What Do We Mean by “Literary”?

Posted on December 22, 2017 by

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Here’s a question that comes up all the time: How do you know a work is “literary;” or, the even more common, “what is literature”?
As someone who has a difficult time narrowing things down to a “favorite” book, I admit that I find this question about defining or explaining the “literary” genre a bit difficult! But, thinking about the question in relation to a particular example might help. 

 

I first have to expand on my own definition of literary, as it is something that comes up on my blog/twitter often, with the argument often being that “literary” or reading “literature” applies to anyone who reads lots of books. This is just not the case. I am sorry if that sounds snobbish, but it’s true. One who reads hundreds of books a year might rightly be considered bookish, but if these books are mainly* YA-Level, romance novels, erotica, etc., then, no, that, in my opinion, is not literary reading.

 

I would define a work of literature, in general, as something that has lasting or permanent literary and social/political/theological, etc. impact. It could be works, like those of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, that revolutionized a genre (here, the detective story and the mystery genre, respectively). It could be a stand-alone work, like Vanity Fair which, read now, might make one wonder “hm..this is a classic because…?” but which, upon deeper contextual study, is discovered to have been a landmark in terms of prose, execution, or other groundbreaking change to the elements of fiction. The point is, a literary work must have a larger impact on the “literary” world, and it must stand the test of time. Books that have been published within the last 10 years might qualify as literary, because we anticipate that they will last for generations to come and because they are, in some way, a “first” for literature (like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides).

 

So, all that being said, which novel can I pick in order to discuss this idea of “literary merits”? Well, I think I must go with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Hugo wrote Les Miserables following the French Revolution, and after his exile to Guernsey (after calling Napoleon a traitor to France). The novel itself spans 20 years in the life of its unusual protagonist, Jean Valjean, but it tells, through flashbacks and historical segues, much more of French history and culture than could be contained in 20 years.

 

The novel is lengthy, though this has nothing to do with literary merit (some say it is more difficult to write a perfect short book than a perfect long one); however, in this case, it certainly helps that the book is hefty, because it tackles so much: politics and war, religion, and the nature of “family.” Hugo also expounds on elements of moral philosophy; how is a thief a thief, if he thieves only to feed his family? How does a policeman arrest the man responsible for saving his life? These complex morality arguments and the historical nature of the book are what make it socially and academically significant, and thereby will likely seal a place for this book in literary discussion for all time. It is an interesting and sometimes exciting story, but that on its own does not qualify the book as literature. What makes it literature are the many deeper elements that touch upon human nature and that ask the reader to take a look at life and his/her place in it, then ask, “what shall I do with this information?”

 

From my original (short) review of the book:

 

Victor Hugo’s achievement with Les Miserables is stunning and breath-taking. Not only is the story superb, realistic, and moving, but it is complemented by aspects of French philosophy, history, and politics. When beginning this novel, I had no idea that I would be exposed to, and learn so much about, French history and culture. Napoleon Bonaparte, Waterloo, Louis VIII, the Guillotine, European relations, the gamins, prisons, crime and punishment, religion, morality; all of this is examined with a literary microscope. Meanwhile, love, poetry, song, revolution, family, and society are all exposed to the scrutiny of an expelled patriot. The story of Jean Valjean is heartbreaking and vindicating. Cosette and Marius, lovers despite the odds. Javert, the intensely dutiful (to a fault) inspector, and his tragic revelations. Gavroche, the beautiful underprivileged. Fantine, the lost and compromised woman, taken advantage of while trying to care for her daughter. Eponine, Fauchelevent, the Nuns, the Gillenormands, all minor but telling characters that are described incredibly and delicately by Hugo. What most impressed me is how Hugo described the history and purpose of each detail, to demonstrate it’s importance. Chapters of the novel are devoted to explaining seemingly insignificant points of detail, such as the prisons, the chain gangs, the slang language, all of which come into play during the story, but become active and live characters on their own merits because of Hugo’s attention to them. I cannot say enough about this novel – it is truly a masterpiece.

 

So, what about you? Do you select your reading according to type or genre? Do you tend to read mostly from one particular style? Do you find a distinction between literary and non-literary works? And, if so, do you have a preference for one or the other? What do you think compels you toward the books you do read? 

*Note: I think reading widely and eclectically, whatever the type and genre, also has its benefits. I’m not knocking any particular reading choice — I think that’s a rather silly thing to do. My argument is simply that, when we use the term “literary” or “literature,” we should be thinking about context. I might want something from my romance reading, and something else from my comics, and still something else from my horror. I don’t particularly look for the “literary” in those texts, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fun, interesting, and valuable experiences. 

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Posted on December 17, 2017 by

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After reading Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge in college, I certainly appreciated Hardy and was grateful to him for truly piquing my interest in the classics. Now, after reading Far from the Madding Crowd, I can absolutely call myself a fan. It is no wonder that Hardy has multiple entries on the infamous “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die” master list, including Far From the Madding Crowd. This story revolves around a love-triangle (or love-square, really) between Bathsheba Everdene, a beautiful, resourceful young woman who comes into ownership of her Uncle’s farm, another farmer from a neighboring town, Gabriel Oak, who finds himself ruined and goes to work for Bathsheba as a shepherd (after having met and courted her previously, before she became owner of the farm), a dashing young soldier, Sergeant Francis Troy – whom, had the term existed then, would have been known as a “player,” and, finally, Bathsheba’s neighbor-farmer, Mr. William Boldwood, whose mild manner and temperance masks an inner-passion and danger that only Bathsheba can unleash –unwittingly and, ultimately, remorsefully. The three men court Bathsheba in their various ways, and the town goes on around them, filled with the regular gossip, up-and-down seasons, and mild mysteries and adventures. 

The two things that first made me fall in love with Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge were its style and its characters. Far from the Madding Crowd is no different. Although the story does not move along at a rapid pace and although the majority of it is rather mild and calm in nature (though there are some surprises and moving moments, for certain!), Hardy has a way of making everyone and everything so very interesting, as if we the reader are a part of the plot, rather than an observer of it. The characters, from major to minor, are original, unique, and distinguishable from one another. The poor desolate Fanny, beautiful but tragically ruined, is a sideline character, but one of utmost importance. The workers, Jan Coggan, Joseph Poorgrass, and Cainy Ball are exactly the type of men you would hope (and assume) to find on a prosperous but familial farm. Liddy Smallbury, Batsheba’s maid, is sweet but mildly devious, and the aptly named Pennways, Batsheba’s former bailiff (accountant) is fittingly slimy. These minor characters move the story along and interplay with the primary characters and themes in a way that is subtly intricate. Most importantly, all of the characters are realistic both in their flaws and in their strengths, which strengthens the genuineness and believability of the story as a whole. 

As I mentioned above, one of Hardy’s great strength is his writing, including prose and style. He has the ability to engage his readers in stories which are interesting, but not necessarily enthralling. Although much of the story is about everyday life, with love’s toils interspersed throughout, the book is never boring. Much of this is thanks to the interestingly drawn and loveable (or despicable) characters, but the principal reason for the story’s success is that Hardy is such a fantastic storyteller. His narrative voice is interesting and distinct from the main characters’ tones; they, too, are independent of each other, and the dialogue is wonderful. The descriptions are lovely and lucid, without being overwrought (e.g. Proust, Radcliffe), so they complement the story without overshadowing it. 

Simply put, Far from the Madding Crowd is a story about love and life. It is a story about growth and maturity, and how true maturity only comes about through experience. Each of the characters in this story, excluding perhaps Gabriel Oak, have made grave mistakes, and each character must suffer in his or her way for the choices they have made. Some, like Bathsheba, do seem to learn from what they have experienced and grow into better people. Others, like Troy, seem to be so immature and self-absorbed that little growth can be expected from them. And still others, such as Mr. Boldwood, are doomed to suffer from choices instigated by the follies of others.  The themes of independence, self-worth, female leadership, and human companionship are explored.

Final Verdict: 4.0 out of 4.0

Notable Quotes:

“It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.”

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession.”

“There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear.”

“She was of the stuff of which great men’s mothers are made.  She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.”

Background on the Title:

“Far from the madding crowd” means, essentially, safe from the crazies. It refers to a quiet and rural place.  Hardy took the line from a passage in Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchard, 1751:

“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”  –Thomas Gray

My Life in Books (2017 Edition)

Posted on December 13, 2017 by

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So, here’s a little year-end fun, because why not? I first completed this back in 2010 and thought I would bring it back as a sort of review of this year’s completed reading. The rules? Pretty simple: answer the questions with books you read this year!

  • In high school I was: One of the Boys (Daniel Magariel)
  • People might be surprised (by): The Inexplicable Logic of My Life (Benjamin Alire Saenz)
  • I will never be: Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! (Kurt Vonnegut)
  • My fantasy job is: American Studies (Mark Merlis)
  • At the end of a long day I need: Letters to a Young Writer (Colum McCann)
  • I hate it when: Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
  • Wish I had: The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Mackenzi Lee)
  • My family reunions are: The Art of Being Normal (Lisa Williamson)
  • At a party you’d find me with: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
  • I’ve never been to: The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
  • A happy day includes: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)
  • Motto I live by: Love is Love (Marc Andreyko)
  • On my bucket list is: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
  • In my next life, I want to have: The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)

That’s it!  My Life in Books! Want to play along? Share yours (or your link!) in the comments. 🙂

The Pervasive Problem of Gender-Biased Language

Posted on December 5, 2017 by

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On Monday, two pages that I follow, Exploring Masculinities and The Sociological Cinema, shared a recent article written for The Atlantic, titled “Females’ Eggs May Actively Select Certain Sperm: New evidence challenges the oldest law of genetics.” The argument comes from one Joe Nadeau of the Pacific Northwest Research Institute.
 
My first reaction to this was, wait a minute, Emily Martin wrote about this nearly 30-years ago, in her 1991 piece, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” My hackles were raised, and rightly so, as it turns out.
 
In her original research, Martin explains how the rhetoric of science is, as in every other field, hetero-sexist and patriarchal, favoring masculine actions, descriptions, and even metaphors over neutral or female ones. As a basic example, in the process of fertilization, the sperm “penetrates” the egg, because the sperm is male and must therefore be the active agent in this process. As Martin points out, however, a number of studies at the time were suggesting that the egg might actually attract the sperm, pulling it in as it were, rather than being penetrated by it. And yet, the masculine-favored metaphors persisted (and still do).
 
Now, here we are, 26 years later, and both the researcher (Nadeau) and the science writer for The Atlantic, are ignoring Martin’s work? Why? Well, someone, seemingly Carrie Arnold, the science writer reporting on Nadeau’s work, cites Martin’s piece, but either completely misunderstands it or intentionally misrepresents it:
 
“This male-oriented view of female reproductive biology as largely acquiescent was pervasive, argued Emily Martin, an anthropologist at New York University, in a 1991 paper. ‘The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey but passively “is transported” … along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, ‘streamlined,’ and invariably active,’ she wrote.”
 
This is all the acknowledgment Martin gets, and it completely misses her point. This is not what Martin argued about the science* of the situation, but about the language* used to describe it! Now, I don’t know why Arnold included this portion of Martin’s 16-page piece, whether it was presented in Nadeau’s work in the same way, or whether Arnold found it on her own and thought she was covering an extra base (superficially). It seems clear to me, though, that this is at BEST lazy research on one or both of their parts, and at worst, egregious misrepresentation and dismissal of original work in order to advance Nadeau’s own theory (which is simply Martin 2.0).
 
I couldn’t access Nadeau’s piece (it is published in GENETICS 207.2 (October 2017), but if anyone has access to it and wants to see if he cites/references Martin at all and, if so, in what way, that would be great. Or send it to me. I may very well be missing something (perhaps he did treat Martin fairly in the original, and Arnold glosses it — I don’t know), but at the moment I’m simply fuming.
*
Update: I did get access to the primary study. Martin is not cited in the research (probably because she is an anthropologist, not a geneticist; is not a great excuse, but that’s another problem with “hard” science / “soft” science bias. This, too, is often characterized by gender. People view certain sciences as more “feminine” and others as more “masculine,” so that the actual numbers of people of a certain gender working in or pursuing that field are dramatically skewed); funny that his research still uses the gendered terminology, though, such as “sperm penetrating,” when his research seems to suggest it is a more magnetic (for lack of a better term) relationship between sperm and egg, not an active/passive one. But that begs the question, why was Martin added by the Atlantic writer, and did she simply misunderstand (or poorly phrase her explanation of–) Martin’s work?

The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper

Posted on December 3, 2017 by

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Harper Perennial calls The Marbled Swarm, Dennis Cooper’s “most haunting work to date,” and it is impossible to disagree. Although this latest from Cooper is more psychological and subtle, in many aspects, than most of his other works, it is perhaps because of those reasons that it is even more effective. The book is disturbing, as is typical from Cooper. The narrator, a deeply troubled young man with fantasies of incest on the brain, is consumed by homicidal and cannibalistic tendencies. The layers of his mind are just as twisted, concealed, and misleading as the secret passageways and hidden rooms that encompass his father’s voyeuristic mansion. The book, at its core, is a mystery story, which parallels the physical reality with the narrator’s subconscious, and what the reader finds in both places is darkly troubling.   

A narrator who refuses to identify as gay, but whose sexual perversions include raping and killing boys (particularly of the “Emo” type), then eating them; a father who spies on his sons, and who slowly and subtly persuades them to become sexually infatuated with each other; a boy who lies about being raped by his father to his brother, and by his brother to his father, with the hope that one of them will rape him; men who kidnap boys, alter them through plastic and bone surgery so they will look like their fantasy type, then sell them for sexual favors to men with twisted desires. These are just some of the characters in The Marbled Swarm. Individually, each is sick, twisted, and alarming in his own right; together, they create a world of psychological distrubia. The narrator and main character is the most interesting of the bunch, perhaps because the reader witnesses some of his secrets unfold chapter-by-chapter. His younger brother and father are also fascinating, in a “this car crash makes me want to vomit but I can’t turn my head” kind of way. Ultimately, the group serves to progress the story’s purpose, which is a commentary on language and communication, as well as Cooper’s modus operandi – exposing the terrible side of humanity and the evil side of desire. 

Cooper’s writing style is nearly unmatched; he is a type of writer that has been unknown in American Literature since William Burroughs. Although his themes are twisted and hard to stomach for most, his ability as a writer are laudable to say the least. His mastery of language, his ability to advance a plot seamlessly, and the sickeningly playful way he messes with his readers minds are impossible to overlook, despite how unsavory the subject matter. In The Marbled Swarm, Cooper has accomplished all that his previous works attempted, which is saying much, because his previous works were groundbreaking in their own right. In retrospect, though, it is clear to see that Cooper has been developing over time, getting better and better; and this latest, his masterpiece, is proof of how hard he has been working to perfect his craft. 

After admiring Cooper’s work for nearly a decade, I can say that, though I have loved and been fascinated by almost every book, poem, and essay the man has ever written, this is the book all previous works were helping to develop. It is, by far, Cooper’s most complex piece to date, and also his finest in craft, in theory, and in delivery. The fluid prose, disturbing subject matter, and psychological warfare (within the story and between narrator and reader) make this book a demonstrable work of genius. Had this been just a story about a disturbed young man who had sexual attractions for his brother and father, and who liked to eat human flesh, the book would have been sick, sad, and confusing; however, though that is technically what happens in the book, it is not what the book is about. This is a story about desire and depression; it is a story about cravings and theatrics;  it is a story about the pleasure of playing “the witness” in horrifying situations and, most importantly, it is a story about story-telling. 

Final Verdict: 4.0 out of 4.0

 

 

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