TSR Appendix N Discussion

[overgeeked]

Literary critics are frustrated novelists to a person. No one should take what they say seriously. The reviews on Goodreads are often better written, more honest, and actually helpful with a lot less pretentious snobbery.

 

[Hussar]

Literary critics are frustrated novelists to a person. No one should take what they say seriously. The reviews on Goodreads are often better written, more honest, and actually helpful with a lot less pretentious snobbery.

Wow.

Just. Wow.

I know that it’s cool and all to bag on anyone with any sort of expertise or credibility but rarely is it stated so baldly.

But it does rather help to shed light on how people arrive at various points of view.

 

[Parmandur]

Wow.

Just. Wow.

I know that it’s cool and all to bag on anyone with any sort of expertise or credibility but rarely is it stated so baldly.

But it does rather help to shed light on how people arrive at various points of view.

Now, a lot of critics missed the boat on Tolkien when he first came on the scene, or have overestimated various writers that have come and gone. But on the aggregate, yes, literary critics know literature.

 

[overgeeked]

At best, literary critics are on par with every other hobbyist who can’t or won’t turn pro. They’re literature experts in the same way the funny guy at your office is a stand-up comic. In RPG terms, literary critics are no more experts in literature than your average gamer is an expert at game design. Which is to say they’re not.

 

[Parmandur]

At best, literary critics are on par with every other hobbyist who can’t or won’t turn pro. They’re literature experts in the same way the funny guy at your office is a stand-up comic. In RPG terms, literary critics are no more experts in literature than your average gamer is an expert at game design. Which is to say they’re not.

Did a literary critic run over your dog or something...?

For what itsoeth, one of the great literary doers and academic critics of the 20th century, C. S. Lewis, would have loved Sword of Shanara and the genre revolution it sparked...particularly since it proved his critical hypotheses about what people actually like in literature 100% dead-on correct.

 

[overgeeked]

Did a literary critic run over your dog or something...?

Nope.

For what itsoeth, one of the great literary doers and academic critics of the 20th century, C. S. Lewis, would have loved Sword of Shanara and the genre revolution it sparked...particularly since it proved his critical hypotheses about what people actually like in literature 100% dead-on correct.

What was his hypothesis?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Literary critics are frustrated novelists to a person. No one should take what they say seriously. The reviews on Goodreads are often better written, more honest, and actually helpful with a lot less pretentious snobbery.

The issue, fundamentally, with all professional critics is that they are people who, as a job, have to digest media whether they like it or not, and have to digest it all with an eye towards creating a review with some sort of take on it (usually on a deadline). This leads to deeply loathing things that are simply not their cup of tea and that a normal reader, viewer, etc. would have simply set aside or hurry through if they had a comparable initial dislike; excessive critique of details because they can think of little to say about the work as a whole; getting frustrated with works that simply don't inspire a good angle for commentary; excessively engaging (positively or negatively) with works that do offer an obvious angle for commentary; and being hyperaware of what has been done before and how often and hence likely to place too much value on originality over actual quality. With books, where the time investment is quite substantial, all these tendencies are exacerbated considerably as the frustration factor if they are not having a good time with the book is amplified considerably. And, even under the best of circumstances professional criticism involves digesting media in a way very different and alien to how the intended audience would (unless it is the sort of pretentious and inbred work for whom the critics are the primary intended audience).

Which is not to knock critics, or say professional reviews are worthless, but simply to outline the heavy biases one must read around when trying to get a useful takeaway from a professional review of anything. I think there is a general failure of education in not teaching people how to understand where critics are coming from and appreciate their work for what it is, what its limitations are, and what insights can be gleaned from it. Instead people are usually just vaguely taught that they should read and respect reviews, and this often results in the extreme reactions of rejecting them as out of touch, or at the other end taking on all the values and concerns of a reviewer which, which for the average person often just leads to enjoying media less for no good reason.

 

[Cadence]

At best, literary critics are on par with every other hobbyist who can’t or won’t turn pro.

Hasn't a widely published (paid) critic who has been doing it for decades definitionally gone pro in criticism?

 

[Clint_L]

Critics in general know a lot more about their subject than the lay person. By nature of their training and their job. That doesn't mean their opinions are better - art is subjective - but it is more informed.

So that book that I think is really fresh and original might be the 15th iteration on the same idea that a critic has previously read, often executed better.

I teach language and literature, and I generally do not re-read books that I loved as a teen, like Shannara, because I know they aren't going to hold up. Fantasy in particular is a thin genre; I love playing it, but it is particularly prone to derivative literature. It tends to be traditionalist and less conducive to fresh ideas, as compared to science fiction, for example.

 

[Hussar]

Critics in general know a lot more about their subject than the lay person. By nature of their training and their job. That doesn't mean their opinions are better - art is subjective - but it is more informed.

So that book that I think is really fresh and original might be the 15th iteration on the same idea that a critic has previously read, often executed better.

I teach language and literature, and I generally do not re-read books that I loved as a teen, like Shannara, because I know they aren't going to hold up. Fantasy in particular is a thin genre; I love playing it, but it is particularly prone to derivative literature. It tends to be traditionalist and less conducive to fresh ideas, as compared to science fiction, for example.

Heh. Tell me about it. I LOVED Thomas Covenant when I first read it. Devoured the books. All sorts of stuff stuck with me over the years and my view of Monks are STILL based on Cords.

Then I reread Lord Foul's Bane a few months ago. Holy crap was it boring. I realized I was 2/3rds through the book before he even arrived in The Land. SO MUCH EXPOSITION. SO MUCH SETTING DUMP. Gack. I couldn't even get through it.