The reality is, tastes change. I think most classic authors, if they were writing the exact same things today, they'd never be successful in the modern marketplace.
i really do kind of feel vaguely embarrassed when I read prose whose main purpose is to prove that the writer always got perfect scores when reading the word power column in Reader's Digest. Just. Oh dear, my friend. Oh dear.
This can be argued. Your statement itself is subjective. I don't know if I agree that art is subjective or objective. People much smarter than you and I have debated this for centuries.
it's absolutely subjective. I don't even know how this is a question. all you have to do is gather nine friends and go to an art gallery and talk about how you engage with whatever's on the wall.
I think this comes down to how sophisticated and developed one's pallet is when it comes to reading. In my opinion your friend's little experiment says more about the people on the message board than it does about the works in question. I also don't see the point in tricking people like this. It doesn't change the value of the works. And things don't end up in the literary cannon by accident. If you want to feel like you have a better handle on what good writing is, read more. Expose yourself to more. Yes, taste has a lot to do with it, but that is also something that can be developed more and evolve.
Another thing that I want to point out. you can't give prospective readers an entrance exam that they have to pass in order to read your stories - that isn't how this works. you can *aim* your work toward a certain kind of reader, of course you can, I certainly do. But honestly? I dislike the idea that this writer is more valuable than that writer because they know their epistrophe from their isocolon and the other one cares not a whit for cleverness or ornament or pretension. I mean I like writing. I like prose. I like the weighing and measuring and the leavening of what words you use and in what way. I like tricks and stunts and showing out--and it's not because I think that's going to make my work more valuable than the writer who lays words like bricks to build up a strong story wall. I'm a sucker for a transparent page turner and I feel sorry for anyone who won't let themselves just check out for six hours and have a damn adventure, for crying out loud.
Of course you can't pin it down. If you could, it wouldn't be subjective. Sounds like you're looking for a black and white answer to a very grey question. I mean, if you trying to define "good" in measurable, repeatable terms, you've got a long night ahead of you.
Once again I have to say that there are aesthetic philosophers and other people much smarter than any of us who don't agree with subjectivity. I'm well aware that the vast majority of people believe that beauty/art is subjective. In most respects I do too. But see Roger Scruton's works. There are real and identifiable reasons for objectivity according to him. I'm not saying I agree with him, but I also refuse to just assume that aesthetics are entirely subjective since that's what most people think.
Nice post. This is why I'm not such a fan of Nabokov, for example. He seemed to be mostly style and little substance. Of course his works were meaningful at times, but at a certain point the style is so apparent the reading experience becomes "meta" and you're thrust out of the world. Lolita is a decent story, but did it have to be so darned sophisticated, so dripping with linguistic sauciness? In my opinion a good story will always be more important than style.
uh. yes, I honestly think that it did. I believe that Lolita in particular utterly collapses if you take that prose away. It's funny; I would not have expected you, out of all the people in this conversation, to have such disdain for an obviously adept prose stylist. People are so interesting.
Did I say I disdained him or his work? Not sure why you're trying to exaggerate my words. I merely said that his style was somewhat of a hindrance to my enjoyment of the story precisely because it was so stylish. Anyway I'm not sure what I've said in this thread to give the impression I'm some kind of arbiter of style. I was agreeing with you that not everything has to be stylish and that a good story will suffice. Though Hemingway I can't really get behind...
Warning: Thyre Be Dragons. The question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines "quality" drove a certain Phaedrus to seek electroconvulsive therapy. Re: Hemingway. I loathe Hemingway's work. Loathe it. Every single time I bring myself to read it, I learn something valuable. Argh! Appreciation for the SOB's craft compromises my beautiful pure loathing of his work.
Yikes, Lolita has no point without the prose. It's a battle between Humbert the eloquent who wants to immortalize Lolita in beauty versus Quilty the crass who wants to immortalize Lo in pornography and that very battle reaches out into the realm of Nabokov writing the book. Had Nabokov gone Quilty's route it would just be a sleazy Midwood novel which Nabokov actually jokes about in the afterword that if he had just wrote it full of plain cliche language it would've been published faster and easier. The style is the subtext and depth of the story. Kathe Koja is the same, if you take away her prose - her horror stories are merely functional - and lose all the haunting, obsessive quality her quirky prose brings to them. To me books function on two levels - one reassures what you already know - most commercial entertainment fiction. The other makes you question what you think you know - literary, general or any challenging book.
No need to say "yikes". People are allowed to have different opinions. I enjoyed reading Lolita, especially the last half. I also got some enjoyment out of Pale Fire. I just think Nabokov's style is so apparent that I was actively removed from the story, at least in the beginning. It was the equivalent of saying, "Look at me, look at me." Yes, that flair and eccentricity is part of Humbert as a character, but it took me out of the story at times. It almost had a meta vibe to it and that's not my preference. That's all I'm saying.
You might be interested in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. I learned more about Lolita reading Nafisi than I did reading Nabokov.
It was used humorously to show that taking away the very thing that gave the book it's depth would be a disaster. I apologize if I sounded sharp. And I get that people find Nabokov distracting. I've been distracted by him but that's where I think he and other writers are in a different category of writers that you read, not just for the enjoyment of what they're writing about, but how they write. And that can be either fun or obnoxious but it's something you either buy into or not. Although Wil Self dropping paragraphs was just plain mean. There was this one book I loved called Woman's World by Graham Rawle where he used the cut and paste technique for the entire novel. He cut out slang and sayings from vintage woman's magazines, distracting yes, but a marvelous work of art. I either got this idea from a book of essays on Lolita by Christina Clegg or I read it in another book or essay on Nabokov. I like studying him and lately Stanley Elkin.
Oh, I wasn't really aiming that at you but everyone. I think I quoted your post as the Nabokov-related links were getting quite specific. No worries though. I probably started it! Edit: I mean it was just a good opportunity to indicate the flow of the discussion.
honestly I enjoy reading critical analysis of lolita more than I enjoyed reading lolita. and in writing that, I realized that there's a bunch of old-timey books that i engage with the same way - I like hearing what people get out of them more than I like reading them. maybe that's more because I really like talking about stories in a way that often resembles the fascinated, intent process of dissection--and that the observations one makes while slicing are so interesting. sorry for the gruesome metaphor!