My impression was that “great literature” is mostly read to signal intelligence/culturedness to people who don’t realize that reading them doesn’t require much intelligence, and that fiction doesn’t “teach lessons” as much/well as people claim, and that people only claim that it does because they need some justification (to themselves and others) for spending long periods of time in fake worlds. I’ve only read like 3 or 4 classics though, and I could be convinced to read more if I found one that actually seemed to teach something, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The impression I’ve had from reading supposed Great Works is that they often (but not always) fail to tell you much that’s new about life or love or the human condition or what have you, but they do often tell you a lot about the evolution of fiction as an art form. That doesn’t generalize all that well, but it does make you a better reader and a better writer.
Another point: if you’re reading works that’re central to your native literary traditions, you’re likely to have already picked up most of their major themes through cultural osmosis. That doesn’t mean they weren’t insightful at the time, but it does mean you’ve been spoiled for that aspect of the books. If you’re looking for new insights in your fiction, reading Great Novels from a culture you don’t belong to is probably a better idea than digging into your native canon.
Depends what’s changing about it. Sometimes I’d say the evolution of media points to genuine improvement, especially when you see it in relatively new branches like rock and roll or comic books or film; we’ve been doing some literary forms for a very long time. Often, though, it reflects external changes in technology or education, changes in language, or just differing tastes and preoccupations. And even that might be assigning too much rationale: sometimes it’s just a random walk based on recombinations of whatever’s been popular in the last thirty years or so.
With this in mind, I’d say modern writers are likely to get more out of responding to technological and social changes than trying to improve basic technique. Reading techno-thrillers or near-future SF, for example, is vastly different when you’ve got a Wikipedia tab open, and yet I can only think of a couple of writers that seem to have realized this potential.
I’m not sure what the point of your reply is—my comment wasn’t about why people read “great literature”, it was about how the canonical list of great works changes over time and the implications of that. Perhaps you’re eager to signal that you think reading classics is all about signalling?..
Your list of what you think people’s motivations are w.r.t. “great literature” has middle-school rebel written all over it. It’s not even wrong, and hence difficult to discuss. The fact that you seem to be using “great literature”, “fiction” and “classics” interchangeably doesn’t help either (e.g. the “fake worlds” clause applies to genre fiction just as well as to literary fiction, but people don’t normally claim that romance novels or detective novels teach important lessons).
I’m not sure what the point of your reply is—my comment wasn’t about why people read “great literature”, it was about how the canonical list of great works changes over time and the implications of that.
Yeah, sorry, this was probably the wrong place to put it. I’m just trying to figure out why people read “great literature”, because it seems weird to me and I suspect I might be wrong that it’s not worthwhile, especially because some aspiring rationalists seem to think it’s worthwhile.
Perhaps you’re eager to signal that you think reading classics is all about signalling?
Ha, I missed that :) I’m writing under a pseudonym though, and I’ve never told the stuff in the grandparent to anyone in person, because it:
has middle-school rebel written all over it
Maybe my ape-brain wants to metacontrarianly signal that it’s so smart it can afford to signal middle-schooler-level stupidity? Still, I think middle-schoolers are largely right about “great literature”.
It’s not even wrong
Do you think it’s wrong to say that “great literature” (by which I mean things like Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby) is read mainly to signal intelligence/culturedness? I really think it is, because for instance it impresses people, and it’s difficult, and it’s not as fun as most things you could read, and I don’t think reading (a small amount of) “great literature” has taught me anything useful for anything other than signalling. By saying I think it’s about signalling I’m not trying to imply that it’s wrong or that you shouldn’t do it, but if you know you’re signalling then you can optimize for signalling (by e.g. reading summaries rather than the original).
Do you think it’s wrong to say that “great literature” (by which I mean things like Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby) is read mainly to signal intelligence/culturedness?
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It is possible for something to both genuinely posses literary merit, and for people who don’t actually appreciate that merit to say that they do in order to signal culturedness.
On an unrelated note, The Great Gasby is unrepentantly an Idea story, and that Idea is “Fuck The Jazz Age”; if you don’t give a shit about the Jazz age, then Gatsby probably isn’t going to appeal to you at all.
That’s strange, I also thought Gatsby was an idea story, but with a different idea: “don’t get too hung up on your dream”. But then again, I saw the same idea in “Moby-Dick” and “Tender Is the Night”, so maybe I’m imagining things...
You might be using ‘fuck the jazz age’ in a slightly broader sense than referring to the literal, but I don’t care much about the jazz age, and Gatsby appealed to me. Though I’ve only seen the film and so probably lose all signalling rights.
I have not seen the film; what about it appealed to you?
For my part, when I said that Gatsby’s Idea was “Fuck the Jazz Age”, what I meant was something along the lines of: “The period in American history from the end of the first World War until the onset of the Great Depression was a decadent, morally bankrupt time and furthermore the so-called ‘American Dream’ that it was said to embody is a hollow lie; fuck it, and fuck any similarities that our current time period has to it”. It’s been years since I read the book, though; so it’s possible that I’m misremembering details. Elsewhere in this thread, Moridinamael says: “The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place.” This comment leads me to believe that my assesment of Gatsby as an Idea story may be incorrect; perhaps it works better as a Milieu story. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better if I had understood it as such when I initially read it.
You sound like you don’t know that Gatsby was written during the period it chronicles. I don’t expect that this will have a large effect on your reading, but some of the details in the long version of your slogan are definitely off.
I’m not sure what I liked about the film so much: I’m a sucker for Lurhmann in general. But there’s something more general about privilege and carelessness, and the dismissal of those outside an enchanted circle, going on in it for me: these might be particularly well-shown in the jazz age, but they aren’t limited to it. There’s clearly something about the American Dream going on—apparently Fitzgerald tried to change the title to ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’, but I think being British I don’t fully get the American Dream either intellectually or emotionally.
Then again, this is
just the film
probably heavily influenced by half-hearing about it and expecting an entirely different story (I thought Gatsby was the dangerously careless one and that the narrator would be drawn into his glitzy world but wouldn’t have the money and power to escape the bad sides and would be discarded)
I saw the film with people who’d read (and possibly briefly studied) it, and I suspect my view isn’t typical. For instance, I saw a clear and direct read-across between Gatsby and Steerpike (from Gormenghast), and everyone thought I was just being weird...
Do you think it’s wrong to say that “great literature” (by which I mean things like Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby) is read mainly to signal intelligence/culturedness? I really think it is, because for instance it impresses people, and it’s difficult, and it’s not as fun as most things you could read, and I don’t think reading (a small amount of) “great literature” has taught me anything useful for anything other than signalling. By saying I think it’s about signalling I’m not trying to imply that it’s wrong or that you shouldn’t do it, but if you know you’re signalling then you can optimize for signalling (by e.g. reading summaries rather than the original).
I’ve read a lot of “great literature”, and I will admit that signalling is a big motivation. Many of my friends are academics in the humanities and I’m often involved in conversations where references to Dostoevsky, Henry James, etc. are frequent (again, probably to signal intelligence and culture). Not being familiar with literature would incur a significant social cost in that context.
That said, I do also legitimately enjoy much great literature. Not so much because I learn a lot from it (although I wouldn’t say I don’t), but because a lot of it is actually brilliantly written and involves deep and interesting ideas. As a contrast, I also have friends who are really into anime, and they often talk about it. I’ve tried getting into it, but I’ve found even the most acclaimed animes (Cowboy Bebop and Death Note are ones I’ve tried watching) to be dull and somewhat silly. I just can’t get into the aesthetic. I pay a social cost for this—I often feel left out of the conversation when I’m hanging out with my anime-loving friends—but that isn’t enough to force me to watch these series.
So signalling is definitely a big part of why I read literature, but it’s not a sufficient reason. If I didn’t enjoy it I doubt I would force myself to do it.
Those can be some of the factors, depending on the people. Another reason for reading “focus point” works of fiction is that they give you a common topic to talk about. This is true for Cult Classics as well as for Great Classics.
One can thus read fiction for two social reasons; their value as a simulator of interesting and dangerous situations, and their value as a conversation piece.
Ambiguous works that invite a lot of alternate character interpretation or a lot of symbolism are especially appropriate, whether it be Hamlet or Neon Genesis Evangelion; you make the audiences care about what happens, and then you leave them homework (an exercise to the reader).
My impression was that “great literature” is mostly read to signal intelligence/culturedness to people who don’t realize that reading them doesn’t require much intelligence, and that fiction doesn’t “teach lessons” as much/well as people claim, and that people only claim that it does because they need some justification (to themselves and others) for spending long periods of time in fake worlds. I’ve only read like 3 or 4 classics though, and I could be convinced to read more if I found one that actually seemed to teach something, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The impression I’ve had from reading supposed Great Works is that they often (but not always) fail to tell you much that’s new about life or love or the human condition or what have you, but they do often tell you a lot about the evolution of fiction as an art form. That doesn’t generalize all that well, but it does make you a better reader and a better writer.
Another point: if you’re reading works that’re central to your native literary traditions, you’re likely to have already picked up most of their major themes through cultural osmosis. That doesn’t mean they weren’t insightful at the time, but it does mean you’ve been spoiled for that aspect of the books. If you’re looking for new insights in your fiction, reading Great Novels from a culture you don’t belong to is probably a better idea than digging into your native canon.
Hence why I thought it might be easy to see where there was room for improvement using more modern techniques.
Depends what’s changing about it. Sometimes I’d say the evolution of media points to genuine improvement, especially when you see it in relatively new branches like rock and roll or comic books or film; we’ve been doing some literary forms for a very long time. Often, though, it reflects external changes in technology or education, changes in language, or just differing tastes and preoccupations. And even that might be assigning too much rationale: sometimes it’s just a random walk based on recombinations of whatever’s been popular in the last thirty years or so.
With this in mind, I’d say modern writers are likely to get more out of responding to technological and social changes than trying to improve basic technique. Reading techno-thrillers or near-future SF, for example, is vastly different when you’ve got a Wikipedia tab open, and yet I can only think of a couple of writers that seem to have realized this potential.
I’m not sure what the point of your reply is—my comment wasn’t about why people read “great literature”, it was about how the canonical list of great works changes over time and the implications of that. Perhaps you’re eager to signal that you think reading classics is all about signalling?..
Your list of what you think people’s motivations are w.r.t. “great literature” has middle-school rebel written all over it. It’s not even wrong, and hence difficult to discuss. The fact that you seem to be using “great literature”, “fiction” and “classics” interchangeably doesn’t help either (e.g. the “fake worlds” clause applies to genre fiction just as well as to literary fiction, but people don’t normally claim that romance novels or detective novels teach important lessons).
Yeah, sorry, this was probably the wrong place to put it. I’m just trying to figure out why people read “great literature”, because it seems weird to me and I suspect I might be wrong that it’s not worthwhile, especially because some aspiring rationalists seem to think it’s worthwhile.
Ha, I missed that :) I’m writing under a pseudonym though, and I’ve never told the stuff in the grandparent to anyone in person, because it:
Maybe my ape-brain wants to metacontrarianly signal that it’s so smart it can afford to signal middle-schooler-level stupidity? Still, I think middle-schoolers are largely right about “great literature”.
Do you think it’s wrong to say that “great literature” (by which I mean things like Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby) is read mainly to signal intelligence/culturedness? I really think it is, because for instance it impresses people, and it’s difficult, and it’s not as fun as most things you could read, and I don’t think reading (a small amount of) “great literature” has taught me anything useful for anything other than signalling. By saying I think it’s about signalling I’m not trying to imply that it’s wrong or that you shouldn’t do it, but if you know you’re signalling then you can optimize for signalling (by e.g. reading summaries rather than the original).
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It is possible for something to both genuinely posses literary merit, and for people who don’t actually appreciate that merit to say that they do in order to signal culturedness.
On an unrelated note, The Great Gasby is unrepentantly an Idea story, and that Idea is “Fuck The Jazz Age”; if you don’t give a shit about the Jazz age, then Gatsby probably isn’t going to appeal to you at all.
That’s strange, I also thought Gatsby was an idea story, but with a different idea: “don’t get too hung up on your dream”. But then again, I saw the same idea in “Moby-Dick” and “Tender Is the Night”, so maybe I’m imagining things...
You might be using ‘fuck the jazz age’ in a slightly broader sense than referring to the literal, but I don’t care much about the jazz age, and Gatsby appealed to me. Though I’ve only seen the film and so probably lose all signalling rights.
I have not seen the film; what about it appealed to you?
For my part, when I said that Gatsby’s Idea was “Fuck the Jazz Age”, what I meant was something along the lines of: “The period in American history from the end of the first World War until the onset of the Great Depression was a decadent, morally bankrupt time and furthermore the so-called ‘American Dream’ that it was said to embody is a hollow lie; fuck it, and fuck any similarities that our current time period has to it”. It’s been years since I read the book, though; so it’s possible that I’m misremembering details. Elsewhere in this thread, Moridinamael says: “The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place.” This comment leads me to believe that my assesment of Gatsby as an Idea story may be incorrect; perhaps it works better as a Milieu story. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better if I had understood it as such when I initially read it.
You sound like you don’t know that Gatsby was written during the period it chronicles. I don’t expect that this will have a large effect on your reading, but some of the details in the long version of your slogan are definitely off.
I’m not sure what I liked about the film so much: I’m a sucker for Lurhmann in general. But there’s something more general about privilege and carelessness, and the dismissal of those outside an enchanted circle, going on in it for me: these might be particularly well-shown in the jazz age, but they aren’t limited to it. There’s clearly something about the American Dream going on—apparently Fitzgerald tried to change the title to ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’, but I think being British I don’t fully get the American Dream either intellectually or emotionally.
Then again, this is
just the film
probably heavily influenced by half-hearing about it and expecting an entirely different story (I thought Gatsby was the dangerously careless one and that the narrator would be drawn into his glitzy world but wouldn’t have the money and power to escape the bad sides and would be discarded)
I saw the film with people who’d read (and possibly briefly studied) it, and I suspect my view isn’t typical. For instance, I saw a clear and direct read-across between Gatsby and Steerpike (from Gormenghast), and everyone thought I was just being weird...
I’ve read a lot of “great literature”, and I will admit that signalling is a big motivation. Many of my friends are academics in the humanities and I’m often involved in conversations where references to Dostoevsky, Henry James, etc. are frequent (again, probably to signal intelligence and culture). Not being familiar with literature would incur a significant social cost in that context.
That said, I do also legitimately enjoy much great literature. Not so much because I learn a lot from it (although I wouldn’t say I don’t), but because a lot of it is actually brilliantly written and involves deep and interesting ideas. As a contrast, I also have friends who are really into anime, and they often talk about it. I’ve tried getting into it, but I’ve found even the most acclaimed animes (Cowboy Bebop and Death Note are ones I’ve tried watching) to be dull and somewhat silly. I just can’t get into the aesthetic. I pay a social cost for this—I often feel left out of the conversation when I’m hanging out with my anime-loving friends—but that isn’t enough to force me to watch these series.
So signalling is definitely a big part of why I read literature, but it’s not a sufficient reason. If I didn’t enjoy it I doubt I would force myself to do it.
Those can be some of the factors, depending on the people. Another reason for reading “focus point” works of fiction is that they give you a common topic to talk about. This is true for Cult Classics as well as for Great Classics.
One can thus read fiction for two social reasons; their value as a simulator of interesting and dangerous situations, and their value as a conversation piece.
Ambiguous works that invite a lot of alternate character interpretation or a lot of symbolism are especially appropriate, whether it be Hamlet or Neon Genesis Evangelion; you make the audiences care about what happens, and then you leave them homework (an exercise to the reader).