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Good Books?
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Are you kidding me? Animal Farm was terrible. If I wanted to learn something about the Russian Revolution I'd read about Leon Trotsky or Josef Stalin. Not only was the learning curve not there, but all of the characters were poorly represented.
Except for Napoleon(stalin), that pig was a bad mofo.
That confirms you didn't read it.
I like Michael Crichtons' books. Action throughout with very interesting topics.
the last dragon ... really great not sure of the title tough...its in spanish so it may be different is about this girl that runs from being a servant with a dragon and an egg(dragon) and that is the last dragon egg...
also ANY of the troyan horse i loved those and i also liked narnia...the movies were bad compared to the books...
also ANY of the troyan horse i loved those and i also liked narnia...the movies were bad compared to the books...
More like a series that started off great, but petered out eventually. The last book wasn't a good read at all. It was pretty boring, and couldn't hold the my interest like the previous ones could. The fifth and fourth were slightly lacking as well, but they were still alright. The first three were great though.
The movie was pathetic, whether you've read the books or not. It seemed like it was geared towards ten year olds. The whole atmosphere, and the way the characters were depicted just refused to appeal to me, and everyone I watched it with.
Wow, that sounds like a complete ripoff of The Inheritance Cycle, which is basically Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings, so what you're enjoying is a ripoff of a ripoff... Try reading LOTR sometime, or even The Inheritance Cycle. Even though it is a ripoff, I've enjoyed the basic plot of The Inheritance Cycle so far, and I hope they'll conclude it in the next book instead of dragging it out for another, which I think Paolini will probably do...
Also, I saw some post about the Animorphs series a few pages back, and I just wanted to say that it was a series I really enjoyed back in the day. The series was a lot deeper than others of its kind that I came across, and it was a lot more than just "FUCK YEAH KIDS TURNING INTO ANIMALS!".
Deschain, you could probably find e-books if you wanted, but I guess that's not what you're looking for if you want to have the series for your kids someday lol.
Yo Mr Indigo, sorry to drag this up again now, but some of the things you said got me thinking, or maybe forced me to finally get down on paper some things I’ve been thinking about recently. Anyway, prepare for some major (BAN ME PLEASE)ry and please just laugh at me if I’m being ridiculous.
First of all, just to deal with the Shakespeare thing: you talked about “literary academia,” and then said you weren’t familiar with how Shakespeare is taught in universities. Presumably you don’t study English, then? I’m a little confused as to where your experience with literary academia is coming from. Are you talking about critics and scholars you’ve read? I can’t think of a single Shakespeare scholar who would defend everything he wrote. I’ve never heard anybody say that everything he produced was “solid gold”. There are about a dozen plays that are very widely acknowledged to be second-rate: Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, Pericles (though I’d bet this would have been a masterpiece had it survived to us intact) and a bunch of early ones get slagged off by almost everybody. They all have their merits, because Shakespeare is, after all, a genius, but they are by no means perfect.
As for his high-school preeminence, well, first of all high-school sucks and is gay. But I think this is one thing they get vaguely right. They manage to get it right in the worst way possible, but hey. The fact is that Shakespeare is the most important poet that ever worked in the English language (a language which he, in no small part, has invented through his works). He has influenced every single English writer working after him. I completely agree that it’s a mistake to sacrifice the richness of English poetry to the altar of one man - kids come out of high school (over here in the antipodes) not knowing Chaucer or Spenser or Milton or Keats, because we think they ought instead to spend nine months struggling through Othello with a teacher who hasn’t read more than ten Shakespeare plays and hasn’t understood one (I understand that in the United States teachers are subject to much higher standards of qualification than they are here). But the problem is a weak curriculum and bad teaching, not Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare, like Homer, is important enough that he should be studied in depth by all students. You simply cannot fully understand the modern world without a knowledge of his works.
(And uh here’s a really embarrassingly long post, based only partially on the argument we were having? You just touched on something that’s kind of close to my heart. I will completely understand if you don’t read it.)
You said “literature is inherently subjective”. I, uh, I don’t think it is. First of all because that statement itself is so meaningless that it’s open to a dozen interpretations. Secondly because almost all aspects of literature can be objectively examined and interpreted, provided one has a high enough degree of skill and knowledge.
My own degree of skill and knowledge is not particularly high, so I’m going to demonstrate with a very simple analysis of some metaphors. I want to show you that while how much you enjoy a text may be “subjective,” the quality of it - the skill with which it was composed - is not. That can be examined and judged.
Take a metaphor like Zhuangzi’s famous anecdote. It runs something like this:
I dreamt I was a butterfly, and when I awoke, I wasn’t sure if I was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly, dreaming he was a man.
Imagine he had dreamt he was a pig. Instantly the metaphor loses all its effectiveness. It is conveying exactly the same idea, it is fulfilling its function as a concept, but it doesn’t work anymore. “Butterfly” has a beautiful delicacy, a transience which fits perfectly with the delicate and transient mental state described. Zhuangzi has picked the perfect word, and created for his purpose, I think, a perfect metaphor.
Now take a mediocre metaphor - the new Dan Brown book has the following: “cruised the deep waters of the C.I.A. like a leviathan who surfaced only to devour its prey.”
There are many problems with this. First of all the awkwardness of its construction, which is apparent to anyone who reads it aloud. Leviathan (which is, as far as we know, supposed to be a proper noun) calls up no image at all, because it has been millennia since anybody has known whether Leviathan is a whale or a crocodile or something else. And its tone is unnecessarily biblical and grandiose - if Brown was content to use “shark” or something less pretentious, we would have a clear idea of something dangerous and predatory, which is what he’s trying to convey. “Leviathan” jerks us out of the mood Brown wants us to be in, because he wants to sound literary.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. is itself “the deep waters,” or whether the leviathan inhabits only a certain quarter of the C.I.A., which is here referred to as “the deep waters”. There is disharmony between the quiet, smooth verb to “cruise” and the violent “devour,” giving us a mixed mental image of the leviathan’s behaviour (this could maybe work if Brown spaced the two verbs out more, and made the contrast the point of the metaphor). It switches from true metaphor to simile a little way in, for no reason. It also kind of rhymes, which is weird and jarring?
But in the end, it’s not a bad metaphor. It’s labored and tedious, but it gets the job done and it’s self-consistent. Having read it, we have picked up on Brown’s general idea.
This, on the other hand, is a bad metaphor: Jerry Izenberg in the New Jersey Star Ledger wrote: “He was marooned in the jaws of a human minefield, and with every step the noose grew tighter.”
This is ludicrous. First of all the man is marooned, then suddenly we find him “in the jaws” of something that doesn’t have jaws; a “human minefield”. Finally we are treated to another, very disparate image of him apparently walking away from a noose so that it grows tighter around his neck. This metaphor has no unity whatsoever. It is verbal fluff, it throws in a few recognizable clichés and assumes that from them we, reading with one eye on the television, will get a sense of “he was in difficulty”.
There is nothing at all subjective about the quality of these metaphors. We can take each of them apart, say where they go right or wrong and why, and come to an agreement about their quality. It is possible to analyse any aspect of a work of literature in this way, be it a single metaphor, or the pace of the action, or the skill with which an author draws a character. It takes practice and thought, but it is possible.
Yet always there are people who jump up and say “art is subjective; you can’t say one of those metaphors is better than the other!”
The usual reason for this is that they have not developed the reading skill to see the difference in quality between the metaphors. But occasionally it will be because they think they have discovered one of the great false truths of the twentieth century: that it is impossible to say what “better” means.
Better means what it is agreed to mean between the parties conversing. A statement like “Milton’s poetry is better than Dr Seuss’” is dumb, but only because we have not yet discovered what the speaker means by “better”. The word itself is not meaningless, but we are not aware yet of its meaning in this sentence.
When we attach a specific meaning to the word “better,” when we can point to the objective markers that constitute what we call “quality,” that is when we have useful and meaning discussion about books.
Of course, you may remind me that there is no objective way to tell what meaning we should accept. It may seem to you that I have shifted the burden of subjectivity from literature itself to the words “better,” and “good” and “bad”.
I’ll try to illustrate what I’m coming to with a comparison with science: when a glass of water interacts with its immediate surroundings in a certain way, by freezing, or boiling, we say “this glass of water is 100 degrees Celsius.” Now, this is no more objective a statement than “structurally, Coriolanus is superior to Hamlet.”
Degrees Celsius are a human concept, devoid of any objective reality. They are not a truth inherent in the universe; they are a convenient notation we accept because it makes it easier to talk about temperature and understand one another. If someone got up and said “you can’t say that glass of water is 100 degrees Celsius, because you can’t say what degrees Celsius are!” we would think they were mad. And we would be right. They would be advocating for us to abandon a very useful tool in conveying precise meanings from one human mind to another.
Why can’t we accept standard terms and definitions in art analysis? When we think of how much use this practice is in the fields of science, it seems completely stupid to disregard how much use it could be in the arts. We will probably never be able to determine the quality of a metaphor to the degree that we can put it on a numerical scale, because while literature is not subjective, it is subtle. But there are some solid objective measures by which we can judge a piece of art:
We examine the author’s purpose. We then judge, by close reading, how well they have achieved what they were trying to achieve. The part of literature that is subjective, deciding whether we enjoy it or not, comes afterward - our first concern should be whether something is well-written. To do otherwise is like complaining that Einstein wrote about relativity and not cell biology, because you find the latter more interesting.
I guess this is why I can’t take your criticisms of things like Ulysses and Moby-Dick and Shakespeare’s oeuvre too seriously - because I know exactly what makes those works so fantastic. And from the things you’ve said about them (Joyce being wordy?) I don’t think you do.
I can completely understand you not enjoying them. But when you try to imply that they’re not as good as their reputation, that it’s all some confidence trick, you’re devaluing thousands of years of work, done by massively intelligent people. You’re saying one of the oldest cultural traditions we have is a bunch of stuffed shirts trying to outclever each other. It’s a very, very ignorant view to take.
Hip, when I said one had to develop a taste for good writing, what I meant was that it is possible, and profitable, to teach oneself to enjoy another person’s display of brilliance and skill, regardless of how engaging we find their themes, or their narrative. Appreciation of another human being’s genius does not come easily; it has to be learnt. The reason is obvious - the more things we can appreciate in an artwork, the more art we will enjoy. I mean, if I’m going to spend twenty hours reading Moby-Dick I want to get as much out of it as possible.
First of all, just to deal with the Shakespeare thing: you talked about “literary academia,” and then said you weren’t familiar with how Shakespeare is taught in universities. Presumably you don’t study English, then? I’m a little confused as to where your experience with literary academia is coming from. Are you talking about critics and scholars you’ve read? I can’t think of a single Shakespeare scholar who would defend everything he wrote. I’ve never heard anybody say that everything he produced was “solid gold”. There are about a dozen plays that are very widely acknowledged to be second-rate: Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, Pericles (though I’d bet this would have been a masterpiece had it survived to us intact) and a bunch of early ones get slagged off by almost everybody. They all have their merits, because Shakespeare is, after all, a genius, but they are by no means perfect.
As for his high-school preeminence, well, first of all high-school sucks and is gay. But I think this is one thing they get vaguely right. They manage to get it right in the worst way possible, but hey. The fact is that Shakespeare is the most important poet that ever worked in the English language (a language which he, in no small part, has invented through his works). He has influenced every single English writer working after him. I completely agree that it’s a mistake to sacrifice the richness of English poetry to the altar of one man - kids come out of high school (over here in the antipodes) not knowing Chaucer or Spenser or Milton or Keats, because we think they ought instead to spend nine months struggling through Othello with a teacher who hasn’t read more than ten Shakespeare plays and hasn’t understood one (I understand that in the United States teachers are subject to much higher standards of qualification than they are here). But the problem is a weak curriculum and bad teaching, not Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare, like Homer, is important enough that he should be studied in depth by all students. You simply cannot fully understand the modern world without a knowledge of his works.
(And uh here’s a really embarrassingly long post, based only partially on the argument we were having? You just touched on something that’s kind of close to my heart. I will completely understand if you don’t read it.)
You said “literature is inherently subjective”. I, uh, I don’t think it is. First of all because that statement itself is so meaningless that it’s open to a dozen interpretations. Secondly because almost all aspects of literature can be objectively examined and interpreted, provided one has a high enough degree of skill and knowledge.
My own degree of skill and knowledge is not particularly high, so I’m going to demonstrate with a very simple analysis of some metaphors. I want to show you that while how much you enjoy a text may be “subjective,” the quality of it - the skill with which it was composed - is not. That can be examined and judged.
Take a metaphor like Zhuangzi’s famous anecdote. It runs something like this:
I dreamt I was a butterfly, and when I awoke, I wasn’t sure if I was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly, dreaming he was a man.
Imagine he had dreamt he was a pig. Instantly the metaphor loses all its effectiveness. It is conveying exactly the same idea, it is fulfilling its function as a concept, but it doesn’t work anymore. “Butterfly” has a beautiful delicacy, a transience which fits perfectly with the delicate and transient mental state described. Zhuangzi has picked the perfect word, and created for his purpose, I think, a perfect metaphor.
Now take a mediocre metaphor - the new Dan Brown book has the following: “cruised the deep waters of the C.I.A. like a leviathan who surfaced only to devour its prey.”
There are many problems with this. First of all the awkwardness of its construction, which is apparent to anyone who reads it aloud. Leviathan (which is, as far as we know, supposed to be a proper noun) calls up no image at all, because it has been millennia since anybody has known whether Leviathan is a whale or a crocodile or something else. And its tone is unnecessarily biblical and grandiose - if Brown was content to use “shark” or something less pretentious, we would have a clear idea of something dangerous and predatory, which is what he’s trying to convey. “Leviathan” jerks us out of the mood Brown wants us to be in, because he wants to sound literary.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. is itself “the deep waters,” or whether the leviathan inhabits only a certain quarter of the C.I.A., which is here referred to as “the deep waters”. There is disharmony between the quiet, smooth verb to “cruise” and the violent “devour,” giving us a mixed mental image of the leviathan’s behaviour (this could maybe work if Brown spaced the two verbs out more, and made the contrast the point of the metaphor). It switches from true metaphor to simile a little way in, for no reason. It also kind of rhymes, which is weird and jarring?
But in the end, it’s not a bad metaphor. It’s labored and tedious, but it gets the job done and it’s self-consistent. Having read it, we have picked up on Brown’s general idea.
This, on the other hand, is a bad metaphor: Jerry Izenberg in the New Jersey Star Ledger wrote: “He was marooned in the jaws of a human minefield, and with every step the noose grew tighter.”
This is ludicrous. First of all the man is marooned, then suddenly we find him “in the jaws” of something that doesn’t have jaws; a “human minefield”. Finally we are treated to another, very disparate image of him apparently walking away from a noose so that it grows tighter around his neck. This metaphor has no unity whatsoever. It is verbal fluff, it throws in a few recognizable clichés and assumes that from them we, reading with one eye on the television, will get a sense of “he was in difficulty”.
There is nothing at all subjective about the quality of these metaphors. We can take each of them apart, say where they go right or wrong and why, and come to an agreement about their quality. It is possible to analyse any aspect of a work of literature in this way, be it a single metaphor, or the pace of the action, or the skill with which an author draws a character. It takes practice and thought, but it is possible.
Yet always there are people who jump up and say “art is subjective; you can’t say one of those metaphors is better than the other!”
The usual reason for this is that they have not developed the reading skill to see the difference in quality between the metaphors. But occasionally it will be because they think they have discovered one of the great false truths of the twentieth century: that it is impossible to say what “better” means.
Better means what it is agreed to mean between the parties conversing. A statement like “Milton’s poetry is better than Dr Seuss’” is dumb, but only because we have not yet discovered what the speaker means by “better”. The word itself is not meaningless, but we are not aware yet of its meaning in this sentence.
When we attach a specific meaning to the word “better,” when we can point to the objective markers that constitute what we call “quality,” that is when we have useful and meaning discussion about books.
Of course, you may remind me that there is no objective way to tell what meaning we should accept. It may seem to you that I have shifted the burden of subjectivity from literature itself to the words “better,” and “good” and “bad”.
I’ll try to illustrate what I’m coming to with a comparison with science: when a glass of water interacts with its immediate surroundings in a certain way, by freezing, or boiling, we say “this glass of water is 100 degrees Celsius.” Now, this is no more objective a statement than “structurally, Coriolanus is superior to Hamlet.”
Degrees Celsius are a human concept, devoid of any objective reality. They are not a truth inherent in the universe; they are a convenient notation we accept because it makes it easier to talk about temperature and understand one another. If someone got up and said “you can’t say that glass of water is 100 degrees Celsius, because you can’t say what degrees Celsius are!” we would think they were mad. And we would be right. They would be advocating for us to abandon a very useful tool in conveying precise meanings from one human mind to another.
Why can’t we accept standard terms and definitions in art analysis? When we think of how much use this practice is in the fields of science, it seems completely stupid to disregard how much use it could be in the arts. We will probably never be able to determine the quality of a metaphor to the degree that we can put it on a numerical scale, because while literature is not subjective, it is subtle. But there are some solid objective measures by which we can judge a piece of art:
We examine the author’s purpose. We then judge, by close reading, how well they have achieved what they were trying to achieve. The part of literature that is subjective, deciding whether we enjoy it or not, comes afterward - our first concern should be whether something is well-written. To do otherwise is like complaining that Einstein wrote about relativity and not cell biology, because you find the latter more interesting.
I guess this is why I can’t take your criticisms of things like Ulysses and Moby-Dick and Shakespeare’s oeuvre too seriously - because I know exactly what makes those works so fantastic. And from the things you’ve said about them (Joyce being wordy?) I don’t think you do.
I can completely understand you not enjoying them. But when you try to imply that they’re not as good as their reputation, that it’s all some confidence trick, you’re devaluing thousands of years of work, done by massively intelligent people. You’re saying one of the oldest cultural traditions we have is a bunch of stuffed shirts trying to outclever each other. It’s a very, very ignorant view to take.
Hip, when I said one had to develop a taste for good writing, what I meant was that it is possible, and profitable, to teach oneself to enjoy another person’s display of brilliance and skill, regardless of how engaging we find their themes, or their narrative. Appreciation of another human being’s genius does not come easily; it has to be learnt. The reason is obvious - the more things we can appreciate in an artwork, the more art we will enjoy. I mean, if I’m going to spend twenty hours reading Moby-Dick I want to get as much out of it as possible.
Yeah but I dont think anyone has to teach themselves to enjoy brilliance. Anyone in this thread can recognise the relative virtues of the three metaphors you listed. It's not because they have learned to appreciate good metaphors, its because good metaphors are better at achieving their desired outcomes than bad ones.
What is it that you have to teach yourself to do in order to appreciate The Old Man and the Sea?
All it really takes is the ability to empathise with the characters. People who dont like The Old Man and the Sea dont like it because they arent interested in it. They fall outside of it's demographic, and they read it when they are forced to for school, and so they call that scholarly reading. Yeah, in this context if they had learned how to identify effective use of the skills of brilliant writers then their appreciation for Hemingway's genius could improve the experience. But, honestly I dont even think that is possible. If you arent appreciating the work then you arent appreciating the writing skill.. I dunno, it just doesnt seem plausible to me.. I am kinda getting sidetracked here anyway..
In the context of a videogame this is fine, I dont play videogames for other peoples appreciation. Art on the other hand is created to be appreciated.
Why would anyone put in the effort to appreciate Melville instead of me? (assuming I am as good at this videogame as Melville is at writing)
Why would anyone put in the effort to appreciate either, when they could read Einstein instead and appreciate genius while actually learning something.
I mean, if you had two literary geniuses, one of which requires you to learn a lot to appreciate, and another you can appreciate without learning, all else being equal, the second is clearly the greater genius of the two. If you are creating something intended to be appreciated, arbitrary elitism is inherently bad. So by definition, appreciation of genius should come easily.
Man it got to be way too late while I was writing this, I have a feeling I got completely lost halfway through this post. I'm sorry if it isnt the most coherent thing ever posted..
Have a nice day.
What is it that you have to teach yourself to do in order to appreciate The Old Man and the Sea?
All it really takes is the ability to empathise with the characters. People who dont like The Old Man and the Sea dont like it because they arent interested in it. They fall outside of it's demographic, and they read it when they are forced to for school, and so they call that scholarly reading. Yeah, in this context if they had learned how to identify effective use of the skills of brilliant writers then their appreciation for Hemingway's genius could improve the experience. But, honestly I dont even think that is possible. If you arent appreciating the work then you arent appreciating the writing skill.. I dunno, it just doesnt seem plausible to me.. I am kinda getting sidetracked here anyway..
Obviously I disagree with this. And I think this is where the problem I have with the rest of your argument is coming from.
Ok, lets say for instance I was a genius at something completely trivial. Perhaps some internet simulation of a children's videogame for example. To appreciate my genius at this videogame you would need to have some understanding of the way the game works, to recognise what it is I am doing that is so brilliant (I'd say you would actually have to understand the videogame as well as I do to fully appreciate my genius at it, which is more or less impossible in the context - if you knew the game as well as me, then you probably wouldnt be very impressed with my genius). But it's utterly unreasonable for me to expect people to put in the effort required for them to appreciate my genius.
In the context of a videogame this is fine, I dont play videogames for other peoples appreciation. Art on the other hand is created to be appreciated.
Why would anyone put in the effort to appreciate Melville instead of me? (assuming I am as good at this videogame as Melville is at writing)
Why would anyone put in the effort to appreciate either, when they could read Einstein instead and appreciate genius while actually learning something.
I mean, if you had two literary geniuses, one of which requires you to learn a lot to appreciate, and another you can appreciate without learning, all else being equal, the second is clearly the greater genius of the two. If you are creating something intended to be appreciated, arbitrary elitism is inherently bad. So by definition, appreciation of genius should come easily.
Man it got to be way too late while I was writing this, I have a feeling I got completely lost halfway through this post. I'm sorry if it isnt the most coherent thing ever posted..
Have a nice day.
I agree completely with Doctor Heartbreak.
Let's put it this way: There is a difference between "subjective" and "objective" criticism (using these terms loosely, in a nontechnical sense). Saying "I think this book is boring and do not enjoy it" may be a perfectly true statement. You may indeed think a particular work is boring. But this is of little use to other people or in evaluating the qualities of the piece of literature in question. For instance, I found The Old Man and the Sea to be completely engaging and interesting and finished reading it in one sitting. So which of us should you turn to: UncleSam, who says no one should ever read it and that it is a terrible book, or myself and Doctor Heartbreak, who claim that it is one of the most significant novellas of the 20th century? Just because one enjoys something says little about its objective qualities. To use an admittedly contrived and imperfect analogy: suppose someone absolutely loves Britney Spears and hates classical music. Well, whatever suits them; we all have our musical tastes. But would you take this person seriously if they said Beethoven is structurally worse at composing music than Britney Spears is? Someone can enjoy Dan Brown more than they enjoy Melville, but that doesn't mean Dan Brown is a better writer than Melville is, or that his novels are better constructed.
And note that two people can still disagree about the relative virtues of a work based on a careful consideration of objective criteria. Professional literary critics do this all the time. You have to provide an argument for your criticism though. Here is an example of a well-written critical review that I recently read: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n08/james-wood/gossip-in-gilt. Now, one needn't agree with James Wood's argument here: that Updike is sexist, superficially antiquated, vaguely (and somewhat perniciously) flowery. But it is impossible to claim that Wood does not attempt to offer a cogent and learned critique that is specific in detail without losing sight of the work in question and Updike's oeuvre as wholes. On the other hand, here is a review of one of Wood's own books, criticizing his entire theoretical outlook on the novel qua novel: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...ity-check-needed/story-e6frg8px-1111116200590.
So should I take more seriously the vacuous assertion that The Old Man and the Sea should not be read because it is boring, which assertion makes little attempt to understand the deeper metaphysical significance of the work, to relate it to Hemingway's other writings or the context in which it was written, to provide textual evidence, to consider literary and linguistic form, or to engage literature theoretically; or, say, Robert Weeks's article, which directly and specifically engages the text and juxtaposes it with Hemingway's other writings to argue that The Old Man and the Sea strikes a false tune with its "fakery" and represents a regrettable divergence from the author's earlier realism? To me, the latter is more valuable and frankly more interesting.
Let's put it this way: There is a difference between "subjective" and "objective" criticism (using these terms loosely, in a nontechnical sense). Saying "I think this book is boring and do not enjoy it" may be a perfectly true statement. You may indeed think a particular work is boring. But this is of little use to other people or in evaluating the qualities of the piece of literature in question. For instance, I found The Old Man and the Sea to be completely engaging and interesting and finished reading it in one sitting. So which of us should you turn to: UncleSam, who says no one should ever read it and that it is a terrible book, or myself and Doctor Heartbreak, who claim that it is one of the most significant novellas of the 20th century? Just because one enjoys something says little about its objective qualities. To use an admittedly contrived and imperfect analogy: suppose someone absolutely loves Britney Spears and hates classical music. Well, whatever suits them; we all have our musical tastes. But would you take this person seriously if they said Beethoven is structurally worse at composing music than Britney Spears is? Someone can enjoy Dan Brown more than they enjoy Melville, but that doesn't mean Dan Brown is a better writer than Melville is, or that his novels are better constructed.
And note that two people can still disagree about the relative virtues of a work based on a careful consideration of objective criteria. Professional literary critics do this all the time. You have to provide an argument for your criticism though. Here is an example of a well-written critical review that I recently read: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n08/james-wood/gossip-in-gilt. Now, one needn't agree with James Wood's argument here: that Updike is sexist, superficially antiquated, vaguely (and somewhat perniciously) flowery. But it is impossible to claim that Wood does not attempt to offer a cogent and learned critique that is specific in detail without losing sight of the work in question and Updike's oeuvre as wholes. On the other hand, here is a review of one of Wood's own books, criticizing his entire theoretical outlook on the novel qua novel: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...ity-check-needed/story-e6frg8px-1111116200590.
So should I take more seriously the vacuous assertion that The Old Man and the Sea should not be read because it is boring, which assertion makes little attempt to understand the deeper metaphysical significance of the work, to relate it to Hemingway's other writings or the context in which it was written, to provide textual evidence, to consider literary and linguistic form, or to engage literature theoretically; or, say, Robert Weeks's article, which directly and specifically engages the text and juxtaposes it with Hemingway's other writings to argue that The Old Man and the Sea strikes a false tune with its "fakery" and represents a regrettable divergence from the author's earlier realism? To me, the latter is more valuable and frankly more interesting.
Let's go back to the example of classical music. One can enjoy listening to classical music in a casual manner. This is perfectly acceptable; I do this myself. But does this person understand and enjoy the subtleties of the music in the same way that someone who has studied musical theory and history does? Does the average person with no artistic background "understand" an El Greco in the same deep sense that an art historian specializing in Spanish Renaissance and Mannerist painting does? I would say no. It is simply a different level of understanding.
Maybe there are different types of "genius?" And different levels therein. I mean, just because I find James Joyce boring (I'm thinking of Dubliners here, those are the only stories of his I've ever had to read) doesn't mean he's a bad writer. But then, just because you (or anyone else) finds him to be a brilliant literary artist doesn't mean he is either. We spent about two days in my mediocre English class discussing how the climactic moments of his stories came not through direct action but through inspiration--the characters realizing something, after which their outlook was changed. Me being a 21st century middle class American teenager, I find that to be a boring method of story structure, but maybe it was considered ingenious in its day (in the context of its being written). However, that it was ingenious in its day is not a reason for it to be thrown in the face of modern high schoolers as an example of literary brilliance; we simply don't care enough for the context.
So James Joyce was a genius from certain angles; he is now dead, so that's a safe statement to make. Ludwig van Beethoven was a genius; he is also long dead. Yet I can safely differentiate between the two. I don't personally believe that James Joyce had any giant impact upon either modern literature or modern life; his works are appreciable, but it's a struggle for me. Beethoven, on the other hand, influenced many, many musicians after him and is essentially cemented in pop culture as "some dead composer," two (three?) hundred years after his death--that's pretty damn impressive in my view. J.S. Bach too. Their genius... matters more, on the whole, than that of James Joyce; likewise, I can subjectively say that J.K. Rowling's genius in helping to introduce an entire generation of children to reading (and being cemented in culture) is also more important than that of James Joyce. (My opinions aren't overly strong on this, I could be wrong).
EDIT: I'm gonna mention Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics as being very good books (and examples of genius) again; if you haven't read 'em yet, you should. I also enjoyed the Bourne trilogy (the books, not the films), especially Identity... I'm pretty sure I already mentioned this somewhere in this thread.
So James Joyce was a genius from certain angles; he is now dead, so that's a safe statement to make. Ludwig van Beethoven was a genius; he is also long dead. Yet I can safely differentiate between the two. I don't personally believe that James Joyce had any giant impact upon either modern literature or modern life; his works are appreciable, but it's a struggle for me. Beethoven, on the other hand, influenced many, many musicians after him and is essentially cemented in pop culture as "some dead composer," two (three?) hundred years after his death--that's pretty damn impressive in my view. J.S. Bach too. Their genius... matters more, on the whole, than that of James Joyce; likewise, I can subjectively say that J.K. Rowling's genius in helping to introduce an entire generation of children to reading (and being cemented in culture) is also more important than that of James Joyce. (My opinions aren't overly strong on this, I could be wrong).
EDIT: I'm gonna mention Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics as being very good books (and examples of genius) again; if you haven't read 'em yet, you should. I also enjoyed the Bourne trilogy (the books, not the films), especially Identity... I'm pretty sure I already mentioned this somewhere in this thread.
Are you serious? I think you picked a bad example in using Joyce. The terms quark and monomyth come from Finnegans Wake. James Joyce inspired the entire modernist movement and was one of the pioneers of stream-of-consciousness. It is pretty safe to say that practically ever major writer and critic since Joyce was in some way influenced by him: Faulkner, Borges, Rushdie, Updike, Conrad, Beckett, Nabokov, Burgess, Roth, Vonnegut; Derrida, Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom to name a handful. Ulysses is routinely listed as one of the best and most influential novels of the 20th century. The Ulysses censorship trial was an absolutely essential precedent in establishing freedom of expression. His works have been adapted into multiple films, musicals, and radio theater. Music, film, and television often directly reference his works. There is an entire day devoted to Ulysses. Anyone who knows anything at all about literature knows his name. I found an entire website that lists not a few Joycean allusions in popular culture. If anything, I would say that Joyce is perhaps the single most influential writer of the 20th century.
One of the greatest misconception of Science is that it finds facts. That's completely false. The purpose of science is to create plausible models that we can use under certain situations. That's the purpose of the scientific method and why we attempt to have "with all else equal" conditions put on science -- we want to find how this one variable affects the condition that we propose.
In the end, these are all models. The models may be pretty correct, but remember that under each model are a lot of assumptions. They work under certain conditions -- and more generally, you can't call them facts. They are models, which may be abandoned for a better model in the future.
Think of models as "stories" that people write, stories on how certain variables interact with one another. It is, in the end, a human concoction no matter how you put it, and we can test them in the same way we can test concepts from other stories and literature.
In the end, no matter what field you go into, everyone ends up doing the same thing regarding anything else in their lives. There is no difference between "physics" and "literature", there's no point of calling one of the "nonfiction fact" and demeaning the other by calling it subjective -- they're all subjective in the end.
If you want facts, go do Mathematics. Because all you do is take definitions and figure out derivations from the definitions in Mathematics - its literally the only field that is made of "facts". Physics is fiction, just like anything else not math.
I would argue that literature also has that purpose of expanding/changing/questioning your way of thinking -- they don't need to be a treatise, nor do they need to be fiction. Sometimes, a story is the best way to communicate the idea.
When you are talking about something made a long time ago, then having a better understanding of the context it was made is going to improve the experience. I think that is separate from what we are discussing here.
As for musical theory.. It's not really that useful. It doesnt change your perception of music, aside from giving you that context that you would otherwise be missing. That can make some difference for listening to Bach or something, but you dont actually need the knowledge of theory, a familiarity with Baroque music would be enough.
There are times when your knowledge of theory will help you understand how something achieved, and sometimes these solutions are particularly elegant and you can find yourself thinking you know "wow that is smart" but this is more the equivalent of being told how a magic trick works. It is important if you want to be able to emulate the effect in your own work. But it's not really greatly improving the experience otherwise..
Also tang, my understand of the word "facts" is more that that is what is produced by science. A fact is never entirely certain to represent completely accurately what is. What you get from mathematics is more just definitions. There is a distinction between non-fiction and fiction in this context regardless.
I ran out of time.
Have a nice day.
As for musical theory.. It's not really that useful. It doesnt change your perception of music, aside from giving you that context that you would otherwise be missing. That can make some difference for listening to Bach or something, but you dont actually need the knowledge of theory, a familiarity with Baroque music would be enough.
There are times when your knowledge of theory will help you understand how something achieved, and sometimes these solutions are particularly elegant and you can find yourself thinking you know "wow that is smart" but this is more the equivalent of being told how a magic trick works. It is important if you want to be able to emulate the effect in your own work. But it's not really greatly improving the experience otherwise..
Also tang, my understand of the word "facts" is more that that is what is produced by science. A fact is never entirely certain to represent completely accurately what is. What you get from mathematics is more just definitions. There is a distinction between non-fiction and fiction in this context regardless.
I ran out of time.
Have a nice day.
I have read some critical work (although not being from a high level of literary education, I don't know how significant the authors were), but the majority of it is from my high school teachers.
Now, I don't like to write them all off as "High school, hur hur, they don't know anything"; my high school was a selective one, and the teachers were all pretty good, and all of my English teachers have done university-level education in literature and the like. It may in fact be the case that their education is lacking, but I doubt it; or at least, I doubt it is the sole cause. Regardless, I think it is probably the most important area of literary education because 99.9% of the population will get that far and no further.
However, now that I think about it, most of the curriculum is defined by (in no small part) politicians, and many of those probably have very little in the way of literary education, so the source of my distaste for the over-emphasis on the one author. For the most part, I agree with you, and I certainly don't think Shakespeare should be removed entirely from the curriculum; that would be exactly as bad as the current neglect shown to non-Shakespeare authors. However, I think you are perhaps being a little over-hyperbolic when you say you cannot understand the modern world without Shakespeare; even if we assume Shakespeare did write the best reflection of the human condition and that the condition has not greatly changed since the 1600s (I would say that it has, but that's a separate debate entirely), that does not necessarily mean that one cannot understand society without his descriptions.
I'll clarify the statement, then: "The quality of literature is related to the influence it has on the audience, and therefore can only be judged in regards to the effectiveness at conveying the author's message/idea to each recipient." This is what makes the quality of literature subjective; because no audience member is identical to another, the impact and effectiveness of the construction can only be assessed in terms of how each audience member responds to it. The rules that govern how effective the literature differ from person to person.
Now, there are parts of literature that can be assessed objectively, because there are definitive rules about the construction of language. That is, spelling and grammar are objectively assessable because there are hard-and-fast rules about how sentences are constructed, how letters within words are arranged, how punctuation should be used, etc. etc. But these are not assessment of the literature, they are assessment of the use of language. I am assuming that all literature obeys these laws as a basic requirement, with any deviations from them being deliberate attempts by the author to convey an idea.
This is still subjective; it is based on your cultural and individual experiences in relation to the butterfly. For instance, if your experience of a butterfly was from 5mm away, as they are shown in some nature documentaries, suddenly they're not ephemeral, beautiful delicates but alien, bizarre, and disgusting.
Also consider the pig metaphor in a hypothetical society where a pig is venerated as a being of grace (as the elephant is in Indian cultures).
The bolded text above highlights my point. This metaphor appeals to you because of -your- personal response to the metaphor. This is what I mean by subjectivity of literature.
This is exactly what I would say. You can objectively say "According to this definition of 'good', then this metaphor is good." But then your definitions are largely defined to make the conclusion tautological.
You are confusing arbitrary with subjective. 100 Degrees Celsius is indeed an objective statement. It conveys precise information. 100 Degrees Celsius for Person A is exactly the same as 100 Degrees Celsius for Person B and for Person C. It is an arbitrary, human measurement (defined metrically from a starting point of water freezing and counting to 100 for water boiling at standard pressure). It is easy to conceive of a society measuring temperature based on the different states of mercury or some other substance. Their name and size of units for measuring temperature would be different, but their 34.56 Kwarits would always be the same as 100 degrees Celsius. The physical concept they represented would always be precise.
My argument is that terms used to define quality in literature do not (maybe even cannot) mean the same thing from person to person. There is no standardised meaning to them.
I agree; this argument would be solved if we had standardised terms for describing the quality of literature beyond that of grammar and spelling. I foresee difficulty, however, getting any kind of agreement or coherence among multiple people.
It's more that I feel that there is a subculture within art in general that catering for an intellectual elite means that your work is 'better' simply because few people can understand it. In a field such as art, where consumption is the primary goal, I feel this is not the case and is generally an attempt to make one seem more educated simply by distancing oneself from the average person.
That's not to say that a book that requires further education is bad because the common man can't read them; I'm saying that requiring further education does not make the book good of itself.
In regards to this point, I agree with Hip's response entirely.
ok, sorry for playing down James Joyce then :) so i'll use a different example. Moby Dick is also a generally good work, perhaps it helped influence countless other writers, maybe it affected whaling/whaling practices, etc etc (I don't know), but I didn't enjoy it all that much. Of course, my own enjoyment or dislike of a work does not directly relate to that work's genius, merely to how I perceive that genius. If i'm a dumbass for not seeing the genius of a work, shoot me. But don't shoot me, because regardless of whether I fully appreciate James Joyce or Herman Melville's societal contributions, I'm still going to try to make some of my own. It would be nice if I knew all these intricate subtexts and background information surrounding these works, but I don't necessarily have to know them to create my own positive impact; time moves on. If Ulysses helped end arbitrary censorship, then thank you James Joyce.
Oh, and Dr. Seuss is a literary badass. We just read through Oh the Places You'll Go again, and its intricacies are incredibly impressive, especially considering its target audience. It reads like an epic letter to children when you actually pay attention to it--it warns of bumps in the road, yet builds excitement about everything the world contains, and I for one like its rhyme scheme, however childlike it may be. So yeah. Happy belated birthday to the late Dr. Seuss; the world will miss you, and it already does. Oh, and the Lorax too. Pretty overt moral, however over the top, but damn... Unless... and i didn't think it was too blatantly/ridiculously environmentalist, and I'm not too green a guy myself.
Oh, and Dr. Seuss is a literary badass. We just read through Oh the Places You'll Go again, and its intricacies are incredibly impressive, especially considering its target audience. It reads like an epic letter to children when you actually pay attention to it--it warns of bumps in the road, yet builds excitement about everything the world contains, and I for one like its rhyme scheme, however childlike it may be. So yeah. Happy belated birthday to the late Dr. Seuss; the world will miss you, and it already does. Oh, and the Lorax too. Pretty overt moral, however over the top, but damn... Unless... and i didn't think it was too blatantly/ridiculously environmentalist, and I'm not too green a guy myself.
that's really not what i meant at all. obviously you don't need to read shakespeare to understand human emotion or interaction. but i can guarantee shakespeare tangibly influences your life every day.
have you ever said the word "assassination"? because shakespeare invented that word. how about "employer"? that was him too. how about "bedroom"? "dawn"? "glow"? that's just a sample of the nouns.
and then there's the phrases that everyone knows belong to shakespeare, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" etc. but i'm going to assume you didn't know he invented the term "foregone conclusion" in othello, "faint-hearted" in 1 henry iv, "full circle" in king lear. there are scores of these. so, so much of our language we can trace to shakespeare. he is the biggest individual human influence on the way we communicate in english.
even if that wasn't all true, he's still a cultural touchstone. you hear people calling lovers romeo and juliet all the time. he is referenced and quoted in all media, so frequently. shakespeare is An Important Dude, i don't even know why this is an argument
um, there are no objective rules about any of your examples. they have changed massively in the past five hundred years, even. you continue to prove that you have no idea what you are talking about.
okay? so, if i came from a culture that doesn't exist, i would experience things differently. if i was somehow the size of a butterfly, i would think of butterflies in a different way.
do you really think this stuff needs to be explained? all you are saying is "but different people like different things!" which is so incredibly obvious that it's almost offensive for you to point it out
yes, different things affect different people in different ways. cool. but as readers, we all have the capacity to imagine what the author, usually justly, assumes a certain image is going to provoke in his audience
artists know that they are working for a specific audience, with a shared cultural background and some shared traits. for art to work, they need to make assumptions about that audience. it is ridiculous to say that a metaphor isn't objectively good because it rests on the assumption that the author is writing for british people and not lilliputians.
when i read greek literature, i put myself in a different headspace than i do when i read french, or whatever. i accept that the author had different cultural values and experiences, and then i try to judge how well he is achieving his aims with those values and experiences in mind. when homer talks about apollo's rage against the achaians i don't think "this isn't impressive or frightening because apollo doesn't exist." i imagine how it would have affected an audience that did believe in apollo.
literature is more than the words on the page; it is also context. when you take context into account, you can make objective statements about a metaphor. you can say "zhuangzi has chosen the right word for his audience (none of whom are 5mm tall)"
it's just most of us don't say the disclaimer, because we don't expect there to be a need? because your objection is absurd?
i guess i forgot it was impossible to think something that was also true!
truth is tautology. everything we can call truth is tautological. 2 + 2 = 4 is tautological. it's still useful to know that 2 + 2 = 4. it's still useful to be able to refer to it in conversation.
are you really saying we should avoid using words with meanings because that would give us the ability to talk truthfully about things?
seriously, what are you talking about? there is no standardised meaning to them because we have not accepted a standardized notation. if we were to standardize their meaning, then they would have a standard meaning!
there was a time when we didn't have a standardized method of talking about temperature. it was awful and inconvenient and harmful to discussion. so we invented a standard measure.
measures probably can't work for literature, but that doesn't mean we have to limit ourselves to stupid, imprecise language that conveys nothing to anyone. even if you can "foresee difficulty," surely you can also foresee the utility of such a system.
you are spouting shit faster than i can address it. "consumption is the primary goal"? what? why? why do you get to say "art is subjective" and then decide what its objective "primary goal" is? or that it even has a goal? christ
add that to the fact that you're again talking about a "subculture within art", whatever "within art" is supposed to mean, without having any experience of the subculture you're talking about, without even offering any evidence that it exists
ah, i see, you were arguing against a point nobody was trying to make in the first place! that makes sense
yeah, i chose them because they were so obvious to everyone. they were supposed to demonstrate the principle that literature can be analysed objectively.
if you really think there's a need to argue that being good at laddering on shoddybattle and being good at using language to communicate ideas are the same, or have the same level of potential, that's okay, and i'm sure it would make for a fruitful discussion, but i'm not really interested in debating it
why learn to read at all, then? wouldn't you be happier rolling in mud all day than doing boring things like using your brain to understand things?
sometimes, it is necessary to write something complicated. sometimes the author isn't just showing off; he has had a difficult idea and he is trying to communicate it.
the ideas in ulysses have to be complex. they can't be expressed simply, because they're not simple. if someone can't make the effort to understand joyce, they're not going to find his ideas elsewhere, in simpler form. they just miss out.
objective seems a bit strong a word for describing the quality of a metaphor. perhaps "reasonably determining the merits of a metaphor according to a generally accepted criteria" is better. It may seem like petty semantics but it goes along way in terms of understand the subjective vs. objective understanding of literature debate.
subjective vs. objective is such a strong dichotomy (totally relativist vs. purely factual) that people can be led astray. if it's not objective then it's subjective, the thinking goes... but i think that's not the case and heartbreak did a good job illustrating that point with his analysis of metaphors. if we understand literary analysis as a quasi-objective undertaking (kinda like probability) then it can be better appreciated.
the real question is why heartbreak has a knack for remembering bad metaphors
subjective vs. objective is such a strong dichotomy (totally relativist vs. purely factual) that people can be led astray. if it's not objective then it's subjective, the thinking goes... but i think that's not the case and heartbreak did a good job illustrating that point with his analysis of metaphors. if we understand literary analysis as a quasi-objective undertaking (kinda like probability) then it can be better appreciated.
the real question is why heartbreak has a knack for remembering bad metaphors
What?
You said "regardless of how engaging we find their themes, or their narrative." I sure as hell didnt learn to read to appreciate the skill of people's writing regardless of the content.
My argument is that what you you need to learn isnt appreciation, it's context. And that if you understand the context of a work then you almost cannot fail to recognise and appreciate its genius (or lack thereof).
As a side note, I do believe that Ulysses is needlessly complex. I think it's a case of style over function. I believe that the effort required to read it appeals to peoples vanity, which I will admit is a reasonable thing to appeal to. Only that it seems disingenuous in that most people wouldnt like to admit to liking a book for that reason. And I believe that any concepts within the book could have been conveyed in much easier to digest terms. I also believe that if you do put in the effort to understand Ulysses that it is an extraordinarily good book. The criticisms I have made are essentially superficial, and while they prevent me from wanting to read it, they shouldnt necessarily prevent everyone from reading it. But I am extremely skeptical of praise of Ulysses because of its unwieldiness. However, I only read the first few chapters before giving up. And maybe it was just all flying over the top of my head.. But I doubt it..
Have a nice day.
This isn't an argument; I've said from the beginning that I understand that Shakespeare is immensely important in terms of literary history.
I'm aware of most of those invented words (although full-circle and foregone conclusion I wasn't); I'm not sure what it has to do with the argument, though.
I'm starting to suspect we mean different things when we each say 'objective'. Something that changes is still objective; objective means that it is the same regardless of the viewer. For example, the temperature of a glass of water can be changing (throughout the day as the sun shines on it, say) but for all viewers in the glass' rest frame, it has a precise value at any given moment and all of them will agree on what it is.
Grammar is objective because it is a formalised and specific rule set for a particular language. You can communicate information even if you break said rules, but it is objectively incorrect. (e.g. Double negatives; in most cases we can infer what the speaker means, but their English is not formally correct when they use it).
In the case of the effectiveness of literature, it is not the case that it can be objectively determined outright, because the effectiveness of communication depends on both the sender and the receiver. A totally trivial example would be to take the sentence above about the butterfly. You can objectively determine what the letters used to construct the sentence are, and what order they are in. But the effectiveness to me will be entirely different to someone who doesn't speak English. Those particular English letters and words will not communicate any of the idea the author intended, and hence the effectiveness will differ person to person. The differences may not be as pronounced between two people who speak the same language, but the fact that the metaphor draws upon their experiences and emotions means that the effectiveness of the metaphor is inherently subjective.
Now, there's no problem with literature being subjective. That doesn't mean it can't be subjected to analysis or debate or be discussed. You can also make statements about the objectiveness of literature provided that you specify the statement applies to the effectiveness for you (or whomever the observer/observers you're describing is).
Yes, artists do work for a certain audience. For instance, to take my trivial example above, someone who writes in English is targeting an English-speaking audience. That doesn't mean that the writing is objectively good.
Without the disclaimer, there is no clarity. Your statement of "Zhuangzi has chosen the right word for his audience" is only objective if there exists no person within the audience that you have specified that did not receive the message the author intended it to convey, because if such a person did exist then the effectiveness of the metaphor is based on their reaction and hence is subjective.
Truth and tautology are not the same thing. For instance, the sentence "My window is currently open." is true, but it is not tautological. The sentence "When my window is open, it is not closed." is tautological.
Defining your parameters in such a way that your statement is tautological is fine, but it is not an objective statement if your definitions are subjective.
Standard measures don't create objectivity, they just provide a method of precisely conveying information. In a pre-standardised time, glasses of water could still be 100 degrees Celsius, it's just that the specific name "100 degrees celsius" for that state didn't exist and so the communication of how hot the water was was not possible (in an accurate sense). The water still objectively had the quality that would eventually be called temperature and that quality would be set at a value that would eventually be called 100 degrees celsius.
I can indeed; I am simply saying that such a system does not yet exist.
Well, for a start, the fact that we disagree on this proves my point about literature being subjective. But leaving that aside, my point is that you can do nothing with literature without consuming it. It is impossible to for a book to be appreciated if it is never read (which is a strange thing to think about anyway, because the author must have read it in order to compose it; but maybe if a computer was randomly printing out letters in a particular order but noone ever read them, you could have a situation where a book was written without being read).
The only evidence of such a subculture that I have is my anecdotal experience with people who espouse the views thereof (I may be using the word subculture inaccurately; I don't mean to imply there is any kind of collusion between members, and I'm not aware of any minimum-number-of-members requirements beyond "More than 0" or even "More than 1" to define a subculture). Unless I misunderstood what said people were saying (or am lying about having met such people, which I can do nothing to prove so it's simply a matter of you taking my word for it or not), however, my grievances against said people stand.
I wasn't arguing against that point, it was the point I raised originally; I do not believe that literature is always made better by making it more complex. It can be, but it is not a universal law.
To get back to the main purpose of the thread: I'm now up to Book 3 of the New Sun quartet by Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor. I'm not really enjoying it, but I'll finish reading it regardless because I'd like to see where it goes. I find the protagonist very inconsistent (which makes him feel realistic and human, but not endearing, to me), particularly about love. He professes to love one character, and then has vigorous sex for hours with another character to whom he professes irritation and disgust just because he has the opportunity, before going back to the first character (who knows what he's just done and cries about it) and acting like everything's normal.
There are, however, occasional highlights. I still enjoy trying to infer what objects from our present or future he is describing, since he writes a little bit like how I'd expect a person from the middle ages to describe our world. He also made one quite interesting statement towards the beginning of this book about the justification for execution and excutioners as a legal device in a time of war and scarcity. (For instance, he says that labour camps and chain gangs to build infrastructure is a poor strategy, because those thieves and murderers sentenced to it will not work willingly, only under a whip. Hence the money that goes toward guarding and driving them could instead go toward paying willing labourers, in turn providing their families with food, and the guards could be used in the war effort instead of wasted at home. He makes a similar argument towards prison sentences).
Ultimately, I've found Gene Wolfe's ideas reasonably interesting, but I find Iain Banks to have more interesting and entertaining ideas, communicated in a less tedious way.
My post above pertains to the issue of subjective vs. objective literary analysis. I am interested in what you have to say about it.