What constitutes Literature?

[Whispersecret]

On another thread the subject of literature came up, and it got me thinking about the difference between commercial fiction and literature.

Is Jane Austen's work literature? I think most people would say yes. But I wonder why. Don't get me wrong. I adore her writing. And yet, she wrote romance. Almost no one considers the romance genre to be literature.

What about Edgar Allen (sp?) Poe? Is his horror considered literature? If yes, why, then, is Stephen King considered a hack?

What makes you, as a reader, qualify a book as literature? Is it longevity? Theme? Content? Genre? The fact that the author is dead? (Seriously!)

If a novel is entertaining--and by entertaining, I mean grabs you and doesn't let you go for the duration of the story--does that entertainment value detract from the literary value of the piece? If it makes you laugh or cry or stay up all night to finish, is it then only fluff?

Does literature have to teach you something or make you sit in a funk of confusion and ponder all the choices you've ever made in your life? Can "good literature" ever have a happy ending?

 

[Laurel]

That's an good question. Many people would say that the difference is that "commercial" fiction is written for a profit, while literature is written for the art of it. Yet those same people will consider the works of writers like Poe, Dickens, and Twain to be literature - yet these writers unashamedly wrote their works to make a living, just like Stephen King or Patricia Cornell or any of the other "pop" authors that dot the best seller lists.

There's a tendency for people to sneer at what's popular, and to take the obscure more seriously. I think that's a shame. Not everything on the NYT best seller list is crap. Sometimes an obscure author is obscure for a reason. I think Stephen King writes very well. I think he's doomed to be sneered at because he chooses to write genre fiction. Cormac McCarthy, to some, will never be more than a writer of westerns - yet I personally believe that he more than transcends the genre.

I'll probably catch hell for this, but I think these are highly subjective labels when you're discussing modern fiction. The true test of any novel is how well it survives over time. If a book can be read a hundred years from now and still touch the reader - fill them with sorrow/joy/passion/whateva - then I suppose it can be given the "more important" (whatever that means) title of "literature". Stephen King may disappear in 50 years, or he may be included in The Canon along with Poe. Who knows? Only time will tell.

Reading is an intensely personal activity. What affects me deeply may have absolutely no effect on you. Who would I be to tell you that a novel that touches you is "crap" or "unimportant" simply because it has no relevance to me? Outside of academia, I don't think labels denoting the supposed important or unimportance of a novel serve a real purpose.

 

[Guest]

Literature: This is best defined by reference to the Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" which contains:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

Literature, as opposed to mere writing is what the reader considers to be "good".

Put differently again, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

 

[REDWAVE]

Art & $

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. Shakespeare and Dickens are two obvious examples of writers who achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim. More recently, Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski are good examples of writers who did both, at least to some extent. However, it is rare. And the examples of HM & CB suggest that the authors who have the best chance of accomplishing both are "underground" writers.

But the great majority of the time, the two do not go together. Why? Because the artist is intent upon telling people the truth, what they need to hear. The entertainer (i.e., the commercial writer) is intent upon telling people sweet lies, what they want to hear.

Are you an artist or an entertainer, or (that rare bird indeed) both?

 

[Sateema Lunasi]

In my opinion, if you entertain someone with your written words, it is literature. It doesn't have to be important, acheive fame or cause controversy. I have read some wonderfully brilliant books, and then I have read some absolute trash that I enjoyed more than those brilliant novels. It is entertainment in the written word. It's what people did before TV.

 

[lovetoread]

In my opinion, if you entertain someone with your written words, it is literature. It doesn't have to be important, acheive fame or cause controversy. I have read some wonderfully brilliant books, and then I have read some absolute trash that I enjoyed more than those brilliant novels. It is entertainment in the written word. It's what people did before TV.

Exactly, I believe anything that captures your imagination and you can "see" the action inside your head is literature. And anyone that can capture that in written word is an artist. Not everyone can put pen to paper and have it be readable.

 

[Polarbear II]

Ok, this won't make me popular, but something that is well written an entretaining, is not necessarily literature (in the more than define-it-as-I-see-it sense of the word). Some segments of The West Wing are entertaining and well-written, but are not literature. Some lyrics are well-written and entertaining (Lyle Lovett comes to mind), but are not literature. And some books, while entertaining and page-turning and enjoyable, are well-written, but don't cross the threshold from fiction to literature. What makes the difference? The test of time? Yes, but that makes it hard to know what new works qualify today, and yet some works immediately strike the reader as more than standard fare(Garcia Marquez' "Love in the Time of Cholera," for example). Either a non-commerciality or a sense the author has a higher purpose? Maybe, but except for the author of "A Confederacy of Dunces," I can't think of an author who didn't have some hopes of making money for their art. Maybe the best definition is that literature informs something more than just the mind. It doesn't simply entertain (Stephen King or Tom Clancy), it strikes something far deeper....escape, but escape with change that lasts beyond the last page.

 

[Ulyssa]

I can't pass this one up.

Can you imagine in this day and age the almost impossible task that A. Conan Doyle went through? He couldn't make a living as a doctor--so to supplement his income he sold short stories! The very concept makes a modern American (and most other nationalities) shudder in disbelief.

Yet what Sir Art considered as his important work [historical fiction] is considered basically to be second rate.

Literature is a contrived term coined by those people who need middle men to tell a story. If a critic or a professor finds a piece worthy of criticism, then it must be literature. If any reader off the street can get a handle on the story, language and/or theme of a written work then it must be produced by a hack.
These are the same people who look for historical personages to replace Shakespeare, because how could a character actor and stage manager [in modern terminology that's Director ] produce such works of literary inspiration?

An elitist moronic bigot doesn't stop being moronic just because he or she has been educated. She/he is just much more capable of peddling bullshit under the guise of organically produced, naturally scented aroma therapy.

 

[Laurel]

Ulyssa has such a wonderful way with words.

 

[Polarbear II]

Maybe you're right. Maybe literature is a contrived term. But most of us who stumbled into this place were drawn at least in part by the "lit" of "literotica", so the word must hold some meaning in some way. Literature, I think, means some work of fiction that reflects craft and art -- Steven King? craft. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Craft, but with something lasting that draws readers still these many years later.....and so, in some way, art.

Maybe the argument is meaningless and the word empty (except when filled with elitism or anger), but, but, but......"from there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

 

[The_old_man]

I failed a course in English Literature When I told the professor that I considered Hamlet to be funny.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote good detective stories.

Literature is what you enjoy reading, be it Poe, Dickens, or Twain. James H. Shmitz and Dorothy Gilman are also exelent story tellers.

I enjoyed Poe, altho I found him a bit difficult to read(Old English). Twain was an exceptional humorist, altho some of his best work has been supressed as pornographic.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Back to Basics...

Literature--n. 1. Imaginative or creative writing. 2. The body ofwritten work produced by scholars or researchers in a given field: "medical literature" 3. Printed material of any kind, as for a political campaign.

When all else fails, ask Webster. Sometimes he getsit right where it belongs...sometimes he's an idiot. I think he was having an idiot moment when he wrote this...
He covered everything one could possibly think was or mistake for literature.
I think the difference is that Literature has a societal value. It is work that is of a creative nature (elsewise it would merely be informative writing) that we can learn from in terms of emotional uplifting or moral values. It's less whether we relate to it or if we are entertained than if it actually "means" something. It has to be written word, prose or poetry, or possibly even essays or articles, I suppose. It has to relate to people as people, and not just be something written to entertain, shallowly thought.
Long story short..."Girl, Interrupted" had meaning, "Die Hard" did not. I don't know whether or not Stephen King will survive the test of time in the long run (I think he will. His writing isn't like the older styles, but then, no ones today really is. Writing has a new face now. It's just changed, not lost value), but if you read his work and find some meaning in it, then I feel that, to you at least, it is literature.
Let's break this down to basics though...who cares? We all have a different definition, we're all right, and we're all wrong. Basically, it doesn't matter if we consider Stephen King to be literature or not. Read it, enjoy it, learn from it if yo can, then get another book. We can't waste too much time on a topic that can't get us anywhere anyway, even if we do answer it.
I like to write, and I think my writing has merit in terms of plot and whatnot, other than that, I'm not concerned about it.
As charmbrights said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Behold it, and enjoy beholding it, and move on...

 

[Ulyssa]

There is a simplicity in Quiet_Cool's argument.

You can learn something from any writer.

Sometimes you merely learn what not to do.

But if you have learned something positive from an author, whether it's style, storytelling, or language, then the piece has a fighting chance of surviving. Whether or not it survives as literature is academic. Unfortunately the institution which may be the least capable of determining the worth of a story or book is responsible for labelling it.

Life is like that.

 

[kiwiwolf]

I have to agree with Sateema Lunasi. Literature is anything that entertains. To check my theory I asked a Professor of English Literature for his definition. His reply... any written work that entertains, or educates through anecdotes. He stressed that not all entertaining or educational literature is GOOD literature, but it is literature just the same.

 

[bluntforcemama]

What is and is not considered literature cannot be left mainly to the masses. I think it's purely a personal choice of what one considers literature, and it seems to change throughout a lifetime. To me, anything of good reading constitutes a piece of literature. This includes a lot in my realm, and very little in others, I suspect.