The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Sean Bosker:

Oops, sorry I misspelled your name, Renatus.

@Renauts 108

I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. I call that particular behavior 'hairsaucing.'

Years ago, I posted an article on another forum about a Chinese company that was using protein taken from hair clippings as a substitute for soy to make counterfiet soy sauce.

I found the story disgusting and amazing for many obvious reasons. But some of my friends in the thread immediately began quibbling with the idea that eating hair is so gross. They said that people bite their nails and kiss and do all sorts of things.

I was so mad! My point was to gape in wonder and horror at the idea that millions of people were putting industrially produced hair sauce on their dumplings instead of soy sauce, and instead I got into this tedious debate about whether or not eating hair is gross at all to begin with. Nevermind issues of consent, fraud, and hygeine.

It seemed sooooo internet to me. So now, when I present an idea and I find someone ignoring the main point to focus on a minor detail, I say I'm being hairsauced.

heresiarch, I think I see things the same way that you do.

I also think that writing a book that is a lot of fun to read is the highest and most difficult of all literary standards. At least, as a writer, my primary goal is to entertain the reader. If I can do that, I'm really happy.

OK, fair enough. Patrick said we don't have to fear literary snobs. We talked a bit about literary snobs.

Then this guy came, and called bullshit on all of us in a nasty and belittling way. Then we called him a literary snob. It kind of makes sense to me.

avram,
I can't agree with your characterization of this thread. I don't think anyone insisted "that people with high literary standards can't actually be enjoying the books they say they like."

I did suggest that some folks think difficulty iteslf is meritorious. I never suggested that those people didn't like reading difficult work. I posited that they liked it just because it's difficult. I even went out of my way to relate to that mindset, by admitting that I once had that approach to literature and that I approach some music in that way.

I think that the whole discussion up until Nick came was very civil, disagreements and all. People were debating in good faith, and I think that Nick was in 'internet attack mode.'

People like talking about this stuff without having their shields up, and Nick's tone was kind of nasty. He was condescending and sarcastic. The internet is a force multiplier for sarcasm, one just need to add a touch of sneer to make a disagreement feel very harsh, and I think that Nick didn't adjust his tone to his audience and he stepped on some toes.

Folks were describing how they felt about interactions they had with other folks, and Nick was demanding proof like a Orly Tait screaming for Obama's birth certficate at a town hall meeting on health care.

if you want to talk to people in our world (and you said you did), you need to play by our rules. And our rules say that the responsibility for transmission of information lies with the sender. You fucked up.


Now THAT is what I call a top.

A personal example:

My mother was a college professor with a Ph.D in German literature. She and her colleagues read all kinds of complicated literary stuff to stay current.

In her spare time, my mom and her friends loved to read mysteries. They called the mysteries, 'junk.' For example, 'This weekend I'm just going to read junky mysteries.' They also called these mysteries, 'trashy' and 'guilty pleasures'.

Why was it junk? Why did they feel guilty about reading mysteries? They valued the hard stuff, the epic poems with references that took footnotes to explain, but they seemed to enjoy the trashy junk too, but that was somehow not OK.

I do think it applies to the dynamic of pleasure vs. work as a way that some folks seem to evaluate the merit of writing and the place of literature.

Could you name some of these people and point to their statements where they've said such things?


In the essay that Patrick linked to at the start of this post, ' The Modernists introduced us to the idea that reading could be work, and not common labor but the work of an intellectual elite, a highly trained coterie of professional aesthetic interpreters. The motto of Ezra Pound's "Little Review," which published the first chapters of Joyce's "Ulysses," was "Making no compromise with the public taste." Imagine what it felt like the first time somebody opened up "The Waste Land" and saw that it came with footnotes. Amateur hour was over.

-----


I don't agree with all of what Grossman says in that essay. The one thing I do agree with is that in this strange and undefinable land of 'literary' fiction, there is a significant readership that values difficulty over pleasure in a text. I don't even think it is wrong, it is a matter of taste. What is wrong is to look down on someone who has different taste.

I think this dichotomy extends beyond fiction. I play the shakuhachi. It is an extremely difficult instrument to play. Within the tiny shakuhachi community, you will find people who value the pieces that are technically more difficult to play over the easy, crowd pleasing folk music.

In popular culture, you have classical music snobs who sneer at rock and roll. I remember when the classically trained prog rock virtuosos looked down on the 'three cord' punk rockers.

There is something about difficulty vs. pleasure in the assignment of artistic merit that happens. I don't know if this is about acquired taste, the reward of effort, snobbery, puritanism, or some unholy combination of all the above. But it exists, and in the genre vs. litfic arena the smell of it is very strong.

I read that rebuttal. The author contends that institutions are NOT forcing a certain canon on readers, contrary to what Franzen claims. It seems like much of what Franzen argues, and that I argue, and who rebutts us, depends on what school and crowd one went to and hung out with.

I still like his Status model vs. Contract model, and I do think it applies to the dynamic of pleasure vs. work as a way that some folks seem to evaluate the merit of writing and the place of literature. I don't personally use this method to value a work of writing, but I think that's what is behind a lot of litfic snobbery.

skzb,

I just want to say that our discussion has been really fun for me. I appreciate you making me work to clarify my point of view, and I also enjoy your style. I hope we meet some day. If you ever find yourself in rural Japan, drop me a line. I know some good soba restaurants.

Here is a link to that Franzen essay, which I really enjoyed.

(Even the name sounds like a top!)

And, just for fun, here is a link to a great essay/ brutal takedown of academic literary criticism by a Yale Grad student.

I am sitting in a windowless conference room. The walls are lined with sets of leather-bound books with gold-lettered spines. ‘The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism,’ a young man is saying. He pauses for a long time. Underneath the table, one leg is twisted around the other. A stretch of gaunt white ankle shows between trouser and sock. ‘In order to approach participating in.’ He pauses again, his body knotted like a balloon creature made by a children’s entertainer. Finally, in one rush: ‘The unity which is no longer accessible.’ My fellow students utter a long soft gasp, as if at a particularly beautiful firework.

‘Brilliant,’ says the professor. ‘Very finely put. But I didn’t quite understand it. Could you repeat it?’ I write the sentence down in my notebook, like everyone else in the seminar. The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism before it can approach participating in the unity which is no longer accessible. When I have pieced it together, I realise he is talking nonsense. I am struck by the thought that literary criticism – at least as it is practised here – is a hoax.

Letter from Yale

Nick, we have had different experiences. Maybe you went to all the right places and met the right folks and I went to all the wrong places, wrong this and wrong that. That works for me.

skzb, you wrote "To me, a work is good insofar as it reaches, moves, delights, influences, and especially ephiphanizes as many people as possible over as wide a spectrum of humanity, across time and culture, as possible. "

When Oprah put Franzen's Corrections on her reading list, he objected. He said that his work was too complex for her readership and suggested that they wouldn't get it. This kicked off a huge controversy. Some folks said he was being a snob. Some folks said he was just being honest. Oprah herself was very angry. They've reconciled since, but it was a fun controversy, and it was a mainstream version of the lit vs. genre discussion that I enjoyed very much.

There are a lot of litfic folks who would not agree at all with your definition of 'good' writing. I was one of them, back when I was in school. We turned our noses up at any 'bestseller.' We were suspicious of anything that became too popular, too mainstream. It was pandering, it was selling out, it was bland, escapist, pablum, etc.

Good fiction required labor on the part of the reader. That's my central tenet. My choice of diction got in the way, perhaps the truth is more nuanced. I am not saying that litfic writers don't think at all of their writers and genre only think of their writers. It is a matter of degree.

I think that in litfic, the empasis is on the writer doing more of the 'work' to understand what the author is getting at. The onus is on the reader. If a reader doesn't understand the work, then the reader is embarrased and fakes it.

In genre, the onus is on the writer. If the work is not accessible, or not at the very least a fun read, then the writer has failed. A work of litfic can not be a fun read, and be considered very succesful.

I guess I am trying to say that a work of genre could be fun, and only fun, to be considered a success. Litfic can get away with being boring, difficult, and not fun at all, and still be considered a success by its readers, because they don't demand that their reading be fun.

Franzen describes both these models much better than I could. I see a suprising similarity in your words and his, although he would put you in what he calls his 'contract model' vs. Flaubert's Satus model, in which most people will NOT enjoy the work, precisely because it is literary!

I quote:

'It turns out that I subscribe to two wildly different models of how fiction relates to its audience. In one model, which was championed by Flaubert, the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of how many people are able to appreciate it. We can call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance.

In the opposing model, a novel represents a compact between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group, whether the group consists of "Finnegans Wake" enthusiasts or fans of Barbara Cartland. Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness; and so a novel deserves a reader's attention only as long as the author sustains the reader's trust. This is the Contract model. The discourse here is one of pleasure and connection. My mother would have liked it.'

Melville and making pretty noises. Nice. I know exactly what you mean.

Louis Ferdinand Celine was a literary French writer, misanthropist, curmudgeon, and all around creep whose fiction can top me every time I dare venture into it. Journey to the End of Night is an exquisite pain.

MacAllister,
Thanks for the apology, but it is not at all necessary. I knew I was venturing onto dangerous territory by using loaded terms, but I wanted to make my point with a bang. I did not know that I was using the same imagery as centuries of anti-literature Puritans.

I think I disagree with those folks on two points, that a type of writing can be immoral based on esthetics, and that if an esthetic is somehow feminine, it is therefore bad.

teresa, thanks for vouching for me. Everyone has been very respectful.

If I saw someone whom I may have thought was claiming that novels are girlish and wrong, I could not have rebutted with the same degree of diplomacy that I have encountered here.

I laughed at the Hemmingway free verse thing too!

I'm just too busy making sure my metaphor doesn't make me its bitch.

Mac, I welcome your posts. You helped me refine what I was saying. The last thing I want to do is come across as a guy who thinks fun books are girlish and therefore bad. I do not, not, not think that.

texanne, I will go find some Gene Wolf, thanks for the suggestion.

#69, you misunderstand me. I think your previous reading is coloring your view of what I am saying.

I believe that both types of writing can be intellectually rigorous. I am describing the reader's relationship to the writer, not to the prose itself.

I believe that in so-called 'literary fiction`, the reader enters a submissive relationship with the author. A (make me work, make me struggle, make me earn understanding), whereas a genre author works from the assumption that the onus is on him or her to create something that will be less work for the reader, more immersive, more compelling and captivating.

The actual prose is neither top nor bottom, it's an authorial stance. The prose might be difficult, obtuse, wonderful, turgid, dense, light, feathery, butch, femme, or woody with buttery finish and a fruity nose.

As for these terms, 'literary' and 'genre', I am agree with anyone who says all litfic is a genre. One distinguishing feature of the litfic genre is the idea the the reader will be engaging in a certain kind of effort to meet the author more than halfway. Some folks really like doing this kidn of work. I have enjoyed it myself.

I disagree.

First of all, I don't think it is immoral to be a top or a bottom. Secondly, I don't think one is less intellectually rigorous, and third, I don't necessarily agree with people who define fun as being escapist, nor do I think that escapism is necessarily wrong.

I was trying to describe what I see, not advocating one side or the other. As a matter of personal taste, I prefer genre fiction. It is more fun to read, and I like fun. I see nothing immoral about the experience.

Sorry if it's too over the top, I'm just trying to make the point that I think genre readers have more empahsis on their audience, and litfic writers are more interested in their audience doing the heavy lifting.

I am giddy with excitement over this post. This is one of my favorite topics!

I started liking genre, then was convinced by school to like literature, then went back to genre. I still read litfic, but as a genre, it isn't as fun for me these days.

I think one aspect, touched on above, is that 'good literature' must not be escapist. An immersive read, that Patrick describes as being 'plot' is precisely what puts some people off of a genre book. 'Immersive' becomes 'fun' and that becomes 'escapist'. If you read a difficult work, it prevents you from being carried away. You must chip away at each sentence, you must labor to understand what the author is doing. I'm not being sarcastic, some people consider that act of labor stimulating and that is what distinguishes a worthy work of art from what they might call 'fluff.'

I have no problem with that. I am not into SM or BD, but since I went to San Francisco State University, I had the luxury of getting a minor in human sexuality. I learned a lot about tops and bottoms in power relationships.

My personal opinion is that in so-called 'literary fiction' the author is the top. You, the reader, are the author's bitch. You will submit, you will struggle through what he is doing, and you will enjoy it. You exist to serve and service the author. There is nothing wrong with this relationship. It is consensual, and some folks really like it. It is especially appealing to creative writing students, because we aspire to be the top to a whole pool of readers.

With genre fiction, the author is the bottom. The reader is the top. The author exists to serve and service the reader. The author must make the prose good enough to keep the reader coming back for more, and if the author doesn't, the understanding is that reader will throw the book across the room. The author is the reader's bitch, there to serve. Take a look at how fiesty genre fans get when their authors aren't writing books fast enough.

This does not happen to Jonathan Franzen. He making our struggling-to-understand asses come correct with his leatherclad, horsewhipping prose. But an fantasy writer? Where's my product, bitch. I read your blog! Stop having a life and tell me what happens next!

I originally wanted to be a writer because I wanted to get laid. I didn't know this at the time, but I hoped, yearned, ached for legions of smart women and men to admire my prose, to prize out the meaning, and to take me to bed. I wanted adoration, and literature was to be my vehicle.

After I got older, I realized I still really want to write. In fact, I want people to like what I write because I want them to have fun. Somewhere I stopped making writing be about me, and started making it be about the reader. I found this attitude in the SF community, and it was this philosophical turnaround that led me back to science fiction. I liked the attitude that SF writers had, I liked it more than the attitude that litfic writers had.

That was why I switched sides. That, and now that I'm a grown man, I don't worry so much what that woman in the cafe thinks about the cover of the book I am reading. I am free to read space ship stuff.

A true tragedy: Jonathan Lethem, first published by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, a brilliant genre writer. He went the other way. At first, it looked like a good move. He wrote a great crime book called 'Motherless Brooklyn'. Wonderful stuff, and it made him a legit writer in the minds of the litfic folks.

He just had a short story in the New Yorker. I was so excited to read it. The protagonist was a middle class person with a midlife crisis and a big headache. That's right, Jonathan Lethem is now writing about headaches that come in midlife. If I had the time, I would buy one of those archives of the New Yorker and do a spreadsheet on every story in the past 30 years that had a middle aged protagonist with a terrible headache. It is a stand-in for 'something is wrong with my life but I don't know what...nobody can see it because it is in my head.'

I liked 'Gun, With Occaisional Music' so much more.

I am sorry for the length of this post, but I just love this topic.

I wrote some fantasy, and got paid for it, for an RPG publisher called Alderac Entertainment Group aka AEG and they handled everything fine. So I think there must be more than one publisher called AEG.

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