Quote:
Originally Posted by astra_lestat
Now I feel embaraced for writing sooo much.
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Don't, please! I love this kind of discussion - it's a major part of what makes MR such an interesting place to visit.
Perhaps we could make an analogy to paintings. Personally, I don't like "impressionist" art (I like art which looks like what it's supposed to be!), but I can accept that artists like van Vogh and Piccaso are "great artists" even though I don't personally like their paintings. They are great artists because they did something that nobody had ever done before, and they did it very well.
Similarly, I can accept that there are authors who are "important" authors in the field of literature because they invented new ways of writing, even though I don't personally like them. Authors like James Joyce would fall into this category for me. I don't enjoy reading his books, but nonetheless I can accept that they are "great literature"
One can, I think, make a distinction between authors who are "great" in the sense that they write important books in the field of literature as an art-form, and authors who "merely" write books which are great to read (and I don't mean "merely" in any derogatory sense here, but just to indicate that they didn't bring anything fundamentally new to the field of literature).
I agree with you completely about "The Lord of the Rings". It is, IMHO, "great literature" by anyone's standard. For one man to "invent" a world like that, down to its smallest detail, was a staggering achievement. Although there are many fantasy authors who have come along subsequently, they are all, in a sense, just copying what Tolkien invented.
We do of course read books for pleasure, but books are also a type of art, and we can appreciate that some books and authors are major figures in that field of art even if we don't actually enjoy what they write. Eg, lots of people don't particularly enjoy reading Shakespeare, but I think that virtually everybody would agree that Shakespeare was one of the most important figures in the field of English literature.