Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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I'm probably one of them dastardly flickers and trollers but I'm passionate about books and I love arguing or hearing you guys arguing. I find it interesting because you are starting to touch on the notion of quality ...I didn't think anyone would be offended by crits of Sci Fi because (sob) people always put my interests down: from Coro to Shakespeare. I'm secure enough about my enjoyment of my genres not to be threatened. OTOH I should read some sci fi to see what y'all are talking about. Ballard here I come.
I've just finished Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Superb. Unusual. I feel enriched by it!
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{works that denizens of literature departments recognise as important}
is not the same subset as
{works that readers relate to}For those of us not genuflecting at the altar of modernism, that can be read as:
works that readers believe are important
(which is likely to involve enjoyment, but let's not diminish that)
cf
works that anointed high priests believe are important
(or, is that a canon in your pocket?)Oh, and these things are not mutually exclusive. Quality is muti-dimensional and more about matching purpose which is varied. We don't all read (or watch telly or listen to music) for the same reasons or even for the same ones all the time.
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I find it interesting because you are starting to touch on the notion of quality.
Quality. Now there's a novel idea [sic]. We could establish an ISO 9001:2008 (updated) Standards Approved definition by Genre, complete with Scope and Terms of Reference. Then we could conduct annual surveillance audits, for the purposes of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), to see if certain literary Canon stack up [sic], or whether we need to issue a Non-Conformance Report (NCR), with the commentator over-dub which says 'You're out!' or 'You're in!', as the mood takes them, and strangely in a German accent.
Any objections?
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Vaguely remember the discussion of quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In my humble non-post-modern opinion there is such an idea. It's something to do with characterisation and writing style and dialogue and narrative structure and and point of view and the relationship between form and content. And ideas and insight and .... Why do people sing the praises of The Great Gatsby? Not just because they enjoyed it I would say but because they were inspired by it and admired the richness of the prose.
I also vaguely remember something called the uses and gratifications theory - we find certain media texts useful and gratifying in ways that are nothing to do with quality.
Even bloody so ...
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Not just because they enjoyed it I would say but because they were inspired by it and admired the richness of the prose.
I'm all for that - readers find works important to them for a whole lot of reasons, just as profound and significant as any from the hallowed halls of academia or the smoking saloons of publisher's row.
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I'm all for that - readers find works important to them for a whole lot of reasons, just as profound and significant as any from the hallowed halls of academia or the smoking saloons of publisher's row.
Me too. [Returns to sitting on hands].
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What about the enduring appeal of some books like The Great Gatsby and Jane Austen's works - which have been mentioned here. Will the Da Vinci Code last as long as Pride and Prejudice?
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The notion of "enduring" is in itself modernist (as are concepts like "post-" really). We could also ask about say the current breadth of reach or types of effect on readers, or what they are inspired to do in response? How the work affects what is around it and what comes after it - and before it.
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Will the Da Vinci Code last as long as Pride and Prejudice?
I've always thought that The Da Vinci Code would be seen historically kinda like Chariots of the Gods, or Peyton Place. However lately I suspect it may be something more akin to Sherlock Holmes, or Victor Hugo or Jules Verne or something.
By the way I changed my avatar to one which I thought was much more interesting in the context of this thread*. And I also didn't want to offend Paul Litterick (again).
(*it's actually some kind of a robot thing by UK design wizard Edward Maddison, drawn as the cover art for one of my old albums.)
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I'm all for that - readers find works important to them for a whole lot of reasons, just as profound and significant as any from the hallowed halls of academia or the smoking saloons of publisher's row.
When I came over from Italy (which is where I am originally from) I could bring a limited number of books and it was an interesting exercise. I essentally had to decide what was my personal canon, and discovered that of course it's not as simple as picking the books I enjoyed the most, or even the ones I was most likely to reread. I brought the books that were important to me, for a variety of reasons, as well as books that I knew would be harder to find. I think the publishing industry and academia, at their best, work in the same way: they aid the circulation of books that are seen as having some value beside the one dictated by their commercial success and shelf life. Academics in particular strive to define what it is that makes a book valuable or important. Hardly an untained process, I know, but there's a place for it.
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there's a place for it
Agreed, just no longer at the centre (where it used to think of itself as being).
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This is horribly late to the party, but for those readers wondering when Terry Pratchett came to New Zealand, I can date it - I went straight from my first year philosophy exam in June 1994 to a talk he gave. He was back again at least once, probably around 97.
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When I came over from Italy (which is where I am originally from) I could bring a limited number of books and it was an interesting exercise.
I'm currently preparing to move house (not quite as far) and have decided to get rid of about half my books. My collection of fantasy books have all gone up on trademe. I kept history books - particularly in my area of academic interest - and a couple of dozen personal favourites (mostly comedy - Ben Elton, Bill Bryson), plus about 15 or so novels that people have given me which are in my 'to be read' pile.
I used to read so much in my youth, and now I'm more a watcher of TV and DVDs, it kinda feels like I don't really have a personal canon.
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We are now running out of space to shelve books so any that are not worth the 2nd read go to the 2nd hand bookshop these days.
I just like looking at my favourite books - my uni books from the 60s now take up only a small section of shelf as I give up those of lesser value to me to save space as we move around the country.
Some of it is snobbery. 'Goethe's Werke' looks good on the shelf but I will need a bomb under me to read it again - if I can still read German.
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Giovanni, I am not going to bother, other than to note you have an unique talent for misrepresenting the views of others and an over-sensitivity to this particular issue. And your claim that I think Sci-Fi is for "teh stupid" is ridiculous and offensive.
Please be assured that whenever you leap into such a discussion in future, I shall leave. Ta-ra.
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Please excuse this if it has already been posted, but here is the quote of Margaret Atwood's with respect to the difference between science fiction and speculative fiction. She is far from dismissive of science fiction, and is herself unable to classify an author as either sci fi or speculative, and points out that Ray Bradbury (for instance) wrote books in both genres.
Margaret Atwood: I like exact labeling. Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see. We can do the lineage: Sci-fi descends from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds; speculative fiction descends from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea came Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, out of which came We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, then George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Ray Bradbury’s Fahreneheit 451 was speculative fiction, while The Martian Chronicles was not.
Wired.com: But merges exist, aside from the historical designations.
Atwood: Well, there’s a crossover park where sci-fi and fantasy play together. But it’s really just a question of who is related to whom. If you could do a DNA of books, you could trace the classifications of these kinds of writing.
Wired.com: It seems that much of the blurring comes more from a lack of experience with these works, rather than some kind of postmodern sampling that erases points of reference.
Atwood: Right. People haven’t really read these books. They want to know where to put it on the bookstore shelf. When people first started writing this stuff, they didn’t call it science fiction. The first were called scientific romances. Before that, there were utopias and dystopias.
How can we classify some bizarre tales? That disturbing series of stories about civil servants in Russia by Gogol... like that one about a guy who wakes up and finds his own nose in the middle of the bread roll he's eating for breakfast...
Paul Litterick: come back! We readers out here are enjoying the debate... if not the acrimony... you guys really like each other right? If this were over cups of tea there might be much thumping of teaspoons, but we'd all be enjoying ourselves I think. Wouldn't we? I love these sorts of conversations... though having read very little fiction published after 1920 I haven't much to add...
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She is far from dismissive of science fiction,
Yes, we have been through that, that's roughly twenty years after her original comments. I have no particular quarrel with the distinction she's come to in her wiser old age, much as it's a tad obvious. Her earlier dismissals would have been fine too, except they did away with half a dozen feminist writers that had somewhat pre-empted Handmaid's Tale - it would have been nice to recognise them. Still, Handmaid is a powerful book and more recently I enjoyed her series of lectures on debt. They used to be available on the CBC website but no more, alas.
And your claim that I think Sci-Fi is for "teh stupid" is ridiculous and offensive.
The emo comment? The painting kittens thing? Come on now, Paul. You make it sound as if Keri had lost her rag for no reason whatsoever, and that's not nice. I'm with you on never having this discussion ever, ever, ever again though.
In closing, I wanted to ever-so-casually point out that earlier today I was quoted by squids-in-space writer William Gibson, so I might just take the rest of the year off. Somebody feed me grapes.
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I say, well done sir. Well done.
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In closing, I wanted to ever-so-casually point out that earlier today I was quoted by squids-in-space writer William Gibson, so I might just take the rest of the year off. Somebody feed me grapes.
Nicely done! Linkage?
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icely done! Linkage?
Heh. I don't see your name on it Giovanni.
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Nicely done! Linkage?
Oh, well, if you must TWIST MY ARM.
Heh. I don't see your name on it Giovanni.
That's actually my favourite part. But just so nobody thinks ill of anybody, the original tweeter had included the link to my post, which then got lost in the retweeting. Not @tragedyhatherle's fault, in other words.
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Or am I cheating myself out of an opportunity to sue Twitter here?
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Excellent!
Me, I'm still smiling so widely half my face has fallen off after getting an email from A Writer I Truly Admire.
And I've enjoyed the thoughtful untangling-the-complex-strands posts from linger and Dr Tiso- you want those grapes peeled first, sir?
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Good choice on the grapes, as this diagram confirms.
Has anyone posted this list here before? It is nicely divided into 'The Board's List' (BL) and "The Reader's List (RL)'. And I'd just like to point out, for no apparent reason, that The Grapes of Wrath is 10 on the BL and 22 on the RL, while The Great Gatsby is 2 on the BL and 13 on the RL. There also seem to be four (that's 4!) Ayn Rand in the top ten on the RL, and none (which as my 4 year old pointed out once, is exactly the same as zero) on the BL.
And that, to coin a phrase, is a loaded Canon.
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Me, I'm still smiling so widely half my face has fallen off after getting an email from A Writer I Truly Admire.
Tell me about it! :-)
But this one was a silly thing. However I believe I shall never wash the Internet again all the same.
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