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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I occasionally see this self-deprecating tendency among fans of sci-fi and other types of genre fiction, where they assume that there must clearly be some inherent property of classical literature, unbeknownst to the plebians, that sets it apart - that the English majors are hoarding the secret sauce for what makes a work "actually good". I assure you that they're not.

The property is called "not having a second leg to stand upon". Genre fiction has two legs: the literature leg and the genre leg. It can have bland characters that talk like it's an autist convention, but it's offset by also having murder mysteries, aliens, dragons, dark and handsome billionaires that are into BDSM, superheroes, scary supernatural shit, funny antics or cultivation (I can't get over how much this sounds like farming) etc.

Classical literature has only one leg. It has mundane characters that are stuck in mundane situations. How do you make the readers eagerly follow the brooding stream of consciousness of a father of two (three) that has every component of the American dream, but is deeply unhappy, if you can't lure them with murder mysteries, aliens, dragons, dark and handsome billionaires that are into BDSM, superheroes, scary supernatural shit, funny antics or cultivation?

Classical literature has only one leg. It has mundane characters that are stuck in mundane situations.

The "second leg" of literary fiction is form and prose quality; the language of the book itself making itself apparent as an independent object with intrinsic aesthetic merit, instead of acting as a transparent window through which the content of the story is viewed.

See: Joyce's Ulysses, Nabokov's Pale Fire.

How do you make the readers eagerly follow the brooding stream of consciousness of a father of two (three) that has every component of the American dream, but is deeply unhappy, if you can't lure them with murder mysteries, aliens, dragons, dark and handsome billionaires that are into BDSM, superheroes, scary supernatural shit, funny antics or cultivation?

There's no law that says that "classical" literature can't have anything interesting happen.

The Iliad has many elements that would be at home in a Marvel movie. Shakespeare racked up quite the body count over the course of his oeuvre, particularly in the lesser-known but notably violent Titus Andronicus. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow caused some commotion upon its release due to its lurid sexual content.

The "second leg" of literary fiction is form and prose quality; the language of the book itself making itself apparent as an independent object with intrinsic aesthetic merit, instead of acting as a transparent window through which the content of the story is viewed.

That is the part of its first and only leg, I guess I did a poor job of implying that. Unless you meant one could write great literary fiction that was masterful prose, but told nothing and went nowhere.

There's no law that says that "classical" literature can't have anything interesting happen.

The Iliad has many elements that would be at home in a Marvel movie. Shakespeare racked up quite the body count over the course of his oeuvre, particularly in the lesser-known but notably violent Titus Andronicus. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow caused some commotion upon its release due to its lurid sexual content.

I didn't say that. Something Happened is one of my favourite books and is filled with mundane, but interesting events.

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