/lit/ - Literature

neo-restructuralism

turns out chaos theory is the key to understanding the universe

>>2953723
I'm still not sick of seeing a protagonist get rewarded for being painfully honest to himself.
"I'm not putting up with any more of my bullshit."
I don't care if some people think it's too awkward to have a character snap out of it in the middle. That sort of "What the hell am I doing?" moment gives me a literary hard-on.

The Odyssey for a modern age

Is there a particular collection of Aesop's tales you're read OP?

> building a novel
> building a novel around a philosophy
> building a novel around a philosophy in the year of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Twelve

>>2953726
>>2953764
Can we get on writing a screenplay with these themes for a Thomas Paine film?

>>2953767
OP: Oh, I'm a fan of proverbs, morals and Fairy-tales in general. I've been studying the form lately, mostly reading Aesops. (Love the hell out of a trickster character), and they've just been in the back of my mind all month.

>>2953764
>That sort of "What the hell am I doing?" moment gives me a literary hard-on.
Saramago, dawg. Read him if you haven't already.

>>2953775
Not a diatribe or a manifesto, I mean a novel where the characters and plot and subplots all combine at the climax to some profound realization, even if its an old or obvious truism.

>>2953810
that's a shitty base for a novel. not the guy you replied to, btw.

>>2953822
That's a basic formula for a million different stories, which makes it neither "shitty" nor perfectly whole.

Get the fuck out!

>>2953822
It's not the base, it's the focus. The base is strong characters going through a significant life changing event by way of a dynamic plot.
You don't use the moral or Aesop to form the bones of the novel, just like you wouldn't build the novel around a motif or symbol. It's not about using a gimmick or espousing a message. It's about having a coalescing point for the thematic elements.
I'm probably not explaining myself well.

>>2953840
I can get behind that.
>>2953833
stories made to teach you a lesson are shitty. if you want to tell people something, just tell them.

>>2953851
I was made to read a short story from some link a bit back (Of course I volunteered it. Never before and never again) and it had no discernible point, but to show an immature bitch. I hate stories like that. "Lessons" or not, a story should have a POINT. Meaning.

Its true, life itself has no real reason. You make your own, in fact.
But the fiction you read shouldn't just jerk you around and say nothing. Its art, its symbol, a reflection, distillment. You champions of bullshit ruin culture.

>>2953851
Stories that have morals aren't only about telling somebody something.
"stories made to teach you a lesson are shitty. Oscar Wilde if you want to tell people that consequences ground us and keep us from overindulging, just tell them."
After all, the rule is tell don't show, right?

Actions speak louder than words.
All good things must come to an end.
Don't fall before you're pushed.

>>2953767
fuck the modern age

>>2953867
>Its true, life itself has no real reason.
>implying you can know that for sure
typical atheist
>implying truth exists

>>2953896
Counterrevolutionary christfag.

>Fuck the modern age
I dislike it too, so I was not trying to propose a "post-modern" DFW version of The Odyssey, but a re-imagining and expansion of it for modern (as opposed to ancient Greek) sensibilities, leaving the basic structure in homage....

>>2953867
the point is for it to engage the reader emotionally or intellectually. it doesn't need any further purpose.

>>2953869
i never claimed that. but stories made with the primary goal of teaching lessons are usually bad, because that's not the proper motivation off which good stories are based. see: Ayn Rand

>>2953963
>[T]he point is for it to engage the reader emotionally or intellectually.
As a color makes one think "Red"? No, I see you're back peddling. You just don't like the word "lesson" Got it. Nm now.

>>2953963
Read the rest of the thread, other people have already addressed that.
See:
>>2953833
>>2953840
>>2953810

Nobody is talking about using novels as thinly fictionalized manifestos like Ayn Rand, OP was talking about Aesops, and fairy tales.
There's a difference between Ayn Rand and "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched." or "I think, therefore I am."

GNU philosophy

No I don't agree with it. Yes, I'm serious, it could be interesting in a Sci-Fi context

>>2953978
k, sure i guess.
>>2953984
i still don't think the primary purpose of any art should be didactic. like, books can teach lessons, but they shouldn't have to, and they sure as hell shouldn't with the main aim to do so.

>>2953767

>The Odyssey for a modern age

We call this one Ulysses, by a guy named James Joyce

>>2953998

I think it's all about subtlety. The reason Ayn Rand sucks major dick is because she can't write fiction that includes her opinion skillfully enough to make it worth reading if you don't already espouse those opinions yourself. Whereas I get a shit-ton of philosophical and social messages from, say, Pynchon, but he's got it all wrapped up in a fictional world that is satisfying on its own. If you can only pick one, I'd pick a story over a message, though. Stories are always more interesting than editorials.

>>2953998
Nobody said it was the main purpose!
We get it!
Aestheticism! Art for Art sake!
But literature is about concepts.There's a difference between talking about morals, and ideas and shoving it down somebody's throat.
You make it sound like if the author has the protagonist come to any kind of realization or epiphany that its the same thing as crafting the entire book just so the author could hammer home one point from the top of a soap-box.
You are at the same time assuming the author will do nothing but preach, and accusing the author of doing nothing but preaching.
If the main character is going to undergo some kind of dramatic change, than some sort of different way of seeing the world will be espoused. You can't have the Protagonist go through a dramatic change and then not show what it is.
They may start out a pessimist and become an optimist, they may start out an optimist and become a cynic. They may fall, they may redeem themselves, they may be torn apart, they may find inner peace, but just because that is expressed in the book does not meant that the author is beating the reader over the head with it.

>>2954006
Really? How's it go?

>>2954044

All I remember is a dude jacking off through his trousers in public

>>2954060
Now see, that's not the direction I was thinking of taking it.

A novel will never be the best way to convey a short meaningful idea.

If you're trying to make some kind of formalized assertion you write an essay.

If you want to communicate an image or feeling you do it with a poem. Maybe you need something longer to get someone to really empathize with something, but there's a limit to that.

Why do you ever need a story to communicate for you? It's not deductive, that's an essay. It's not inductive, there's no reason to believe your story actually correlates with reality. It's less than anecdotal evidence. If you're actually trying to teach a lesson via novel at worst you're doing it with emotional appeals and at best you're embedding reasoning or suggested explanations in a more recreational context.

So what are you really accomplishing by making a specific idea applicable to a lot of things in your story? I guess if you can do it without compromising the quality of the story you've given a reader with a specific interest something with repeated relevance to them. But apart from that I don't see it. A lot of people treat literature like it can tell us things unavailable from other perspectives but I fail to see how it's more than a framing device. Maybe you guys aren't actually implying that, but when you claim that art should have some purpose it seems like you're going beyond 'this is something I care about and would like to think about while reading a story' and actually suggesting that being put in novel form adds something.

>>2954128

I think putting it in novel form does add something. I don't want to read a didactic-ass essay or some obscure-ass poem. With the novel form you can sneak your ideas into a reader by feeding them a tasty story. By the time they've slurped it down, they don't even know the medicine was in there.

>>2954142

dead @ thinking poetry is obtuse when it's pretty much the simplest game of pattern recognition concocted by mankind

dead @ basically saying you don't want people to actually consider your message b/c considering messages is somehow unappealing

dead @ disparaging the use of essays for ideas you (as a poster and author) can't competently encapsulate to a readership and thus need to obfuscate via making up bullshit

Moral nihilism doesn't get covered enough. An idea of mine would be to explain how morality is human herd instinct and use that knowledge to your own benefit.

>>2954128
Lit talking about how they don't like philosophy in their literature....

Is this Labor Day or Opposite day?

Without knowing what the message is you're dictating which literary form it must be written in?

>Framing Device.
Really? The Aesop or Moral you eschew as being antithetical to Literature but the Framing Device is just fine? Okay, maybe you'd like to make a list of all the literary devices you do and do not approve of. Just for future reference.

"I like my poetry to convey experience and mood, and my essays to talk about philosophy and sociology, and my novels to tell character stories and by God, you better keep them separate or else."

>>2954231
I would love to use you as an example of what will happen if moral nihilism becomes (consciously) popular.

>>2954258

Stop projecting. I didn't say you shouldn't stick philosophy into literature. I said that the format of literature doesn't add anything to the philosophy and that if a story is based on espousing philosophy all it does is hold all the pieces that actually are relevant to philosophy together.

> writing a high school handout list of 'elements of literature' and acting like they are all inherently related with storytelling
I wasn't even using the term 'framing device' in a context that your criticism makes sense. It was a metaphor. Would you like me to share my feelings about 'metaphor'?

"I think that everything which is commonly in novels (not all of them only the ones lit likes) needs to be in all novels and I won't suffer people suggesting that novels can be compartmentalized to any greater extent."

>>2954231
welcome to the 1870s

Confucian

Make me a modern novel

>>2954357
Nobody said you had to like aesops and morals, nobody said they had to be in all novels, nobody here is projecting, because nobody here gives a crap about trying to accuse you of anything. You're not fucking under attack. If you don't like the idea of Aesops, why are you posting in the thread. Why do you even freaking care? Why are you spending post after post defending yourself and forcing me to clarify myself in post after post?

Why do you continue to assume before you have read anything from an author that they would not handle any message with subtlety and tact?
Why? Seriously, Why does every thread on this board about writing get derailed by insanity? Why is there no single topic involving philosophy that /Lit can discuss without going nuts? Even when the "philosophy" is hypothetical?

How is it that people so well read can be so bad at reading?

I just want one productive conversation about literature, just one. Is that really so much to ask?

>>2954383
This in a sci-fi novel. I'd read.

>>2954446

I posted twice. Once to make a point that I think is actually interesting and relevant to this thread and once because someone misinterpreted what I said to just be a statement of personal distaste for philosophies and themes in literature, which you are still doing.

My point has nothing to do with subtlety. I think that a story does nothing for expressing or supporting an idea except for containing other forms of communication which do so directly. This is a claim about types of ideas, how they are supported, and how this relates to different forms of communication. The only value judgement I made is that emotional support for philosophical propositions is not valuable. You seem to be trying to turn the whole thing into something subjective.

Actually, people did say things very similar to that, for instance that art should contain some central message, and I don't understand why you're trying to shut any discussion about these differing views of the role of literature down. I'm trying to have a productive conversation about literature but people keep assuming I'm making some grand claim about what should be excised from books. I'm hoping the problem isn't literacy so I assumed it was projection.

>>2954823
>I don't understand why you're trying to shut any discussion about these differing views of the role of literature down.
I'm not, I'm trying to fucking keep the thread on topic.

Do you get that you can have an idea that can be perfectly defensible, perfectly rational, and perfectly reasonable. But that it might just not be relevant to the freaking topic!!! Do you understand that no matter how cogent your argument, if it's not in fitting with the fucking subject, it's still shit-posting? If you don't, please, go start at thread about politics on /ck and a thread about Anime on /fit, and let them instruct you on proper fucking etiquette.
Derailing a thread so you can have a personal space to talk about what you think is appropriate in literature is shitposting, You don't have something to add to the conversation, you start a new thread.