The "bigger than Sutton Hoo" reference was taken out of context; it refers merely to the quantity of gold, that's all, not the cultural context or overall historical value.
This is a hoard that includes coins too, which helps enormously in terms of dating etc.
There's a gold Byzantine coin, as well as a number of silver pennies and partial coins, and some loose chain-rings.
If you’re a secular gay, your only responsible course of action is to have lots and lots and lots of sex. You’ll know you’ve reached an appropriate level when you suddenly turn heterosexual. Short of that point, you’ll just have to keep trying harder.
This explains so very much . . .
@abi437 writes:
What PNH wanted, what I wanted, was to discuss what is good in books. (I know this, because we had a long discussion on IM about whether the thread was going to work.) A fallback position was to discuss why we couldn't discuss this without running into our neatly mirrored set of emotional and intellectual twitches.
What is good in books is whatever is in an individual book that stirs "narrative lust" in the reader. It doesn't matter if the book is stone, a scroll, or a insect-marred sheepskin or a codex. It is narrative lust, in fiction, non- fiction, prose or poetry, that stirs us to find out "what happens next," to unroll the scroll, to turn the page, to flick the back-lit margins.
I give you C. S. Lewis in "On Stories," at the part where he talks about "narrative lust":
The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only once) but for a certain surprisingness…In the only snese that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the ’surprise’ is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn’t look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. So in literature. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which mearely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the ’surprise’ of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is really the wolf. If is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia. (page 17 )
That is what is good in books, any book, and any reader, though both will vary.
skzb@#372
1. It seems to me that the distinction between "fiction for the masses" and "literature for the elite" is a 20th century aberration.
2. Is the above the same as the distinction you were making? It seems different.
The distinction I was making is related but not identical. That said, the distinction between "fiction for the masses" and "literature for the elite" was very much part of the medieval lit landscape.
Until fairly late, in terms of post Norman conquest lit, the literature that was "literature" was in Latin or French, not the vulgar stuff in Middle English. A standard thing for medievalists to point out is that Gower wrote in all three languages.
The Middle English Metrical Romances would likely qualify as "trash" reading; Lydgate as "literature," then, based on the comments we have about them. Chaucer makes loving fun of the metrical romances.
I note that we have one copy in ms. of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We have six of Beves of Hampton.
When I did my first M.A., I wanted to write about the metrical romances; two medievalists tried to dissuade from writing about them because they were "trashy." I wrote about them anyway.
I see others have pointed at the penny dreadfuls, and reminded us again of Austen's comments in Northanger Abbey.
#361@skzb asks
RE: MacAllister @ 352: "There is a long, long, VERY long tradition of sorting written stuff into what we're supposed to like, vs. stuff that's fun and "trashy" and we're supposed to be embarrassed about reading."
at which @skzb asks:
Um. Are you sure? Does this tradition pre-date the 20th Century? Can you point me at anything that indicates that it does?
I'm sure.
It's part of the Platonic tradition re: The Republic and what will and won't be allowed.
It's embedded in the lists of texts for the trivium and quadrivium, which typically includes that ones that are "trash" and fabulae, and not to be taught. It's the reason behind Sidney's Defense, which is a reply to Gosse's The Schoole of Abuse.
It runs through into Richardson arguing that Clarissa was not immoral but didactic, and not, therefore, titillating (see Shamela as Fielding's response) and Austen's parody of novels and the Gothic in particular as "immoral."
See Dicken's efforts to defend his work from the criticism that they were popular and trash, or the early responses to lending libraries with (gasp!) novels in them.
Or see Louisa May Alcott on Huckleberry Finn, when as a library board member in Concord, N. H. she wrote "wrote that "If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them." It was, to her way of thinking a trashy novel. The funny thing about that is that she secretly wrote "trashy novels," and called them that, that were not at all like Little Women.
Or the way people still trash romance, especially category romances, as "trash," "not really writing," etc. etc.
The fact that you can unfriend, never friend, or block those you do not wish to follow you on Facebook is a better option, by far, than having an adult lurker other than a parent.
It isn't a principal's job to watch out for kids outside of the school. It's the job of parents.
I absolutely do not follow or friend my students on Facebook. That's not my role. I don't want to know that their dog didn't eat their paper but that they were "bombed with omfg hangover" and opted not to write.
I think we should send all the kids ebooks of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother
I suspect that the schools actions might be problematic in terms of Federal law; they are, by demanding access entering FERPA territory.
People
Let's not, please, confuse critical theory, particularly as espoused by the likes of Ruth Yeazell (the Yale prof above in Sean's excerpt) and literary criticism. One is a lovely, fascinating theoretical and philosophical exercise, the other is practical application with an eye to understanding a text and our reactions to a text.
And 15K hardcovers of literary fiction by a tier one university faculty member will sell to students in five years. Easy. That's why more and more schools are telling faculty you can't require your book as a text; you must make it optional or demonstrate to the textbook committee that it really is the best choice.
N.B. Writing poetry gets you laid, not prose.
@#97 edward oleander
There's a lot about what an author is trying to accomplish, or whether or not the author wrote a fun read. What I would like to hear is how people go about analyzing the authors themselves.
I'll try to respond, not so much because of indulging in the "Intentional Fallacy," but in terms of how my reading changed (the way I read changed), so for me, the books changed.
In the vicissitudes of grad school life, a lot of my books, especially genre fiction, had to be in storage. After years of close reading, when I got my SF and F out of storage, there were a lot of books I hadn't read for about twenty years. Books I very much loved.
Two authors, in particular, I couldn't stand to read. Both were authors I had attempted to ocate everything they'd written. Both were authors I'd published essays and presented papers about. Not just for the prose, but for the underlying assumptions about the world. My changes in perception changed the books for me, and yes, at the level of story.
I am exquisitely uncomfortable with the use of "literary fiction" for a number of reasons.
1. It really is used a very great deal to refer to the M.F.A. books that tenure track academics send to university presses within the presses themselves. It is not well meant. It means "we'll do a small run, and hope that we can sell all of them in under five years." I say this as a former employer/reader at three university presses, and after wading through stacks of lit fic as a member of tenure and hiring committees.
2. I see some posters here using literary fiction to, I think, describe prose style. That makes me wince a bit.
3. I keep thinking of Barthes and things like S/Z, where he talks about jouissance / orgasm (with a nod at Lacan), and books he wants to fuck, and those he wants to fuck him. It's better in French, really, but he wants to make love to text--and as far as I can tell, pretty much does.
@#81 TomB
If I step on a rake, I think that makes me the top. Hopefully the rake likes it.
That rather depends on whether the rake is Byron, Rochester or Anne Lister.
@#75 Sean Sakamoto
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.
Do you think Dickens was writing for the critics? Or Twain? Both were roundly condemned for their lack of style, and absence of philosophic value. Dickens' books were described as "consumables" by the leading literary critic. You might also think about the fact that the Brontes, like Tiptree, were deemed to be, clearly, "masculine" because of their masculine, dominant style.
Referring to an author as someone's bitch is very much using gendered language--I note Neil Gaiman's carefully chosen "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch" reference wrt to "who's on top."
LitFIc is mostly a category used by publishing marketing folk and tenure-seeking M.F.A.s It's mostly used to mean "books we can't sell except to the M.F.A.'s own students." It's not a genre outside of publishing and book selling. It's not even in the huge giant list of LOC headings for genre.
Sean Sakamoto @59
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.
You show me a novel in the canon, and I'll show you a genre. Our brains work in terms of motifs and themes and tropes. Pretty much all of the canon novels we read now, say for a novel Ph.D. qualifying exam, were initially decried as genre fic and populist. The authors, by the way, even then were just as much telling lies for money as the scops behind Beowulf and the current genre fic authors, low list, mid list, and best seller, and yeah, category romance is in there too.
I'm not a fan lit fic per se. If a novel is such that a press will only publish less than five thousand copies, it's likely lit fic, and as far as I can see, that means M.F.A. and publish or perish. God knows I don't want to read any more of 'em if I'm not being paid up front.
@#41 Ralph Giles
Lisa L. Spangenberg @ 30:
There is nothing new under the sun, and of the making of books there is no end.
What a beautiful thought! Could we have it in Latin please? I'm sure I would find it much more profound, and certainly Improved, if rendered in a language I can't really read.
You're gonna laugh, now.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=23
Ecclesiastes 12:12
And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=23&c=12
Keep in mind that the Vulgate numbers and breaks verses a bit differently.
I note in passing that the "Overmuch study maketh men mad" in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was much inspired by the second verse.
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/56
Serge @#39 Hah! I can't spell my name, or anything else, correctly at least half the time. I bless PNH's note about spelling of things every time I screw my courage to the sticking point and post, because even though I proof and write outside the comment window, I'm afraid I'll make an error and annoy PNH.
Actually, I spell everything perfectly but the Internet introduces errors . . . yeah, that's it.
Serge@#38 wrote:
I ask because I remember something that a buddy in Québec once said about the origins of fantasy tales up there. He pointed out that the tales of the 19th Century could not be considered as belonging to the genre of fantasy because people truly believed that, for example, the defiance certain religious interdictions was how one could become a werewolf, and that thus those stories belonged to the realm of folk tales.
I say Feh. The first widely circulated and written version of a werewolf tale was Mare de France's Bisclavret, from the twelfth century. She very much wrote for an erudite and educated aristocratic audience, and the tale is very clearly identified wrt genre as a Breton Lay--which by definition is a fantasy that includes love, magic, and usually, the otherworld.
I note that even earlier Old Irish lists of the genres of tales include two that are specifically about fantastic trips to the otherworld--echtras, and imramms. The lists of tales make it very clear that these really are genres in just the way we use genres to categorize story types today. And these too were also very much created for a learned audience, pre and post Christianity.
So I'm sticking to fantasy as a medieval genre.
And to the governing belief that it's ok to enjoy what we read.
Serge @#32
But is it fantasy when they believe this is the way Nature truly functions?
A lot of times they knew they were making up stuff just because they could--they didn't, for instance, actually believe that all the things said of fairies were true--for one thing, the Church had decided opinions about it and took measures to make their feelings about "fabulae" very clear.
I rather doubt that Chaucer's readers and hearers thought that kissing an ugly old hag would restore her to youth and fecudity.
But it was totally cool story.
I spend an inordinate amount of time on Absolute Write's forums. They're pretty nifty.
Over and over in genre discussions people attempt to define and categorize "literary fiction," and "literature," as separate from "fiction" and "genre fiction."
As someone who thinks a lot of medieval lit qualifies as urban fantasy, this makes me pull my hair and gnash my teeth.
The endless qualitative distinctions between Austen (or any other canon author) as literature and Stephen King as "trash," or "genre fiction" and hence inferior to "literature" get a little thin too. They do very much seem to be tied to a difference between wanting to read to find out what happens, and reading for an external reason. Austen or Faulkner are "good" for us; King not so much.
Is the idea that if it isn't "hard," and "difficult," that if we have narrative lust reading a book then the book is "bad" part of our puritan heritage? Is it even uniquely American? I do note that German and French book reviews even in terms of SF and F seem to be very very different that American ones.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 21 |
| 2008 | 8 |
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