All Things Literature.

[PleasureToBurn]

This is a thread for literature and literary discussions. Genre stuff is welcome here as well. Fantasy, romance, thriller, mystery/crime, science fiction, erotica, and classic literature. Novels, series, novellas, short stories, flash fiction. All are welcome. Here's some general questions to open up discussion:

-What do you like about literature?

-What makes for good literature aside from good writing?

-What are some of your favorite literary works and why do you like them?

-What have you learned from literature?

-Literature is always evolving, what are some of your favorite periods?

-Any particular style you enjoy? American, British, Russian, Scandinavian, Folk, ect.?

-Who are some of your favorite contemporary authors?

-When analyzing a work, should we stick to the text as written, or view it in broader contexts?

-What do you think the future holds for literature?

-Who are some of your favorite characters in all of literature?

-What are some of your favorite settings in all of literature?

-What are your favorite quotes/passages?

-What would some of the classics look like if they were written today? Could they even be published today?


Feel free to answer or expand on any of these and ask your own questions too. I'll answer some shortly.

[PleasureToBurn]

Okay now that I've had some time to think about this:

I think good literature illuminates life, brings us into a greater awareness of it. It makes the ordinary extraordinary. It gives power to the mundane and the dull, and sheds light on both our joys and our pains. Like if you took someone, anyone, and cracked open their heart, plumbed their soul, what would you find? If you saw their hidden fears, insecurities, wonders, thoughts, emotions, the things they wouldn't ever want anyone to see, how would you feel about it? What if someone were to glimpse you that way? I think that is what literature at it's height has to offer us. A window into ourselves, into our human longings, but also a glimpse into others.

It can show us worlds we've never lived in, people we'd never meet, private fragments of the human heart that no one shows. It can awaken us not only to ourselves, but to the world at large. It can open our eyes to issues we haven't thought of, or show us a side we haven't seen. Like all art, it should shake us, provoke us, challenge us, make us think, make us feel. I think in many ways we fall asleep to our emotions and to our true selves and we close ourselves off from not only ourselves but from others. We see only surface levels. But great literature takes us to those places that we are too afraid to go in a way that is captivating and moving.

Great literature should heighten us, should frighten us, startle something in us. If it can speak to some place we've forgotten in ourselves, some place we've blinded ourselves to, open our eyes, our hearts, to a new way of seeing the world and others in it, then it has been successful.

And all great literature stirs something in us, some primal feeling that deep down we either know or long to know. A sense of adventure like Huck Finn rafting down the Mississippi, a sense of wonder like Scout seeing Boo Radley, obsession like Gatsby chasing Daisy or Ahab chasing the whale, bad romance like Heathcliff and Catherine or Romeo and Juliet, journeying to Faulkner's south or Joyce's Ireland, a glimpse into a family over the course of a day like in Long Day's Journey Into Night, or over the course of generations like in To the Lighthouse.

When you read these characters, and their fears, struggles, desires, obsessions, you really their pathos is your pathos. To read great literature is to more fully awaken to your own inner fire.