There exists an eternal Internet argument, a hydra which reappears in every discussion of art everywhere online, and it grows from the failure of the typical person to disambiguate between entertainment value and other metrics of quality. Most old books are not very entertaining. Most “literature” isn’t even very entertaining. I would provide examples but I honestly don’t really feel that I need to. Chances are that if you read something in high school, it was both literature and not very entertaining.
A very fast and effective way to make something more entertaining is to make the characters likable or at least relate-able, possessing some degree of internal conflict. Writing an unlikable or flat protagonist is viewed as a novice writing mistake, and yet many literary protagonists are unlikable, or merely very flat.
The value of literature isn’t in its entertainment value. We’re trained to expect entertainment from art. Suggestions to improve literature are thus usually aimed at making it more entertaining, which in a sense misses the point. In my personal view, I don’t see why something can’t have literary merit and also be entertaining, but I also try to assess art on its own terms.
I think it uses lots of interesting ideas and is very good at sucker-punch or uplifting set-pieces (it can definitely make me laugh, cry, seethe etc.), but the feel of it is more a series of very effective sketches than a novel.
I feel that this can be attributed to the episodic nature of the work. Novelists have the chance iterate on their novels—the first draft often represents the raw materials from which a good book is later reconstructed. HPMOR is essentially a first draft. It is amazing that it is as good as it is.
I agree there’s more going on than being entertaining, but I’ve read many incredibly entertaining (taken in a broad sense) works of literature at school. Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies...
The value of literature isn’t in its entertainment value.
Where, then, does it lie, precisely?
Chances are that if you read something in high school, it was both literature and not very entertaining.
Never happened to me. Even The Great Gatsby, which I loathe, is entertaining in that it has cool prose and witty turns of phrase, much in the same way that the operation of a very well-designed torture machine is entertaining to an engineer, without the engineer ceasing to find it loathsome in other ways.
That’s sort of a different form of the ultimate question, what is art? Some people say a toilet with a Bible in it is art, others say it’s not. Clearly it’s doing something for somebody, it’s trying to say something, but it doesn’t tickle the sense of aesthetic appreciation, so it’s hard to accept as art.
Likewise, I don’t think you would say that Heart of Darkness, The Jungle, or the film Irréversible were created to entertain. Maybe they do entertain, but the desire to entertain probably wasn’t the motivation driving their creation. Like how you might be amused by the Bible in the toilet, but it clearly wasn’t done just to amuse you.
The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place. We can appreciate it as a kind of historical artifact, or as an unpleasant journey through a set of unique human failure modes. Most people don’t finish it and say, “Wow, I really enjoyed that book.”
Anyway, I think we actually agree on this topic in general, I just wanted to answer your specific question.
how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place
I strongly disagree. That kind of mood can be found anytime, anywhere, among any social class.
Guy born with status gets girl born with status who was previously courted with guy born without it who doesn’t know the codes of status all that well. The latter sets out to obtain status, at great expense, all for the sake of getting the girl, on whom he fixated as a status symbol and the solution to all his self-esteem issues.
He fails because of his lack of belief in his newly-acquired status, in the face of the first guy, who is absurdly secure in his own. Also because he’s terrible at making practical plans and gathering the information he needs; he’s charming, but in the end he’s an un-savvy, socially awkward dork.
There are social gatherings of high-status people which are entertaining yet disappointing. Pleasures are abused, and ennui is rampant.
All is passively witnessed by a guy with middle-status is fascinated and repulsed at the same time by high-status people, and has a bad case of cognitive dissonance about it, i.e. sour grapes.
Frankly, this story could take place in a freaking playground, or have a cast of chimpanzees, and still work.
Well, that is why I added the “some would say.” =)
I’ll grant you that The Great Gatsby is probably too good a book to be used as an example of obviously bad literature.
There are definitely parts of the book that seem to emphasize the absurd excess that became the hallmark of that time and place, but I agree that in general it’s a very universal story template.
Perhaps that is the hallmark of “literary fiction”; trying to be as timeless and applicable as possible while dealing with human failure modes. “Genre fiction,” because it often deals with strange and spectacular situations, doesn’t endure, because humans get acclimated to amazing and wondrous and shocking things, and they soon become zeerust of one kind or another. Also works set in the past tend to grow a wondrous and wistful aura merely by virtue of being old, making us feel nostalgia for times and places we never saw.
By the way, reading historical novels, written at different times, and set in the same time period, alongside works written in that actual time period, can be in itself a source of much amusement and bewilderment, even when the time period is fictional.
Films are also quite fun about this; pay attention to the haircuts :P.
Reading historical novels set in the same period but written at different times does sound like fun.
C.S. Lewis’ High and Low Brows * builds the rather plausible theory that high brow fiction is simply more difficult than low brow, and thus higher status. He mentions Dickens, who was low brow when he was writing, and high brow after his work became less accessible.
It isn’t a matter of the authors’ intent.
You may have a point about more recent literary fiction considered as a genre, rather than looking at the fiction which is counted as classic.
*Unfortunately, Google books has left some pages out, but the outline of the argument is still there.
Well, yes, stuff that’s harder to like and harder to enjoy becomes popular among the “right” crowd who can delude themselves and each other that they’re appreciating it right, and the rest of the world’s oafs aren’t. Subverting this kind of stupid bullcrap is another big motivator for that project.
I suspect that many literary and philosophical projects were motivated by the urge to flip the bird to the current paradigm. I just gotta hope most of them failed and we only heard about the winners, because outrage, frustration, defiance and facetiousness don’t seem like very good motivators to get suff done...
There exists an eternal Internet argument, a hydra which reappears in every discussion of art everywhere online, and it grows from the failure of the typical person to disambiguate between entertainment value and other metrics of quality. Most old books are not very entertaining. Most “literature” isn’t even very entertaining. I would provide examples but I honestly don’t really feel that I need to. Chances are that if you read something in high school, it was both literature and not very entertaining.
A very fast and effective way to make something more entertaining is to make the characters likable or at least relate-able, possessing some degree of internal conflict. Writing an unlikable or flat protagonist is viewed as a novice writing mistake, and yet many literary protagonists are unlikable, or merely very flat.
The value of literature isn’t in its entertainment value. We’re trained to expect entertainment from art. Suggestions to improve literature are thus usually aimed at making it more entertaining, which in a sense misses the point. In my personal view, I don’t see why something can’t have literary merit and also be entertaining, but I also try to assess art on its own terms.
I feel that this can be attributed to the episodic nature of the work. Novelists have the chance iterate on their novels—the first draft often represents the raw materials from which a good book is later reconstructed. HPMOR is essentially a first draft. It is amazing that it is as good as it is.
I agree there’s more going on than being entertaining, but I’ve read many incredibly entertaining (taken in a broad sense) works of literature at school. Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies...
I expect entertainment from entertainment. I want to be moved by art, preferably in a way that can be used again and again in life.
Where, then, does it lie, precisely?
Never happened to me. Even The Great Gatsby, which I loathe, is entertaining in that it has cool prose and witty turns of phrase, much in the same way that the operation of a very well-designed torture machine is entertaining to an engineer, without the engineer ceasing to find it loathsome in other ways.
That’s sort of a different form of the ultimate question, what is art? Some people say a toilet with a Bible in it is art, others say it’s not. Clearly it’s doing something for somebody, it’s trying to say something, but it doesn’t tickle the sense of aesthetic appreciation, so it’s hard to accept as art.
Likewise, I don’t think you would say that Heart of Darkness, The Jungle, or the film Irréversible were created to entertain. Maybe they do entertain, but the desire to entertain probably wasn’t the motivation driving their creation. Like how you might be amused by the Bible in the toilet, but it clearly wasn’t done just to amuse you.
The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place. We can appreciate it as a kind of historical artifact, or as an unpleasant journey through a set of unique human failure modes. Most people don’t finish it and say, “Wow, I really enjoyed that book.”
Anyway, I think we actually agree on this topic in general, I just wanted to answer your specific question.
I strongly disagree. That kind of mood can be found anytime, anywhere, among any social class.
Guy born with status gets girl born with status who was previously courted with guy born without it who doesn’t know the codes of status all that well. The latter sets out to obtain status, at great expense, all for the sake of getting the girl, on whom he fixated as a status symbol and the solution to all his self-esteem issues.
He fails because of his lack of belief in his newly-acquired status, in the face of the first guy, who is absurdly secure in his own. Also because he’s terrible at making practical plans and gathering the information he needs; he’s charming, but in the end he’s an un-savvy, socially awkward dork.
There are social gatherings of high-status people which are entertaining yet disappointing. Pleasures are abused, and ennui is rampant.
All is passively witnessed by a guy with middle-status is fascinated and repulsed at the same time by high-status people, and has a bad case of cognitive dissonance about it, i.e. sour grapes.
Frankly, this story could take place in a freaking playground, or have a cast of chimpanzees, and still work.
Well, that is why I added the “some would say.” =)
I’ll grant you that The Great Gatsby is probably too good a book to be used as an example of obviously bad literature.
There are definitely parts of the book that seem to emphasize the absurd excess that became the hallmark of that time and place, but I agree that in general it’s a very universal story template.
Perhaps that is the hallmark of “literary fiction”; trying to be as timeless and applicable as possible while dealing with human failure modes. “Genre fiction,” because it often deals with strange and spectacular situations, doesn’t endure, because humans get acclimated to amazing and wondrous and shocking things, and they soon become zeerust of one kind or another. Also works set in the past tend to grow a wondrous and wistful aura merely by virtue of being old, making us feel nostalgia for times and places we never saw.
By the way, reading historical novels, written at different times, and set in the same time period, alongside works written in that actual time period, can be in itself a source of much amusement and bewilderment, even when the time period is fictional.
Films are also quite fun about this; pay attention to the haircuts :P.
Reading historical novels set in the same period but written at different times does sound like fun.
C.S. Lewis’ High and Low Brows * builds the rather plausible theory that high brow fiction is simply more difficult than low brow, and thus higher status. He mentions Dickens, who was low brow when he was writing, and high brow after his work became less accessible.
It isn’t a matter of the authors’ intent.
You may have a point about more recent literary fiction considered as a genre, rather than looking at the fiction which is counted as classic.
*Unfortunately, Google books has left some pages out, but the outline of the argument is still there.
Well, yes, stuff that’s harder to like and harder to enjoy becomes popular among the “right” crowd who can delude themselves and each other that they’re appreciating it right, and the rest of the world’s oafs aren’t. Subverting this kind of stupid bullcrap is another big motivator for that project.
I suspect that many literary and philosophical projects were motivated by the urge to flip the bird to the current paradigm. I just gotta hope most of them failed and we only heard about the winners, because outrage, frustration, defiance and facetiousness don’t seem like very good motivators to get suff done...