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Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 552
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008 - 09:31 pm: | 
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I read somewhere that writers who receive commercial success, especially while living, are considered hacks in the literary world. I'm talking authors who make bestseller lists and have their books optioned as movies such as James Patterson, Stephen King, and Terry McMillan. It's said that these types of writers only write for commericial success and not for the sake of art. While I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank, I wonder if there is some truth to the claim. Will their writing stand the test of time like classic literature? Or will readers laugh at their works, say, a hundred years from now?
What do you think?
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12167
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 11:05 pm: |
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The "literary world" seems to be afflicted with an acute case of sour grapes. It is trying to preserve a legacy by issuing a blanket indictment of financially-successful books in an attempt to make them synonymous with banality.
But, as a reflection of a culture that supplies the setting and characters for their particular genre, the works of authors like Toni Morrison and Stephen King and James Patterson will stand the test of time just as the horror classics of Bram Stoker, and the Sherlock Homes detective series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the feminist novels of Willa Cather have remained classics. Which is to say that years from now readers will still find books by these authors worth reading. Street fiction will even retain an intrinsic value just as the pulp fiction of the Horation Alger series have earned a special niche in American literature. IMO.  |
Schakspir
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1224
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 - 11:15 pm: |
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No, not at all. The problem is that serious writers need to stop navel-gazing and writing boring, stupid, fucking novels about boring, stupid, fucking middle-class people, and find material that is much more exciting. Like, for instance, the same material that the so-called "urban" novelists use. Once the serious writers realize that they can make a killing by writing the modern-day versions of "Les Miserables" (and we all know where they are in the U.S.A.), or "War and Peace" (plenty of material to go 'round--look at Iraq or Somalia), or "Native Son" (how many modern day Biggers do we have NOW???) or "Invisible Man" (no comment), then they could actually put a lot of hacks out of business. But first, the so-called "serious" writers would have to learn how to write again. They would have to learn to craft sentences that would sustain a reader's attention and not put him to sleep. The hacks are successful because they know how to get and keep an audience, rather than drive them away talking pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Case in point: Stanley Crouch's novel "Don't the Moon Look Lonesome." Who actually read that thing, anyway?
My problem, of course, was one of distribution. And money. Which is why I'm looking for a major publisher for my stuff. But I know damn well that it will sell better than Crouch. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12170
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 11:56 am: |
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I said "Toni Morrison" but I meant "Terry McMillian". (The area in my brain that controls "names" is whacked out. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6688
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 02:38 pm: |
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I read somewhere that writers who receive commercial success, especially while living, are considered hacks in the literary world.
(In some quarters commercial success is viewed as proof that a work is pap and hackwork--I think sometimes it is true and sometimes it is sour grapes.
Some novels have been considered great literature and have achieved commercial success, too--but on the other hand the stuff that sells most is usually crap.
Think about it. The average person is a moron, really. He or she hates "literary" work because it usually makes them think or work and they go to literature for entertainment and escape.
Dickens, Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas and others were considered hacks in their day and now are considered classics.
The hacks are successful because they know how to get and keep an audience, rather than drive them away talking pseudo-intellectual bullshit
(I discovered this is true when I did a study of--I can't even call her name now, but she's a best selling romance novel. I started reading and sneered at the crappy writing.
It was Danielle Steele. And I think the novel was "Kaliedescope".
By about the 40th page she had put her character in such a fix I was turning them pages to find out what would happen to little Nell (whatever her name was).
Same thing with Mario Puzo's "The Godfather". A bigger pile of shit was never written. Yet I love that book. He really tells that story.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6689
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 02:40 pm: |
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Another example. Michael Chabon's the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Won the Pulitzer Prize. It's strongest suit was the style, which is that New Yorker, witty, flowing, long paragraphed style.
Other than that the book was shit. Chabon didn't know anything about the Golden Age of Comics save what he got from talking to folks and it showed.
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Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 553
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 03:01 pm: |
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The average person is a moron, really.
LOL! So true.
Good posts folks.
You know, sometimes you can be in the middle of reading a book and realize it is some pretty great writing (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Invisible Man, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and The Sun Also Rises come to mind.) At other times, you know you're just reading crap with a bit of spritz for flavor. I like works that show a clear love of the language, not just storytelling. You know what I mean? Beautiful narration. Great dialogue. Unforgettable characters. Thought-provoking plots.
The other stuff the hacks write usually falls in line with pure entertainment.
Thanks,
Emanuel |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 554
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 03:03 pm: |
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So writers should really concentrate on writing beautiful work and not necessarily commercial success, right? Is this realistic? Perhaps universal acclaim might lead to a Pulitzer or other prizes. Or maybe the artful-minded writer shouldn't even care. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12176
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 - 04:24 pm: |
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Writers should just be good at what they do, whatever the genre. "beautifully written" is in the eye of the beholder. IMO. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6703
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 02:08 pm: |
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So writers should really concentrate on writing beautiful work and not necessarily commercial success, right
(I never said that.
A writer should concentrate on what he wants to.
If he wants to have lots of commercial success, he should write what is selling.
If he wants to write works of art, he should concentrate on that.
He must be ready to accept the consequences of either choice. It is only rarely that he will be able to do both. |
Nom_de_plume
Regular Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 75
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 - 05:12 pm: |
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Well, Jhumpa Lahiri is at #1 on the NYT Bestseller list. Commercial hack she is not. I'm lovin it! |
Nom_de_plume
Regular Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 76
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 - 05:14 pm: |
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Also, she was at The Strand last night. Read from one of her stories to a SUPER packed audience. A lot of questions asked of her can be found in her recent NY mag interview and New Yorker profile. It was a great event and can be seen at
www.strandbooks.com/tv |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6734
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 12:50 pm: |
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From this article
http://nymag.com/arts/books/profiles/45571/
What makes Lahiri’s corner of the world seem so important, to her and to us? Maybe, for all the polish, it’s the lack of ironic layering that tends to distance us from the tragedies chronicled in most “literary” fiction. Lahiri isn’t afraid to make people cry.
Desser admits to breaking down in the office while going over Unaccustomed Earth—sometimes on the third read. Lahiri writes often of illnesses, failing marriages, and just plain loneliness, but thanks to her economy and mastery of detail, it never quite crosses over into the sentimental. Nor does it rely on the melodramatic twists that are staples of more middlebrow writers like Sue Monk Kidd or Alice Sebold.
Everyone has their Kleenex moments. For some, it’s the passage in The Namesake where the protagonist, Gogol Ganguli, remembers walking with his now-dead father across Cape Cod at low tide. Desser cites a relatively lighthearted scene in “Hema and Kaushik,” the sad trio of linked stories that closes Unaccustomed Earth, in which two immigrant children buy doughnuts for the first time. “It’s the happy parts of Mozart that make me cry,” she explains. She also gets to see firsthand, in their meetings, how Lahiri’s own experiences keep feeding those moments. “The more life happens to someone like Jhumpa Lahiri, the more it goes into the work,” she says. “I look forward to that.”
Haw! Don't sound like no shit I want to read. High class shmaltz. She may not be a hack but she sounds like an Oprah writer waiting for the Big O to anoint her
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Nom_de_plume
Regular Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 77
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 03:36 pm: |
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LMFAO Jhumpa doesn't need The Big O to anoint her, she's got a fucking Pulitzer.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 12208
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 05:52 pm: |
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Wonder what "Nom_de_Plume" 's real name is? Jhumpa Lahiri?  |
Nom_de_plume
Regular Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 78
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 06:59 pm: |
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Imagine that, Cynique!
I been round these parts for SOME time...at least you ain't say I was Kola. LMAO
One of the last times I posted, I was raving about just having seen Stephen Carter at B&N Union Square and even posted a pic or two from that event. I just enjoy good books and good readings, that all.  |
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