So what is the central impetus behind writing and reading novels? Is the writer trying to impart some moral lesson? It seems to be a fine line between that and merely illustrating an uncritical portrait of the human condition.I suppose what I'm asking is, when someone writers fiction, what are they trying to do with the story?
Telling stories and having fun
>>25337463At best they are just trying to express somethingAt worst they are just trying to make a livingMostly it's somewhere between these two
Novels are not judgements on the world. They cannot be separated into those novels that make a clear judgement and those that withhold a clear judgement. Do not assume that a novel stands apart from the world and that authors and readers are authorities on high. Novels are incarnations of the world.
novels are a commodity produced by industrial capitalism. make of that what u will.
>>25337489>>25337492>>25337498But what are they trying to express with those stories? When they start out with the conception of the work, what is the primary objective?I hope I'm not being obtuse. It's just that every work of art fundamentally contains a relative worldview, right? And especially in a drama or tragedy, there's judgments inherent in the actions which precipitate the characters' fall, no?I of course recognize the difference between that and overt political didacticism, but more art exists in the blurry middle than most would admit, I'd say.
>>25337463anything to keep the chaos and decay at bay.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pov0MKuyJfg&ra=m
>>25337489'having fun' might be the human activity we understand the least.>>25337463i see novels as something like a big lab where the author selects from their society different types of language, personality, imagery, experience, memory, habits, etc, and then puts those raw materials into combinations that 'real life' doesn't allow, or doesn't allow you to experience in an immediate perceptible way as you can in art; and from these new combinations, new effects emerge, new combinations suggest themselves, you get a sense of the mysteries and possibilities locked up in everyday experience. so from this pov novels are more about experimentation than expression.as it happens i was skimming a pdf of 'the rise of the novel' by ian watts earlier today. might interest you.
>>25337463>when someone writers fiction, what are they trying to do with the story?People could enjoy more things if they reduced their definition of what a medium is supposed to accomplish. The only necessary criteria here is that there's text on pages and that it's imaginary. Having taste and preferences is fine but you only limit yourself by coming up with requirements. You'll often be looking for something that isn't there, ignorant to what the author is trying to accomplish. Take everything for what it is imo. If there's not much of a story, then maybe the story isn't the point.
>>25337535morality aside it's a form of immortality
Often times, you see praise for writers like "they have something to say [about our times]" so what does that mean? What are they saying? Is it a moral judgment? A judgment on how or how not to live? How the world affects the human condition without judgment at all? But surely there's always judgment.forgive the autistic questions, but it's genuinely an unresolved tension for me, especially since I grew up on Nabokov, who is all about the rejection of big ideas and moral viewpoints in fiction.
>>25337719Well said. And thanks for rec.
>>25337506So the Homeric tales aren't novels? Why not?
Novels are actually part of peripheral means of communication by substitution. The key idea being that you lay out a bunch of structural or aberrant implements and then subject them to discursive reconstruction by the reader and audience. Narrative typology affords people analogues for things they believe, learn or feel and it reorders and reflexively reorganize the order. For example when the author lays down a particular semantic content as belong to a specific narrative type, they are putting it in dialogue with history of culture and the the written word. In a sense, yes, it may be a moral imperative to not organize certain bits of semantic information to the point of express abuse, but that is largely not even a footnote in the larger spectacle of storytelling. When an author tells you that "the good" is a person instead of an idea, they are merely giving audiences and readers a programme for what has ultimately given life to the endeavor itself. A writer might say that that the value of their work is in people and their lives, or ideas, or dramatic tension, but anyway you slice you you're going to get a narrative account of what pegs fit into what holes, but this is usually limited to the author's intention of society's understanding of the work. As you have already outlined the difference between didactic testimony and mimetic illustration, you're probably aware that most works can be divided into rising action and denouement. These parallel bis sections fundamental inform each other to the extent that that the dramatic climax is often a matter of intensification of narrative or apotheosis of assertion. When you have one without the other you are putting forward an artifact which either stakes a position between narrative imperative (the good character or the good idea is functional) and aesthetic attitude (the merit is in the way the good character or event or idea is expressed) but generally tries to ring true in both camps. From the pers[ecive of the intellectually and culturally leveled playing field, the contemporary story does not so much try to force the reader to accept these things but instead encourages the reader to cultivate these ideals on their own accord, because frankly the oversaturation of the medium has led to a crisis of originality. The impetus of the modern novel is very much something that invites involved parties to make their own fun rather, to that end, instead of the historical novel which necessarily was a bit heavier handed as a consequence of breaking relatively newer ground. The novel as edification still serves stylistic and rhetorical ends, to the extent that something can be structurally sound and convincing, but narratological there is less intent to demand something specific of the reader.
>>25340780Hmm, well said... I think...
bump
>>25337463>>25337719moral judgements are sometimes necessary to enjoy art, but that's not the main goal.narratives are an art form just like music. to me, that entails that there is something more than mere mimetic representation of reality or moral/ideological fluff, even if unlike music, language represents the world as its material. the goal of the best kinds of narrative art, whether the author confesses to it or not, is to create something unique that also holds together harmoniously, which doesn't mean assonantly but in assonant and dissonant ways that are interesting and beautiful.the best value to be found in art is not that it expresses a worldview, nor in it expressing emotions through empathy necessarily, nor is it the page turner fun with cliffhangers etc. it's originality and harmony.
>>25343361>it's originality and harmony.So it's all about form? Content is irrelevant? Or rather merely a means of providing form a vehicle to express?
>>25337463Being able to jump through space and time and to feel, look at, learn, hear, remember, think of what it was like there in that space and time, wether they were real or only a dream.To obtain a mind that never ceases exploring.
Novels have existed for centuries, arguably millennia, in countless nations and languages, formats, genres, and mentalities. Even if you restrict your question to the English-language novel in America, you will find as many theories of the meaning of novel-reading and novel-writing as there are novel readers and novelists. The dominant theories change with each generation. So your question, though an important one, cannot really be answered. I think it's most helpful to read critical works by major novelists to get your bearings. One starting place should be "The Art of Fiction" by Henry James. In my opinion and in my reading, novels are monuments to existence: they honor and represent humanity and I think there's something maybe even a little heroic about novels.
>>25337929nabokov already resolved your question: it's for fun. he likes stories. so he writes them and reads them.
>>25344039Another good one, actually, is the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on the novel, which is written by Anthony Burgess: pretty fascinating and thorough.
>>25337463There is no “central impetus”, writers write for all sorts of different reasons. Any singular claim of intent would be so broad as to be meaningless. If there is a moral lesson, it should emerge as a natural extension of the story. An author that shoehorns in ethical concerns is little more than a propagandist.
>>25344007form vs content is a very awkward distinction. but without getting into that debacle, the "content" should be original and internally harmonious too. in theory, you could write great stories about anything.like all art at its best, good literature is not about generalities. artistic value comes from particularity. characters for example have depth when they're fleshed out with detail, nuance, idiosyncrasies, not when they're reduced to symbols for ideas.
>>25344174>If there is a moral lesson, it should emerge as a natural extension of the story. An author that shoehorns in ethical concerns is little more than a propagandist.This sounds like an issue of subtlety and degree rather than of kind.
Tragedies and dramas, which purport to portray the world and human condition just as they are, in some sense are advocating against the behaviors and actions they depict, no? Depending if the character is a moral exemplar, in which case the world is the bad actor and cause of the calamitous conclusion -- thus suggesting the world ought to change, so like Antigone or The Trial, or if not, if the character's woes are self-inflicted, then suggesting against becoming like the person, like Macbeth or Moby-Dick.Every depiction contains advocation or denunciation of a position, I suppose is my point.
>>25344618You’re not wrong, at least if we define literature in the broadest possible terms. But if we’re talking specifically about the literary arts, there is a distinction between whether an author approaches their work with a pointed moral intent, or whether they cannot help but produce a work out of which arises a complex and nuanced moral discourse. I’m not interested in the author’s ethical concerns, I want to know how they unconsciously animated those concerns via the work itself. It’s the difference between storytelling as proselytising, and stories that require no proselytisation to be effective. Of course this is all tied up with the problems in determining the author’s true intent. But I think we can all tell when a work’s moral concerns feel timeless and universal, and when the work is beating us over the head with a specific moralistic cudgel.
