. as for mice, I do poorly with dumbed down literature e.g. As I Lay Dying where I'd posted u're unable to find an intelligent sentence with a search warrant (later proven wrong when someone did post a couple of decent lines), and also with the sort of distasteful, to me, sexual innuendo. i am quite satisfied with my opinion of these which, contrary to above posting, is based on fairly broad comparisons.
If you're going to attempt to write with punctuation please don't stop half-way. It's more obnoxious than being entirely without punctuation.Quote:
Originally Posted by fb0252
It sounds as if you're in the habit of reading "mediocre writing" quite a bit. Although I have not read White Noise , it is written by one of the most prominent postmodernist authors, and like another poster here said, it is easily one of the greater postwar works of literature. That being said, one of the greater postwar works of literature can be anywhere from the single best, to the hundredth best. The latter position is still an achievement. As you endeavored to only read one-fifth of the novel, you have no right to criticize it.Quote:
I abandoned my usual perseverance with mediocre writing and found good cause to practice my basketball toss with WN right into my kitchen dumpster.
The fact also, that you decided to practice playing basketball instead of read, is another choice which illustrates your character.
"Dumbed down" literature? Modernism. It is called modernism. Because the literary techniques and intelligence of the novel completely eluded you, does not mean that Faulkner did not write a brilliant novel.Quote:
I do poorly with dumbed down literature e.g. As I Lay Dying where I'd posted u're unable to find an intelligent sentence
You have low standards to be satisfied by that.Quote:
i am quite satisfied with my opinion of these
i can only give my personal opinion. there's zero accounting for taste, as they say. if u think white noise is the best whatever u think, so be it. after 60 pages I abandoned my usual perseverance with mediocre writing and found good cause to practice my basketball toss with WN right into my kitchen dumpster. as for mice, I do poorly with dumbed down literature e.g. As I Lay Dying where I'd posted u're unable to find an intelligent sentence with a search warrant (later proven wrong when someone did post a couple of decent lines), and also with the sort of distasteful, to me, sexual innuendo. i am quite satisfied with my opinion of these which, contrary to above posting, is based on fairly broad comparisons.
Remember that personal opinion and value judgments are not one and the same.
Personal Opinion: "I don't like X"
Value Judgment: "X is an example of "dumbed-down" writing"
Personal opinion is not open to challenge. I may disagree with your opinion of the work in question if you state "I didn't like As I Lay Dying"... but I cannot challenge your opinion. If you say you dislike it, then you dislike it. End of story.
You open yourself to challenge, however, when you make value judgments... especially if they go against the accepted opinion. Why do imagine that Of Mice and Men or As I Lay Dying are dumbed-down? Do you assume that because you don't like something or don't get something that it is immediately "dumb". I don't particularly like James Joyce. He's never grown on me in spite of the fact that I love any number of other Modernists. Not for a moment, however, do I assume his writing is "dumbed-down". If anything, it is the exact opposite.
Again... I am not questioning your right to an opinion... your dislike of something I... or even the vast majority like. But calling something "dumb" simply because it didn't work for you is not much of a step above the teenager complaining that "Shakespeare sucks" after being assigned Romeo and Juliet for reading homework.
very easy. of mice and men is the single worst book for me ever that i finished.
You need to read more books.
Perhaps he or she has read nothing but Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Virgil, Tolstoy, and such...:biggrin5:
interesting, as noted, am content to remain minority of one in personal scorn for Steinbeck, and in particular Delillo, and to lesser degree Faulkner. Harold Bloom has chapter on Faulkner in his book Genius which I will be interested to read. and, curiously also high praise for Delillo. Wondering if Bloom has actually read Dellilo, an experience that I'd take again maybe if someone put a gun to my head.
Joyce is usually one of the least cherished modernists. I remember reading him back when I was a great deal younger and I found it very unconventional. Reading Finnegan's Wake a few years later made me realize that Ulysses was actually quite conventional.Quote:
I don't particularly like James Joyce. He's never grown on me in spite of the fact that I love any number of other Modernists.
I believe that aside from subjective opinion of the novel, there are a few things that Ulysses has set in stone.
It immortalized Dublin (which is a minor point, actually).
It extensively used stream-of-consciousness in almost an impressionistic sense of expressing the interior of a character. (Although there were precursors to this in literature, such as Dujardin).
And then there's the abundance of allusions and puns.
It spawned countless amounts of foreign renditions, one of them being Berlin Alexanderplatz.
All in all it makes it one of the most "influential" novels of the 20th century-- although this tirade of mine is pointless, I realize you said that you believe that Joyce is the "exact opposite" of "dumbed down." The only reason I state this is because I remember seeing somewhere on this thread that many agreed to disagree of Joyce's literary recognition.
I doubt this, though. If he happens to be in the habit of reading great literature he would most likely address them properly.Quote:
Perhaps he or she has read nothing but Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Virgil, Tolstoy, and such...
No one is going to waste any bullets on that head of yours.Quote:
an experience that I'd take again maybe if someone put a gun to my head.
intution that none will be wasting any bullets on this old carcass is good to see in print but am thinking u change ur screen name, as your "intuition" is a little off. have spent much of the last 10 years marking off Bloom's Western Cannon one by one including several reads of Shakespeare, a couple of times through Middlemarch etc., which may help explain my views on such as Delillo. Homer I never got to as Bloom left it out of the top 26. i consider Joyce one of the great minds btw and Ulysses one of the greatest books, whatever that is worth. St. L. G. i'd agree with ur general characterization, but "dumbed down" as in Faulkner, I more read as an excuse for inability. I'd doubt Faulkner on his best days could touch James Joyce on his worst, personal opinion that I'd also stand by as a value judgment :) Edit: Q--do men and women see books in differing ways--am unable to think a woman enjoying Montaigne e.g.?
IntuitionQuote:
Originally Posted by fb0252
1. Immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes.
2. A perceptive insight gained by the use of this faculty.
You proved that my instinctive knowledge was correct.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bloom's Western Canon only contains twenty six writers. You took ten years to read that?Quote:
have spent much of the last 10 years marking off Bloom's Western Cannon one by one including several reads of Shakespeare, a couple of times through Middlemarch etc., which may help explain my views on such as Delillo. Homer I never got to as Bloom left it out of the top 26.
Secondly, I do not have a strong liking of Delillo, only that he happens to be an above average novelist who still lives.
I will not disagree, Middlemarch is an absolutely brilliant novel, not much of a point in comparing it to postmodern literature.
If that were so, then Dubliners and Finnegans Wake would have to be greater than The Sound and the Fury.Quote:
I'd doubt Faulkner on his best days could touch James Joyce on his worst
If that isn't obvious I'm not sure what is. Ask yourself this: do the majority of men that you know enjoy Jane Austen?Quote:
Q--do men and women see books in differing ways--am unable to think a woman enjoying Montaigne e.g.?
Barbara Cartland (ugh!)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bloom's Western Canon only contains twenty six writers. You took ten years to read that?
Actually, the "canon" itself is a list of some 2000+ books added as an appendix to the back of the book of the same title.
i consider Joyce one of the great minds btw and Ulysses one of the greatest books
I don't question this. There are passages... whole chapters in Ulysses that I found absolutely brilliant. His writing, however, never engaged me as much personally or emotionally as Proust, Kafka... or even Faulkner.
Richard Dawkins is an acquired taste... i never acquired it
Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I know the Canon itself is massive, I don't question that. But our colleague here was claiming that he was reading what Bloom considered to being the central part of the canon. Which would also be why he never read Homer because it was left out of the top 26 whom Bloom centralized around. I'm inclined to believe he was alluding to these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wes...ol_of_the_AgesQuote:
Homer I never got to as Bloom left it out of the top 26.
I was about to leap in with my usual J D Salinger, but I realise it is his novel I hate. That's not the same thing.
I can't think of any literary writers who are bad, compared to people like Dan Brown or Susan Hill.
I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by nothingman87
Barbara Cartland is the worst. Who reads her books?? :sick:
The fact that he has inspired the word, "Kafkaesque" proves that his impact on Western Literature was profound.
For that alone he should be recognized, if nothing else; but it would be insolent to claim that The Metamorphosis is merely "just another classic."
She is said to have sold over a billion copies worldwide. It would be interesting to know what percentage of her readers are male, if any.Quote:
Originally Posted by siamesecat
Why can't we list truly horrible writers?
The worst writer that I have read has to be William Burroughs. I am a great fan of the beat movement, but most of his novels simply do not make sense. He writes so cryptically that we are supposed to think of him as a genius and that is that. Having said that, I haven't read Naked Lunch or Junky, two of his most linear novels. I have them both, but haven't gotten around to reading them.
Get over yourself. Using cheap personal insults like "I doubt they'd waste a bullet on you" just because someone doesn't like modernism and postmodernism?
I agree with how he described Faulkner's style as an excuse for inability and think that this applies doubly to Delillo. It doesn't surprise me that Delillo has a Master's in Literature and in fact I would expect him to hav a Ph.D. by how boring and self important his writing is.
I don't think I have any hated authors. I got over my hatred of dean koontz after the 30th book I read of his.
Now let's see here.
Kafka
Ayn rand
Charles dickens
James joyce
Ernest Hemingway
These authors seem to have a lot of people against them on this thread. So perhaps it is fair to say they are controversial.
Calling William Faulkner as "dumbed down" literature will invite personal insults. Whereas, if he would have said "I do not enjoy modernism, although William Faulkner may be a good modernist writer," I would have no disagreement.Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberbob
If you claim that his insult of Faulkner's writing was a "description" of his style, then you are being ignorant yourself. As to Delillo, I merely claimed he is a postmodern author which does not deserve to be considered as the worst of critically acclaimed writers.Quote:
I agree with how he described Faulkner's style as an excuse for inability and think that this applies doubly to Delillo.
For those who aren't in search of cheap entertainment, "boring" should never be a part of their vocabulary.Quote:
by how boring and self important his writing is.
I know the Canon itself is massive, I don't question that. But our colleague here was claiming that he was reading what Bloom considered to being the central part of the canon. Which would also be why he never read Homer because it was left out of the top 26 whom Bloom centralized around. I'm inclined to believe he was alluding to these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wes...ol_of_the_Ages
Of course Bloom has written other books as well. In Genius he gives a brief bio and critical response to 100 writers whom he places at the center of Western Literature. Certainly Homer deserves a spot on nearly any list of the most influential works of literature in the West. Glancing over Bloom's list of 26 I find that I have read something by all except George Eliot. The arguments over the "canon"... this notion of some universal, never-changing list of books that represent without question the greatest works of literature... are fed by the recognition of the giants left off the list that would make for reading no less rich:
Shakespeare..........Spenser, Donne, Calderon, and Racine
Dante................... Virgil or Homer
Chaucer................ Boccaccio or The Arabian Nights
Cervantes.............. Ariosto and Tasso
Montaigne.............. Plato
Molière.................. Rabelais
Milton.................... William Blake
Dr. Samuel Johnson... Boswell
Goethe.................... Leopardi and Rousseau
Wordsworth.............. Keats
Jane Austen.............. Lawrence Stern
Walt Whitman............ Baudelaire
Emily Dickinson........... Tennyson
Charles Dickens.......... Flaubert
George Eliot............... Melville
Tolstoy..................... Dostoevsky
Henrik Ibsen............... Checkov
Freud........................ Thomas Mann
Proust....................... Walter Pater, R.M. Rilke, and Oscar Wilde
James Joyce............... T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and Lewis Carroll
Virginia Woolf.............. Eugenio Montale
Franz Kafka................ Hermann Hesse and
Jorge Luis Borges......... Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar
Pablo Neruda............... Federico Garcia Lorca, Cesar Vallejo, and Rafael Alberti
Fernando Pessoa........... Jorge Guillen, Antonio Machado, and Miguel Hernandez
Samuel Beckett............. Jean Paul Sartre
I think what turns people off the notion of a "canon" is the idea that there is some universal list of essential reading and that one cannot be thought to be well read until he or she has conquered this. It also misrepresents the notion of critical discussion with regard to literature. Stating that "Shakespeare is greater than Dante" (or the reverse) is essentially as useless as ridiculous claims as to how "boring" Faulkner is or how "overrated" Kafka is. Shakespeare and Faulkner and Kafka and all the writers who are deemed as "classics" or part of the "canon" are thought of as such for a reason. Any individual reader may dislike or feel ambivalent about any given writer... but that doesn't mean that said writers are "overrated" or "boring"... It simply means that the individual reader didn't connect with that writer.
Seriously, I'd like to see posters make some attempt at defending absurd blanket statements such as "Kafka is overrated" (Oh really? Why? What arguments can you make in support of this statement of fact?)... Such would at least be more interesting than the usual comments worthy of the highschool freshman: "Dude! This Shakespeare guy sucks!":sosp:
The worst writer ever is Stephen King. I will NEVER recover from Pet Cemetery. All I could think was, I wish I had that, and I'd take advantage of that pet cemetery, no matter the consequences. But it was a horrible thing to contemplate.
I'm pretty sure that the worst writers in the world don't get published. Though, there is Stephanie Meyer. . . .
This would seem to suggest King is a great writer, no? If he can evoke such emotion and contemplation, he's doing something right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vonny
The whole point of entertainment is to prevent boredom. Being boring will always be a perfectly legitimate criticism of any form of art.Quote:
Originally Posted by Intuition
Faulkner purposely tries to make his work confusing. I can't respect an author who tries to make his work look like more than it is by muddling things up.
And DeLillo is somewhat like that, although he doesn't go about it by using confusing prose. He takes the typical postmodernist approach of placing style over substance. Saying a very simple thing in a terribly long-winded and boring way that it must be artistic and important.
I wouldn't say that either is the worst writer--that's a title reserved for someone who's absolutely incompetent at crafting a story. The criticisms they reserve, however, are, in my opinion, warranted.
And there is a big difference between disagreeing with somebody and insulting them.
I do remember being riveted by this book. But I don't think I'll read another of his soon!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I think that more and more the worst writers do get published. Virginiawang has been published apparently. I think more and more any decent author who comes along will get buried underneath a heap of that ...um, I don't know what to politely call it. And there are a gazillion of those awful authors who write for women now - all that "chick lit."
Now there are certain to be writers out there who are technically inferior in their craft. And recently this reader has been made aware of what 'fan-fiction' really is (a three way assault on intellectual property, written language and human decency)... so the category must be narrowed.
There've been dry books, and boring books, and dense books. Even stupid books. But reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was, for this reader, a put-the-book-down-in-disgust, seriously-are-you-serious kind of awful. So put another chalk mark on the Ayn Rand side of the board.
As an interesting side note, this reader did finish it, and is still awaiting her posthumous apology.
J
Publishing is first and foremost a business and publishers know their customer base is largely composed of people who are not concerned with 'literature' per se; which explains the myriad examples of pulp fiction that fill the bookstores and online publishing outlets. Many respected writers were frequently rejected before being published, which begs the question as to how many good writers are still being rejected ( see list below). Conversely, now that millions of people have a word processor at there disposal, the number of poorly written but saleable books awaiting publication must be monumental. Somewhere among them lies the book whose author will live up to the title of this thread.
http://www.examiner.com/book-in-nati...-by-publishers
This is the worst question I have ever heard.
There is no reason to dislike the "canon." It is necessary when preserving World Literature, or "highlighting" select pieces of literature. Hopefully I did not imply (somehow) that I do not find the "canon" essential.Quote:
I think what turns people off the notion of a "canon" is the idea that there is some universal list of essential reading and that one cannot be thought to be well read until he or she has conquered this.
Arguing that one author is greater than another is not necessarily unsound of mind. Although an argument of whether or not "Shakespeare is greater than Dante", or the reverse-- would take two posters a great deal of articulation, and effort, to present their arguments notably (which is not likely to happen on a thread created for the sole purpose to condemn acclaimed writers, as if they were revealing the names of heretics to be burned at the stake).Quote:
Stating that "Shakespeare is greater than Dante"
Correct in every sense, although I'm sure the author of this thread (for some reason) made this thread in order for individual readers to express their ambivalence towards writers who have established themselves as part of history.Quote:
Shakespeare and Faulkner and Kafka and all the writers who are deemed as "classics" or part of the "canon" are thought of as such for a reason. Any individual reader may dislike or feel ambivalent about any given writer... but that doesn't mean that said writers are "overrated" or "boring"... It simply means that the individual reader didn't connect with that writer.
I doubt you really would like to see how most posters would defend that statement. Take a look at one of them said in defense of claiming that Faulkner was overrated:Quote:
Seriously, I'd like to see posters make some attempt at defending absurd blanket statements such as "Kafka is overrated" (Oh really? Why? What arguments can you make in support of this statement of fact?)...
Art can exist for art's sake, not for the sake of entertainment. When someone claims that a novel is "boring," what they are really claiming is that they do not have the "tolerance" for that specific novel.Quote:
The whole point of entertainment is to prevent boredom. Being boring will always be a perfectly legitimate criticism of any form of art.
All I educed from this is that you dislike stream of consciousness.Quote:
Faulkner purposely tries to make his work confusing. I can't respect an author who tries to make his work look like more than it is by muddling things up.
I will again state, that I have not read DeLillo in ages, although it seems that the only resemblances they have to you is that you disagree with their reputation.Quote:
And DeLillo is somewhat like that, although he doesn't go about it by using confusing prose.
There is nothing wrong with placing style over substance. Those are essentials of modernism and postmodernism; by claiming you dislike style so much you have just exemplified on the fact that you dislike modernism and postmodernism, making you biased.Quote:
placing style over substance
Quote:
The criticisms they reserve, however, are, in my opinion, warranted.
These criticisms they receive, bringing back an old example of Faulkner being "dumbed down" literature, are just as warranted as my insults, then. For if the writers were alive they would be insulted even more so than the readers I have insulted.Quote:
And there is a big difference between disagreeing with somebody and insulting them.
I found the response to Nabokov comical, also-- it seems like Kipling didn't know how to write. The shock the San Francisco Examiner experienced when they found out that he was the youngest person to receive the Nobel (in literature) would have been priceless to view.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
There is no reason to dislike the "canon." It is necessary when preserving World Literature, or "highlighting" select pieces of literature. Hopefully I did not imply (somehow) that I do not find the "canon" essential.
What many dislike in the "canon" is the idea that it is a universally agreed upon list as opposed to an abstract idea that varies according to the reader. What is "essential reading" for the English language reader is not necessarily the same as what is "essential reading" to the French or German... let alone Persian, Indian, or Chinese reader. Bloom's "canon" is a good list of books of real merit... but certainly not the last word on what books are or are not "classics".
Arguing that one author is greater than another is not necessarily unsound of mind. Although an argument of whether or not "Shakespeare is greater than Dante", or the reverse-- would take two posters a great deal of articulation, and effort, to present their arguments notably (which is not likely to happen on a thread created for the sole purpose to condemn acclaimed writers, as if they were revealing the names of heretics to be burned at the stake).
The notion of suggesting that this or that "classic" is the "worst book ever" and the author is "the worst author ever" seems to reveal far more about the reader than it does about the presumably "bad" author.
I'm sure the author of this thread (for some reason) made this thread in order for individual readers to express their ambivalence towards writers who have established themselves as part of history.
Again... I see nothing wrong with stating, "I really hated As I Lay Dying." That's a simple statement of personal opinion... one's own experience with a writer. To make what passes for a factual statement of judgement, however, "Faulkner is boring" demands some sort of logical argument.
I doubt you really would like to see how most posters would defend that statement. Take a look at one of them said in defense of claiming that Faulkner was overrated:
If an individual can't offer a strong argument as to why a given writer is overrated, then they probably should make such value judgments.
The whole point of entertainment is to prevent boredom. Being boring will always be a perfectly legitimate criticism of any form of art.
OK... let's start with the initial presumption. Is all art... in this case all literature... nothing more than entertainment? Personally, I am of the camp of Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, and Gautier and as such I thoroughly embrace the notion that a central value of art is pleasure... but do we assume that all derive pleasure from the same sources? Some individuals find pleasure or are entertained by struggling through the New York Times crossword puzzles. Others need car chases, explosions, and scantily dressed girls on the big screen. Boredom is not a valid criticism unless it is defined... (Boring according to whom? by what standards?) and examples should be provided.
Faulkner purposely tries to make his work confusing. I can't respect an author who tries to make his work look like more than it is by muddling things up.
Is that seriously his goal? Again... according to what standard. Shakespeare was criticized by the French for his subplots and diversions. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Byron's Don Juan are almost wholly constructed of diversions. Is Faulkner really that difficult? Considering it was As I Lay Dying that was initially mentioned how difficult is that book? A tale is being told by different members of the same family. The artist has abandoned the single omnipotent narrator and presents the narrative from the point of view of a variety of individuals. Is this idea really so difficult to grasp? Perhaps the author employed this form as a means of reinforcing the notion that any story is never as simple as it seems. It changes according to who is telling it... their agenda... their grasp of the facts... etc... This makes more sense than to suggest that the author is simply trying to be "difficult".
...placing style over substance...
This assumes that "substance" or "content" and "style" or "form" are two separate things. The reality is that in a successful work of art the two are so interwoven so as to be insuperable. Let's go to Shakespeare again. What is the substance of the majority of his sonnets. As one wag famously suggested, it is little more than "when I think of you, I feel blue". On one level this analysis is true... if we accept a grade-school approach to reducing a work of art to a simple "meaning" not unlike a dictionary definition. To me this seems akin to reducing a marvelous meal to the recipe. As Walter Pater pointed out, in Art, as in life itself, it is the experience not the end... not the "meaning" that matters. Reduced to the essentials, the meaning/content/substance of Shakespeare's poems is not profound. But as one recognizes that style... the language... the form is all part of the substance... of the whole experience... they become so much more.
Again, it is fully fine to admit I don't like that particular style of writing: "I don't like stream of consciousness" or "I don't like the use of multiple narrators". This is different from suggesting that the work is an example of style over substance when style and substance are essential to all art.
I agree that art can exist for its own sake. That doesn't mean that it can't be boring. You're the one who said that boring should not be used to describe by those not looking for "cheap entertainment" implying that it is some form of entertainment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Intuition
And I never claimed I disliked style at all. Style is fine. Even placing style over substance is fine as long as you still have some substance and don't use style to create the illusion that there is more substance than there really is (which I believe Faulkner does).
And I do not dislike all modernism and postmodernism, and even if I did, that would not make me biased against it. If that were the case, I could just say that you are biased in favor of Faulkner because you like him. See how pointless that is?
James Joyce is one of my favorite writers and I even like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I also love some postmodernists like McCarthy. My beef is with the particular techniques Faulkner uses to deliberately make his writing more difficult to understand. I am not just talking about stream of consciousness. I'll put up some examples later on.
In art style is substance.
I agree completely; but as you have seen, some posters have the audacity to outright claim that some of the writers do not deserve the reputation they have gained from critics and give simple answers as to why they believe so.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
No disagreement there.Quote:
The notion of suggesting that this or that "classic" is the "worst book ever" and the author is "the worst author ever" seems to reveal far more about the reader than it does about the presumably "bad" author.
The former is not a statement I dislike, but it is usually fused with the latter when asked for a reason.Quote:
Again... I see nothing wrong with stating, "I really hated As I Lay Dying." That's a simple statement of personal opinion... one's own experience with a writer. To make what passes for a factual statement of judgement, however, "Faulkner is boring" demands some sort of logical argument.
I agree completely; but the one individual I was in debate with claimed that another individual disliked modernism because "it is boring." Which is what brought us to this stalemate.Quote:
If an individual can't offer a strong argument as to why a given writer is overrated, then they probably should make such value judgments.
Of course that does not mean it cannot be boring for certain individuals who require a "certain pace."Quote:
I agree that art can exist for its own sake. That doesn't mean that it can't be boring.
If it does happen to be some sort of entertainment, it does not exist upon entertainment; chances are that if someone in search of greater literature will not care to search for the novel that will entertain, but rather-- enlighten.Quote:
You're the one who said that boring should not be used to describe by those not looking for "cheap entertainment" implying that it is some form of entertainment.
Elaborate on this illusion you speak of. How does Faulkner give you this idea? Your retorts are far too broad.Quote:
Even placing style over substance is fine as long as you still have some substance and don't use style to create the illusion that there is more substance than there really is (which I believe Faulkner does).
If you dislike the entirety of the movement then you are bound to be biased.Quote:
And I do not dislike all modernism and postmodernism, and even if I did, that would not make me biased against it
Firstly, in this case, Faulkner is a single writer; modernism is a movement.Quote:
If that were the case, I could just say that you are biased in favor of Faulkner because you like him. See how pointless that is?
Secondly, I do not champion every single piece of literature Faulkner has written, but he has written (what critics refer to as) masterpieces. The latter I hold as great pieces of 20th century literature.
You claim that "even if you did" dislike modernism in its entirety, you would not be biased. Modernism encompasses a large amount of authors. To dislike them all, is simply biased.
The only pointless thing about that was you claiming that championing Faulkner was tantamount to containing malice for modernism.
You must articulate what those techniques are, until then we cannot defend upon what you consider to be "boring," and "dumbed-down," and what we do not believe exists.Quote:
James Joyce is one of my favorite writers and I even like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I also love some postmodernists like McCarthy. My beef is with the particular techniques Faulkner uses to deliberately make his writing more difficult to understand. I am not just talking about stream of consciousness. I'll put up some examples later on.
Chances are what you're referring to, as I've said before, is his stream of consciousness/interior-monologue. There is a famous example in The Sound and the Fury in which the Harvard attendee Quentin is severely depressed. Towards the end of his monologue his mind is at the state of being completely deteriorated, and this is what causes the rambling paragraphs devoid of grammar. In my experience, most students discontinue reading the novel here.
Thank you.Quote:
In art style is substance.
I get the impression that many would put Edward Bulwer Lytton on the list of the worst ever. That he was the one who prompted Dickens to change the ending of GREAT EXPECTATIONS which according to George Gissing in CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY is otherwise the perfect first person narrative. He also may have played a role in the fall out between Dickens and Thackeray which doesn't help his popularity. I've never actually read any of his works so I can't personally provide a judgment on that.
I think many regard Anthony Trollope as a writer of little merit because of the narrative tone and what Gissing calls a capital crime of fiction, acknowledging within the narrative that he his writing fiction. This opinion I am certainly not in agreement with. I've read several of his novels and have been quite impressed with them, for the psychological depth of characters, and Trollope's aptitude for complex social situations.
George Bernard Shaw, cannot be called a bad writer because as a playwright he is quite brilliant and philosophically deep, BUT, the novels he wrote very early in his career (I've read the two that were published in his lifetime) are somewhat lacking, I think in literary value, as the author himself acknowledged.
An argument could probably be made for James Fenimore Cooper.
I'm not willing to give a name because the worst writer ever is probably someone I've never read, but the worst writer I've read might be Clara Reeve, who produced a fairly cheap and uninspired offspring of Horace Walpole's THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO a few years after Walpole's novel was published.
Jackie Collins by far. Ok she isn't exactly considered 'literary'; but how the **** is she the most widely sold author?!?! Eh?
Chuck Palahniuk, another trendy jump-on-the-bandwagon author IMO. Though not as bad Jackie.
I'd like to evaluate some of the nominations I've seen (for the record I consider myself extremely well read when it comes to eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century literature, but know almost nothing about literature after about 1920 so there are a lot of choices I can't evaluate).
I've seen a few people nominate Jane Austen. I'm surprised that they aren't more, because to really understand Jane Austen (more so than with other authors) you really need to slow it down a little bit and enjoy the irony in some of her sentences. I know a few people who enjoy her novels for the plots. I don't, but I love the novels because of the ambiguity. A good critic can make the case that MANSFIELD PARK is an anti-Jacobin novel, while another good critic can consider it to have the exact opposite orientation. Some have aligned her with Edmund Burke, others with Mary Wollstonecraft, still others with Godwin. To me that's the mark of a good work of art.
Samuel Richardson's nomination I can understand. I enjoyed PAMELA in the early chapters because of its perversity. You could legitimately claim that it lacks subtlety and psychological complexity. On the other hand, the novel was still a very new literary form at that point and he made some impressive contributions to the epistolary novel form.
Charles Dickens, while I would argue he isn't quite Thackeray's equal in genius, his sentences are beautiful and profound, and his characters memorable. As to comments about the serialization process, it had its disadvantages, but Dickens insisted it was the best way to create his art. It must be noted that many well known nineteenth century novels were written that way. I recommend reading George Gissing's book on Charles Dickens, because Gissing goes into depth on the serialization process and the impact that it had on each individual novel. I also think that not enough people have read THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP and BLEAK HOUSE.
I would be interested to know why the person who nominated Oliver Goldsmith considers him to be lacking in Literary Merit.
Can't agree with that either. Not because I have read Trollope (I should start on him really), but because it's a stupid argument. Adn I really mean 'stupid'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vavasor
I remember Austen 'hastening to a happy conclusion' (in Northanger Abbey?), I remember Saramago saying something about returning from a digression with a clever stroke of writers' craftmanship (what a horribly arrogant thing to say!). How are both of them not essentially great novelists? Both admit writing fiction and deconstruct to some extent their function as a writer: it is manipulative, without them we woudn't know what the characters are going to do, but we as readers are also at their mercy. We could then say that Austen and Trollope (if not many more) were way before their time instead of committing a sin.
Stupid argument, as I said.