The Guardian click-bait - Get real. Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not at all. Bash away . It's a fun discussion. I'm happy to talk about it as long as anyone else is interested.

Cool

So to sum up the thread for TL;DR late comers.

The only definition of Literary fiction everyone agrees with is if it's boring / borderline unreadable drivel (Finnegans Wake again)
Even though 50 Shades is far more popular and just as grammatically poor (Disclaimer, I haven't read it, just going off literary opinion)

Shakespeare, Dickens, Marsh & Christie are Literary because they were popular writers (and, I'm guessing, crucially, still are popular many years later)

Pratchett isn't Literary because he is popular (and it's only been 32 years since the first discworld novel, so we have to wait a good 50 years to find out if he will still be popular </Snark>)

The writer of the original Guardian article was a muppet because he only reads Literary fiction and decides who is good by a form of cultural osmosis instead of reading.

Jon hates Shakespeare.

We can discount sparkly vampires because you have to draw the line somewhere no matter how popular they are.

[DiapDealer]

I find the idea that some Classic Literature may or may not be deemed "Literary" to be ridonkulous. Perhaps it's the word itself being used incorrectly (by otherwise intelligent and idealistic people) that I take offense to. Maybe if it was labeled "Great Artsy Writing", or "Heady Stuff Not Really Written to Entertain", or "Extra Really Good for Not Easily Definable Reasons", it wouldn't trouble me so. But no... they had to take a perfectly good (and clearly defined) adjective and muddy it all up.

"What's your favorite kind of literature?"
"Literary."
*facepalm*

[HarryT]

A bit of free association / drivel here. Feel free to ignore...

This thread has certainly made me think about how I define "literary fiction" and realise that I don't define it all the same way, which I hadn't actually realised before, which is interesting (sorry, I know it goes against all the conventions of the Internet to admit that you might actually be open to changing your mind about something ).

Literary = widely recognised as a great work of literature
Literary = deliberately written as a work of art rather than as mass-market entertainment

Are they the same? Clearly not, but both definitions are widely used.

"Finnegan's Wake" fits the latter definition, but is it a great work of literature? Personally I think it's complete crap, but what do I know?

Is being influential the same thing as being a great writer? No. (sparkly vampires!)

[DiapDealer]

What about:

Literary = of or relating to literature

[Cinisajoy]

Ok, if one is writing for art's sake and not "the money", then why did they sell their books?
Or did they say that later because their books were not best sellers.
Note, I have read part of 50 shades, it is not grammatically poor. It is just written simply and in a different style than most literary people are used to. Now if you want a badly written book, I highly recommend Erskine Caldwell. He writes in poor Southern English.

Now back to literary geniuses, it depends on who you ask.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Ok, if one is writing for art's sake and not "the money", then why did they sell their books?

Most artists who paint pictures sell their work, don't they? If you want to paint for money, you paint houses, not pictures .

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Most artists who paint pictures sell their work, don't they? If you want to paint for money, you paint houses, not pictures .

Don't bring art into this or you are going to have to explain why "sheep in formaldehyde" not why it's classed as art, just why

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Don't bring art into this or you are going to have to explain why "sheep in formaldehyde" not why it's classed as art, just why

Modern art, innit? No rules .

[DiapDealer]

For what it's worth: David Foster Wallace is an author who often gets the "literary" label who I don't consider particularly innovative. I did find his Infinite Jest to be a great novel, though. It was quirky, witty, darkly humorous and at times extremely entertaining (whether he intended it to be so or not). But he certainly didn't invent/redefine quirkiness, wit, or dark humor. He just wrote exceedingly well.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

I absolutely agree with this. Pratchett was brilliant in exactly the way you say, and I don't think anybody here is denying that. But the whole premise of this thread is the argument that he is (or isn't) one of the literary greats, on a level with Shakespeare, for instance.

No, it's not. The basis of this thread is a newspaper article whose premise is that Pratchett isn't a literary genius. It's been diverted into this pointless comparison with "the greats." Whether he's ever acknowledged as "great" is not dependent on whether he has genius. Contributing to the silliness of this thread is the fact that "genius" can't be defined conclusively.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

No, it's not. The basis of this thread is a newspaper article whose premise is that Pratchett isn't a literary genius. It's been diverted into this pointless comparison with "the greats." Whether he's ever acknowledged as "great" is not dependent on whether he has genius. Contributing to the silliness of this thread is the fact that "genius" can't be defined conclusively.

Well, if you re-read the article that started this thread, you will find that its author asserts what he thinks is Pratchett's mediocrity by telling us which writers he thinks are great. These things, silly or not, only work by comparing. So no diversion at all there.

As to the silliness of this thread: Seems it isn't silly enough for you not to participate...

[DiapDealer]

So why are you keeping up with such a silly thread? Waiting for it to get back to your personal and inconclusively definable version of not silly?

I've personally found it to be a quite engaging and mostly civil discussion. Which is to say ... rare.

[doubleshuffle]

I've done a bit of research in the meantime and looked up definitions of literature in different places. Turns out that the mess that is this thread is a direct result of the mess that is the definition of literature in general.

Originally just a term for anything written it later got that quality twist that is reflected in a definition like Merriam-Webster's: "written works (such as poems, plays, and novels) that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance." I think many people operate with that definition, and probably had it thrown at them in school.

The definition I have put forward earlier derives from the Russian Formalists and their literariness: "The subject of literary science is not literature, but literariness, i.e. that which makes a given work a literary work." (Roman Jakobson, 1919, quoted from The Penguin Dict. of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed.). According to the dictionary just quoted, literariness is closely connected to defamiliarization as defined by Viktor Shklovsky: "The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty of length and perception, because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important."

So in the end there is not really a basis for a decision, because everybody will abide by their own definition of literature. I think the emotionality of debates like this shows how deeply engrained the distinction between good and bad literature is, even in people who say they don't care about it. Blame the schools.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Make all the quality judgements you like but if the issue is repetition and diversity of ideas then Austen-Pratchett is an unfair comparison. Austen only wrote 6 novels. Pratchett has at least that many distinct stories. I'll concede he gets a bit repetitive later on. Having said that I can't say I can predict his plots so much as his jokes follow a similar pattern and so often only raise a smile where once I'd've LOL'd.

And of course you guess directly how an Austen book will end and a large part of the plot.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

My personal definition (and others may well disagree) is that a "literary" author is one who writes as an art form, rather than to entertain the reader. Two examples would be James Joyce and Virginia Woolfe, neither of whom wrote for the entertainment of the public, but considered writing to be a form of art for the "intelligentsia" (however you choose to interpret that word). Which explains why most people don't find their books to be an entertaining read: they weren't intended to be.

So Austen and Dickens are not literary authors according to your definition then.