# Something stupid with modern writing



## M. LeRenard (Sep 23, 2009)

I'm talking super modern here.  So, for the creative writing class I took in college, we had to read the top ten 'Best Short Stories' from 2007, as decided on by one single person, and one trend I couldn't help but notice was that a lot of the stories had the annoying habit of not really having a clear ending.  In other words, we got some characters, the beginnings of a plot, some stuff happened, and then suddenly it all stopped, like right in the middle of a scene.
Now, I also couldn't help but notice that a lot of the short stories printed in the New Yorker do the same thing.  The New Yorker being a rather elite magazine, I figured this was an indication that what's considered 'the best' writing by these kinds of folks (the highest tiers in the American writing business, I guess you could say... though that's a subjective measurement) seems to be shifting to this kind of cut-off style.  Like endings, with closure, are going out of style for some reason.
Now, my thoughts on this are... well, I think it's stupid.  Let me start with the other side first, though: some of my classmates in that class I was talking about pointed out that they think the reason these stories are done this way is because the author wants the reader to make his own ending, to be given the chance to ponder the work after the work is finished.  Well, that's all fine and dandy, but honestly?  It strikes me as being incredibly lazy on the author's part.
I mean... think about if a painter did something like that.  Let's say I make a painting of a woman from the 17th century, or something, and I try to sell it at auction.  The thing is, instead of painting the woman's nose, I just leave a blank spot.  When people ask about that blank spot, I tell them, "Well, I thought it would be more pleasurable for the viewer to imagine what the woman's nose would look like, so that he could ponder the painting more deeply than if I'd have drawn it on there."  Do you think anyone would buy that painting?  I mean, I'd expect to be slapped for being a pretentious dick-wad if I said something like that.
I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed this trend, and what your thoughts on the subject are if you have (or even if you haven't).  There are a lot of things I definitely prefer about modern styles, but this is just... well, I've said it.  Strikes me as stupid.  So what do you all think?
Or maybe I'm noticing a trend that doesn't exist.


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## VÃ¶lf (Sep 23, 2009)

I don't recall a painting like that ever being done... might be interesting, I'd like to see a woman painted w/o a nose, just for kicks XD

Speaking truthfully about the stories though, I know what you mean. I despise cliffhanger endings myself, and I want to know the ending. I don't like creating my own fanfiction after a story is over.

I guess these few subjective people just prove writing is a game of luck. Even though those endings aren't really well liked, all the big important people in the world make the decisions on what's "in".


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## ShÃ nwÃ ng (Sep 23, 2009)

It's the result of too many writers watching the Sopranos.

Probably some new trend as a mimesis of the direction by which contemporary life moves by, you'll eavesdrop on a conversation and as soon as it gets good it stops. You'll have conversations with friends that'll switch subjects abruptly leaving some stories incomplete. 

Might also be a result of that idea that you'll never know the full story because there will always be that missing something, so rather than have the reader decipher what was missing during the body they simply exaggerate it at the end of the work. 

I don't often read contemporary short stories though, so I didn't know this trend was going on. I'd almost consider it a result of the post-modern era, at least the characteristic I notice, which is the breaking down of the traditional presentation format to exemplify the underlying philosophical characteristic the artist is trying to convey.


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## TakeWalker (Sep 23, 2009)

I wonder what precisely you mean by this lack of ending. I mean, does the story truly just stop in the middle?

Normally, vague endings are the sort where the main character is left with two outcomes and the reader can then decide for themselves which happened. It's _guided_, if open-ended.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 23, 2009)

VÃ¶lf said:
			
		

> I despise cliffhanger endings myself


Not really cliffhanger...


TakeWalker said:


> I wonder what precisely you mean by this lack of ending. I mean, does the story truly just stop in the middle?


Here's the most recent story from the New Yorker, which has an ending like I'm talking about.  Better get to that link before they change it, though, so you don't miss it.  You'll notice that not much happens in the story, and then it just kind of stops, practically right in the middle of a conversation.


			
				Bowtoid_Obelisk said:
			
		

> Probably some new trend as a mimesis of the direction by which contemporary life moves by, you'll eavesdrop on a conversation and as soon as it gets good it stops. You'll have conversations with friends that'll switch subjects abruptly leaving some stories incomplete.
> 
> Might also be a result of that idea that you'll never know the full story because there will always be that missing something, so rather than have the reader decipher what was missing during the body they simply exaggerate it at the end of the work.


Maybe you don't read modern fiction, but that kind of thinking sounds like it could be accurate.  In other words... new age bullcrap, making excuses for sloppy work.  I see this kind of thing the same way I see splatter-painting or minimalism, I guess, and I don't like it any more in writing than I do in visual art.


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## Tanzenlicht (Sep 23, 2009)

Man what a great scam for writers though.  Endings are hard.


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## Stratelier (Sep 24, 2009)

Endings are easy; it's _denoument_ that's hard.



M. Le Renard said:


> Here's the most recent story from the New Yorker, which has an ending like I'm talking about.  Better get to that link before they change it, though, so you don't miss it.  You'll notice that not much happens in the story, and then it just kind of stops, practically right in the middle of a conversation.



Not really.  It's an abrupt ending, yes, but the last half of the story focuses on the character's past, Vivian learning she was adopted and musing over whether to seek out her biological parents, ultimately deciding not to.  Last two sentences are a definite end-of-paragraph or even end-of-chapter two sentences, but I agree, this is really more of a 'scene' writing than anything (that I'd consider) approaching actual story.  There doesn't appear to be progression towards a distinct climax, no central conflict, just the introduction and description of a character, obviously inside-and-out description, but that's all.  It seems not so much a story as an exercise in expository writing.


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## panzergulo (Sep 24, 2009)

I haven't really experienced this myself at all... Don't know why. But anyway, I can see the problem there. Most of the readers are still used to regular storytelling, where a story ends into a real end, an open end, or a cliffhanger. A story without any of these is just... weird. One friend of mine said: "Sometimes the journey can be better than the destination. But without the destination, the journey wouldn't be there." I think this applies here as well. A story without any sort of conventional ending is just that: A pile of words without destination, or meaning.


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## foozzzball (Sep 24, 2009)

Quick note:

It's probably an attempt to, as you mention, make the story stick with the reader. And one way you do that is you foreshadow and foreshadow and foreshadow until things truly are inevitable, and then you twist something ever so slightly to make the reader _wonder_.

The trouble is ending a story like this results in something that is incredibly subjective and technical - which is why the literati love it so. The trouble is that the artistry of it can kind of disappear up its own ass.

By all means, write nice and literarily. But do it _Carefully_ and because you _WANT TO_, not because it's fashionable. I don't like the idea that we just go 'Pfft, this concept for how a story works is shit and it's lazy and I don't like it because I don't understand it'.


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## Stratelier (Sep 24, 2009)

panzergulo said:


> I haven't really experienced this myself at all... Don't know why. But anyway, I can see the problem there. Most of the readers are still used to regular storytelling, where a story ends into a real end, an open end, or a cliffhanger. A story without any of these is just... weird. One friend of mine said: "Sometimes the journey can be better than the destination. But *without the destination, the journey wouldn't be there.*" I think this applies here as well. A story without any sort of conventional ending is just that: A pile of words without destination, or meaning.


Good point (emphasis mine).  I want to make some snarky Creation/Evolution -ism analogy, but why open that can of worms in here?


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## panzergulo (Sep 24, 2009)

Stratadrake said:


> Good point (emphasis mine).  I want to make some snarky Creation/Evolution -ism analogy, but why open that can of worms in here?



You should have made the snarky comment... now I'm disappointed.



			
				Tom Clancy said:
			
		

> The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.



Reality doesn't make sense. Fiction is just one manifestation of our feeble attempt to create something beautiful, logical and pure. Let fiction stay that way, I say. Reality is just random enough without all artsy modern writer types.


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## Mojotaian (Sep 24, 2009)

First off, I wouldn't compare it to art because art is art and art could be ANYTHING! Like... seriously... ANYTHING!

But you do have a point. To write a book isn't about working the imagination of the reader to end YOUR story! YOU have to do it!!! THAT"S WHY YOU"RE THE WRITER!!!!


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## TakeWalker (Sep 24, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Here's the most recent story from the New Yorker, which has an ending like I'm talking about.  Better get to that link before they change it, though, so you don't miss it.  You'll notice that not much happens in the story, and then it just kind of stops, practically right in the middle of a conversation.



That link locks up my browser something fierce, so I guess I'm not reading the ending :|

All I know is, that story was boring as shit. It's terrible. Paragraph after paragraph of humdrum exposition, hardly any character development, ugh. This is modern writing, worthy of publication in a high-end newspaper?


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## Lazarus (Sep 24, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> ...This is modern writing, worthy of publication in a high-end newspaper?



Yes, because the prevalent school of thought in current literature is Postmodernism. This is what allows someone to write in the middle of their overall boring story an even more boring 15-page description of a man eating Captain Crunch and receive nothing but praise from it. I can't remember who exactly the author is that did that "Captain Crunch" scene, but it's legit, and boy was he ever elevated towards the Gods for writing it.

Postmodernism, to me, is a celebration of mediocrity. All you have to do to be a very good postmodern writer is know how to describe mundane things in exceptional detail, poorly construct characters, maintain a placid level of anything that can move a story forward and there must always, *always* be a deeper meaning to your work than those silly philistines will ever understand. It's all about emphasizing the boring parts of life as opposed to literature's usual choice of the conflict and road to resolution.

It's literary snobbery at it's finest and is what turns so many new writers off and away from ever wanting to write again. If anything, within the next 10 to 15 years you should see a reaction to Postmoderism coming along, and hopefully it'll be a bright, vibrant and energetic contrast.

In my creative writing class I have to deal with this crap as well, so I feel your pain.


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## nybx4life (Sep 24, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> That link locks up my browser something fierce, so I guess I'm not reading the ending :|
> 
> All I know is, that story was boring as shit. It's terrible. Paragraph after paragraph of humdrum exposition, hardly any character development, ugh. This is modern writing, worthy of publication in a high-end newspaper?



I've read the New Yorker many times before, and yes, it does go like that, as far as I know, all the time.

Maybe it is foreshadowing that the writer placed in there for the sake of making their readers imagine what happens next, or just writer laziness.

To me, most likely it's an idea that didn't play out right.
With the exception of "The Giver", any abrupt cliffhanger-like stop in action or conversation gets told, in its own way, at the actions that happen after.

They just forgot this is a short story, and not a chapter story.
Or, it's an excerpt from their story.


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## NaotaM (Sep 24, 2009)

It's like that New Yorker story is gleefully raping the "Show, Don't Tell" rule right up the ass. Sideways. With a rusty nail spike. I could hardly take half a page of that six-page mess.

As for stories just sorta stopping...you don't read a lot of thursday prompts or tarbh challenges, do ya? lol


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## Poetigress (Sep 24, 2009)

As far as the trend you're talking about, MLR, that's pretty much the big difference between "literary" and "genre." Namely, those of us who write genre fiction generally can't get away with that sort of thing.  Literary fiction looks at story as an art object more than what we usually think of as a narrative. (This is also what separates it from "mainstream" or what is sometimes called "general" fiction.) 

I also think Lazarus has it right about postmodernism. Poetry seemed to go through the same sort of phase and came out the other side with the spoken-word slam and more accessible work.

And Naota, as far as the Thursday Prompts go, I will keep saying this as many times as I have to in as many places as I have to -- the prompt is an exercise, so responses are not necessarily meant to be complete stories. As for the Tarbh challenges, it's a lot harder than most people think to write a real beginning-middle-and-end story in 100 words (not just a scene), so I think the length limitation might be at fault there.


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## VÃ¶lf (Sep 24, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Not really cliffhanger...
> 
> Here's the most recent story from the New Yorker, which has an ending like I'm talking about.  Better get to that link before they change it, though, so you don't miss it.  You'll notice that not much happens in the story, and then it just kind of stops, practically right in the middle of a conversation.



*snoring...* *more snoring...* Woah! It's done? Pfff. so boring I couldn't even get to the end. I tried to read the last page but... idk. does seem kinda dumb to me, yeah.



NaotaM said:


> It's like that New Yorker story is gleefully raping the "Show, Don't Tell" rule right up the ass. Sideways. With a rusty nail spike. I could hardly take half a page of that six-page mess.



pure lulz XD


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 24, 2009)

Poetigress said:
			
		

> As far as the trend you're talking about, MLR, that's pretty much the big difference between "literary" and "genre."


So that's what 'literary' means, huh?  And here I thought it had something to do with literature, which is to say, fiction that tells a good story but also has a point to make.  So now I guess we're moving away from the first part and just sticking with 'has a point to make'.
I guess I'm just not fond of these kinds of mind-games.
In which case:


			
				TakeWalker said:
			
		

> This is modern writing, worthy of publication in a high-end newspaper?


The thing is, when I read these stories, I know there's supposed to be some kind of deep message for the reader.  Sometimes I can find it right off the bat, and I think, okay, that's kind of cool I guess.  Other times I just don't care enough to look.  But either way, I guess it makes sense that now it's suddenly popular for the message to be more important than the story, and that literature elites seem to put such stories on a higher pedestal than other works, simply because they're more cerebral than basic fiction.
But that brings back my original point about it being lazy.  Foozzz is trying to be snarky with me, but the fact is, people used to be able to (and some of them still can) write profound pieces like these _while at the same time making them entertaining_.  This takes away half of that process, so to me it's just as worthy of praise as a story that's entertaining but has no message.
Hence my comparison with art: it's like that "painting" (if you can call it that) that I saw in the Centre Pompidou in Paris.  This is it (what the guy is standing in front of; those three panels).  Just three blank canvases.  Now, I can sort of appreciate the idea behind it, but I mean seriously... tell me that's not in some way a lazy painting.


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## Lazarus (Sep 24, 2009)

Poetigress, there's a great book out called "Atomik Aztex" by Chicano poet Sesshu Foster that is both "literary" and "genre". It's so far the only postmodern novel to entertain me because its main viewpoint is moving back and forth between modern Los Angeles (literary) and Los Angeles in a parallel universe (genre). By the end of the book he's blended them together so you can't tell which viewpoint you're seeing things from.

This meshing of both literary ability along with genre fiction can be done, but it requires more skill than most modern writers are taught and most certainly more than postmodern writers will ever hope to have.


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## TakeWalker (Sep 24, 2009)

There are so many good posts in this thread, argh! @.@ (Excellent working definitions there, Poey!) I'm just going to reply to this one, though.



M. Le Renard said:


> The thing is, when I read these stories, I know there's supposed to be some kind of deep message for the reader.



This is how they get you, you know: the expectation of depth. Then you say to someone, "Well, it didn't seem to be about anything to me," and they can cluck their tongues and draw themselves up in their chair and say, "Well, obviously, that's because you're simply less _cultured_/_intelligent_/etc." Fact is, most of them either have no idea either (but consider pretending to to be a mark of intelligence), or their heads are shoved so far up their asses that they've come up with long-winded explanations for the meaning that they actually believe.

Thus, literary canon. :V



M. Le Renard said:


> Foozzz is trying to be snarky with me, but the fact is, people used to be able to (and some of them still can) write profound pieces like these _while at the same time making them entertaining_.



Sad but true. 

Wasn't it Stephen King who said that you can't write meaning into a story, you have to find the meaning and then edit to emphasize it? Something along those lines. If you try to write a meaningful piece of fiction, you're going to end up with (in the best case scenario) a meaningful piece of fiction -- _and not a story_. Me, I like stories.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 24, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> Wasn't it Stephen King who said that you can't write meaning into a story, you have to find the meaning and then edit to emphasize it? Something along those lines. If you try to write a meaningful piece of fiction, you're going to end up with (in the best case scenario) a meaningful piece of fiction -- _and not a story_. Me, I like stories.


That was in _On Writing_, yeah.  And I agree, because it takes a rare kind of person to be able to write a story with a meaning in mind on the rough draft and have it not come out sounding pretentious or preachy.  And it's because you usually end up concentrating more on the message than on the mechanics of the story, the plot, the characters, or any of those things that makes a story a story.

And yeah, there are lots of good responses in this thread.  I'm trying to keep myself from making a huge post and responding to all of them.


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## panzergulo (Sep 25, 2009)

Urgh... this thread has turned too intelligent and cultured to me.

*Me a wri-ter. I put words to-get-her. Nice story. You laugh in the end. Some-times cry. But it is all good.*

When reading something like this thread, I'm just happy I don't really care that much about anything cultural. I just write because I have fun doing it and it seems other people can enjoy my stories as well. "Literary" and "genre" and whatnot are just words, ideas, concepts, you can't measure them, but you can fight endlessly because of them. But yeah, I guess I'm more of a scientist than a humanist anyway...


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## foozzzball (Sep 25, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> But that brings back my original point about it being lazy.  Foozzz is trying to be snarky with me, but the fact is, people used to be able to (and some of them still can) write profound pieces like these _while at the same time making them entertaining_.  This takes away half of that process, so to me it's just as worthy of praise as a story that's entertaining but has no message.



Damn right I'm being snarky - I resent the idea that any of this has anything to do with techniques. Techniques are things people do - if it fails, they have failed. Not the technique. It's far too damn fashionable to go 'Ohhh, we resent the du jour literary/artistic culture, clearly it all sucks, wehhhh.'

I find it pathetic. Why? Because there is a hell of a lot to learn about art and literature from these movements, they do result in beauty, and just because they are not something you comprehend doesn't mean they're shit - it means that they're so wrapped up in their own little world they have sacrificed the ability to entertain for something else, and hopefully in the mind of the artist that was a fair trade.

Now I haven't even read the New Yorker piece, but I do keep an eye on this stuff from time to time, and let me tell you this - people are blind to the fact that 'literary' fiction is a genre. It is a very, very tightly defined genre and as a result it falls prey to something all genre fiction must deal with: a scarcity of material. That scarcity of material means that during the formative phases of SF, during the pulp era, any retard who could write 'ROCKET SHIP GLOWING DARKLY IN THE POOL OF SPACE' or some similar phrase got to be a SF author. There were not enough authors skilled with using SF to do anything - as a result the retards who were willing to try their hand at it got a nearly free trip to publication.

Currently, Furry is having this problem in SPADES, but that is a digression.

My point is, the techniques involved in pulling off a good story using these kinds of post-modern concepts probably means that less than one in a dozen authors who have been studying it hard and examining it and writing it for ten years are capable of putting out a decent literary story - however every publication has a schedule and if they can't get better material they will have to go to press with shit. And they will have to smile and claim that it is award winning ownder because if they said, 'well, folks, we couldn't get the guy who actually made this kind of story work, so we had to settle for a knock-off. Hopefully you'll like it anyway if you're into the genre so much it blinds you to quality issues' they wouldn't sell a single issue.

Now, as for allegations of laziness.

Modern art has some very strange extremes. I have seen chunks of packing tape scrawled on with marker at the Saatchi gallery - an hour's work, if the stuff is laying around, sure. I have also seen _highly detailed_ mannequin sculptures of frighteningly realistic old men bumping into each other in automated wheelchairs in the basement of the Saatchi. I have no idea how many man hours in total went into constructing those old men.

Some of these things are lazy, sure. Probably the laziest pieces of art I know of are 'found' art - which were produced by the DaDa guys in abject rejection of everything art at that period stood for. Pretty much all of these blank canvases etetcera are, in my view, mimicking stuff like Duchamp's 'Fountain' - a found sculpture, being a urinal presented as a drinking fountain. 'Fountain', in the context of its time period, actually means something. It's from 1917. 

The real laziness here is the artist having no message and aping their betters, and that is very common in art as well as literature. This 'dropping off in the middle' thing you guys are talking about, I connect that with Hemingway and Kazuo Ishiguro right now, but this is only because I don't read a hell of a lot in 'mainstream' - the amount of pulpy trash I read is actually astonishing, and if I am going to namedrop authors I read, those are really the only two I _can_. 

Anyway. My point is, just because a bunch of retards murder the technique/style/etcetera, don't blame the technique/style/etcetera.

If we did that, we would look at furry fiction and assume that it's complete tripe nobody should touch with a forty foot pole - writing about animal people CLEARLY means that the story is going to be some uncomfortably sexual self insert story with no real plot or meaning, right? Right?


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## Poetigress (Sep 25, 2009)

The blank-canvas-draw-your-own-meaning-from-it school isn't so much born out of laziness, though. It's born out of fear. If you don't say anything definite, then no one can attack your point of view. Being vague and obscure is therefore also being safe. There's a fantastic book called _The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear_ by Ralph Keyes that has two sections called "Literary Fog" and "Higher Obfuscation" that go into this in detail. A few pertinent passages:

"We're all born with an ability to get our message across. The ability to baffle is acquired. Although I often hear about programs in 'effective communication' and the like, I've seldom met anyone who couldn't make a point he really wanted to make. 'Communication problems' usually result from a prayer that others won't get our message so that we can keep our options open ('That isn't what I meant.') Saying exactly what we mean can be risky. That's why we so seldom do."

"...anyone who calls fog fog risks being told it's he who has a problem. That's a colossal risk to take. It's one reason that garbled writing is such a balm to writer's nerves. Should some brave reader of confused syntax say 'I don't get this,' the writer is free to respond (or at least think), 'You wouldn't.' By contrast, a clear, direct, vigorous piece of writing invites a clear, direct, vigorous response. That could be, 'This stinks.' ... The fear of inviting such a response helps explain why so little writing gets produced that is clear, direct, and vigorous."

"Plainness and simplicity are admired more in Shaker furniture than in written words. Clear, simple writing risks being called simpleminded by those who are unsure of their own intellectual gifts. It's a variation on Groucho Marx's line about not wanting to join any club that would have him: anything I can grasp easily couldn't possibly be profound. That's one reason the market for obscure writing is so robust. Readability is no prerequisite for either commercial or literary success."


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## Stratelier (Sep 25, 2009)

Poetigress said:


> The blank-canvas-draw-your-own-meaning-from-it school isn't so much born out of laziness, though. It's born out of fear. If you don't say anything definite, then no one can attack your point of view.


. . . _what_ point-of-view?



			
				panzergulo said:
			
		

> You should have made the snarky [Creation/Evolution] comment... now I'm disappointed.


It was something along the lines of "there is no 'why' in Evolution".  I forgot the rest.



panzergulo said:


> Urgh... this thread has turned too intelligent and cultured to me.


And that is even a _problem?_ I'll take TLDR over HRDR any day.


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## Poetigress (Sep 25, 2009)

Stratadrake said:


> . . . _what_ point-of-view?



Exactly. If one can't define it, one can't comment on it.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 25, 2009)

It sounds like you're going to have to supply an example of a good piece of literary fiction, Foozzz, so I can see what all the fuss is about.  Because hey, maybe you're right and I've just only read bad pieces (though I have been reading The New Yorker for some time now, and I've yet to find a story in there that I've liked).
Although now I'm curious: you keep insisting that I don't understand it.  Would you offer an explanation?


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## foozzzball (Sep 26, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> It sounds like you're going to have to supply an example of a good piece of literary fiction, Foozzz, so I can see what all the fuss is about.  Because hey, maybe you're right and I've just only read bad pieces (though I have been reading The New Yorker for some time now, and I've yet to find a story in there that I've liked).
> Although now I'm curious: you keep insisting that I don't understand it.  Would you offer an explanation?



Example: Blank canvasses.

To 'get' blank canvasses you can't expect the work to speak to you, you can't be entertained, it cannot make you engage with it: to deal with these things you have to _engage with the work_, actively - and this is absolutely ridiculous for art, which we traditionally understand as _expression_. These things are kind of selfish - they demand the audience to go through many of the actions required for us to express, just without an audience of our own - being the artist. 

These things are more like Zen Koans than stories, or riddles - trying to imply that they need to be viewed in the same light as representational art - portraiture, storytelling - denies what they _are_.

(Furry art, BTW, is something I find almost weird in how it is, technically, dominated by portratiure of various sorts.)

There is a lot of what I personally classify as 'writing for writers' going on here - using techniques and references that are only going to make any kind of meaningful sense to somebody who is used to the artform, is engaged with it, and is used to picking apart other people's work. In this light, a lot of works are completely locked away from the common man - and I agree that's sad, probably even a failure to understand what storytelling as an art is all about, but there is still a lot that's valid we can learn about from observing people who do that.

Yes, there is a shitload of modern and post-modern work in art and literature that makes no sense, and typically this is because the _ARTIST HAS FAILED_. But you seem to be assuming this is because the _movement_ and the _style_ have failed, which is the part I find willfully ignorant. You can feel free to say, 'I don't like this style', but saying 'this style is clearly ridiculous', as I interpret most of your posts, really implies that you haven't figured out that there are valid, strong artistic reasons that people have been going post-modern for the last forty, fifty years.

The major author I read who is considered post-modern is Kazuo Ishiguro - I don't know if he's done any short stories, but I do know that I absolutely LOVED his novel 'Never Let Me Go' - which, I warn you, does not have anything like a conventional ending. I understand that Ernest Hemingway - probably the only other piece of cultural cannon I read much of - is often considered to be a guy who provided most of the foundations for a lot of modern (as in current) literary movements.

(I will note, BTW, that Hemingway seems to be touted as some kind of paragon - I don't think I agree with this. 'Very Good' is not the same as 'OH GOD WE HAVE TO APE THIS GUY ALL THE TIME.')

Go read some of those. Get hip to why this isn't just laziness, although I agree this stuff provides perfect camouflage for retards who _ARE_ lazy.

--

Also, PS @ PT: I'm not sure I agree with the 'fear of expression' thing, but I do find the concept very interesting. I can agree with using obfuscation as an attempt to bulwark oneself against others intellectually, but blank-canvas-draw-your-own-meaning from it is also, usually, tied into a _very specific_ contextual framework, and - in my view - are practically meaningless without commentary from the author. For an example of what I mean, read about --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Oak_Tree


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 26, 2009)

Okay, foozzz, slow down, because you're repeating yourself a lot.  This is what I wanted to know:


> but there is still a lot that's valid we can learn about from observing people who do that.


Give specific examples of what we can learn.  Because it sounds like you're saying that we shouldn't look at these as writing or art, but we should still try to glean advice from them as writers or artists.  What can we learn, and why is it important that we learn it?
For example: I've read _The Old Man and the Sea_.  I also enjoyed it.  Was that literary fiction (as in, the definition we're using now), and did I just not know that because all the other literary fiction I've read was _supposed_ to read like that one but didn't, hence giving me the wrong impression?


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## TakeWalker (Sep 26, 2009)

foozzzball said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Oak_Tree



On a side note, this is the kind of shit I love.  It's thoroughly pretentious and ultimately hilarious, yet it sure as hell makes you think once you've stopped laughing.

I've begun to think that the answer to "What is art?" is not so much "Whatever we call 'art'," but "Whatever we can convince you is art."

So I can pull a brick out of a fountain and call it art, which will cause a lot of people to laugh at me for being lazy. Or, I can pull a brick out of a fountain and write up an artist's statement which details what it is, where it came from, and how it's a symbol of... well, I dunno, it would probably be something along the lines of being a material thing that in and of itself would have a certain use, but in that particular context is proven to be completely useless, which is to say, you cannot build a house without bricks, but removing one brick from the wall hasn't destroyed the house, and is therefore unnecessary.

c.c

I need to do this now.


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## Stratelier (Sep 26, 2009)

foozzzball said:


> Example: Blank canvasses.
> 
> To 'get' blank canvasses you can't expect the work to speak to you, you can't be entertained, it cannot make you engage with it: to deal with these things you have to _[be the one to]_ engage with the work . . . e.g: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Oak_Tree


Emphasis mine.  Much of 'art itself' is the communication from author to audience, that is where the so-called blood, sweat & tears come into play.  Those elements culminate into one final product that communicates itself to the viewer.  By contrast, something like Oak Tree communicates nothing -- by itself -- to the viewer, and so if the viewer can't grasp the idea or concept that the artist wants them to, the piece is a failure.

Conceptual art itself isn't a bad thing -- how many of us have scribbled out 30-second poses on sketchpaper or jotted down flittering thoughts to remind us later of the ideas that were floating around our heads at the time?  Of course, these are for author's reference more than for any presentation to an audience (who didn't visualize the initial idea that we did).

Trying to present an intangible idea in intangible form is . . . well, telepathy notwithstanding, you need _something_ tangible to convey it to the viewer, right?


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## foozzzball (Sep 28, 2009)

M. Le Renard said:


> Okay, foozzz, slow down, because you're repeating yourself a lot.  This is what I wanted to know:
> 
> Give specific examples of what we can learn.  Because it sounds like you're saying that we shouldn't look at these as writing or art, but we should still try to glean advice from them as writers or artists.  What can we learn, and why is it important that we learn it?
> For example: I've read _The Old Man and the Sea_.  I also enjoyed it.  Was that literary fiction (as in, the definition we're using now), and did I just not know that because all the other literary fiction I've read was _supposed_ to read like that one but didn't, hence giving me the wrong impression?



I am known for babbling. >.> (Also I tend to write forum posts when I am dead tired and about to sleep, or just after I've woken up and am muzzy!)

Old Man and the Sea is one of the Hemingway works I still need to get ahold of, but from what I understand of it, it's definitely up there. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but for forty odd years every other literary author was desperately trying to ape Hemingway - regardless of what they're doing, Hemingway uses a lot of the techniques that are important. So, yes - if you haven't found a more recent 'literary' author you like, chances are good that they just aren't the hot shit you've been led to believe they are.

As for things you can learn from Hemingway, it seems the term for one of the big ones you can be learning about, according to Wiki, is Iceberg Theory --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory

You want a list of things you should be learning from Post-Modern literature? Again, Wiki serves to bolster my intelligence here - I'm a lot stronger on SF as a genre... But the list here looks pretty good to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature#Common_themes_and_techniques

One I like, personally, is intertextuality (typically drawing from my own work/other points in the same story - I've heard this referred to by many names), but, really, you are in fact getting me to a point where I'm still stumbling to understand and learn - and I'm not all that comfortable in being all authorative about it because I fear I will look like an idiot. XD

But, what I will dare venture an opinion about is what I've been learning from litty fiction over the past year or two, and that is inclusive of stuff like traditional plot structures versus nontraditional plotstructures - three acts, for instance, is now in my estimation bullcrap, plots are way too nuanced to reduce into blocks in that fashion. Very useful in all of this, along with Hemingway and whatnot, have been a couple of books I own on relatively modern literary criticism (How Novels Work by John Mullan is my favourite) which have opened my eyes to a lot.


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## Volpino (Sep 28, 2009)

I think everyone here is saying the same basic thing. Let me give a small example.

I arrive at my in-laws after work to pick up my wife and go home, but when I get there, she's gone and the house is locked. On the door is a note that reads: Terry has the key.

It turns out my brother-in-law had been there earlier, read the note, but couldn't find the key.

I went to the brown car left in the driveway, opened the door and picked up the house key off the floormat.

The note had been absurd to my brother-in-law. He had no way of knowing that my wife and I called that car Terry.

But, in the future, his ability to communicate with my wife and I was enhanced, because he learned what it meant and could use it later if he wanted to.

As a writer, you try and communicate your idea to your audience. I have a novel that only my family understands. I have a short story I wrote 30 years ago that every that speaks English can understand.

If you, as a writer, don't understand what an author is doing, there's two things that happened. 1. The writer missed you. Either you weren't part of the intended audience, or the author was a lazy wank who only got published because, out of the four submissions the magazine had that month, his was the one that least resembled a garbage heap. I worked in semi-pro publishing. It happens.

But you also failed as a writer too. If the writer wasn't writing to you, but you passed up the opportunity to learn how to reach that particular audience, you've hobbled yourself. It doesn't matter that you think you will never need to reach that audience. How many times do you pass up something and then need it ten minutes later? ("Ug, I'm going to forget this idea because I didn't think I'd need to pack a pad and pen!")

And of course, if the writer did hit an epic fail, you can learn just about as much from a badly written novel as you can from a good novel. (That's my story for why I spent so many hours weeding through bad fiction at the magazine, and I'm sticking to it.)

That said I just don't buy the New Yorker. If everyone that didn't understand it canceled their subscriptions, we'd know if the stories were selling because they were good, or if they're selling because it says New Yorker on the cover. Either way, I don't really care.


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## Volpino (Sep 28, 2009)

So, it might be slightly off topic, but I think more it brings things back to the start: JRR Tolkien (who was definitely NOT a furry) had some interesting things to say about allegory and interpreting his stories. I was gratified to find out that we shared the same view on finding meaning in stories. The first quote is from a letter to Christopher and Faith Tolkien dated 11 September 1957. All my quotes are from the book: The Letters of JRR Tolkien



> There is _no _'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort 'five wizards=five senses' is wholly foreign to my way of thinking... To ask if the Orcs 'are' Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.



I wish I knew of that quote earlier so that I could have shoved it in multiple English lit teacher's faces. I blame them for many editors and English teachers over-reading the material. Tolkien as a whole did not appreciate such allusions (delusions?) 

In an earlier letter to his publisher, Sir Stanley Unwin, dated 31 July 1947, Tolkien is commenting on the impressions Unwin's son, Raynor, had upon reading (and approving) _The Lord of the Rings_ The quote is set in context, but the publisher seems to be using a different style book than what I'm used to. (big surprise) I added the bold.



> But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect 'Allegory'. There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals -- they each of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such.
> 
> *Of course*,* Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth*. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect 'human' literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read 'just as a story'; and *the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it*. But the two start out from opposite ends.



His point, simply, is that you make your point by writing your story. You don't write your story, to make a point. I despise, I hate, I loathe, I fail to find enough words in English to describe my feelings regarding the current publishing standard of trying to cram an author's opinion down my throat. Bad enough in the newpapers, but we see it in the bookstores, in the movies, even the ads we read. Like so military chaplains I met, they preach pluralism from pulpits built upon principles of prejudice. They shout to the world, "Here is my view! It's now your view too!" Too weak to convince me through means of reason and logical discussion, they turn on their wind tunnel and cast their tripe in the air, so there is not a way for me to constantly keep it from hitting me in the face.

*snort* /rant off

ahem. ok. Sorry about that. Back to Tolkien on why he wrote what he did. There are other reason that people write, but he sums up the reasons I write very nicely, and at the same time gives some grand insight into the inner workings of a master's mind. (Letter to W. H. Audin, the _New York Times_ book reviewer that first reviewed his books. Dated 7 June 1955. I added the emphasis.)



> ...most people that have enjoyed _The Lord of the Rings_ have been affected primarily by it as an exciting story; *and that is how it was written*. Though one does not...escape from the question 'what is it about?'...*That would be like answering an aesthetic question by talking of a point of technique*.



I'm not saying that I disagree with anyone else's opinions. I'm just saying that this is my take the current trends and I wish more writers would share my view.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 28, 2009)

I think the only reason I start these kinds of threads is because I usually end up learning something from them that makes me think about things in a different way.  So thanks, guys, for arguing with me.


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## Poetigress (Sep 28, 2009)

Vupino said:


> His point, simply, is that you make your point by writing your story. You don't write your story, to make a point.



Yes. And it's even better when you _discover_ your point by writing your story -- writing to find and explore your answer instead of just communicating your answer -- because then you've left yourself open to nuances in your own thoughts and feelings that you might not have known were there otherwise.


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## Volpino (Sep 28, 2009)

Poetigress said:


> Yes. And it's even better when you _discover_ your point by writing your story -- writing to find and explore your answer instead of just communicating your answer -- because then you've left yourself open to nuances in your own thoughts and feelings that you might not have known were there otherwise.


  Very well put. There's another letter where he basically says that he was surprised with many of things that appeared in his writing. Things as small as that he didn't know Frodo was going to meet Farimir until Farimir just wandered into the story or that Aragorn wasn't going to marry Eowyn until she got a little too fiesty. Things as big as not knowing that even the will of hobbits would fail on the cracks of Mount Doom.

His letters and his son's compilations of his notes are excellent reads for any world builder.


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## Atrak (Oct 2, 2009)

Okay, I have mixed emotions about cut-off endings. Ones like what you're talking about, Ren, I hate  . However, there are some endings that are cut-off, but final, as well. They sort of end it, but then add something that is a turning point for the entire story.
The only example of this that I can think of is the Animorphs series. It's not really adult-orientated. More like middle-school  . But the ending was awesome, and annoying  . You should read it, if you want to know what I mean. The series has 54 books, and various Megamorph, alternamorph, and chronicle books in addition. They are, however, excepting the chronicles, very short. Each of the 54 normal books is little more than 100 pages long, and very quick reads.
The funny thing, I got into these in fifth grade, before I even knew what a furry was, and in this book, 5 kids have the ability...to transform into animals  . Read it if you're interested. You can download the entire series for free online. Don't remember where, sorry, but I downloaded it a year or two ago  .


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