GENIUS FORUMS

Sher, who wouldn't want to read about stories of lovers?

I wouldn't. If I would, I'd probably get more out of a soap opera than a web page.

And aren't you guys supposedly trying to become more masculine? What is masculine about lover stories?

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Nothing, but I was talking about creating a commercial website, not any kind of spiritual venture. I'm just saying it's a common theme in entertainment. The most common probably, so it's kind of surprising to hear someone ask why anyone would be interested in it.

If you ever write your novel, would it be about mushy romantic love?

I doubt it, but I don't think it's an inherently bad theme. The Odyssey was a great book and it was about some guy trying to get home to his wife. Mushy, I guess, but I thought it was great. The perfect story.

I read The Odyssey and I didn't think it was a mushy story. The pages were not loaded with lover stuff.

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I thought it was all about beer and pretzels.

Oh, hang on, sorry, wrong Homer.

Matt wrote:

I think I would blow a major nut if someone were moving my stuff from the place I put it all the time. That fact alone is enough to remain single. In fact, if I ever get the urge to desire an attractive woman again, I'm confident that I could simply picture her in my apartment moving my stuff around and the desire would immediately depart and be replaced with intense terror.

I find this utterly hilarious, reason being is that most men wouldn't be able to find something in their own closet if you showed it to them. It is all a ruse so that you will have to find it because they really didn't want to look for it to begin with. Then, when you do pull it out for them, they gush on and on about how wonderful you are...as if. I've been married too long.

Anyhow, top three books:

My all time favorite is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Howard's End by E. M. Forster

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

My husband says that everyone has at least one good book in them. He thinks fiction is a waste of time, but I disagree. One lifetime of experience most likely can garner enough subject matter to write a decent work of fiction. A good fictional author can express his/her ideas and beliefs through characters such that the reader can have an understanding of the author as if he wrote a three page autobiographical essay.

I would look forward to reading what you might write...good luck with it.

The two best novels in my mind are The Broken God by David Zindell and Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

They are both first novels of a series, but you don't need to read the other books as they are not as good.

The Broken God is relevant to the genetic engineering thread.

Matt Gregory wrote:Hey Shardrol, how's it going?

It goes. Pretty much okay. I seem to have taken on something of the character of a Genius Forum onion garlic pizza: it's not there for very long but it keeps coming back.

Trevor:
It's fine with me if you don't want to read fiction. I just disagree that fiction & nonfiction are all that far apart. Ideas in fiction are often more obliquely rather than directly stated & may need to be inferred from elements of the characters or plot. But we reveal ourselves completely with everything we write, no matter what the form, no matter how disguised we think it is, 'lies', 'truth' & all the rest of it - it's all there in what we choose to write about, which words we choose to use, the unspoken & often unconscious assumptions & beliefs that underlie our views. All this is visible to the discerning eye.
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Trevor wrote:

Truth is not a virtue that fiction can possess.

K: Truth is simply that whatever appears, is exactly "what" it is. So fiction cannot avoid Truth.

T: There's a hundred book-writers for every good book,
more poets than readers, and more painters than art.
The problem is simple: drawing makes you lose depth,
so one who wants depth has no words to impart.

I was afraid that this would happen. As soon as form and style is valued over and above meaning, things go haywire. I think that's perhaps what Trevor means by "fiction".

But it is a good illustration of my point: no matter what style or genre a person uses to communicate, if they haven't got understanding, then the expression is a load of codswallop.

What do you think "fiction" means, Trev?

Shad,

I just disagree that fiction & nonfiction are all that far apart.

I disagree with this distinction, as well, but for a different reason. There are very few nonfiction books that have gone far enough beyond fiction that they become any more worth reading than a given television program is worth watching.




Kelly,

As soon as form and style is valued over and above meaning, things go haywire. I think that's perhaps what Trevor means by "fiction".

Yes, that is one problem of fiction. I'm also wise to the fact that any experienced author knows that he is often paid by the word, so he is motivated to write a lot more words than he needs. What some people see as a beautiful use of adjectives, I see as a waste of my time, motivated by greed. It's not hard to pretty up language or make a message worth 2 pages vague enough to fill a 300-page book. It's what English majors call "bullshitting".

But it is a good illustration of my point: no matter what style or genre a person uses to communicate, if they haven't got understanding, then the expression is a load of codswallop.

Yes, and someone who has understanding can easily manipulate any genre to express it. Except the act of expression always removes the artist from the art, until a genius is reduced to prettying up his masterpiece so other people can digest it. The act of creation sacrifices a personal understanding of the Absolute, if only for a time, and forces the one to pay close attention to something egotistical and insipid.

What do you think "fiction" means, Trev?

By definition, fiction is untruth. I fully agree that there can be truth found lurking in fiction, but that is not the primary purpose of a fictional work. It is meant to be an escape, not a lecture.

Yes, that is one problem of fiction. I'm also wise to the fact that any experienced author knows that he is often paid by the word, so he is motivated to write a lot more words than he needs. What some people see as a beautiful use of adjectives, I see as a waste of my time, motivated by greed. It's not hard to pretty up language or make a message worth 2 pages vague enough to fill a 300-page book. It's what English majors call "bullshitting".

You mean like this, Trevor:

The Eye of Argon

Trevor,

Book writers are not paid by the word. Not like some magazine writers.

Second, excessive adjectives and adverbs are frowned upon by editors, in books about writing, and at writers conferences. Good writing simply does not contain them.

Third, the primary value of fiction may indeed be escape, but there is also a good deal of it designed to inform, including some historical fiction as well as creative non-fiction. These can be seen as akin to recreations of historical buildings from ruins. Those also have a legitimate place in our knowledge base.

You're being a fundie about fiction. Which is your right, or should I say "write," of course but it makes you come across as almost comically strident: Augh, not one syllable of that fantastical tripe shall ever cross my eyes, I shall avert them lest I instantly perish by thunderbolt from the very arm of Almighty Truth.

Heh, I made that last part up.

Carl,

Book writers are not paid by the word. Not like some magazine writers.

Book writers often start by writing short stories for magazines. Also, getting paid to fill a bunch of pages (a novel's-worth of words, rather than a pamphlet or novelette) is technically the same thing.

Second, excessive adjectives and adverbs are frowned upon by editors, in books about writing, and at writers conferences. Good writing simply does not contain them.

Really. Les Miserables, one of my favourite pieces of fiction, occasionally has a dozen adjectives for a single noun. Good writing can easily contain many many many adjectives. It's excessive, but also spectacular.

It sounds like contemporary writers are afraid of their own craft. No wonder there's so much mediocrity in the trade.

Using lots of adjectives and adverbs is not what annoys me: it's the reason for the number of adjectives that is bothersome.

Third, the primary value of fiction may indeed be escape, but there is also a good deal of it designed to inform, including some historical fiction as well as creative non-fiction. These can be seen as akin to recreations of historical buildings from ruins. Those also have a legitimate place in our knowledge base.

I don't disagree with this. Many television programs also have a legitimate place in our knowledge base. I have no idea why philosophers are having such a hard time admitting the simplest fact: fiction is not truth. That is not to say there are not other virtues to fiction.

You're being a fundie about fiction.

Pardon? I'm doing my best to describe fiction, and am actually agreeing with most of what people are saying here. My point of contention is the place of fiction in relation to truth.

I have even offered my own exceptions to this rule.

Others have pointed out Hakuin's metaphors, and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, like Plato's writings, I think that these fall under the category of philosophy, and not fiction -- even though the stories aren't wholly accurate accounts.

Really good fiction is not often categorized as fiction any more.



Matt, I hope you didn't actually intend me to read through all that. I read the first paragraph, and the last one, and I think I already developed a tumour.

passthrough wrote:My all time favorite is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Howard's End by E. M. Forster

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

My husband says that everyone has at least one good book in them. He thinks fiction is a waste of time, but I disagree. One lifetime of experience most likely can garner enough subject matter to write a decent work of fiction. A good fictional author can express his/her ideas and beliefs through characters such that the reader can have an understanding of the author as if he wrote a three page autobiographical essay.

Yeah, I don't plan on becoming a fiction author. It will just be one book consisting of me saying, "Matt wuz here!"

I would look forward to reading what you might write...good luck with it.

Thanks! My plan is to get it done in five years. One year of free pondering, followed by a write up of a rough sketch, three years of more direct pondering on the sketch, then a year or so to write two drafts and a final. If I'm going to go through all the trouble, I want to guarantee that it's something worth reading.

Matt Gregory wrote: You mean like this, Trevor:

The Eye of Argon

Quality literature right there.

Hahaha.

Shardrol wrote:

Matt Gregory wrote:Hey Shardrol, how's it going?

It goes. Pretty much okay. I seem to have taken on something of the character of a Genius Forum onion garlic pizza: it's not there for very long but it keeps coming back.

I'm kinda like Norm on Cheers, who never moves from his barstool.

By the way, could you pass the beer nuts?

Philosophaster wrote:

Matt Gregory wrote: You mean like this, Trevor:

The Eye of Argon

Quality literature right there.

Hahaha.

Do not impetuously condemn it, precocious braggard. The alluring subtexts of The Eye of Argon shall not be misted over in time as drollery nor catastrophic maze of anachronisms bathed in the turgid waters of the loin-straining begotten of peering at the line drawings of bodaciously breasted half-human females in Monster Manual!

Nice. :-)

Matt, I struggled through about two pages, and decided that Jim Theis is a man with a thesaurus (but neither encyclopedia nor dictionary) embedded in his brain, who is utterly obsessed with death, well past the point of panic. The humour is in his seriousness with which he tries to solve this crisis in the single most incorrect way imaginable, and the unshakeable feeling I get that, as he wrote it, he fully believed this work significant.

I notice, reading the history of this work and the author's reaction to his reception, that it struck a chord with a lot of people -- but not in the way he intended. For many people, it must be like narrowly avoiding a carwreck, and then moments later watching another person in virtually the same situation lose his entire family, his car, and all control over his muscles.

It's completely inimitable, though. I simply would not think, when describing a sword fight, to tell the audience the direction the blade ricochets off of a piece of armour. Nor would I think it particularly essential to explain the worksmanship that went into this particular piece, nor an archaic name for the suit. But not only does he fit all this into a sentence, he manages to add that the blade is already covered in blood, that the man who wields the sword has a headache, and that the blade made a clanging noise before it bounced off (again, I must emphasize that it reflected to the left of the opponent).

Such details do not seem important to me. The swing missed.

Yeah, I read about two pages. I thought it was funny.

I was actually looking for a different book, written by a bunch of actual sci-fi authors who set out to write the worst book ever to see if it would get published and it did. I can't remember the name of it, but it starts off like this:

Pain.

Pain.

Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

No, but I'm a genius so I found it:

http://critters.critique.org/sting/

Yeah, that's it! Sweet!

Uh oh, an emoticon.

I must say that what I've read so far from this "terrible" book is laugh out loud funny to the point of being painfully funny.



"Bruce lied there in the bed, trying to recover his memory. All he could remember was the screeching of tires', like a steam engine gone crazy, and then there was just all that pain. Hell. Hell on wheels, that's what it was, yeses.

Hell.

On wheels." -from Atlanta Nights