Any current books you think will become lasting literature?

[stlukesguild]

Domination is hard to count.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest artistic domination... unless its the realm of classical music in which the Germans and Austrians rule (and even there we have some very strong showing by the Italians, French, and Russians. The Italians probably dominated the Renaissance in Europe... but then at the same time the Persians were at their peak and China and Japan were no slackers.

Rather than "domination" I would suggest that the Latin-American contribution since mid-century cannot be ignored any more than that of the Americans for the 20th century as a whole.

Or looking closer to the present, Victorian literature. Why are our classics texts dominated by Victorian literature? Britain in the 19th century was a superpower: that's why people could begin to afford better things like novels. So writers could finally earn a better living. Actually I think it was easier for a Victorian writer to earn a living compared to now, because they didn't have TV or cinema then. But why Victorian??? Why not 18th century for instance?

Since when are "our" classics dominated by Victorian literature? The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, The Black and the Red, Nana, Don Quixote, Robinson Caruso, Tristram Shandy, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The Steppenwolf, The Magic Mountain, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels, Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, Mlle de Maupin, Our Lady of the Flowers, Ulysses, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Trial, etc... are all equally recognized as classics.

I wonder whether anyone has noticed that when there are fewer restraints on writing, the novel is more likely to become a classic?

Actually, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an essay in which he claimed the opposite was true. The British writers, he argued, labored under a censorship of all sexuality. Stevenson compared the British writers of the 19th century to "muzzled dogs" and exclaimed, "What books Dickens could have written had he been permitted! Think of Thackery as unfettered as Flaubert or Balzac!... They give us a little box of toys and say to us, 'You musn't play with anything but these!' " Artists have almost always labored under censorship of one form or another. The strongest artists always find a way around the censors and still achieve something of genius.

Has anyone considered the possibility of fantasy taking over the literary world? I know they're more plot-driven than character-based, but epics seem to be timeless for some reason. Look at LOTR and the Greek epics. His Dark Materials may be a possible candidate. I know it's set in the past, but the idea of a tyrannous establishment seems to be an old plot device. And the wicked parents. In fantasy you get to exercise the creativity and wonder you don't get to do in fiction (stupid publishers) but if it has a fault the characters are not always realistic and can be too serious. If you think about it, Gothic tales and HP Lovecraft are making a comeback too, though they weren't considered serious fiction in their lifetime.

I think that there is a constant cycle of artists struggling against an establishment that has become fossilized and these same artists eventually becoming the establishment themselves. Undoubtedly, there are any number of artists... in literature, music, and the visual arts... who are achieving something of real merit by avoiding even attempting to work within the current system.

[JCamilo]

The phrase dominated shouldn't be used so liberally. They have done well, and have had a very unique, developed, and aesthetically high output. Marquez in particular has had perhaps the best international success, yet the word dominate, well, lots of countries have had such great authors. I would also say that the proximity to the United States, and American military funding has also helped a great deal in making those Latin American authors really available to a larger audience - Spanish is a very important political language after all.

That is the biggest question to me, how much is actual "boom" and how much is just the emergence of attention, or translation. I am of the mind that almost every country in the world has a sizable literary output, but how much do we know about early 20th century Persian poets? As much as we do, lets say, Spanish poets from the same time period?

Domination is hard to count.

It goes more to Europe. The discovery of latin-american poets starts with Ruben Dario, goes to Neruda and Borges and they were "discovered" by europeans, not americans (which are more influential on building). It was kind off politics: the latin-america was an alternative. Some form of counter-culture. Even the brazilians writers were europeans "discoveries" (the musicians no).

Now, I must point that saying South Americans makes as much sense as Saying europe. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil are not the same place, same culture, same tradition, etc. Argentina has to deal with Borges, Brazil to deal with portuguese lack of translation (Portuguese hasnt been discovered yet), etc.

There is a Brazilian alive that has good chance to last, Ariano Suassuna, but likes Marquez, he is already an old name, so he kind of fighting against time already.

[carolinehelston]

Or looking closer to the present, Victorian literature. Why are our classics texts dominated by Victorian literature? Britain in the 19th century was a superpower: that's why people could begin to afford better things like novels. So writers could finally earn a better living. Actually I think it was easier for a Victorian writer to earn a living compared to now, because they didn't have TV or cinema then. But why Victorian??? Why not 18th century for instance?

Since when are "our" classics dominated by Victorian literature? The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, The Black and the Red, Nana, Don Quixote, Robinson Caruso, Tristram Shandy, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, The Steppenwolf, The Magic Mountain, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gulliver's Travels, Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, Mlle de Maupin, Our Lady of the Flowers, Ulysses, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Trial, etc... are all equally recognized as classics.

Perhaps I didn't explain very clearly. All those you mentioned are of course classics, but I meant the most famous classics everyone knows of, including 10-year-old children and those who don't in general like or know much about classics. For some reason the most famous ones seem to be Victorian ...

Your take on censorship breeding creativity is interesting. Actually come to think of it, the present emphasis on sexuality seems to be causing things like the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Which can be rather boring. On the other hand, it's hard not to wonder whether the current emphasis on realism and minimalism may be breaking a lot of fiction writers. You can't write in too many fantasic Dickension characters, or even weird coincidental plots or raging Heathcliffs (for example). But a lot of plot liberties can be taken in fantasy. Do you think that's why fantasy seems to be very popular?

Just read something about Fantasy on Manners. Apparently it's a fantasy take with elements of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. Maybe it might even become the new literature...

[JCamilo]

If you really consider Victorean period, you have great fantasy writers in the end of her domain. Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, H.G.Wells, Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, Oscar Wilde... The anti-realism take seems more a matter on Russian/french fiction than english, they quickly solved it, I would say, humor solved the matter there.

You must recall, Jane Austen was a reader of gothic novels, she kind of use elements of it there. I do not know what you mean by fantasy being popular or not, but i would say it is because realism is trully impossible, and fantasy is necessary as resource in literature. However, the emphasis in realism is an american take in, most due to conventional book market and fantasy goes as classified as children... again, market.

[JBI]

If you really consider Victorean period, you have great fantasy writers in the end of her domain. Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, H.G.Wells, Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, Oscar Wilde... The anti-realism take seems more a matter on Russian/french fiction than english, they quickly solved it, I would say, humor solved the matter there.

You must recall, Jane Austen was a reader of gothic novels, she kind of use elements of it there. I do not know what you mean by fantasy being popular or not, but i would say it is because realism is trully impossible, and fantasy is necessary as resource in literature. However, the emphasis in realism is an american take in, most due to conventional book market and fantasy goes as classified as children... again, market.

Well, naturalism, or realism if you will has never faded as a tradition - look at something like Cormac McCarthy's works, for instance, as a prime example. Fantasy as you define it, is dependent on a great deal of sincerity, it's hard to shake the realism, as the term Magical Realism would dictate, it pretty much brings fantastical elements and reconstructs them as metaphors since realism cannot be compromised, the difference of its bastard cousin fantasy is that the vision itself takes itself sincerely as a vision not reflecting reality.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm gone for a couple days and look at what I miss? A gold ol' StLukes vs. JBI battle. Will catch up on it tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure Mutatis was being sarcastic, we're talking about novels right now.

Yep. Though I think StLukes was probably just playing devil's advocate to me devil's advocate. Or alcohol was clouding his sarcasm detector.

[Darcy88]

I'm gone for a couple days and look at what I miss? A gold ol' StLukes vs. JBI battle. Will catch up on it tomorrow.

Watching them debating each other and bringing up things of which I haven't a clue makes me feel like the runt with two left feet who gets relegated to the side-lines while the tall talented kids dribble about and dunk.

[stlukesguild]

Perhaps I didn't explain very clearly. All those you mentioned are of course classics, but I meant the most famous classics everyone knows of, including 10-year-old children and those who don't in general like or know much about classics. For some reason the most famous ones seem to be Victorian ...

Well Dickens seems to be embraced as THE English novelist... and there are other great Victorian-era authors such as the Brontë sisters, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Lewis Carroll, William Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Edward Lear... but then again I think Jane Austen is nearly as popular in many circles as Dickens... and she is pre-Victorian. The same is true of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And you might also recognize that the obsession with 19th century English novels may not carry over outside of England to the same extent. Indeed, even within Britain, when you turn to poetry it is the Romantics, not the Victorians, who are the more dominant voice.

Your take on censorship breeding creativity is interesting. Actually come to think of it, the present emphasis on sexuality seems to be causing things like the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Which can be rather boring.

The old blues and jazz and early rock n roll singers were quite often far more creative in terms of symbolic language, double entendre, etc... because they couldn't come out and use every profane word or pornographic image. The eroticism of Paul Verlaine's early poetry is exquisite in its use of delicate turns of phrase and the slightest suggestiveness. His later poems in which he no longer censors himself are vulgar, crude, and bland.

On the other hand, it's hard not to wonder whether the current emphasis on realism and minimalism may be breaking a lot of fiction writers. You can't write in too many fantasic Dickension characters, or even weird coincidental plots or raging Heathcliffs (for example). But a lot of plot liberties can be taken in fantasy. Do you think that's why fantasy seems to be very popular?

Again, I think that as usual the great innovations in the arts eventually become institutionalized and fossilized. The next generation of artists can fight against their preconceptions head on... or obliquely. If you look at the Victorian era, some of the most innovative writing is to be found in genre that many in academia and the institutions would not have taken seriously: ghost stories and horror (Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Poe, Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Gautier etc...) "children's literature" and fantasy (Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Poe, Hans Christian Anderson, E.T. A. Hoffmann, etc...) and science fiction (H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, etc...).

In the 1950s, science fiction films became the genre through which many film-makers and writers were best able to make a social commentary about the state of political affairs at the height of McCarthyism.

It is quite possible that these "minor genre" may become or continue to be a major venue through which writers will push against the limitations presented in the more mainstream approach to "serious literature". J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, a good deal of the "Magic Realists" of Latin-America have already absorbed ideas from the more fantastic traditions of fiction. Of course mainstream fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc... have their own limitations as well.

I see an analogous situation occurring within the visual arts. After a half-century of longer dominance of the traditions of painting and sculpture by academia, a few major universities, and a slew of pretentious critics, many artists are turning their back on this "art world" and returning to what they loved as children... painting and drawing things... from "low" or "high culture"... as a result one of the most influential movements right now is the self-named "lowbrow art" movement:





















Many... myself included... suspect that there is far more innovation... sheer invention... and audacity to be found in the work of these artists who have spent their lives embracing the whole of the visual world around them... the works of the "old masters"... as well as the the works of popular culture: TV, film, photography, rock n roll, jazz, pin-ups, advertising, pornography, etc... than many of the young twits clutching Yale degrees and capable of quoting Derrida and Foucault... but lacking so much as the ability to tell which end of the brush is up. As the English art critic, Matthew Collings pointed out, there is far more sheer visual splendor to be found in architecture and even advertising than there is is a lot of what passes as the "art of our time."

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Awwwww damn, StLuke's breaking out the pics. Things just got real.

Watching them debating each other and bringing up things of which I haven't a clue makes me feel like the runt with two left feet who gets relegated to the side-lines while the tall talented kids dribble about and dunk.

I've always felt that way.

[Mr.lucifer]

I don't get the arguement than genre limits artistic expression. Why is this?

[JBI]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

[stlukesguild]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

You are speaking from the POV of literary criticism. I have no idea of the approach taken in creative writing courses. In the visual arts theory and criticism have supplanted aesthetics for quite some time... probably since Clement Greenberg... who ironically was a sworn formalist... focused upon aesthetics. The shift in the visual arts owes much to the fact that academia is biased toward the word. It is far easier to ramble on for pages about theory, narrative, political and social ramifications, etc... You don't even need an eye for what looks good. There has been a shift away from the dominant theory-based criticism of the New York/Yale "Art World" as well for probably 10 years or so as well. Some of this involves a reactionary shift toward the old master traditions involving a return to the ateliers etc... frequently termed New Old Masterism. At the other end of the spectrum is Pop Surrealism or "Lowbrow Art" which embraces the visual stimuli drawn from popular sources. Some of the strongest artists draw from both end of this spectrum.

[JCamilo]

Well, naturalism, or realism if you will has never faded as a tradition - look at something like Cormac McCarthy's works, for instance, as a prime example. Fantasy as you define it, is dependent on a great deal of sincerity, it's hard to shake the realism, as the term Magical Realism would dictate, it pretty much brings fantastical elements and reconstructs them as metaphors since realism cannot be compromised, the difference of its bastard cousin fantasy is that the vision itself takes itself sincerely as a vision not reflecting reality.

Well, I would say realism can be used as two different approaches on literature, even if very similar. One is the aesthetical movement lead by guys like Flaubert and Tchekhov, which had a bit of social critic on them. Like all aesthetical movement it was never true enough to end or have a real begining, as Ortega y Gasset would point the extreme realism of Dom Quixote.

Then you have realism, as you say, style. And I think for example, this is not genre. Science Fiction norms is usually very realistic, Tolkien, J.K.Rowling, Stephen King or Robert Howard are fantasy writers that were very realistic approach.

On the first realism, you have the influence of journalism, which demands the audience to read in conformity with their daily work. The author would not bound the rules to change anything and this is the realism most usual on editoral market, it is a basic rulle of average. The audience does not want to be surprised by cowboy who crosses the mexican-texan border and sundenly goes flying. It is ok if he thinks he can comunicated with a wolf, because it is normal, people dailly think they can comunicated with animals. This is very american, as american novels were born like this (Hawthorne, Melville, Twain) and it favour "historical fiction", "biographies', etc.

Fantasy in other hand has suffered a lot with this realism, where mundane, normal occurences were norms and fantasy styles were developed to respect te scientifism of XIX century. The "genres" are but this. Science Fiction, Horror, Political, etc. borrowed the genre to produce a realistic acceptable "fantasy'. And the traditional fantasy entered in the faery tale label, with pedagogical use and move to children field. No wonder it is almost a minor genre such as short story where Borges had to break the magical realism, he would hardly have this freedom on novels, that when they are fantastic, are major experimental works like Finnegans Wake or "south-sea adventures" like Conrad, Stevenson... Language itself have to became fantasy, the supernatural is doubtful like in Thomas Mann Doktor Faust or Guimaraes Rosa The Devil to pay in the backlands which are basically the old devil buy your soul stories, disguised by an unrealiable narrator or gimmicks of language to mimicry orality.

But truthlly fantasy was never at risk, the idea of showing only the daily life of novels lost its strength, no more Balzacs to carry it on, it is mostly a editorial genre now. Guys like MacCarty will use the narrative, even if realistic, to scape from journalism and we never had a literature period when the fantasy was not countering it, even Dickens, Flaubert, James, Tolstoy, etc have fantastic stories.

As Literary Criticism i would say it is dead simple because as literary genre they were minor, not inotivative and limited. As pretencious scientifism they failled to add anything beyond the what the writers already showed in their essays. It is a minor genre, perhaps even minor than pulp-fiction.

[Drkshadow03]

Just so you know, Derrida and Foucault are already a thing of the past. Theory has been dead or on its last breath for at least 5 years in the top American universities at least. The return to Aesthetics has already begun, and close reading will be making a comeback in the process.

Really the people who quote theory widely are just the least self-assure of the bunch.

What evidence do you have for that?

As far as I know there are plenty of new books being published about Foucault and Derrida. I just checked the courses being offered at three Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Yale, and Stanford). Only Harvard lacked any identifiable theory course. Meanwhile, both Yale and Stanford had a handful of theory courses they were offering.

[JBI]

What evidence do you have for that?

As far as I know there are plenty of new books being published about Foucault and Derrida. I just checked the courses being offered at three Ivy Leagues (Harvard, Yale, and Stanford). Only Harvard lacked any identifiable theory course. Meanwhile, both Yale and Stanford had a handful of theory courses they were offering.

Just a general trend I had been noticing. That these authors are still studied does not prove anything - as of now, they are moving toward Museumification. We still study Dickens, but his genre of novel has since expired.

The theoretical textual tradition seems to have dried up. Even that annoying brat Terry Eagleton has admitted as much, and published on it. The gimmick may still be discussed, but the glory days are long past, in current academic thought other traditions seem to be taking over.

Namely, the environment is beginning to be a topic of discussion, likewise, things like Darwinism, new aesthetics, and various other subshoots. The whole Post-Modernity thing, and with it the theoretical tradition seems to be out of the cutting line, despite having resonance. Ph. D.s looking for tenure track positions will be reliant on new skills for a new environment.

My friends who study politics have interestingly reported an upsurge of what they call Modernist theory and scholarship that has come in to replace much of the traditional post-modern theoretical crap they were forced to read.

I do not mean that theory is ever going to fade - Deconstruction is one of the better forms of close reading that can be done - I merely meant the heavy theoretical stuff, all that French post-structuralist mumbo jumbo is now being pushed into a background and hushed up. Paul de Mann is no longer the God he once was in the academy, regardless of his Nazi bit. Even Derrida, though still resonant, is probably not going to be read much at all. The French heavy theorists? Perhaps a little, but we seem to have moved beyond them to new ways of reading texts, besides all that weird language of cyborg transvestites with leaking bodies.