it's like that for 900 pages
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
It's the only novel I ever started reading and felt like I was in way over my head (not that I've read a huge variety of literature...)
Gravity's Rainbow pales in comparison, especially if you have a scientific background.
Gravity's Rainbow pales in comparison, especially if you have a scientific background.
gravity's rainbow and a lot of pynchon's stuff could be seen as the anxious and despairing post-modern reaction to the death of high-modernism. a lot of talented writers felt like there was nothing really new to say or no new methods/idioms in which to say it after the period of high-art and erudite experimentalism from 1890-1930 ended. a lot of great postmodern books like gravity's rainbow have a pervasive gloom about them and a truncated, stunted feel. 'there's not a lot left to say' is their formal statement, so in turn the literature becomes very self-reflexive and often self-ironising.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
Could you recommend a few other high-modernist works that you consider essential to defining the genre?
a la recherche du temps perdu - marcel proust
the waste land - t.s. eliot
the waves / mrs dalloway - virginia woolf
a passage to india - e.m. forster
nostromo - joseph conrad
the trial - franz kafka
bliss - katherine mansfield
in that order
the waste land - t.s. eliot
the waves / mrs dalloway - virginia woolf
a passage to india - e.m. forster
nostromo - joseph conrad
the trial - franz kafka
bliss - katherine mansfield
in that order
Last edited by Uzique (2011-03-02 16:00:26)
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
So basically its 900 pages of crossword puzzle style clues to what the author wants to say?Uzique wrote:
it's like that for 900 pages
Not for me and my tiny brain. Pincher Martin was about my limit of verbiosity and tangential um stuff.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2011-03-02 23:21:13)
Fuck Israel
i find most of it pretty easy to understand... but the onus is on you, as the reader. not the piece of art - that's autonomous.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
"The piece of art" as you put it, was created by a person--the author. So the onus is on them, as well. An author who creates a book that is incomprehensible to the majority of the reading world hasn't done himself any favors (not saying that is the case here). The "piece of art" didn't miracle itself into existence, zeek.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
of course not, but it stands for itself-- and it stands for SOMETHING. the author hasn't created 'nonsense', you PERCEIVE it as nonsense because of your lack of comprehension and background-knowledge; the onus is on you, therefore, to truly comprehend the full intention of the piece of art. joyce is often quoted as saying that his works "will have professors arguing for centuries"-- it's arrogant and egotistical, but high-modernism never had any pretentions about its high-minded and erudite nature. it certainly isn't a bad aspect or a criticism of the book that the average person cannot understand it... there's a very good cultural argument to state that some art and culture does need to be exclusive, in the epistemological sense. the entire notion that art should be literal and referential and accessible and understandable to everyone is absolute nonsense. total tosh. does the average person really understand a picasso? how many people discard modern abstract art as 'nonsense', or called rothko 'rubbish', because they didn't understand the aesthetic point or intent of the piece? ulysses, similarly, is not a 'rubbish' book because it infuriates you with its density and complexity. you just don't get it. that's fine. move on.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
Meh, I generally don't like it when artists start forming their own subculture, I feel that art should be able to be enjoyed by everyone regardless of wether or not they have any background knowledge in the piece. Arguably, it would also be much harder to make something that can have both a professor in the respective art and your average joe be impressed by the work.
Although you're talking literature now, the point is made much easier in visual arts. The vast majority of people regard modern buildings these days as looking like garbage - yet the artists would say they love it. Which is even worse because any building is part of a larger collective.
Although you're talking literature now, the point is made much easier in visual arts. The vast majority of people regard modern buildings these days as looking like garbage - yet the artists would say they love it. Which is even worse because any building is part of a larger collective.
inane little opines
yeah life and culture would be really interesting and dynamic if there were no subcultures and if everyone understood everything and shared the same aesthetic principles and the same ideologies. i mean life would be amazing then, wouldn't it? that's basically a fascist theory of art. please. people often say things look 'garbage' because their subjective taste and judgement are not well-informed. is this a problem? no, not really. but some opinions are worth more than others: conceptual architects are hardly pandering to your local white-van driver for appreciation and acclaim... no, of course not, they're paying their dues to the academy of architecture that trained them, and which they are trying to further. this is good for culture and the 'arts', collectively. if everybody tried to create a culture that was populist and accessible to all, then all of our literature would be sold in airport departure lounges and all of our fine-art paintings would be imitative and derivative nonsense copying a van gogh or something. no thanks.
Last edited by Uzique (2011-03-03 09:36:31)
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
If you're going to build something in a city you should at least try to make it appeal to the general public, who are going to be walking in and around that building every single day. Not to your community of architects. It's also the state who funds the university in the first place to train them, wouldn't you say they could try pay their dues to the collective as well then?
Sure you can achieve progress without having to copy a van gogh, making something aesthetically pleasing and modern at the same time should be the challenge, not to cater to your own community of architects and put emphasis on complexity and niche artistic ideas. Then you end up with stuff like this, in the middle of a city;
Sure you can achieve progress without having to copy a van gogh, making something aesthetically pleasing and modern at the same time should be the challenge, not to cater to your own community of architects and put emphasis on complexity and niche artistic ideas. Then you end up with stuff like this, in the middle of a city;
inane little opines
i really don't see the problem with having variation and experimentation in any artistic field... so what if it excludes some people? why does it really bother you that much that some art is inaccessible or incomprehensible to you? some of you people speak about these high-modernist, complex texts as if they're failures when it comes to art... or are somehow reprehensible and dismissable. it's like it really personally wounds you that you don't understand it, that you lack the (arcane and esoteric) knowledge required to unlock the book's mysteries. why does it really bother you that a world of academia and theory and critics exist to thrive on this stuff? it's the same as in any field - artistic, scientific, humanistic, etc. it doesn't bother me that there are scientific journals and discourses out there that i haven't got the foggiest clue about. but the attitude is different about arts. why? it has always been common historical understanding that art has been traditionally the preserve of the rich and the elite and for people that generally have the spare-time to think about such high-minded, abstract, idealistic riff-raff. why do people get snickety when certain high-art baffles them? art and culture's roles in society aren't to pacify and please you!
if you disallowed architects from experimenting and pushing forward... or required every artist and architect to produce something beneficial to every common-man on the street, you get crap like 'socialist realism' in literature (and the visual/musical equivalents):
no thank you!
(incidentally, some of the soviet architect's attempts to produce progressive and experimental art within the confines of a communist ideological system were... bizarre to say the least. some of the soviet-modernist projects are clearly struggling to coerce artistic autonomy into a limiting functional and populist framework. look at this for an example. but i digress...
if you disallowed architects from experimenting and pushing forward... or required every artist and architect to produce something beneficial to every common-man on the street, you get crap like 'socialist realism' in literature (and the visual/musical equivalents):
no thank you!
(incidentally, some of the soviet architect's attempts to produce progressive and experimental art within the confines of a communist ideological system were... bizarre to say the least. some of the soviet-modernist projects are clearly struggling to coerce artistic autonomy into a limiting functional and populist framework. look at this for an example. but i digress...
Last edited by Uzique (2011-03-03 09:53:17)
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
My gripe is with artists dumping their works in the collective without really caring for the opinion of that collective. If you're talking books, paintings, I don't have any problem with it whatsoever. Sure, I may dislike it but it doesn't impact anyone in the slightest if someone decides to create a painting with stripes of 3 different colours for display in art exhibitions / modernistic musea etc.
It's when someone takes that painting, enlarges it and plasters it on a building in the middle of the town square that I will start complaining. There should be room to experiment even here, ofcourse, but there should be limits.
It's when someone takes that painting, enlarges it and plasters it on a building in the middle of the town square that I will start complaining. There should be room to experiment even here, ofcourse, but there should be limits.
Last edited by dayarath (2011-03-03 10:02:32)
inane little opines
i don't really see why its of any major consequence to you: you make an aesthetic judgement of it and consider the work for maybe 50 seconds, and then carry on. it's not as if any major 'public art' is being placed in places of great natural beauty or civic value, anyway... it adds some variation and colour to public spaces. whether it's divisive and provokes a range of opinions... that's fine and okay (even 'healthy', in a sense). it's not as if a piece of art is making the urban landscape look worse than it was before. if you're talking about graffiti and street-art then that's an entirely different matter altogether-- that's an underground and counter-cultural scene, so it's directly contradictory to this discussion we've been having about art and culture. i can't really think of any examples of public art that haven't been well considered and respectfully placed.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
now lets get over this elitist high-modernism trip and get into the 20th centuries reaction to such a phenomenon:
go read 'infinite jest' by david foster wallace.
in my opinion, wallace was the james joyce of our times. many of those snooty, horrible little men that are joyce scholars would agree.
go read 'infinite jest' by david foster wallace.
in my opinion, wallace was the james joyce of our times. many of those snooty, horrible little men that are joyce scholars would agree.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
Heh, that's the last book I bought...came in the mail last week. The premise sounds absurd in the best possible way.
absolute staggering genius... i rank very few authors as highly as david foster wallace. and im a snobby cunt.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
Just who were you ranting at here, Uzique?Uzique wrote:
of course not, but it stands for itself-- and it stands for SOMETHING. the author hasn't created 'nonsense', you PERCEIVE it as nonsense because of your lack of comprehension and background-knowledge; the onus is on you, therefore, to truly comprehend the full intention of the piece of art. joyce is often quoted as saying that his works "will have professors arguing for centuries"-- it's arrogant and egotistical, but high-modernism never had any pretentions about its high-minded and erudite nature. it certainly isn't a bad aspect or a criticism of the book that the average person cannot understand it... there's a very good cultural argument to state that some art and culture does need to be exclusive, in the epistemological sense. the entire notion that art should be literal and referential and accessible and understandable to everyone is absolute nonsense. total tosh. does the average person really understand a picasso? how many people discard modern abstract art as 'nonsense', or called rothko 'rubbish', because they didn't understand the aesthetic point or intent of the piece? ulysses, similarly, is not a 'rubbish' book because it infuriates you with its density and complexity. you just don't get it. that's fine. move on.
I didn't refer to it as "nonsense" or "rubbish." Nor did I argue that all books should be "literal and referential and accessible and understandable to everyone..."
However, if an author is living on ramen noodles and ketchup because he's made his "art" incomprehensible to all but a handful of people who can be arsed to sit around and devolve it for weeks on end to determine its root meaning...well, it's his own damn fault. You deem others UNABLE to do what you do. That's egotistical (shocking). We're not unable...just unwilling. We have more important things to do with our time, tbh. But to each his own, I suppose.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
TBH I don't care if authors want to write the word 'bluh' 50,000 times and publish it, or paint three stripes on a piece of canvas and hope people buy it or they gain recognition some other way.
To understand Salvador Dali takes education (and strong drugs) each to their own, I get it.
Arguing about which art form or example of art is more valid than the next is a waste of time.
If we brought everything down to the lowest democratic denominator it would be a pretty dreary world.
To understand Salvador Dali takes education (and strong drugs) each to their own, I get it.
Arguing about which art form or example of art is more valid than the next is a waste of time.
Just walk on by, its hardly a problem for you. I like to see unusual stuff even if it is daft, and you've got to respect people for putting stuff out there.It's when someone takes that painting, enlarges it and plasters it on a building in the middle of the town square that I will start complaining. There should be room to experiment even here, ofcourse, but there should be limits.
If we brought everything down to the lowest democratic denominator it would be a pretty dreary world.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2011-03-04 00:48:59)
Fuck Israel
On the previous topic of sci-fi, it is worth noting that especially nowadays, "hard" sci-fi in particular is written as much as an outlet for scientists/"futurists" to express their weird and whacky ideas for technologies and the like as about plot etc.
The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
~ Richard Feynman
~ Richard Feynman
Really plot has always been irrelvant to sci-fi.Spark wrote:
On the previous topic of sci-fi, it is worth noting that especially nowadays, "hard" sci-fi in particular is written as much as an outlet for scientists/"futurists" to express their weird and whacky ideas for technologies and the like as about plot etc.
Its about technological change and the effect on people and society, although many authors dress up an average plot with a few gizmos to try to grab the sci-fi audience.
Fuck Israel
joyce made a shit ton of money and bought his entire family out of poverty and lived in paris with the world's artistic eliteFEOS wrote:
Just who were you ranting at here, Uzique?Uzique wrote:
of course not, but it stands for itself-- and it stands for SOMETHING. the author hasn't created 'nonsense', you PERCEIVE it as nonsense because of your lack of comprehension and background-knowledge; the onus is on you, therefore, to truly comprehend the full intention of the piece of art. joyce is often quoted as saying that his works "will have professors arguing for centuries"-- it's arrogant and egotistical, but high-modernism never had any pretentions about its high-minded and erudite nature. it certainly isn't a bad aspect or a criticism of the book that the average person cannot understand it... there's a very good cultural argument to state that some art and culture does need to be exclusive, in the epistemological sense. the entire notion that art should be literal and referential and accessible and understandable to everyone is absolute nonsense. total tosh. does the average person really understand a picasso? how many people discard modern abstract art as 'nonsense', or called rothko 'rubbish', because they didn't understand the aesthetic point or intent of the piece? ulysses, similarly, is not a 'rubbish' book because it infuriates you with its density and complexity. you just don't get it. that's fine. move on.
I didn't refer to it as "nonsense" or "rubbish." Nor did I argue that all books should be "literal and referential and accessible and understandable to everyone..."
However, if an author is living on ramen noodles and ketchup because he's made his "art" incomprehensible to all but a handful of people who can be arsed to sit around and devolve it for weeks on end to determine its root meaning...well, it's his own damn fault. You deem others UNABLE to do what you do. That's egotistical (shocking). We're not unable...just unwilling. We have more important things to do with our time, tbh. But to each his own, I suppose.
where exactly does this notion come from that to make good art, you have to be dirt poor?
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
i actually disagree. that's like saying anyone could easily work with high-level science or maths if they wanted to and were so inclined to spend their time studying it. the analytic and philosophical ideas and arguments that you have to grapple with at the top-level of arts study is a SPECIALISED field. it's not just something people do because they have too much time and money and enjoy playing around with fun little books. it's actually egotistical of you to think that you could comprehend and engage with texts on the same level as somebody that has studied the discipline for years... at a mere whim, 'if you did so fancy'. every branch of human knowledge is so far developed and specialised nowadays that i really think it would be difficult for anyone to simply turn their mind to something else and decipher it with ease-- as if they're some sort of unread polymath. sure you could take 5 years of art courses and probably be up to scratch in background knowledge, reading and analytical skills...FEOS wrote:
We're not unable...just unwilling. We have more important things to do with our time, tbh. But to each his own, I suppose.
but i do simply disagree. show somebody some heidegger or some cavell and tell them to go read and 'understand' it, then apply that to joyce's ulysses... yeah, okay. maybe give them 2-3 years to get their heads around everything required.
Last edited by Uzique (2011-03-04 05:54:36)
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
This.Dilbert_X wrote:
Arguing about which art form or example of art is more valid than the next is a waste of time.
Because you are arguing a subjective topic.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular
― Albert Einstein
Doing the popular thing is not always right. Doing the right thing is not always popular