Literary Commentary. Here, have some hip boots.

Crooked Timber's discussing an interesting little event that went on at the National Book Awards dinner Thursday. Short version: Stephen King got an honorary award, made a speech where he essentially informed the judges that they needed to read more genre fiction and an author named Shirley Hazzard got contrasted to King by just about everybody commenting on it.

Now, looking over the links, it would seem that the proud philistine contingent is underrepresented in this debate, so I am stepping up to the plate.

I'm pretty much with Stephen King on this one - always have been, really. There's something called Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"), and while it certainly applies to genre fiction, literary fiction ain't immune, either. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if Sturgeon was being too hopeful when it came to that particular style... because, frankly, the stuff bores me to tears. Somebody came up with an image(Hell, it might have been Stephen King himself) - it's like seeing a beautifully restored car with no engine - to describe it, and based on the few pieces that I've forced down my literary gullet out of morbid curiousity, whoever said it was dead on.

Don't get me wrong: I have a BA in English Literature (albeit from possibly the only English Department on the Eastern Seaboard that kept the deconstructionalists away with cattle prods), I've a lively interest in history and so I have a respectable selection of the classics in my personal library. But - again, like Stephen King, I'm pretty sure - I consider story to be the most paramount factor in literature. No story - well, I'm sure that it's probably very nice, but it's fundamentally kind of pointless to me. This eliminates most of the over-characterized, over-mooded, over-introspective books out there, and keeps me happily immersed in fat paperbacks with either tanks (I buy Clancy. In hardcover. Happily.) or exploding spaceships (I also buy David Weber. In hardcover. Willingly.) on them.

OK, so far, so good: this is just personal preference stuff, and I certainly don't begrudge the literary crowd their fun. The reason that I'm commenting at all is that I don't think many people have picked up on what King was trying to do - OK, OK, what I think that he was trying to do. In a nutshell, he wasn't picking on them: he was trying to warn them.

Look, every generation we get books that are crap, books that are ehh and books that are great. We also get books that are reviled, books that are ehhh and books that are wildly praised. Out of all of these, a few get remembered and read generations later - but, oddly enough, while there's a rough correlation between 'good book' and 'remembered book' there's almost none between 'critically acclaimed book' and 'remembered book'. King was being nice to the National Book Awards people: they're going off into their own path and missing out on the very thing that they're supposedly interested in fostering (to wit, our time's literary gifts to the future), and they had just given him an award, and a guest has obligations...

Or I could be completely wrong: it is 1 AM, after all, and I am a proud philistine.

Comments

[Henry Farrell]

I've been reading my way through Weber recently - not my political cup of tea, but that's fine. You have to admire someone who can come up with a magnificently silly theory of interstellar physics for no other reason than to allow Hornblower-in-space naval battles. What annoys me immensely though are the bloody treecats. If I see one more reference to their addiction to sticks of celery ...

[Katherine]

Katherine's law: I like 2-10% of everything (this does not necessarily overlap with the part that's not crap, though.) Current literary fiction, journalistic non-fiction, plays, mysteries, romances, sci-fi, fantasy, spy thrillers, children's books, whatever.* Give me reasonably developed, sympathetic characters and a good story (in that order) and I'll probably like it.

*not horror, but only because I'm a scaredy cat. My sisters used to read Stephen King out loud during camping trips; I was severely traumatized.

[angua]

Sometimes the story is not THE thing. There is a paragraph in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that I stared at for about 45 minutes the first time I read it. It was that brilliant.

But that's the exception that proves the rule, I think. If you think of the classics that endure, from the Odyssey to the Bible to Dickens and so on, there's always a good story to go along with everything else.

I think people dismiss genre fiction because they don't realize that their stereotypes are out of whack. Even romance novels have gone beyond boy-meets-girl, misunderstanding on page 66, resolution and happily-ever-after on page 234. Mysteries must have a crime and a solution of sorts, I guess, but in almost any configuration and environemnt. I don't know enough about sci fi, but I know the stuff I like beats much of the modern stuff I read for being thought-provoking and educational.

There really only are two basic plots for any fiction and most non-fiction, whether they are wrapped up in an exploding tank or conflicted academics dealing with adultery. Writers who dismiss that do so at their peril.

Shorter Angua: Word, Moe.

[spc67]

The thing about current literary fiction that bothers me is the negativity that seems so rampant. For every Marquez whimsical wonder, or Helprin fable, it seems there are many stories of stress, suicide, crime, self immolation (figurative),distress and despair. Very tough to look forward to those themes.

The older I get, the more I find myself reading the classics in fiction, many over and over and over again. Homer (I guess he belongs in this category), Greek drama, Beowulf, the Bard (I guess he belongs here as well), Swift, Virgil, Twain and the rest. Every time I pick them up, I learn something new and they speak to me differently.

But with regard to current stuff, I think King is more right than wrong. King, Koontz, Dennis Lehane and Elmore Leonard are all better reads than Richard Price or some of the other literary types.

Angua, I thought there were three plots, not two.

1. Boy meets girl
2. A man goes on a journey
3. A stranger comes to town.

[angua]

#1 can be subsumed in #2 or #3.

[angua]

The intolerance and stereotyping works backwards sometimes. There are also genre readers afraid to try something outside of their usual range because it's written by a dead Frenchman. They come around when I point out there's kissin' and sword-fightin'.

[spc67]

I read things by dead Frenchmen (is anybody better than Hugo?), it's the living ones that bother me. ;)

[angua]

is anybody better than Hugo?

For kissin' and sword-fightin'? (And history and justice and tolerance in all its guises and a touch of humour?) Alexandre Dumas Pere.

Night.

[Doug]

is anybody better than Hugo?

Sienkiewicz. Henryk Sienkiewicz.

[tomsyl]

Moe, a strange genetic compulsion forces me to buy and read just about everything written by Steven King. At least 90% of it is crap. He has many imaginative, genuinely scary ideas but his best genre by far is the longish short story. Yet he insists on writing excruciatingly long, multi-part verbal spews like The Stand and his multi-multi-part Gunslinger serialization. He is an example of how a best-selling author can tyrranize his editors and critics into silence. He is not any kind of authority on good writing. He is, however, a historian of trash.

IMHO.

[tomsyl]

And tyrannizing readers into spelling blunders.

[Navy Davy]

Leon Uris died recently, but he has a new book, "O'Hara's Choice", thatsa pretty darn good read, if you be likin' Uris. "Exodus," "Trinity" and "Battle Cry" are some of my favorites

[Edward]

Two enthusiastic thumbs up for Alexandre Dumas, Pere.

He's the lithmus test in my book for what a writer should be able to do if they're gonna step outside the dialog of contemporary fiction (i.e., if, like King, they're gonna cling to the argument that story comes first, they have to be at least as good at it as Dumas not to invite my scorn).

Otherwise, get with the program.

Literature is an art form, and like all art forms it's progressive. If you simply want to spin yarns, then take your seat in the row for folk art and let those aspiring to advance the art of Literature dare to venture where no one has been before.

If as a reader, you don't like experimentation, that's fine. Just don't expect me to appreciate King the way I do Morrison or Will Self. They're not practising the same art form.

[harley]

Britney Spears is invaluable in that she brings folks into the record stores where they might stumble upon Princess Superstar while shopping. Britney and her ilk keep labels profitable (well, not anymore, but...) enuf to assist them in investing in new talent (before they rip them off). But no one makes the mistake of thinking that Britney is Billie Holiday. That would be silly.

___________

Atonement by Ian McEwen
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
American Tabloid & The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy

___________

There's plenty of plot in each. Get to work.

[Katherine]

I second Kavalier and Clay, and add: Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem.

[harley]

Lethem's amazing. I spent three months chasing the movie rights. Ed Norton seized the day, and the book. Not sure what's up with it now. Have you read the new one yet? Also good.

[Edward]

Motherless Brooklyn is overrated.
Good premise, but shallow execution in parts. Hear the same critique of Lethem's latest. He's good at coming up with a clever hook, but can't sustain any profound level of insight.

The Corrections could have been a masterpiece, had Franzen taken a couple more years to edit it, but then, it's social relevance was already crumbling away as it came out, so I can't say I blame him.

[harley]

Edward, you'll like the new one better -- more literary, and plenty of insight. Motherless Brooklyn wasn't built to sustain either. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Edward]

I liked Motherless enough to try his new one...just was slightly disappointed after all the hype.

Find most things don't live up to their marketing these days...kind of like 90% of everything is overhyped.

[Navy Davy]

The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy* ---Harley is back!! My man!

Ain't it kinda ironic that it nearly dupilcates American Tabloid, but is sooo much better.

How 'bout White Jazz, the best of the Ellroy bunch, No?

Navy Davy

* Saw Ellroy at this bookstore on Van Ness a few years back -- that boy got some serious demons to purge!

[harley]

Loved White Jazz, but Cold Six blew my mind. Not often you start a book knowing the plot already, or at least thinking you do, and then finding it damn near impossible to put down. And yeah, not surprised about the demons.

[Vinteuil]

Edward:

Charles Dickens--yarn spinner, or artist?

Fyodor Dostoevsky--same question.

Are you sure about this distinction?

[tomsyl]

Train by Pete Dexter is the best book I've read this year.

[judson]

Just re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Forgot how glorious a novel can be.

[Edward]

artists both, Vinteuil

have to ask that question in historical context (not by today's standards)...were their accomplishments advancing the art.

I'd say yes.

[Vinteuil]

Edward--so it's not a question of "the primacy of story," as such, but of "advancing the art" ("in historical context," of course). Dickens and Dostoevsky lived in a time when one could do both at the same time (i.e., advance the art while maintaining the primacy of story). Nowadays, of course, we have left all that behind in the dust.

Poor us.

[Vinteuil]

Sorry - in case the above was needlessly obscure:

Why should the arts "advance?"

The sciences, yes - but the arts?

Isn't the idea of "progress" in the arts just a lot of enlightenment nonsense?

[Edward]

you'd have to provide a defintion that delineated science from the arts for me to respond intelligently Vinteuil.

[st]

Thread may be dead, but appropos of King's comments, I recommend this 2001 article from the Atlantic by B.R. Meyers savagely going after the lionized "prose stylists" of lit'ry fiction that the critics (and the National Book Awards) seem to like so much. I disagree with a good bit of it, but much of his criticism rings true:

In Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves (1925) a character named Mr. Cardan makes a point that may explain today's state of affairs.

Really simple, primitive people like their poetry to be as ... artificial and remote from the language of everyday affairs as possible. We reproach the eighteenth century with its artificiality. But the fact is that Beowulf is couched in a diction fifty times more complicated and unnatural than that of [Pope's poem] Essay on Man.

Mr. Cardan comes off in the novel as a bit of a windbag, but there is at least anecdotal evidence to back up his observation. We know, for example, that European peasants were far from pleased when their clergy stopped mystifying them with Latin. Edward Pococke (1604-1691) was an English preacher and linguist whose sermons, according to the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, "were always composed in a plain style upon practical subjects, carefully avoiding all show and ostentation of learning."

But from this very exemplary caution not to amuse his hearers (contrary to the common method then in vogue) with what they could not understand, some of them took occasion to entertain very contemptible thoughts of his learning ... So that one of his Oxford friends, as he traveled through Childrey, inquiring for his diversion of some of the people, Who was their minister, and how they liked him? received this answer: "Our parson is one Mr. Pococke, a plain honest man. But Master," said they, "he is no Latiner."

Don't get me wrong—I'm not comparing anyone to a peasant. But neither am I prepared to believe that the decline of American literacy has affected everyone but fans of Serious Fiction. When reviewers and prize jurors tout a repetitive style as "the last word in gnomic control," or a jumble of unsustained metaphor as "lyrical" writing, it is obvious that they, too, are having difficulty understanding what they read. Would Mr. Cardan be puzzled to find them in the thrall of writers who are deliberately obscure, or who chant in strange cadences? I doubt it. And what could be more natural than that the same elite should scorn unaffected English as "workmanlike prose"—an idiom incompatible with real literature? Stephen King's a plain, honest man, just the author to read on the subway. But Master, he is no Latiner.

[Edward]

Vinteuil,

not sure if you're still here, but in case you're coming back, this bit of what i think doesn't require any delineation between science and art.

"Why should the arts "advance"?"

Because for "fine art" (as opposed to folk art), advancement is its essence.

Art has two components we can use here: what is being expressed, and how it's being expressed.

What is being expressed need not advance, per se, because a love story can be as beautiful to us as it was to the ancient Greeks. (Although advancement in what is being expressed can go hand in hand with the other.) And we can enjoy an ancient story as much as a contemporary one.

How that love story is expressed though, needs to advance for any new love story writer's contribution to be "art." And it's not simply a matter of a new location or other descriptive details (a love story on Pluto won't necessarily be art, just because it's a new location). Otherwise, any idiot who can search and replace could create art.

In this context: Art begins where imitation ends (hence "progress or advancement" is the distinguishing factor).

Everything else is craft.

And I LOVE craft, so this is not a slight, but "Art" is the invention...not the execution or imitation of a previous invention.

[Vinteuil]

Edward: OK, so “progress” or “advancement,” in form of expression, if not necessarily in expressed content, is of the “essence” of “art.” That would include Schoenberg and Picasso and Joyce, while relegating many centuries of Indian music, Chinese Painting, African sculpture, etc. to the realm of mere “craft.” That’s contentious, to say the least, but at least I know where you’re coming from.

The question is, why should anyone give a damn about “art,” so construed?

Advances in – say – genetics regularly lead to longer and more comfortable lives for all concerned. But why should we be glad to see yarn-spinners like Dickens give way to “artists” like…well, you can fill in the blank as you please…

Why should we welcome or encourage *any* sort of artistic “progress?”

It’s a mystery to me.

[Edward]

You're confusing me Vinteuil. I thought you agreed that Dickens was an artist.

Just because they're not enshrined in museums in the same way European art is, doesn't mean there have not been advances in Indian music, Chinese Painting, and African sculpture. In fact, you'll find representatives from all those places in the now more global world of fine art.

Why should anyone care? That's a good question. But it's not art construed as essentially progressive I'm saying that about. I'd say there's no reason anyone should care about any form of art (fine art or craft). They either do or they don't.

Art is very parallel to sports in this regard. You don't need to know the players names and stats to enjoy a game. You don't need to understand the rules or strategies. You don't have to follow the history or evolution of the game either.

Some people enjoy that level of involvment (knowing all the details, who's been traded to where, what a new regulation means with regards to past records). Others just want to see a ball being bandied about.

Is any of that really important? No.

Does its lack of importance make it any less interesting to people? No again.

There's a dialog in fine art, literature, etc., just like there is in sports. And like the committee that decides who gets enshrined in the Football Hall of Fame, there are art world types who decide what gets enshrined in the museums of the world. The Hall of Fame committee looks at all kinds of stats in deciding who to admit.

The dialog in fine art includes the awareness that advancments are worthy of certain points, if you will, in deciding what art is worthy of a museum. That doesn't mean work that's dirivative or imitative can't get in the museum, but it's likely the museum already has a more original piece and prefers it for its historical significance.

I, obviously, could go on and on, but your original question was why should art advance.

The answer to that seems to me to be, because it must to keep "Artists" interested in it..

I have an artist in my gallery who can paint anything he wants. He can do your portrait in minutes and it will be both exact and look like one of his portraits (his style is unique).

A few years ago he had a block. How could he stay challenged, when it all came so easily to him?

He began to explore other painters processes. Not to copy them, but to see if he could find new challenges. To see if he could advance his own process through learning from them. He's turned this exploration into a highly successful new project that's remade his career and is shaking up the way other people look at artists' processes.

This is microscopic in terms of world art history, but it illustrates that artists need challenges to remain interested in their work. Otherwise they're just producing work like any other assemblyline.

So the essence of fine art is to advance, not because there's something innately valuable about "progress" but because there's something innately motivational about it. Exploration is the foundation of expression in all disciplines, which is where art and science overlap: a hungry mind, wanting to push the current status of a discipline, more or less because that exploration keeps them engaged in their "craft."