Do You Love Literature?

Hmm. I tend to agree. I think one can be personally passionate without belittling others, though.

Maybe. But if you say you dislike a writer someone else likes, that is not personally belittling them. If we can't express critical judgements we might as well give up on A2K.

There can certainly be personal belittlement there.

You: I really like Jack Kerouac.

Me: Jack Kerouac is a ridiculous hack, who is beloved only by pimply adolescents or those who are in a stage of arrested development.

If I made my statement in a vaccuum, whatever. But immediately after yours, it's a statement about what kind of person you must be since you like Kerouac. (I have no idea whether you do or not, btw.)

What's wrong with:

"Me, I've never really cared for Kerouac, barring a period in my late teens. I DO find Salman Rushdie absolutely amazing, and find that the stream-of-consciousness aspects I liked about Kerouac are used to great effect..."

The problem is not in preferences referring to literature. After the response in the way that Sozobe has demonstrated as an example, everyone forgets about Kerouac and starts discussing personality of the opponent. Culture of discussion on the A2K has improved significantly, if compared to Abuzz, but there still is possibility for further improvement.

Exactly.

um lets see if i got this straight: Kerouac was a drug infested slime ball that thought ramdom pounding of typewriter keys consitituted literature'
Rushdie is just another towel head reactionary trying to garner a bit of andy warhol 5 minute fame by being crucified by the Islamic link to spiritual gurury.
i guess i will have to the cliff notes version to let me know what i think. i read a book once but i started at the end so i would not be surprized at the beginning.

Well, while all the above refers to the particular authors, and not to their fans on the A2K, this may be considered a legitimate, though, somewhat harsh, criticizm.

oh yeah, i forgot to mention sozobe who quite obviously wouldn't know real literature if it bit her on the nose.

<rubs nose>

Hey, what was that?

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - )

That Kurt eh the things he says !

The mind is everything,' wrote Proust. No doubt true, when you're dead from the neck down. Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do. Most writers are naturally sycophants. Born in the fetal position, they never learn to stand erect. Henry James: our finest lady novelist. Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life. Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a
lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco. What are called inspirational books, like Gibran's _The Prophet_ or Bach's _Seagull_, seem to have been strained through a bowl of fish-eye tapioca. The best American writers have come from the hinterlands--Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. most of them never even went to college. When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from
the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.

Everyone knows.

I encountered the writings of Paul Auster and thought them literate.

My best friend Mitch said 'I read one of his books and the guy couldn't emerge from an oily paper bag victorious.'

I managed to slip Dr. Vertigo his way. A year later, forgetting who started this, he suggests I read Auster.

Could it be the moment, the mind, then need?

Further: The best writers are, I think, telling us something we need to hear. Some medicine tastes bad, we spit it out. But even the residue we swallow helps the healing. Vonnegut an example.

A century later, their work becomes part of the profile of their age. They were right. We weren't ready.

Kerouac is important because he was telling us about the American psyche set adrift in the rootless fifties. Becomes a cliche; was always truth.

Hmmmm - I have read a few books that made me spit green bile - but i have forgotten their names.

Would I have been right to spit the bile on their readers?

Spit not on the poor innocent readers, dear dlowan. Their options are few. If you think a writer is getting away with gross misrepresentation of literacy or interestingness (?) move along. It's like bad music... you don't have to listen and dance. Something for everyone, I say...

For the record: the Kerouac reference came from me quickly running through a list of possible authors I could insult for illustrative purposes, and after a few dozen runs "no, not him, not her either, I like him"s, thought eh, what the heck, Kerouac.

I don't have anything in particular against him.

Rather than running hot and cold, I seem to run hot and lukewarm when it comes to books. There are authors I ADORE, and authors I don't care for much. There are occasional authors I can't stand, but they tend to be along the lines of "Dr." John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.)

Hiya H...squeedle... beedlesquoink!

I think dlowan's question had to do with the question that started this thread, and is quite pertinent.

Well, Beedle me darlin' - our words run right into the debate about whether literature can affect reality, or not.

If it can, we are right, it seems to me, to be passionate in its condemnation - as long as we can back this up with reasonable argument - if it cannot - then pass by the street accident, as you say....

Gratuitous insult and ranting, however, seems to me to have no place in literary discussion...

I find myself in agreement with sozobe, steissd, dlowan and beedle. To me this boils down to the simple idea that each of us is an individual. Anyone who thinks or expects that everyone else's taste in literature ought to agree with his own is simply asking way too much.

Personally, I've enjoyed Jane Austin, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy right along with Hemingway, Faulkner, and Ring Lardner, and don't see why I shouldn't.

I admire people who can tell a great story, and I'm not too fussy about how they do it, as long as I can see where they are going. There are plenty of authors I don't read, either because I don't like them or because time won't allow, but I guess others like them or they wouldn't be in print.

There's not much point in being a literary bully.

Also, when someone criticizes a writer, I'd like to hear at least one specific thing that they don't like. Statements like "He's a literary slob," or "She does not deserve to be called an author," really don't tell us much.