/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6310231]

Why would anyone read genre fiction? It'd just another way of saying derivative fiction. Why read something that's deliberately unoriginal?

[Anonymous No.6310236]

Some ideas can be expressed in fiction that are better understood in that format.

[Anonymous No.6310238]

>>6310236
Such as?

[Anonymous No.6310244]

>>6310231
>Why would anyone read genre fiction?
Entertainment.
> It'd just another way of saying derivative fiction.
Than do so.
>Why read something that's deliberately unoriginal?
Which novels in SF are unoriginal by name?

[Anonymous No.6310257]

>>6310238

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.

[Anonymous No.6310292]

>>6310231
Homer and Shakespeare wrote 100% genre fiction, you moron.

(Yes, let's throw out the epic Greeks and Shakespeare, because they're "unoriginal". 'Ulysses', a fanfiction book literally about shit, is apparently not.)

[Anonymous No.6310297]

>>6310292
>Homer and Shakespeare wrote 100% genre fiction, you moron.

This is what neckbreads actually believe.

[Anonymous No.6310302]

>>6310257

[Anonymous No.6310309]

>>6310297
> This is what people who never read a book actually say on /lit/

[Anonymous No.6310324]

>>6310231
>Why would anyone read genre fiction?
At its best it raises questions about potential futures in ways that 'proper literature' cannot.
>genre fiction'd just another way of saying derivative fiction.
This is meaningless
>Why read something that's deliberately unoriginal?
So is this

[Anonymous No.6310327]

>>6310244
>Entertainment.
Does anyone even really read books for entertainment anymore? When I want entertainment I play video games or something. When I want new ideas I open a book. The only reason I read books meant for entertainment is for academic purposes.

>Than do so.
The things that define a genre are the ideas that get recycled by every work in that genre. When you set out to write a genre story you're basically just building Ikea furniture from prefabricated components according to obvious instructions.

>Which novels in SF are unoriginal by name?
I don't read many science fiction novels, but I've read every pulp survivalist series, like The Survivalist (#2-27 are by definition derivative, especially after the main story arc is done in like #6), The Traveler, and Endworld, etc. etc. etc. That's a few million words worth of material to compare. Pretty much every series after The Survivalist is just a ripoff of formula already established in the original series, and the original series wasn't exactly all that original to begin with, because it just drew on men's adventure cliches from the 1950s pulp magazine markets with more and more stock science fiction elements mixed in as the series progressed. I've also read widely on subterranean science fiction like the Shaver Mystery and while Shaverism was actually original and Shaver is an unrecognized if uneven genius the small subgenre that corpus spawned was entirely imitative, even with later reflexive works like Tamper. :/

[Anonymous No.6310362]

>>6310292
Homer and Shakespeare also wrote some well-crafted verbiage with round, dynamic characters that touched on important and novel themes. You just can't say the same about modern genre fiction. The prose is workmanlike, the characters are flat and static, and the themes are shopworn and puerile.

>>6310324
>At its best it raises questions about potential futures in ways that 'proper literature' cannot.
I'm not just talking about science fiction. I'm also talking about romance, fantasy, mystery, etc. Why are so many works in these genres so...I don't even know how to put it. It's like they're just rocks in fields full of rocks. Sure they exist, but that's all they do, and there's millions of them. There's nothing about them that matters. And then people come along and construct hundreds of "rock factories" that do nothing but pump out more rocks. That metaphor broke halfway through but you get the idea.

[Anonymous No.6310374]

>>6310327
>oes anyone even really read books for entertainment anymore?
Most sold books are just entertainment.
>When I want new ideas I open a book.
Good for you.
>I don't read many science fiction novels, but I've read every pulp survivalist series
If you read shit novels why expect them not to be shit?
>The things that define a genre are the ideas that get recycled by every work in that genre.
Does this make Dostoevsky a genre writer since he used and recycled an idea (Ivan Karamazov)

[Anonymous No.6310381]

>>6310362
>Homer and Shakespeare also wrote some well-crafted verbiage with round, dynamic characters that touched on important and novel themes.
Indeed, but they also wrote 100% genre fiction. This is a fact that you simply cannot deny.

> You just can't say the same about modern genre fiction. The prose is workmanlike, the characters are flat and static, and the themes are shopworn and puerile.
Really? You've read _every single_ 'genre fiction' work to make a statement like that?

[Anonymous No.6310386]

>>6310297
historical and religious/folklore themes typically aren't included with genre fiction

[Anonymous No.6310404]

>>6310386
Why? They might as well be.

[Anonymous No.6310412]

>>6310386
Yes they are you autist

[Anonymous No.6310437]

>>6310374
>Most sold books are just entertainment.
Do those books actually get read? I can imagine people buying shit like Harry Potter or A Game of Thrones or whatever and maybe a few of the troglodytes actually follow through and read it but I just can't see most of the genre shit that gets pumped out ever actually being read for entertainment or any other reason.

>If you read shit novels why expect them not to be shit?
I didn't read those for their quality. Like I said, I read them for academic purposes.

>Does this make Dostoevsky a genre writer since he used and recycled an idea (Ivan Karamazov)
Do you actually think this is a clever question?

>>6310381
>Indeed, but they also wrote 100% genre fiction. This is a fact that you simply cannot deny.
Not really. When I say "genre" I mean "modern fiction marketing genre." Shit like "science fiction" and "fantasy" that got established as a way to sell readers books.

>Really? You've read _every single_ 'genre fiction' work to make a statement like that?
No but I've read plenty of literary fiction and when I compare works like those to the "best" genre fiction has to offer I can't help but notice that the writers obviously had different priorities.

>>6310404
Not really. Genre works are written to tap into a pre-built audience using a standardized set of symbols. They're basically just commercials for a larger metatext that exists independently of the text in question. It's kind of like how back in the day movie studios would hire an artist to create a poster for a generic "cave man picture" or a "costume drama" using such and such an actor who's popular right now, then the producer would hire a writer and a director to make a film that fit the poster. It's the idea of considering the sale before the product. Modern publishing genres got established that way. They're not an organic product of individual works themselves, but rather individual works are now mechanical products of the genres they occupy. Frankenstein was a literary work. Untitled generic scientist creates monster and then is destroyed by monster science fiction morality tale #155,171,112 to be published this summer by Tor books with the term Science Fiction slapped on the spine is genre.

[Anonymous No.6310461]

>>6310437
>Do those books actually get read?
Yes.
>Do you actually think this is a clever question?
Do you actually think this is a clever question?

[Anonymous No.6310477]

>>6310386
>historical and religious/folklore themes typically aren't included with genre fiction
Homer isn't folklore, you fucking mongoloid. Homer is epic poetry, a highly rigid, structured and unoriginal genre. Likewise Shakespeare; Shakespeare is Elizabethan drama, also a highly rigid and commercialized genre.

They were the equivalent of their day's superhero comicbook movie.

[Anonymous No.6310494]

>>6310437
>>Not really. When I say "genre" I mean "modern fiction marketing genre."
A.k.a.,
>When I say "genre" I actually mean something completely different than what the word actually means.

>Genre works are written to tap into a pre-built audience using a standardized set of symbols.
This is true of every good book ever. Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Joyce, etc, etc, etc.

[Anonymous No.6310541]

>>6310477
Yeah, you've convinced me.

Shakespeare has just as much literary merit as capeshit.

Jesus Christ. Listen to yourself. You need to take a good long look at your life. Something has gone horribly wrong in the development of your intellect and personality. Your soul is deformed.

[Anonymous No.6310563]

>>6310477
Are you seriously comparing Homer to Stan Lee? God damn, the sad thing is that you might be serious.

[Anonymous No.6310592]

>>6310231
Why perpetuate the idiotic and unjustifiably elitist idea that a work stops having a genre when its well written or otherwise good?

[Anonymous No.6311226]

>>6310231
All fiction is "genre fiction." Giving some kind of elevated status to books supposedly set in our own world, as if that was somehow more demanding than setting the same drivel in a more obviously imaginary setting, is silly.

[Anonymous No.6311238]

>>6310437
>Not really. Genre works are written to tap into a pre-built audience using a standardized set of symbols. They're basically just commercials for a larger metatext that exists independently of the text in question. It's kind of like how back in the day movie studios would hire an artist to create a poster for a generic "cave man picture" or a "costume drama" using such and such an actor who's popular right now, then the producer would hire a writer and a director to make a film that fit the poster. It's the idea of considering the sale before the product. Modern publishing genres got established that way. They're not an organic product of individual works themselves, but rather individual works are now mechanical products of the genres they occupy. Frankenstein was a literary work. Untitled generic scientist creates monster and then is destroyed by monster science fiction morality tale #155,171,112 to be published this summer by Tor books with the term Science Fiction slapped on the spine is genre.

Fair enough, but you're describing hack/bad writing. Whenever something comes along that's notably better/unusual/gets the right marketing, everyone says it "transcends the genre," as if it was any less part of that tradition just because it was unusually good. Then they reprint it in trade paperback with a less genre-ish cover, and make more money.

[Anonymous No.6311240]

>>6310297
>written before "genres" existed in a totally different volksgeist than our own
>applying what is essentially a book store differentiation on the ancients

/lit/ you LITERALLY can't be this retarded. It's not allowed.

[Anonymous No.6311249]

>>6310477
>poetry is an unoriginal genre

kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.6311255]

>>6311249
He is right in one way though, poetry might be original, it's just a shitty and cringe-inducing form of expression.

[Anonymous No.6311262]

>>6311226
>Giving some kind of elevated status to books supposedly set in our own world

That's not how the distinction between literary and genre fiction is made, though. For example Borges is considered to be a literary writer.

[Anonymous No.6311269]

>>6311238
That's right, they are just stupid marketing terms.

[Anonymous No.6311282]

>>6310231
There are themes in science fiction that ought to be explored (and sometimes are) that cannot be explored otherwise.

Plenty of it is crap, but plenty of all "genres" is crap. But so long as technology plays a central role in human life, the consequences of its development will be an important theme.

[Anonymous No.6311301]

>>6311255
Congratulations. I think that's literally the stupidest thing I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.6311310]

>>6311255

You might grow up to be a great person, but at the moment you are very unintelligent and this opinion you just expressed might be a true sin against art if such a thing were to exist.

I sincerely hope you are under 20 and that there is still time for you to change.

He is not "right in one way". His entire argument is that poetry is rigid and structured and that somehow is limiting.
No actual issue he raised points towards "genre" rather than structure, which is dishonest and asinine because poetry has more forms of structure than actual literature. Poetry qua genre exists only insofar that it is a convenient name for a certain type of art project.

He has also for whatever reason tied in plays; then compared them to comic books (for whatever reason, they would be the direct ancestor of a movie, seeing as a "screen play" is essentially that) in an attempt to discredit them, yet they have nothing in common. its a blatant false equivalence.
Comic books are rewritten into scripts when they appear on stage/in movie, this is proof enough of that.

Not to mention movies are respected and cinema is considered still artistic at its best. There are many plays that are forgotten just like today, good and bad; some are remembered some forgotten.


Hes so turned around hes comparing entirely different things.

now that all being said, however "cringe-worthy" you find something changes exactly nothing in terms of its real original expression. And almost any scholar on the topic turns to poetry as mankinds more pure form of original artistic expression.

[Anonymous No.6311311]

>>6311249
Epic poetry != poetry, you mental retard.

[Anonymous No.6311313]

>>6311301
I've been on /lit/ for awhile and I've seen some dumb shit; I will be fair, that is not the worst post I've ever seen. But God damn, it was certainly trying to be.

[Anonymous No.6311316]

>Why read something that's deliberately unoriginal?
Nothing is original. Plenty of works in the "proper literature" canon deliberately borrow ideas from one another.

[Anonymous No.6311325]

>>6311311
long narrative poetry is still poetry anon. Its only "typically" about certain things, but not necessarily so.

You are retarded if you take a trend in a form as the definition. sorry about your brain problems.

[Anonymous No.6311344]

>>6310327
>Does anyone even really read books for entertainment anymore? When I want entertainment I play video games or something.
You're just a pretentious faggots that reads to feel superior, that's all.

[Anonymous No.6311347]

>>6311325
Epic poetry != long narrative poetry, you fucking mental retard.

God fucking damn, how about you go and read at least a page from 'The Iliad' and come back when you're finished. I don't want to waste any more time on moronic kids.

[Anonymous No.6311373]

>>6310592
Because well written and otherwise good works are experimental and innovative and sui generis. It's part of what makes them good. In other words they're not genre. They're literary.

>>6311226
There's literary fiction besides realistic fiction, but realistic fiction is more likely to be literary simply because it can't rely nearly as much on shopworn concepts like robots or wizards.

>>6311238
I think it's entirely possible to elevate a genre into literary territory. There's a difference between a work being a paint-by-numbers rehash where the entire focus is on regurgitating formulae, and works where the formulea sink seamlessly into the background and the innovative elements take center stage and defy all expectations. The Crying of Lot 49 is detective fiction, but you can't really call it that because it's something else entirely.

>>6311282
What are these themes? They better not be ones that science fiction has already explored to death.

>>6311316
But they do so in a creative, innovative, experimental, unexpected way. And that's why they're literature and not genre.

Literature is a genre only in that it defies genre.

[Anonymous No.6311387]

>>6311347
sshhh, yes it is.

If you only read Wikipedia that opening line is from Michel meyers book and hes a fucking retard.


Its just a narrative in poem form that long, period.

[Anonymous No.6311409]

>a work has to be 'innovative' or 'original' to be good

This is not even close to true but people keep saying it.

[Anonymous No.6311417]

>>6311409
Why should a work of art even exist if it's just an identical copy of another work?

[Anonymous No.6311420]

>>6311344

You've cut to the heart of the "I read fiction to learn things" crowd. They know they'd be at the bottom of the order if they actually stepped into the world of academia. Better to just represent knowledge than actually seek it out.

Any intellectual exercise you get from fiction is pure coincidence, or a lesser facsimile of an idea already put forth in academia.

[Anonymous No.6311429]

>>6310231
Wait, are you saying genre fic is bad because it uses common tropes? How exactly does high literature not do the exact same thing? Do you even read?

[Anonymous No.6311807]

>>6311373
>What are these themes? They better not be ones that science fiction has already explored to death.

Why would that matter? It's not only the themes explored which matter. If this were the case, I don't think any good literature could be written. Most themes have already been explored. That doesn't mean additional commentary can't be made, original things can't be said, and that it can't be said in new ways.

[Anonymous No.6312143]

If you can't reasonably assign a genre to something, does that mean it's not genre fiction?

[Anonymous No.6312283]

>>6310327
>Does anyone even really read books for entertainment anymore? When I want entertainment I play video games or something. When I want new ideas I open a book. The only reason I read books meant for entertainment is for academic purposes.
pennandtellertrashman.jpg mee-mee

[Anonymous No.6312290]

>>6312143
If it still doesn't qualify as literature, then it's probably slipstream.

[Anonymous No.6312585]

>>6310327
>The Traveler

Scan and upload this series and I'll be your friend forever.

[Anonymous No.6312601]

>>6310327
>Does anyone even really read books for entertainment anymore? When I want entertainment I play video games or something. When I want new ideas I open a book. The only reason I read books meant for entertainment is for academic purposes.
Name 5 "original" ideas a book has ever given you.

[Anonymous No.6312613]

>>6310541
>anon gets this horrified that his biases may be stupid
Lalalalala I cant hear you lallala soul is deformed lala

[Anonymous No.6312631]

>Daily reminder that genre fiction is the poetry of prose

[Anonymous No.6312641]

>>6312613
Years ago I used to be a tripfag on /co/ called Loudness Lad. Search on the archive for that name to read several hundred thousand words detailing my opinions about capeshit.

[Anonymous No.6312646]

>>6312631
What the hell is prose poetry then?

[Anonymous No.6312679]

Jetpacks, nigga

[Anonymous No.6312850]

>not reading for pleasure and to sharpen your mind
>not switching between literature and shitty pulp whenever you want
Why worry about being a patrician when part of being patrician is not worrying about being a patrician

[Anonymous No.6314786]

>>6312850

I do this.

I just went from Stephen King to Dostoyevski then King again. Planning on reading War and Peace, and some sci fi after that. I don't consider myself patrician or pleb though, shit's stupid.

These distinctions are stupid, folks. Just enjoy yourselves.

[Anonymous No.6314795]

>>6310386
>historical fiction
>historiographic metafiction

[Anonymous No.6314798]

>>6310231
>Why would anyone read

[Anonymous No.6316843]

>>6310231
>He believes in originality

You're a fucking dumbass.

[Anonymous No.6316860]

>>6310437
>"Academic purposes"


Stop being so autistic about books. It absolutely doesn't matter what the fuck you like to read. It will never make you superior to anyone by itself.