Thread 24801372

Write complete nonsense and people will praise it as high art. Ridiculous

>>24801372 (OP)
Joyce seemingly thought obfuscation is depth or beauty, which it isn't. Depth is depth and obfuscation is a byproduct, clarity and simplicity are to be appreciated. So yes FW may sound nice, but it is not great.

>>24801527
>Beauty is this, not that.
filtered

>>24801372 (OP)
>Write complete nonsense and people will praise it as high art.
To quote Ulysses:
'Yes.'

if you read it in an irish accent it's good.

>>24801527
I can't think of a single masterpiece that is clear or simple. Clarity and simplicity and undesirable traits in a literary work.

>>24801372 (OP)
Enough about Thomas Aquinas.

>>24801748
If a writer actually has something to say it can't help but make itself clear.

>>24801770
If he has something of worth to say then it'll come out as messy, as the Systems that govern us are themselves messy. Clarity and simplicity are clear signs of a charlatan.

>>24801798
Your problem is you don't understand the essence and purpose of art. You're confusing it with second-rate commentary.

>>24801840
>True, it may be urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it couple with another requirement—equally insisted upon, perhaps—that, while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent character is a rara avis? Which being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at his wits’ ends to understand living character, shall those who are not sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit along a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every character can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a glance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear for wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand, that author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different periods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the caterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
>If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on.
>But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always, they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency, which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted, considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow.

>>24801863
>Upon the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.
>But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to the understanding even of school misses, the last complications of that spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully made.
>At least, something like this is claimed for certain psychological novelists; nor will the claim be here disputed. Yet, as touching this point, it may prove suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity, having for their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles, have, by the best judges, been excluded with contempt from the ranks of the sciences—palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise, the fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the most eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as with other topics, seem some presumption of a pretty general and pretty thorough ignorance of it. Which may appear the less improbable if it be considered that, after poring over the best novels professing to portray human nature, the studious youth will still run risk of being too often at fault upon actually entering the world; whereas, had he been furnished with a true delineation, it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be very crooked, he may often pause; but, thanks to his true map, he does not hopelessly lose his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection, that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.

>>24801871
>>24801863
He's wrong, the struggle to change is the defining condition of mankind. The caterpillar becomes the butterfly gradually and exhibits clearly delineated characteristics at each stage of the process, certainly not existing as both things at once. Plus, character is only one aspect of writing and not even a necessary one; the message must be emotional and emotional content is always clear and immediately recognized.

>>24801932
>>24801798

A difficult argument to make on a literature forum.
Most modernist writing is about breaking forms which typically obscures meaning. Do you consider ulysses not to be a masterpiece that had something to say?

>>24801527
I love when a filtered anon can't handle it so he has to perform mental gymnastics as to why the filtering media is bad, actually

>>24801748
Homer, the Bible

>>24801798
Maybe you're just low iq bro, I understand even the tough books easily.

>>24802066
What exactly have I been filtered out of? I've talked to the fans, I get their perspective, it's not one I care for.

>>24801372 (OP)
/lit/'s Evangelion

>>24801527
>Depth is depth and obfuscation is a byproduct, clarity and simplicity are to be appreciated.
Wait til you midwits hear about Mallarmé and late-Zukofsky lol.
Funniest shit is FW is syntactically conservative and isn’t all that hard to read lol. Nothing particularly confusing about the way these sentences are shaped.

>>24802332
Let me ask you two questions. What's your favorite book and what is the first name of the dumbest kid in your high school?

Pseuds gonna pseud

>>24802563
The issue is with understanding not reading

>>24801372 (OP)
In the past, people might have read a book a second time if they failed to understand it. Now, they jump right online and bicker pointlessly

>>24803627
Life's too short to waste it reading bad books twice