Have we degraded literature?

Different times as you note and styles change with the times...

butterfly said:

If you go here http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ you will find that many of these novels were written many years ago. The prose, style, concept, and eloquence doesn't come close to what is written today.

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You mean the prose, style, concept, and eloquence of Laurell K. Hamilton and Tom Clancy?

Some of those are old classics, but many are not.

There's plenty being written today that is as eloquent as what was being written a hundred years ago, but we don't know what will stand the test of time yet.

But I think your point is silly and the list you are using to make it is sillier.

butterfly said:

If you go here http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ you will find that many of these novels were written many years ago. The prose, style, concept, and eloquence doesn't come close to what is written today.

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It's still in Modern English--how good can it be, if written in the vulgar tongue?

butterfly said:

Today we have tv, internet, and these books. They read older books, hand-wrote letters and talked to people more than we do.

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And died in their 40s and 50; younger if they were women.
ed?

butterfly said:

Maybe I'm just reading the wrong books.

What do you think?

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I think you need to read a lot more. And I'd suggest trying a variety of languages, or translated books.

I don't think you can't judge the subjective quality of a novel based on a list that someone else came up with.

I don't think literature is "degraded" at all. I think much of it has gone in different directions, some maybe for the worse, some definitely for the better. But more than that, "better" and "worse" only exist for me in a subjective warp and what applies in there doesn't necessarily apply for everyone else...but, really, there are veritable buttloads of brilliant authors around today who can do much better than some of those on these lists.

Seems to me a lot of those books are listed not necessarily for their "quality" but for what their content did for the art or the history of the time. Ulysses, I would argue, is not a great novel--in fact, as a novel, it's utter crap, because it's damn confusing to read and making a novel damn confusing on purpose confounds the purpose of storytelling. But in that very confound--as a writing experiment, as a contribution to the artistic milieu of the age, and in its historical context--it has not a small amount of importance.

Same with those "greatest movies" lists AFI has...Citizen Kane is always at the top somewhere, if not number one. Citizen Kane is not fun to watch, nor is it terribly interesting, and nor is it, I would say, a great movie in itself. But its method of narrative did wonderful, revolutionary things for the art of film, and it's immensely important in those terms. Today, we do much better, more awesome and fantastic things with movies that far outshine anything Citizen Kane approaches--but in its historical context, it's a great thing.

butterfly said:

If you go here http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/ you will find that many of these novels were written many years ago.

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"Before the present day" covers a much wider span of years than "present day" does. Therefore, if we default to assuming constant range in quality of writing per year, we would expect the "Top 100" to have a considerably higher number of "before present day" than "present day"


(For example, if there were a list of the top books of the past 100 years, and 5% came from the past 5 years, or 10% from the past 10 years -- the kneejerk impression would be that "recent" literature was under represented, when by those sample numbers it's not.)

(Or top literature of the past 500 years, and 4% came from the past twenty years, say.)

You've got to remember that the shitty books from the days of yore just quietly disappeared.

It's not that they didn't exist.

Are we degrading literature?

I sure am. Every time I write.

butterfly, if you were sitting right in front of me and I was moved to be courteous, I would tell you that your question is based on an inaccurate premise.

Comparing 100 books that have been loved over the past 300 years to the point where they're revered as classics with the average day-to-day output of this year or last year or the last five years isn't a valid comparison.

I can guarantee you that there were thousands of books published contemporarily with each of those books that are sloppy and unimaginative and clumsily written and just basically duds. Those books are justly forgotten.

Judging the whole range of today against the very best of the past isn't fair.

The Great Gatsby, for instance, is in my and many many people's estimation one of the best novels ever written. However, when it was published in 1925 it didn't make the bestseller list. The number one bestseller in the US that year was Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs. It is not a forgotten gem, but a forgotten dud.

I can go on and on about this. For every Dickens there were a hundred Marie Corellis; for every Sinclair Lewis there were a hundred Harold Bell Wrights. Time is the great winnower, but that doesn't mean that the chaff levels have risen in the past hundred years.

jjdebenedictis said:

You've got to remember that the shitty books from the days of yore just quietly disappeared.

It's not that they didn't exist.

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This, too.

The forgettable stuff gets forgotten. So it will always seem like there's more forgettable anything now than there was in the past.

butterfly said:

Wow. I was looking for some conversation, not judgement.

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You know, when you post something about "literature being degraded" in a writers' forum with over 35K members all over the world, you might anticipate hearing something that isn't the response you were angling for.

Your initial post was . . . daft is about the kindest thing I can say.

It reveals an appalling set of assumptions that all rest upon entitlement, arrogance, and a combination of ignorance and naiveté.

butterfly said:

Medievalist - I don't plan on reading in other languages and writers die today at those ages and younger.

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I can see you've given this a great deal of thought.

But you need to read a hell of a lot more.

First, your trite little reference to the "degradation of literature" suggests that you're completely unaware that you are echoing a cliché that's thousands of years old.

It's in Plato.

It's in Lydgate, Spenser, and Ascham.

It's in Milton, Ruskin, and Carlyle.

Also?

It's one of the things that freshmen English majors trot out at the drop of the hat.

Go read some more. A lot more.

Also, you need to consider that there are only a FEW books from any given era, and that we still study and read and enjoy stories from the classical era. When you look at the Victorian era, those books weren't written that long ago, as far as history goes. Only a hundred years? Pshaw--that's nothing. Read some Juvenal or Chaucer--now THOSE guys were storytellers.

That being said, literature, like any other artform, grows and develops and changes with society and the times. A hundred years from now, somebody on the mindspeak networking applications will ask the same question, and will receive approximately the same sorts of answers--

--and hopefully will know enough to be more temperate in their response to those answers. Part of having a successful conversation is the ability to listen to differing views without being defensive--a skill that any writer really needs to develop before heading out into the mean nasty world of publishing. Just sayin'.

butterfly said:

Amaden - I don't think this is silly at all and would you say that if I were sitting in front of you? Please tell the titles of those books.

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I don't know Amadan personally and he sometimes posts crap that make me want to tear my own arm off just so I've got something to throw at him but I feel pretty confident in saying this:

Yes. Yes, Amadan would say that to your face.

Amadan said:

There's plenty being written today that is as eloquent as what was being written a hundred years ago, but we don't know what will stand the test of time yet.

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Additionally, often what stands the test of time is not what the people at the time would have expected.

My understanding is that Shakespeare's plays were considered pop cultural tripe during his lifetime, for example. Talk about "degradation of literature", the man didn't even follow Aristotle's rules about drama!

People are still writing them I'm sure there were always a lot of fluff books ever since printing became inexpensive. Not to knock fluff books, either They are fun.

What do you usually read? I'd knock out several on that list for, say, Beloved by Toni Morrison. That's just mho

eta: I cross posted with, like, everybody!

Please, God, not this again. Thank you.

Amen.

caw

jjdebenedictis said:

You've got to remember that the shitty books from the days of yore just quietly disappeared.

It's not that they didn't exist.

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IceCreamEmpress said:

I can guarantee you that there were thousands of books published contemporarily with each of those books that are sloppy and unimaginative and clumsily written and just basically duds. Those books are justly forgotten.

Judging the whole range of today against the very best of the past isn't fair.

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LindaJeanne said:

The forgettable stuff gets forgotten. So it will always seem like there's more forgettable anything now than there was in the past.

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These three comments underscore the real issue. It's easy to let great works that have survived decades or centuries fool one into believing everything produced in the past was great, and all we have now is crap.

This specious argument is made against current art, music, movies, plays, books, toys, really absolutely anything that's been around for a long time.

Meanwhile, some works that are revered as "great" have been surpassed many times over, but are still respected if only for being the first of their kind.

Butterfly, maybe don't ask us what we think if you don't care to hear our answers.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Give the kid a little break. Most writers and readers must think this at one point or another before they learn better.

It's just... Well, god help the ones that learn better by posting it on AW.

kuwisdelu said:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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Frog.

caw

blacbird said:

Frog.

caw

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Gero Gero.

I do believe we are degrading literature. It is a trend started by Shakespeare, continued with Voltaire and then Dickens and passed down to us as an honored tradition.

Keep up the good work.

Isn't literature sort of what's left after everything else has been forgotten? So we're not degrading it - it is what it is. And lists like that don't begin to tell the full story.

ETA: Styles do change though, and I suppose that expectations help create differences. I'm a sucker for 1930s and 40s children's omnibuses - Girls Own Adventures and Terrific Tales for Boys and all that sort of thing - and the level of word comprehension required seems very much higher in the old books (if such a simplistic comparison can be made where syllable count = degree of difficulty). However, there wasn't nearly as much call made on an emotional-nuance level. Character, motivation and themes in these old books - not classics, you understand, I'm just talking about basic boarding school fodder - seem on balance to have been much much simpler. I doubt that "Two Weeks With The Queen" would have got a look-in....

kuwisdelu said:

Give the kid a little break. Most writers and readers must think this at one point or another before they learn better.

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It's mostly said for effect, which is a problem; that means a writer has completely missed his or her audience.

It's not promising.

In terms of textual "tells" it's right up there with "I'm a writer, not a reader. "

Medievalist said:

It's not promising.

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Ah, but I'm going to give the Butterfly points for her sig :

I'm thinking WTF is a turning point

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I think that's adorable. I'm going to make it my 2012 screensaver.