Been a while, but I’m back for a glass of something and some good conversation…
What’s literature? Tough one. For many, I think they can’t get past the boundary that a book has to have been taught in English class — high school or college — in order to be considered literature. Presumably, something has to be read to be considered literature, or maybe it had to have been read at one time. I’m thinking of a quote from the movie “Bullets Over Broadway”, where the pretentious playwright mentor of the hero proudly intones that all of his plays are specifically written to go unproduced. I’m also reminded of my freshman year of college, where my Intro to Literary Method teacher spent a class period talking about the concept of “dramatic literature”, or plays written to be read rather than performed. Then later the same day, my American Musical Theater prof talked about how the concept of “dramatic literature” is a crock — plays have to be performed to be fully realized.
So what does this have to do with literature? I think my point is that writing, in order to be relevant to anyone other than the writer, has to be read. But to be literary, it has to relate to the world. Now, a lot of writing takes place in the world without actually relating to it. Hell, some of Stephen King’s writing is like that. And I’m not talking about just dropping common references — a lot of writing does that as a short cut to engage readers. There’s a feeling to literature that I’m having trouble articulating (obviously). I think a lot of writing is intended to (and succeeds in) activating emotional reactions from its audience, but in a very superficial way, like movies made from video games instead of scripts, or quickie books written based on TV characters. In order to be literary, I think writing (or art in general) has to access emotions in a genuine way. I almost wrote a “lasting” way, but it doesn’t have to last to make an impression.
I guess I think Stephen King’s best work is literary, but no writer is always literary. I think a lot of people think that authors are either always literary or always not. But was Charles Dickens really writing at the top of his game all the time? Was John Steinbeck? Was Jane Austen? The answer should be obvious.
Well, that’s my two cents on literature. Here’s another related question, though, which is implied in some of my comments above: does a work have to be written to be literature? Can a film or a play qualify as literature?
Later, y’all.
Adam Diamond
I’m with your American Musical Theatre professor on this one. Strictures of form are essential. Goethe said, “In the limitations the master shows his mastery.” I do think that “literature” is a specific term that refers to prose or poetry, so I don’t think plays or films are literature, but the best ones embody the same qualities as the best books – a good story, well told, about characters who are true even if they aren’t real.
Art is not theory, it’s connection. It’s not about thinking, it’s about doing. It’s an interaction between people, across a spectrum of immediacy that ranges from live on stage to words or images whose creators are no more than mulch and memory. When it comes to fiction, I’m not interested in realigning the post-modern literary paradigm through radical re-interpretation of established form. Bleh. I want a good story, well told, with some sort of resonance and meaning that I can connect with. I want it to be particular, the way our tastes and experiences and notions of ourselves are particular. That’s part of my definition of good writing. But do we really need three hundred pages of ten-dollar words and tortured metaphors to get there? I don’t think so.
I recently judged a writing competition with two other writers. One referred to himself as a noir mystery writer, the other as a literary writer. We had an interesting disagreement about what should constitute a winning entry, and eventually found ourselves on opposite sides of the border. The entry that these writers preferred was controlled and structured and obeyed all the rules of reasonable prose, and it was boring. Nothing happened. All telling, no showing. An adjective or two for every noun, an adverb for every verb. A theme constructed in crystalline sentences and unconvincing dialogue. I would rather pound my head against a brick wall than read a whole book of that stuff. But they liked it because it was “good writing.”
We disagreed not so much about what good prose is, but what it does. I agree with you, Adam, at heart it’s about emotional truth (which is how I’m paraphrasing your comments, let me know if that’s not right). I’m not sure it’s possible to successfully express precise emotional truth in bad prose, but I am sure that it’s possible to write beautiful prose without heart, without a human center.
So much of what is pointed out as “literary” prose seems to me to be almost a purely intellectual exercise in vocabulary and structure and style. All these things are necessary, but they are tools, not substance. A novel shouldn’t be “about” voice or theme. Yeesh. It should be language in service of story. It should create people the reader can connect with in some way, and things should happen to these people that matter to them, and to us.
And of course there are many literary novels that do exactly this. I think my biggest grump comes with the idea that genre, by definition, cannot be literary in this way. Genre can be crap sure, and it can also be literature – but try getting the literary establishment to think so. It was interesting at the judging meeting. Everyone was comparing writing experience, seeing who could pee highest up the wall. The New York Times Notable Book thing is a clear contender in this regard, and the LW’s eyebrows went up a notch when I mentioned it. Then he looked at the book. “Oh,” he said. “Science fiction.”