Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148

how do you define what, to you, is literature? do you have a particular personal criteria in which you judge a work to be literature versus just a novel or a story?

__________________

[Ignore Sig]

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2002
Location: Pere Ubu land
Posts: 1080

Off the cuff, I would classify anything written as literature that provides more than mere entertainment or raw information, ie. it has artistic merit.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148

in your opinion, can a book that was written with the express intent of raw entertainment still have artistic merit, even if the author didn't intend for it to be classified as such?

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2002
Location: Pere Ubu land
Posts: 1080

I've often heard it put that that communication in art is a joint effort between artist and audience (surprise!). I'm in accord with this notion, so yes, what you say is possible if rare.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148

maybe i'm just getting my wires crossed a bit, but isn't ALL great literature written with the intent purpose of entertaining? i mean, even if a book is written in order to teach you or inform you on a subject, the author still wants to make it inviting to the reader so that you pick it up and read it.


what do you think, since it's a lonely lonely morning and there's nothing else to discuss?

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2002
Location: Pere Ubu land
Posts: 1080

Well, yes. Generally speaking I think most writers regardless of artistic intent, bent, or the rent want to engage their audience. That said, though I don't think they are necessarily looking to merely provide the reader with pleasant way to pass the time. Some great works out there are fucking hard to read. I have attempted and failed to read Ulysses three times now, for instance. This is not a book to read for entertainment. I guess what I am saying is that there, for me, is a difference between being merely entertained by a book and being fully engaged. Both are pleasurable, but only one has a lasting impact.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18157

I have never been able to get very far into Ulysses before giving up. I don't think entertainment is the point in literature so much as engaging the reader or arresting their aesthetic sense during the experience. I am highly entertained by Hardy and Stendahl, and I couldn't put The Magic Mountain down. Those are all considered literature of one stripe or another, and I found them very entertaining in one way or another. I think it's just a matter of taste for some folks. I happen to like that dry stuff more than some folks. I know that bunkie loves Austen's stories and probably finds them all very entertaining. It's all about imagination and the life of the mind, and we could all stand to read a great deal more.

Having said that, I'm on the ninth in the Sharpe's... series, and I'm loving it. It's pure trash, but I enjoy pure trash.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: my mother's bloody womb
Posts: 7148

yes, pure trash is good for the soul.

*goes back to her gaiman, king, and martin books*


mmm...pulp.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged