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/lit/ - Literature

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21395999 No.21395999 [Reply] [Original]

"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity. A physicist tries to make it simple; an idiot, anything the more complicated is, the more he will admire it. If you make something so clusterfucked he can't understand it, he's gonna think you're a god cause you made it so complicated nobody can understand it."
- Terry A Davis
People who hate simplicity are pseuds. Being complex in your story is a bad thing and can muddle or negate the point you're trying to make. Simple archetypes are often better for this reason.
That's basically what the greatest works of fiction are. Whether they do it with super simple babby shit like the 10 commandments, or they hit you over the head with it incessantly for hundreds of thousands of words like The Brothers Karamazov, the best works of fiction are very simple.
The only time things need to be complex is when you're not telling a story but just laying out facts. if your story is complex, you're probably a really incompetent author. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." If I had more talent, I would've written a less complex story.

>> No.21396003

What sort of person dedicates their life to seething about being filtered by IJ?

>> No.21396012

>>21395999
The older I get the less patience I have for overly complex academic language. When you're younger you feel smart for being able to decipher it, but once you move past that you appreciate that it could have been laid out more simply without losing any of the nuance. With that said I'm not sure what a 'complex' novel looks like. Are you implying that DFW is needlessly complex, because I don't think he necessarily is. Sure IJ is long but I don't think it is complex. I think you'd also find plenty of people who say that Dosty is too complex. Seems harder to define with fiction.

>> No.21396041

>>21395999
The claim that nobody could understand something is blatantly absurd, unproveable and probably a stunted sperg fag generalizing from his own limitations.

>> No.21396049

>>21395999
David foster wallace looks like every single one of my elementary school friend's fat dads

>> No.21396116

>>21395999
How could you possibly get filtered by IJ? It's literally high school level difficulty. I could understand Joyce or Pynchon, but DFW is just a level above YA novels when it comes to difficulty/complexity.

>> No.21396702

>>21396116
>>21396003
Using big words when you don't have to makes things more complicated than they need to be. Making things more complicated is a sign that you lack intelligence; if you're able to communicate a complex idea and make someone understand it - that's typically a sign that you understand the idea and have the proper intelligence to communicate it in a way that most people can understand.

>> No.21396704

>>21395999
A genius admires complexity made simple.

>> No.21396726

>>21396702
Who decides when it's necessary to use "big words" or when diluted, simplified and inadequate words are necessary to address plebeians?
Why is the biggest possible number of potential listeners important?
It's important to the market and sect-like pseudo-revolutionary groups of ressentment filled losers, you conformist subhuman.

>> No.21397222

human being are complex. Your story may be simple but your book shouldn't because, i assume, it is about human beings and, therefore, it should reflect its complexity; and, how can something simple reflect a non-simple thing? i'm extensively using the word thing here

>> No.21397821

>>21396012
Filtered pleb

>> No.21398230

>>21396726
I think we're talking past each other a bit. I agree with you that eventually you need to specialize in something to learn more about it, but I disagree that you have to "Gatekeep" and use specific words etc. Look at almost any legal document that we sign, they are written in such a way to make them hard to understand for the layman so that we depend on another profession to help us understand the paperwork.

This is true for much of academia too, if you try reading any papers about like Critical Theory that have been published it's all just a garbled mess of crap that makes little sense. If you understand the definitions of the "big words" they use then you can tell it makes little sense and they're purposefully using big words where they don't need to. So, then the question becomes why are they choosing to write in such a way? If their goal is to communicate their ideas to an audience, they're not doing a good job

>> No.21398267

>>21398230
critical theory is a jargon of the brahmin class. it's like that on purpose.

>> No.21398296

>>21395999
What sort of person dedicates their life to seething about being filtered by IJ?

>> No.21398391

>>21396702
>avoids the question
Ok. How about you define "big words" then. What is the division between big and normal or small words?
>>21398230
> they are written in such a way to make them hard to understand for the layman so that we depend on another profession to help us understand the paperwork.
Nah, they are written that way in an attempt to make a rather sloppy and ambiguous language concise. Written in plain English a legal document would either be 10 times longer or filled with loop holes. The things which make language wonderful for literature make it a nightmare for law.

>> No.21398404

>>21396726
see, this criticism is applicable to shit like Blood Meridian where it's clear the author is just shitting out a thesaurus. But DFW deftly uses a rich vocabulary to good effect; perhaps your vocabulary is just lacking?

>> No.21398436

>>21398391
I still think we're talking about two different things though, unless you don't agree that things can be made unnecessarily complicated.

Another example, if you're coding a program a "smart" and "experienced" person would make it easy to understand, properly organized and put together well. An inexperienced coder would make it unnecessarily complicated. The same is true for most other occupations in life, that's essentially my entire argument. There is a massive difference between a dumb person trying to look smart and a smart person -- and that difference is what I am eluding to.

>> No.21398529

>>21398436
>avoids the question again
Ok, one more try, how about you give an actual example instead of flawed analogies. Ultimately part of DFWs thing was that the difficult things in life are important, especially those difficult things related to communication which literature is a part of and more importantly his goal was not just to write about a problem, it was to write about a problem in a form which he enjoyed and found worth in.

>> No.21398562

>>21395999
>the point you're trying to make

Literary works do not exist "to make a point", imbecile.

>> No.21398614

>>21398230
>So, then the question becomes why are they choosing to write in such a way?
It's clear this is a rhetorical question since you allude to the answer, but I'll chime in anyway. The issue is not so much that they use "big words", since often it is beneficial to have a lexicon of terms with a generally agreed upon meaning. The sciences are great at this, whenever I read a scientific abstract, I can understand immediately what the paper is about. "Big words" are taken from Greek and Latin roots and generally the meaning is easily deciphered. Moreover, in a scientific abstract, the motivation, results, and conclusion are all clearly related. The issue arises, funnily enough, in the humanities, where papers are written with overall poor communication. The reason for this is because unfortunately the humanities are responsible for policy, not the sciences. Certain policies are passed with ulterior motives which are obfuscated by "complex" theories and language underpinning them. For example online safety bills are often pushed as a means to protect children, and various papers and findings are purposefully misrepresented in the media. If we try to turn to the source material, it's all so convoluted and awkwardly written that we give up (if people at all bother to look at the source material, since, it's put behind a paywall and is almost always guaranteed to be difficult to understand without wasting one's free time). In reality, the policy of online safety is pushed because it forms a protective shield for political figures who want to punish anyone who uses the free and open internet to criticise them and their policies, since us proles shouldn't really be trusted to spread information to each other (we should save such a role to the "objective" press).

>>21398391
>Nah, they are written that way in an attempt to make a rather sloppy and ambiguous language concise. Written in plain English a legal document would either be 10 times longer or filled with loop holes.
Except laws are full of loop holes, and these arise precisely because the obscure, lengthy documents allow for businesses to hire large teams of people to find and exploit loopholes. This is why so many lawyers exist - they exist because other lawyers exist. It's very similar to armies existing because other countries have armies. The people with the most resources will use their resources to build the best army, which thus enables the further accumulation of resources.

>>21398436
>There is a massive difference between a dumb person trying to look smart and a smart person -- and that difference is what I am eluding to.
You present yourself as belonging to the latter, since you used the wrong "alluding"

>> No.21398660

>>21398614
>Except laws are full of loopholes
You are confusing intended loopholes for unintended loop holes. Unintended loopholes are fairly rare and get taken care of rather quickly. The ones you are talking about are just the standard shell game which law makers have been playing for decades, they move the loopholes back and forth between business and the 1% so the 1% never really gets affected, they just have to shift a few things to keep it in their favor. Populism plain and simple.
>look what we did for you, we closed this loophole on the 1%!
>next election season, new loophole on big business
>look what we did for you, we closed this loophole on big business!
>next election season, new loophole on the 1%
>repeat
And they are not even loopholes or even hidden, any half decent CPA can tell you all about them. This is just politicians trying to have their cake and eat it too, protect their financing which comes from the minority while appeasing the majority who elects them.

>> No.21400185

Bump

>> No.21400207

Simplicity is not an excuse for a dearth of effort.