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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 634029" data-attributes="member: 4937">Altin: In many ways you hit upon exactly my thoughts, though it seems clear that you have spent some more time studing these things in a formal way than I have.  If you haven't already guessed, I do think Western Art would improve if we stopped making elitist distinctions.  I find Shakespeare the better model, for I do not believe that the masses are as stupid as they are believed to be, nor do I believe that art is like fashion - it shouldn't change just to distinguish you from 'the rabble'.Post-modern, neo-modern, neo-post-modern, post-post-modern, tragical-comedic-neo-post-post-modern: it is all the same to me I'm afraid.  I'll take your word for it.I am being harsh on Mr. Vonnegut.  While the label dishonest most certainly doesn't hold up to an academician's 'close textual analysis' - it holds up to every other kind of analysis.  I have the feeling that the critics can't recognize when they are being played.  One gets the impression reading reading Stephen King that he doesn't write a single thing to impress the critics.  Mr. King doesn't appear to have any sort of conscious 'style', and instead writes whatever comes readily into his mind.  Mr. King appears to put all his thoughts down on paper in a white heat of inspiration without regard to what will be well recieved by a literary critic.  Mr King appears to write to please himself, to please his daughters, to please his audience, and to make money.  There may not be great depth, but there is no affectation in his writing.  And, if there _is_ conscious style, by achieving the appearance of honesty, then he is a far better writer than either of us have so far given him credit for.Mr. Vonnegut's works on the other hand are so stylized that if he is writing from his heart, it is quite impossible to tell, because the result is identical to the results of affectation either way.   Mr. Vonnegut writes as if every paragraph was intended to inspire a paragraph in some graduate student's thesis.   He never seems to fail to try couple a wry beginning to a paragraph with a fashionably ironic closure.  He panders to the critic, the way a teen movie panders to the purient.  He ends up writing not so much a story, or even a political satire, or even a stand-up comedy reutine, but an outline of a critical essay accompanied with humorous annotations.   After the 15th such ironical twist of the English language in a row, one is quite already tired, and you just want to say, "Kurt, stop hamming it up and just tell your story."   The actor who over acts is not held in high regard, but the writer who overwrites is not held to the same standard.</blockquote>

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