/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20034189]

Should the writer be visible or invisible?

A lot of writers have very noticeable styles: Cormac McCarthy, Hemingway, Krasznahorkai, Jelinek, Hilbig. You can read these writers and know who you are reading, and while you are reading the style, the author is always present through their styling.

And then there are authors whose writing is not stylish at all, not visibly, but instead more utilitarian. With these books you remember the plot and you feel engaged, but you may struggle to remember any striking passage itself, and you may find yourself not highlighting any beautiful passages, as there may not be any.

So, what are your thoughts on style? Do you like an author with idiosyncratic punctuation or syntax or vocabulary?

[Anonymous No.20034637]

I thought this was an interesting question. I'm disappointed no one is engaging with it.

[Anonymous No.20034739]

Every literary classic I know of has a pervading style thats incredibly distinct and has quotable passages. most sci fi / pulp books have at least a somewhat noticeable style, above utilitarian.

The only books Ive read with utilitarian style are YA other such nothingburger books, so no, i prefer a "present" author.

Translations of classic novels are usually written utilitarian. I feel like a lot of /lit/ users just read alot of russian and japanese books in translation and assume that theyre a good representative of Prose.

[Anonymous No.20034763]

>>20034189
Seems to me like an author can't avoid having a style. They'd have to make an effort not to, and why would I want that?

[Anonymous No.20034770]

Unique prose styling is an inevitable consequence of writing but when it's become the primary feature of literature, you know the medium has degraded.

[Anonymous No.20034771]

>>20034189
Having read both, I prefer a writer that is visible and draws me in. Fitzgerald is one of my favorites because his style is almost musical without being florid. He picks the right few words and colors his phrases such that I really enjoy good passages. One of my favorites is the passage from This Side of Paradise after Amory and Eleanor talk in the barn, where Amory walks her part way home and then goes back to his house and lays awake in the still darkness. So wonderful.
Utilitarian authors like Raymond Khoury, for example, are nice to read and they engage me with their fast pacings, but I think you can accomplish that with a distinctive style that doesn't sound like an airport novel.

[Anonymous No.20034809]

>>20034189
I prefer artists I can recognize. I strongly prefer artists that cannot disguise themselves, even to the ones that would not disguise themselves.

[Anonymous No.20034823]

>>20034739
>Translations of classic novels are usually written utilitarian. I feel like a lot of /lit/ users just read alot of russian and japanese books in translation and assume that theyre a good representative of Prose.
Honestly feels like the opposite at least for old translations they have a style. And it feels like most of /lit/ likes these old translations more

[Anonymous No.20034829]

>>20034823
the old translations are definitely better

[Anonymous No.20034863]

For me, I think I like style as a flourish, not as the whole meal. When a writer becomes known for never using paragraphs, or for using punctuation in some esoteric way, I think it has gone too far. That's not to say that there is no place for all sorts of experimentation, but when a writer latches onto one experimental gimmick and filters all of his work through it, then I think that is dishonest. Not every story will benefit from being written in a single sentence with no commas.

[Anonymous No.20034869]

>>20034189
I only like when the author adds themself as a character. Like Stephan King did in his Dark Tower series. It's really awesome and doesn't detract from the writing at all. Also when they retcon everything. Retcon it so much that they go back, and rewrite their original books so the new books make sense. That's my favorite. How about you guys?

[Anonymous No.20035813]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-readers-manifesto/302270/#

[Anonymous No.20035830]

>>20034189
I can not think of a successful author who lacks a visible style. If you can not identify their style it is most likely a lack in your knowledge of language and grammar.

[Anonymous No.20035851]

>>20034189
The more I read the more I feel style and prose are kinda like spice with regard to food. You could technically live an entire life not eating anything spicy. Many dishes and foods are great without spice, many are dependent on it, the majority of "the good ones" have some degree of spice. Not all of "the good ones" have spice, but like 70% of them do to some degree. It's an element that's not required but often present when something is good. Style and prose is the same way with reading, the majority of good books/authors/classics have a distinct style. There's plenty of examples of ones that don't and are still great stories. I personally like it but don't need it all the time.

[Anonymous No.20035857]

>>20035813
>In Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves (1925) a character named Mr. Cardan makes a point that may explain today's state of affairs.

>>Really simple, primitive people like their poetry to be as ... artificial and remote from the language of everyday affairs as possible. We reproach the eighteenth century with its artificiality. But the fact is that Beowulf is couched in a diction fifty times more complicated and unnatural than that of [Pope's poem] Essay on Man.

lol

[Anonymous No.20035926]

>>20035813
This is a really excellent article. I can hear /lit/ reeing already as they come to the section on McCarthy. And it's all true.

[Anonymous No.20036036]

>>20034189
If it’s all plot and no style it’s shit writing. If you don’t have beautiful prose or excerpts that I want to quote or at least save you suck at writing. I don’t care how amazing your plot is.

[Anonymous No.20036047]

>>20035926
It is really not, too much context removed from the "proof," you can prove anything that way. Just an article written to be controversial.

[Anonymous No.20036096]

>>20034189
Plot is a sensationalist meme. Good writing is partly a subconscious process, and utilitarian writing cannot produce anything of true artistic worth, at most, it can produce gimmicky thrillers.

[Anonymous No.20036178]

>>20034189
I think a style should have it's own sort of naturalism in the sense that it creates a world that is believable and feels as though it has its own internal logic and reality, while still being able to present itself in a way that feels fresh and/or idiosyncratic.

It's kind of like cinematography--every director/cinematographer has their own style, yes, but there's a huge difference between Tarantino and Tarkovsky, or Kurosawa and Lynch, and so on. Each of them manages to make distinct works that are still intelligible and realistic enough to be relatively coherent.

I do have a big issue with people who really sink into their style, however, because I think that can quickly lead to flanderization at the detriment of the work--John Green is a posterchild for this. He was never really a good writer, but his first book at least had something about it that was distinct, and yet still reaching for more than it was, even if it wasn't much. But all of his following books trended towards an exaggerated, quirky style that relies more on a feeling of "lol so quirky listen to how quirky this all sounds LOL" than it does the actual strength of the writing, if there was any of it to actually begin with. This not only makes the book unpalatable to the eye, and possibly the soul, but it also just completely saps the story of any potential impact and resonance with the reader.

Wes Anderson could be argued to be a cinematographic counterpart of this, but I think his works--though the style can be really saccharine at times--has much more thought and effort put into it than Green's.

Beyond anything, I think if your style of writing is an honest expression of a mixture of your own thoughts, feelings, and the way you live, and how you think other people feel, think, and live, it will find some kind of resonance somewhere, and become something with the potential for reaching further than you ever thought it could go. If not, then all you have to do is work, and practice, and see what happens next.

[Anonymous No.20036371]

The writer as a writer should be visible, but the writer as a person should be invisible. On finishing a book one should have no doubt that you have the work of one writer and not another, but you should leave with no trace whatsoever of the author's beliefs, background, or feelings.

[Anonymous No.20036647]

>>20034189
I once trained to be an illustrator. On of the first things my mentor showed me were two drawings, both of the same model, from the same perspective, with the same lighting, and in the same style (realism).

They were instantly, recognizably different. He explained:

Neither artist here was attempting to "have a style." They were both doing the very same task; they were trying to capture the subject. But in doing so, they revealed themselves, not deliberately but as a by-product of the process. They revealed where their attention was naturally drawn (he gestured at the cuplike line defining the lower portion of the model's breast in both images and asked me to look carefully at the subtle differences, and then to repeat this which each shape and each line).

Then he asked me: Which artist is in love with the model?

This was apparently a typical routine with him. The model was his wife, and he was one of the illustrators. It was pretty obvious in hindsight. Most striking to me were her eyes and the care he had taken to show their liveliness and their light, whereas the other artist had focused more on the gestural shapes of her body and had left the eyes looking somewhat dull.

[N E M O . !!GgBWHLRiayD No.20036708]

>>20034189

Overpondering one's appearance constitutes superfluity.

Style, and substance, are mutually complementary; personalization entails sufficient implication, and proficient explication; stylefulness does not necessarily imply insubstantiality, as substantiality does not necessarily imply stylesness.

[Anonymous No.20036753]

>>20034189
>And then there are authors whose writing is not stylish at all, not visibly, but instead more utilitarian. With these books you remember the plot and you feel engaged, but you may struggle to remember any striking passage itself, and you may find yourself not highlighting any beautiful passages, as there may not be any.
Not sure about this. Just because an author doesn't have an idiosyncratic style you can recognize immediately doesn't mean they can't produce beautiful passages.

And yeah I do think they can cling too closely to their style sometimes, same goes for movie directors and bands. If it becomes a sort of "brand" then I don't think that's condusive to artistic expression.