Literature: What redeeming values does it have

[shadow_archmagi]

Why does a book being difficult to understand mean it has more value? Why is it that there's some kind of hidden 'real' or 'deeper' meaning? And why I say why, I mean both

1. Why would the author put that there. I mean, it's one thing to have a philosophical message about the meaning of life, but why hide it in a conversation about bagels? Is the story meant to stand on its own, with the sub-story just being a hidden influence, or is the audience intended to sit back and read it two or three times and puzzle out every symbol?

2. If the author didn't put it there and this is just one way of many of looking at the story, why is this story significant then? I mean, if the only thing that counts is the interpretation, then shouldn't that mean that the source material is irrelevant, and famous writers shouldn't be revered?


--
I think what bothers me most is that I'm an English major. I really like reading, and there's nothing I enjoy more than talking about Pratchett or Adams. I like writing, too, and I like to think that once I've had enough practice I'll be quite good. My creative writing classes and teachers certainly seemed to say so. I don't think I've ever had anyone say to me "Pete you are just not very good with words."

So why is it that when I'm given George Elliot I can't help but think "This book is not very interesting and takes a long time to go nowhere. Even after I spent a few hours figuring out the weird two hundred year old prose, the thing still revolves around character types and ideas that just aren't relevant anymore. No, I don't think that the river is a metaphor for experiencing life."

[The Unborne]

Big questions. :smalltongue: Well, the second one at least, but here's my quick response:

1. Depends on the author and what time period I think. Shakespeare writes thinking English is still a case language half the time, hence all the sentence structure that turns people off to him. Others? Maybe the hide the philosophical discussion in an argument about muffins because their government censors anything that is obviously politically/religiously/philosophically against the state. Some, like me, probably feel preaching some kind of meaning to the reader is as good as subtly hiding it within a story. And then you get the writers who think people who do not mess around with the meaning within a piece of work are not true readers at all. There's probably tons more, but that's what comes to mind.

2. Here's the hard one but I think the problem stems from an understanding that interpretation means we can see whatever we want to see, and that depreciates the value of all literature. Sure, you can interpret anything from a piece of work, but there are a lot of instances where interpretations fall flat. If you see all things as symbols for sex, good for you; however, if it does nothing to further an understanding of the text, then it probably was worthless to begin with. Some interpretations work for different stories, blah blah blah.

Maybe every text is a theme park. Everyone knows a theme park for their roller coasters. I mean, without a map you can still walk around the park and find each ride, but maybe there's a few of us who go around passing all of the McDonalds and Bell/Sledgehammer games looking for that one restaurant, which makes a great lunch before we head out towards the Millenium Force.

[Gnoman]

Literary value has nothing to do with "being difficult to understand." Consider that authors like A. Conan Dyle and Laura Ingalls Wilder are revered workse of literature, and are still read in their original forms by children. The difficulty of some works is primarily a function of time, and older works are considered to have more literary value. Why? Because they give you a snapshot into the culture of the ere. Reading Oliver Twist gives you a much better view of the poor in a 19th century city (even if exaggerated) than reading about it in a textbook. Literature is a distillation of an era, their views about the world, and the way they lived.

[Mina Kobold]

Hmm, good questions. :smallsmile:

1. Why not? Why spell out the solution to the puzzle and write in the words of the crossword for the reader? Because it is satisfying to be able to say that you could figure it out, to look for clues and cues on your journey.

After all, it's the journey that counts. :smallsmile:

It's also fun to reread something and suddenly noticing something new, another way to understand the story, or another story entirely, a new experience.

2. The interpretation is how you see the story, how you imagine the hero's looks, who you think is right and how everything fits together but to do all that then you need the story itself.

Some stories have bigger differences in interpretation than others as well, a silver-age Batman story may just be a goofy good vs. evil story that leaves you with an enjoyable experience but doesn't expect your interpretation to differ much from the next guy while Watchmen leaves the very question of who is right, whether Ozymandias' plan will work and so on entirely up to the reader. Both can be enjoyable but each in their own way and nobody say you have to read them to have those conclusions but where's the fun in jumping to the end without taking the trip and seeing the scenery first? :smallsmile:

[Lord_Gareth]

Before this continues, we should define what "literature" is and what defines it from non-literature.

[White_North]

1. Well, there can be several reasons for that. One of them, and perhaps the one that earns the author the most ill will, is that the author delierately makes his message as difficult to understad as possible. Take T. S. Elliot, for example. The man was frighteningly well-read and intelligent, and he wanted to adress his poems to people in the same league as him. I'm pretty sure he once went on record to say he didn't want factory workers to read his poems. Since you're bound to read "The Wasteland", as an English Major, you'll quickly see what I mean. It's chock-full of sometimes incredibly obscure literary references. Elliot's editor had to force him to put in notes so that people who weren't him could have a chance of understanding. The idea behind it is that, if you want to be able to understand, you have to have read as much as him. He essentially forces you to become more cultured if you want to read him. I understand he did that because he thought people in his time had abandonned their ties with their cultural past. And so he wanted to "teach" them.

Alternatively, as was said before, it can also be because writer's aren't philosophers. They're not here to tell you what they think directly. They're here to make you figure it out for yourself. You know how a good tutor won't simply give you the aswer to a question, but just help you figure it out? Authors are a bit like that, in my opinion. They're not here to lecture, but to help you see fr yourself something they think is interesting. And the fact that you figure it out for yourself makes it that much more real to you. I addition, you can taylor that lesson to suit you, since you can project a certain amount of personal perception onto the work. It's rare that two people will walk away from a work with the same message in their heads. They're both allowed to figure out the author's intention, but in their own ways. Which brings me to...

2. Well, I personally don't think that a work of literature is completely subjective to interpretation. In most cases,I think the author will have something to say, even if it is only a feeling or a vague impression. What the author thinks will inevitably color his work, and that thus it reflects that part of him, in a demonstrable manner. But the thing about that "intention", is that it's up to the reader to determine how he interprets it. Take "The Tyger", for example. It can be read as an outcry against a mechanized world, a thought on the nature of God, something about the loss of innocence, or any number of other ways I'm sure people will find. The point isn't that Blake deliberately put all of those in there. The point is that most, if not all, of these interpretations relate back to a central feeling: an unease about the contemporary world. William Blake put that in there. Now, it's up to his readers to determine how that unease translates into their own perceptions of the world. See what I mean? A great writer isn't great because he has something really smart to say. He's great because he helps you figure something out for yourself.

[Goosefeather]

Have a look at Roland Barthes' essay on the Death of the Author (http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/) - I don't entirely agree with it, and it can be a little hard to wade through, like a lot of post-structuralist writing, but it poses some interesting challenges regarding the respective roles of Author, Reader and Critic.

To quote the Wikipedia page,

In his essay, Barthes criticizes the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of the author's identity — his or her political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the author's work. In this type of criticism, the experiences and biases of the author serve as a definitive "explanation" of the text. For Barthes, this method of reading may be apparently tidy and convenient but is actually sloppy and flawed:

"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."

Readers must thus separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate the text from interpretive tyranny (a notion similar to Erich Auerbach's discussion of narrative tyranny in Biblical parables). Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. In a well-known quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a "text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations," drawn from "innumerable centers of culture," rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, "but in its destination," or its audience.

No longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a "scriptor" (a word Barthes uses expressly to disrupt the traditional continuity of power between the terms "author" and "authority"). The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work and "is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, [and] is not the subject with the book as predicate." Every work is "eternally written here and now," with each re-reading, because the "origin" of meaning lies exclusively in "language itself" and its impressions on the reader.

Barthes notes that the traditional critical approach to literature raises a thorny problem: how can we detect precisely what the writer intended? His answer is that we cannot. He introduces this notion in the epigraph to the essay, taken from Honoré de Balzac's story Sarrasine in which a male protagonist mistakes a castrato for a woman and falls in love with her. When, in the passage, the character dotes over her perceived womanliness, Barthes challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking, and about what. "Is it Balzac the author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know." Writing, "the destruction of every voice," defies adherence to a single interpretation or perspective.

[SuperPanda]

While I agree with your Lord Gareth, I think the original post makes it clear that this particular thread is about the western literary Canon, also known as "Those dead white men plus Emily Dickenson."

Now while I jest (sort of) about the ethnic and cultural basis and bias for what most of the English speaking world will think of when using the word "Literature" in a discussion of this nature, it is none-the-less the academic and cultural basis of our shared cognitive frame of the word Literature. (translation from quasi-linguistic speak is: If I say literature you think Shakespeare and you don't think Tom Clancy).

There is no objective reason why Shakespeare is considered literature and Tom Clancy is not. There could be one, but there isn't one at this moment because there currently are not any objective rules for determining the value of a text for entry into the Literary Canon, especially recent texts. One rule is "withstanding the test of time." This is one of those reasons why older texts are more "valuable" in terms of literary merit than recent ones.

Reading Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens will paint and incredible picture for you not just of life in the time frame of the books, but it captures something both inherent to the time period (zeitgeist) and the human experience itself.

When I say the "Human Experience" I mean that the stories are relevant to our lives even now, after all that time. Sometimes that is better done over muffins.

So my answers:

Question: Why does a book being difficult to understand mean it has more value?

Answer: I can only think of two books off the top of my head prized for being "difficult to understand" and those would be Joyce's Ulysees (which most Harvard professors haven't read, let alone graduates) and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (which is bloody aweful).

As reading goes, they aren't generally considered great books. However what you have in both of these books is two people who are acknowledged to be capable of incredibly intelligent and insightful writing (not to mention engaging and fun) who set out to accomplish something beyond their own graps. These two texts are prized for their faults because its the literary equivalent of watching Einstein wrestle with Quantum physics. For Pynchon I'd recommend The Crying of Lot 49 It convey's much the same messages that are in Gravity's Rainbow while being much, much, shorter and more pleasant to read. For Joyce there is Dubliners which includes many amazingly captured moments through short stories. The big books which are important for being hard really only survive because their author's are famous.

Question 2:
Why is it that there's some kind of hidden 'real' or 'deeper' meaning

Answer:
Sometimes there is not. "A Rose is a Rose is a Rose" - Gertrude Stein.

People like to find meaning in the chaos of artistic expression. Our brains are designed to find patterns.

That doesn't mean the pattern isn't there. Our brains are also designed to create patterns, even subconciously. Pynchon is actually famous partially for intentionally avoiding creating sensical patterns in Gravity's Rainbow. I didn't appreciate the result myself, but that's a matter of taste. On the other hand, when Hemingway has a rainy day in his stories, something somewhere is dying. This is a theme running through Hemmingway's work and creates a pattern which is more than just a rose, and it allows for metaphor to be used to convey a meaning and an experience that goes beyond text on a book. Personally I don't like Hemingway that much either, but I know why he's considered so good at what he does. He's a master craftsman who makes a craft I don't personally need large quantities of but greatly appreciate having a little of around. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy alot of things that to a reader now would be "hidden" were incredibly obvious to him then. When Swift wrote "A Modest Proposal" he used hidden language to thumb his nose at the people in charge while riling up a greater response.

Sometimes the hidden message is in what's not there. There are several accounts of colonized or even enslaved populations writing heavily skilled and articulate accounts of their lives in the language and styles of their conquer to prove that their people are at least equal in potential to the colonizing/enslaving power. The lack of a focus that the writer is of (insert ethnic group here) is the hidden meaning which would have been very powerful to its intended audience.

Question 3: Why would the author put that there. I mean, it's one thing to have a philosophical message about the meaning of life, but why hide it in a conversation about bagels? Is the story meant to stand on its own, with the sub-story just being a hidden influence, or is the audience intended to sit back and read it two or three times and puzzle out every symbol?

Answer: Um... what?

Really, can you be any more exact here. I have similar tastes to you though I find Adams to have been unrefined while Pratchett is consistently amazing in his execution, I still enjoyed both greatly.

"Why would the author put that there?" - most likely because they wanted to. I mean, Pratchett puts in philosophical commentary on the meaning of life all the time and sometimes its obvious and sometimes its not. I mean to think of Monsterous Regiment (usually not one of the better received books) "When the metal meets the meat, try to be the metal." On the one side, thats a funny way of saying it, on the other that pretty much embodies the military and diplomatic strategies of many powerful government bodies throughout man kind and a pretty honest human approach to "threat assessment." If you haven't read it yet "Only You Can Save Mankind" is full of this "meaning of life" stuff in a story about a 12 year old dreaming that he's the only hope of a video-game alien race trying to survive against the forces of humanity's game player population. Its fun, its silly, its totally Pratchett (early Pratchett), and its full of subtle and overt commentary on the nature of human beings, of how we cope with our world, how we deal with each other, the nature of relationships, and all of that. For a book obviously written for younger readers, its up there with Gulliver's Travels in literary merit though the latter has the value of age giving it more "worth".

"it's one thing to have a philosophical message about the meaning of life, but why hide it in a conversation about bagels?"

Probably because that's how it works. How many Zen Koans, Proverbs, Aesop's Fables, or other distillations of wisdom, actually make sense if they're translated into "normal speak?" Also, when was the last time you sat around talking about the meaning of life or the true nature of Freedom, or what Love really means? Works like The Symposium by Plato are very few because outside of Socrates's dinner parties there aren't that many places where its believable for an assembly of geniuses of the time to gather and spend the evening dissecting each other's thoughts on the unquantifiable aspects of humanity. Instead we have books, which brings us back to the muffins. Even when we're talking about the nature of life, we don't really understand it. We do however understand muffins, and we're trying to say that life is sort of, something like muffins; well, maybe only if you squint with your left eye and look slightly past the muffin so its all blurry like. It also helps if you've had a few pints.

Tongue out of my cheek for a moment, there is another more important reason why the big themes aren't always readily apparent and why there is discussion over them. Truly great books become conversations between the author and the reader which is why you are able to read it more than one time with new understanding and appreciation.

Question 4: 2. If the author didn't put it there and this is just one way of many of looking at the story, why is this story significant then? I mean, if the only thing that counts is the interpretation, then shouldn't that mean that the source material is irrelevant, and famous writers shouldn't be revered?


Answer: If you haven't run into it yet, it is my sad pleasure to introduce you to something called "The Intentional Fallacy." Basically for a long time people tried to value a work by how well it did what the author was believed to have been trying to do. The Intentional Fallacy says this is bunk and the work should be valued instead on what it did do, whether or not the Author knew they were doing it at the time. In some situations this is problematic. "A Modest Proposal" has a very clear intention that it executes very well as does Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticsm."

What the intentional fallacy is good for though is in re-establishing an obvious but easily forgotten fact. A book exists as a story only while its being read. Tom Stoppard demonstrated this (show don't tell) in Rosancranz and Guildenstern are Dead (which made a wonderful filmed version). For the story to exist there needs to be a Story Teller (Author) a Medium (book) and an Audience (reader) and the three interact with each other to create this unique instance of the story.

One of the problems you'll encounter on your Lit degree (I know I did) is that a lot of the theory is heavily political. There is gender and race politics in literary study because the canon provides a cultural basis and guideline. As part of a noble endeavor to open the Canon to authors of varied backgrounds and expand our cultural awareness some scholars decided to attack the very notion that the author was important in the first place. The theories have their merit in some places and fall apart in others, in the end you have to interpret it all for yourself. But the important thing is: This is in itself an integral part of our culture. Deciding for yourself.

Again, I have to say it: Deciding it for yourself is a big part of our cultural identity (our here being the English speaking world at least). We routinely process claims from multiple sources and work out who or what to believe, we bombard ourselves with conflicting ideas and often with downright blatant misinformation and through that cultivate critical thinking skills which we value very highly. Not all major cultures on Earth do that. One culture I've been learning about finds it very strange and a little scary just like we find not doing it very strange and a little scary.

But that's a tangent of its own right. In many ways the interpretation is a sign of how good a mathematician you are, but you can only do so much work with basic integers. Sooner or later you'll need decimal points, variables, derivativeness, square roots, exponents, and imaginary numbers. Sooner or later you'll need Pi. The source controls the complexity of the numbers your working with, the reader determines if you get 2+2=4 or E=MC^2 out of it. To have a moment of true insight with a book you need only yourself. to have a moment of shared insight with a book you and the author need to use the book to transport yourself and the other to the same level of awareness.


The Literary Greats are considered who they are because they routinely achieve this with a large and varied audience, but like with my and Pynchon sometimes two minds can understand what the other has to say and just not feel much like listening.

Edit (acknowledgements to posters between Gareth and me who posted while I was typing).

White North summed up that relationship between the author and the reader better than me. Thank you.

Goosefeather - I agree with your position on "The Death of the Author." I think thats the work which spawned the Intentional Fallacy as well of if not that essay than another post structuralist did.

[snoopy13a]

The reason complexity is praised is because our human experience is complex and a literary work that speaks to people on different levels best reflects reality. Additionally, complex imagery does appeal to a discering and experienced reader who is willing to devote time and effort into fully understanding the text.

There is absolutely wrong with escapist literature. It is meant to entertain and to enjoy. I'm sure many English professors enjoy reading Harry Potter or John Grishman simply because they enjoy a good story (there are some literary snobs who despise escapist literature but that is more a function of snobbery than anything else- i.e., since the common masses like it, they must not).

However, some of the characteristics that make escapist literature appealing- straightforwardness and readability- also make it less attractive to academic study. So, the complex literary works are studied while the bestsellers rarely are simply because of their approachability and ease of reading. To draw and analogy, it is really important to change the lightbulb when your lamp goes out and lightbulbs are important, worthwhile things. However, you don't need to be an electrician to do so. Thus, there is no reason to dedicate academic study to say, Dan Brown because the average person grasps the essence of his works.

There isn't anything inheritely wrong or bad about this. It is simply the nature of the two.

[Science Officer]

This (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2112#comic) explains much, I feel.


I believe that this provides some interesting illumination on Death of the Author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote) theory.


Aside from the issues 1 & 2, of hidden meanings in books, and the interpretation of meanings in books, I suppose another part of this difficulty is that some books that are considered works of literature, simply aren't good. Sort of like the true (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArt) art (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsIncomprehensible) problem.

Whether you believe that the quality of a book as literature is objective or not, I think that perhaps you might agree that these qualities are determined in a way that is less objective than it might be. Or rather, is determined incorrectly.
Consider who decides what is literature and what isn't, and consider Francis Bacon's Idols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Organum#The_Idols).


--From a man who doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Dr.Epic]

Yes literature, another blunder of the human race and anyone who composes a masterpiece with the written word is a horrible person. Shakespeare, how dare you!!! Arther Conan Doyle, you should be hanged! Mark Twain, you're inhuman! Written words, they're so stupid...which is why I'm saying they are in a forum with text...um, yeah.:smallconfused:

[White_North]

Yes literature, another blunder of the human race and anyone who composes a masterpiece with the written word is a horrible person. Shakespeare, how dare you!!! Arther Conan Doyle, you should be hanged! Mark Twain, you're inhuman! Written words, they're so stupid...which is why I'm saying they are in a forum with text...um, yeah.:smallconfused:

Dude, calm down. The OP clearly doesn't have any beef with literature. He even states that he's an English major. He just wonders why some works of literature have to get so damningly obfuscating, which I think is a sentiment that anyone who's studied Literature in college can relate to. Although, I have to admit, the title of the thread itself is more than a tad... agressive.

[toasty]

A lot of literature is a waste of time. I say that as a man who likes reading and loves literature but is majoring in English Writing (that is to say, some strange sort of writing degree that is basically a technical writing degree, but not entirely) instead of English Literature. I took a Film/Lit class last year with probably one of the best English Lit teachers we have on campus and I couldn't stand any of the lit/poetry stuff we did in that class. Plus I'm sick of the "canon" of English Literature. Oliver Twist is badly written, I'm sorry. Twain is good, but Shakespeare is hardly "literature" he's just a good example of Elizabethan era pop writing. He had some good themes, but so does damn George Lucas and no one really considers Star Wars high art.

Bleh, that was just my little rant on English Lit. I can't stand most of the stuff. This does of course have to do with the fact that I'm opinionated, hate trying to find meaning in things that don't strike me as obviously symbolic (read: 90% of literature, apparently:smallsigh:) and really dislike it when I feel like a book is basically propaganda for a political/religious view that I find utterly pointless (Slaughterhouse Five, I'm looking at you. :smallannoyed:)

Having said that, I really enjoy reading and there are a lot of good books, i'm just not one for the "canon" of literature.

[0Megabyte]

You may say Shakespeare isn't literature, but his writings have endured where most pop writing has not.

The fact is, you have an opinion on Shakespeare. You're familiar enough with his works to find you aren't terribly impressed. You probably don't have an opinion on most of his contemporaries, though. Do you know why?

Because Shakespeare endures. Nobody likes everything, but disliking something doesn't in and of itself mean the work is bad, and you not being impressed doesn't mean it isn't impressive.

Shakespeare wouldn't endure if people didn't like it. A civilization keeps the stories that mean something to it with them. And Hamlet means something. Macbeth means something. Richard III means something. Othello means something. These stories mean something to this civilization, and it doesn't hurt that the man basically wrote down a good chunk of the language for the first time.

As for George Lucas: I wouldn't be so sure that Star Wars isn't high art, if I were you. It's certainly being shown in film schools. It has an important place in film history. It has an appealing story told in an appealing way. It caught the zeitgeist of a generation, which is always important with these sorts of things. Compared to the vast majority of movies you and I both see each year, it's superior. And if I had to guess which movies would still be watched in five hundred years, Star Wars would be at the top of that short list. But of course we'll see.

Speaking of Lucas, if he'd made a large number of movies of the same quality as Star Wars, perhaps one could talk of him as similar to Shakespeare. The fact of the matter is that Shakespeare has a much much larger body of work, and of vastly more consistent quality. (Even then, some of his works suck. But compared to Lucas? No comparison. He has American Graffiti, THX 1136, and Star Wars. Oh, and Empire and Return were his idea, though other people wrote and directed them. Shakespeare has a much greater list.)

[Sarco_Phage]

Okay, so, I'm just gonna pop in here and drop some suggested readings:

Hans-Robert Jauss for his Reader Reception theory.
Derrida and Barthes for post-struc.

Read up on those and decide if Literature has any inherent value.

(hint: it doesn't. but then again, neither does money. it's a useful label, and such).

[SuperPanda]

Go deep enough into post modernism and nothing has "intrinsic" value. Heck go deep enough into Quantum physics and you get the same thing.

Even protons have building blocks apparently and electrons / photons are both energy and mater at the same time.

If science can't ascribe an intrinsic value to mater then how is something as subjective as Art supoose to have one?

That said, some Art is more valuable than other Art and once in a while there is a piece of Art which, for whatever reason, becomes valuable to the culture just as Megabyte put forth.

Sometimes greatness is acheived with careful planning. Sometimes Greatness is achieved through incredible skill. Sometimes Greatness is achieved by having survived. Sometimes greatness is achieved by having good timing. Sometimes greatness is achieved by being observant. Sometimes greatness is achieved by being contrary.

In every single case though, regardless of other conditions, Greatness is achieved through dumb luck.

Books and knowledge quite possibly more valuable than anything which survives today have been lost in every field of human endeavor. Masamune's technqiues for forging steel has been lost to history. The identity(s) of Homer have been lost along with his (their) other works. Religious texts, pieces of philosophy from Plato's rivals and possible betters, and much much more.

Surviving in the public mind as an exemplar of wit and sophistication (Shakespere) for a single lifetime is practically impossible, surviving for more than 5 life times even as the language changed is damned impressive.

So, does Literature have any "intrinsic" value? I'd have to say, no more than Quantum Physics, Evolutionary Pyschology, Archeology, History, Art, Sports, Money, Stamps, The Nation-State, truth, or even life.

None of those have any "intrinsic" value but all of them have value.

Part of the study of Literature is learning where the value comes from. Its a part of the study of Literature that most teachers of Literature forget to include.

[Goosefeather]

Okay, so, I'm just gonna pop in here and drop some suggested readings:

Hans-Robert Jauss for his Reader Reception theory.
Derrida and Barthes for post-struc.

Read up on those and decide if Literature has any inherent value.

(hint: it doesn't. but then again, neither does money. it's a useful label, and such).

Ugh, I can't stand Derrida. I agree with Foucault on this, Derrida's writing consists of 'obscurantisme terroriste' (terrorism of obscurantism) - “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.”

[Sarco_Phage]

Ugh, I can't stand Derrida.

One might argue that Derrida is actually acting out his whole decentralization idea in his very writings, but that's far too meta for my tastes.

At any rate, you should try Jauss. He has a very clear (if REMARKABLY dry) writing style that is very concise and scientific.

[Goosefeather]

I'll look into it, thanks! :smallsmile:

[Ozymandias]

Okay, so, I'm just gonna pop in here and drop some suggested readings:

Hans-Robert Jauss for his Reader Reception theory.
Derrida and Barthes for post-struc.

Read up on those and decide if Literature has any inherent value.

(hint: it doesn't. but then again, neither does money. it's a useful label, and such).

You know, I've been reading quite a bit of post-structuralism recently and I still can't get over how much of it is basically people paraphrasing Sartre or Nietzsche or whoever and changing "God" or "reality" into "literature" or "language." And at the same time post-structuralists aren't academic philosophers (as far as I can tell), and Derrida at least doesn't seem to fully understand analytic philosophy ("Ontology is a lie" or whatever unsubstantiated nonsense he said in Structure Sign and Play). So take that with a grain of salt, I guess?

Personally, I'm with the aesthetes. If a particular interpretation of a work is repugnant, reject it. If it's beautiful, embrace it. This goes for readers and critics. I agree that objective values don't exists (and can't exist) but that doesn't actually imply anything else, especially about human action, almost by definition.

This is actually starting to bother me a bit. People say, "If there are no objective values, shouldn't we despair/kill ourselves/stop letting an inability to rhyme prevent us from being poets?" There's no "should" about it; you took out "shoulds" when you got rid of values. Axiological nihilism is exactly as compatible with Deconstruction as it is with Textualism, New Criticism, Structuralism, or literally any other method of analysis that exists.

Anyway, to respond to the actual question: Metaphor and symbolism are good when they are beautiful and cleverly applied. Why? Because people in general (and critics in particular) like beautiful and clever things.

Literature, insofar as the "canon" and academia is concerned, is basically a club reserved for people who really like finding clever and beautiful things that have been written down, and then talking about it. Luckily for us, we somehow get paid for it.

It's really easy to disagree about beauty (which is sort of marginalized in academia today) and slightly harder to disagree about cleverness. In either case, you should probably just try to respect other people's opinions of things. Literature (at the academic level) is more or less a club; if you really can't find anywhere to fit in, I'd suggest joining another one. Or you could write; that's where all the big money is, anyway.

[Vaynor]

Why does a book being difficult to understand mean it has more value? Why is it that there's some kind of hidden 'real' or 'deeper' meaning? And why I say why, I mean both

First of all, nothing about a book being harder to understand means it has more value. The fact that you find it harder to understand books that have more value is another story. Some books are what I like to call "page-turners," they're good books, don't get me wrong, but they're just meant to be entertaining stories, and not much more. "Literature" is that which has more depth than a simple story, lasting relevance, great meaning, is well written, or speaks for its time. Literature is often not what is popular at the time, but that which has more of quality #2 on my list (limited as it may be).


1. Why would the author put that there. I mean, it's one thing to have a philosophical message about the meaning of life, but why hide it in a conversation about bagels? Is the story meant to stand on its own, with the sub-story just being a hidden influence, or is the audience intended to sit back and read it two or three times and puzzle out every symbol?

Straightforward, philosophical messages on the meaning of life are best saved for philosophy books. That's what differentiates a philosopher and a novelist.


2. If the author didn't put it there and this is just one way of many of looking at the story, why is this story significant then? I mean, if the only thing that counts is the interpretation, then shouldn't that mean that the source material is irrelevant, and famous writers shouldn't be revered?

I assure you that (as far as I'm aware of, and in most cases) the authors that wrote (and write) what you and many others consider literature well intended the deeper meaning behind their stories. The fact that multiple conclusions (and perhaps unintended ones) can be drawn from a single story does not diminish its value; in fact, I'd argue that any book that has deep meaning on an individual level could be considered literature, as long as that meaning stems from more than just a simple enjoyment of a story. You mentioned Pratchett, whom I consider to be a great author and a fantastic storyteller, but while I enjoy his books they have no significant meaning to me aside from being entertaining, humorous stories.


I think what bothers me most is that I'm an English major. I really like reading, and there's nothing I enjoy more than talking about Pratchett or Adams. I like writing, too, and I like to think that once I've had enough practice I'll be quite good. My creative writing classes and teachers certainly seemed to say so. I don't think I've ever had anyone say to me "Pete you are just not very good with words."

So why is it that when I'm given George Elliot I can't help but think "This book is not very interesting and takes a long time to go nowhere. Even after I spent a few hours figuring out the weird two hundred year old prose, the thing still revolves around character types and ideas that just aren't relevant anymore. No, I don't think that the river is a metaphor for experiencing life."

Are you an English major or an English Lit major? If you're the latter, I'd suggest the former, as liking to read strikes me as a bad reason to be an English Lit major in and of itself.

Liking Pratchett and Adams is fine, and whatever personal meaning you ascribe to those works is your prerogative, but you'll have to acknowledge that most people don't see the meaning I assume you do, and that those novels are not widely considered to be literature despite being staples of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres.

Anyways, not liking/understanding an author you consider archaic isn't a bad thing - I disliked Pride and Prejudice for its writing style, but I can still acknowledge its significance in the literary world and understand the importance of the work as a whole. You should focus on the books that you enjoy, but I'd also suggest branching out a bit and trying some literature (more recent literature might suit you better, however). You may not like Elliot, not everyone does, but I can guarantee you'll enjoy at least one work of literature, there's a reason they've stuck around for so long. Types of writing styles are as numerous as there are authors, perhaps you just haven't found what you like yet.

I can't hope to define literature for you, or tell you how to enjoy it, but I hope this helps.

For the record, I'm an English Lit major (albeit in my freshman year).