Ahahaha, yeah, Eddings has the plot itself as a character. It's maybe the most blatant piece of story manipulation I've ever read, and is very silly indeed (though occasionally amusing).
There is never an excuse for poor writing, regardless of genre.
thats like saying theres never an excuse for losing a football game, you gotta win all the time!
1: without the crap, you wouldn't know what was good vs really good. it would change your scale.
2: bad writing teaches other writers what not to do.
The only interesting characters in WoT were the bad guys. I wonder if they'd be able to do them enough justice in a movie. Somehow they felt much more real than any of the good guys (and like all interesting things in the Wheel of Time, they were rarely seen). Most of the time I just wanted Rand and Mat and the entire group of braid-tugging skirt-straighteners to die, so I found myself rooting for the Forsaken a lot, particularly Moghedien.
well in the early books, the bad guys were all faceless identical clones. they had no real developement until all the main characters were well developed... then jordan got done developing the bad guys and decided to develope side characters and just add new characters and the books started to drag.
also, i was kidding about shai lebouf (don't like him) but height is not a problem remember, they made 5-6' tall actors look like 3-4' tall hobbits.
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
edited January 2009
Eddings was good, but he clearly writes for children which limits his scope a bit. I probably wouldn't have appreciated the Belgariad as much if I had first read it as an adult.
Terry Brooks on the other hand, urgh. Starting every chapter with repeating what happened in the last chapter, I mean wtf? I just read that 5 minutes ago, stop regurgitating everything. Couldn't stand his style of writing at all.
Then the story of the Shannara series was kind of meh too. It started out ok, but then meandered into total blandness and emo introspective wanking with completely toothless and flat villains, fizzling out into nothingness in the finale (which was so bland that I can barely remember how it ended).
The books are some of the most awfully-written novels I've ever read. Like...the way the novels are structured are just awful. Fucking god damned motherfucking AWFUL.
But they are some of the best god damned fantasy books I've ever read.
I read the Legend of Huma, which was decent, and quit while I was ahead.
The books are some of the most awfully-written novels I've ever read. Like...the way the novels are structured are just awful. Fucking god damned motherfucking AWFUL.
But they are some of the best god damned fantasy books I've ever read.
You should probably read some better fantasy books, dude.
Dragonlance is wretchedly bad. Everything about them. They are basically a transcription of a DnD campaign, and a pretty boring one at that.
Except the Lord Toede novel. That book was fucking wonderful.
In a Wheel of Time movie, should they even try to pull of all the crazy accents? Because frankly Domani is bad enough in written form, I'm not sure I ever want to hear some actually trying to speak it.
Randy Quaid will have to play one of the Seanchan. We can have Anna Pacquin do her bad Rogue/Sookie Stackhouse accents for Tuon.
In a Wheel of Time movie, should they even try to pull of all the crazy accents? Because frankly Domani is bad enough in written form, I'm not sure I ever want to hear some actually trying to speak it.
Randy Quaid will have to play one of the Seanchan. We can have Anna Pacquin do her bad Rogue/Sookie Stackhouse accents for Tuon.
The nerves that were struck are the same nerves that get struck when someone makes a "Duke Nukem Forever! Get it!?" joke and when the "<thing that has a following here> is so fucking lame. See? I'm cool!" card gets played. They're both unproductive and boring.
And yeah, I'd say the books aren't bad for what they are- pulp fantasy suitable for middle/highschoolers and I'd defend that opinion. I get that people have ecountered idiots who hold the books up as paragons of fantasy literature and I know how frustrating that is when there's so many better series out there but, jesus, get over it. Don't act like a fucktard just because you've met a few fucktards.
*Edit* I suppose my real issue is that literary snobbery annoys the shit out of me. Probably almost as much as musical snobbery. They're both forms of art with a huge range of content and the tendancy for people to pick something mediocre but popular to use as an example of everything wrong with the genre is ridiculous.
Yet in spite of that people happily hop on bandwagons like this one until the prevailing opinion of something is "It's total shit" when in reality it's pretty mediocre but not with out some merit. It's harmful to rational discussion.
Then the story of the Shannara series was kind of meh too. It started out ok, but then meandered into total blandness and emo introspective wanking with completely toothless and flat villains, fizzling out into nothingness in the finale (which was so bland that I can barely remember how it ended).
I think the last four (Scions?) could make a decent film adaptation if they rooted the story and world enough in the present of the setting. Re-discovering ancient heritage for butt-kicking and world-saving can be quite awesome. The again, it has been years since I read all the way through those books, but it seems as if they could certainly take the "everyone has their own storyline...oh! they're all related after all" approach and create some interesting tales.
And what one calls "literary afterbirth" others may call "a really enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon and by far worth the $15 I spent at Barnes and Noble while the wife was reading every word on wedding planning ever written in the modern English tongue."
Authors are paid for entertainment. Real art is hardly ever a lucrative endeavor. I know that the countless hours I have spent exploring the world presented in WoT far outweighs the concerns I have over the quality of the writing.
I think that the success of the LotR films gives us hope for more long-winded fatty fantasy novels being converted into entertaining action films.
This.
Also, am I the only one who feels that Prince Caspian the film was better than the book? Now don't get all reactionary on me... think carefully and recall that Caspian was the worst book in the series, and that the changes they made in the film (additional action sequences and Susan not being worthless) were vast improvements.
Eddings was good, but he clearly writes for children which limits his scope a bit. I probably wouldn't have appreciated the Belgariad as much if I had first read it as an adult.
Terry Brooks on the other hand, urgh. Starting every chapter with repeating what happened in the last chapter, I mean wtf? I just read that 5 minutes ago, stop regurgitating everything. Couldn't stand his style of writing at all.
Then the story of the Shannara series was kind of meh too. It started out ok, but then meandered into total blandness and emo introspective wanking with completely toothless and flat villains, fizzling out into nothingness in the finale (which was so bland that I can barely remember how it ended).
Well the second book in the second series, The Druid of Shannara was excellent as a stand alone book. I mean, it was really really good, and probably the high watermark of the Shannara books.
The actual ending to the second series was forgettable, but the beginning of the last book where Walker fights the Four Horsemen and
I think that the success of the LotR films gives us hope for more long-winded fatty fantasy novels being converted into entertaining action films.
This.
Also, am I the only one who feels that Prince Caspian the film was better than the book? Now don't get all reactionary on me... think carefully and recall that Caspian was the worst book in the series, and that the changes they made in the film (additional action sequences and Susan not being worthless) were vast improvements.
ppffffffttttt
Caspian wasn't the worst book in the series. Last Battle was.
Other than that, I have no disagreements with your statment. Carry on.
And what one calls "literary afterbirth" others may call "a really enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon and by far worth the $15 I spent at Barnes and Noble while the wife was reading every word on wedding planning ever written in the modern English tongue."
Authors are paid for entertainment. Real art is hardly ever a lucrative endeavor. I know that the countless hours I have spent exploring the world presented in WoT far outweighs the concerns I have over the quality of the writing.
This is true, of course. I think I overreacted a bit, but I feel that saying "it's just fantasy so it can afford to be bad" unfairly cheapens the genre.
Authors are paid for entertainment. Real art is hardly ever a lucrative endeavor.
This is just silly and is your stick-up-ass English professors talking. They are pretentious, which would be okay if they were right, but they are wrong, at least when it comes to judging the quality of modern literature.
"Real" art can be both accessible and entertaining. In fact, I would almost go so far as to argue that it SHOULD be.
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How would you guys feel if the producer picked up the surviving writing/directing staff of The West Wing for the later books? Pretty much all they do in those books is walking around hallways talking, anyway, so why not go all out?
How would you guys feel if the producer picked up the surviving writing/directing staff of The West Wing for the later books? Pretty much all they do in those books is walking around hallways talking, anyway, so why not go all out?
This is a good idea
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Well the second book in the second series, The Druid of Shannara was excellent as a stand alone book. I mean, it was really really good, and probably the high watermark of the Shannara books.
The actual ending to the second series was forgettable, but the beginning of the last book where Walker fights the Four Horsemen and
Cogline dies
was good.
Yeah, Walker's storyline was the best one - but I couldn't stand the Par and Coll one (especially Par, what a whiny little bastard), and the one where the girl searched for the elves was rather bland if I recall correctly.
The only thing I really remember as good was the part with that abandoned stone city where some kind of sulky demi-god lived. Maybe that was Walker in Driud of Shannara?
I think I overreacted a bit, but I feel that saying "it's just fantasy so it can afford to be bad" unfairly cheapens the genre.
Nice signature.
The writing and plot development for WoT became a muddied swamp around book 8 or 9, but I would make the argument that the true value of the series is in the world-building it engages in. I mean, Jordan has created a breathing, complex world which has been slowly revealed to us over the course of the past two decades. I was never into the series because of style but, instead, for the meaty content that is provided. I think that, especially with fantasy lit, it is a fine premise to be able to shift one's critical eye away from literature and focus closer to the metaphorical and representational content in the same way one evaluates Religion, which is essentially the study of "world-building." I think this is why WoT on the big screen could be a huge success. If they focus on creating the world and walking the viewer through the mythology which is both concrete and unfolding we could have a great series of films, if they focus on "the plot" they'll be robbing us of the (greater) value of evaluating and understanding the way in which the world "ticks."
Off the top of my head, a minor theme in the books is the way in which "evil" attempts to stunt academic and technological growth within the society. Presenting this and evaluating the situation within a film would be more interesting and fruitful than the majority of books nine and ten. But that's a theoretical and non-practical application.
"Real" art can be both accessible and entertaining. In fact, I would almost go so far as to argue that it SHOULD be.
Says who? Your stuck-up professor to my stuck-up professor? My only point is that "rich" writers do not, in general, write "artistic" literature. Artists don't make the big bucks as entertainment industry writers are capable of making. Regardless, accessibility is a red herring. It is a concept that directly engages itself with the question of "how can we make ourselves popular/profitable again?" and has little to do with literary and artistic truth statements. Accessibility was an issue for the Western written word until we had a large enough population who were literate. The concept of what is accessible has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of a text, but in the means and tools available to tackle the difficulty. I mean, Joyce is more accessible than ever, now, as we have mountains of guides and annotations which make Ulysses available to anyone who wishes to put in the time and effort. Hermetic, "modernist" difficulty is not difficult if you have the tools to decipher it, but apparently we just like to write a lot of it off as inaccessible and too difficult. Inaccessible to who? to the person who wants complex concepts to be transferred directly to their brain just because they read the words on the page? Tsk. To dismiss difficulty as an impediment to accessibility is like saying that the smaller field-stone is more valid because we do not require the tractor to pull it to the foundation-- even when the larger, and more difficult, stone will have a more substantial and important impact on the soundness of construction.
"Real" art can be both accessible and entertaining. In fact, I would almost go so far as to argue that it SHOULD be.
Says who? Your stuck-up professor to my stuck-up professor? My only point is that "rich" writers do not, in general, write "artistic" literature. Artists don't make the big bucks as entertainment industry writers are capable of making. Regardless, accessibility is a red herring. It is a concept that directly engages itself with the question of "how can we make ourselves popular/profitable again?" and has little to do with literary and artistic truth statements. Accessibility was an issue for the Western written word until we had a large enough population who were literate. The concept of what is accessible has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of a text, but in the means and tools available to tackle the difficulty. I mean, Joyce is more accessible than ever, now, as we have mountains of guides and annotations which make Ulysses available to anyone who wishes to put in the time and effort. Hermetic, "modernist" difficulty is not difficult if you have the tools to decipher it, but apparently we just like to write a lot of it off as inaccessible and too difficult. Inaccessible to who? to the person who wants complex concepts to be transferred directly to their brain just because they read the words on the page? Tsk. To dismiss difficulty as an impediment to accessibility is like saying that the smaller field-stone is more valid because we do not require the tractor to pull it to the foundation-- even when the larger, and more difficult, stone will have a more substantial and important impact on the soundness of construction.
Your analogy is not very apt, though. Why does a book have to be more difficult to be "sound of construct"? Why does it need to be encoded in a way that you need annotations and CliffNotes and above all professors to understand it? Why, in short, do you believe that something written for laymen is not "artistic"?
Spoilered to trim down on the derailing.
Academia hail James Joyce not because he was a genius--whether or not he was one--but because his work, and the work of other modern authors like him, give professors' jobs meaning. Holding these works on a pedestal creates necessity.
And it goes farther than that. Professors extend the attitude into derogatory remarks about how popular literature is not literature. Because it is popular. Because laypeople like it without needing professors to explain to them why they should like it.
You might be reading a lot of disgust for literary academia into my words. It's not just that it is so cyclical--professors teaching students to be professors so they can teach students to be professors. That's bad enough, but people can do what they want, and I can understand the love for learning. The problem is that our English education system is so tied in with our practical education system, and that we have elevated education to such a lofty position in our society that the things English professors say skew the perceptions of society as a whole. They create the kind of irrational reservation you yourself are demonstrating, where people run around thinking the things they like are not actually that good because damn it, our education system wouldn't approve of them.
Not that popularity makes something good, or that something written for "just folks" is automatically better than dense, literary works. Just that being popular is not a bad thing. Being written for the masses is not a black mark. And far from being greedy, it is being generous. It is saying, "come one, come all, this is for you."
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"Real" art can be both accessible and entertaining. In fact, I would almost go so far as to argue that it SHOULD be.
Says who? Your stuck-up professor to my stuck-up professor? My only point is that "rich" writers do not, in general, write "artistic" literature. Artists don't make the big bucks as entertainment industry writers are capable of making. Regardless, accessibility is a red herring. It is a concept that directly engages itself with the question of "how can we make ourselves popular/profitable again?" and has little to do with literary and artistic truth statements. Accessibility was an issue for the Western written word until we had a large enough population who were literate. The concept of what is accessible has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of a text, but in the means and tools available to tackle the difficulty. I mean, Joyce is more accessible than ever, now, as we have mountains of guides and annotations which make Ulysses available to anyone who wishes to put in the time and effort. Hermetic, "modernist" difficulty is not difficult if you have the tools to decipher it, but apparently we just like to write a lot of it off as inaccessible and too difficult. Inaccessible to who? to the person who wants complex concepts to be transferred directly to their brain just because they read the words on the page? Tsk. To dismiss difficulty as an impediment to accessibility is like saying that the smaller field-stone is more valid because we do not require the tractor to pull it to the foundation-- even when the larger, and more difficult, stone will have a more substantial and important impact on the soundness of construction.
Your analogy is not very apt, though. Why does a book have to be more difficult to be "sound of construct"? Why does it need to be encoded in a way that you need annotations and CliffNotes and above all professors to understand it? Why, in short, do you believe that something written for laymen is not "artistic"?
Spoilered to trim down on the derailing.
Academia hail James Joyce not because he was a genius--whether or not he was one--but because his work, and the work of other modern authors like him, give professors' jobs meaning. Holding these works on a pedestal creates necessity.
And it goes farther than that. Professors extend the attitude into derogatory remarks about how popular literature is not literature. Because it is popular. Because laypeople like it without needing professors to explain to them why they should like it.
You might be reading a lot of disgust for literary academia into my words. It's not just that it is so cyclical--professors teaching students to be professors so they can teach students to be professors. That's bad enough, but people can do what they want, and I can understand the love for learning. The problem is that our English education system is so tied in with our practical education system, and that we have elevated education to such a lofty position in our society that the things English professors say skew the perceptions of society as a whole. They create the kind of irrational reservation you yourself are demonstrating, where people run around thinking the things they like are not actually that good because damn it, our education system wouldn't approve of them.
Not that popularity makes something good, or that something written for "just folks" is automatically better than dense, literary works. Just that being popular is not a bad thing. Being written for the masses is not a black mark. And far from being greedy, it is being generous. It is saying, "come one, come all, this is for you."
Have you ever actually met an English professor? The majority of profs who teach English have no such views on popular literature. Almost any class will contain popular literature - whether it's your fun horror fiction class that happens to have a Stephen King or Lovecraft story, or your boring 18th century class that has what was popular fiction at the time.
Part of the postmodern literary movement was the removal of such over-arching standards of literary evaluation. In fact, books that are specifically bad or kitschy have their place in the field of literature specifically for that reason. There has been a recognition that the meta-narrative of "canon" is a really hierarchical system of exclusivity, and there has been action against that. My brilliant horror fiction prof loves cheesy horror movies, and he will carry out a detailed analysis of them that is as valuable as any other film analysis. He did the same with gothic literature for this graduate work, and that was the cheesy horror of past centuries.
English profs like Joyce because Joyce is really fucking good. Some of his stuff is inaccessible, sure - Finnegan's Wake is pretty experimental, and Ulysses is a massive, difficult tome - but read his short stories, or Portrait of the Artist, and you'll find absolutely brilliant writing that is more accessible than many other great authors.
You're getting the reasoning confused. English profs enjoy and study difficult literature because you don't need a prof to study easy or simple literature. Someone with experience in close reading can get plenty out of a popular novel, but it's mostly not going to be a life's work, like Joyce or Faulkner or Elliot would be. And sometimes a popular novel has plenty of depth and complexity beyond the surface, but then it's not "easy or simple" anymore, is it?
Regardless, two facts are true: great literature is often not financially lucrative, often because it's only recognized after its time, and because great literature is - like great ideas - often difficult. Second, the idea that English professors look down snobbily on "popular" literature is out of date. I'll say that Salvatore's books are crap, but they're still literature, and there's still a) entertainment to be obtained, for the right audience, and b) value in the analysis of them, for what they indicate about the genre, the culture, the audience, etc.
I hope you're right that my views are outdated and that things have changed; perhaps I've just had bad professors, and read bad statements by bad professors.
I still don't think I've read a convincing argument as to why
great literature is often not financially lucrative, often because it's only recognized after its time
Considering that it's only fairly recently that art became quite so much of a capitalistic endeavor, and in the past, many classic, highly respected, and influential artists were very popular in their time. (Or at least their art was.)
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Considering that it's only fairly recently that art became quite so much of a capitalistic endeavor, and in the past, many classic, highly respected, and influential artists were very popular in their time. (Or at least their art was.)
The argument is that writing literature, in general, doesn't pay great. If you can knock out a novel every year that will be widely read and popular you can make a living off it, but you won't get close to the wealth of a similarly successful Hollywood producer (who is also in the field of entertainment.)
There is really no distinction between the "good" and "bad" authors, very few ever get seriously rich off of their writing.
I think a more useful distinction to make is that literature, in general, is not valued by our economy in relation to other forms of popular entertainment. My argument is that the push for "accessible" writing is both a literary movement as well as an economic decision. Poets are quite guilty of the latter, here, as they have pushed for more accessible writing as a means to get more people involved, buying books, and caring about the work itself. This is my opinion, and it is based primarily on my work with poets who are, as a general whole, worried about the ability of their art and work to maintain a position within the modern economic and academic system.
All work has academic value, be it Joyce or Dean Koontz. "Bad" literature is useful in sociological and comparative work as it reveals concepts about our culture as a whole. "Good" literature is deemed so due to its mastery of the language itself, not due to its value in assisting social commentary. Both are required for understanding our culture as a whole, but only "good" lit is concerned with the art of the language, itself, in addition to extrapolating cultural meaning.
Evil M. is very, very correct in his assessment of the current state of literary theory.
In relation to WoT this is important as we can distinguish between an academic issue: Poor use of literary pacing, development and language, and a more popular triumph: that Jordan created a living, breathing world which holds many concepts which will allow us to evaluate the work in relation to our own lives and mythologies.
Jordan wasn't a "great" writer, but he could very easily make the transition to film as there are so many modern parallels of which we can gain insight on our culture within his work. He is just as valid as Joyce, but fills a different place within the academic and popular spectrum.
I personally find language to be almost wholly irrelevant. It is a surface issue; an aesthetic, a sense of style, not of substance. Being good at it is nice, but you can spray as much expensive perfume on a turd as you want. Underneath, it's still a turd.
For me, "good" literature is literature that changes people. Preferably for the better. To change someone, you have to reach him; to reach him, you have to speak on his level.
I get frustrated with your definition of "good" literature because it causes authors to value narrowing their focus to a small, elite group of people.
But I agree wholly with the first part of your post, that fiction is not a high-paying field, and that the accessible style of modern literature is due to both economic and literary concerns.
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I hope you're right that my views are outdated and that things have changed; perhaps I've just had bad professors, and read bad statements by bad professors.
I still don't think I've read a convincing argument as to why
great literature is often not financially lucrative, often because it's only recognized after its time
Considering that it's only fairly recently that art became quite so much of a capitalistic endeavor, and in the past, many classic, highly respected, and influential artists were very popular in their time. (Or at least their art was.)
Great literature is usually hard work for the reader, and has limited popular appeal until its greatness is more widely recognized. Faulkner is brilliant, but he is difficult. Obviously there are exceptions - some truly great literature is easier, or at least accessible on an easier level and still enjoyable or worthwhile, and some great authors do well from the start.
The simple fact is that the more accessible something is, the more chance it has of being immediately popular and successful, and it's very hard to do something "great" with art and maintain accessibility. Some authors manage it, but they are exceptions. I would not call Faulkner accessible (mostly), but I would call him great. His greatest work is definitely not easily accessible, and his most accessible work is definitely not his greatest.
I get frustrated with your definition of "good" literature because it causes authors to value narrowing their focus to a small, elite group of people.
Let's look at a different field, then. In physics, one could argue that quantum "studies" are the most interesting and groundbreaking area where a physicist could work. The comprehension and mental ability for this field is greater than that for astronomy. Quantum physics are for a small, elite group who can understand the work. It is a field that is important and meaningful, but is not understandable by the "layman."
I think that one thing to keep in mind is that we're both (and everyone involved in this conversation) not the "laymen" that we have been speaking of. We're all of above-average intelligence. I see no reason why a quantum physicist would benefit from addressing the work to a common level of comprehension. The language used to communicate imperfect ideas of quantum mechanics could be made accessible, but the concepts themselves remain out of reach to the "average" American.
Good literature should be accessible, but inaccessibility isn't a devil in disguise. Anyone can read Portrait of the Artist and understand the basic story, but in order to understand Portrait it requires greater intelligence and harder work.
I just get sick to death of people who argue that we need to make art and literature "accessible" to "average" men and women. These "average" readers don't care about Ulysses, and would have trouble getting much more than plot out of even a Dan Brown novel. No one is writing actual literature for the "common man" they're writing it for reader who are already of above-average intelligence and who have "elite" training or instruction already.
I mean, accessible and inaccessible lit exist. My hesitation is that statements like "all art should be accessible to be successful" drags those who would create masterful and difficult work to "dumb" it down for the illusory prick who won't read the work, anyway. And that prick has his novels and could even get through "difficult" work if they wanted to put in the effort. I don't see any reason why we need to exist under the illusion that art should be fully understandable by everyone. Asking that we maintain a high academic standard from our authors doesn't seem to be a damaging request to art.
It isn't elitism, it's asking that people put some work in of their own before expecting metaphysical enlightenment.
I don't know how you can find language, which, aside from paper and ink, is what books are made of irrelevant.
Language is a tool for communication. It is quite valuable, as such, but it is still a means to an end. The end is the ideas you are communicating. Those are what make literature great. I will accept that some people can use language in really beautiful ways, but to me, it will always be more of a surface thing. Nice to have. Pretty. Not at all the point of a story.
Different people do appreciate different things. But I will say this: I've never been changed by language. I don't internalize language in terms of how I view things and how I live my life. Stories, though, the substance you are communicating with language... Oh yes. Those have changed me.
great literature is often not financially lucrative, often because it's only recognized after its time
Considering that it's only fairly recently that art became quite so much of a capitalistic endeavor, and in the past, many classic, highly respected, and influential artists were very popular in their time. (Or at least their art was.)
Great literature is usually hard work for the reader, and has limited popular appeal until its greatness is more widely recognized. Faulkner is brilliant, but he is difficult. Obviously there are exceptions - some truly great literature is easier, or at least accessible on an easier level and still enjoyable or worthwhile, and some great authors do well from the start.
The simple fact is that the more accessible something is, the more chance it has of being immediately popular and successful, and it's very hard to do something "great" with art and maintain accessibility. Some authors manage it, but they are exceptions. I would not call Faulkner accessible (mostly), but I would call him great. His greatest work is definitely not easily accessible, and his most accessible work is definitely not his greatest.
Could you explain what you mean by "great", and why you think it is usually hard work for the reader? I'm still not getting the why here.
And I think if you look back before the 19th century or so, most classic writers of literature did write in an accessible fashion. I mean, shit--look at Shakespeare. He is probably the most-hailed author, thought of by many as the best writer of all time, and he wrote for regular people at playhouses. Homer's work was entirely carried by the oral traditions of regular people. I would argue that, when it comes to storytelling, it's only recently that we've started to associate inaccessibility with greatness.
I get frustrated with your definition of "good" literature because it causes authors to value narrowing their focus to a small, elite group of people.
Let's look at a different field, then. In physics, one could argue that quantum "studies" are the most interesting and groundbreaking area where a physicist could work. The comprehension and mental ability for this field is greater than that for astronomy. Quantum physics are for a small, elite group who can understand the work. It is a field that is important and meaningful, but is not understandable by the "layman."
I think that one thing to keep in mind is that we're both (and everyone involved in this conversation) not the "laymen" that we have been speaking of. We're all of above-average intelligence. I see no reason why a quantum physicist would benefit from addressing the work to a common level of comprehension. The language used to communicate imperfect ideas of quantum mechanics could be made accessible, but the concepts themselves remain out of reach to the "average" American.
Again, I don't like this comparison at all. Quantum physics is not literature. It shares few, if any of the same purposes. I suppose to have this discussion we do need to talk about what the purposes of literature are, but I think it's safe to say that literature is (and should be) much more in touch with overall society than quantum physics.
Good literature should be accessible, but inaccessibility isn't a devil in disguise. Anyone can read Portrait of the Artist and understand the basic story, but in order to understand Portrait it requires greater intelligence and harder work.
I just get sick to death of people who argue that we need to make art and literature "accessible" to "average" men and women. These "average" readers don't care about Ulysses, and would have trouble getting much more than plot out of even a Dan Brown novel. No one is writing actual literature for the "common man" they're writing it for reader who are already of above-average intelligence and who have "elite" training or instruction already.
I mean, accessible and inaccessible lit exist. My hesitation is that statements like "all art should be accessible to be successful" drags those who would create masterful and difficult work to "dumb" it down for the illusory prick who won't read the work, anyway. And that prick has his novels and could even get through "difficult" work if they wanted to put in the effort. I don't see any reason why we need to exist under the illusion that art should be fully understandable by everyone. Asking that we maintain a high academic standard from our authors doesn't seem to be a damaging request to art.
It isn't elitism, it's asking that people put some work in of their own before expecting metaphysical enlightenment.
I never said that art should be fully understandable by everyone; I do value accessibility, but I have no problem with having a niche for highly complex, intellectual work. My problem is more with raising it to an artificial level of importance as academics have done. I believe, again, that in history, the most memorable and important and influential storytellers have been those who made a heavy impact on a wide variety of people, not just the few elites trained to understand it.
Furthermore, I don't see where you're getting this attitude that some kind of "price" must be paid to receive great literature. Why should ideas be hidden and obfuscated and encoded? Why should they require hard work to get at?
I get frustrated with your definition of "good" literature because it causes authors to value narrowing their focus to a small, elite group of people.
Let's look at a different field, then. In physics, one could argue that quantum "studies" are the most interesting and groundbreaking area where a physicist could work. The comprehension and mental ability for this field is greater than that for astronomy. Quantum physics are for a small, elite group who can understand the work. It is a field that is important and meaningful, but is not understandable by the "layman."
I think that one thing to keep in mind is that we're both (and everyone involved in this conversation) not the "laymen" that we have been speaking of. We're all of above-average intelligence.
One could say that. Its completely arbitrary though. Stephen Hawkin is an astro-physicist. The greatest minds in physics are largely astrophysicists. The fact that you dismiss it highlights that you are presenting your own prejudice as fact in a vain belief that you are some kind of arbiter of truth. That's the bullshit about a fine distinction between literature and accessible fiction. While fiction can be difficult and great, the presumption that inaccessibility to the dirty little plebs is a positive characteristic is ignorance draped in faux sophistication.
Not sure if I should bump this thread, or start a new thread. Just got the newest book in the mail from amazon today, "The gathering storm" and was wanting to talk about it. Only read the foreword, and a few pages of the intro so far. Its read pretty good I think, but again, its not much. I don't think the part I read was by Joradan, it was done in the same style as a lot of intros, but the writing was different.
Debating whether to re-read Knife of dreams before digging in. Really looking forward to reading it though, thing is huge! Might to try and find it in ebook format so I don't ruin my hardback though.
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thats like saying theres never an excuse for losing a football game, you gotta win all the time!
1: without the crap, you wouldn't know what was good vs really good. it would change your scale.
2: bad writing teaches other writers what not to do.
well in the early books, the bad guys were all faceless identical clones. they had no real developement until all the main characters were well developed... then jordan got done developing the bad guys and decided to develope side characters and just add new characters and the books started to drag.
also, i was kidding about shai lebouf (don't like him) but height is not a problem remember, they made 5-6' tall actors look like 3-4' tall hobbits.
Terry Brooks on the other hand, urgh. Starting every chapter with repeating what happened in the last chapter, I mean wtf? I just read that 5 minutes ago, stop regurgitating everything. Couldn't stand his style of writing at all.
Then the story of the Shannara series was kind of meh too. It started out ok, but then meandered into total blandness and emo introspective wanking with completely toothless and flat villains, fizzling out into nothingness in the finale (which was so bland that I can barely remember how it ended).
I read the Legend of Huma, which was decent, and quit while I was ahead.
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You should probably read some better fantasy books, dude.
Dragonlance is wretchedly bad. Everything about them. They are basically a transcription of a DnD campaign, and a pretty boring one at that.
Except the Lord Toede novel. That book was fucking wonderful.
As long as they keep the threesomes in...
Randy Quaid will have to play one of the Seanchan. We can have Anna Pacquin do her bad Rogue/Sookie Stackhouse accents for Tuon.
Yes. It will be like having King of the Hill back.
I don't remember any threesomes.
And yeah, I'd say the books aren't bad for what they are- pulp fantasy suitable for middle/highschoolers and I'd defend that opinion. I get that people have ecountered idiots who hold the books up as paragons of fantasy literature and I know how frustrating that is when there's so many better series out there but, jesus, get over it. Don't act like a fucktard just because you've met a few fucktards.
*Edit* I suppose my real issue is that literary snobbery annoys the shit out of me. Probably almost as much as musical snobbery. They're both forms of art with a huge range of content and the tendancy for people to pick something mediocre but popular to use as an example of everything wrong with the genre is ridiculous.
Yet in spite of that people happily hop on bandwagons like this one until the prevailing opinion of something is "It's total shit" when in reality it's pretty mediocre but not with out some merit. It's harmful to rational discussion.
I think the last four (Scions?) could make a decent film adaptation if they rooted the story and world enough in the present of the setting. Re-discovering ancient heritage for butt-kicking and world-saving can be quite awesome. The again, it has been years since I read all the way through those books, but it seems as if they could certainly take the "everyone has their own storyline...oh! they're all related after all" approach and create some interesting tales.
Those are still no reason to give people assloads of money for penning literary afterbirth.
And writing can only be compared to football if Herman Melville comes out of nowhere and tackles your bitch ass every time you complete a sentence.
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Authors are paid for entertainment. Real art is hardly ever a lucrative endeavor. I know that the countless hours I have spent exploring the world presented in WoT far outweighs the concerns I have over the quality of the writing.
This.
Also, am I the only one who feels that Prince Caspian the film was better than the book? Now don't get all reactionary on me... think carefully and recall that Caspian was the worst book in the series, and that the changes they made in the film (additional action sequences and Susan not being worthless) were vast improvements.
Well the second book in the second series, The Druid of Shannara was excellent as a stand alone book. I mean, it was really really good, and probably the high watermark of the Shannara books.
The actual ending to the second series was forgettable, but the beginning of the last book where Walker fights the Four Horsemen and
ppffffffttttt
Caspian wasn't the worst book in the series. Last Battle was.
Other than that, I have no disagreements with your statment. Carry on.
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This is true, of course. I think I overreacted a bit, but I feel that saying "it's just fantasy so it can afford to be bad" unfairly cheapens the genre.
Nice signature.
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This is just silly and is your stick-up-ass English professors talking. They are pretentious, which would be okay if they were right, but they are wrong, at least when it comes to judging the quality of modern literature.
"Real" art can be both accessible and entertaining. In fact, I would almost go so far as to argue that it SHOULD be.
This is a good idea
Yeah, Walker's storyline was the best one - but I couldn't stand the Par and Coll one (especially Par, what a whiny little bastard), and the one where the girl searched for the elves was rather bland if I recall correctly.
The only thing I really remember as good was the part with that abandoned stone city where some kind of sulky demi-god lived. Maybe that was Walker in Driud of Shannara?
The writing and plot development for WoT became a muddied swamp around book 8 or 9, but I would make the argument that the true value of the series is in the world-building it engages in. I mean, Jordan has created a breathing, complex world which has been slowly revealed to us over the course of the past two decades. I was never into the series because of style but, instead, for the meaty content that is provided. I think that, especially with fantasy lit, it is a fine premise to be able to shift one's critical eye away from literature and focus closer to the metaphorical and representational content in the same way one evaluates Religion, which is essentially the study of "world-building." I think this is why WoT on the big screen could be a huge success. If they focus on creating the world and walking the viewer through the mythology which is both concrete and unfolding we could have a great series of films, if they focus on "the plot" they'll be robbing us of the (greater) value of evaluating and understanding the way in which the world "ticks."
Off the top of my head, a minor theme in the books is the way in which "evil" attempts to stunt academic and technological growth within the society. Presenting this and evaluating the situation within a film would be more interesting and fruitful than the majority of books nine and ten. But that's a theoretical and non-practical application.
Says who? Your stuck-up professor to my stuck-up professor? My only point is that "rich" writers do not, in general, write "artistic" literature. Artists don't make the big bucks as entertainment industry writers are capable of making. Regardless, accessibility is a red herring. It is a concept that directly engages itself with the question of "how can we make ourselves popular/profitable again?" and has little to do with literary and artistic truth statements. Accessibility was an issue for the Western written word until we had a large enough population who were literate. The concept of what is accessible has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of a text, but in the means and tools available to tackle the difficulty. I mean, Joyce is more accessible than ever, now, as we have mountains of guides and annotations which make Ulysses available to anyone who wishes to put in the time and effort. Hermetic, "modernist" difficulty is not difficult if you have the tools to decipher it, but apparently we just like to write a lot of it off as inaccessible and too difficult. Inaccessible to who? to the person who wants complex concepts to be transferred directly to their brain just because they read the words on the page? Tsk. To dismiss difficulty as an impediment to accessibility is like saying that the smaller field-stone is more valid because we do not require the tractor to pull it to the foundation-- even when the larger, and more difficult, stone will have a more substantial and important impact on the soundness of construction.
Your analogy is not very apt, though. Why does a book have to be more difficult to be "sound of construct"? Why does it need to be encoded in a way that you need annotations and CliffNotes and above all professors to understand it? Why, in short, do you believe that something written for laymen is not "artistic"?
Spoilered to trim down on the derailing.
And it goes farther than that. Professors extend the attitude into derogatory remarks about how popular literature is not literature. Because it is popular. Because laypeople like it without needing professors to explain to them why they should like it.
You might be reading a lot of disgust for literary academia into my words. It's not just that it is so cyclical--professors teaching students to be professors so they can teach students to be professors. That's bad enough, but people can do what they want, and I can understand the love for learning. The problem is that our English education system is so tied in with our practical education system, and that we have elevated education to such a lofty position in our society that the things English professors say skew the perceptions of society as a whole. They create the kind of irrational reservation you yourself are demonstrating, where people run around thinking the things they like are not actually that good because damn it, our education system wouldn't approve of them.
Not that popularity makes something good, or that something written for "just folks" is automatically better than dense, literary works. Just that being popular is not a bad thing. Being written for the masses is not a black mark. And far from being greedy, it is being generous. It is saying, "come one, come all, this is for you."
Have you ever actually met an English professor? The majority of profs who teach English have no such views on popular literature. Almost any class will contain popular literature - whether it's your fun horror fiction class that happens to have a Stephen King or Lovecraft story, or your boring 18th century class that has what was popular fiction at the time.
Part of the postmodern literary movement was the removal of such over-arching standards of literary evaluation. In fact, books that are specifically bad or kitschy have their place in the field of literature specifically for that reason. There has been a recognition that the meta-narrative of "canon" is a really hierarchical system of exclusivity, and there has been action against that. My brilliant horror fiction prof loves cheesy horror movies, and he will carry out a detailed analysis of them that is as valuable as any other film analysis. He did the same with gothic literature for this graduate work, and that was the cheesy horror of past centuries.
English profs like Joyce because Joyce is really fucking good. Some of his stuff is inaccessible, sure - Finnegan's Wake is pretty experimental, and Ulysses is a massive, difficult tome - but read his short stories, or Portrait of the Artist, and you'll find absolutely brilliant writing that is more accessible than many other great authors.
You're getting the reasoning confused. English profs enjoy and study difficult literature because you don't need a prof to study easy or simple literature. Someone with experience in close reading can get plenty out of a popular novel, but it's mostly not going to be a life's work, like Joyce or Faulkner or Elliot would be. And sometimes a popular novel has plenty of depth and complexity beyond the surface, but then it's not "easy or simple" anymore, is it?
Regardless, two facts are true: great literature is often not financially lucrative, often because it's only recognized after its time, and because great literature is - like great ideas - often difficult. Second, the idea that English professors look down snobbily on "popular" literature is out of date. I'll say that Salvatore's books are crap, but they're still literature, and there's still a) entertainment to be obtained, for the right audience, and b) value in the analysis of them, for what they indicate about the genre, the culture, the audience, etc.
I still don't think I've read a convincing argument as to why
Considering that it's only fairly recently that art became quite so much of a capitalistic endeavor, and in the past, many classic, highly respected, and influential artists were very popular in their time. (Or at least their art was.)
The argument is that writing literature, in general, doesn't pay great. If you can knock out a novel every year that will be widely read and popular you can make a living off it, but you won't get close to the wealth of a similarly successful Hollywood producer (who is also in the field of entertainment.)
There is really no distinction between the "good" and "bad" authors, very few ever get seriously rich off of their writing.
I think a more useful distinction to make is that literature, in general, is not valued by our economy in relation to other forms of popular entertainment. My argument is that the push for "accessible" writing is both a literary movement as well as an economic decision. Poets are quite guilty of the latter, here, as they have pushed for more accessible writing as a means to get more people involved, buying books, and caring about the work itself. This is my opinion, and it is based primarily on my work with poets who are, as a general whole, worried about the ability of their art and work to maintain a position within the modern economic and academic system.
All work has academic value, be it Joyce or Dean Koontz. "Bad" literature is useful in sociological and comparative work as it reveals concepts about our culture as a whole. "Good" literature is deemed so due to its mastery of the language itself, not due to its value in assisting social commentary. Both are required for understanding our culture as a whole, but only "good" lit is concerned with the art of the language, itself, in addition to extrapolating cultural meaning.
Evil M. is very, very correct in his assessment of the current state of literary theory.
In relation to WoT this is important as we can distinguish between an academic issue: Poor use of literary pacing, development and language, and a more popular triumph: that Jordan created a living, breathing world which holds many concepts which will allow us to evaluate the work in relation to our own lives and mythologies.
Jordan wasn't a "great" writer, but he could very easily make the transition to film as there are so many modern parallels of which we can gain insight on our culture within his work. He is just as valid as Joyce, but fills a different place within the academic and popular spectrum.
For me, "good" literature is literature that changes people. Preferably for the better. To change someone, you have to reach him; to reach him, you have to speak on his level.
I get frustrated with your definition of "good" literature because it causes authors to value narrowing their focus to a small, elite group of people.
But I agree wholly with the first part of your post, that fiction is not a high-paying field, and that the accessible style of modern literature is due to both economic and literary concerns.
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Great literature is usually hard work for the reader, and has limited popular appeal until its greatness is more widely recognized. Faulkner is brilliant, but he is difficult. Obviously there are exceptions - some truly great literature is easier, or at least accessible on an easier level and still enjoyable or worthwhile, and some great authors do well from the start.
The simple fact is that the more accessible something is, the more chance it has of being immediately popular and successful, and it's very hard to do something "great" with art and maintain accessibility. Some authors manage it, but they are exceptions. I would not call Faulkner accessible (mostly), but I would call him great. His greatest work is definitely not easily accessible, and his most accessible work is definitely not his greatest.
Let's look at a different field, then. In physics, one could argue that quantum "studies" are the most interesting and groundbreaking area where a physicist could work. The comprehension and mental ability for this field is greater than that for astronomy. Quantum physics are for a small, elite group who can understand the work. It is a field that is important and meaningful, but is not understandable by the "layman."
I think that one thing to keep in mind is that we're both (and everyone involved in this conversation) not the "laymen" that we have been speaking of. We're all of above-average intelligence. I see no reason why a quantum physicist would benefit from addressing the work to a common level of comprehension. The language used to communicate imperfect ideas of quantum mechanics could be made accessible, but the concepts themselves remain out of reach to the "average" American.
Good literature should be accessible, but inaccessibility isn't a devil in disguise. Anyone can read Portrait of the Artist and understand the basic story, but in order to understand Portrait it requires greater intelligence and harder work.
I just get sick to death of people who argue that we need to make art and literature "accessible" to "average" men and women. These "average" readers don't care about Ulysses, and would have trouble getting much more than plot out of even a Dan Brown novel. No one is writing actual literature for the "common man" they're writing it for reader who are already of above-average intelligence and who have "elite" training or instruction already.
I mean, accessible and inaccessible lit exist. My hesitation is that statements like "all art should be accessible to be successful" drags those who would create masterful and difficult work to "dumb" it down for the illusory prick who won't read the work, anyway. And that prick has his novels and could even get through "difficult" work if they wanted to put in the effort. I don't see any reason why we need to exist under the illusion that art should be fully understandable by everyone. Asking that we maintain a high academic standard from our authors doesn't seem to be a damaging request to art.
It isn't elitism, it's asking that people put some work in of their own before expecting metaphysical enlightenment.
Language is a tool for communication. It is quite valuable, as such, but it is still a means to an end. The end is the ideas you are communicating. Those are what make literature great. I will accept that some people can use language in really beautiful ways, but to me, it will always be more of a surface thing. Nice to have. Pretty. Not at all the point of a story.
Different people do appreciate different things. But I will say this: I've never been changed by language. I don't internalize language in terms of how I view things and how I live my life. Stories, though, the substance you are communicating with language... Oh yes. Those have changed me.
Could you explain what you mean by "great", and why you think it is usually hard work for the reader? I'm still not getting the why here.
And I think if you look back before the 19th century or so, most classic writers of literature did write in an accessible fashion. I mean, shit--look at Shakespeare. He is probably the most-hailed author, thought of by many as the best writer of all time, and he wrote for regular people at playhouses. Homer's work was entirely carried by the oral traditions of regular people. I would argue that, when it comes to storytelling, it's only recently that we've started to associate inaccessibility with greatness.
Again, I don't like this comparison at all. Quantum physics is not literature. It shares few, if any of the same purposes. I suppose to have this discussion we do need to talk about what the purposes of literature are, but I think it's safe to say that literature is (and should be) much more in touch with overall society than quantum physics.
I never said that art should be fully understandable by everyone; I do value accessibility, but I have no problem with having a niche for highly complex, intellectual work. My problem is more with raising it to an artificial level of importance as academics have done. I believe, again, that in history, the most memorable and important and influential storytellers have been those who made a heavy impact on a wide variety of people, not just the few elites trained to understand it.
Furthermore, I don't see where you're getting this attitude that some kind of "price" must be paid to receive great literature. Why should ideas be hidden and obfuscated and encoded? Why should they require hard work to get at?
Edit: Continued here.
One could say that. Its completely arbitrary though. Stephen Hawkin is an astro-physicist. The greatest minds in physics are largely astrophysicists. The fact that you dismiss it highlights that you are presenting your own prejudice as fact in a vain belief that you are some kind of arbiter of truth. That's the bullshit about a fine distinction between literature and accessible fiction. While fiction can be difficult and great, the presumption that inaccessibility to the dirty little plebs is a positive characteristic is ignorance draped in faux sophistication.
Also Lake Woebegone ftl.
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There is official progress on the "Game of Thrones" production with HBO.
I love that the one actor that we know of now is right in line with what most of the fans seemed to feel was both the obvious and best choice.
Don't bump this thread. You'll give people heart attacks that the WoT movies are still going to be inflicted on everyone.
Fuck WoT.
Debating whether to re-read Knife of dreams before digging in. Really looking forward to reading it though, thing is huge! Might to try and find it in ebook format so I don't ruin my hardback though.