Esoteric Authors: Do they serve a purpose?

Whilst we are on the subject of "greatness", you may want to check out _this_ link:

What Makes A Classic?

What Is A Classic

I can't speak for those excitable Russians, but Tolkien did not "hate" Shakespeare

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I am not talking about hating in a "personal" way, but "hating" in a impersonal way i.e he hated Shakespeare's works- not Shakespeare, he didn't even know the man.

On Tolkien's religious views. Given that some orthodox Christians, may choose to take a literal take on the Bible, and thus condemn to hell all non-Christians-or even Protestants and Catholics, and I ask myself, if a good Christian is not supposed to hate anybody, then why do some of the stricter Christians choose to condemn so many people, because of their religion etc. to hell? Is there a more hateful act? I doubt it. NOTE: This is not an anti-Christian bash, but since we are talking about a Christian then my comments would naturally be about Christianity. I know that few Christians take such a standpoint, and I respect such views.

Inderjit S said:

....he hated Shakespeare's works- not Shakespeare....
Given that some orthodox Christians, may choose to take a literal take on the Bible, and thus condemn to hell all non-Christians-or even Protestants and Catholics....

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I don't want to labour this point but I am quite certain that Tolkien did not hate Shakespeare's works; for a professor of English to do that would be quite absurd.
I'd be interested to know what "literal take" on the Bible leads to condemnation to hell of all of any group of people. If any people who claim to be Christians apply such a "take", then they most assuredly are not "orthodox" - with or without a capital "O/o"!

I think I read somewhere that he disliked Shakespeare. And just because he was a professor of English doesn't mean he had to like Shakespeare-you can teach something you do not like, and there is no way he could have removed the old bard from the syllabus. Or he may have taken a dislike to him later on in life.

Yesterday I watched Borat, in which a Borat interviewed some conservative, Christian politcian, who, when asked whether or not Jews would go to hell, said "Yes, because the Lord Jesus said....", and thus, I was struck by the irony of such a great man claiming that all those who didn't follow his path were damned. That is, of course, that persons interpretation of Jesus's words.

Inderjit S said:

I think I read somewhere that he disliked Shakespeare.

....I watched Borat, in which a Borat interviewed some conservative, Christian politcian, who, when asked whether or not Jews would go to hell, said "Yes, because the Lord Jesus said....", and thus, I was struck by the irony of such a great man claiming that all those who didn't follow his path were damned. That is, of course, that persons interpretation of Jesus's words.

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Look back at my post #19: "....he may not have liked him much, but that's another matter!"
The "other matter", surely, is that the idea of disliking Shakespeare, without qualification, is an absurdity; it's like disliking (all) books!

What is "Borat", and what, or who, is "a Borat"? Where did you watch it, or him, or her?
You say that the person interviewed was "great"; who was he, and who assesses him as great?
It's unfortunate that you didn't complete the quotation; what was the alleged saying that generated the preposterous "interpretation"?

I'd also add that hating people and condemning them to a bad fate is not the same thing.

By that logic, everyone who believes in the death penalty hates criminals, criminals they have never met who have commited the crimes worthy of the death penalty. You could stretch this and add in those who would just use life sentences and say there are levels of hate. . .

Let me continue with that logic:

If you don't hate anyone you will totally set them free no matter what they did.

If you hate mildly you will mildly punish.

If you hate but not strongly you will punish by something like a life sentence.

If you hate fervently you will invoke the death penalty.

Now, I support the death penalty. We could debate that elsewhere, but I don't hate any condemned murders. I simply believe that they are worthy of death.

In Christianity all humans are worthy of damnation and therefore must be saved in order to avoid it. Therefore, all Christians must hate all humanity by your logic.

I don't think it holds, but it goes into a lot of really tiny theological points we probably arent' supposed to go into on a literature thread.

S Inderjit said:

Whilst we are on the subject of "greatness", you may want to check out _this_ link:

What Makes A Classic?

What Is A Classic

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Thanks for the links. What each link demonstrates most effectively is that question isn't really "What Makes a Classic" so much as "Who Makes a Classic"? The first article--based upon an interview with a Penguin publisher--suggests (at least to me) that a "Classic" is simply that which is packaged/marketed as a "Classic" by a publishing corporation (thereby determining its shelf placement in a bookstore). The second article broadly agrees: "A classic is an old book for which there is still a market; that is the only fair and logical definition" (emphasis added). But it also alludes to the way in which the notion of the "classic" has become embroiled in not-altogether-apolitical debates in the academies: not simply over what should be taught in a university course in Literature, but how it should be taught.

So perhaps what counts as a "classic" (and perhaps by extension, what counts as "literature") is a decision made in the boardroom as well as in the academies. After all, how many "Penguin Classics" feature introductions by noted scholars? (For example, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Bleak House features an introduction by Yale deconstructionist J. Hillis Miller).

Here are some articles that may interest you:

The Literary Canon

Feminist Questions about the Literary Canon

Literary Canon and Eurocentric Bias (from a left-wing e-zine called the Goan & South Asian Digest)

Harold Bloom's The Western Canon

You say that the person interviewed was "great"; who was he, and who assesses him as great?

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No, you misunderstand my point. Maybe I should have been a tad bit clearer. I said Jesus was a great man, not the guy.

The man in question was a Republican Party candidate. Borat (played by the guy who plays Ali G) who asked him "I want to go to heaven, how do you get there?", I cannot remember this original reply, but then Borat asked "So, will a Jew get into heaven", the man then sighed and said "Boy. Well, Lord Jesus said that only those who follow his teachings will get into heaven, so no, a Jew will not get into heaven". Oh well, at least it is nice to see some sincerity from a politician.

Borat is a satirical program, from the guy who played Ali G. In it, the guy who played Ali G, in one of his guises as a gay Austrian t-v show presenter had an interview with a gay converter priest, in it he asked if watching Will and Grace was o-k to watch, to which the gay converter replied "No, it is sinful", or something like that...just thought I'd give you an example. Oh yeah, he asked if eating brunch was o-k, to which the preacher replied "If you are eating it in the fellowship of good Christian folk, then yes" oh and the best one "Is eating chocolate o-k", "Not if it is part of a homosexual lifestyle"

In Christianity all humans are worthy of damnation and therefore must be saved in order to avoid it. Therefore, all Christians must hate all humanity by your logic.

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Hell is, correct me if I am wrong, an eternal punishment, or, rather, the ultimate punishment in Christian theology. So claiming somebody will be punished forever because he does not follow the same religion as you is, in my opinon, hateful.

"A classic is an old book for which there is still a market; that is the only fair and logical definition"

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Yes-possibly-though not many people have brought say, Ulysses, and many people have brought The Lord of The Rings-which many critics deride as being a poor book.

Looking back I see that I took your statement the wrong way; my apologies for that.
Apologies are due also both to you and to Mr Cohen for my lapse of memory concerning his comical character Borat. It would have been interesting to know the source of that first interviewee's biblical quotation. There is a simple answer to the interviewee's comment though: a Jew is perfectly capable of "following <Christian> teachings", and has, therefore, no need for concern regarding access to heaven.

S Inderjit said:

Yes-possibly-though not many people have brought say, Ulysses, and many people have brought The Lord of The Rings-which many critics deride as being a poor book.

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I don't know that said critics would have agreed entirely with the definition of a "classic" as an old book for which there is still a market. I'd also make the observation that many of these critics were writing in the 1950s and 60s, when Tolkien's work would have been much "newer" (See the BBC article: "How Tolkien Triumphed over the Critics")

Also worth reading: Kicking the Hobbit and Lord of the Slings

Hell is, correct me if I am wrong, an eternal punishment, or, rather, the ultimate punishment in Christian theology. So claiming somebody will be punished forever because he does not follow the same religion as you is, in my opinon, hateful.

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You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but it is illogical.
By the same token death is pretty permanent. It is the ultimate punishment we humans are capable of inflicting (if you don't go into James Bond style 'Now I will feed you to my sharks. . ."). By inflicting the death penalty, humans are doing the worse they see as possible, and there is no way to undo it, no way for the person to gain pardon after it is done. Very similar.
And as I said there are plenty of small theological points to go into. There is the belief that hell is the natural state of humans without God and that all people in hell chose hell and could've chose Heaven. (Dante's point).

Of course, part of Christianity is wrapped up in faith. We ultimately believe we have a just God who knows what He is doing and everyone will get what they deserve, no more, no less. Perhaps this means Hell isn't as bad as we've made it out to be. Perhaps Dante was right and there are levels of it, each bad but not all that bad. We'll see, won't we?

HLG Strider said:

By the same token death is pretty permanent. It is the ultimate punishment we humans are capable of inflicting (if you don't go into James Bond style 'Now I will feed you to my sharks. . .").

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The death penalty is, in my opinion, also hateful.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, esoteric literature and the popularity of Ulysses . . . can I just make the observation that the book and its author have a following at least comparable to that of Tolkien (in 1998, for example, Ulysses jumped to the top of the best-seller list in the UK, outselling Tom Clancy and John Grisham (source)), especially in Ireland, with "Bloomsday" festivities being celebrated "from Tokyo to Sydney, San Francisco to Buffalo, Trieste to Paris," if this website is to be believed. I doubt that all of these fans can reasonably be described as "the intelligentsia"--though that is no slur on Joyce's following, nor am I trying to suggest that the book is easy bedside reading a la Stephen King. In point of fact, I cannot truly attest to its difficulty, because I am yet to read it--though it is sitting on my shelf, and I am intrigued. I imagine it's one of those books that needs to be read in a certain frame of mind (that's the best way I can put it).

I did find the following, however, which I hope you will enjoy . . .

Ulysses for Dummies

Cheats Guide to Joyce's Ulysses

Arthur_Vandelay said:

....the book and its author have a following at least comparable to that of Tolkien (in 1998, for example, Ulysses jumped to the top of the best-seller list in the UK....

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"the best-seller list"?

The article you quote is about "the list of 100 best novels published by the Modern Library". Was it "the list" that was published
by Modern Library (whatever that is ), or was it a list of 100 novels taken from the list of those novels which are published by Modern Library? Given the vagaries of English syntax and punctuation the answer is not clear, though, strictly speaking, the answer to the second question should be "yes". Whatever the answers, I question the validity of that list!

joxy said:

"the best-seller list"?

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From the article:

Ulysses is now number one on the best sellers list, ahead of contemporary novelists like Tom Clancy and John Grisham. It has also become the second biggest seller on Amazon.com, the online bookshop.

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I take your point--the article can't really be talking about "the" best-sellers list (if such a list exists). I'd suggest the article is referring to best-selling books in Britain, as well as on Amazon.

joxy said:

The article you quote is about "the list of 100 best novels published by the Modern Library". Was it "the list" that was published
by Modern Library (whatever that is ), or was it a list of 100 novels taken from the list of those novels which are published by Modern Library? Given the vagaries of English syntax and punctuation the answer is not clear, though, strictly speaking, the answer to the second question should be "yes". Whatever the answers, I question the validity of that list!

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The list wasn't really the point--although having investigated the Modern Library website and elsewhere (for example, here), the answer to the second question is in fact "no" (i.e. the list comprises the Top 100 novels published in English in the 20th century, as selected by the Modern Library board). You're not the only one to question the validity of the list, but given that the list only represents the opinions of the members of the Modern Library board, I don't think validity really comes into it. In other words, it is no more (or less) valid or authoritative than the reader's list of Top 100 novels, situated alongside the board's list on the Modern Library website. Both lists can be found here.

I agree, "validity" wasn't the right word to use; "importance" might have been better.
I must say that reading the two lists has given me more entertainment and amusement than there is to be found in some of the entries on them! L R Hubbard way up in the readers' estimation, numerous entries from Charles de Lint -who he?! - .........
Nice to see James Baldwin well esteemed by the "board", though I'd have given the place to Another Country.

on the readers list;

Wow...those guys sure like Ayn Rand but, rather humurosly, they include anti-captialists such as Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac and George Orwell in their list. I guess it was a pretty non-political list, but all those Ayn Rand books may say something different. Plus that list is unbelivelably centred on English and American literature. The only non-Brit/American I can see there is Joseph Conrad. Well, he was a Polish Brit anyway.

In fact even the authors list is pretty much contains only American/British novels-apart from Nabokov, but then again he immigrated to America. I will never understand why people like E.M Forster, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and 'The Great Gatsby' appear in these classic books lists.

I don't think your friend Joyce would be happy about a suggestion that he was Brit/American, and there are other representations there for Ireland, as well as for Australia, Canada, and India. Who would you suggest from the wider world?!
As for Forster, Conrad, Ford, and Fitzgerald, chacun a son gout, though at least they are all readable.
And who is this Rand, and of course who the de Lint?

joxy said:

And who is this Rand, and of course who the de Lint?

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For Rand's biography, start with this Wikipedia entry. Also see the Ayn Rand page at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This USA Today article is worth a read as well.

Charles de Lint is a SF/Fantasy author. See his home page for more details.

The death penalty is, in my opinion, also hateful.

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Sorry for the off topic then, but this needs to be addressed and Jr brought it up on his own thread.

When you say hateful you mean "dispicable" or "immoral." This is not the meaning of the word as Indy brought it up in his first post about it. Indy said that it was impossible for Tolkien not to hate because he believed in damnation. His logic was you can't believe it is all right damn someone without hating them. I said by the same logic you can't believe it is all right to execute someone without hating them. Therefore hateful in this sense means "coming from someone who is full of hate" not "causing a person to hate the something (ie death penalty, damnation)."

They are totally different senses of the word. Unless you do mean that you believe everyone who supports the death penalty is filled with hate and has to hate those who receive the death penalty. In which case, your logic/facts is/are also faulty. I can attest to being a supporter of the death penalty who has no personal hatred for Timothy McVeigh (the only death penalty recipient I can think of off the top of my head).

HLGStrider said:

Sorry for the off topic then, but this needs to be addressed and Jr brought it up on his own thread.

When you say hateful you mean "dispicable" or "immoral."

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Yes. And abhorrent, abominable, detestable, horrid, odious . . .

Now, back to the topic at hand ...

A more obscene version of Ayn Rand is Terry Goodkind; atleast Atlas Shrugged had some little merrit as a story per se, Sword of Truth series by Mr. Goodkind is one of the most abominable of its kind - and SF/F is full of trash.

Charles De Lint is an excellent 'Urban Fantasy' author who also writes Young-Adult Fantasy.