tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post2103446665826143345..comments2024-03-18T16:55:31.971+00:00Comments on This Space: What is happening?Stephen Mitchelmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-88529572514431985252008-07-30T23:22:00.000+01:002008-07-30T23:22:00.000+01:00Ingmar Bergman considered Andrei Tarkovsky in a se...Ingmar Bergman considered Andrei Tarkovsky in a separate league altogerther to all other film-makers, & I'd unhesitatingly agree. And he most certainly cannot be reduced to genre. Can life be reduced to genre? Though I don't think it a simple issue. Is tragedy a genre? Though and I read DH Lawrence last night, I think in an essay on THomas Mann, saying something( barbarically put here no doubt) that form in the broadest sense was an artificial concern, wereas what was within the form, the living art, was what mattered. Lawrence considered Mann an immensely intelligent but lifeless, poisoned soul. I can se his point after The Magic Mountain. A 'healthy' person's recoiling from the life within the the mountain should surely have dispensed with its sickness in a much more concise manner, and got onto more vital aspects of being. I did find Dr Faustus more satisfying, though a strange artificiality at key moments also. Mann's devil scene pathetically stilted compared to what must have been much of its model in Brothers Karmazov. <BR/>I'd say this drink imbued post has shapelessly staggered all over the shop- whatever shop that may be- & in blind hope that somehow it related to the matter at hand, I send it into the public arena with an admittedly somewhat careless hope for its future.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11708539533684206357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-69546211101734955682008-07-30T10:05:00.000+01:002008-07-30T10:05:00.000+01:00Stephen, I'm with you on the absurdity of a Proust...Stephen, I'm with you on the absurdity of a Proust/Wells tie-up. And I'm certainly with you on what I perceive to be your main point - that contemporary literary fiction is perhaps an exhausted form, and this will eventually lead to renewal.Hugohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15086593725809537401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-56132525777364253722008-07-29T21:31:00.000+01:002008-07-29T21:31:00.000+01:00I saw this recently from a convention on sci-fi fi...I saw this recently from a convention on sci-fi fiction as a literary genre:<BR/><BR/>"Proust’s Recherche ... whatever critics have said about it, is actually a time-travel story deeply indebted to Wells’s Time Machine."<BR/><BR/>This almost makes me weep with laughter and sadness. If this person had read and appreciated Proust, I'm sure he wouldn't feel the need to make such absurd claims. And even if Proust had read Wells, it doesn't tell us anything about what makes either work unique. <BR/><BR/>So, I suppose, the issue is that perceived "trade up" - but this is cultural and nothing to do with the work itself. The novel was as much art when it was considered vulgar as when it was prize-winning; hence my point about the death of the novel is a promise of its rebirth. This may come in the form of writers trafficking in all forms - but it doesn't mean those parts are necessary for the whole.<BR/><BR/>Beckett I'm sure didn't think of himself as A Great Artist. He just wrote what he felt (just as he said). I wish every writer did this rather than hiding behind the alibi of craftsmanship.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-43045128882154601802008-07-29T13:37:00.000+01:002008-07-29T13:37:00.000+01:00Well, I just had to look up what the Nietzschean s...Well, I just had to look up what the Nietzschean sense of 'untimely' is all about, so <I>touché!</I><BR/><BR/>Yes, literature of note always has an element of the untimely - although for me it's more a dialectical product of the timely and untimely. There has to be a structure there for a piece of literature to work with or against (or both). There already have to be conventions before anything can be unconventional. And literature has always trafficked between high and low. Cultural media "trade up" to become "art" (after all, the novel itself was considered a rather vulgar form until fairly late in its history). Camus's <I>L'Etranger</I> was inspired by James M. Cain's pulp novel <I>The Postman Always Rings Twice</I>, which in turn was inspired by Zola's <I>Thérèse Raquin</I>. Beckett chooses Buster Keaton for his film - etc., etc.Hugohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15086593725809537401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-40318509241942197532008-07-28T19:18:00.000+01:002008-07-28T19:18:00.000+01:00Hugo, I know enough about film not to have heard o...Hugo, I know enough about film not to have heard of Lubitsch. <BR/><BR/>But the reason why there's the distinction is probably because, as my old boss announced with pride, film is the dominant art form. For that reason it's bound to "work with genre" (a phrase that makes me inordinately sad). Literature of note is always untimely (in Nietzsche's sense, I suppose). And that's what I told my boss; it's why it's more interesting (unless it's late Godard or Starship Troopers).Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-68481268102177091402008-07-28T12:31:00.000+01:002008-07-28T12:31:00.000+01:00The term "literary" has become above all a status ...The term "literary" has become above all a status signifier, and as such provokes status anxiety. "Genre" novels that get a lot of critical praise are almost always considered to go beyond the genre, to "blur the distinction" between genre and literary fiction etc.; somehow the good genre novel can never be good simply <I>on its own terms</I> as a piece of genre fiction. That said, the very distinction between genre and literary is largely factitious. Contemporary literary fiction – loosely defined as the sort of novel that might end up on a Booker shortlist – is clearly a genre, albeit a baggier one than most.<BR/><BR/>I'm interested that this distinction between genre and real "proper" fiction doesn't seem to apply so much in film criticism. Ask James Wood who the most important fiction writers of the 20th century are, and he probably won't mention any genre writers at all. On the other hand, many if not most of the 20th century's canonical movie directors worked within genre – Ford, Lubitsch, Lang, Kubrick, etc.…Hugohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15086593725809537401noreply@blogger.com