My Toaster Strudel kicks your Pop Tart's butt.
I'm too stupid to read horror.
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 Karen Koehler |
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Posts: 1681 (06/02/08 09:31:52) Shocklineraholic |
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kpaffenroth |
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Posts: 736 (06/02/08 10:26:34) Master Shockliner |
You might be offended if someone said that you were a morally repugnant or inferior person for liking PopTarts, but as far as I can tell, no one did the
analogous with the discussion of literary quality and criticism. If anything, the moral judgment is usually in the direction AGAINST those who argue for
objective standards - calling them elitists who are either ruining the genre, or who are arrogant and oblivious to the merits of others.
Kim Paffenroth, Stoker Award Winner for Gospel of the Living Dead, and author of the new zombie novel Dying to Live. Visit him at his blog
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dogpoet |
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Posts: 3182 (06/02/08 10:39:57) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Nemonymous wrote: I have, but I preferred Ciccione Youth's cover which was over in three minutes: it was a dance remix, apparently, and so played at a faster tempo. There is a level of writing quality below which the author cannot communicate ideas effectively, and the reader cannot draw meaning from their words.Very true, but this very problem doesn't appear to have done Dan Brown's career any harm, does it? |
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lokilokust |
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Posts: 2729 (06/02/08 11:22:11) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
i also think that at least someone should point out that the phrase 'anti-intelligent' was never actually used by jack here, or elsewhere.
yrs. in exile,
-s.j. bagley |
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rbmoney |
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Posts: 2879 (06/02/08 11:22:15) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Hi, Kealan. It's good speaking with you again.
I think my main concern with the original Joshi thread was how some participants were lambasting criticism in general. And yet it is part of the universal discourse of mankind talking to and about itself. (I'm reading Faulkner now. Probably I should stop at one book. What it does to my writing ... well, I have no trouble being pretentious to begin with and pretentious with a phony Southern accent isn't any more charming.) Probably my own experience of reading Koontz and reading some of Joshi's criticism factors in. I read DK's The Keys to December which, I understand, was an early work he revised for the edition I read. I hate to think how it was before revision -- the conceit was okay, but the plot was standard, the characters just enough to get from plot point to plot point, and at least three times DK used pretty much the same word-by-word description for his main character. Meanwhile, the essays I've read by Joshi were insightful and I suspect the recent literary cache conferred on Lovecraft -- like the Library of America edition -- is in part a result of Joshi's championing HPL since the 1970s. T.M. -- absolutely right. You can't write for the critics. I suspect that now and again they may bring up something that could be useful to react to, but if the consequence of looking for that nugget is the threat of letting them sit in your head and direct the flow, don't do it. Randy M. |
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nkalanta |
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Posts: 12521 (06/02/08 11:34:21) Queen of Horror World
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Did you mean THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT (1995) or THE DOOR TO DECEMBER (2002)? Dean Koontz never wrote a book called THE KEYS TO DECEMBER.
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lokilokust |
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Posts: 2730 (06/02/08 11:34:31) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
also! here's the original thread where all this began, for those of you who are just joining us- http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/4342
yrs. in exile,
-s.j. bagley |
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Qusoor |
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Posts: 703 (06/02/08 11:45:23) Veteran Shockliner |
lokilokust wrote: Third post.
John Goodrich,
My blog: Flawed Diamonds "There's an old Indian proverb that says if you are ever lost, you should sit down and begin to make a curry. Before the water boils for the rice, someone will come out of the forest and tell you you're making it wrong." --Bruce Lierman, "Dutch Mess" |
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lokilokust |
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Posts: 2731 (06/02/08 11:49:00) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
i have deeply wronged you, and for that i can only beg for forgiveness.
yrs. in exile,
-s.j. bagley |
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Qusoor |
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Posts: 704 (06/02/08 11:49:57) Veteran Shockliner |
lokilokust wrote: Doesn't hurt to remind people.
John Goodrich,
My blog: Flawed Diamonds "There's an old Indian proverb that says if you are ever lost, you should sit down and begin to make a curry. Before the water boils for the rice, someone will come out of the forest and tell you you're making it wrong." --Bruce Lierman, "Dutch Mess" |
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ilurvnick |
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Posts: 18 (06/02/08 11:54:07) Shockliner |
As you have said, you read purely for pleasure. You do not read literary criticism of the genre. Yet you felt compelled to make a comment in a thread that dealt specifically with something you have no stake in, and are in fact ignorant of: literary criticism. And you got slapped for it.Are you saying that he is not permitted to comment in the thread in question and because he did he deserves to be slapped for it? Leading someone down the path of knowledge with education would result in a more favorable outcome than slapping them. But that wouldn't be as much fun as ridiculing them, would it? |
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gfaherty |
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Posts: 3321 (06/02/08 11:56:15) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Just my 2 cents.
A 'good' book doesn't have to be a 'well-written' book. It all depends on what you're looking for in a book. A well-written book isn't necessarily a 'good' book. Good is a subjective view - it's based on personal taste. What I think is good might not be what the next person thinks is good, but we should both be able to determine if it is well-written based on plot, grammer, vocabulary, setting, characterization, etc. No one will ever hold 'Carrie' up as an example of fine literature, but it was a good book to read. It did what it was supposed to do - it entertained the reader, it told a good story, and it was never boring. The fact is, literature or not, I expect those things from all the books I read. Compelling prose and complex subject matter don't make a good book, but when combined with a good story they create a great book - often a literary masterpiece. To only read 'literature' is like saying a person is only going to eat filet mignon; in its own way, that's just as bad as the uneducated person who refuses to try the filet mignon because it has a funny name or doesn't look like a hamburger. We can find something good at either end of the literary spectrum, just like that burger you cook on the grill can be just as 'good' as the $50 steak you had at a restaurant, only in a different way. It's all a matter of taste. And just like we have nasty, gristle-filled burgers at the ball park (90s horror paperbacks!), we also have nasty, gristle-filled pieces of steak at fine restaurants sometimes (literary works with no real story to them). There's good and bad wherever you look. One is not better than the other, merely different, and serving a different purpose.
JG Faherty
www.jgfaherty.com 'Everyone has a monster inside.' "Bones," in Cemetery Dance #58 (available now) "The Toll" and "Hybrids" in Wrong World, www.wrongworld.com (available now) "Experimental Subject," in Bits of the Dead "Family First," in Dark Territories |
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TMWright.gorezone |
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Posts: 170 (06/02/08 12:10:19) |
gristle-filled pieces of steak at fine restaurants sometimes (literary works with no real story to them).
Which, as you point out at the beginning of your post, is a subjective judgment (meaning, of course, that "literary works with no real story to them" are sometimes quite readable and enjoyable, depending on the reader: goes without saying, though I've said it). T.M. |
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gfaherty |
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Posts: 3322 (06/02/08 12:41:18) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
Hah! TM, you got me there! It's true - a literary book with no story could be a good book to someone if they enjoy it. It's tough to keep personal
biases from sneaking in!
JG Faherty
www.jgfaherty.com 'Everyone has a monster inside.' "Bones," in Cemetery Dance #58 (available now) "The Toll" and "Hybrids" in Wrong World, www.wrongworld.com (available now) "Experimental Subject," in Bits of the Dead "Family First," in Dark Territories |
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rbmoney |
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Posts: 2880 (06/02/08 12:43:15) Top-Tier Shockliner Demon |
nkalanta wrote: And that's what happens when you rely on memory ...
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Nemonymous |
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Posts: 597 (06/02/08 12:48:40) Veteran Shockliner |
gfaherty wrote:Can it be a good book if nobody enjoys it? Perhaps it hasn't met its optimum reader yet? There should be a dating agency for books and readers. A good book could be a good book and never meet its optimum reader, for whatever reason. Out of Print and only in a few 2ndhand bookshops? Is 'enjoyment' the only criteria for a good book? It may be a good book but painful to absorb. It may *do* you good, without realising it. But I do agree gristle is hard to chew. Silly Idea - The Baser Pulps
- Nemonymous - The Weirdmonger Wheel - Weirdmonger (Prime Book)
There are many worse ways of life than contented failure - Robert Aickman |
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dlatham |
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Posts: 893 (06/02/08 12:51:10) Master Shockliner |
There will probably be 600,000 books published this year: almost half will be self-published, trying to reach a reader base of maybe 7 million people. Of those
7 million people, half read only romance fiction, leaving 3.5 million to consider the remaining books. This is why on this board almost everyone tries to sell
books. Writing is no longer a bigger than life career. Anyone can do it without restriction. Having ability no longer matters.
I read a book last week by a big time author with more than 20 bestsellers. I counted 50 passive verbs in the first few pages. And then I spotted among other things the line: I'll do it, Rick thought to himself. Who else would Rick think to but himself? It's not a novel about telepathic ability. That is bad writing and editing. This is a writer with 20 bestsellers and countless editors. I've seen many horror writers do the same thing over and over. That's why I wonder why anyone bothers with criticism or worries about being read after they die. What difference does it make when you're dead? And why do people on the Other Dark Place board think they are so much better than people on this board? I don't quite understand the elitism when most stores don't even have a horror section.
Michael In Hell
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Michael Johnston |
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Posts: 83 (06/02/08 13:15:02) |
Kinda tangential, but I was reminded of Graham Joyce's guest editorial in Postscripts 13. Worth reading in full, but here's a bit on his attempt to
'keep up' with the critically lauded:
"Because I've long been puzzled about why elements of style (which is surface) have long been held to encode superior literary value than narrative (which is content) I've made a bit of a study trying to discern these higher purposes. For quite a while I set myself the task each year of reading the short-listed novels for the Booker Award, on the basis of "keeping up". Keeping up with trends, innovations, exciting developments and thrilling new voices, that is. Well, after a decade of this tedious enterprise I concluded that I hadn't found many of those things in the short-lists so I gave up. I did try to "keep up" with the annual winner on exactly the same basis. In that I get excited by fine writing and a fresh voice, I'm no different than any writer. But ultimately, after John Banville's The Sea, I also absconded on the winners. I figured I already had enough ponderous adjectives in my own modest store, cheers, fanx, ta. I also figured that a model of creeping narcolepsy wasn't good for me, and that if it's fresh writing I wanted then I should look elsewhere." |
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Posts: 28156 (06/02/08 13:34:50) Administrator |
I love Graham Joyce -- and that was a great editorial.
Shocklines.com -- your one-stop shop for hell on earth
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Laymon fan |
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Posts: 455 (06/02/08 13:35:13) |
Thank you to those who have offered kind words and support, either in the thread or in personal messages. Particularly to those who recognised the intended
humour in my post, rather than it being a hurt whine as some TOPD people have suggested. As has been kindly pointed out, I don't consider myself an
intellectual and I have no problem with Jackula expressing that opinion of me, to my face. I was merely pointing out the snide way in which he chose to make
his "anti-intellectual" (got it exactly right that time, but to an ignoramous like myself anti-intelligent means exactly the same thing) comment on a
different board, that as far as he knew I was completely unaware of, for the gratification of his cohorts.
Jason |
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