Harold Bloom: Pro on con?

Harold Bloom is a divisive figure in literary criticism. Highly opinionated and ridiculously prolific, people have a "hate-on" for Bloom.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Harold_Bloom

Do you like him? Do you hate him? Why?

Let the literary pie fight begin!

I think these days it's vital that aesthetically-focused critics maintain a place in academia. For that reason, I like Bloom. I also appreciate that he likes DeLillo and McCarthy a lot (though he has a higher opinion of Roth than I do). I also appreciate his dislike of Doris Lessing. For those reasons, I like Bloom.

On the other hand, and here I'm going to be much less specific because it's late and I can't think of any examples, I have found myself strongly disagreeing with his aesthetic evaluations at various times in the past. For this extremely vague reason, I dislike Bloom. I mean, let's be honest: he's kind of a self-satisfied blowhard.

At least Bloom HAS an aesthetic and is able to articulate it wonderfully. I agree with him most of the time but when he's wrong, he's dead wrong.

I do appreciate his mind and respect the man. I just don't think ANY critic or commentator is unassailable.

The quote from this article, as I remember, is from Harold Bloom. Whenever I see his name now I think "Porseffor of Eglinsh"....

http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/newslettersv03/3.4.htm

I like Harold Bloom a lot when i agree w/ him; contrarywise, i dislike like him alot in a lot of other of his writings. Actually, i should say that i'm reacting to his writings - in re the man himself, i don't have a clue.

Bloom is a smart enough guy, and he has probably read (and thought deeply about) more books than anyone else you might name. He has the very helpful quality to put books into context with the era, the author's oeuvre, other authors, and Bloom's own project.

Politically, he has deep disagreement with Foucauldians, etc, who dont have much faith in American institutions.

Politically, he has deep disagreement with Foucauldians, etc, who dont have much faith in American institutions.

While I am glad Bloom is around, given the cell death of American freedoms, business sense, and collective brain power, I have lost my faith in many "American institutions": the corporation, organized religion, the armed forces, etc. Everything has become an amoral rat race towards more money and less ethical accountability. Great swaths of the Midwest ensconced in an authoritarian ethos that boils down to "I was just following orders." They may be superficial patriots -- flag lapel pins and "Support our troops" bumper stickers -- but when it comes to preserving the Bill of Rights, they will abandon those at the drop of a hat. The town hall shouters are nothing but quislings and quacks.

When American institutions don't embrace torture, crony capitalism, and cover-ups, then my faith will be restored. Right now I remain skeptical and disillusioned.

Right now I remain skeptical and disillusioned.

No S.

Still there are good institutions that exist in America and we should fight to see them continue: democracy; free, undistorted communication; and equality.

"Democracy"...or, as my good friend Lewis Lapham from HARPER'S put it: a choice between two blue-blooded sons of the American aristocracy.

"Free, undistorted communication"...controlled by organs of corporate America, hostage to deep-pocketed special interest groups.

"Equality"...if you can afford a good lawyer.

Sometimes skepticism isn't merely a coping mechanism, but a valid, comprehensive, informed point of view.

And sometimes the skeptic should be told to get lost.

10:
Eek, I hope you're joking.

Why would you hope I am joking?

Latham is wrong, I dont know how Clinton or Obama could be considered as "blue-blooded".

Corporations cant control everything, for example this little discussion is free with only the distortion caused by our experiences.

Procedural justice helps level out preferential treatment.

Look, I think it is very, very easy to be cynical about everything; but it makes one useless for political action. I think it would be better to focus on what is good, and expand on it.

Ah, sure. Tell the cynic to get lost, by all means. I thought we were talking about skeptics.

Well, Clinton somehow managed to afford Oxford College, which is a bit out of most people's price range. Hardly lower middle class. And then he peddled his cracker ass to Tyson Foods and the rest is history. Not the first president to sell out to business interests (McKinley was another glaring example from the historical record) and certainly not the last.

As for Mr. Obama, someone will present him with the bill sooner or later. He might have been more coy than his predecessor, played hard to get, but you don't become president of the USA without ample backing from folks who expect quid pro quo once their lad/lass hits the big time. A cheap investment that promises massive dividends (as Bush, Cheney and his cronies discovered):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06RY_A4SfY

>9 CliffBurns: and 14
So, you're changing the definition as the argument proceeds - first, blue-bloods were sons of the American aristocracey (post 9); Then, regarding CLinton (post 14), a blue-blood is someone who can afford Oxford University (more about that in my P.S.). Then, later in post 14, they are simply people who raise enough money and support to get elected, which guarantees your argument to be true, since getting elected = blue-bloods.

On top of that, you're even using your own argument to predict what will happen and then pointing to what will happen to support your argument: Only those who practice quid pro quo with the powerful and/or wealthy will get elected - therefore - Obama will, in the future, practice quid pro quo with the powerful and/or wealthy that helped him get elected - therefore - only those who practice quid pro quo with the powerful and/or wealthy can get elected.

I don't know if I agree or disagree with your conclusions, but I can't accept your logic in getting there.

Os.

P.S. Oh, and Clinton went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. I don't know how much he or his family had to pay over and above the scholarship, but as I understand it, a Rhodes scholarship covers tuition and fees and may include a stipend as well.

13: It was misleading that Burns described his cynicism as skepticism, but following his lead I called it skepticism, too. My bad.

Clinton somehow managed to afford Oxford College, which is a bit out of most people's price range. Hardly lower middle class.

Jesus. From the Oxford website: "Higher education in Britain is largely publicly funded and a high percentage of Oxford students are from families of modest means." Not to mention Clinton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship....

As for Mr. Obama, someone will present him with the bill sooner or later.

Well, until that time you should have only your speculation to back your argument.

Hmmm...I see where you're going even though I think you're being a trifle pedantic--going after minor discrepancies and presenting them as major lapses in logical progression. As a debating tactic, it's quite long in the tooth.

Lemme put it this way: no one becomes Prez (except by accident or misfortune, i.e.. Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ) unless they've been thoroughly vetted and approved by wealthy interests. Presidents no more represent the common people than a fucking medieval Pope or 16th century King of France.

Clear?

Clinton, from what I've read went, to Georgetown and Harvard (as well as oxford) and while scholarships may have played a role, those are two very expensive institutions. Certainly I couldn't afford to give my kids such a, yes, "blue-blooded" education. That's wayyy beyond our means and we're decidedly upper middle class...

Clinton, from what I've read went, to Georgetown and Harvard (as well as oxford)

(sarcasm) Harvard, Yale, whatever. Do not bother me with facts! In any event, facts have no impact on my argument! (/sarcasm)

I think if I'm going to ally myself with commentators who write honestly and forthrightly about America, its promise and failures, folks like Lewis Lapham and Molly Ivins are at the top of my list.

I feel quite secure in the company of good people like them...

Meanwhile as this quaint irrelevant debate has been going on, the future of your grandchildren has been mortgaged and America has become a Chinese colony.

Cynical? Maybe. Just let me know where those patriotic baubles you buy at big box retailers are manufactured.

And what does any of this have to do with Harold Bloom anyway? The election is over.

As the token Brit, I'd just like make things clear regarding university education in the UK, re #16 and "Higher education in Britain is largely publicly funded and a high percentage of Oxford students are from families of modest means."

Here, university is open to everyone who can meet the academic requirements (usually pre-determined A Level grades). Their stay at university is funded by a student loan; fees are usually paid by their local government. There used to a system of student grants but they were abolished in the mid-1990s. Students now leave university with between £10,000 and £20,000 of debt on average.

While in theory higher education is available to all, in practice the abolition of the grant system has led to a higher proportion of students funded by loans supplemented by their parents. So the student body is more middle class now than it was before - "families of modest means" are becoming increasingly rare, IOW.

All this applies only to UK citizens and residents. Overseas students have to pay fees - often considerably more than home students are charged - and fund their lifestyle. They get no monetary assistance from the British state. I've no idea how much the Rhodes stipend is worth, but I'd be surprised if it provides an acceptable standard of living to a mature US student. Unless you're willing to live like a pauper, studying abroad is an expensive business.

In re: UK education, "The Young Ones" University Challenge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxA0a5G6ccg

As a skeptic, cynic, and all-round awful human being -- "Vegetable rights and peace!" --any of the intellectual polestars from Scumbag University will get my vote.

As a classicist, Iʻm interested in Bloomsʻ "canon" concept, but very skeptical of it as a useful ongoing rule. This doesnʻt come from the inevitable disagreements with some of his choices. In fact I 80 or 85% agree with those.

I mean, even if weʻre allowed to substitute our own "canon" for Bloomʻs, Iʻm skeptical of the concept of HAVIng a canon

rolandperkins wrote: Iʻm interested in Bloomsʻ "canon" concept, but very skeptical of it as a useful ongoing rule.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "a useful ongoing rule." Anyway, why are you skeptical of a canon? There is a benefit to culture from having a shared history, a shared reference just as culture benefits from people rebelling against some (but certainly not all) of the received culture. Both are necessary.

umm..one reason the "liberal" press was so down on Clinton from the get go, i believe, was that they couldn't believe that someone who emerged from a white trash background might actually be smarter than they were. Whatever Clinton and Obama became or become, no meaning of the word "blueblood" applies. Bush/Kennedy/Gore/ w/in the context of US history would all be considered blueboods/

And any and all political commentators could be and were wrong on various topics. (except, maybe, Sparky the Penguin - the voice of reason in the Tom Tomorrow strip)
I wrote Molly Ivins a note after she'd written a few columns early in the W yrs saying that the dubster really WAS a "kinder gentler conservative" and that as a fellow Texan, she felt required to set the larger public straight. And i just asked if she was serious. Just one of my collection of unanswered letters - along side my one to the good folks from the "project for the new american century*" wondering if they stood by their bravura presentation of Achmed Chalabi (sic, i'm not going to bother looking up the ahole's name) as a staunch, loyal supporter of "Western" values who'd turn Iraq into a model middle eastern democracy.

*think tank (if such a word applies) to the neo-con movement.

Robert, people who haven't got the backing of powerful interests--and therefore have sold their asses down the line--can't be president. Just doesn't work that way. Not these days, anyway. T.R. broke the trusts and established national parks but that was because he owed allegiance to no one and could forge his own way. Many wealthy Americans considered FDR a "traitor to his class" for his New Deal legislation...but those fellows are, methinks, rare exceptions to the rule. Sooner or later, all men and women in positions of power show their true stripes: Clinton a Democrat who put as many cops on the streets and more people involved with minor drug-related crimes in jail as any conservative with an NRA bumper sticker and a loaded hand gun in his glove compartment.

Without Tyson Foods, he would never have become president (don't forget Arkansas' grievous environmental record during his tenure as Governor)...and his attendance at all those posh schools makes me wonder where he got the loot, when his mom was a nurse and his step-dad a car salesman. Was someone grooming Billy-boy from wayyyy back...

Harold Bloom, anyone?

oh backing of wealthy interests is a given. I'm just saying that "Blueblood" is a fairly specific term that assumes a social origin that usually, but not always, involves old* money, but always assumes a class history.
*old money in the US is a lot younger than old money elsewhere.

sorry for this total hijak.

Going back to Harold Bloom...

One of my complaints about Bloom is from an article of his I cannot find right now, but he complained about study in Elizabethan literature moving from Shakespeare and Marlowe to Aphra Behn and Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and study in the romantic poets moving to three female poets I can't remember--and whose poems are not anthologized in any book I have at hand. Even if Aphra Behn sucks as badly as Bloom says she does, the value of an article done on her and her writing, in terms of our knowledge and understanding, has to outweigh the value of yet another article on Shakespeare, who gets thousands of articles a year (my source says 5,000 articles in 1990). I see no evidence that any of those are even starting to affect the study of Shakespeare or the major romantic poets; my alma mater still has Shakespeare as the only author an entire class is devoted to, and 13 books by Aphra Behn as opposed to 520 by Shakespeare. Is it such a crime to study anyone besides the greats? To think that it's of interest to study the female authors of an era, irrespective of whether they're part of the canon?

When it comes down to pre-college education, I'm all for sticking with the big guys. Yes, Shakespeare in the Park will continue to outsell Behn in the Park, quite possibly for very good reasons, and Hollywood will keep looking at Shakespeare's plays. But once we're talking about academia, about higher level undergraduate and graduate level classes and actual research, it's time to explore new ideas, new people, to run down roads less travelled a few times. Even if interest in Aphra Behn is a flash in the pan, a hundred articles devoted to her are going to have far more value to perpetuity than another hundred articles on Shakespeare.

29:
I'm with Bloom on Aphra Behn. Oroonoko was one of the worst books I (half) read in college. It was almost as mind numbing as Phyllis Wheatley's poems. We had to take three chronological survey courses, and the 2nd one was taught by a couple of professors who included way too much stuff with minimal literary value just because it was historically interesting (supposedly). We read I don't even know how many Phyllis Wheatley poems, and not even a single Keats poem! Sorry, it's a sore subject...

17 and 18: I was from a poor but college-educated family and I was admitted to Georgetown University for undergrad. My education was almost fully funded by the University, which has guaranteed financial aid. As part of my Georgetown education I went to Paris for my junior year and studied at the very exclusive "Institut d'etudes politiques," again not on my own dime (which I would not have been able to do).

Clinton may be a centrist who has ties to industry, no doubt, but he is not a "blueblood" merely because he got into good colleges and got a Rhodes scholarship to study overseas. These are two different things.

As for Bloom, I have read and loved many of the books in the "canon" but I also think colleges should give professors the freedom to choose alternate things for their syllabi, and I think by and large they do. Also I thought that the whole issue of the "canon" was an Allan Bloom thing not a Harold Bloom thing? Though I usually get those two guys confused...

>31 anna_in_pdx:

Just as a reference, here's a link to The Western Canon by Harold Bloom

Me, I don't care if we have a canon or not, but if we let the New York Times pick the best books of the year, why not let intellegent, educated, and, yes, opinionated folks like Bloom give us the benefit of their thinking about a deeper and older list? I can decide what to read, but intellegent sources for what to consider and why is a challenge. So, I have Bloom's 'canon'; I have The Lifetime Reading Plan and it's somewhat recent update; I have the list of "National Book Award" winners for every year; I have the Booker Prize winners; etc. From these, I put together my own lifetime reading plan, to which I add anything else I run across that pushes my buttons.

I'll never read them all - my 'to read' list is 12 years long now (it was 11 years long 5 years ago).

Os.

32: Thanks, I just looked it up and see that yes, it was H. who wrote The Western Canon. I mix him up with A. because of the book The Closing of the American Mind which seems sort of similar in tone.

I agree that Western Canon is a good reference for what it is, and does not have to be exclusive. I'll never read all the good books that deserve to be read in this world, either.

>33 anna_in_pdx:
The Closing of the American Mind - one on my list, not on H. Bloom's list.

Os.

I suspect that H. Bloomʻs namesakeʻs* book ("The Closing...." by Alan Bloom) is not on H. Bloomʻs list because it is too recent to have become a canonical item, not because of any vehement disagreement with it.

*Namesake, I think, not relative.

actually looking through the (revised?) Western Canon - i don't really see where he includes anything remotely like Alan Bloom's book. Now he may totally agree with it - but H. Bloom's list is virtually all literature and not cultural criticism. Just looking at 20thC American writers - there are omissions that i'd argue with (no Allen Ginsberg??) but that's not an awful list of either 20th C American novelists or poets.

Some odd choices, though. Cat's Cradle, but not Slaughterhouse Five? Surfacing, but not The Handmaid's Tale? The Dalkey Archive, but not At Swim Two Birds? And so on.

if he doesn't like Doris Lessing then i don't think he knows what he's tokking about.

>32 Ealhmund: "why not let intellegent, educated, and, yes, opinionated folks like Bloom give us the benefit of their thinking about a deeper and older list?"

I think that's a strawman; people making lists is not the problem, and many people have done so without fuss.

The issues are whether it's meaningful to speak of a canon, and whether such a thing is as narrow and tight* as Bloom claims; whether what's taught and studied should be from something like Bloom's canon, or should it include more emphasis on modern works or popular works works chosen for their multicultural value; and whether aesthetically focused critics have much of a place in academia.

Also on the table is whether Bloom is a "self-satisfied blowhard", as Sutpen says.

His attitude with Harry Potter really annoyed the hell out of me. 35 million people are wrong, huh? And his review on that missed most of the fantastic element and the fight between good and evil, and why that--especially the handling of Snape--went a step above most children's fiction. He offers Alice in Wonderland, as if they were somehow comparable works. I'd like a critic to show some understanding of why a successful book is a successful book, even if they don't like it in the end.

I think his statement that he has read all of the important works is a little irritating, as well. La Infano Raso, Mr. Bloom? The great, rarely translated, works of other small literatures?

* That is, a narrow and tight canon, in the way I'm using those words, would have broad agreement about exactly which works go in it, whereas a wide loose canon** would have few if any works that could reach majority approval as canon works.

** Going further astray, Loose Canons, by Henry Louis Gates, wasn't nearly as interesting as I could have hoped, and didn't really discuss these topics all that closely.

>39 prosfilaes:
I suppose it could be a strawman, but my main purpose was to make explicit the idea that well thought-out lists can be useful things, even if a canon is undesirable or impossible to establish. I'm generally anti-canon, whether we're talking about Western lit., or the 'Word of God'.

I also agree that H. Bloom is a bit of a "self-satisfied blowhard", but I also believe that he has views that should be thoughtfully considered, either because they're spot-on or because they force me to think about why I disagree. Besides, I happen to believe that 35 million people can be wrong (this in no way is an opinion about Harry Potter; I'm thinking more along the lines of the election of George W., twice!).

Os.

Things legitimized by popularity ("30 Helens agree." for you Kids in the Hall fans) is a popular fallacy. The popularity defense legitimized segregation, lynching, religious favoritism, and all manner of human unpleasantness on whichever unfortunate minority groups stood in the path of the Juggernaut of Human Mediocrity.

Another self-satisfied blowhard is Jeremy Clarkson His tendency to say shocking and insensitive things is well-known, he also knows his cars. Like Bloom, he's follows a dying creed -- in Clarkson's case, the Church of the Internal Combustion Engine. But I can understand his anti-green fury, since the UK has much more stringent anti-pollution standards and gas is really high. Still, all in all, it doesn't take away from his uncanny genius to write a cracking car review, whether for the latest Lambo or a Volvo station wagon.

prosfilias wrote: I'd like a critic to show some understanding of why a successful book is a successful book, even if they don't like it in the end.

My preference would be to find out what the critic herself thinks, what she responded to, how she weaves it in with the other books she has read. That is why I read a critic in the first place. I dont see any reason for her to tell me she understands the result of some customer satisfaction survey.

I am unsure of what it is that makes you, Sutpen and Osbaldistone think Bloom is "self-satisfied"---is it because he has read a lot of books? because he didnt like Harry Potter? Help me out.

41> Bah. Moral issues are mere smoke to confound the issue, and in any case as many crimes have been justified because of the moral superiority of the criminal. If you want to claim that Harry Potter is morally wrong, then you have a point. But art is legitimized by popularity; beloved art is good art.

42> Bloom said that 35 million people were wrong. Because you don't respond to a book is not a justification to say that someone else is wrong for liking it. Perhaps, arguably, if you can make the claim a book is objectively bad, then you can say that someone else is wrong for choosing that book, but you can't say that a book is objectively bad until you understand why people like it.

I think there's two meanings of critic clashing here. If you want to write a review of a book based solely on your own impression of a book, then that's one form of being a critic, and it doesn't give you the right to say that others shouldn't like the book, unless you're speaking on moral terms. If you're an academic literary critic, you shouldn't be just writing your own opinion; you have a responsibility to understand a work. Bloom wrote the first trading on his reputation as the second.

Bloom is "self-satisfied", because he's willing to dismiss 35 million people as being wrong, and roll his eyes at what people are reading. Because he claims to have read all the important books, which is very different from reading a lot of books. It means assuming that every important book has been translated into a language he reads. It means that he believes that he can smell an important book so well that there are no Moby Dicks sitting around as of yet unnoticed.

43> Voicing strong positions and interpretations - which are often at odds with the preferences of the majority - is the role of a critic. A critic should be judged on their ability to communicate their ideas eloquently, help us discover new things in the works reviewed, place books in historical/social/etc context, and point us towards works we haven't encountered yet. Telling 35 million people they are wrong is his job.

Bloom defined what the important books are and has read all the books within that definition. Your problem should be with his definition of important. (Also, I believe Bloom defines his canon as 'Western', which narrows the field quite a bit.)

This group is called Literary SNOBS, so I'm not sure why dismissing the horrible taste of millions of people is seen as a bad thing. Isn't that what we do all the time?

>43 prosfilaes: - art is legitimized by popularity; beloved art is good art. I'm sorry but that's complete rubbish. Art and popularity are completely independent of each other: very popular music/film/literature tends to the bland. The reason Bloom doesn't like Harry Potter is because he doesn't think they are particularly well-written, and I tend to agree with him - Rowling is a mediocre writer. That doesn't mean people can't enjoy her work but it does stop it being seen as 'art'.

Spoken like a true snob, lad.

You've earned your "Good Conduct" badge for the month.

I'm amazed that we find people making this appeal to popularity again, and again, and again.

It leads to this notion that, excuse the name-dropping again, James Patterson is a more important artist than Cormac McCarthy or Pynchon, simply because the Great Unwashed buy more of his books (by a factor of 100...maybe even 1000).

While some good literature also makes the bestseller lists, most of those rosters are filled by hacks and scribblers exploiting the latest "niche of the month". Slight, trivial, escapist reads, for the beach or airplane, but nothing of sustaining power and originality and certainly nothing that constitutes true ART...

>43 prosfilaes: - art is legitimized by popularity; beloved art is good art.

Just peruse the earlier lists at the LT group Best Sellers Over the Years (say, the years before you were of school age), and see how many of these 'beloved' works you've even heard of (other than simply because you saw them gathering dust on your grandparents shelves). I know some good and even great art slips from sight, sometimes to be rediscovered, but the almost universal anonymity of these early 'legitimized by popularity' titles tells a different story.

Rowling tells a ripping good yarn, and I have no issues with Harry Potter's popularity. They make fun movies, and they get a lot of kids and adults to read; which doesn't guarantee they'll become discerning readers, but it can't be a bad thing. I'd agree that their sheer popularity demands a serious and fair critique, but it is not the measure (or even a measure) of great art.

Yes, 35 million people can be (and often are) wrong. But, more importantly, in the case of Rowling/Potter, 35 million people are not shouting about great art, they're jazzed about a ripping good yarn.

Os.

Yes, I have no objection when someone says vis a vis Rowling (or that ilk), "They tell a terrific story" or "Man, I couldn't put that book down, it was such an enjoyable read". But when they then pronounce "J.K. Rowling or _____________ is a great writer", then I have to politely demur.

I like Lee Child or Michael Connelly for a rainy day read, something fast (but not stupid). But I would certainly never put either in the category of great writers...

>50 CliffBurns:
Agreed. Now, give me a great writer and a ripping good yarn, and I'm in heaven!

Os.

51:
Come to think of it, that's kind of a rare thing...
Off the top of my head, I think McCarthy's books generally satisfy on both a stylistic level and on the level of page-turning story. Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale does as well. In general, I think Helprin's got sort of a limited palette, but Winter's Tale, taken alone, is beyond reproach in my mind. I can't decide whether or not Bloom would like it though...it's got an all-embracing 'isn't-Big-Picture-America-beautiful-with-all-its-faults' kind of vibe that reminds me a little of Hart Crane, whom Bloom looooooves. On the other hand, it's way out of the academic mainstream because at one point Helprin did some GOP speechwriting.

I think Burgess' EARTHLY POWERS does that for me: smashing great writing and an ambitious, energetic storyline. David Mitchell (BLACK SWAN GREEN and CLOUD ATLAS) is another writer who comes to mind...

Pynchon!!!!

#49 - nicely put. I, my wife and son all enjoyed the HP series immensely. And most of the movies. JKR's prose style is serviceable. But she, in my opinion, serves it well by creating evolving characters we cared about and effectively ratcheting up the suspense level as the series developed, and serving up intriguing plot lines -> ripping yarns.

The Quiet American, the Russia house, The Translator,the glass palace work well for me. Looking over Bloom's 20thC American Western Canon authors, i ENJOY many more of the poets Bloom selected than the novelists. i'm not about to argue their "greatness" or "importance" but i certainly don't enjoy Hemingway, Faulkner, Roth, Barth, Doctorow, Steinbeck (except Cannery Row). My failing, but fk it.

53:
Of those books, I've only read Cloud Atlas. I thought it was entertaining, but overhyped.

Yeah, Ian Sales wasn't keen on it either.

Wait, is linking someone with Sales (however innocently) considered libel? I'll have to check...

Osbaldistone wrote: I'd agree that ... sheer popularity demands a serious and fair critique, but it is not the measure (or even a measure) of great art.

Which begs the question, what is the measure of great (articulate) art? What Harold Bloom thinks? What happens to be on the reading list at some liberal arts college?

I can agree with prosfilias if I limit his/her statement to a special case. A certain kind of popularity does matter: popularity with an intelligent, widely read, sensitive audience (hey, Harold Bloom fits in that audience!). An audience more like us, and not like the undifferentiated masses. And agreement even within that smaller audience is still going to be very limited.

49> "But, more importantly, in the case of Rowling/Potter, 35 million people are not shouting about great art, they're jazzed about a ripping good yarn."

Exactly. Then claiming that they're wrong because it's not great art is being self-satisfied. You're wrong if you don't read what I read is a pretty bad attitude to have in general.

48> And why do I know that Pynchon is great art? Maybe because I've read the name in Henry Gates and in Kingsley Amis and in discussions of Harold Bloom. An even more telling field for me is instrumental music. My favorite instrumental band is Apocalyptica; I couldn't tell Bach from Beethoven from Mozart, and don't appreciate what I've heard of any of them. But they're obviously responding to someone in a way that puts them in the great art status.

Apocalyptica is really neat. 4 cellists redoing Metallica (among other things).Actually i'd bet any amount of money that you could tell Bach from Beethoven. At least until the grosse fugue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGSGMJMX7p8
this is NOT a great performance of Mozart's fugue for 4 hands in C minor, but you get the idea anyway. A very muddy, pedal heavy, i'd guess, performance.

To hear a pretty direct influence on Apocalyptica, try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68WBx91nQE
Beethoven's grosse fuge

>60 bobmcconnaughey: - but you claimed the opposite: I quote "art is legitimized by popularity; beloved art is good art.". The implication being that HP is great art on the basis that 35m have bought the books.

I think everyone will agree that HP is incredibly popular but has little literary merit; therefore it is primarily more a cultural phenomena than a work of art.

"HARRY POTTER...primarily more a cultural phenomena than a work of art."

Ah. Exactly.

61> I wouldn't agree with your second paragraph, at least in its implications. There is inherent merit in the HP books, in the drama and plot twists, that J. K. Rowling deserves recognition for. They may not be "good writing" for some meaning of that phrase, but it is their writing, not just some "cultural phenomena", that causes their popularity.

I'm not sure I agree. Genre fiction relies on ideas rather than literary merit and as long as the prose satisfies the minimum standards of fan-dumb and provides them with escapist entertainment, everyone is happy.

HARRY POTTER did not start out a cultural phenomenon. It was released by a relatively small press and its initial success was attributable to word of mouth, parents telling each other about a book that was fun, kept their kids interested and entertained. I don't think the quality of the prose was a major selling point. Rowling is a story-teller, NOT an artist; same with Stephen King. King has often equated his fiction with fast food ("the equivalent of a Big Mac with fries") and I would put Rowling in the same category. Quick, easy bites rather than a full-course, French gourmet-style meal, prepared by a master chef...

Which is why people like Heinlein and not Dhalgren

Pynchon, Bolano, Melville, and Burroughs use genre as a "starting point," while each transformed fiction in their unique way. Even works heavily indebted to genre, like The Sopranos and Apocalypse Now -- 2 non-book examples -- brought the audience to a completely different place. "The Sopranos" had some of the most brilliant dream sequences in mainstream television.

Genre, like all art, relies on tropes. Tropes aren't a bad thing, but they can be a crutch to a lazy and/or unambitious artist.

I still consider Harry Potter as "childrens literature", a subset of literature. Also something, personally speaking, I don't want to waste my time with. I've seen the movies, that's about as far as I'll go. There are rare examples that transcend the genre like Alice in Wonderland But I'll be the first to admit I'm no source on kiddie lit. But I'm OK with that.

There is some terrific young adult fiction out there, Karl. I think we had a thread on here somewhere about that. Philip Reeve's MORTAL ENGINES and Rich Wallace's WRESTLING STURBRIDGE are terrific reads.

There are many more good books out there than when I was a youngster. Back then, it was Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Penthouse Forum (hey, I was a kid with an active, wide-ranging imagination, what can I say?)...

Cliff, I agree. It sounds like a worthwhile effort. I'm glad to see the proliferation of quality childrens lit. Just not an expert or enthusiast of the genre. I'm spread thin enough as it is.

Two Poems, one very popular in its day, the other, not so much except with the elites:

Little Orphan Annie. (Pardon the music, please), and

Burnt Norton.

How does popularity make the first one art? While the lack of general popularity makes the second art? I posit popularity has nothing to do with art.

Keep in mind, James Whitcomb Riley was far more popular than Eliot ever was. Every general anthology of American Poetry is going to have one or two of several candidates from Riley, while if it contains an Eliot (yes, I know, he was the little boy who wanted more than anything to be English, but facts, being what they are and all, he was an American) it will be Prufrock or an excerpt from the Four Quartets.

Given all that, Eliot is considered the better poet. Why?

64> I don't think we're disagreeing, as much as we're using different language. I would say that calling Harry Potter a "cultural phenomenon" annoys me, because it takes away from the responsibility Rowling deserves for Harry Potter, as story-teller or whatever you want to call her. One of the sources of friction seems to me to be this unwillingness to credit the Heinlein's of the world with the ability to do something the Delany's can't, just as much as vice-versa can do; the implication is always that good fast food is easy, which it's not.

65> Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a Hugo award winner; I would say that's a pretty objective standard that it's transcended children's literature, even if into another genre that you may not be interested in.

But the Hugo has little credibility to me, as it is voted by fan-dumb (and a very limited cross-section at that).

Awards are NEVER objective--the contention surprises me.

I respect your view, however; clearly you think the books far better written than I do.

geneg wrote: How does popularity make the (Riley) art? While the lack of general popularity makes (Eliot) art? I posit popularity has nothing to do with art.

Popularity has something to do with it because art doesnt occur without people, without an audience. My argument in message 58 posits a popularity much more discriminating than General popularity is required.

Here is something from Brandom's essay Untimely Review of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that some may find interesting:

"Hegel’s idea is that normative statuses are instituted by reciprocal recognition, a particular structure of normative attitudes. Recognizing someone is attributing normative statuses: taking or treating that individual as responsible, committed, entitled, or authoritative. Hegel thinks that actually to be responsible, committed, entitled, or authoritative is to be recognized as such by those one recognizes (as authoritative in this respect) ... Here is a mundane example. Achieving the status of being a good chess-player is not something I can do simply by adopting a certain attitude toward myself. It is, in a certain sense, up to me whom I regard as good chess-players: whether I count any woodpusher who can play a legal game, only formidable club players, Masters, or Grand Masters. That is, it is up to me whom I recognize as good chess-players, in the sense in which I aspire to be one. But it is not then in the same sense up to me whether I qualify as one of them. To earn their recognition in turn, I must be able to play up to their standards. To be, say, a formidable club player, I must be recognized as such by those I recognize as such. My recognitive attitudes can define a virtual community, but only the reciprocal recognition by those I recognize can make me actually a member of it"

So the fact that some anthology editors select both poets is an argument that both are art---while remaining silent on who is the "better" poet.

70> An award by a genre-based community is a fairly objective statement that the work under contention is in fact considered part of that genre by a major community; It says that it is part of the genre as defined by readers.

#72: Does the Hugo Award specify that it must be given for adult science fiction or fantasy? There is such a thing as children's SF/F, after all. (Didn't another children's book just win--that Neil Gaiman book?)

If I'm recalling correctly, and Ian can correct me here, the Hugo voters are confined to those people attending the World Science Fiction convention that particular year. Maybe 800 or 1,000 people, some of whom dress up in Starfleet uniforms or glue hair on their toes and converse in Elvish.

One "Viva Las Vegas" joke, Karl, and I'll cram that monocle of yours in your left nostril...

I think we can all agree that the Golden Globes and Kid's Choice awards are objective measurements of a book's literary merits ;)

Hi Cliff (#9)

Good definitions of "Free, undistorted communication" and of "Equality"!

Your definition of "Democracy" falls down on defining "blue-blooded" as applied to candidates.

In regard to the elections since I first voted (1952-2008), I noted down whether one, both, or neither of the candidates could be called blue-blooded OR grass-roots (making "grass roots the antonym of "blue-blooded, for these purposes
Results BB= blue blooded
GR = grass roots
One of each: 7 (The BB in these was not always Republican).

Both GR 7

Both BB 1.

Of course this is by my definition of BB and GR.

The one where both were BB was 2000, Gore v. Bush II. (One was the son of a senator, the other the son of a president.)

There were 6 straight elections where neither was BB: 1964 - 1984. (I didnʻt regard Carter or L. Johnson as BB, although it might be arguable, that they were "locally" BB.) Elsewhere, I regarded JFK but not Mike Dukakis (D MA) as BB --perhaps inconsistently, as they were both the grandsons of immigrants. LBJ boasted in 1960 that he was the grandson of Confederate veterans (When, b t w, was the SON of an immigrant last elected president? I donʻt know. Might have to go back to Andrew Jackson in 1828. His parents were from Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland).

The matchups between a GR and a BB? --Inconclusive: A GR won 4 times and a BB 3.

This is about ancestry and ancestrally-derived prestige, not about money available for campaigning. The money is another question, and I suspect that research on it would show the richer to have been the winner more often, with the understanding that neither one is exactly poor.

John Kerry was worth about a half billion (thanks to his wife of the Heinz fortune) when he ran against Bushie Jr. A blueblood by marriage?

You've done your research though. Thanks for the info which I found, simultaneously, inneresting...and depressing as hell.

Thanks for the commendation.

Kerry a "blueblood by marriage" running vs.
Bush II? --Possibly. Or it may have been "doubly by marriage", if it was not his wife, but his wifeʻs first husband who was the aristocrat -- moderate Republican Senator John Heinz.

Curiously, Heinz and Sen. John Tower (R, TX) were both senators and both died, within 48 hours of each other, in questionable plane crashes. (And had little else in common.)

For purposes of the chart in #76, I counted Adlai Stevenson (D IL, and BB) and Dwight Eisenhower (R, NY and GR) as a total of 4 candidates. This doesnʻt mean that I accept the conventional count of Grover Cleveland (D, NY) as TWO presidents just because he had non-consecutive terms. (Small point, but the "Cleveland was 2 presidents" count is the count that makes Obama # 44, not as he actually is, #43 -- and Iʻm not arguing about who "really" won, say in 1876 or 2000, just about the number that were inaugurated. Count them, promising not to count anyone twice, and youʻll see that Obama is
# 43!

Hmm...I'd forgotten about those plane crashes you allude to. Conspiracy theorists everywhere, prick up your ears.

You know your history, old son, and my praise was sincere, believe me. It's a pleasure hearing from you...

>77 CliffBurns:
OED defines 'blue-blood' as 'noble birth'. No such thing in this country (at least, not that counts). So how about Encarta's definition - 'somebody of royal or aristocratic birth, or somebody born into a respectable and very wealthy family'?

Either way, it's only by birth, not by acquired wealth. One could be blue-blooded and still be broke and/or lacking in respectability. Either way, it's parents that make one blue-blooded. It's not something one can attain.

Os.

How many generations of wealth, Oz? Is the definition specific?

>69 prosfilaes:
You're saying that not calling Harry Potter good (or great) art is taking credit away from Rowling for what she accomplished by creating the Harry Potter works. You are, in effect, saying that if ain't art, it ain't s**t. I don't believe anyone one else has said that Rowling's accomplishments are somehow less because they are not art; simply that they are not art - or, at least, not great art.

Something can be great art AND a cultural phenomenon; a book can be a ripping good yarn and NOT be a cultural phenomenon.

It seems that the difference of opinion is not unlike arguing over whether gymnastics is art, since it is (at least, the floor excercises are) like ballet . Most would agree that ballet is art; I suspect most would agree that gymnastics is not; which says nothing about how great, talented, or phenomenal an Olympic gymnast is.

Some may consider Harry Potter to be good (or great) art. Many on this thread do not, while still recognizing Rowling's accomplishments and talents.

Os.

82: I would expand upon your assertion that gymnastics is art and assert that "professional wrestling" is art. Roland Barthes would agree. I'm not going to ask "What is art?" because that just opens the Pandora's Box and distracts from the initial discussion.

I've found professional wrestling far more believable than any US Presidential debate.

>82 Ealhmund: No, I'm saying that to say that this is art and Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon is to take credit away from Rowling. To speak of art is to speak of an artist; to speak of a cultural phenomenon is to speak of a culture.

Tautologically speaking, of course.

>83 kswolff:
Actually, I was asserting that gymnastics is not art, but primarily for the sake of a comparison to the "Harry Potter, art vs story telling" discussion.

Os.

>84 prosfilaes:
Hmmm... How does speaking of culture take away from Rowling, then? It seems you still consider it an insult to Rowling not to consider her work art, even if one considers her work to be great story-telling, as if art is somehow great, while story-telling is just common. I happen to think of great story-telling as one of the great creative human achievements (which we are, sadly, losing rapidly).

Os.

I don't think Rowling would consider herself a great "artist" and I don't think that was her aim when she started that first book. As I recall, she was a single mom with bills to pay.

She's a fine craftsperson, certainly a storyteller of considerable ability but nothing in her writing suggests the innovation or stylistic originality of an artist. Her sentences are workmanlike, nothing more. I read the first 4 books out loud to my sons and I frequently winced at the repetition and padding, particularly in the later books. She definitely got worse after the third book (PRISONER OF AZKABAN). Every book following that could have been cut by 1/3 and improved greatly. The last book was just plain bad and needed massive reworking...

87> "It seems you still consider it an insult to Rowling not to consider her work art"

I don't know what to tell you besides to re-read what I wrote. It's about the phrase "cultural phenomenon"; using the dictionary definition of phenomena and moving cultural from the adjective position gives us "the strange and unaccountable thing of a culture". Craftsperson is fine, storyteller is fine.

#74 Hugo nominations are made my attending and supporting members of the worldcon that year and the preceding year. They are voted on by both groups, although typically books receive considerably less votes than they do nominations. Which explains why a book may receive the most nominations but come last in the shortlist on the day.

The pool of voters is aging, growing increasingly conservative (in literary terms), and are fixed to a conception of the genre which is growing ever more outdated.

In other words, the Hugo Award is a waste of time. And as a sf fan, I do not want the genre to be defined by an award given by a group of 700 - 1000 people with whom I have nothing in common - including what sf actually is.

As for Rowling... The HP books are not art, they are ordinary. The only extraordinary thing about them has been their success. Since that's extra-textual, it's not a characteristic of the books and so they can't be described as "art".

>89 prosfilaes: - but the books are a cultural phenomena; not unlike Titanic or Thriller.

It's simplistic to say that Rowling achieved her success because of her storytelling skills. There have been, and are, many authors of equal, or even superior, technical skills who achieved little success. The question therefore becomes what attributes of the books are responsible for their success, why did the culture at large embrace them so completely, etc.
The same could be asked of Dan Brown.

Dan Brown managed to convince readers that they were in on some secret "truths" about the powers that be. While the target was different, the concept wasn't much different from say, the protocols of the elders of zion, novelized & done up in hollywood fashion, and mass marketed from the get go. The whore of Babylon, the villain of the Protestant reformation way back when, is back and badder than ever.

JKR's series began as a viral phenomenon - that quickly became a marketing juggernaut. The series escaped from its intended audience, middle school kids delighted to find themselves as potentially "special" and, w/ guidance of wise elders, capable of saving the world, into the world at large. Immediate ancestral works - a wrinkle in time, diane duane's "young wizards" series - but key, to HP's success was the expansion of the cohort of "special" kids.. Instead of the members of a family, or a few families, saving the world or universe, the HP books set up an army of young wizards brought together into a school that was clearly ever so much more fun than William Cullen Bryant jr hs in Fairfax county (say) where i went at the same age. HP succeeded because many readers identified with and cared about what happened to the large cast of protagonists.

In my reading of both Brown and the HP books, i, personally, found the pretensions and premises of Dan Brwn's book banal and insulting to the reader - ignoring its clunky and formulaic prose. And, conversely, found the HP books engaging and great fun. But i've friends, generally w/ rather sophisticated,or at least educated reading tastes who got totally sucked into DBrown. Baffled me.

Brown simply ripped off The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which had been a big seller in the 1980s. Brown's book was well-marketted, though. I remember there being some sort of Internet-hunt used to promote it.

>89 prosfilaes:
I keep re-reading your first post.

My point is (as you said in your later post) that saying "cultural phenomenon" says something about the culture, not about Rowling. So how can that take away from "takes away from the responsibility Rowling deserves for Harry Potter". It says nothing about Rowling. Other posts have, in debating whether or not Harry Potter is art or craft, good art or great art, etc. But the cultural phenomenon of the Harry Potter series is outside of that, in that it's about the cultures reaction to the books, not Rowlings art or craft. And I think this point is brought out in the some of the posts after your post 89 (91 and 92). If not, then I guess we aren't getting each other.

Os.

Some good storytellers can transcend themselves, methinks, and approach artfulness.

Stephen King did that with ONE book, THE SHINING, which I think is pretty darn close to flawless. But that was Steve's "Apocalypse Now". He went far into himself, threw everything he had, all his talent and strength (as Coppola did in the Philipine jungle). There was something PERSONAL about THE SHINING, Jack Torrance (perhaps) what he (King) might have been, had circumstances been different (an failure as a writer and father). Neither he, nor Coppola, ever approached those masterpieces again. It cost them too much and afterward they fell back into the safe arms of convention...and mediocrity.

since we've gone way on beyond Bloom, H., Bloom, A., Blume, Judy, Bloom, L. & M, here's a quote from Nick Hornby on the subject at hand...

"9. The creative masterpiece you wish bore your signature?
The Harry Potter series. A vulgar answer, I know, but there we are. And it’s hard to imagine that I could have come up with the Oresteia, or “Hey Bo Diddley”. They’re just not me.

I don’t wish I’d produced anything else, other than the next thing I’m supposed to be doing. I’m really happy for other people to do it, and for me to read it or watch it or listen to it."

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/111448-nick-hornby/

...whereas I would've chosen "Macbeth" or ULYSSES or "Citizen Kane".

Now I know why I haven't read Hornby in years...

Now I know why I haven't read Hornby in years...

I hear ya.

He doesn't address his motives. Given the smart-ass tone of the interview, I'd say he's just thinking he'd like JK Rowling's royalties.

97: But Hornby said there are some things he can't imagine having done. Truly great writing that wows me, such as the Penelope chapter of Ulysses, is not something I can imagine myself writing. Now Harry Potter, yeah I can. Cliff, do you imagine yourself capable of having written Ulysses? There are so many writers who write in a way that makes me put down the book and say "I could never in a million years have thought of saying that - WOW" (e.g., Joyce, Nabokov, etc.)

I don't know much about Hornby, as I have only read About a Boy but I really thought it was a pretty decent read.

"...imagining (oneʻs)self writing...." (#100)

I imagined myself once as a 17th c. writer, capable of writing a better epic than Paradise Lost. In fact if I, that 17th c. writer COULDNʻT write a better one, say in 1690 AFTER P L had been published, I would give up writing.

But if I could have written a better one in, say, 1650, BEFORE P L was published, I would have changed the whole history of English Literature.

This discussion reminds me of the Borges short story about the man who wrote the Quixote (Menard?). As I recall he was waiting for the Quixote to condense out of the air on the pages of his writing pad. It was not plagiarism because it was all in the air and what one needed was to be there when it came around again.

Cliff, you remind me of that fellow.

Made me smile, Gene, thanks.

I wish like hell MY stories condensed out of the air. Might make me less of a miserable prick...

Bad provost.
Indifferent critic.
Important popularizer of criticism.

How is he as a cook?

94> "My point is ... that saying "cultural phenomenon" says ... nothing about Rowling."

Out of context, no. The context, however, was "it is primarily more a cultural phenomena than a work of art", (#61, #62) so we are contrasting art (and the artist) versus something that's about a culture, not a creator.

44> "A critic should ... help us discover new things in the works reviewed, place books in historical/social/etc context,"

Agreed. I would say that understanding why a popular book is popular is key to discovering new things in it and placing it in its historical/social/etc context. I don't see any evidence that Bloom fulfilled your goals for Harry Potter; it felt a lot more like he took a quick run at the book expecting not to like it just so he could complain about modern reading practices.

"Bloom defined what the important books are and has read all the books within that definition. Your problem should be with his definition of important. (Also, I believe Bloom defines his canon as 'Western', which narrows the field quite a bit.)"

First, I'd like to admit that this is one line in an interview, not even a written statement that he could review before publishing. That said, if your definition of important books only includes books you've read, I think "pompous" and "self-satisfied" are fitting adjectives; it's an amazingly closed attitude. Defining the canon as Western doesn't really affect the books I was talking about; La Infano Raso is a book by a Scottish author published in a basically European language, and with in the bounds of Europe alone there are 50 languages, some of whose major works may not be promptly translated into the major languages. Western's pretty large; during the 20th century, that would include all the works of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and North and South America. (More contentiously, I'd include all of the Soviet Union except for the Islamic southern parts, South Africa and a significant number of works from the rest of Africa. I don't know where Bloom draws the line.)

>106 prosfilaes: - but HP isn't art (in the meaningful sense). At best Rowling is a competent writer for children; often she is no better than mediocre. To critique her books in terms of language, plot and character would only reflect negatively on her. Rowling's success says more about the current cultural climate than it does about her skills as a writer therefore making it more interesting to look at. Bloom, however, isn't interested in cultural context, he's only interested in literary value (whether or not you agree about his assessments is a moot point).

>102 geneg: - the sharpest point of that story is that after Menard publishes his (identical) version of the Quixote the criticsm claim that, in many ways, it is superior to the original.

>106 prosfilaes: - William Auld, the writer of La Infanta Rosa was an advocate of Esperanto, and all of his work appeared in that language.
For those who are interested, here's an English translation. And for good measure, here's one into Scots. (Note to the wary, it could be easier reading it in Esperanto than Scots).

107> "At best Rowling is a competent writer ... Rowling's success says more about the current cultural climate ". Nonsense. I've read a huge amount of fantasy and young adult books, and Rowling stands out among the crowd. Again, the essential twists of her plot, the way trust plays out in the stories, the character of Snape, they all build to make her an exceptional author. Her audience didn't choose Rowling for cultural reasons; they, including many discriminating readers, choose her because they enjoyed her writing. Perhaps readable, enjoyable writing doesn't contribute to literary value, but it's not simply cultural climate.

To call Rowling an exceptional writer is pushing it.

It must be said that she does some things very well. But in other respects, she's unremarkable.

Most of her audience, much as you may wish to deny it, bought her books for cultural reasons. Rowling's initial sales can be attributed to her mashing together various things to create an interesting world in a fairly conventional childrens' book. Kids read it, and they liked it. They wanted to read the sequel.

The subsequent massive sales phenomenon -- which, by definition, brings most of her audience -- is largely the result of marketing and media hype built on anticipation for the sequels. Just as Dan Brown is guaranteed to sell a zillion copies of The Lost Symbol, Rowling could sneeze Harry Potter into a napkin and sell the resulting heiroglyphs.

I have three kids, by the way, and while we own most of the HP books, none of my kids are much interested in them. They were all too young for the initial hype.

#109: I'll second that.

Rowling is an effective writer, a workmanlike writer, but her technical skills leave very much to be desired, even compared to other YA writers (Philip Reeve and Rich Wallace, fer instance).

I feel similarly toward Neil Gaiman--sells gazillions of books but, really, when you break down his sentences, analyze his work beyond the superficial gosh-this-is-a-fun-read, he's little more than average. But (like Rowling) he does have that intangible ability to tell a story with big, broad strokes that win over massive amounts of readers (as long as they don't look too close and spot the crude brush work)...

110> "he does have that intangible ability to tell a story with big, broad strokes that win over massive amounts of readers (as long as they don't look too close and spot the crude brush work)..."

And Pollock just threw paint at a canvas. Rowling and Gaiman and King are doing something deliberately that wins over a lot of readers consistently. The fact that their style ("the crude brush work") is not your taste doesn't mean they aren't doing something that few others can do that well.

But an ARTIST makes every brush stroke count. Every flick of paint. I see nothing in those three scribes you cite that indicates they subject their oeuvre to anything CLOSE to that same level of scrutiny and conscious aesthetic control. Sorry, I admire them (at least to some extent) for their ability to tell a tale and their mass appeal but as for the power, originality and innovative qualities of their prose, ah, no...

Neither does their popularity prove any kind of merit.

Formula wins over large numbers of readers consistently, too. Is formula the basis of good writing?

Hype packs viewers into theatres. Is hype the basis of good film-making?

ajsomerset wrote: Neither does their popularity prove any kind of merit.

I support prosfilaes here. For reasons given in #58 and 71. ajsomerset, who gets to decide on merit?

Formula wins over large numbers of readers consistently, too. Is formula the basis of good writing?


Genre forces a formula on the writer. If you are going to write a detective story you had better place clues throughout the book for the reader to "discover", otherwise it wouldnt be recognized as a good detective story by your readers.

Annnnnnd...that's why the vast majority of detective/crime fiction comes nowhere NEAR any notion of Art.

The crime novels I love and admire are the ones that stand convention on its head and fuck around with hard and fast rules. James Crumley, Jack O'Connell and, yup, The Pynch's INHERENT VICE come to mind.

Art is innovation, fresh approaches and perspectives, revolutionary epiphanies.

Formula is an accommodation to commerce and the lowest common denominator.

It's not GENRE that forces formula on writers, it's greed, laziness and stupidity.

114: You're missing the point, re formula.

People read nurse novels because they're nurse novels, for example. Because the formula is comfortable. You know what you're going to get. But that's exactly why formulaic fiction isn't good art -- although it is extremely popular.

(Formula fiction is, in fact, the literary equivalent of a McDonalds Happy Meal -- the whole idea behind McDonalds being that the consumer knows what the food will be like.)

Popularity has something to do with merit, sometimes; sometimes, good work is ignored, and sometimes, bad work is wildly popular. Let history decide on merit, and this quickly becomes clear. Again, read the best seller lists of years past.

I'm not arguing that JK Rowling is a bad writer (nor an entirely formulaic one; I offer that only as an analogy to demonstrate the weakness of the popularity argument). To be fair, she's clearly good at some things, and she's been very successful at creating a rich fictional world for her readers.

I'm simply arguing that she is not an "exceptional" writer, as proposed above.

Dahlinks:

Have you noticed this thread has become "Harry Potter, Pro or Con" as opposed to "Harry Bloom, Pro or Con"?

Just wondering...

116: Yes, I did miss your point about formula; although, I dont see why formulaic fiction necessarily precludes art.

Burns wrote: Art is innovation, fresh approaches and perspectives, revolutionary epiphanies.

Gee, whatever happened to Beauty?

ajsomerset wrote: Popularity has something to do with merit, sometimes; sometimes, good work is ignored, and sometimes, bad work is wildly popular. Let history decide on merit, and this quickly becomes clear. Again, read the best seller lists of years past.

Does "history" get us out of this inconclusive muddle? I dont think so for a couple of reasons.

First, whose history? When? To think there is some sort of conclusive verdict on (to use my favorite example) Moby Dick seems to me to be an exageration. In 1906, Conrad wrote "It struck me as a rather strained rhapsody with whaling for a subject and not a single sincere line in the 3 vols of it." But Carl Van Doren and D.H. Lawrence revived Melville around 1920 with favorable reviews in two anthologies. In 2009 GeoffWyss and chamberk dogged it pretty well.

Second, all you are seem to doing by relying on "history" is replacing one audience's judgment with later audience and privileging the later audience's view. The later audience has different needs, different values, and on aesthetic issues I dont know if those needs and values are any better than the earlier audience's.

By arguing ad populam, you're privileging the view of a larger audience ... the larger audience has different needs, different values, and on aesthetic issues you have yet to establish that those needs and values are any better than those of the smaller audience that fancies itself more discerning.

That shock wave, incidentally, was the detonation of your own petard.

ajsomerset wrote: By arguing ad populam, you're privileging the view of a larger audience ... That shock wave, incidentally, was the detonation of your own petard.

I suppose the detonation would be quite embarrassing to me if that was indeed my argument---it's not. But I appreciate your wit anyway! :)

In #58, I suggested privileging an audience that was intelligent, widely read, and sensitive. That's arguable, obviously, but I specifically wasnt privileging the masses.

In #71, I quoted Brandom's interpretation of Hegel that normative statuses are attributed by reciprocal recognition. So that led me to suggest (very obliquely I see now) that there may very well be a reciprocally recognized community of artists, critics, anthology editors, essayists on art and beauty, etc., that perform that function for literature. (And there is still wont be much agreement even among that group).

>118 semckibbin: - the advantage (any) history has over the present in terms of artistic judgements is that the works begin to stand apart from their cultural baggage (i.e., all the media coverage, fandown, etc, has generally died down).
You can then argue these judgements are made by a clique (academics, publishers, etc) but that is not necessarily the whole story. Popular novels, and novelists, tend to surf the cultural zeitgiest and once that dies down they struggle to find an audience, hence their works go out of print (and are forgotten). I'm not saying that Rowling will be OOP in 50 years but I am fairly certain that the majority of popular writers (Patterson, Brown, Binchy, et al) will be. Some writers who are currently described as "major" will undoubtably also fall by the wayside - John Updike already looks to be heading down, although his Rabbit books may survive.
Whether or not we like it history is the final determining factor on artistic value.

If we look at the here-and-now, if we do not appreciate the writings of literary critics* then what is the point of literary criticism? What is the point of reviewing books from any other standpoint than "I liked this", "I didn't like", and/or a plot summary?
Amazingly there is a prize ($50k???) for literary criticism - Truman Capote Prize.

* this could be extended to discerning readers of all sorts.

120: I stand corrected. The problem with these petards, you know, is they're terribly imprecise weapons.

If I scroll way back up the page to #71, we aren't that far apart. In letting history be the judge, I'm suggesting that over time a critical consensus will emerge among a widely read audience. (As imprecise as "consensus" is.) And of course, you also may have a critical consensus in the here and now, although the question is never quite so clean-cut as who's a good chess player.

In the here and now, I don't see any support for the claim that Rowling is an "exceptional" writer (prosfilaes' claim, and the bone of contention here) in #71 -- quite the opposite, in fact. She is recognized as "exceptional" not by an audience of skilled chess players (save Stephen King), but by large numbers of people who mostly play checkers. Skilled chess players are more likely to describe her game as competent.

Cliff, maybe genre is what happens to art when it loses its freshness.

Oooooo, Gene.

I LIKE that.

123:
That's sharp. I bet you could build a pretty sophisticated argument around that.

>123 geneg:
I just had a flashback on my Dad, standing at the fridge, sniffing the cold-cuts, and saying "We'd better eat this up. It's about to go bad". Drove my mother nuts (first because it insulted her as a housewife; second because, if you can smell it and tell it's about to go bad, it already has).

I can see him standing in a museum, saying "You'd better hurry over hear and enjoy this art. I think it's about to go 'genre'."

Os.

jargoneer wrote: the advantage (any) history has over the present in terms of artistic judgements is that the works begin to stand apart from their cultural baggage (i.e., all the media coverage, fandown, etc, has generally died down)......Whether or not we like it history is the final determining factor on artistic value

I suppose an argument could be made that later audiences are less actively coerced by the media and the counter-argument would be that later audiences have their own cultural baggage to deal with (We need to read more lesbian poets! says Amber's English teacher) so they arent free from coercion after all.

I have a little trouble with your using the word "final". The one thing I know about history is that (absent a comet strike or something) there is always going to be more history, and therefore the "judgment of history" can change over time; books and authors go in and out of fashion; and the judgment is never final.

122: I agree, we arent that far apart. I would only repeat that critical consensus will emerge, disappear, re-emerge as the opposite of the first consensus and so on,ad infinitim.

As far as JK Rowling goes, I've never read her, but I have read quite a bit of Bloom and he has earned my trust.

We have reached the end of history at least twice in my lifetime. Funny thing is they were both in the last twenty or so years.

That sucker just won't go down and stay down.

Indeed, the day will yet come when Ayn Rand is regarded as a literary genius.

But I plan to be dead by then, so that doesn't bother me.

"Indeed, the day will yet come when Ayn Rand is regarded as a literary genius."

Not unless evolution is reversed and a prehensile tail must be factored in when getting dressed in the morning...

121 and 127: I think Jargoneer's on to something here. I actually was talking to someone the other day about how Jane Austen has somehow lasted and is still read widely while some of the popular "genre" authors she mocked/parodied (Ann Radcliffe for example) are hardly read at all apart from diehard fanatics of 19th century kitsch. I personally haven't read the Gothic novels that were so popular around the time Jane Austen was writing, but always thought they'd be slightly interesting and wondered how badly or well-written they were and how they have held up (Mysteries of Udolpho, or stuff by H. Rider Haggard)

Maybe a hundred years from now people will be reading Pynchon, but not Dan Brown or J. Patterson et al....

>131 anna_in_pdx:
You know Donne was highly regarded at least part of the time he was alive, then dropped off the map for 100 years or more, then was rediscovered (and my memory tells me it was by TS Eliot and his crowd, but I wouldn't trust my memory) and became a big deal again.

History can be fickle (so it's not necessarily the best judge of what is great art). I happen to like Donne and luckily for me (and Donne's legacy) history is also cyclical. I'm also hoping kilts will come back into fashion for business wear while I'm still alive. ;-)

I think this overall discussion has lead to one thing most can agree on (he says optimistically, with wide-eyed enthusiasm and naivety) which is that there is no one measure of what is great art (or even what is art). It's some alchemical mix of insight, recognition by peers, breaking new ground, genius, and most of the other reasons provided in this thread. You may know it when you run across it (sometimes), but more often, you know what isn't without much trouble. And you can be that if you identify what isn't, someone else will disagree with you.

Os.

I think of someone like Van Gogh, an unknown in his lifetime and now is one of those "namebrand" artists whose work fetches prices in the tens of millions.

Time does seem to ferret out the weak artists and (eventually) promote genius.

Too late for Vinnie, needless to say...

You bring up an valid point, Cliff. Van Gogh was a commercial failure, as opposed to a commercial artist like Peter Paul Rubens It also helped that Rubens had balls, vision, and talented assistants. While Patterson works the same as Rubens -- collaboration, assistants, PR juggernaut -- the man has no vision at all. Even commercial mainstream mystery writers, the genre as Monsieur Patterson, like Andrew Vachss create their own microcosms and populate them with compelling characters. Reading the Burke series by Vachss is like Balzac's Human Comedy relocated to the deepest malbolgia of Hell.

Usually I'd say the whole commercial vs. literary debate is a false opposition and red herring. In the cases of Patterson and Harry Potter and Dan Brown, the pop culture juggernaut associated with a commercial work overwhelms the actual literary product. "Spaceballs: the Flamethrower!" -- you know what I'm talking about. You don't need to be a pop culture academic to know what I'm driving at.

If it wasn't for Vincent Van Gogh we wouldn't have any of this.

112> "But an ARTIST makes every brush stroke count." So what? Again, the fact that an ARTIST does something and these writers don't means they aren't ARTISTS, not that they aren't good writers.

113> "Neither does their popularity prove any kind of merit." Yes, it does. It proves that millions of people can read and enjoy them. Let George Soros and Bill Gates join together to spend every cent to hype Ulysses however you want, make sure every store that has a shelf of books has copies priced at $2.95, you still won't end up with as many copies sitting on people's shelves as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. You will have enriched the reading of the landfills, however. I do take the enjoyment of those millions of people to be a meritorious thing.

"Hype packs viewers into theatres."

Which is off the point. I'm not defending The Phantom Menace, which left much of its audience unsatisfied, as a good movie, but Star Wars was. Popularity is about more than pure numbers; it's about the general enjoyment of the work

119> "By arguing ad populam, you're privileging the view of a larger audience"

Ignoring a couple earlier off the cuff remarks, I'm not. I'm requesting that authors people enjoy receive the credit they deserve for being able to write a book that the public enjoys, instead of it being just a "cultural phenomena", as if they had no part in it.

109> "Most of her audience, much as you may wish to deny it, bought her books for cultural reasons"

I read them because one of my family who reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy shoved them at me and said "these are great books, you have to read them." If you define "cultural reasons" broadly enough, I'm not sure there has been a single copy of Romeo and Juliet knowingly bought (i.e. not in the bottom of a box of auction books) that wasn't for cultural reasons in the last few hundred years. Does that mean that we can dismiss all the people who enjoyed that play?

I thought I'd post a link to Wikipedia's "Best selling books of the 1930's". I just picked a decade at random and went to take a peek.

Interesting how many of these "best-sellers" fell by the wayside. I mean, at one point in time Mazo de la Roche's JALNA series was hugely popular--yet nobody (except septuagenarians lapsing into senility) read that crap today.

The books that persist, that defy time and fashion and taste, can make a far more credible claim to "artfulness" than a scribbler who makes a splash, sells a ton of books...then ends up on the ol' rubbish tip of history. As forgotten as a Mayan ditch-digger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishers_Weekly_list_of_bestselling_novels_in_the...

136: I'm requesting that authors people enjoy receive the credit they deserve.....

Uh, beg to differ. You are arguing that JK Rowling must be an "exceptional" writer, because a large number of people enjoy her work, i.e., arguing ad populam. You assume that a similarly large number of people might not enjoy some other book just as much, were they encouraged through similar hype to read it instead.

In fact, you do privilege the view of a larger audience, when you mention Ulysses.

Requesting that she gets the credit she deserves follows from the assumption that she deserves it.

And I DO NOT give her credit for being an artist, innovator or genius.

I DO recognize her skill at her CRAFT and her ability to please a large number of readers.

Art and craft.

The two are decidedly different things.

121> There's always movements to demand reaccounting of history's judgment. Gilgamesh got the ultimate thumbs-down until it recently (for a several thousand year-old book) rocketed up the charts, and Beowulf was apparently no hit until at least the mid-19th century. Currently Aphra Behn is undergoing reappraisal. Nothing's a final determination.

Apparently some people do appreciate the writings of literary critics, which makes them valuable. Are you arguing that if literary criticism had no popularity, there would be no point to literary criticism?

Personally, I'm not on Harold Bloom about being a literary critic; I'm on him about making a superficial reading and a superficial, terse criticism of Harry Potter as an excuse to complain about modern reading culture.

>137 CliffBurns:
Well, yes and no. As discussed in earlier posts (e.g., 131 and 132), some persist, then disappear, then appear again and persist, etc. It depends on what decade you look at for many (Donne, for example). Of course, there are some who, once they are generally recognized as being 'great', stay on the list for generations, even centuries. Those rarely engender debate. But it's more difficult to reach consensus on the ones that fall off the lists and then return when tastes change or someone decides to promote them (and succeeds).

However, I agree with the general conclusion. It's just that one must look across decades to make such an assessment, and even then, we'll miss the ones that are currently 'off the lists' but may reappear a few decades from now and really make a splash.

Leonardo da Vinci died in relative obscurity, mainly because he didn't finish most of his work and he kept most of it in his own posession. His notebooks weren't 'discovered' for a century or two (as I recall). I doubt that he would have been deemed a 'great' artist in the first few decades after his death.

Os.

138> I think this is the first time I've used the word "exceptional". Of course she's an exceptional writer; there are very few other writers who have made a half a billion pounds from their writing. That is the textbook definition of exceptional. The fact that you want to glue some artful meaning to that word doesn't change its meaning or how it's used.

"You assume that a similarly large number of people might not enjoy some other book just as much, were they encouraged through similar hype to read it instead."

Just like you assume that people might not find some other author just as great as Shakespeare, were they encourage through similar hype to read him instead. If you're willing to ignore the opinion of people who have read a vast slew of this type of fiction and pick this book out of the mess as exceptional, why should I pay attention to the opinions of other people when they say Shakespeare is exceptional? Especially knowing that everyone alive got told before they ever picked up the plays that this is the work of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, author of all time? That type of hype is beyond anything that Rowling ever got; why doesn't it discredit Shakespeare?

The only way to sustain the argument that the Harry Potter books could have been arbitrarily replace with another set of books provided the same hype is to ignore the audience of experienced readers who consider these volumes exceptional for their genre. Once we start handwaving experts, I don't see why yours get to stand, especially considering that you have more hype on your side.

"In fact, you do privilege the view of a larger audience, when you mention Ulysses."

Yes, I think there's value in a book being readable by more than a handful of literature majors. I don't dismiss Ulysses, but if all literature were like Ulysses, it and the rest of the fiction section of college libraries would quickly go to a landfill because the now-enlarged engineering department wasn't satisfied with the space of the former literature department.

137> "The books that persist, that defy time and fashion and taste, can make a far more credible claim to "artfulness" than a scribbler who makes a splash, sells a ton of books...then ends up on the ol' rubbish tip of history."

Which if the only thing worthwhile is "artfulness", is fine. Of course, history was probably changed far more by The Fountainhead and Gone with the Wind then Ulysses.

"I mean, at one point in time Mazo de la Roche's JALNA series was hugely popular--yet nobody (except septuagenarians lapsing into senility) read that crap today. "

Which is argument ad populam, is it not?

139> "Art and craft. The two are decidedly different things."

Yes, but fans of craft don't go around dismissing fans of art and assuming that any assertion of value has to mean value by their standards.

142: I think this is the first time I've used the word "exceptional".

See your 108.

Of course she's an exceptional writer; there are very few other writers who have made a half a billion pounds from their writing. That is the textbook definition of exceptional.

Can you cite the textbook in question? I sure hope touchstones are working!

If you're willing to ignore the opinion of people who have read a vast slew....

You have this habit of confusing your individual experience and opinion with that of millions of others. Need I remind you that you are only one person?

prosifilaes wrote: I'm requesting that authors people enjoy receive the credit they deserve for being able to write a book that the public enjoys, instead of it being just a "cultural phenomena", as if they had no part in it.

Jesus, the author is worth over $1 billion, and has well-attended book signings, and popular movies of her work, and the adoration of millions. Isnt that enough credit? Im still unsure why you feel everybody (including Bloom) has to bow down.

prosifilaes wrote: If you want to write a review of a book based solely on your own impression of a book, then that's one form of being a critic, and it doesn't give you the right to say that others shouldn't like the book, unless you're speaking on moral terms. If you're an academic literary critic, you shouldn't be just writing your own opinion; you have a responsibility to understand a work. Bloom wrote the first trading on his reputation as the second.

Read the review and I dont see it how you do. I think he did understand the work and found it "aesthetically weak" but an "index of our popular culture". What is more, Bloom was speaking in moral terms when he asked, "Why read, if what you read will not enrich mind or spirit or personality?" And I think he has every right to call 35 million people idiots. Which reminds me of a South Park bit:

Kyle: Anybody who thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy is a retard.

Cartman: Oh, really? Well, did you know that over one-fourth of people in America think that 9/11 was a conspiracy? Are you saying that one-fourth of Americans are retards?

Kyle: Yes, I'm saying one-fourth of Americans are retards.

Stan: Yeah, at least one-fourth.

143> "You have this habit of confusing your individual experience and opinion with that of millions of others. Need I remind you that you are only one person?"

Excuse me? http://www.librarything.com/review/28416307 for a couple. The science fiction fans who voted for the Hugo, for several thousand more.

Perhaps I should remind you that it is merely your assumption that these books could be replaced with any number of other books modulo the hype. Given the dearth of comparable books in your library, I wonder of your competence to make that judgment; until you have read Diane Duane and Anne McCaffery as well as JK Rowling, I question whether you can honestly say one of the volumes of the first two are interchangeable with the books of the third.

I have not made that assumption. I have pointed out that you can't prove that Rowling would be more enjoyed than those other, hypothetical, books. And you, in proclaiming that she is an exceptional writer, bear the burden of proof.

Also, why do you assume that the books I have catalogued here are the only books I've read? In fact, I have a sizeable collection of science fiction and fantasy, down in the basement.

I agree that Rowling does some things very well, and that this partly explains her success, but I do not agree that she is, overall, anything more than a competent writer. You'll just have to get over that.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for you to cite that textbook.

Hi prosfilaes:

I donʻt remember the publication of The Fountainhead, when I was about Jr. High School age. I was just vaguely aware that the movie The Fountainhead (1949?) was based on a novel by some minor writer. The reception of Atlas Shrugged was very different.

The title threw in readersʻ faces Randʻs politico-economic concept: that big money-makers (in industry, not in finance) are the ones who "hold up the world." And they could "shrug" and "stop" the world.
In real life, it was left-leaning regimes (Miyanmar, Iran, Cambodia) that adopted the "Stop the World and let us get off" stance. But the main stream of the Left stayed with their own version of the status quo, as much as the "Free" (Capitalist) World did: If Sweden, say, could work capitalism within a nominally socialist system, why couldnʻt the states that were reforming socialism (commonly called "Communism" in the West) reverse that, and work capitalism within a socialist system? According to reports, Hungary could. Yugoslavia couldnʻt.

So the critics, and presumably some of the readers, caught on to the politics/economics of Atlas Shrugged, more than they had with The Fountainhead. It was admitted even by some of the unfavorable critics that Rand was a good story-teller -- especially in A.S. and in the "thriller" genre which she used in one of her shorter novels. Her non-fiction "philosophical" works arenʻt taken seriously by philosophers.
I have a lot of respect for plotting and action in a novel. I suppose her being a reputed story-teller is what has kept A.S. on my TBR list all these decades. (The list is in my head only, not in a pile of books as in the LT logo,) And, though I donʻt agree with her politics/economics, I respect it more than that of Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, who advocated a return to an agrarian era, as in the Czarist empire. In religion, I would agree with Solzhenitsyn rather than with Rand, but I get the impression that rather than being "for" religion, he was more "against being against" it, which isnʻt the same thing.
Ironically, she became the arch-foe of "altruism", while the arch-supporter of it, Pitirim Sorokin was.like her, a politico-economic exile from the Soviet Union. We might have expected them to be allies, not exponents of opposite political and spiritual life styles.

I notice in the Touchstones that Sorokin is presented to us in Dutch translation, not in English or in his native Russian (The title cited is the Dutch of "Leaves from a Diary: Russia 1917-1922".) Suppose Ayn Rand were pre-sented in the form of a Catalan or a Slovenian translation of a minor work, and her "major" works in a "major" language were left in obscurity? So much for the importance of hype. Sorokin received none at all, outside of
academia, Rand a generous helping of it.

Miyanmar (Burma) and Iran are "left-leaning regimes"? I am not a partisan of any state, left-wing or otherwise, but describing those two states as left-wing is a bit crazy. Iran went from a moreorless fascist dictatorship to an Islamist theocracy. Miyanmar/Burma is a military dictatorship.

What does any of this have to do with spherical genius Harold Bloom?

TO Kswolff and Prosfilaes:

". . . history was far more changed by The Fountainhead and Gone with the Wind th(an by) Ulysses." (#142)

Scrolling back I find I was replying to an earlier post by Prosfilaes, not the most recent one; it was to the above remark on the long term effect of F, GWTW, and U.
I started writing in some doubt about any "changing of history" by any of the three. I went into a meditation on the early reception of The Fountainhead and of Atlas Shrugged about a decade later.

The connection with the most illustrious of the Bloom clan?* None at all. But this deviation from Harold and other Blooms was already being noted about several of our posts, way back. Someone wrote "Harold Bloom, anyone?"

*Assuming Harold is so considered. Of course my personal opinion is that the most illustrious of the clan is Ralph Blum.

JKRowling gets the popular appreciation she deserves, she's the second wealthiest person in England. Money is how you measure popular appreciation, not art. Sales are not synonymous with worth or talent. See whatshisname Brown, the symbologist.

". . . history was far more changed by The Fountainhead and Gone with the Wind th(an by) Ulysses." (#142)

Glad you didn't add "changed for the better," since Ayn Rand has written some of the most damning, immoral, ruthless philosophical discourses this side of a Sade orgy. And Gone with the Wind is a racist whitewash of the Civil War.

Speaking of Gone with the Wind, here's the "love isn't ambivalent" monologue from Angels in America:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTpVBWJnclg