Genre Fiction

I thought I'd take a second to talk about genre fiction, since it didn't spark a lot of discussion during the class exercise. I'm going to use genre fiction here as a blanket term to describe anything that doesn't fit into the category of "literary fiction," i.e. most fantasy, science fiction, horror, comedy, young adult, etcetera. The tacit assumption, especially among English majors, critics, and scholars, is that these works are not as good as literary works. More, it's assumed they're somehow "easier;" both easier to read and easier to write.
First, I challenge the assumption that being easy and enjoyable to read is somehow worse than complexity and difficulty. A complex work can be rewarding, and I would not say that complexity is bad any more than I would say simplicity is bad. But a good idea, stated elegantly, can be much more rewarding than a complex obfuscation that leaves the reader unsatisfied and in the dark.
Second, I vehemently disagree with the idea that writing a gripping and satisfying story is somehow "easier" than writing a complex and unsatisfying story. Literary people have gotten the idea that a complex work is more difficult to write than a simpler story, but I don't think that's true. Anyone who has stayed up all night to finish a Stephen King story, or read a Harry Potter book in one sitting because the story gripped them by the collar and wouldn't let them go shouldn't be ashamed to call those good books, and shouldn't laugh them off in discussion by saying "ah, it's just junk."
I found it a little unnerving in our class discussion that I was evidently the only one who wanted to bring genre fiction to prison. You're in prison, people. Do you really think you're going to read War and Peace more than once? And the sad thing is, it's an education in English that makes us act this way; we became English majors because we love to read, and then turn our backs on the books we once loved.

My realization when I began to look for closure on the topic of subjectivity.

Due to our latest readings, and especially after our discussions on the cannon and the qualities of what makes a piece of literature good, I feel like interpretations of texts and literature have to be subjective. I know a few people have brought this up on the blog already, but never agreed fully to the idea of subjectivity. They only admitted texts can sometimes be interpreted subjectively. I feel like we’ve been skating around these ideas of subjectivity and objectivity fairly frequently, but never addressed them head on.

To be truly objective one has to be free of any bias or prejudice caused by personal feelings. Objectivism is based on facts rather than thoughts or opinions. In a world where so much emotion, thought, and personal ideas come from the author to create that text, how can a reader simply look at the facts of a text and create an interpretation? What even are the facts of a text? At this point the idea of anyone ever having a truly objective interpretation or opinion on a piece of literature seems truly impossible to me. How do you not let your personal bias, interpretive communities, and personal emotions not affect the way you are reading the text? Before I said that an objective opinion seems close to impossible, but now I really think it is. It is impossible to separate our mind from our personal beliefs and opinions to form a truly unbiased objective opinion.

Is there anyone who believes in objectivity? If so, I would be really interested in what you think.

Long time, no post--reaching back to Leavis

This is reaching back a little bit into the past since I have had this blog writen for some time now but computer troubles / my own hopelessness with infernal machines like computers have bungled up my postings. So, if you will excuse me for going back to Leavis, this is my two cents.

Leavis overreaches. To say there are only four (maybe five if you include Lawrence) “great” English novelists worth reading about is to limit yourself in the extreme. I understand his early point that “It is necessary to insist, then, that there are important distinctions to be made, and that far from all the names in the literary histories really belong to the realm of significant creative achievement” (653). Bad literature has been written; we know it; we have read it but to limit ourselves (and subsequently our canon) to only a minor set of very few authors as Leavis does is an injustice to other authors who might have more merit in our eyes then do Austen or Eliot or James. Leavis was a little too driven by the general dissatisfaction of his era. Reacting to the void modern life had become in the 1920s, he wants to accuse future writers of having no inherent value to offer in their works. They are not “worth reading” in his eyes. And yet, what does he give us other than his opinion that these four authors are the ones that should be written? He seems to have picked the names of Austen, Conrad, James and Eliot out of an arbitrary hat since he does not offer us either generalized criteria but mere subjective opinion: “Disraeli[‘s]….interests as expressed in [his] books…are so mature” (Footnote 1 653). I confess myself very dissatisfied with his argument overall.

Emily Franzen