The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: Sdragon1984Do you plan on submitting it to SJ Games?

GURPS? Ick. What I'd really like to see is RIFTS done in Mutants and Masterminds' system.

I would contend that if something is not entertaining, it's not literary.  If it's not written in such a way that the reader enjoys reading it, it's not literary.  If it's a pain, it's just not literary.  Being a pain does not make something literary, contrary to popular belief.

Of course, there are books that are brilliant but are also a pain to read.  These can be literary, but they would be better if they weren't such a pain.

Good writing should be accessible to the reader.  When it's not, there are issues.

That's what I think, Jharviss.  I just don't like it when people imply that I should like something specific, regardless of my own feelings about it.

Literary merit, as far as I am familiar with the term, means simply that a book has lasting aesthetic value.  Aesthetic, in this case, means having the quality of art; not pornographic or otherwise gratuitous, and not purely functional (e.g. a car manual).

Whether a single person likes a book or not is irrelevant to whether the book has literary value.  There are plenty of artists whose work I do not enjoy, but that doesn't mean they aren't artists or that their work isn't art.  It just means that I don't like them, and nothing more.  Similarly, the ease of reading a book is irrelevant.  Dune is hard to read, but it's also my favorite book of fiction, with no exceptions.  I've never read Harry Potter (as I said before, I don't read much in the way of "pure" or high fantasy, as opposed to sci fi), but I've heard it's quite easy to get into, which also doesn't prevent it from having literary merit.

As for school assignments, it should be apparent that books you are forced to read on a schedule are harder to appreciate than those you take up on your own time.  I thought Beowulf was rather tedious when I had to read it; I find myself appreciating it more now that I'm out of college and capable of reading the book on my own terms.

To take the example of Moby Dick, I read it a long time ago and didn't think much of it.  My housemate in my last two years of college was an English major who wrote a 90 page thesis on Cosmopolitanism in Moby Dick.  He not only enjoyed the work, but found it full of interesting minutiae to study and write about.  After 10 months and 90 pages, however, even he started to loathe it - it's not just the bored high school students who can get a book ruined for them by a class assignment.  You're doing a disservice to yourself if you say a book "sucks" just from the experience of trudging through it in some second-year English class.

I don't know what qualifies as "snobbery" but I'm afraid I don't buy the reaction against it - to me looking down on literary criticism or other such "snobbery" smacks of anti-intellectualism for it's own sake.  There are surely snobs of literature just as there are literary troglodytes, but that's no different than all the other arts and sciences.  Some people can appreciate deeper meanings in art than others, and some can appreciate deeper meanings in rhetoric, or writing, or design, or flavor.  What of it?

Quote from: Holy Carp!Literary merit, as far as I am familiar with the term, means simply that a book has lasting aesthetic value.  Aesthetic, in this case, means having the quality of art; not pornographic or otherwise gratuitous, and not purely functional (e.g. a car manual).

Whether a single person likes a book or not is irrelevant to whether the book has literary value.  There are plenty of artists whose work I do not enjoy, but that doesn't mean they aren't artists or that their work isn't art.  It just means that I don't like them, and nothing more.  Similarly, the ease of reading a book is irrelevant.  Dune is hard to read, but it's also my favorite book of fiction, with no exceptions.  I've never read Harry Potter (as I said before, I don't read much in the way of "pure" or high fantasy, as opposed to sci fi), but I've heard it's quite easy to get into, which also doesn't prevent it from having literary merit.[/quote]As for school assignments, it should be apparent that books you are forced to read on a schedule are harder to appreciate than those you take up on your own time.  I thought Beowulf was rather tedious when I had to read it; I find myself appreciating it more now that I'm out of college and capable of reading the book on my own terms.[/quote]To take the example of Moby Dick, I read it a long time ago and didn't think much of it.  My housemate in my last two years of college was an English major who wrote a 90 page thesis on Cosmopolitanism in Moby Dick.  He not only enjoyed the work, but found it full of interesting minutiae to study and write about.  After 10 months and 90 pages, however, even he started to loathe it - it's not just the bored high school students who can get a book ruined for them by a class assignment.  You're doing a disservice to yourself if you say a book "sucks" just from the experience of trudging through it in some second-year English class.[/quote]I don't know what qualifies as "snobbery" but I'm afraid I don't buy the reaction against it - to me looking down on literary criticism or other such "snobbery" smacks of anti-intellectualism for it's own sake.  There are surely snobs of literature just as there are literary troglodytes, but that's no different than all the other arts and sciences.  Some people can appreciate deeper meanings in art than others, and some can appreciate deeper meanings in rhetoric, or writing, or design, or flavor.  What of it?
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Snobbery is snobbery. It's calling something merit that isn't merit. It's attributing the aesthetic value of a thing, as you put it, to something that isn't aesthetic. Certainly, Lovecraft's stories can be said to be about despair or what have you. But it can not be said that Lovecraft's stories constitute good horror on the basis of that "tiny speck alone in the universe" concept. The literary merit of Lovecraft's stories rests in his implementation of a certain set of techniques to evoke a certain aesthetic.

So Lovecraft had a knack for scary things; the transhuman element that made Innsmouth tick, the "something is wrong" feeling throughout the whole of the Whisperer in Darkness and the oh-so-wrong conclusion thereof, etc. Likewise, Asimov's merit wasn't in his attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct the way people think using machines as a metaphor (even if that's something his stories do). Asimov's merit is in his no-frills writing style and his story structure's resemblance to a more investigative style of story. Or something. Hell, the Scarlet Letter isn't a good read because of its commentary on morality, prominent though that commentary may be in the book. The Scarlet Letter is good because everything is anthropomorphicized(is that a word? did I spell it right) and everything is described with it's own sort of malicious intent.

Something like that. It's point-missing. Point is, any dumb shmuck can write a story that's "about despair" or "about sentience" or "about morality." While in school you're taught to look for the central point of a book, it isn't the core ethos or any of that rot that makes the book a good read.

There are other kinds of snobbery too, but that's a big chunk of what I was referring too.

A literary snob is not somebody who sees merit where there is none; a literary snob is somebody who sees others as inferior because they do not or cannot see what they see in literature.  That's what it means to be a snob: you think you are better than person X because you possess Y.  You could very well be a literary snob and only like works of real literary value.  What would make you a snob is if you thought people who didn't understand that value were inferior to you.  A person who ascribes literary merit to something worthless isn't a snob, they're just wrong.  Being wrong, especially about something as difficult to agree on as literary merit, is not a terrible thing.

I don't like snobbery.  Nobody should.  I perceive, however, that "anti-snob" comments are often directed against higher literary criticism generally, or "pretentious" books, or english teachers/students in general, and not just against people who actively look down on others.  The way you describe snobbery would seem to indict everyone who disagrees with you with regards to literary merit as either stupid or a hypocrite.  I think people should be able to have different sets of aesthetics, even simpler or more complex ones, without being branded as elitists.

By the way, I didn't mean to imply that you personally were in second-year English; I was drawing an example from my own experience in my second year of high school English, which was atrocious.  I hear a lot of people complain about books they were forced to read; if you picked it up yourself and still didn't like it, well, at least you gave it a chance.

Quote from: Holy Carp!A literary snob is not somebody who sees merit where there is none; a literary snob is somebody who sees others as inferior because they do not or cannot see what they see in literature.  That's what it means to be a snob: you think you are better than person X because you possess Y.  You could very well be a literary snob and only like works of real literary value.  What makes you a snob is that you think people who don't understand that value are inferior to you.  A person who ascribes literary merit to something worthless isn't a snob, they're just wrong.  Being wrong, especially about something as difficult to agree on as literary merit, is not a terrible thing.

I don't like snobbery.  Nobody should.  I perceive, however, that "anti-snob" comments are often directed against higher literary criticism generally, or "pretentious" books, or english teachers/students in general, and not just against people who actively look down on others.  The way you describe snobbery would seem to indict everyone who disagrees with you with regards to literary merit as either stupid or a hypocrite.  I think people should be able to have different sets of aesthetics, even simpler or more complex ones, without being branded as elitists.[/quote]By the way, I didn't mean to imply that you personally were in second-year English; I was drawing an example from my own experience in my second year of high school English, which was atrocious.  I hear a lot of people complain about books they were forced to read; if you picked it up yourself and still didn't like it, well, at least you gave it a chance.
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I figured. But this is the internet. One can't assume much.

Me personally, I enjoyed English greatly most of the time. And I realize the purpose behind the point-missing itself... in that the *assignment* is usually to analyze the central point of a work, whereas if one is expected to learn to write, the central point has little to do with the merits of *your* original work. And in the "show don't tell" example, the lesson that day was about the use of descriptive language... so when a student piped up with "show don't tell" it was easier to include it as part of the lesson than spend limited class time contradicting it. Although I still feel the glorification of the description uber-alles technique is a bit much...  just the Asimov fan in me grumbling really.

What I object to is the idea that there are traits which objectively determine the value of a particular form of artistic expression.  The idea that the things that put some work of fiction in the "good" or "merit-worthy" category are anything other than purely subjective.

Quote from: JharvissI would contend that if something is not entertaining, it's not literary.  If it's not written in such a way that the reader enjoys reading it, it's not literary.  If it's a pain, it's just not literary.  Being a pain does not make something literary, contrary to popular belief.

Of course, there are books that are brilliant but are also a pain to read.  These can be literary, but they would be better if they weren't such a pain.

Good writing should be accessible to the reader.  When it's not, there are issues.

I'd have to disagree with all but the second paragraph, using my personal experience with LotR as an example. I have never been able to get past the Prancing Pony bit, because I've always found Fellowship to read too painfully slow. I've heard lots of comments from people who have love LotR that agree, the beginning is painfully slow. Does this mean Tolkien's well-loved trilogy isn't "literary"? I, personally, don't think so. I think it's still a good work of art, I just don't think it's as accessible as, say, the Harry Potter series.

I'm not saying it's not literary.  Rather, I should say that it not being well-written has very little to do with it being good literature, it's just not well written.  When the writing style is keeping people from reading the story, I would say that that is a major fault in the writing.  English is used to communicate, and it's not effective communication if the person reading it quickly decides its not worth it.

And you can't just disagree with the second paragraph.  Those three paragraphs were all explaining the same point.  It's either void or isn't, methinks.

Yep yep.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawWhat I object to is the idea that there are traits which objectively determine the value of a particular form of artistic expression.  The idea that the things that put some work of fiction in the "good" or "merit-worthy" category are anything other than purely subjective.

Does anybody actually think this?  I've never met anybody, let alone any students or professors of English, who thought that there were objective traits that determine the value of art.

Quote from: Holy Carp!Does anybody actually think this?  I've never met anybody, let alone any students or professors of English, who thought that there were objective traits that determine the value of art.

Hey, man... we're discussing literature specifically here. You tell me that wishy-washy stuff about there being no objective traits that define the value of art... well, them's fighting words.

Seriously, though, there is a huge difference between an Escher and a scribble in brown crayon on a piece of newspaper. Both *are* art, because calling something art says nothing of the quality of the piece, but only one is good, with good being defined (in my opinion) by the degree of technical skill, effort, etc. that went in.

To say otherwise overvalues work produced by toddlers, undervalues work produced by renaissance painters, and might be found mildly insulting to critics teachers and students of art... all of whom seek to make their wage on their knowledge of exactly what constitutes good art.

It's one thing to say that diametrically opposed techniques are still valid. Tolkien has the uber-descriptive thing down, while Asimov takes the uber-concise route. And while I prefer Asimov, I can appreciate that both are good writers who produce good work. But tell me that anyone goes online and reads about the hypercube and calls it good and I'll happily call you a liar. Likewise, pop art (some of it anyway), impressionism, expressionism, photorealism (again, some of it), abstract, surreal, and about forty other kinds of painting and drawing are all good. But if I write someone else's name in sharpie on a used popcorn bag? The only reason anyone's going to buy that is on pretense or hype, not on artistic merit.

All art is not equal.

QuoteSeriously, though, there is a huge difference between an Escher and a scribble in brown crayon on a piece of newspaper. Both *are* art, because calling something art says nothing of the quality of the piece, but only one is good, with good being defined (in my opinion) by the degree of technical skill, effort, etc. that went in.

objective[/i] trait makes the Escher art and the crayon not art?

Quote from: Holy Carp!

QuoteSeriously, though, there is a huge difference between an Escher and a scribble in brown crayon on a piece of newspaper. Both *are* art, because calling something art says nothing of the quality of the piece, but only one is good, with good being defined (in my opinion) by the degree of technical skill, effort, etc. that went in.

objective[/i] trait makes the Escher art and the crayon not art?

Ah, I explicitly said they're both art. However, one is good, on the basis of the greater degree of technical skill, time, effort, etc. put into it (not to mention its being more visually impressive, which is not totally subjective, though I wouldn't know enough to give you an all-encompassing set of rules as to why).

Again, you're confusing art with good. All art isn't good and everything good isn't necessarily art.

As for what makes art good... I've seen stuff on psychological studies on what provokes a response in the brain, as well as mathematical studies on compositional techniques on what does and doesn't work. For example, Pollock isn't just paint spatters. Beyond the difference of technique (continual drips and paints thick enough that the paintings were... "hairy" I guess is the word I'm looking for) his work also produced a set of fractal patterns, and these patterns increased in complexity in certain ways as his career progressed.

Anyway, I'm not debating that a scribble in crayon isn't art. It is. But is it on par with a Rodin? As someone who has scribbled in crayon, I say no.

I misread you with regard to the art/good distinction.

I agree with Silvercat; the things that make art are subjective.  I just don't think that anybody holds the opposite opinion, so I'm baffled as to how somebody could take offense to it.  One might as well object to something extant and worthwhile like poor copy editing or trickle-down economics.

Effort and time do not necessarily correlate with artistic or literary merit.  More importantly, however, they - just like technical acumen - are attributes of the craftsman, not the object.  When I view two paintings in a museum, I have no idea which one required more technical skill.  When I decide which one is good, it is through my subjective aesthetic perception alone that I come to that decision.  Heck, there are things in nature that I think have "lasting aesthetic value," and thus art, and haven't been produced by any craftsman (let's leave God out of this for now).