Complex Numbers

Literary Merit

Lorien , commenting on us finding something else to obsess upon now that the last HP book is out: "Preferably something with literary merit."

While I agree with the sentiment to some extent - as good as Rowling is at capturing and engaging the reader, she's not the world's greatest writer (Richest, maybe, but the two are not synonyms) - I have issues with literary writing. Now, I'm not sure exactly how Lorien meant it, but to me,"literary merit" is code for "a dense, impenetrable force field of twisted allegory, obscure allusions, and other ways an author can demonstrate how clever she is without resorting to plot or characterization"

Ann Beattie is a great example of this. So is pretty much anything in The New Yorker (at least, it used to be that way - I haven't even tried to read that in a while). When I was younger and I picked up mags like that, and tried to read the stories, I found them dense, impenetrable and impossible to understand. I figured, "I'm a smart guy. One day, perhaps after college has warped my mind to a sufficient degree, I'll understand and appreciate the rarefied subtleties of literary fiction."

Well, here it is a quarter-century later. I'm still a smart guy, and I still find that sort of thing dense, impenetrable and impossible to understand. Granted, I took very few liberal arts courses in college - being an engineer and all - but I don't think I'm ignorant about writing.

As with a lot of modern art - an exhibit showing an overflowing trash can and a canvas painted red with a purple stripe down the middle come to mind - a lot of it is, as I mentioned above, artists (painters, sculptors, writers, whatever) having stopped trying to be accessible to ordinary people and merely trying to outdo each other using rules created BY the field FOR the field.

I shouldn't need a degree in art history to appreciate fine art. I shouldn't need a degree in literature to appreciate reading. And writers (I'll leave artists alone from now on, because this is writing.com and not deviantart.com) need to decide whether they're writing for other writers - or for general consumption.

If you're writing for other writers, hey, that's great. Don't expect to become rich, but then, that would be "selling out," wouldn't it? If you're writing for the general population, of course, don't expect to get rich doing that, either. I don't. I expect to get rich (well, at least earn enough to retire) doing engineering. You've as good a chance at winning the lottery, the only difference being that with writing there is some element of skill involved.

If you can string a sentence together, turn a few phrases, stand some clichés on their heads, create interesting characters, put them in interesting situations, and bribe a few publishers, you can get readers. Who cares if it's a rehashed plot? At least it's a plot. The romance industry makes a living cloning plots - or at least I've heard they do.

So... essence of rant: the same people who would rather find out what's going on in Paris Hilton than in Paris aren't going to read "literary" writings. They're going to read Stephen King and Patricia Cornwell - and J.K. Rowling, if they read at all. I'm not writing to impress professors and black-wearing, clove-smoking elitists*; I'm writing to (try to) impress guys in Ford pickup trucks and single mothers.

Not ragging on you, Lorien - I agree with you to a point. It just ain't going to happen.

*Incidentally, I wear black and I used to smoke cloves.