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shadowkatMy interactions on the Good Reads "don't like it, don't read it thread" - have begun to make me question the definition of badly written. It's also made me regret all the snarky, negative reviews that I've ever written myself.
I'm experiencing cultural dissonance, folks. Not for the first time. Also why does this always happen on discussion board or comments threads? Where you find yourself constantly trying to defend your point of view? Point of View or Perception is almost impossible to defend.
Example?
B: How can you like X, how can any woman like X (fill in the blank). He's obviously a jerk, a control freak and obsessive.
Me: He's also a fictional character and not real. I find him fascinating.
B: But he's unlikable.
Me: I like him. I find him compelling. He's a poet.
B: a bad one.
Me: Well, so am I...so I identify.
B: Ah. You're identifying with a jerk who reads bad poetry.
Me: No. That's not what I meant.
See? Cultural dissonance.
B: How can you like Les Miz, it's bad opera.
Me: Well define bad?
B: Have you seen Puccini or Mozart?
Me: No.
B: Go see that and get back to me.
(checks out vids B sends me on Youtube, also has seen Porgy and Bess).
Me: I saw them.
B: And?
Me: Prefer Les Miz and Porgy and Bess. Actually I think Les Miz is better than P&B. It resonates for me more.
B (scoffs): I don't understand you. Everyone knows Les Miz is a pop rock opera, trendy.
It makes if very difficult to discuss something, when the points of view are so diametrically opposed. Sooner or later the discussion will derail into name-calling.
That's what happened whenever I tried to discuss Spike online in certain forums and with certain individuals, until I learned (sigh the hard way) never to do so. We just had diametrically opposed views on the character, we agree on other things, but we came at that character from diametrically opposed angles, we would never see eye to eye on him.
I do understand why that is.
It's similar I think with anything. Even writing. Certain styles of writing bug people.
I tend to be fairly flexible.
But will admit that my patience for academic formal writing and footnotes is...severely limited. May have been a result of reading one too many legal contracts in lifetime or technical proposals. I don't know. Someone on Good Reads recently wrote a review of a non-fiction novel - Berlin Stories, and stated the best thing about it was that it had no footnotes. That footnotes unnecessarily distract from the reading experience, are jarring, and disrupt the rhythm. They are also incredibly irritating if you happen to be dyslexic and have difficulty figuring out where your place is on the page.
My eyes skip lines, so I'm constantly re-reading or going back over stuff. Footnotes cause such a disruption that I lose track completely. But I know people who love them. One of my co-workers, an ex-attorney, adores them - he told me that he hides information in footnotes and has won a lot of court cases with footnotes in briefs that the Judge or opposing counsel missed. He uses them in all his papers at work. I refuse. Hate the damn things, for reasons previously stated. The other style of writing that tends to annoy me and I have limited patience for is the classical somewhat stiff Victorian formal style - that you see in the Brontes, Bram Stoker, Shelley, Dickens, Nathanel Hawthorn, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolfe. I find this style annoyingly passive. But again, others love it, they love the language, the repression, the passivity of it. The language is fine. But the passivity and circling around the point - drives me bonkers.
Some people hate slang. I love slang. Others hate stream of consciousness...for me it is poetry in action. My father loves the crisp journalistic style of Hemingway. I find Hemingway boring and prefer Fitzgeral or Joyce...who have more poetry. I like how words sound together. I will often choose words just for their sounds.
So how do you determine what is badly written? I am obsessed, as you most likely know, with point of view. It fascinates me. So if a writer can fully capture a character's voice, I'm willing to tolerate repetitions. Because first person narratives are hard to write, harder to pull off than people think. So often you get ciphers or Mary Sues, or the author. In 50 Shades, I was impressed with the writer's ability to fully convey the pov, with slang words, repetitious phrases that this character would think and use, and how they character is embarrassed enough by them that she never utters them aloud. The phrases conveyed to me..the character's insecurities. While everyone else sees the use of these phrases as evidence of bad writing. Cultural dissonance.
Then I wonder why I am compelled to discuss all this online. The reason is simple really.
There's relatively no one to discuss it with offline. Most of the people I know don't like what I like. I've managed to find a few male co-workers who do. But even that...It would be much easier if I liked spectator sports - but I find them dull and uninteresting to discuss. Numbers on a wall. So that does not work. While the people at church and at work and my brother and in my real life find tv shows, books and movies...dull to discuss.
They don't want to discuss them.
Cultural dissonance. It plagues me with lonliness sometimes. It's not so much that I want people to like what I like, but to be less diametrically opposed to my pov. A meeting of minds. Harder to find than you may think.
I'm experiencing cultural dissonance, folks. Not for the first time. Also why does this always happen on discussion board or comments threads? Where you find yourself constantly trying to defend your point of view? Point of View or Perception is almost impossible to defend.
Example?
B: How can you like X, how can any woman like X (fill in the blank). He's obviously a jerk, a control freak and obsessive.
Me: He's also a fictional character and not real. I find him fascinating.
B: But he's unlikable.
Me: I like him. I find him compelling. He's a poet.
B: a bad one.
Me: Well, so am I...so I identify.
B: Ah. You're identifying with a jerk who reads bad poetry.
Me: No. That's not what I meant.
See? Cultural dissonance.
B: How can you like Les Miz, it's bad opera.
Me: Well define bad?
B: Have you seen Puccini or Mozart?
Me: No.
B: Go see that and get back to me.
(checks out vids B sends me on Youtube, also has seen Porgy and Bess).
Me: I saw them.
B: And?
Me: Prefer Les Miz and Porgy and Bess. Actually I think Les Miz is better than P&B. It resonates for me more.
B (scoffs): I don't understand you. Everyone knows Les Miz is a pop rock opera, trendy.
It makes if very difficult to discuss something, when the points of view are so diametrically opposed. Sooner or later the discussion will derail into name-calling.
That's what happened whenever I tried to discuss Spike online in certain forums and with certain individuals, until I learned (sigh the hard way) never to do so. We just had diametrically opposed views on the character, we agree on other things, but we came at that character from diametrically opposed angles, we would never see eye to eye on him.
I do understand why that is.
It's similar I think with anything. Even writing. Certain styles of writing bug people.
I tend to be fairly flexible.
But will admit that my patience for academic formal writing and footnotes is...severely limited. May have been a result of reading one too many legal contracts in lifetime or technical proposals. I don't know. Someone on Good Reads recently wrote a review of a non-fiction novel - Berlin Stories, and stated the best thing about it was that it had no footnotes. That footnotes unnecessarily distract from the reading experience, are jarring, and disrupt the rhythm. They are also incredibly irritating if you happen to be dyslexic and have difficulty figuring out where your place is on the page.
My eyes skip lines, so I'm constantly re-reading or going back over stuff. Footnotes cause such a disruption that I lose track completely. But I know people who love them. One of my co-workers, an ex-attorney, adores them - he told me that he hides information in footnotes and has won a lot of court cases with footnotes in briefs that the Judge or opposing counsel missed. He uses them in all his papers at work. I refuse. Hate the damn things, for reasons previously stated. The other style of writing that tends to annoy me and I have limited patience for is the classical somewhat stiff Victorian formal style - that you see in the Brontes, Bram Stoker, Shelley, Dickens, Nathanel Hawthorn, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolfe. I find this style annoyingly passive. But again, others love it, they love the language, the repression, the passivity of it. The language is fine. But the passivity and circling around the point - drives me bonkers.
Some people hate slang. I love slang. Others hate stream of consciousness...for me it is poetry in action. My father loves the crisp journalistic style of Hemingway. I find Hemingway boring and prefer Fitzgeral or Joyce...who have more poetry. I like how words sound together. I will often choose words just for their sounds.
So how do you determine what is badly written? I am obsessed, as you most likely know, with point of view. It fascinates me. So if a writer can fully capture a character's voice, I'm willing to tolerate repetitions. Because first person narratives are hard to write, harder to pull off than people think. So often you get ciphers or Mary Sues, or the author. In 50 Shades, I was impressed with the writer's ability to fully convey the pov, with slang words, repetitious phrases that this character would think and use, and how they character is embarrassed enough by them that she never utters them aloud. The phrases conveyed to me..the character's insecurities. While everyone else sees the use of these phrases as evidence of bad writing. Cultural dissonance.
Then I wonder why I am compelled to discuss all this online. The reason is simple really.
There's relatively no one to discuss it with offline. Most of the people I know don't like what I like. I've managed to find a few male co-workers who do. But even that...It would be much easier if I liked spectator sports - but I find them dull and uninteresting to discuss. Numbers on a wall. So that does not work. While the people at church and at work and my brother and in my real life find tv shows, books and movies...dull to discuss.
They don't want to discuss them.
Cultural dissonance. It plagues me with lonliness sometimes. It's not so much that I want people to like what I like, but to be less diametrically opposed to my pov. A meeting of minds. Harder to find than you may think.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-15 03:24 pm (UTC)Sins of pride and vanity.