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Why most contemporary US and British literature sucks.
- Thread starter princealfie
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Exactly. My kids love HP, The Indian in the Cupboard, and The Chronicles of Narnia. I take them to the bookstore every other week and have them select a book that they want to read. By getting them into the habit of reading, and reading things they enjoy to read, I hope to instill a love a reading in them that carries over into their adult lives so that they do read Joyce and Beckett.
Starting them off with material that is way over their heads is counterproductive. They will learn that reading is difficult and dry and a chore - and never do it as an adult
Sorry, but most successful authors are going to write the kind of garbage that publishers ask and pay for. They want it fast and in quantity and hopefully pre-made for a made for TV movie.
I've written off getting any good modern literature, but I think the worst effect has been on the technical book and documentation market. I remember when the manuals that came with software were actually so useful that they became dogeared reference manuals. Now I'm lucky if I can find a third party written book that has a couple useful pages or get a lucky one sentence hit in the online help file. Got to love it when a programming keyword doesn't even get a hit in the index.
I've written off getting any good modern literature, but I think the worst effect has been on the technical book and documentation market. I remember when the manuals that came with software were actually so useful that they became dogeared reference manuals. Now I'm lucky if I can find a third party written book that has a couple useful pages or get a lucky one sentence hit in the online help file. Got to love it when a programming keyword doesn't even get a hit in the index.
So...why does most contemporary US and British literature suck? I had thought that you might be providing an answer, and by scanning your list, that the answer might refer to adult literature. Not only did you dodge your own question, you're also confusing the issue by comparing J.K. Rowling to Joyce and Beckett. I do agree though, that you did a masterful job of summarizing your thoughts with "And that's about it for me." Indeed.
How many children have you taught to read?
"The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language."
Myself. I was a kid once. My first books I read were One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by A. Solzhenistyn and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
Personal experience speaks the loudest.
It's not Casablanca or Citizen Kane is all I'm saying.
Maybe I should have used another piece of crap from Emmerich or maybe a Michael Bay or Bruckheimer turd to more universally illustrate my point.
Did you not begin reading books until middle school?
I was reading at two; I don't think Solzhenitsyn or Joyce were on the menu.
I haven't read the whole thread,just to point out Joyce and Beckett belong in the world of Irish literature and not British or US.
Myself isn't actually a number, but I'll assume you meant one, or 1. No credit to your parents or teachers? Surely you weren't raised by wolves that led you to an abandoned library full of literature, and then, left only with your instinctual understanding of written languages and deep thought, you picked Solzhenitsyn from a shelf and decided to learn more about Soviet repression...?
"Personal experience speaks the loudest" - you have zero experience teaching a child to read, even if you claim to have experience beyond childhood learning to read. Until you have your own "future children" to take to therapy, you might refrain from offering much more than theory on the literature that might best lead a child (other than yourself) to further explorations, and instead stick to your OP.
Why, in your personal experience, does contemporary US and British literature 'suck'?
The first book i ever read had to be the bible. I grew up with a religious grand-mother. Before i was in school, i was reading passages out of that book. But the most popular books that i remember from my childhood were books by Richard Wright, Alex Haley and Langston Hughes to name a few. I didn't read Mark Twain or Dickens until i got to high school. I have always wondered, what and who decides what a great novel is. Is there this cookie-cutter shape that all great writers have to adhere to. I find it ironic that within the world of story writing we still find narrow mindedness.
A great story in my opinion make you wonder further than what the book provides. You start to ask questions about the plot and hunger for details that the author didn't provide. A great story will render your attention with out the feeling of being subdued.
I've read Dan Brown's entire collection, and i think every book is amazing. I must admit that the chapter structure is a little different but i learned to enjoy it because it made the book feel like it was moving along. That book possess a lot of detail and if the book is structured the wrong way it can damper a persons motivation to finish reading it. Picture a book that had 100 page chapters lol. I know i wouldn't enjoy reading it. A book has to flow, it has to have direction. I think Dan Brown did that in his books. In my opinion The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are 'must reads'. I'm looking forward to his next book.
J.K. Rowling is another author who figured out how to create a interesting story that a person of any age can be rapped up in. I think she's doing wonders for the youth in motivating them to read and i think she is also helping the older crowds by convening them that they can read something thats not so serious and have a good time with it and actually learn a few things from it.
But above all is personal preference. I don't really care what other people read as long as they continue to write works that interest me. On another note, i don't believe in a perfect author and i don't believe all these so called 'classics' works to be such great works. I've read a few works and found some of them to be pretty dry and uninteresting or non-relative. For example Gulliver's Travels was boring to me. The book was all over the place as if it didn't have any order to it. One page you were in a land that had very small people and then within a few pages you were with giants with little knowledge of how you got to that point.
But if nothing else, read what interest you regardless of what others might think or say.
A great story in my opinion make you wonder further than what the book provides. You start to ask questions about the plot and hunger for details that the author didn't provide. A great story will render your attention with out the feeling of being subdued.
I've read Dan Brown's entire collection, and i think every book is amazing. I must admit that the chapter structure is a little different but i learned to enjoy it because it made the book feel like it was moving along. That book possess a lot of detail and if the book is structured the wrong way it can damper a persons motivation to finish reading it. Picture a book that had 100 page chapters lol. I know i wouldn't enjoy reading it. A book has to flow, it has to have direction. I think Dan Brown did that in his books. In my opinion The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are 'must reads'. I'm looking forward to his next book.
J.K. Rowling is another author who figured out how to create a interesting story that a person of any age can be rapped up in. I think she's doing wonders for the youth in motivating them to read and i think she is also helping the older crowds by convening them that they can read something thats not so serious and have a good time with it and actually learn a few things from it.
But above all is personal preference. I don't really care what other people read as long as they continue to write works that interest me. On another note, i don't believe in a perfect author and i don't believe all these so called 'classics' works to be such great works. I've read a few works and found some of them to be pretty dry and uninteresting or non-relative. For example Gulliver's Travels was boring to me. The book was all over the place as if it didn't have any order to it. One page you were in a land that had very small people and then within a few pages you were with giants with little knowledge of how you got to that point.
But if nothing else, read what interest you regardless of what others might think or say.
I agree with your sentiment, but I disagree with your choices. Brown couldn't put a sentence together if his fortune depended on it and Chrichton used to be entertaining but has lately fallen into fighting poltitical and personal battles with his lousy novels, the State of Fear being the most egregious example.
There are much better authors who get a lot less recognition than those two bozos, which is really unfortunate.
This is widely argued point among literature scholars. What makes a book become Literature?
I would say simply enough, that a book is more than its plot. It is also its prose, its characters, and dozens of other small elements that make a book more than just pages and ink.
I want a deep plot delivered by elegant prose and interesting and realistic characters. This can be sci-fi, this can be historical fiction, this can be nearly any genre, but what's important is the whole widget, so to speak.
Dan Brown has interesting plots, but his characters are siphers to move the plot along and his dialogue and prose is simple terrible. Frankly, Clive Cussler has owned the same genre with a lot more aplomb than Brown has.
If you think modern literature sucks, you've spent too much time looking at the best-seller rack. Look deeper, and you'll find real gems hidden among the stacks.
I *knew* Citizen Kane was going to show up. Great movie a bit too bloated in my book. Casablanca is my favorite movie and when you know the story behind how it got made, its all the more impressive. The writers were doing the script as the actors were shooting.
The good book is often a good read. There are parts that get a little dry, especially when they take inventory. On the whole there are great stories. I need to read more but I'm having issues with it.
A great story does not a great book make. Have you ever read the Princess Bride? Like the movie its 2 stories in one. In one he talks about his father reading the book to him and he transcribing his fathers version. The other is his fathers version of the story. He mentioned one chapter in the original book was 40 pages describing Buttercup packing to move to the palace with Humperdink. His father cut that chapter down to "Between this and that 5 months passed"
Gulliver's Travels was actually political satire. To really enjoy it you have to understand what was going in England and Ireland at the point in time. If you read it like an adventure story or a travelogue you'll say WTF.
Chriton does write fairly well but gets very preachy. Its like reading Ayn Rand or Terry Goodkind, but he's preaching to a different choir.
Yes. I think for a work of Literature it has work on many levels. Not just plot but characters and theme and setting.
Asimov was a great writer.
Ironically I hate realism and direct prose quite a bit... that's why all of the racks on B and N fiction list are mostly cookie cutter. At least, Pynchon is way off the rocker in his descriptive genius-infused prose.
Another fine example of writing is done by the hubby-wife team of Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss. Everything is Illuminated is a beautiful example of how character development needs to be fragmented and reshored up to newer levels of understanding.
I don't have any admiration for Rowling as a descriptive character. Honestly she's a one note singer and if I had to read her I would have considering doing the Fahrenheit 451 on the local Barnes and Noble.
We need to stop producing cookie cutter writers from MFA programs which is destroying the art of literature, no diggity. People need to experience a real life and **** around like Michel Houellebecq or Henry Miller and write from the heart which is what really counts.
Otherwise, I can't feel the coldness of warmness of characters.
Another fine example of writing is done by the hubby-wife team of Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss. Everything is Illuminated is a beautiful example of how character development needs to be fragmented and reshored up to newer levels of understanding.
I don't have any admiration for Rowling as a descriptive character. Honestly she's a one note singer and if I had to read her I would have considering doing the Fahrenheit 451 on the local Barnes and Noble.
We need to stop producing cookie cutter writers from MFA programs which is destroying the art of literature, no diggity. People need to experience a real life and **** around like Michel Houellebecq or Henry Miller and write from the heart which is what really counts.
Otherwise, I can't feel the coldness of warmness of characters.
if i send you a list of all the books i've read along with what is on my bookshelf, can you personally approve or disapprove of each so that i know what to read, what to burn, and what to burn from memory?
Hate is not a very Christian attribute but I would gladly stone to death the kind of pretentious **** that reads Stendhal or Beauvoir because it's fashionable but would sneer down their nose at you if you said you enjoyed Harry Potter. I've been in circles like that. You could draw a list of the authors they would read and the authors they would not read. I've always liked reading so I was exposed to a lot of authors I wouldn't otherwise have experienced. But it was the pretentiousness of it that got me in the end. I'm reading War and Peace at the moment, and at some stage after that I'm going to read the Harry Potter series. What anyone thinks about that is irrelevant to me.
At the same time I think you can draw up vague rules about what makes a good book. Developed characters and plot, interesting peripheral setting, etc. If you say, "I enjoyed the DaVinci Code" I'd say "Great" but if you said, "That DaVinci Code is an extremely well written, important work of contemporary literature that deserves far more recognition amongst cafe society" I'd have to stone you (though for different reasons than the previous situation).
There are no absolutes. If a book of fiction entertains it has served its purpose, even if it isn't a fascinating book.
At the same time I think you can draw up vague rules about what makes a good book. Developed characters and plot, interesting peripheral setting, etc. If you say, "I enjoyed the DaVinci Code" I'd say "Great" but if you said, "That DaVinci Code is an extremely well written, important work of contemporary literature that deserves far more recognition amongst cafe society" I'd have to stone you (though for different reasons than the previous situation).
There are no absolutes. If a book of fiction entertains it has served its purpose, even if it isn't a fascinating book.
You mean to read W&P? No, I have very little time, but I like to go to bed early when I can and read. I'm hoping to finish it by next Christmas...
It's actually a rather easy read - characters are engaging and the plot rarely stalls. The constant shift to a language that I don't understand (French) was the most difficult part for me. But context makes it easy to get the meaning when you don't understand the words.
I guess quantity is really the only obstacle to finishing (ah the joy of being able to stay up until 5am for three weeks during summer vacation).
I call bullsh*t.
A 5 or 6 year old does not have the vocabulary to be able to read Solzhenistyn or Joyce, and definitely does not have the reading comprehension to be able to understand the thematic principles behind them.
Before 10 years old even taking them through C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, or Lemony Snicket takes an incredible amount of guidance, help, and explanation.
I'm not even sure what his first books where, but then my son was reading _Captain Underpants and the Plot of Professor Poopy Pants_, or _Ricky Ricotta and his Mighty Robot vs the Jurassic Jackrabbits from Jupiter_, _ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ was not a viable alternative.