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Post by Reba on Sept 6, 2018 21:51:59 GMT -5
of course not. enough to know its name though lol.
how many people have read the bible in its entirety? mostly those who have devoted their lives to it, i assume. i guess the bible only survives in elite academic circles then.
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The Seer
Reptile Researcher
Hoping that they were telling the truth.
Posts: 48
Likes: 7
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Post by The Seer on Sept 7, 2018 4:37:45 GMT -5
Bear, are you really going to make the claim that humanity is "utterly inessential" to art (Bear, 2)? Please, how has that been settled already?
And no, I'm not even bothering with quoting here. The citations should make up for it.
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Post by Reba on Sept 7, 2018 8:59:48 GMT -5
it’s already settled that I think that, based on a dialogue in a previous thread .
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Post by Grace on Sept 7, 2018 9:10:36 GMT -5
i'm not telling you to read any more, but i'd say none of those are his best.
if you're arguing that hemingway is economical on purpose, yes, that's probably true. how is that different than what vonnegut does?
not every piece of work has to "convey something more brilliantly than ever before" to have artistic merit. if we treat all writing with intentionality ^, i don't agree that intentionally being obscure means the work has (more) artistic value.
also, you're not correct about the bible. much of christian america makes it a point of pride to read the thing cover to cover but have not "devoted their lives to it" - they're not fundamentalists or however you would define that vague statement.
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Post by Reba on Sept 7, 2018 11:39:17 GMT -5
if you're arguing that hemingway is economical on purpose, yes, that's probably true. how is that different than what vonnegut does? what? are you responding to the quote I posted? the Hemingway passage is the same technique as vonnegut, yes, and equally bad. gass’s paragraph under it explains why. certainly not, otherwise we’d have far less work of artistic merit than we do. but even our “OK” authors wouldn’t be worth anything if “the best” weren’t what they were ultimately striving for. no, but it’s possible for some such writers to find worth, whereas intentional simplification is a dead end full stop. i don’t believe you, or them.
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Post by Grace on Sept 7, 2018 14:41:37 GMT -5
okay, my point was that hemingway uses a similar technique, if you think they're equally bad, fine.
i don't agree that "ok" authors are those that don't write in your flowery style or do so inadequately, and that "the best" are all flowery, verbose writers. that's so silly. how can there be one best style of writing?
i'm not talking about simplification for the sake of pandering or losing something. vonnegut aside, isn't the best way to construct a sentence the clearest way? even if the sentence discusses complex ideas? i'm not talking about dumbing down ideas.
enough people read the bible cover to cover for it not to qualify as an obscure text.
ONTO to the point of this thread, my biggest issue with vonnegut is the detached way he can sometimes construct the characters. metafiction is one thing, and i mostly like the way he employs it, but some of his characters feel too cartoonish that when they die, or tragedy befalls them, they are too unreal to feel empathy for. not all! but some
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Post by Reba on Sept 7, 2018 15:01:38 GMT -5
i don't agree that "ok" authors are those that don't write in your flowery style or do so inadequately, and that "the best" are all flowery, verbose writers. that's so silly. how can there be one best style of writing? i don't know how this became a dichotomy where i am the Great Adherent of purple prose. the reason i mentioned it in the first place is because of its obvious drawbacks-- how dumbing down is as wasteful as fluffing up, and as an aside, how dumbing down is actually worse because it doesn't even have the minority in its ranks who have made it work. the fact that it's not an obscure text was also my point. that a book that's rarely read cover to cover is not automatically obscure.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Sept 7, 2018 15:23:49 GMT -5
the thing, bear, is that we disagree with you on authors like hemingway or vonnegut having "dumbed down" anything... simplified ≠ oversimplified. i also disagree with your wish that art should get rid of meaning to just revel in aesthetics, but whatever floats your boat... just cut down the whining about authors who actually have things to say and choose not to flower it up.
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Post by Grace on Sept 7, 2018 17:21:51 GMT -5
i don't know how this became a dichotomy where i am the Great Adherent of purple prose. lol maybe when you said "well steered verbosity can't be topped"? dumbing down and being economical with language (which Hemingway arguably isn't in that passage, he goes on, doesn't he?) are not the same thing.
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Post by Reba on Sept 7, 2018 19:27:23 GMT -5
dumbing down and being economical with language (which Hemingway arguably isn't in that passage, he goes on, doesn't he?) are not the same thing. so you understand why such writing which is often labeled economical is actually not. and is actually bad. because it’s really just dumbing down. I guess truly minimalist prose can’t be topped either. like uh Beckett.
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Post by Reba on Sept 7, 2018 19:29:33 GMT -5
the thing, bear, is that we disagree with you on authors like hemingway or vonnegut having "dumbed down" anything... simplified ≠ oversimplified. i also disagree with your wish that art should get rid of meaning to just revel in aesthetics, but whatever floats your boat... just cut down the whining about authors who actually have things to say and choose not to flower it up. maybe U R right, you can’t dumb down an idea that’s dumb enough from its conception
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Sept 7, 2018 23:51:20 GMT -5
lol if you read anything that actually conveys complex ideas that aren't easy to grasp, like wittgenstein, you'd see the necessity for clear language and started begging for the author to actually dumb it down. luckily art, unlike philosophy, isn't all about having original ideas, but having an original voice to convey ideas close to the heart of the author; in other words, a healthy balance between aesthetics and meaning. you, on the other hand, seem to shift from arguing for art that is purely decorative to arguing against art that is "dumb" or without profound meaning, whenever it suits you.
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Post by Reba on Sept 8, 2018 2:42:41 GMT -5
lol if you read anything that actually conveys complex ideas that aren't easy to grasp, like wittgenstein, you'd see the necessity for clear language and started begging for the author to actually dumb it down. damn, who's the snob now? i got a feeling you weren't actually laughing out loud when you wrote that sentence. the conversation is about writing literature, not just writing. i fully realize that language is used in a wealth of other contexts throughout human society. are you implying that no literature ever actually contains complex ideas, or literature is incapable of conveying them well? either way you're a tool. all good art has run on essentially the same cycle of ideas for thousands of years. it's not the ideas themselves that are profound, it's the new forms in which societies, centuries & continents apart, have told them. if i wish for a world where aesthetics rules the roost that means a world where writers aspire to literature by actually studying the history & nuances of their craft, instead of futilely chasing a false attempt at new "meaning" which will end up transient or half-assed or both. of course i'm concerned with the stability of the content as it showcases the form.
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Post by Reba on Sept 8, 2018 2:50:15 GMT -5
Precisely why students of literature have become amateur political scientists, uninformed sociologists, incompetent anthropologists, mediocre philosophers, and overdetermined cultural historians, while a puzzling matter, is not beyond all conjecture. They resent literature, or are ashamed of it, or are just not all that fond of reading it. yall making me emptyquote like pandora?
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Sept 8, 2018 16:32:22 GMT -5
all i was saying is theres a place for expounding original or difficult concepts directly, and art is not usually it. it *can* be (and is sometimes), because art can do anything it pleases, but literary fiction, at least, is not the best place for presenting any groundbreaking theories, no. instead it's a way to present an artist's worldview (by showing something through its lens), and it can be connected to ideologies like romanticism or philosophies like existentialism. yes, sometimes a work of literature even predates/inspires such a movement, but that's definitely not a prerequisite for good art, nor even a guarantee for it being good. (EDIT: haven't seen your Harold Bloom quote--it kinda reflects my argument!) also i never claimed to be a big reader of difficult texts, nor have i implied its superiority over other lit, so i don't see any snobbishness in what I wrote. if i wish for a world where aesthetics rules the roost that means a world where writers aspire to literature by actually studying the history & nuances of their craft, instead of futilely chasing a false attempt at new "meaning" which will end up transient or half-assed or both. i guess that's fair. and what makes you think vonnegut didn't study the history & nunances of literature? (i feel somebody should make this convo more about vonnegut specifically again. i feel like ive run my course here.)
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