[ SECRET POST #389 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #389 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 09 pages, 222 secrets from Secret Submission Post #056.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 ] broken link, [ 1 2 3 4 ] not!secret, [ 1 ] too big, [ 1 2 (yes, twice) ] repeat.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30th, 2008.
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[falco-999.livejournal.com]

56. Twerp.

[(Anonymous)]

Lit Snob

[falco-999.livejournal.com]

I have nothing against sci-fi and fantasy, or against any of the genres. I love Pratchett and George Martin and genre detective fiction by the likes of P.D. James and Lindsey Davis. They're fine writers who know how to spin a good yarn, and they do it with a fair degree of skill and intelligence. But I'm not going to lie and say they're better than the classics. "Elite" is not always a bad word.

[redseeker]

No, I think they have a point. I'm doing a joint degree in Eng. Lit. and Creative Writing, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that others in my CW group are interested in writing, say, teen fiction, or fantasy, or whatever. I can't stand those who go on about "cultural landmarks" and adopt a snobbish attitude to modern fiction. As my CW tutor said the other day, even genre fiction can be "literary" if it's good.
And I can't stand Dickens.

[falco-999.livejournal.com]

Genre fiction can be literary, certainly. And it's bloody hard to write a good genre novel. I can't even write good fanfiction. People in your class take writing genre seriously? Good for them. It should be. Though I think there's a cut off point, where good genre ceases to be genre and becomes good literature, having abandoned or subverted so many traits of the genre, having injected so much original material that it makes a blueprint of its own, it frees itself from generic constraints. For instance, the two defining works of 20th century fantasy are TLotR and the Gormenghast books. The former is not genre itself, but it founded a genre. The latter stand alone and hard to quantify.

The curt tone of my initial response was assumed because the OP sounds thick and boorish. Just because you don't like Dickens, and the OP doesn't like Austen, and I flee when confronted with Russian literature, which supposedly contains the greatest novels ever written, that still makes us asses if we try and belittle their achievement, or assume that because we are unable to appreciate them, their greatness must be a myth. They have a place in the literary canon for a reason. In a hundred years time, so much of what is popular now will be pulp in the lining of motorways. A few modern authors from literary and genre may have survived and still be read. Perhaps Pratchett will be a second Wodehouse. Most, however, will have joined Walter Scott or the run-away best seller Uncle Tom's Cabin in obscurity.

[redseeker]

I didn't mean to sound like I belittle the classics or their authors' achievements - I really don't. And yes, the OP does sound narrow-minded. I just dislike the attitude I tend to encounter a lot in the Lit. department that you can only find depth and greatness in old books.

[drworm.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin are particularly obscure. Maybe in the overall literary canon, okay, but historically? Not so much.

Otherwise, I completely agree.

[falco-999.livejournal.com]

Yep, sorry. Mea culpa. I picked the wrong word, and in any case didn't want to overload the sentence by sticking in a digression about Uncle Tom's Cabin as a sociological/historical document and as a work of literature.