http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine /archive/2001/07/a-reade

>>8773580

I don't live in America.
I'm glad the urbanite culture of lumbersexuals isn't mine to endure.

>>8773580
tl;dr?

Can't read the article due to paywall

>>8773593
tl;dr
>the modern dividing line between "genre fiction" and "Literrrrature witha capital L" should be removed.
>Modern "Literary fiction" generally speaking is written for an echo chamber audience of snooty , bi-coastal critics and professors
>This artificial divide has led modern "literary" authors to adopt unorthodox and artifical prose styles because their job is to sound "writerly" rather than tell a story
>Many examples of this, Corncob included

>>8773593
some dumb formalist faggot can't appreciate the socio-historic and historical contexts of literature

>>8773620
He's right though. He isn't writing about contexts, he's writing about needless verbal masturbation by pretentious faggots trying to impress critics.

>>8773612
Can you list all the examples?

>>8773593
??
I can read it just fine and I don't subscribe to the atlantic.

File: tallman.jpg (59KB, 1920x1080px) Image search: [Google]

59KB, 1920x1080px

>>8773627
Corncob, Annie Proulx (author of Brokeback Mountain) and Don Delillo

>>8773623
socio-historic and theoretical i mean by the way

i know he isn't writing about contexts. that's the point

>>8773650
No. He's talking about how writers should maybe start off with trying to write something somebody might actually want to read. If it accomplishes that, the context generally tends to emerge organically from the story. Yeah, i know, story's for plebs.

>>8773670
i know what he's talking about. he's talking about form. he's not talking about the socio-historical and theoretical contexts of literature itself as a medium rather than individual examples of literature.

he's a dumb formalist who thinks literature ought to be written with certain priorities in mind because his dumb formalist mind can't conceive that a medium as old and varied as literature can be used for different purposes.

>>8773677

But that's just it. He IS callign out the different purposes, those being mainly the purpose of masturbating in one's own verbiage and writing in a style coldly calculated to impress today's literary establishment. Purposes abound.

>>8773690
yeah he's saying they're not allowed to be used for different purposes...

>>8773626
Not him but his exampled authors were Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Don DilLillo, Paul Auster, and David Guterson. He named others but these were the ones he did lots of examples from, usually focusing on one of their recent, award-winning books but pulling examples from other works too. He used each author as an example of a different type of pseudo-intellectual prose. Proulx was the example for "evocative" prose, McCarthy for "muscular" prose, DiLillo for "edgy" prose, Auster for "spare" prose, and Guterson for "generic literary prose."

Beyond a rather devastating critique of those named authors he outlines what he sees as a worrying trend among the "cultural elite" for propping up dull, pretentious authors and bullying the American readership away from enjoyable books.

>>8773704
He's saying that the purpose found here is malicious toward the general public, i.e. the readers. Hence the title of the article: A Reader's Manifesto. One might think it was obvious that it would be written from the perspective of somebody looking out for the interests of the average reader.

>>8773821
so he's saying it can't be used for different purposes...

>>8773809
>Beyond a rather devastating critique of those named authors he outlines what he sees as a worrying trend among the "cultural elite" for propping up dull, pretentious authors and bullying the American readership away from enjoyable books.

His DeLillo criticism was entirely unfounded. When the writer takes certain passages out of context and says, ""How the hell am I supposed to know that?" he can do a lot of manipulating. Much of his critique is playing dumb or saying he didn't have the patience to read through something, which I don't find compelling.

>>8773612
>rather than tell a story

MUH PLOT WHY THEY GOTS TO MAKE THEM WORDS SO COMPLICATE???

>>8775122
Must you write in memes?

>>8775126
yes.

>>8774220
>>8773704
MUH PURPOSES

Jesus, go read your shitty-purposed authors already before the author of the article rounds them up into fema camps

>>8773580
>I like being an idiot

Okay.

>>8776404
You really got to the darkly-meated heart of the argument with that one.

Please teach me your strangled ways.

You guys should actually read the article if you haven't. The worst part is his praise of Stephen King as an unrecognized genius and some of it is generally good writing advice, especially the part about "evocative prose". I'm enjoying reading the bad writing and seeing it dissected. I disagree with him on alot of his criticism of Delillo and McCarthy but I do agree he makes good points. Some of the prose I am reading is both difficult, unrewarding and almost humorously bad.

>>8776525
The Stephen King thing was irritating, but ultimately he shied away from flying the "MYSTERY NOVELZ CAN B LITERATURE 2 LOL" banner, which would've invalidated the whole thing.

I do agree that there is a trend of making too many sentences ambitious and excessively descriptive. I find that in a lot of novels images that are truly striking are often buried in an attempt to make every image unique and special. I think the biggest indicator of this is if the author devotes unnecessary attention to describing objects or actions that are insignificant to either the plot, the characters, or the theme. If the character doesn't find something remarkable or interesting, why spend a full paragraph describing it? Of course, maybe the writer is calling attention to the character's failure to notice these details- but how often do you really need to do that?

Sometimes a simple sentence is OK.

>>8773612
>he thinks Literature is still being written
That's his mistake.

I've never thought that genre fiction is bad per se, it's just better suited to film. Things like creativity in the setting, plot, use of action, so on, all of which genre writers tend to focus on, are really great when used in film. Sometimes I think that genre writers just want to be filmmakers in the first place, but they don't have access to expensive cameras or a production team, so they just opt for writing. I can name a few of these kinds of books off the top of my head that were much better when adapted to film, one of which being The Shining

The examples he takes from Proulx are awful. Pure self-indulgent waffle.

> She stood there, amazed, rooted, seeing the grain of the wood of the barn clapboards, paint jawed away by sleet and driven sand, the unconcerned swallows darting and reappearing with insects clasped in their beaks looking like mustaches, the wind-ripped sky, the blank windows of the house, the old glass casting blue swirled reflections at her, the fountains of blood leaping from her stumped arms, even, in the first moment, hearing the wet thuds of her forearms against the barn and the bright sound of the metal striking.

He has a point, the article would have been better if he'd provided examples of good writing in 'genre fiction' though.

>>8778487
>examples of good writing in 'genre fiction' though

there is no such thing, even he thinks that "good prose" is essentially just jerking off and only the plot matters