Stuff we're reading / watching / listening to

[Katya]

I was thinking about why literary fiction is relatively unpopular at BYU.

Relatively unpopular compared to other types of fiction or relatively unpopular at BYU compared to other student bodies?

[Portia]

I was thinking about why literary fiction is relatively unpopular at BYU.

Relatively unpopular compared to other types of fiction or relatively unpopular at BYU compared to other student bodies?

Both, actually. I don't have any hard data, but that's my impression.

[Zedability]

I enjoy literary fiction when I'm on vacation. But when I'm at school, fantasy is basically escapism for me. Literary fiction doesn't fill that need quite the same way.

[Whistler]

Literary fiction was really popular with the other english literature grad students.

[mic0]

I can't restrict myself to one or the other. I go through phases of reading sci-fi, literary fiction, mystery, non-fiction; rinse and repeat. It wasn't until a year or so ago that I realized a lot of people who enjoy reading stick to one or two genres.

[Katya]

I was thinking about why literary fiction is relatively unpopular at BYU.

Relatively unpopular compared to other types of fiction or relatively unpopular at BYU compared to other student bodies?

Both, actually. I don't have any hard data, but that's my impression.

I never noticed a particular love of literary fiction in the student body when I was at UIUC or UMaine. I think BYU students might be unusually vocal about their fantasy/sci-fi geekery (for a variety of reasons), but I don't think that everyone else at other universities is sitting in coffee shops earnestly discussing Dave Eggars, or whoever.

[Portia]

...but I don't think that everyone else at other universities is sitting in coffee shops earnestly discussing Dave Eggars, or whoever.

Literal LOL. Some of us have to just post Eggers reviews on Goodreads and hope to find a modicum of sociality that way. (What is UP with his latest, anyway?) One of my friends from my home neighborhood volunteered at 826 Valencia in Ann Arbor -- she's probably my most traditionally "literary" friend.

Madison Wisconsin is the closest to this in atmosphere of where I've lived, but inconveniently, I was seen as a dirty capitalist. See, I need more friends in publishing, clearly. :P

[Portia]

Thinking About the Genre Debate
by Joshua Rothman
The distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is neither contemporary nor ageless. It bears the stamp of a unique time in literary history.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-r ... nre-debate

[Portia]

I really liked his contemporary references. "Days of Abandonment" was a really intense reading experience for me. Her most recent novels (including "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay") had more social commentary, but are definitely all about the interiority. "Nathaniel P" was very much a novel of manners. I saw the oft-cited parallels to Austen (whereas Ferrante channels a lot more Heathcliffian id), but I hated Nathaniel as a character. He's a jerk. I haven't finished Knausgaard but I've started him. I don't think what he's doing is even a "novel" at all.

One of my ex-boyfriends and I would passionately discuss the state of contemporary literature (maybe that's part of why I took it so hard when he dumped me -- maybe losing a more passionate or interesting or intellectual "me" was as bad as losing him), and we argued (this was circa 2008) that we were entering a Neo-Romantic mode, big "R," all Byron and Shelley (both of them) and we rejected anything that was "post" about the 20th century. We were convinced that we, personally, would write Novels of Big Ideas, and I think this youthful delusion of ours was particularly amusing because the economy was literally crumbling around us. He had a uniquely Mormon-Bourgeois upbringing (his father taught at BYU-Idaho, his mom gave birth to several children), so he would say that maybe he should just become a lawyer instead. I think the lifestyle he really wanted was incompatible with me in it. He gave up the Great Russian Novels and me and moved to the Midwest to go to a Top 10 law school.

And here I am, six years later, and I have a handful more marketable skills, but honestly, I'm a lot closer to the lit professor/creator path than the blue-shoe law firm one. (If you're wondering why I can't be something else entirely, that's a good question, but I think if at 20 we can be anything, past 25, you've made your choices.) And really the only kind of thing I care to write is less a Big Novel of Ideas but more The Story of How This All Happened.

I definitely think that various "genre" novels could fit into these archetypes. I got the impression that "The Name of the Wind" was very much about the protagonist's inner life, which struck me as much more deeply drawn than the typical fantasy novel. (Whereas I've had various editions of the Wheel of Time recounted to me, and it's nothing but plot! Endless plot! What could be more Victorian than the maximalism of spending a year, two, reading only one novel?!) I've nodded politely as my friends discuss their world-building and magic systems, but what I don't understand (and what I actually would love to understand) is why? What need or question is this answering? Zed mentioned "escapism." Is this form really going back to something that pre-dates the novel? Is this all troubadors and ballads and the point is the story, some kind of universal trope about fair maidens and backstabbing villains and we can see ourselves in that? I mean, I read a lot of Shakespeare, and there is magic in plenty of his plays, as well as a penchant for the fantastical.

When I see James Dashner with his grocery-store displays and hashtags and #1 spot on the NYT list, I feel a mixture of pure verdant envy and bafflement. He's a guy with an accounting degree from BYU! Maybe if I revisited Anne of Green Gables and Little Women with a critical eye, they would strike me as similarly "cheesy" to how his prose does.

I think I fear that my own education, my own story, being very much devoid of the experimental sexuality, big-city cosmopolitanism, and basically, the pedestal of privilege that most successful "literary" novelists have the imprimatur of, that no one would actually care. I was always drawn to the French novelists and their knowledge of provinciality -- they seemed more genuinely interested in the rise (and fall!) of ambitious people from the Continental equivalent of Rexburg. But it seems pompous, even by my standards, to say you'll be the next Balzac. I think the whole "long-lost father" trope reached peak saturation with, I don't know, "Lorna Doone" and Star Wars. But I hear they are making another installment of the latter. :P

[mic0]

but I think if at 20 we can be anything, past 25, you've made your choices

AH! I only have eight months to decide??? AH! (PS, that seems unfair since at 25 a person is pretty likely to live until 75, seems like a long time to pigeonhole oneself into something one decided in the first third of one's life. (And, as I think about it, in middle age and old age, it just seems like a person has to take advantage of opportunities and passions since, frankly, they don't have as much time left to sit around doing things they don't like.)

[Portia]

but I think if at 20 we can be anything, past 25, you've made your choices

AH! I only have eight months to decide??? AH! (PS, that seems unfair since at 25 a person is pretty likely to live until 75, seems like a long time to pigeonhole oneself into something one decided in the first third of one's life. (And, as I think about it, in middle age and old age, it just seems like a person has to take advantage of opportunities and passions since, frankly, they don't have as much time left to sit around doing things they don't like.)

Just think how the long, winding road of thirty will feel. :D

But seriously, unless you come from or marry into a lot money, I think that part of the compromise of adulthood is closing doors, occupational, social, religious, whatever. I'll never be a medical doctor, and that's okay.

"Pivoting" one's career is a popular term of art for what used to be called a midlife crisis. I've also read that skills are more important than job titles; I think that's poppycock.

[mic0]

Well, besides the fact that sure we have to close doors (I can't be a pro gymnast, I'll give you that), I disagree with basically everything else you've said. But I don't really care to discuss it (it's something I already think about enough), plus this is the stuff we're reading/watching/listening to thread! So I'll just say that I've heard my first songs from The Book of Mormon Musical and it was alright surprisingly!

[Portia]

So I'll just say that I've heard my first songs from The Book of Mormon Musical and it was alright surprisingly!

Do you think you'd be interested in seeing it live? I'm undecided. I wonder if MSJ has gone.

[mic0]

I'm still on the fence! The music does seem pretty good, standard musical fare (which I'm a fan of ), but I think my personal feelings about the LDS church in general might still be too strong to really enjoy it, you know? Have any active Mormons on this board seen it? This old thread suggests not. Actually, has anyone else seen it since then?

[Whistler]

I've nodded politely as my friends discuss their world-building and magic systems, but what I don't understand (and what I actually would love to understand) is why? What need or question is this answering? Zed mentioned "escapism." Is this form really going back to something that pre-dates the novel? Is this all troubadors and ballads and the point is the story, some kind of universal trope about fair maidens and backstabbing villains and we can see ourselves in that? I mean, I read a lot of Shakespeare, and there is magic in plenty of his plays, as well as a penchant for the fantastical.

I like how epic fantasy gives me the opportunity to understand a system--not just one character. I suppose War and Peace gives a similarly epic feel, but it does the opposite of what a good epic fantasy does. War and Peace discounts the idea that Napoleon's cold was responsible for an important loss, while epic fantasy seems to show how a the decisions of a few key people control the direction of history. Epic fantasy and predictable magic systems play into my fantasy that the world is knowable and operates through rational reasons.

[Digit]

Sonic hedgehog, a gene that plays a critical part in the formation of digits in mammals. Less signaling from this gene, fewer digits. More signaling, more digits. A potential inhibitor of the Hedgehog signaling pathway has been found and dubbed 'Robotnikinin', in honor of Sonic the Hedgehog's nemesis, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik.

And there's Pikachurin, a retinal protein named after Pikachu.

Who knew biologists were such game fans?

[Zedability]

I've nodded politely as my friends discuss their world-building and magic systems, but what I don't understand (and what I actually would love to understand) is why? What need or question is this answering? Zed mentioned "escapism." Is this form really going back to something that pre-dates the novel? Is this all troubadors and ballads and the point is the story, some kind of universal trope about fair maidens and backstabbing villains and we can see ourselves in that? I mean, I read a lot of Shakespeare, and there is magic in plenty of his plays, as well as a penchant for the fantastical.

I like how epic fantasy gives me the opportunity to understand a system--not just one character. I suppose War and Peace gives a similarly epic feel, but it does the opposite of what a good epic fantasy does. War and Peace discounts the idea that Napoleon's cold was responsible for an important loss, while epic fantasy seems to show how a the decisions of a few key people control the direction of history. Epic fantasy and predictable magic systems play into my fantasy that the world is knowable and operates through rational reasons.

I agree with the idea of understanding a system. One thing I love about Brandon Sanderson's books is how rich and detailed the world is. All these random ecological differences. I especially love how he explores the themes of superstition, religion, and truth -- you see a character from one part of the world dismiss the Nightwalker as superstition, but people in another area of the world believe in it. This happens over and over. No one culture has all the "truth" and they all have false ideas about some things.

It's similar in The Kingkiller Chronicle series. Different cultures. Dying cultures -- nobody can read Yllish story knots. Cultural hegemony vs. independent kingdoms. The Adem, with their completely different concept of sexuality and intimacy. They call the Aturan culture (with its more monogamous ideals) "barbaric" and live in more of a free-love society, but they also completely lack understanding of how sex actually relates to conception. They're super "ahead of the time" compared to the Aturans by some of our standards such as feminism and human rights, and completely "behind the times" when it comes to certain aspects of science and technology. Yet they have relics suggesting that their culture once possessed ancient technology well ahead of what any of the kingdoms possess in the present.

Then you have the twist on the classic "hero" storylines. I love those. Kvothe is really just a talented teenage boy. He makes teenage boy mistakes and I-don't-understand-your-culture mistakes. He does some things for wonderful reasons and does some really dumb things. Unlike the classic hero, he doesn't understand the system he's playing in. Similarly, in the Mistborn trilogy, the first book feels like a classic scrappy-hero-defeats-bad-guy story. But then later, the bad guy was actually a pretty decent guy who just wasn't skilled enough to be the hero! Twist! Argh. I love it. I need to log off and not think about fantasy. This probably isn't even making sense to people.

[mic0]

Haha, Zed! "This probably isn't even making sense to people" - I think most of us get what you're saying. At least I did.

I just read Song of Kali and it was intense. If you like intense, morbid, scary books, then I'd recommend it. It had great characters, too.

I also just read Wool: The Graphic Novel. I don't really recommend the graphic novel version, though the actual book book Wool is really amazing. I found the graphic novel hard to follow. Most graphic novels are kind of hard to follow for me; does anyone else experience this? Is it just a medium you have to get used to? I feel like there is never enough explanation of what the heck is happening.

[Whistler]

I find any sort of fight/action difficult to follow in a graphic novel. It just looks like a bunch of lines to me (I guess the action lines indicate movement?).

[Portia]

Remember how 2013 was the summer of The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham? Well I kept running into more references to his work, so I bought Of Human Bondage. It's the centenary next year, so if anyone wants to tackle a 700-page tome of late-Edwardian realism with me. :D (Also, I've decided that the answer to "what kind of person is compelled to write a Bildungsroman?" is, "MOAR CANCER. MOAR DEAD PEOPLE.")