I like pop literature. The postmodernists sometimes approach it with an air of cultural superiority, the way the first anthropologists discussed what they called "primitive" cultures.
A favourite philosopher of mine (one I quote ad nauseum) has argued that genre literature is actually the legitimate inheritor of the great novels of the past.
He argues that science fiction (dealing with the possibilities of where we're going) and spy novels (dealing with dangers of modern politics and technology) are more relevant than the "serious" novels out there that are really just experimental literary masturbation, or the author's attempt to transcribe their dull family drama onto a page.
His theory is that novels become popular because of the ideas they play with -- ideas that the public is thinking about -- and they can't be dismissed as drivel as many intellectuals do. While postmodernists no longer believe novels "say" anything, the public knows differently, and become attached to things generally because of what they're saying.
Thus a badly-written novel like The Da Vinci Code is popular because people are increasingly questioning church-received dogma, while still not willing to give up on spirituality. And the Da vinci Code represents those things. Doesn't matter that it breaks all the rules dished out in creative-writing classes.
And meanwhile, creative writing students are writing just to be writers -- they rarely have something to say. They just want to be famous.
This philosopher -- John Ralston Saul -- takes a more Jungian approach. Rather than judging, we should be asking, "What does the popularity of a novel say about us? What are the ideas we feel the need to explore right now...? why are we exploring those ideas?"
It's a worldview I've taken to heart ^_^
"I consider the group I hang out with (IRL and online) to be pretty hard-core intelligentsia, and we spend most of our time discussing the mythological roots of names and relationships in Final Fantasy games. XD"
I've done that. I'm actually more interested in some of the mis-translations by English translators (and sometimes the original Japanese writers). For instance, how badly the French was screwed up in Final Fantasy ix >_
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-01 07:18 pm (UTC)A favourite philosopher of mine (one I quote ad nauseum) has argued that genre literature is actually the legitimate inheritor of the great novels of the past.
He argues that science fiction (dealing with the possibilities of where we're going) and spy novels (dealing with dangers of modern politics and technology) are more relevant than the "serious" novels out there that are really just experimental literary masturbation, or the author's attempt to transcribe their dull family drama onto a page.
His theory is that novels become popular because of the ideas they play with -- ideas that the public is thinking about -- and they can't be dismissed as drivel as many intellectuals do. While postmodernists no longer believe novels "say" anything, the public knows differently, and become attached to things generally because of what they're saying.
Thus a badly-written novel like The Da Vinci Code is popular because people are increasingly questioning church-received dogma, while still not willing to give up on spirituality. And the Da vinci Code represents those things. Doesn't matter that it breaks all the rules dished out in creative-writing classes.
And meanwhile, creative writing students are writing just to be writers -- they rarely have something to say. They just want to be famous.
This philosopher -- John Ralston Saul -- takes a more Jungian approach. Rather than judging, we should be asking, "What does the popularity of a novel say about us? What are the ideas we feel the need to explore right now...? why are we exploring those ideas?"
It's a worldview I've taken to heart ^_^
"I consider the group I hang out with (IRL and online) to be pretty hard-core intelligentsia, and we spend most of our time discussing the mythological roots of names and relationships in Final Fantasy games. XD"
I've done that. I'm actually more interested in some of the mis-translations by English translators (and sometimes the original Japanese writers). For instance, how badly the French was screwed up in Final Fantasy ix >_