/lit/ - Literature

>>2742522
If science fiction, fantasy, horror, and any other form of "genre fiction" of which I'm unaware or just not thinking at the moment is "inferior" to "literary fiction," it's the fault of the "literary fiction" fanbase for intentionally alienating those who might find an alien encounter to be a more interesting way of exploring culture shock than a child being sent to live with his weird aunt and uncle, or who might want to read about power dynamics through the lens of a society where the ruling elite can curse those who defy them.

It is you who first created the stigma against reading, and the anti-intellectual attitude so prevalent among people who would rather play HALO than read the d'Artagnan Romances. It is you who created a society so uninterested in reading that the textual abomination known as Twilight is hailed as something that "finally got young girls interesting in reading."

It's your fault. Congratulations.

>whine whine whine miss the point be self righteous

oh plebs when will you ever change

Why are you so mad lol. I'm just eating a popsicle wondering why op is mad. Op why you mad? lol

>>2742522
In genre fiction the plot pushes characters around.
In "real" fiction characters push the plot around.
In PKD fiction you're a character, but you're also not, and Horselover Fats is calling from INSIDE THE HOUSE.

>Literature is the only medium of which I'm aware in which some genres are considered "childish"
I assume you're referring to the word "childish" in a demeaning way rather than to mean "chidren's literature." In that case, have you never heard of, for instance, movies with Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler being referred to as childish? Or perhaps music by Justin Bieber?

I don't think many readers - on this board, or otherwise - dismiss the entire genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction as being "inferior." I think they simply react to the facts that a lot of the low-quality literature being published and read nowadays are in that genre, and many readers only read those genres. I think most of this board loves Lovecraft, Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and others. Most of this board, I think, also dislikes the large portion of readers that solely read those genres - often even while ignoring the works of more literary merit in said genres. And it's sort of annoying when people react the way you do suggesting that all reading is largely the same. It's not.

>>2742545
you actually read why op was mad lol why you do that lol

>>2742545
>In that case, have you never heard of, for instance, movies with Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler being referred to as childish? Or perhaps music by Justin Bieber?
Yes, but were those people saying "Will Ferrell is childish, therefore all comedy is childish?" What about "Justin Bieber is childish, therefore all non-classical music is childish?"

>>2742545
My favorite authors are Alexandre Dumas, Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, John Steinbeck, and China Mieville.

And posts saying that science fiction and fantasy are always for kids are pretty common on /lit/.

>>2742562
Like in your OP, you're describing a very small fraction of passionate movie fans and (classical) music fans.

>>2742574
It seems to be a much more prominent problem in literature, though. The prevailing attitude seems to be one of disdain. Most movie fans brush off the die-hard "Hitchcock was the last good director" types, whereas most literature fans ARE the equivalent of the "Hitchcock was the last good director" types.

>>2742577
>I'm making shit up niggers

>>2742577
I imagine the reason you get that impression has to do with the fact that there is a greater fraction of movie fans who like rom-coms and Will Ferrell movies that have also seen Psycho and Vertigo than there are readers of Grisham who have read The Brothers Karamazov.

Pretention among fans of literature certainly exists. I just don't think it's as ubiquitous as you seem to - except, I'm willing to believe, among academics.

>>2742577
>Most movie fans brush off the die-hard "Hitchcock was the last good director" types

i seriously hope you picked one 'classic' director at random and aren't actually suggesting that a /lit/-equivalent film buff would actually say that because it's ridiculous.

much more likely that you'd get brakhage or something along those lines.

>>2742590
I did pick a director at random. I openly admit that I don't know enough about films to know what director a film buff would pick.

I've always wanted to get into film noir but have no idea what's the most "entry level."

>>2742604

i shouldn't be telling you a good movie to watch since your posts itt suck but watch the long goodbye it's really good

One of the things I've noticed in /lit/ is that almost everyone jumps to say that genre-fiction is shitty compared to "real literature." When asked what real literature is, /lit/ almost always replies that literature is an original work of superior artistic value that influences or inspires other authors. But /lit/ doesn't care for those who were inspired by the great work, whatever it may be. If it wasn't a mind-blowing entirely original revolutionary piece of fiction, then its complete garbage. A great piece of literature influences other writers, but the fact that these influenced writers needed an external stimulus and weren't able to come up with anything out of scratch makes them unworthy of being read.

>>2742606
Thank you.

>>2742604
I took a film class one winter, and the movie we watched as an example of Film Noir was His Girl Friday - which, at the the time anyway, was available in full on Hulu.

The most modern thing that comes to mind is Christopher Nolan's stab at Noir from the 90s: Following.

I should tell you, by the way, that I'm far from an authority on film noir.

>>2742604
all of film noir is entry level, except for the one's in the late 50s, those start getting a little meta. watch this as an intro to film noir:

the maltese falcon, double indemnity, the postman always ring twice, the big sleep, to have and have not (yes the very same), sunset boulevard, key largo, gilda, the big heat, where the sidewalk ends, ace in the hole, detective story, force of evil, pickup on south street, murder my sweet, touch of evil, the lady from shanghai, the big combo, sweet smell of success (this is great), the third man, le samourai, and kiss me deadly and in a lonely place.

>>2742620
So entry-level in this case means "no prior knowledge of the genre, conventions, cliches, and assumptions," rather than the rather more popular "stuff you'd already know about."

Clearly you aren't familiar with genre painting. See Thomas Kinkade.

Painting is similar to literature in that one person does it. Since one person does it, typically the same people work in the same genre over and over and over again. Genres therefore quickly develop reputations due to the people working in them.

It takes hundreds of people to make a movie. About a dozen of them have creative input on the project. Consequently there is a lot of talent movement between "genres" of film, as it is easier for a dozen people to recombine into different creative teams then it is for an author to develop multiple personalities with technical competence in and knowledge of different genres.

OP, at the end of the day the difference between us is that I'm good looking, fit, intelligent, and a well rounded-human being who enjoys objectively great literature and you're a fat pseudo-intellectual that enjoys drivel about lazer guns and aliens.

In all seriousness though, genre fiction is written to fit a certian amount of tropes so that it can fall under that genre. It's not like when Kafka wrote the Metamorphosis he was looking to make it some sort of surreal fantasy novel and it's not like when Hemingway wrote a Farewell to Arms he was looking to write a typical war novel. Literary fiction envelops a set of ideas and themes that the author wants to represent through the medium of storytelling, and he can do this in any way. Genre fiction follows a series of commonalities between certian types of books. While genre fiction could ideologically match if not exceed literary fiction, genre fiction is ultimately constrained, whereas literary fiction is not.

>>2742635
Thomas Kinkade is Stephen King.

>>2742643
What about "new weird" books and such? The City & The City, for example.

From a writer's perspective, it's incredibly frustrating to be labeled as genre fiction when it's not entirely intended and, really, not the point of the work. I'm writing sci-fi right now, and from what I've seen there's a huge stigma against it. Most people assume that it's laserz and aliens and other tropes, but all of the genre fiction I've ever enjoyed spent little time trying to cling to the rules set by other authors and instead went off and created their own worlds. It's a trait I try to emulate in my own work.

Science fiction is an incredibly easy way to do away with constraints that "normal" life has to offer and gives a freedom to explore certain issues with the characters. For example, my books deal with grief and the value of life, finding and creating messiah figures, and truth and perception. I would not have been able to explore these themes like I have unless I had the ability to effectively suspend the rules of reality (characters come back from the dead). The kicker is I'm not even that big a fan of sci-fi. It just happened to be the best way to explore these issues.

So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while there's this stigma over genre fiction and how it's "limited," I think it's actually an easier way to explore concepts and thoughts and allows the writer a freedom he/she would not have otherwise.

But then again, dragons, pew pew, sparkly vampires, etc. Some people have to spoil the fun for everyone.

music and anime are the same

i feel like the majority of /lit/ writes from someone who's under the thumb of their 60-year-old 11th grade english teacher or community college intro to creative writing prof. write a smart "genre" novel and watch lev grossman jizz all over it in a disgustingly mainstream publication, you goofballs.

OP, go try to read Finnegans Wake. If it seems to difficult for you to read, it means that you were destined to read only low-brow, pop-fiction fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Go on, read the first few pages using amazon preview.

>>2742610
Literature = Hitchcock movies, Memento, The Godfather

Pop Fiction = The Avengers, Transformers, The Hunger Games

Do you get it yet?

>For example, my books deal with grief and the value of life, finding and creating messiah figures, and truth and perception.
>value of life

your literature sucks

>>2742724
I get it, yes, but you do realize Hitchcock did a lot of thriller and horror stuff, right?

>>2742753
Yes, but that wasn't the sole focus and selling point of his films. It was Hitchcock's cinematography that made him revered by film critics forever. Good cinematography = complex of prose in literature.

>>2742577

You're also blatantly ignoring the fact that reading a book demands a much more significant investment by the user than does say, listening to a few justin bieber songs before going back to your classical routine or watching 1 rom com today before getting back to your analysis of Memento. Thats not to say that the investment is so large that it makes it impossible to incorporate entertainment-level reading, but with the literary canon already being as massive as it is, it makes it difficult for the reader who actually fosters an interest in quality literature (which are the types you find here)

/sp/ here. i don't see the point of reading the whole book when you can just read a summary.

>>2742811
also, not even trolling

>Literature is the only medium of which I'm aware in which some genres are considered "childish" while others, which are obviously genres to the impartial observer, are touted as being "literary" and not falling into genres at all.

/co/ would really like to have a word with you, OP. And if they can stop bitching about FPSes, /v/ or /vg/ is next.

>>2742730

Hah, ok. I never said I was a paragon of intellectualism. Just saying that genre fiction isn't necessarily a medium that strays from having an actual message.

>>2740592

OP IS SOOOO BUTTHURT.

>>2742826

Let me give you an advice.
Skip the idea of giving a message and concentrate on beauty and style.

>>2742811

Shouldn't you be watching the NBA chew up its own guts and cry out its death knell right now?

Also,

>>2742522

OP: Short answer, the literary community does not evaluate works in a vacuum; the literary community uses established (and maybe arbitrary but probably not) tools to decide what makes a work of literature good, and at some point it was decided that "Genre Lit" was generally a lesser thing than non-genre. Probably because non-genre worries about being good lit and genre lit worried about being a genre. Of course, it's not a perfect way to categorize works.

>>2742585

Yeah, well, it's certainly fucking true here, so don't act as though his suggestion is far-fetched.

>>2742835

I focus on the characters and the way they live in their world, the themes just add another layer to the work. To be honest the themes are so subtle that I'm not sure people will get it, but it doesn't really matter. As long as people can connect to the characters I've done my job. And as far as beautiful moments, well, I think I have that covered, but I don't expect you to believe me.

But all this is besides the point. I just think it's a silly thing to have such a stigma for genre lit. I've found beautiful moments and style in both genre and literary fiction. I've seen terrible examples of both, as well. To me it's a case-by-case basis.