How do you know that all of these people don't like adult novels.
All of which people?
Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral
How do you know that all of these people don't like adult novels.
You said all adults don't care about novels for adults. That's not true. It if was then those books wouldn't sell, which they do.All of which people?
You said all adults don't care about novels for adults. That's not true. It if was then those books wouldn't sell, which they do.
That's a sweeping generalization which is obviously false.
Consider for example literary fiction:
And it is precisely one of the points of my criticism in regards to the consumption of art. If a person reads a book like a Ulysses, or watches a film like Persona, and says about them that their point is to entertainment, then the whole book/film went over their heads, watching Persona just as they might watch Jerry Springer. This is not always their fault, often people have been educated to consume this, whether because they don't read literature or because the culture in which they grew up promotes it for obvious reasons (profit).
Yes, that's the film; it was just an example.Persona the Ingmar Bergman film? It’s exactly true what you say. Most people, I fear, would find Ingmar Bergman boring, preferring Transformers or the latest juvenile disaster movie. Even talking about reading in the first place saddens me because it’s rare to find people who actually do it, let alone lovers of literature or even non-fiction. I think of literature as philosophy in narrative/fiction format. Films, too (film-as-an-art-form films, that is).
Statistics and experience? Definitely doesn't apply to all people, but we can sell what books sell the most, check the most read books, and talk to other people to learn what they read (as I did sometimes in the first book club I went to). It's apparent that (1) There's a massive consumption of "bad" books (superficial psychology, common stereotypes, simple predictable plot, poor and repetitive prose), (2) There's a belief that many these are masterpieces in the history of literature (opinion of this sort I've heard about John Green and Paulo Coelho), (3) Many of the books held as great works for centuries are bad (not that they dislike them, but that they are in fact bad books; this I've heard about Alice in Wonderland, Joyce's Portrait, Kafka's The Trial, among others).How do you know that all of these people don't like adult novels.
Yes, that's the film; it was just an example.
I agree with what you say about literature. I think of it as an expression of philosophy, psychology, social and historical critique, and playing with the concept of literature and writing itself. Many of these can, because of being presented as a narrative form, reach more people than academic essays — many philosophers wrote dialogues or novels based on their ideas, so the connection between the two is a long-standing one.
Statistics and experience? Definitely doesn't apply to all people, but we can sell what books sell the most, check the most read books, and talk to other people to learn what they read (as I did sometimes in the first book club I went to). It's apparent that (1) There's a massive consumption of "bad" books (superficial psychology, common stereotypes, simple predictable plot, poor and repetitive prose), (2) There's a belief that many these are masterpieces in the history of literature (opinion of this sort I've heard about John Green and Paulo Coelho), (3) Many of the books held as great works for centuries are bad (not that they dislike them, but that they are in fact bad books; this I've heard about Alice in Wonderland, Joyce's Portrait, Kafka's The Trial, among others).
There's a fragment in T.S. Eliot Four Quartets which reads:
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
(Burnt Norton III)
This is a powerful phrase: Distracted from distraction by distraction, which describes the state of consciousness when watching (most) television shows or reading (most) popular fiction. It's not as much as an entertainment as it is a forgetting of the self, of the conscious state, while this lasts. The fact that this occurs is not the issue, but how often it does is: Eliot considered back then to be entering an era which people's main purpose is to be distracted, looking for distraction not from something but in itself, like zapping through tv channels until finding something ok, watching it without much attention and certainly not purpose, and forgetting it all shortly after. Some kinds of fiction (although to a lesser extent than television) are now fulfilling the same purpose.
I still have to watch that film, The Trial. I haven't seen any movies with Orson Well, with the exception of Citizen Kane.The Trial! They’re wrong! Kafka’s novel is great. As is Orson Wells’s film adaptation of it. Have you seen it? It’s one of my absolute favorite movies, and Orson Wells said it was the best film he ever made.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is also great beyond a shadow of a doubt, albeit not literature, which as I’ve said makes it no less relevant or fantastic in my mind. Virginia Woolf dented Robert Louis Stevenson‘s career by criticizing his non-literature writings, and I’ve honestly never been able to enjoy her novels because of it. She’s a snobby cow as far as I’m concerned.
I completely agree with T.S. Eliot, however, that there’s a difference between distraction and entertainment. Treasure Island (my love) is entertainment. Jules Verne (my other love) is entertainment. But so many of the television shows and movies people watch are simply mindless distractions, not worthy of even being considered entertainment. They’re more like drugs meant to unwind people from the tediousness and meaninglessness of everyday life.
I still have to watch that film, The Trial. I haven't seen any movies with Orson Well, with the exception of Citizen Kane.
I don't think Virginia Woolf problem was being too snobby, but that she was plainly a poor critic, considering she also had a poor opinion of Ulysses when it was published and it's unlikely you can get a book more highbrow than that.
Woolf wrote to T. S. Eliot: “Never did any book so bore me.” She had dismissed James Joyce as “a self-taught working man … egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating.” “When one can have cooked flesh,” she wrote, “why have the raw?”
No disrespect. The point I’m making is that when we have a nation of adults who can only handle/appreciate novels written for children and young adults, this may be something to be incredibly alarmed about.
I don't think Virginia Woolf problem was being too snobby, but that she was plainly a poor critic, considering she also had a poor opinion of Ulysses when it was published and it's unlikely you can get a book more highbrow than that.
That a novel must have a lasting artistic and intellectual value to it. Definitely Fahrenheit 451 qualifies. Without a doubt. But I don’t think most of his novels count as literature, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, which in my mind doesn’t in any way diminish its value or relevance.
Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: most definitely not literature. It was basically a penny dreadful-type of novella when it was published.
Also: I agree with VW. (Ullysses starts wonderfully but then it bogs down in GOTR levels of padding, although I doubt she made that comparison.) And no, Ullysses is not especially "highbrow" anyway. It's much more accessible than, say, Finnegan's Wake or Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren.
Dude it's so bad I couldn't get past the first chapter.I don't think Infinite Jest is a bad book
Many books have been published since, many of which would (probably) not exist without Ulysses.. Even if there are some books far more complex now (which, considering it's just a handful, I would argue it's not true that Ulysses is not "especially" highbrow), in particular when considering some of the major postmodern works, back when it was published it was unlikely to find books that could get close in complexity to Joyce's work.
I don't think Infinite Jest is a bad book, nor Nabokov's Ada (though not my favorite of his works, my fav is Pale Fire).
I've no idea why you feel this way. Other than that F451 has an obvious theme (it's a very dumbed down 1984) and that Wicked possibly doesn't - but is that really a good thing?
Why should one thing be related to the other? JaH established a powerful metaphor. Isn't that one of the highest aims of literature - to provide new ways of thinking and feeling and communicating? The market a story is written for is irrelevant. And even verbal surface isn't that important compared to the ideas a story contains. JaH established a literal modern myth. That's a huge and serious achievement.
Well this is an extremely damn good point. Maybe I’m more like Virginia Woolf than I’d like to admit. It does really seem elitist to classify writing as literature and non-literature, like a hierarchy or something.
Perhaps the impact is really what matters. Robert Louis Stevenson is one of my absolute most revered and favorite authors, and I would never/never say that his novels are any less important or relevant or impactful than those of James Joyce (for instance) or Shakespeare, etc.
But neither would I ever say that they’ve moved me on an existential or intellectual level. I think the point I’m really making here is that people-in-general these days can’t handle novels that require extensive thinking. Dr. Jekyll is pretty darn straightforward, no thinking required. The same goes for Treasure Island (my most dear RLS love).
If most people dig Twilight and Harry Potter but can’t handle Nabokov’s Lolita (for example), then I think we have a huge problem as a species that will have repercussions in every area of reality.
What inspires you on an intellectual level varies from person to person though. For example Harry Potter, which can be enjoyed by children or easily read for shallow entertainment, inspired my interest in moral philosophy.
I wouldn't consider not being able to handle Lolita a negative. It is incredibly well written but it is also a profoundly disturbing book, I couldn't get more than halfway through it because it made me feel physically sick.
in particular when considering some of the major postmodern works, back when it was published it was unlikely to find books that could get close in complexity to Joyce's work.
I don't think Infinite Jest is a bad book, nor Nabokov's Ada