[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

unless you consider someone like cormac mccarthy literary fiction, you will never find it in my home.

Mccarthy did win the Pullitzer prize. There is also this from his wikipedia entry

Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005[2] and placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years.[3] Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, alongside Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth,[4] and called Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying".[5] In 2010 The Times ranked The Road first on its list of the 100 best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. McCarthy has been increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[6]

Continuing on...

Originally Posted by fjtorres

One of the traditional put-downs of Edgar Rice Burroughs is that he wrote in the vernacular of the times.

Mark Twain wrote in the vernacular and he was one of the most celebrated writers of his time and our time.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Really? He wrote popular adventure fiction set in his times and had characters talk like the common people of the times? How dare he!
Never mind that he invented half the narrative conventions of modern action and adventure stories, both print and in video.

Really? I thought it was H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson that established most of the narrative conventions for adventure stories.

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Dickens was considered lowbrow in his time, it is only in retrospect that he is considered "literary". The highbrow stuff of his day is forgotten.

Dickens was not considered lowbrow. He published in literary journals, reviewed by prominent literary critics, and read by the upper middle class.

Additionally, Dickens (and most of the other canonical writers people say were genre writers) used their fiction primarily for social criticism. Dickens was one of the most fierce social critics of his day, and we still use the term "Dickensian" to describe poor economic or social conditions.

I don't think the same could be said about most so-called genre writers (except scifi). For the vast majority of these writers, the goal is pure escapism, pure entertainment, which is usually the desire of their readers. This line you see repeatedly in these kinds of threads

"If I wanted something that makes me think, I would read a nonfiction book/essay..."

There is nothing wrong with this, nor does this intent make these books inferior. But it does mean that comparisons between Dickens and modern "genre" writers are facile.

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

History is too often seen as nothing but dry facts and dates. History is too often seen as inevitable, that it couldn't possibly have happened any other way. You can understand history better if you have some idea of what History could have been like if something had gone differently.

Well, a start to having some idea of history is to actually read history. Except for the crappy textbooks you probably had to read in primary school, history is not about dry facts and dates, nor is it depicted (by everyone) as inevitable. Many historians employ counterfactuals in their narratives and believe history is contingent, not deterministic.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

here are my suggestions to those with the sci-fi, fantasy, horror genres are crap opinion-

http://www.amazon.com/Dune-40th-Anni...8599635&sr=1-1


http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-S...8599659&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-ebook...8600281&sr=1-1

The Road won the pullitzer prize. Additionally, I've had many sci-fi novels assigned in my lit classes, such as The Road, the Dispossessed, and Snow Crash. Maybe there are some literary critics that dismiss scifi outright, but in general writers such as Vonnegut, Bradbury, Mccarthy, Herbert, and Le Guinn are highly respected.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

for sake of argument, whats wrong with "life-filling" junk? whether you read about zombie pandas, enjoy studying history or read novels about the deep personal interplay between an older married couple it all amounts to nothing when you're 6 feet under and worms are eating your eyes. why not enjoy your limited time with whatever you may be into?

sorry to be such a fatalist but we're all equal in the end. "important" books aren't going to help you live longer or be a better person. *shrug*

For the most part I agree with your last assessment, but I'd be careful with the "in the end it doesn't matter because we all die anyways" rationalization. With that sentiment, you could easily justify rapists and child molesters.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I mean; which writers were lionized by the establishment when Dickens and Doyle were selling their serials in the popular magazines of the day? Or further back, what did the cultured people who decried Shakespeare and his ilk read?

Both were fairly acclaimed in their time, as were most of the nineteenth century writers that we still read today.

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Jane Austen wrote romance novels. They fit solidly in the genre. If some people want to say that somehow they don't count as romance novels, fine, but it changes nothing.

Actually, Jane Austen's novels did not fit firmly into any genre, because there was no Romance Genre in her time. She pretty much created the genre (well, the precursor was Richardson).

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I wonder if there even will be future classics. Don't today's English professors tend to teach, say, Dickens, as an exemplar of a time and place rather than as someone who gives us superior insight into human nature?

In order to have classics, you have to believe that human nature is real and permanent. Trollope's novels are all about the differing nature of men and women. If you think sex differences are all socially constructed, there is nothing timeless in the books and they can't be classics.

That would only be true if you believe that society is in no way similar to society in the nineteenth century. And though they are very different, there are remarkable and persistent continuities between societies over time.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Dickens and Doyle weren't contemporaries. But at the time Dickens wrote, all novels were "downmarket." There were no highbrow novels at all. The more intellectually inclined read poetry, or read the classics (the actual Greek or Latin classics).

That started to become less true in the mid-19th century. In Russia, France, and England the novel was the primary vessel for the communication and exploration of ideas; in Russia especially the novel was the primary tool of the intelligentsia(mainly because they had to get their works past the censors).

Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers

I find it odd that literary types refer to genre fiction as "downmarket..."

This is the first time I've ever heard of the term.

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I didn't agree with the judgements of the author. Instead of bemoaning the dumbing down of the reading public, how about comparing it to the majority of the public, who haven't read a book since high school?

The "reading public" could only be dumbed down if there was ever a golden age where the reading public was "smart." I guess that was true before the emergence of the middle class, when only aristocrats read, because anything they read was deemed "smart" by the arbiters of taste, the aristocrats.

Still, I find it funny when people who complain about snobbery then turn around and look down their nose at people who don't read. If the quality of any personal activity is entirely subjective, then what makes reading bestsellers in your spare time any more worthwhile an activity than watching popular tv shows and blockbuster movies in your spare time?