Do You Love Literature?

Maybe I'm obtuse, but I fail to see why disagreeing with someone's literary taste should be taken as an attack on their personality. If a person posts on A2K that John Grisham is a greater novelist than Tolstoy and I point out that Tolstoy was a supreme genius while King is nothing but a hack, is this really a personal attack? I think not.

I meant Grisham, not King!

Larry, I just went back and read the last couple of pages of the Graham Green thread. IMO, your attack on Pynchon, taken within the context of what was being said, was also an attack on D'art as a person. At a minimum it amounted to a a disdainful opinion that he was a man of pedestrian taste.

The manner in which you spoke was more nouveau Abuzz than A2K.

Beedlesquoink

Nice to see ya around. I read Mr Vertigo in a day or two. It was a good book (though toward the end it petered out IMO).

Sorry, Hazlitt, I just don't see it. I started off my critique of Pynchon by saying that THE CRYING OF LOT 49 was "amusing", so how negative can my comments have been? If we are are not allowed to dispute the merits of what another person posts, then how are we to have substantive discussions of ANY topic?

I await suggestions.

Ever heard of damning with faint praise?

I gave a suggestion in my first post -- use discretion, steer to more productive lines of discussion.

I guess it comes down to what you want from discussions. Failing to take into account how your words may be perceived, quickly lashing out with generalized insults -- that doesn't seem like a recipe for thoughtful discussion to me. If you are just looking to let out a bit of aggression, well, have at it, but don't expect many people to have any desire to engage you.

"Generalized insults" to WHO? If I say Grisham sucks, am I criticizing Grisham or the person who thinks Grisham is better than Tolstoy? Get real, Sozobe!

This PC attititude of let's-not-offend-anyone belongs in a ladies sewing circle.

Larry, darlin', do you want feedback or do you want someone to tell you "You're absolutely right. They're fools."?

If it's the former, how about if we have a little sample discussion, with feedback. I don't believe, for example, that anyone is actually claiming that Grisham can write circles around Tolstoy. So those kinds of examples are not very useful.

You are all having a lot of fun taking a dump on my head. Did it ever occur to you all that YOU are being MORE negative now than I was in my original offending post because you are doing it with malice aforethought? What a bunch of hypocrites you are. You attack me under the guise of constructively criticizing me, when in fact what you are doing is just tearing me down. Well, guess what--it doesn't work. I am here and I am staying here.

um anyone have any thoughts re Parr Lagerqvist's "The Dwarf"? certainly on my top 5 list.

Larry, if you dislike stories of Stephen King, and express your opinion, it is not a personal attack. But if you hint that everyone that likes is a moron (this is just an example, I did not mean that you said such things), then this may be perceived as the one. The same refers to Tolstoy, Shakespeare, John Grisham and any other authors. Their writings may be criticized, but not tastes of the people that like or dislike them.

Well, Larry, you asked the question - we are attempting to give you our answers!

Though I confess I can be very abrasive myself in such matters...

Larry, I read the "debate" that is going on in the other thread and I missed where you were being offensive. It seemed to me you were weighing in on your opinion of a variety of writers you have read. Geez, I sort of miss the kicking and screaming that went on in Abuzz- Or rather, the call for healthy diagreements. People seem a bit too polite in Able2Know, that's why I tend to forget to log in...

Gala -- have you checked out the politics category lately? Rife with disagreement -- healthy or no.

I really am very sympathetic to the idea of being passionate about literature. I am, too. The John Gray thing came up because I was a member of a book group from which I expected big things -- discussion of modern fiction in literary terms. Instead we read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", which my husband hated vicariously because I kept stopping every few paragraphs and yelling, "This is totally WRONG! And what's not WRONG is lifted wholesale from Deborah Tannen, MINUS credit, of course. This guy is an IDIOT!" Then when we got together, everyone was talking about how great it was, blah blah blah, and I sat there jiggling my foot and biting my tongue.

But here's what I did. (I don't recall hating a book as much as that one before or since -- usually if it has the potential to unleash that kind of bile, I don't finish it or get wind of it ahead of time and don't bother with it at all.) I listened. I saw that people liked it. I took ahold of the points I agreed with. I had my copy of Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand" with me, and offered to lend it out. I read passages from Tannen. People listened to me back, were interested in what I had to say, and ended up saying "Jeez, that Gray fella's an idiot..."

If I had opened with "Gray's an idiot", after everyone had said how much they loved him, it would have been needlessly confrontational. A thoughtful discussion about gender roles, communication et al wouldn't have followed. And I got to say what I thought -- I wasn't lying, I wasn't misrepresenting -- I was just using a little bit of tact.

When I talk about generalized insults, I don't necessarily mean insulting the person -- I mean "he's a hack" or "he sucks" rather than the SPECIFICS. Specifics can be discussed; generalized insults don't further discussion.

Anyway, as dlowan said, I thought you were looking for suggestions. If not, that's cool.

Thanks for the common sense and the support, Gala. OF COURSE I was not being offensive. Some of the people on A2K would have lasted five minutes in the seminar rooms at Yale and Columbia where I was trained as a historian--the slightest contradiction seems to them to be a personal attack. Get over it, guys, it's called INTELLECTUAL DISCOURSE!!!!

Do you mean that everybody speaks simultaneously, and no one listens to another, Larry? And vocabulary is the most distant from the diplomatic one?

Put it this way, Larry -- are you being too blunt for grad student sparring? Probably not. Are A2K'ers being unreasonably sensitive? Probably not.

Reconcile those however you wish.

larry, I am familiar with your perspective. People who are not as rigorously trained as you have been will tend to take offense at your challenging the writing or ideas of authors who are deemed gods among their field. Your opinions and instinct about a writer are your own, and thankfully you have expressed them. I believe it would be silly to hold back on your incisive observations about Pynchon for the sake of not offending anyone.

well, sozobe, you are more patient then I would ever be. I have avoided any book club discussions for the sole reason you have explained. I don't want to have to be in a position to hold back on my instinct to critisize the Deepak Chopra's or the John Grays of the world. i want to talk about books, not self-help publications that keep it's authors rolling in dough and a population of people who think they are some kind of Kings. They are a bunch of phonies to me.

On the other hand, I view Dante's journey in The Divine Comedy as the ultimate kind of self-help.

pardon my bad spelling...

Gala, don't get me started on Deepak Chopra...

Let me say unequivocally though that I have nothing against challenging the writing or ideas of ANY author. A chorus of "yes, he's great"s is boring. I simply believe that it can be done civilly.