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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

J K Rowling voted best living British writer by The Book magazine.

  
  

Page: 12(3)4

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:02 / 02.08.06
Now you have me at a disadvantage as clearly you know more about the Iliad than I but I'm willing to bet that when Homer wrote it he did so to appeal to as many people as was humanly possible.

Well, whether or not Homer wrote the Iliad, whether there was an Iliad and whether there was a Homer are rather complex questions. The rhapsodic tradition (a rhapsode being a kind of career reciter of heroic epic) which Homer (if such a thing there be) is drawing from was aimed, as far as one can tell, not at the broadest possible audience but the audience most likely to be able to support a rhapsode - that is, aristocratic courts. Later, you can see people reciting Homer competitively at religious festivals, which is a more popular phenomenon, although it still relies on the judgement of citizen men, a minority within the state.

So, that. Also, the idea that any given society before ours could not sustain more than one attitude to the audience is, not to put too fine a point on it, toss. In the first century CE Quintus Horatius Flaccus wrote odi profanum vulgum (I hate the unholy crowd), himself referencing Callimachus (c3BCE). The preface to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1609 edition), says that is was never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar - some say that this means it was not performed in his lifetime, others that it was performed privately for a privileged audience. Some people wanted to be popular, some people wanted the appreciation of a refined audience, some wanted both and produced different kinds of work based on this. That's a pretty old story, I think.

Iliad and Buffy, very quickly because offtopic: an individual, or subsequently individuals, have powers greater than normal man but less than gods. They are placed in a position of guardianship over mere humans. They ponder at various times shirking their status as protectors and living as "normal people" (The Movie, Prophecy Girl, Anne), but return to the fray, knowing that in doing so they sacrifice length of life for the glory of battle. Strong female characters, value of comradeship, humans as pawns and victims of greater forces, the tension of choice and fate - lots of stuff that I suspect makes it a better fit than Black Hawk Down, although I have not seen it and so may be wrong.

Finally, in your comparison of JK Rowling and Paul Auster's futures, I think there are two points to make:

Throughout history how many hypothetical Paul Austers do you think we've lost?

1. I think we have enough Paul Austers left.

2. Are you familiar with Calderon the Courtier, Rookwood or Sybil? These were all bestsellers, which are now almost totally obscure. Compare that with, God help us, Philip K Dick - barely known outside science fiction fandom and Haight-Ashhbury in his life, but thanks to the actions of a couple of dozen influential admirers and an ability with a high concept that would only become relevant with the advent of the Summer blockbuster, the ticket sales from films based on his work must be heading towards a billion dollars by now. Take that, John Buchan.

W.H Ainsworth, conversely, was a massively popular novelist in the mold of Sir Walter Scott, and regularly topped the bestseller charts alongside Dickens, but have you even heard the name, let alone read anything written by him? Popularity is not necessarily a guarantee of longevity. Barring the actual collapse of a civilisation, the number of copies of a piece of work left in existence need not be a huge issue - indeed, in fifty years' time, I imagine there will be models of disseminating information which we have not anticipated, which will have their own impact on the availability of text.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:14 / 02.08.06
Is that really true? Or is it your opinion? I happily read both.

The fact that you are probably not, alas, between the ages of 7 and 11 suggests that possibly what you do is not entirely relevant to what publishers believe about the publication and reception of childrens books - if you happily read to the end of my post, you'll note that I am talking about "kidlit blockbusters", and about the received wisdom of publishing, not about what I personally believe.

That said, Bleakley, Westerberg and Hopkins, The effect of
character sex on story interest and comprehension in children is probably your standard reference here. It says:

When male and female fifth-grade students were exposed to adventure, mystery, and humorous stories, boys rated stories more interesting when the main characters were male; girls were more interested in reading about female protagonists, although their preference was less pronounced.


There are suggestions as to why this may not be entirely a matter of gender - for example, that boys might prefer subject matter more usually found in stories with male protagonists (action, adventure, pirates and so on). On the other side, the paucity of stories with female protagonists might also explain why the preference there is less pronounced - if you read a lot, you will end up reading books with male protagonists, goes the argument. Nonetheless, there need be no hard and fast rule for people who work in publishing to go along with the received wisdom, publishing being a pretty conservative world. If anyone knows the gender split of people who read... oh, I don't know - the Spellcoats? - then go for it.
 
 
Quantum
20:19 / 02.08.06
Going to the previous page, Reidcourchie- Yes there is a subjective element to deciding between good and bad writing, but less so than the subjectivity of what we like. I might love my eight year old nephew's story of what he did during the summer and hate Will Self but, y'know, my nephew's not a great writer. There is an element of skill in writing, seperate from the work's appeal, and that is what I thought the poll was phrased to be asking about. The best writer, not favourite writer.

More women read fiction than men, statistically, and everybody reads more fiction than whites, statistically

As a white boy doing a lot of reading, I never knew that. Guess I'm an exception. Dragon

It's just that there are more non-white people than white people I think. Thus, statistically, more non-white readers.
 
 
Dragon
23:23 / 02.08.06
I see that both John Irving and Stephen King have asked JK Rowling to not kill off Potter in her final book.

Excellent advice! Do you know if she was she considering such a move?
 
 
Dragon
23:33 / 02.08.06
Good reply, Haus. I remember when I was reading 'funny books', I still enjoyed the female protaganist as much as the male. When I discovered science fiction, all the main characters were male, but I think that has changed, lately. I think that is for the better.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
08:00 / 04.08.06

I'll do a longer reply next week when I have more time:

"Going to the previous page, Reidcourchie- Yes there is a subjective element to deciding between good and bad writing, but less so than the subjectivity of what we like. I might love my eight year old nephew's story of what he did during the summer and hate Will Self but, y'know, my nephew's not a great writer. There is an element of skill in writing, seperate from the work's appeal, and that is what I thought the poll was phrased to be asking about. The best writer, not favourite writer."

Fine explain the objective part of the mechanism for deciding between good writing and bad? Because so far in this thread people just seem to know what is and isn't good writing. My grandfather thought that Wilbur Smith was the best writer ever, is this true? Because he knew it. If you know something other why are you right and he was wrong?

Haus I take your point but at I'm not sure of it's relevance. Just because something was popular once and is not now just means it's lost it's popularity. How it's popular is another question, presumably you could take one of the texts/author you mentioned and through decent marketing reawaken people's interest in them or maybe not, perhaps they lack the appeal that say a character like Sherlock Holmes has. If they were still popular now they'd be in print what I was saying is the things that are in print remain so because they are still popular, though obviously there are degrees of popularity (hence HP presumably outselling the Iliad at the moment). As for the entity that may or may not Homer what your saying doesn't stricly speaking preclude popularity just that he/she/it had a target audience. Most products do.

Dragon I've no idea what JKR plans to do with the character I was just interested that King made a comparison between the HP books and Sherlock Holmes a character that I think we can all agree has had some longevity.

Haus interesting comparison betwixt Iliad and Buffy, I don't think I'll push the Black Hawk Down comparison because it would seem irrelavant.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:59 / 04.08.06

Haus I take your point but at I'm not sure of it's relevance.

Reid, I can't do all the work here. Read your own posts, and work it from there.

Here's an example. You say:

Now you have me at a disadvantage as clearly you know more about the Iliad than I but I'm willing to bet that when Homer wrote it he did so to appeal to as many people as was humanly possible.

I respond to this claim. You then apparently forget what you have said and say instead:

As for the entity that may or may not Homer what your saying doesn't stricly speaking preclude popularity just that he/she/it had a target audience.

If your argument is going to not only change, but going to have always changed, I don't really see how one can with any confidence engage with it. Likewise, you said that JK Rowling's popularity meant that her work would be likely to be easy to find in the future, whereas Paul Auster's would be hard to find. I gave you examples of authors who were in their time popular, as J K Rowling is now, but whose work is now largely unknown. If you mean that the work of less well-known authors is less likely to survive at all, then we can talk about information transmission (as, indeed, I did, with my point that the way we store and consume written material is likely to change over the next 50 years), and how one of the ways texts from the ancient Greek world have survived is by people not valuing them enough not to use them for papier mache or notepaper, but since that is not how J K Roowling is going to be preserved it's something of a non-issue, I think.We can also talk about the people most likely to maintain transmission through periods of interruption - for example, a lot of books from pre-Christian Europe have survived primarily because the clergy felt that they were worth preserving, for aesthetic, archival or spiritual reasons. Others are preserved by accident. However, barring a cataclysm so great that the fortunes of Auster and Rowling's literary estate are the least of our worries, I think it is unlikely that either is likely within our lifetime to be utterly expunged from the world.

You also appear not to have noticed this paragraph:

So, that. Also, the idea that any given society before ours could not sustain more than one attitude to the audience is, not to put too fine a point on it, toss. In the first century CE Quintus Horatius Flaccus wrote odi profanum vulgum (I hate the unholy crowd), himself referencing Callimachus (c3BCE). The preface to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1609 edition), says that is was never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar - some say that this means it was not performed in his lifetime, others that it was performed privately for a privileged audience. Some people wanted to be popular, some people wanted the appreciation of a refined audience, some wanted both and produced different kinds of work based on this. That's a pretty old story, I think.

It may be that by the time you get back to this you will mever have written:

This idea that "popular" writers should be looked down on I'm pretty sure is a new concept as I struggle to think of many writers of the past penning their masterpiece and thinking : "Hmmm, I only want literary snobs to read this..."

If so, however, again, how does one have a conversation when the previous terms of the conversation are liable to change at any point? Before we even get onto the middlebrow pointlessness of claiming that anyone has _ever_ only wanted "literary snobs" to read their work.

Incidentally, a quick and unscientific process reveals that Paul Auster's New York Trilogy is currently higher in the Amazon.co.uk sales ranks than Wilbur Smith's The Triumph of the Sun

So, looking at what you have just said, and assuming that you have still said it, when you answered yourself:

Great books and authors that have gone missing yet Tolkein is still with us? Why? Because he's popular.

You got your answer wrong. The answer is not "because he's popular" - because you now say that no work that survives cannot be returned to popularity with a good marketing campaign, and thus that popularity is a constant potentiality (at least, I _think_ that's what you are saying...). The answer is "because of the printing press, the development of libraries and subsequently because of the storage and transmission of books as electronic data, and because of the continuity of transmission in the sixty or so years between their printing and the present day". Which is fine, but somewhat disagrees with your previous arguments.
 
 
Quantum
14:44 / 04.08.06
...explain the objective part of the mechanism for deciding between good writing and bad?

What? Ask an English teacher, things like use of literary techniques and a dramatic structure. Let's make it simple and use the example of boring non-fiction stuff like work presentations;
"Read through a piece with pleasure, and you'll probably find a consistent voice, a clearly targeted audience, complete and focused topic coverage, and clarity of language."
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:05 / 04.08.06
Hmmm... I don't know if that is true, though, Muntaq. For example, a lot of people read books that would not match these criteria, but then go back and buy further books by the same author. Now, we could just decide that these people have poor taste, or are stupid, or are seeking something from books other than formal excellence in the text..
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
15:09 / 04.08.06
There are plenty of books widely regarded as 'good' which don't have a dramatic structure- Freytag based his system on Shakespearean and Greek drama, and although it can probably be seen in much of Western literature it is not universal to every time, place or genre. Naked Lunch and Finnegan's Wake are two examples of 'important', perhaps 'timeless' (though obviously we can't tell just yet) texts that don't satisfy the 'Recognising Good Writing' criteria (or do they?) or have a conventional Dramatic Structure- though I may be wrong, especially about FW, and there may be better examples out there.
 
 
matthew.
15:52 / 04.08.06
[I would argue that Finnegan's Wake has a dramatic structure in a macrocosmic way, in relation to Joyce's other works and his developing style. Not only that, there is the character of HCE, who is developed into another Finnegan from the Irish ballad, and who has a traceable arc throughout the book.]
 
 
Quantum
17:26 / 04.08.06
Well, unconventional narrative structure and use of language aside* I would have thought we could agree that there is a difference between personal appeal and finely crafted prose/poetry/theatre etc. In fact I'd say it was obviously implied there is a difference by things like this;
"The Whitbread Book Awards are among the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards... launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience."
While defining 'literary merit' and 'enjoyable reading' might be nigh-on impossible I don't think I'm inventing a distinction between 'Gosh what a finely turned sentence' and 'OMG I LUV TEH POTTER PLZ DON'T DIE!1!'.
As it says in the link, the ephemeral 'literary merit' or lack of it defines what is pornography and what is literature. We can argue about what constitutes literary skill and storytelling genius etc. but surely, surely it's obvious there is a difference between BEST and FAVOURITE in this particular field of human endeavour.

*e.g. Voice of the Fire, Feersum Engine, Memento Mori
 
 
Quantum
17:31 / 04.08.06
@ Haus; ...are seeking something from books other than formal excellence in the text..

Precisement mon frere, it seems Reidcourchie is denying there can be such a thing as formal excellence in a text.
 
 
Jackie Susann
00:06 / 05.08.06
It seems to me like the main problem with this argument is that everyone is acting like the quality of a text can only be one of two things - objective or subjective. I would suggest that things like 'formal excellence' as much as 'a fun read', etc., are neither objective nor subjective, but social.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
08:26 / 08.08.06
What does that mean?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:16 / 08.08.06
While defining 'literary merit' and 'enjoyable reading' might be nigh-on impossible I don't think I'm inventing a distinction between 'Gosh what a finely turned sentence' and 'OMG I LUV TEH POTTER PLZ DON'T DIE!1!'. As it says in the link, the ephemeral 'literary merit' or lack of it defines what is pornography and what is literature. We can argue about what constitutes literary skill and storytelling genius etc. but surely, surely it's obvious there is a difference between BEST and FAVOURITE in this particular field of human endeavour.

You're not inventing it, no, but you are perhaps perpetuating an unhelpfully simplistic distinction. For reference, there have been several discussions of the issue of whether pornography and literature are necessarily mutually exclusive, unfortunately these took place in threads I hesitate to search for while at work. I suspect (but could be wrong) that what Jackie means by "social" might be a) that how people choose to express their appreciation of prose fiction is shaped by factors such as their background, and/or b) that how people choose to express their appreciation of prose fiction is shaped by their awareness of who they are talking to and how that audience expects them to express it.

So for example, if I wanted to express the sentiment "'OMG I LUV TEH POTTER PLZ DON'T DIE!1!'" in a way that would make it respectable and creditable to a certain audience, I might say "Personally, this reader finds Rowling's narrative to be highly compelling and the characterisation of her protagonists to be so finely tuned and resonant as to result in a deep emotionally involvement and investment". This, in a very real sense, is what is meant by the "OMG" statement, and the "OMG" statement is what the more English-Lit-essat version means in return.

There is no difference between BEST and FAVOURITE except in the minds of people who have been taught not to trust their own judgment or hold their own loves and hatreds in any esteem. I will continue to maintain this no matter how counter-intuitive it may seem to some. Actually, one of the signs that to my mind tells me that I'm right about this is how counter-intuitive it may seem to some - because whenever you start falling back on appeals to how intuitive a mindset seems, "surely, surely it's obvious", "common sense" by any other name, you're in danger of not having given that mindset a thorough enough interrogation.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
09:53 / 08.08.06
When you are taking guidelines that could be used for people to perhaps improve their writing, or help them with writing and turning them into some sort of set of badly defined standards, which you claim there is concensus for, the so called concensus is, I suspect, actually made up of very small group of people (lecturers, critics, Quantum the arbiter of all taste etc.), when in fact the only real concensus we've seen in the thread is the amount of people who voted for Rowling in that magazine poll.

The question is then why are we supposed to look down of Rowling's writing? Why are we also to assume that we know better than the stupid, stupid Rowling fans? (Incidently neither of the two previous questions are rhetorical.) The answer I keep on getting is literary snobbery.
 
 
Jackie Susann
08:19 / 09.08.06
There is no difference between BEST and FAVOURITE except in the minds of people who have been taught not to trust their own judgment or hold their own loves and hatreds in any esteem.

I disagree. I think there is, very clearly, a difference between BEST and FAVOURITE, and that difference is (like I said) neither objective nor subjective, but social. What does that mean? It means the difference isn't something that exists outside of particular institutions and value judgements - it isn't something, say, inherent in the very nature of written communication (or whatever adherents of the 'objective' view think). It also isn't something that only exists in the brains of people who are invested in it. The difference is constructed in social dialogues about what counts as valuable - dialogues that include the individual judgements made by readers and critics (popular and academic), but also institutional factors like genres, promotional material, bookshop shelving practices.

I think this is the only tenable answer. Otherwise you have to either assert that there's no real difference between the prose of, say, David Foster Wallace and Lee Child (of Jack Reacher fame), or that the difference is just a fact and has nothing to do with how people read their texts.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
09:37 / 09.08.06
There's a differance in writing styles, that's not the same as a differance of writing quality. Their may be a social reason due to external circumstances but if we accept that, as Quantum seems to have, then once again we are abrogating our own taste to someone else. I would also ask where the concensus for a social judgment of writing quality comes from becuase here we have, what, 5 or 6 people regularly contributing to this thread and we can't even find concensus.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
09:43 / 09.08.06
Jackie is there is a clear definition betwixt best and favorite does that then mean that the people who voted for Rowling and Pratchett are wrong? If so can you explain why you know better than them?
 
 
Quantum
10:49 / 09.08.06
The question is then why are we supposed to look down of Rowling's writing? Why are we also to assume that we know better than the stupid, stupid Rowling fans?

You're reading a lot of snobbery into this which I'm not intending. I am a Rowling fan. I like her work. I read Philosopher's Stone in 1997. I don't think HP fans are stupid. I am one.

Flyboy, I can see what you're saying, and the distinction between literature and non-literature is not one I'm going to defend, nor porn/non-porn.
But but but, the reasons I don't think best=favourite are compelling to me. Here's three;
I see writing as a skill, one that you can get better at, which implies that you can have better and worse writers just like better and worse artists, musicians, chefs and footballers.
If there were no difference, that would imply that all students and teachers of EngLit were deluded, and that literary criticism was all basically bollocks. If one book is no better than another then the techniques of close reading and so on are pointless.
My subjective experience of reading is qualitatively different for different books. To use a foody metaphor, some books are like pot noodle, a quick snack, some are like a seven course banquet. I like and enjoy books that are pretty badly written, so there's a difference between what I like and what I think is good writing (although obviously there's an overlap).

Let me put it like this- Pratchett is second on that list, is he the second best living British writer? I think not.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:02 / 09.08.06
OK, Quantum. Why do you think not? Try not to be sidetracked by responding to Reidcourchie - it appear not to get you very far. In what ways is Pratchett deficient that make him not the second-best living British writer?
 
 
Quantum
12:11 / 09.08.06
Uh, weak plotting, poor use of language, overuse of the same few techniques and tropes, an increasing sense as you read the later books that he's including more and filler material and less actual ideas.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
12:11 / 09.08.06
"You're reading a lot of snobbery into this which I'm not intending. I am a Rowling fan. I like her work. I read Philosopher's Stone in 1997. I don't think HP fans are stupid. I am one."

Hmm. Compared with:

"AAAAAARGH! *spews black bile from every orifice*"

You initial post in the thread obviously showing a great deal of respect for the people in the poll who voted for JKR and Pratchett. Again we get back to the question of why you're right and all the people who took part in the poll wrong.

Or of course you could just ignore me as Haus suggests.

Haus I'm not sure what you're comment was about, I will respond to the questions you asked further up the thread, it's just a matter of finding the time at the moment.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
12:17 / 09.08.06
"Uh, weak plotting, poor use of language, overuse of the same few techniques and tropes, an increasing sense as you read the later books that he's including more and filler material and less actual ideas."

Compared with my opinion of JKR which is complex plots (a diary that possess's you, brilliant), adiquate language stretching the vocab of her target audience, the later books embracing the life of the characters in an engaging soap opera fashion whilst containing both a self contained plot and advancing the overall meta plot, as well as managing to create an engaging world which has brought pleasure to millions and arguably aided in the teaching of reading comprehension.

But of course your opinion isn't an opinion it's FACT and you can back it up legally if need be, where is my opinion is wrongy, wrong, wrong, wrong...because?
 
 
Quantum
13:12 / 09.08.06
Sheesh. why you're right and all the people who took part in the poll wrong. Because they responded to the question 'who's your favourite writer' when the actual question was 'who's the best writer' and I think they're different questions.
JKR writes in a way I would have found totally appropriate for me when I was nine. I'm thirty one now. I want a bit more subtlety and complexity in my reading material sometimes, because I have grown as a reader, and so need something more challenging than simple mystery stories roughly equivalent to scooby doo.

I'm a bit lost to be honest, it seems obvious to me that this;
And he piled upon the whale's white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.
is better than this;
monkey chocolate! transformer brick face vomit cluster bnana mizpellingz blah blah fishcakes
and that indicates that some writing is better than others. Ergo, some writers are better than others. What am I misunderstanding?
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
13:25 / 09.08.06
Okay the thread has moved on a bit but I feel like some of the points raised earlier in the thread need addressing and I haven’t had the time to do so. My fault, apologies all round.

“Reid, I can't do all the work here.”

I suspect you’re putting yourself down, I’m sure you could, you just need to have a little faith in yourself.

“If your argument is going to not only change, but going to have always changed, I don't really see how one can with any confidence engage with it.”

You’re absolutely correct it was a sloppy argument and I contradicted myself as a result of forgetting what I had written earlier in the thread. If instead I can ask do you think the poet previously known as Homer a). Had a target audience (which I think you have suggested)? and b). Do you think he would have wished to be popular within that target audience? Now I don’t know a great deal about hallowed antiquity but I do know a little about the times that may or may not be correctly described as Medieval. It seems to me that the Iliad was relatively popular during that period as it was referenced in a fair few texts of the period, referring to the Iliad seemed to be a very popular literary tool. Would you agree that would demonstrate a degree of popularity? Also the fact that it’s still around and being discussed on comic web forums today and having films made about it would also suggest a degree of popularity to me?

“Likewise, you said that JK Rowling's popularity meant that her work would be likely to be easy to find in the future, whereas Paul Auster's would be hard to find.”

Now I have checked this time, that wasn’t what I said, what I did was set up a hypothetical model, it may have been sloppy, not the best thought out one but you did not, I’m afraid, engage with it, you in fact changed it. I’m not predicting the future, in 50 years time we may see a church devoted to Paul Auster that controls the world or more likely, as you’ve suggested, we are able to find his book and the majority of human literature in some kind of electronic format, or possibly as a soft drink. All I was saying is what if and attempting to relate it back for the purpose of people who write brilliantly by Quantum’s definition may have fallen by the wayside yet subjectively trashier writers are still popular today. Does that make sense?

“Some people wanted to be popular, some people wanted the appreciation of a refined audience, some wanted both and produced different kinds of work based on this. That's a pretty old story, I think.

It may be that by the time you get back to this you will mever have written:

This idea that "popular" writers should be looked down on I'm pretty sure is a new concept as I struggle to think of many writers of the past penning their masterpiece and thinking : "Hmmm, I only want literary snobs to read this..."

Again you’re right, more careless posting, my apologies. Do you think the majority of writers wish to be popular at least within their own target audience? How common do you think the opinions of the cited evidence are amongst authors (because two or three authors spread out across history doth not a consensus make)?

“Incidentally, a quick and unscientific process reveals that Paul Auster's New York Trilogy is currently higher in the Amazon.co.uk sales ranks than Wilbur Smith's The Triumph of the Sun”

Apropos of nothing Blue Horizon (released in 2003) by Wilbur Smith is 17th best-selling book in 2004 in Britain, Paul Auster does not appear on the list though Oracle Night was released in 2004 and the Book of Illusions was released in 2002. (Info from Writers and Artists Yearbook 2006 and Wikipedia.)

“You got your answer wrong. The answer is not "because he's popular" - because you now say that no work that survives cannot be returned to popularity with a good marketing campaign, and thus that popularity is a constant potentiality (at least, I _think_ that's what you are saying...). The answer is "because of the printing press, the development of libraries and subsequently because of the storage and transmission of books as electronic data, and because of the continuity of transmission in the sixty or so years between their printing and the present day". Which is fine, but somewhat disagrees with your previous arguments.”

So Tolkein is still with us because he’s unpopular and instead it’s the external factors you name which contribute to availability of all, yet in no way explain why some authors are in print and other aren’t are in fact the actual reason that Tolkein is still with us? I may have become terribly confused but you seem to be mixing up cause and effect. Tolkein and Ryder Stacy both have the same access to libraries, electronic data etc. but one is popular and the other isn’t. Though I concede your/mine point that popularity can be aided, arguably even created by marketing and advertising.

“What? Ask an English teacher, things like use of literary techniques and a dramatic structure. Let's make it simple and use the example of boring non-fiction stuff like work presentations;
"Read through a piece with pleasure, and you'll probably find a consistent voice, a clearly targeted audience, complete and focused topic coverage, and clarity of language."

Ah Quantum, brilliant! At last we have the ultimate arbiter of good taste Wikipedia and Melanie Spiller. Thank you. The thing is Quantum even when you follow all these guidelines you are still subject to the opinion of a lecturer or a publisher or the great unwashed of Babrelith’s very own Creation. You may also find that even amongst the cloistered halls of academia and the hallowed halls of the literati (or wherever they inhabit, possibly toadstools) that opinions (There’s that nasty word, spank it, spank it I say!) differ.

“Precisement mon frere, it seems Reidcourchie is denying there can be such a thing as formal excellence in a text.”

No I’m saying that my opinion (Insidious, fucking insidious I tell you!) is that formal excellence, guidelines notwithstanding, is still subject to the opinion of those empowered to describe it as such, be they publishers, lecturers, critics, competition judges, remarkably sentient passing frogs and fairy tale princesses, I will continue to believe this until you can demonstrate the mechanism for judging this objectively.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
13:28 / 09.08.06
"What am I misunderstanding?"

Other people's right to an opinion?

Incidently if you understood the questions and the 10's, 100's, 1000's of people who took part in the pole didn't are you smarter and if so how do you think that happened?
 
 
Quantum
13:47 / 09.08.06
So, let me get this straight in my head Reid- all judgements of quality are just opinion. And no person's opinion is worth more than another. So my hypothetical nephew is just as good a writer as JKR, and a random collection of misspelt words is as good as Moby Dick, because it's all just opinions, right? And the study of literature is a waste of time, no work is better than any other work, I'm assuming this extends to art, football and cooking too? So coal dust is actually just as tasty as cake, and I'm an intellectual elitist for suggesting that people can get better at something. Righto.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
14:07 / 09.08.06
"So coal dust is actually just as tasty as cake"

Pizza or curry which tastes better?

Whilst attempting to turn this into reductive nonsense explain how you remove subjectivity from judgements?

Explain why you know better than the people on the poll and myself? Why does your opinion have more validity? Why do you know more? Are you homo-superior, go on admit it you're wolverine?

And again whilst you seem to have avoided many of the questions asked in this thread please explain how: "AAAAAARGH! *spews black bile from every orifice*" is anything other than (badly written, IMO) elitist crap?

Quantum I'll believe you if you can address some of the points made in this thread by myself and other posters instead of screaming: "It's self evident! Can't you see you fools! Can't you see!" and expecting us to use the Wikipedia as the arbiter of taste and literary guidelines to use as a tool to enforce snobbery!

I say potato, you say potato
I say tomato, you say Pinter! Pinter! Are you fucking stupid!
 
 
Quantum
14:58 / 09.08.06
Quantum I'll believe you if you can address some of the points made in this thread by myself and other posters

Okey dokey, I'll do that now. But basically Deva said it best about four posts in.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:14 / 09.08.06
All I was saying is what if and attempting to relate it back for the purpose of people who write brilliantly by Quantum’s definition may have fallen by the wayside yet subjectively trashier writers are still popular today. Does that make sense?


Rookwood, as mentioned. I already addressed this, at some length. Novels that are popular at a particular point in time may cease to be popular, novels that are unpopular may become popular. As such, current popularity is a marker of current popularity. I at no point said that the Lord of the Rings was unpopular, to my knowledge - perhaps you could offer a citation there? I believe what I said was that, like Rowling and

Incidentally, could you bold quotes? I'm finding it difficult to follow the lines of argumentation in your posts.
 
 
Quantum
15:37 / 09.08.06
Actually, on second thought I don't think I'll bother, as whatever I write you will read as me screaming: "It's self evident! Can't you see you fools! Can't you see!" and expecting us to use the Wikipedia as the arbiter of taste and literary guidelines to use as a tool to enforce snobbery! and Pinter! Pinter! Are you fucking stupid!. When what I am actually saying is that in my opinion Deva was right when ze wrote Mostly people can distinguish between 'excellent read, jolly good stuff, I like this book' and 'the person who created this entertaining thing is the best living writer in Britain'.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:45 / 09.08.06
Generally, as soon as people start paraphrasing their interlocutors' arguments in sentences that end in gratuitous exclamation marks the chance of making progress largely goes out of the window.
 
 
Quantum
16:08 / 09.08.06
There is no difference between BEST and FAVOURITE except in the minds of people who have been taught not to trust their own judgment or hold their own loves and hatreds in any esteem. Flyboy

There's one scale of favouriteness, how much you enjoy a book, and the other scale of authorial skill. I think you're saying that the second one is a construct manufactured by various factors (academic elitism and classism for example) and propogated by teaching as the *actual* scale of quality. Is that about right Flyboy?
The reason I'd disagree is that in my opinion, the received wisdom about 'literary classics' is a third scale. I might read Catcher in the Rye, which is generally accepted as a classic and very well written, and not like it because it's not my kind of book, and also think that it isn't very well written.
To use Diana Wynne Jones as an example, I don't think she's regarded as a literary genius by teh establishment, but I really like her stuff. On the one hand because I've loved it since I was a kid and love stories about magic, but on the other because I admire the skill with which they are crafted, things like her concise descriptions and effective characterisation and such. I can see that both these aspects are reasons she's my favourite, and that 'best' could be seen to mean the critic's favourite. But I was taking it to mean my subjective opinion on quality of writing rather than my subjective opinion on books I enjoy.

Maybe I'm elaborating too much, but for me there's different ways a book pleases me. There's the level where the words are invisible and I'm totally in the story and afraid a beloved character will die and gripped, and there's the level where I am noticing the way the plot is constructed and the choice of adjectives and alliteration and so on. Then there's what the literary community thinks of it which is different again.
 
  

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