Orson Scott Card spells out what I can’t stand about a lot of “literary fiction.”
…because English professors act as if the literary genre were the only kind of writing worth discussing, literary writers too often act, talk, and write as if even bad writing in their genre were superior to the best of other genres. This is ludicrously and offensively untrue.
Bad literary writing is every bit as hackneyed, formulaic, empty, and sad as bad writing in any other genre of fiction. Maybe even worse, because of all the pretentiousness that goes with it.
And I think I am not wrong to say that bad writing is far more prevalent in the literary genre than in any other, if only because so many young writers think that merely by getting published in that genre they have arrived — they are certified “good” — and therefore they don’t have to learn anything.
I remember a would-be literary giant in a graduate writing program at a local university who actually said to his fellow novices, “It doesn’t really matter what the story is about, you have to work on getting a voice.”
This brain-dead attitude toward literature is widely held. It’s all about how you write — who cares what you write.
When bad literary writers try to tell a story, they inevitably fall into the next trap of the genre: that “true” stories are always dark, that “true” characters always hate their parents, and their parents deserve it, and ditto for their parents’ values, unless they happened to be absolutely politically correct, in which case they have the true religion.
This sounds absolutely absurd, but in book after book, story after story, it’s the fundamental cliche of the literary genre. It’s as if you have to remain a perpetual angry teenager in order to be a literary writer; you’re forbidden to grow up enough to realize your parents were doing the best they could, and most of the time they were absolutely right about the things they tried to teach their stupid, ungrateful children.
I don’t know why I understood this even when I was myself a stupid ungrateful child, but I did. I was impatient with this teenagers-know-the-truth viewpoint even when I was a teenager, and I have grown even more contemptuous of it as an adult writer. Why do I still have to see the books of fifty-year-old writers that take it for granted that anyone who takes responsibility is a dull and oppressive person?
Card then goes on to recommend this collection of short stories:
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Much truth here. Simply understanding that perpetual adolescence has become the dominant attitude of our age explains, not just literature, but pretty much everything in our society.
Well said. Some stuff I’ve read recently has my head shaking. Whereas sometimes its good to read a TV Show (Vince Flynn comes to mind), I just can’t get behind the constant pointless navel gazing. Y’know, Buddhist do that for a reason, not just because it’s cool.
It’s a valid criticism. Unfortunately, it’s a valid criticism that tends to parallel some invalid anti-intellectual criticisms, so probably those of arts and letters will take no note of Uncle Orson ‘cuz the buzzing is coming from the same general direction as the wags they’re already ignoring.
I *do* actually think there’s a place for literature and literary criticism. Anyone who ever reads, say, Nabokov for instance, will realize the guy’s a freakin’ genius of geniuses, and his books don’t belong in whatever genre he happens to be writing in. Ada, for instance, is technically Science Fiction (alternate history), but it’s soooooo far above everything in the genre that it is in a class by itself. “Crime and Punishement” is technically just another crime/detective story, but again, it’s so far above and beyond that genre that it doesn’t fit. “The Literature Genre,” as Card sort of calls it, is theoretically stuff that transcends genre qualifications and surpasses them. It’s unique, timeless, hard to pidgeonhole, and it gives you lots of tasty mind-candy to play with.
That said: MOST of the stuff that’s considered “Modern Literature” is tripe, boring, pointless, didactic tripe at that. Card’s criticism is entirely on target. I totally agree with him, but I *do* think there is a very strong need for peer-reviewed and recognized literature, I just think that the peer-reviewing system among the arts and letters in the English Speaking world largely have their heads so far up their own nethers that they’re incapable of recognizing the difference between art and artifice. So clearly they’re not the peers that should be reviewing things.
The idea of and need for high-quality literary criticism is valid, though.
It’s funny you should bring up two Russian authors, Bot. Although I don’t know offhand if Ada was written in English or Russian, Card makes the point that you can tell a genuine masterpiece by how well it sells when it’s been translated.
That strips away the seemingly all-important “voice” of the author (although the translator will do his best to capture it) and gets down to what really matters: story and character.
This would have been funnier if, instead of “art and artifice” you had written, “art and orifice.”
Carry on…
@ Rufus: Damn! You’re right! I’m totally stealing that from here on in!
@ Mike: Nabokov emigrated to the ‘States in the fifties, and wrote a handfull of amazing books in english. Prior to that, he’d lived in France, and wrote a handfull of amazing books in French (I’m told). I’ve read a few of his Russian novels translated, and while they’re still good, they’ve definitely lost something in translation. They lack the jumpy, springy, bouncy quality in his words. Oddly, he always complained about how he’d much rather be writing in his native language, but he clearly had ours knocked down and hogtied. He was a master.
I didn’t actually realize I’d picked two Russians until after I’d hit “Submit.”
I have not read any Nabakov, but I am a huge Joseph Conrad fan and he wrote equally well in Polish, English and at least one or two other languages. A huge, huge brain. And let me ammend my statement; I’m a huge fan of the Joseph Conrad story, “Heart of Darkness.” I’m not sure if I’ve read anything else by him, but he writes in English better than 99.9% of English and American writers.
You’re right Rufus. And English was his third language. His second was French.
I’m still trying to learn English.
Yeah, me too. I’m in awe of these guys.
Nabakov translated “Alice in Wonderland” into Russian in ’23. No point, just thought I’d toss out that fact.
I did not know that! Thanks, Raoul!
I fidn that I agree with Orson Scott Card on just about everything.
Or, “find” … either way …
Yup. Finding books at the library that won’t actually make me dumber than when I started is a challenge. I too am so tired of everything needing to be dark and confusing. I like a happy ending.
I read some stuff by Rebecca Wells. It’s a bit traumatic for me, as some of it deals with child abuse, but she had one of my favorite quotes ever at the end, which totally saved the book for me. “I will do my best to give thanks for gifts, strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped”
It would seem being thankful is out of style.
The pretentiousness of modern literary fiction is what kills it for me whether badly or well written. A lot of these people write about the mundane as if it were the profound. They somehow think that their relationships, marriages, work experiences, families, etc., are all unique and something worthy of a pedestal. And it’s always wholesale victimhood for either having grown up in the suburbs, as if that was a source of their childhood unhappiness, that shaped their tragic adult existence, or for currently living in one. These books usually turn out to be 300-400 pages of pissing and moaning.
Back in the day you’d get all of the above experiences but they would be intermixed with bull fights, war, hooking marlins, debauchery, duels, worldly locations, traveling, gamblers, etc., and they would be peopled with adults.
That is a great comment, Matt! Great observation.
I forgot to say that their first manuscripts are 300-400 page applications to liberal cocktail parties.
Anyone know why I keep having my Amazon links stripped out of my posts?
+JMJ+
When I was studying Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes in uni, my professor introduced the novel this way:
Looking around the lecture theatre, presumably packed with English majors, he asked us how many of us dreamt of being published writers someday–or better yet, of writing what would be a classic novel. Knowing smiles all around. Then he asked us how many of us dreamt of writing what would be a classic novel in a language we don’t even speak yet! Apparently, Conrad didn’t learn English until he was in his twenties. I’ll never forget that.
Not only did he learn English, he mastered it.
30 Things That Should Never be Adapted to Film. In particular, I like the poster of Finnegan’s Wake.
Just watched “Dreams with Sharp Teeth,” the Harlan Ellison documenatry, and he talks about butting heads with his literature professor in college, who told Harlan Freakin’ Ellison in no uncertain terms that he was a talentless hack who would never get anything published, and that he should go learn a trade instead. Shortly thereafter, when Harlan was thrown out of school, he went to New York and got 100 short stories published in his first year alone, and he made a point of sending that professor a copy of every single story and every single review, just to prove that the proff wouldn’t know talent if it bit him in the ass. (Fortunately, Mr. E. Wasn’t in a biting mood that day, I guess, or it literally could have)
I has a video with Harlan Ellison wearing a Fantastic Four t-shirt, talking about America’s true art forms … comics, the banjo, the mystery, musical/comedies and Jazz (I may be missing one, past midnight here). I think it might have been an intro to ‘How to Draw the Marvel Way.”
I had, I mean.