Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Yeah, I have a friend who has become a prolific author and kills people he knows off constantly. Either he hates everyone he knows or he needs a naming dictionary.

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Why not both?

overgeeked said:

Why not both?

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That ain't a naming book,it's a checklist.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

"The author liked the people whose names they used" doesn't really hold water, given what we know about who authors include in the story.

But looking at the names you used, I would be able to accurately make some assumptions about who was in your high school, what era you wrote the story in, etc.

Even if you don't mean to, you are including additional meaning in your writing with the choices you make.

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well now that i have access to random name generators, I no longer have to use names i already knew how to spell.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

The amount of stuff that doesn't tell us about the author is extremely small. The fact that authors might be unaware of it, or actively in denial about it -- "all of these protagonists having screwed up relationships with their fathers is just a trope, I swear" -- doesn't change that.

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Authors have concerns and issues and all of that. Sometimes the details are just details, though, and don't carry much weight or meaning.

(I personally find "what is this trying to say?" to be a more useful question than "what does this mean?" the vast majority of the time.)

el-remmen said:

I always liked using the term "intersubjective."

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I tend to think of it as, roughly, a conversation. The audience is in conversation with the work, the work is almost always in conversation with its medium's past, and plausibly its present. (And yes those conversations might be unequal, each of them.) But as I said elsewhere, I'm much more interested in what a thing says than trying to work out whether it has some more-symbolic-than-words meaning.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Double major in English and Communications.

I wasn't going to a particularly fancy school, but outside of freshman and sophomore English classes that my AP score let me mostly skip (I think I had to do one semester of sophomore English), no one was making declarations that everything in literature had meaning, just we were supposed to interrogate the text and see if there was meaning.

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For me, every literature class involved assuming there was meaning to these kinds of details and arguing about what they meant, either in class or on paper. This is one of those things I hate with the fury of a thousand burning suns.

I went to go look up some Rex Stout quotes on writing that would be relevant to the above and probably just need to look them up in his biography at home. Found a reference to a Van Doren interview book, our library has it held in deep storage and so I put in a request. And then I stumbled across this that is mostly unrelated.

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By David Bordwel (from The adolescent window)

The Law of the Adolescent Window:

Between the ages of 13 and 18, a window opens for each of us. The cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find ourselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold. We may broaden our tastes as we grow out of those years—we should, anyhow—but the sports, hobbies, books, TV, movies, and music that we loved then we will always love.

The corollary is the Law of the Midlife/ Latelife Return:

As we age, and especially after we hit 40, we find it worthwhile to return to the adolescent window. Despite all the changes you’ve undergone, those things are usually as enjoyable as they were then. You may even see more in them than you realized was there. Just as important, you start to realize how the ways you passed your idle hours shaped your view of the world—the way you think and feel, important parts of your very identity.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Yeah, I have a friend who has become a prolific author and kills people he knows off constantly. Either he hates everyone he knows or he needs a naming dictionary.

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I've had authory friends ask for volunteers.

Cadence said:

I went to go look up some Rex Stout quotes on writing that would be relevant. Found a Van Doren interview book held in deep storage and put in a request. And stumbled across this that is mostly unrelated.

----

By David Bordwel (from The adolescent window)

The Law of the Adolescent Window:

Between the ages of 13 and 18, a window opens for each of us. The cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find ourselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold. We may broaden our tastes as we grow out of those years—we should, anyhow—but the sports, hobbies, books, TV, movies, and music that we loved then we will always love.

The corollary is the Law of the Midlife/ Latelife Return:

As we age, and especially after we hit 40, we find it worthwhile to return to the adolescent window. Despite all the changes you’ve undergone, those things are usually as enjoyable as they were then. You may even see more in them than you realized was there. Just as important, you start to realize how the ways you passed your idle hours shaped your view of the world—the way you think and feel, important parts of your very identity.

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This isn't wildly wrong, as like a rule of thumb, but I know I've lost a lot of the hobbies I picked up when I was in that adolescent window, and I haven't really acquired others. I also know I was exposed to stuff in my twenties that in many instances left deeper marks.

dbolack said:

I've had authory friends ask for volunteers.

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It's not at all uncommon for bestselling authors to auction off character names, almost always (that I've seen) for charity.