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A human heart posted:Lovecraft and poe both suck and this thread is supposed to be about a guy not reading genre fiction! Like half of the classics are “genre fiction, but old.” Get over yourself.
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Nov 6, 2018 19:29
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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is better than Frankenstein at less than half the length.
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Nov 6, 2018 19:46
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Doctor Faustine posted:Like half of the classics are “genre fiction, but old.” Get over yourself. I'm sure this opinion is based on a thorough study of The Classics
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Nov 6, 2018 22:05
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Doctor Faustine posted:Like half of the classics are “genre fiction, but old.” Get over yourself. you could fry an egg on this take
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Nov 6, 2018 23:15
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Alright, stop dunking on each other it's time to dunk on me. Some slightly edited thoughts on A Hero of Our Time It feels like a Metal Gear game early on with how many times our narrator repeats words and phrases. I thought the endless little digressions were annoying at first, but they're actually quite fun and ACTUALLY a bit important as we move past the prologue. I also like the little details that show just how much better the narrator thinks he is compared to Maxim. An "Ecstatic narrator" indeed. "Here's what happened." "Here's how it happened." "We might not have arrived; but nevertheless we did." I read this book twice and I'm still having difficulty parsing this. My god, this book nails whigey prat with a high opinion of himself to a Tee. Both through Maxim talking to the narrator and from the "re-publishing" of Perchorins notebooks. My very first thought when I finished the book was how the little side stories, like with the blind boy and the nymph were a bit pointless to the overarching story. It took me a reread to understanding that they are the overarching story here. Byron appears more then once, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Did you lot trick me into reading some Russian guys fanfiction about a Byronic hero? No judgement here if you did, I still liked it a lot. A lot less thoughts overall; on my first run through I had a lot more, most of which were small complaints; on my second read through I came to understand most of those were invalid and just me missing the point. Overall, enjoyable. Not like, an epic masterpiece, but still good. Glad I read it. At this point it's a matter of whether I continue with Russian Lit or move on to something else. I think I want to stay, and try to tackle The Brothers Karamazov. I tried once, but I found myself stopping because I really wasn't enjoying it. While were on Russia it might be a good idea to try again. I'll see how it goes, both with my feelings a few days from now and what everyone else thinks. There were two short Russian Lit stories suggested to me earlier which I might dive into beforehand, as well.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:53
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It seems like A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole is right up your alley, in terms of liking SA, Catch-22, Mother Night and Mark Twain. It's better than those listed novels in terms of laughs at least. It's protagonist is, maybe, the gooniest goon in all of fiction. I'd consider it a classic by this point. Won the Pulitizer in the early 80s, but it was written in the 60s I believe. Author's mom found it after his suicide and sent it out to publishers. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 02:39
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I'm glad that you liked the book! Godspeed on whatever you read next.OscarDiggs posted:"We might not have arrived; but nevertheless we did." I read this book twice and I'm still having difficulty parsing this. OscarDiggs posted:Byron appears more then once, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Did you lot trick me into reading some Russian guys fanfiction about a Byronic hero? No judgement here if you did, I still liked it a lot. Lermontov's poem about the death of Pushkin probably qualifies as "fanfiction about a Byronic hero", though. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 05:20
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I'd again suggest something shorter before tackling Dostoevsky. Short stories would be a good choice, or I'll again recommend two short novels, Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog. Both are really excellent. Glad you liked Lermontov. I'll echo the comment about him being a superfluous man which means he's intended to be a piece of poo poo. I remember reading that book in my first year of undergrad and so most of us in the class didn't really know how to understand literature and we kept just coming back to the fact that he was a horrible person, which our prof used to pretty deftly explain the concept of the superfluous man in Russian fiction.
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Nov 7, 2018 05:57
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Ras Het posted:I'm sure this opinion is based on a thorough study of The Classics I have a master’s degree in English and my particular area of study is Romantic and Victorian British lit, so kinda yes.
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Nov 7, 2018 07:00
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Frankenstein isn't genre fiction. Creating what would become a genre template is pretty much the opposite of following one. Edit: vyelkin posted:I'd again suggest something shorter before tackling Dostoevsky. Short stories would be a good choice, or I'll again recommend two short novels, Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog. Both are really excellent. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 07:08
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Frankenstein isn't genre fiction. Creating what would become a genre template is pretty much the opposite of following one. But the experience for the reader is still a “genre” experience, even if the writer was the person who effectively solidified the genre. Frankenstein still reads like a science fiction/horror novel, just a good one with thematic depth and historical significance. The absence or presence of genre elements alone isn’t enough to determine the quality of a work.
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Nov 7, 2018 07:14
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Even if I agreed with you (and "quality" isn't the question here; I love Philip K. Dick as much as anyone), it wouldn't change that A human heart was completely right in pointing out that the OP does not want to read genre fiction for this thread.
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Nov 7, 2018 |
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Nov 7, 2018 07:58
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if you think about it The Divine Comedy is genre fiction
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Nov 7, 2018 08:55
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I like the concept of "The Superfluous Man" but I'm sure you can guess I've never encoutered it before. Throw a stone somewhere and the first person it hits will probably have a better chance of understanding the argument of Literature vs Genre better then me, and it's probably slightly beyond the scope of this thread. I've talked to a lot of TBB Goons over the years and many (including Hieronymous Alloy  ) have said literature fiction is just a genre of fiction, so I am open to the idea. I mean hell, if I had been asked I would have said Frankenstien and works by Poe ARE lit books, especially since Poe wrote a lot of poems. (And I know Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstien, before anyone says anything.)But erm... the point I'm trying to make is, I've had a lifetime of reading genre books, and I'll have a lifetime more after all this. This is simply a chance to expand my horizons a bit more! So, I'm not ignoring what you say or you're suggestions, or anyone elses for that matter, but they are sort of being tallied with and against everyone elses. God Of Paradise posted:A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole An Uncle of mine has that! I might be able to borrow it soonish, after the Russian crop get's brought in.
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Nov 7, 2018 09:03
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Doctor Faustine posted:I have a master’s degree in English and my particular area of study is Romantic and Victorian British lit, so kinda yes. Aww geez, that must of been awful for you
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Nov 7, 2018 09:13
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Ras Het posted:Aww geez, that must of been awful for you My 4.0 weeps. Anyway, re: the actual thread, I think perhaps I’ve been intpreting “genre” differently than other people have been using it (I’m very much in the “literary fiction is also a genre” camp and prefer to use “pulpy vs literary” over “genre vs literary”). Mostly I just thought it was dumb to call Poe bad for being “genre.” Lovecraft is actually pretty bad, but that has more to do with stylistic failures than him being “genre.” But yes, if you’re looking for stuff more in the literary fiction genre, Poe wouldn’t fit the bill, though Poe owns. My literary fiction recommendation is Possession by AS Byatt. It kind of assumes the reader knows a at least a fair amount about Victorian poetry, but the writing is beautiful and the story is delightful. I also recommend doing a back-to-back of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. The former is just a great story written well, the latter explores the former from a postcolonial and feminist lens. Both are also very creepy.
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Nov 7, 2018 10:41
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OscarDiggs posted:. I've talked to a lot of TBB Goons over the years and many (including Hieronymous Alloy Hieronymous get your loving rear end in here so I can yell at you
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Nov 7, 2018 15:01
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I recommend everyone that enjoys A Confederacy of Dunces to read O'Toole's other novel (written while he was a teenager) called The Neon Bible. It's a Southern Gothic novel about a young man dealing with his small town held back by the priest and his church's stranglehold, and the hypocrisy and cruelty that comes from a group that identifies as people of faith. It's pretty short and goes mostly unrecognized, despite showing an insight to O'Toole's depression and cynicism. It makes an interesting foil to the lighthearted goofiness of A Confederacy of Dunces. I especially recommend it to fans of McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee.
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Nov 7, 2018 15:51
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God Of Paradise posted:John Kennedy O'Toole Franchescanado posted:O'Toole
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Nov 7, 2018 17:01
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Oh hey. You're right. Was going off memory.
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Nov 8, 2018 01:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Hieronymous get your loving rear end in here so I can yell at you I deny all alleged statements unless specifically quoted Even Aristotle divided into genres though (tragedy and comedy) In the modern era genre is more a marketing term than anything else "Literary" fiction all too often just means "fiction of the kind published in the New Yorker" a la Michael Chabon In conclusion genre is a land of contrasts Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Nov 8, 2018 |
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Nov 8, 2018 18:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In the modern era genre is more a marketing term than anything else gently caress you thats my line
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Nov 8, 2018 18:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In the modern era genre is more a marketing term than anything else yes and no. seeing something labelled fantasy or sci-fi gives you a few (well founded) expectations about the text, and they’re usually right on the money edit: they also tell you what not to expect from it, and you’d be right about that too, almost always ulvir fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Nov 8, 2018 |
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Nov 8, 2018 19:19
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What's the consensus on Michel Faber? Under the Skin and The Book of Strange New Things are the closest thing to 'literary sci fi' that I've ever encountered.
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Nov 8, 2018 19:40
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Looking into it, "Death of Ivan Illyitch" by Tolstoy is easily less then a hundred pages. So, I'll pick that up and try to finish it off before the end of the weekend. From there I can decide whether to stay in Russian Lit land for some longer books, or to move onto some of the other fine recommendations that have been made.
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Nov 8, 2018 20:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I deny all alleged statements unless specifically quoted Do people consider stuff like Gentlemen of the Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Summerland to be non-genre just because Michael Chabon wrote them? This is an honest question, I am dumb and mostly poorly-read so I have no idea how actually smart people categorize those books.
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Nov 12, 2018 19:50
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Do people consider stuff like Gentlemen of the Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Summerland to be non-genre just because Michael Chabon wrote them? This is absolutely the thread for you, friend! THough you may also want to ask in the actual literature thread because it get's more traffic.
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Nov 14, 2018 14:51
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Do people consider stuff like Gentlemen of the Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Summerland to be non-genre just because Michael Chabon wrote them? What genre would they fit in? What is the main concern of the novel? Is it to provide entertainment and escapism, with heavy emphasis on plot? Or is it concerned with exploring themes and ideas through characters and situations with a focus that shifts away from plot? Does it distract you, or does it promote thoughts about your internal life, the internal life of someone foreign to you, and/or the world around you? Yiddish Policeman's gets touted as a detective mystery, but the scope and depth of that novel and the themes are much larger than a detective trying to solve a mystery. I also hear it labelled as a science fiction novel because it deals with an alternate history, but that's also disingenuous. Almost every fictional book is an alternate history. Gravity's Rainbow isn't a science fiction novel, for instance. Despite that novel having angels, singing lightbulbs, a Pavlovian-conditioned giant octopus, and all of the action taking place in an alternate history, those aren't really defining characteristics of the novel. The central plot, Tyrone Slothrop trying to understand and find a missile of destruction, is just a light framework for the events that transpire, and hundreds of pages are spent away from that plot. 1984 is considered science fiction because it takes place in a society in the future, but the only plot to speak of is two people sneaking around to gently caress and rumors of an underground rebel group. The majority of the book focuses on Winston Smith journaling his isolation in a society that suppresses individuality and human desire with threats of torture and death. There's a lot of angles to explore this debate, enough to warrant it's own thread, but this New Yorker article does a decent job of laying out a few sides and a brief history of the debate, with Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel as an example for defining the blurred lines. Michael Chabon has described himself as a genre fiction writer, and he's talked and written about it, so if you're curious about his opinion on it, I'd say look those up.
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Nov 14, 2018 15:35
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Do people consider stuff like Gentlemen of the Road, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Summerland to be non-genre just because Michael Chabon wrote them? I picked Gentlemen of the Road for Book of the Month a year or so back pretty much exactly to push that question. I think generally Chabon's genre stuff gets a pass as "one of the good ones" because he's Chabon and he's got a solid prose style. Except of course for the folks who are just here to poo poo on anything that somebody else claims to like. Franchescanado posted:
People sometimes label Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor as sci-fi for similar reasons.
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Nov 14, 2018 15:49
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Is Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers literature?
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Nov 14, 2018 17:23
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Lex Neville posted:Is Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers literature? its certainly literary
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Nov 14, 2018 17:24
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Lex Neville posted:Is Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers literature? A sincere suggestion to promote discussion and critical thinking: When asking "Is (book) literature/literary or genre fiction?", if it is a book that the person asking has read, how about including some aspects of the novel as evidence for either genre or literature? That way we might actually talk about those aspects instead of a congress saying Yes or No to the question.
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Nov 14, 2018 17:37
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I mean I think in general the question "Is __________ literature" is a question that is generally in the wrong direction. It should be "Does ______________ strive to be outside of the constraints of its genre"
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Nov 14, 2018 17:40
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All books are literature by definition.
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Nov 14, 2018 18:17
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yeah but only by the peasant definition
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Nov 14, 2018 18:29
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Franchescanado posted:A sincere suggestion to promote discussion and critical thinking: I didn't mean for it to come off disingenuously. I also wasn't planning on just leaving it there, but was curious to hear other people's thoughts on it before steering the conversation in a certain direction with my own. Either way, it was something I pondered based on your questions above - which, I know, weren't necessarily supposed to help distinguish between literarure/genre fiction, but nevertheless: I think The Sisters Brother "is" literature, but: Franchescanado posted:What is the main concern of the novel? Is it to provide entertainment and escapism, with heavy emphasis on plot? Franchescanado posted:Or is it concerned with exploring themes and ideas through characters and situations with a focus that shifts away from plot? Franchescanado posted:Does it distract you? Franchescanado posted:Does it promote thoughts about your internal life, the internal life of someone foreign to you, and/or the world around you? I thought it was interesting that I would definitely call it a literary work despite those answers, so I got curious to hear what others thought. Didn't mean to sound like a dick!
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Nov 14, 2018 18:32
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You didn't sound disingenuous or like a dick, I just would rather your question be answered through discussions rather than an empty "yes" or "no", and since this is a "Let's try Literature" thread, I figured it's more in theme and constructive for those asking questions to try and answer some of it for themselves instead of just waiting for a goon to throw in their opinion. And I also couldn't answer it because I haven't read that novel.
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Nov 14, 2018 18:42
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I'm unsure on the first, but I'd probably have answered the last 3 with a yes.
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Nov 14, 2018 18:54
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Choosing "Does it distract you?" as a qualifier was a bad call on my part. Any book that you read distracts you to an extent. I guess a better way of discussing it is, "Is the story a form of escapism for you?" Let's compare Jurassic Park and To Kill A Mockingbird. Jurassic Park's tales of dinosaurs eating people is mostly to entertain the reader. There are tangents about mathematical definitions of chaos theory, but the core of the book is reading people grabbing their intestines as a dinosaur eviscerates them. These discourses about mathematics and chaos theory always end back at the action at hand: dinosaurs are on a boat headed towards the main land! The power is out and we gotta fix it! People are being chased by dinosaurs! It's all there to entertain while occasionally it explores themes and ideas outside of the plot and action. Escapism. Compared to To Kill A Mockingbird, which happily leaves behind the quest for Boo Radly and Tom's trial to explore growing up in a small town full of racists and hypocrites, or how a parent teaches a child the evil's of the world like rape and murder, or what is the point of pursuing truth in a world that accepts cruelty and injustice over righteousness or honesty, or how a child realizes their parent is a flawed human, or how even cruel people might elicit and deserve empathy once we take the time to look past their surface, or what it means to kill an innocent, or how does an individual learn and grow their knowledge of right and wrong. The novel, while "distracting" with it's charming characters and the wondrous optimism of Scout's narration, brings up questions and ideas to the reader for them to meditate on more than it follows the several plots that move the story forward. That's not escapism, it's bringing attention to the human condition and the questions of Life it wants the reader to think about. That's why To Kill A Mockingbird is literary where Jurassic Park is not. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Nov 14, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 19:08
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Ben Nevis posted:I'm unsure on the first, but I'd probably have answered the last 3 with a yes. I can see how the fourth question could go either way, based on "the internal life of someone foreign to you", but I think I'd stick with my answers to the middle two. To me, the function of the novel is much more simply "escapist" than many other literary works; it's primarily its form and style that make it stand out (again, to me). Either way, I think it's a good novel. And it suits the aim of this thread to introduce readers to literature pretty well; it's accessible and story-driven, but not just any old piece of prose. e: ^^^^ I deduced that you meant escapism. That's what had me surprised at the answers 
Lex Neville fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Nov 14, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 19:08
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