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

[eschwartz]

@HarryT,

I have not ruled out the possibility.

But I have a long TBR with many books I know I will enjoy, and a limited budget for fast-tracking new books on a trial basis.

There will always be many great books that I could've read won't have the time to -- no one can read everything. I promise you I remain committed to seeking them out when and where I can.

[Cinisajoy]

Hey guys,
I just learned something new,
What is great to one person may be total garbage to another.
Note: this is pretty much in anything not just books.
Let's see, I am a cook, crafter, reader and sometimes just a pain.
I have heard basically the same argument in all of those fields.
Especially in the needle arts.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Significance" is indeed hard to define. Look on any list of "great writers in the English language", however, and you'll almost certainly find Austen on that list, along with authors like Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, Woolfe, and so on. All these authors are taught in English Literature courses as examples of "great writing" in the English language. I'm sure you could name equivalent examples in the Finnish language.

Pratchett is very significant. Not only are the Discworld series relevant, it gets people to read more SF/Fantasy books. Authors like Austen get kids to read less or not at all.

Do you think that universities will be teaching Pratchett alongside Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen in English Literature courses in 100 years' time?

The problem is a lot of the books read in school are not significant any longer. I don't think Pratchett will be taught in school in an ordinary English class. I think the books used should be more relevant to life as it is or will be lived by the students of the time. I've read a lot of books for school and most of them were insignificant and awful. For example, Chaucer was (and still is) irrelevant. It had nothing to do with my life.

Is Wodehouse significant? He was certainly an enormously popular writer, and his characters like "Jeeves" have become a part of popular culture. I don't know whether or not he's a "significant" author, though. Did he have a lasting influence on the direction of English literature, in your view?

Wodehouse is only significant in the UK. Not so much outside the UK.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nobody had previously written novels like that, unless you're perhaps suggesting that the Book of Job is a novel?

Without proof that the Bible is true, it's fiction. Fiction makes it a bunch of short stories/novellas.

[HarryT]

Being fiction does not make it a novel. Homer's "Odyssey" is fiction, but it's not a novel. The first English novel is often considered to have been Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", published in 1719, although novels had been around in other European languages for about a century before that (Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote", published in 1605 is widely regarded as the first novel).

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Without proof that the Bible is true, it's fiction. Fiction makes it a bunch of short stories/novellas.

Actually, no.

Being true would make it a history text.
Being false would make it a mistaken history text.

Neither fits the criteria for the literary style known as the novel(la).

[DiapDealer]

That old works are still being "taught" can just as easily be dismissed as dogma as it can be attributed to "significance." The courses, the curricula, the prerequisites, the notes, the questions, the answers, the study guides--already prepared. Why rock that particular boat by continually introducing new material that teachers may need to be taught how to teach.

I'm not saying that a lot (or even much) of the literature being taught isn't significant. But being taught isn't the be all/end all of literary relevance/significance. Hell, longevity isn't either, for that matter. There's scads of brilliantly written, literarily significant (and socially relevant) books that will never be taught in a classroom, let alone be remembered centuries later. Literary significance is just as subjective and arbitrary as any other personal opinion held about a book.

The greats of the past still loom large in academia, in part, because they were great first. It's not as if they're still there solely because nothing has been written since that could possibly rival them. Judging the significance of present and future literature using past works' longevity as the only measuring stick is a mistake I think.

Books/authors are significant because large groups of people find them to be. Not because certain groups of people find them to be.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Without proof that the Bible is true, it's fiction. Fiction makes it a bunch of short stories/novellas.

Some of the stories have truth in their origins. The thing with the bible is most of the old testament was passed down via word of mouth and from Ancient Roman, Greek and Babylonian texts. Note, you can find the creation, the ark and a baby similar to Moses in all those texts.
But like the others have said, just being fictitious does not make it a novel.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Actually, no.

Being true would make it a history text.
Being false would make it a mistaken history text.

Neither fits the criteria for the literary style known as the novel(la).

For the sake of argument here, let's say that the Bible is all fiction. What type of book would you call it. It's not a history text. It's what?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For the sake of argument here, let's say that the Bible is all fiction. What type of book would you call it. It's not a history text. It's what?

An anthology of short stories. With some songs thrown in.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The greats of the past still loom large in academia, in part, because they were firsts. It's not as if they're still there solely because nothing has been written since that could possibly rival them. Judging the significance of present and future literature using past works' longevity as the only measuring stick is a mistake I think.

Books/authors are significant because large groups of people find them to be. Not because certain groups of people find them to be.

To me personally, the mark of a great novel is that I can get something new from it every time I re-read it. I've read both "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Lord of the Rings" half a dozen times, and I will continue to get something new and fresh from them even if I re-read each of them a dozen more times. That for me makes them great novels. Much as I enjoy reading Pratchett's "Discworld" books, in all honesty I don't think I could say the same about any of them.

[tompe]

New article:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...e_b-gdnculture

“This summer I finally finished Equal Rites. How had I managed not to read it up to now? It’s shameful. But at least now it’s part of my life. The structure of Terry Pratchett’s’s morally sombre plot, the restrained irony of his style, the sudden opening up of the book as it moves from the tiny village of Bad Ass to Ankh Morpok and takes in the complex unreal social world of the pre-Vetinari Discworld – all that’s in me now. Great books become part of your experience. They enrich the very fabric of reality.”

Because there’s certainly a moral weight to Pratchett’s story. There’s sharpness and seriousness alongside the jokes. The heroine Eskarina Smith’s move from her isolated country village to the complex social world of a richly layered city and university community explores serious issues – not least because this is an arena dominated by men and Pratchett so eloquently makes the case (often with delightful and even restrained irony) for her place within it. It’s definitely done good things to the fabric of my reality - and given me some damn fine unreality to ponder too.

In short, this book fulfills all Jones’s criteria. In fact, it has a lot in common with Jane Austen’s work. It’s funny. It poses serious moral questions. It has a tight-winding plot. It features moments of beautiful prose that, like Austen’s, rely on exquisite timing and rhythm:

“The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.”

“They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.”

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

To me personally, the mark of a great novel is that I can get something new from it every time I re-read it. I've read both "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Lord of the Rings" half a dozen times, and I will continue to get something new and fresh from them even if I reread each of them a dozen more times. That for me makes them great novels. Much as I enjoy reading Pratchett's "Discworld" books, in all honestly I don't think I could say the same about any of them.

I have read Pride and Prejudice many times. For me it is light hearted very fun fluff. I get the same entertainment each time I read it. No depth to talk about.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

I have read Pride and Prejudice many times. For me it is light hearted very fun fluff. I get the same entertainment each time I read it. No depth to talk about.

The fact that you've read it many times would seem to suggest that you get something new from it on re-reading it, and that would be my main criterion for what makes a novel "great" for me personally.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly. Austen invented a style of writing which was not "action based" but was instead based on characters revealing their inner thoughts and emotions to the reader. It may seem like an obvious way to write now, but Austen was the first to do it. That had a major influence on the way subsequent authors wrote novels.

Well, according to Wikipedia it does not seem like she invented it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech

Roy Pascal cites Goethe and Jane Austen as the first novelists to use this style consistently.[3] He says the nineteenth century French novelist Flaubert was the first to be consciously aware of it as a style. This style would be widely imitated by later authors, called in French discours indirect libre. It is also known as estilo indirecto libre in Spanish, and is often used by Latin American writer Horacio Quiroga.

In German literature, the style, known as erlebte Rede (experienced speech), is perhaps most famous in the works of Franz Kafka, blurring the subject's first-person experiences with a grammatically third-person narrative perspective.