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    #26
    Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

    Bloody hell Tubs. You are being facetious, no?

    Anyway, thanks for your comments on Hardy. What Bruno says kind of chimes in with what I thought when I read him all those years ago so I'm glad I didn't pursue him.

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      #27
      Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

      Do people really rate novels on realistically drawn characters, rather than narrative? Really? Fucking hell, i'm aghast at that.

      Plot all the time for me, man. That's what fiction is for.

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        #28
        Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

        Nah, both are nice but neither is necessary for a good novel.

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          #29
          Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

          Where Hardy gives you helpless victims of circumstance to make his moral points,
          All characters in narrative fiction are helpless victims of circumstance though, surely. The circumstance being that they're not real and the author decides their fate.

          You're making Thomas Hardy sound like a writer of tracts rather than novels, there. I strongly disagree. Hardy's impulses were aesthetic rather than moral. Jude, Eustacia, Tess and Henchard all died miserable, lonely deaths true, but they suit the fantastically grim worlds the novels are set in to a tee. They're true to themselves artistically.

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            #30
            Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

            Nah, both are nice but neither is necessary for a good novel
            See, I completely disagree. A novel without a plot, just turns into a page from someone's diary, for me. 'To The Lighthouse' or that Stevie Smith one, 'Novel on Yellow Paper'.

            They're alright, if i'm in the mood, but I don't consider them novels really. They're more like essays or something.

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              #31
              Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

              See, I think that's a bit like saying a painting's not a painting if you can't see what it's supposed to be. I love novels that treat plot and character in the way David Lynch does, or in the way My Bloody Valentine treat the pop song: they're probably in there somewhere, but you're too caught up in the sensations to notice.

              I can't stand Virginia Woolf, but Anna Kavan could and she did amazing things with a broadly similar approach. Sleep Has His House might be her idea of a coming of age novel, but it's no-one else's; it's more like a film that pins you to the back of your chair for a few hours, full of crazy lights, dream images, wartime footage, childhood memories and any old shit she's got kicking about in her incredibly sharp but isolated, EST and heroin-medicated mind. (This is where the crapness of books coverage is such a problem: the few pieces written about her make it sound as if she wrote autobiographical, confessional shite. She didn't; she put on spectaculars.) It's different again, but Ice is another killer - that's the one that won her a sci-fi award, and again the plot goes as far as: ice is encroaching on the world and loads of unnerving, beautiful shit is going down.

              I like normal books too though.

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                #32
                Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                Wait: Frank Sinatra was a fan of Dickens?

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                  #33
                  Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                  "This looks like Tess of the D'Ubervilles all over again" is one of my favorite Monty Python lines ever.

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                    #34
                    Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                    I love novels that treat plot and character in the way David Lynch does, or in the way My Bloody Valentine treat the pop song: they're probably in there somewhere, but you're too caught up in the sensations to notice.
                    Yeah, but this is the thing, see. Dickens treats plot and character in the same way, so does Victor Hugo and so does Tolstoy. It's all about layers of intrigue, deception and artifice isn't it? You need tension in a book though, for it to work.

                    See, it's not really about demanding a clear, easy story, but a point, a methodology and some kind of unifying aesthetic. Otherwise it just reads like an exercise in creative writing, do you know what I mean? There's so much that needs saying, why waste your time saying nothing.

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                      #35
                      Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                      Matt P wrote:
                      Where Hardy gives you helpless victims of circumstance to make his moral points,
                      All characters in narrative fiction are helpless victims of circumstance though, surely. The circumstance being that they're not real and the author decides their fate.
                      The distinction I was trying to draw was between an appealing sense of organic contingency and a less appealing sense of contrivance.

                      You're making Thomas Hardy sound like a writer of tracts rather than novels, there. I strongly disagree. Hardy's impulses were aesthetic rather than moral. Jude, Eustacia, Tess and Henchard all died miserable, lonely deaths true, but they suit the fantastically grim worlds the novels are set in to a tee. They're true to themselves artistically.
                      Oh I didn't mean to short-change Hardy's aesthetic impulse or artistic integrity. His novels certainly 'work'. Hardy had deep moral objections to the 'dynamics' of the world he chose to write about, and his characters strike me as somewhat contrived illustrations of that. They're certainly beautifully and sensitively depicted and all.

                      As for plot, they're only as rich as the characters who activate and sustain them. And all the best novels have a very open-ended approach to plot; they're not simply about their plots, the plot is a necessary literary device whereas the various themes are the real architectonic elements. Moby Dick, War and Peace, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov all have plots, without which they would obviously flounder and founder, but which can scarcely contain what it is that makes these books great fiction.

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                        #36
                        Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                        And all the best novels have a very open-ended approach to plot; they're not simply about their plots, the plot is a necessary literary device
                        Oh come on, seriously!

                        How can you have fiction without a plot? What would be the point?

                        I think the problem with these sort of debates is that they debase the integrity of the form, the vision of inspired imaginative flow needed to write a novel. It's more than just being able to write well isn't it? And that's the problem with the modern novel really. I reckon. Too much lovely prose, nothing new to say whatsoever.

                        I blame Henry James. I really do. I hate that bastard.

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                          #37
                          Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                          More than James Joyce?

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                            #38
                            Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                            I like James Joyce. That's prose poetry isn't it? I like poetry.

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                              #39
                              Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                              TBH I don't know that I have a clear definition of prose poetry, as opposed to straight prose or poetry. So I don't really understand why Joyce would qualify but James wouldn't. I do know that Joyce, when read aloud, is quite stunning. I've never heard James that way however so can't draw comparisons. Aside from the eccentric punctuation though I can't say I've ever found James's writing frustrating or otherwise unworthy.

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                                #40
                                Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                He wrote a review of 'Our Mutual Friend' that really annoyed me when I read it. He berated Dickens for not worrying enough about reality or real people and creating endless fantasies and what he termed over-writing.

                                It annoyed me a bit as 'Our Mutual Friend' is a genuinely great novel, loads of inter-linked plots, clear and crisp moments of allegory, genuinely amazing passages and episodes where Dickens captured the blurred edges, constant hum, energy and alienation of big city life so perfectly it was as though the novel was written 100 years later.

                                I'd already wound my way through one of HJ's novels before, and hadn't enjoyed it, but thought there must be something there worth persevering with. I was less charitable the next time I had to read another one of his novels about a unworldly American people meeting posh English people in posh houses with hilarious consequences. I decided he was a bit impoverished in the imagination or ideas department and damningly had no capacity to meet anything he didn't understand halfway.

                                Another thing that's always pissed me off about Henry James is people who say 'The Turn of the Screw' makes the mystery novel redundant by its sheer mastery of the form. It's alright don't get me wrong. But the advocates of this novella are from the almost religiously rationalist school, and I can't stick them.

                                So personal prejudice then really.

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                                  #41
                                  Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                  Slagging off us almost religiously rationalist types now, are you? I shall box your ears for you when next we meet.

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                                    #42
                                    Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                    Heh heh.

                                    Nah, i'm all for rationalism when it comes to real stuff. I just don't like it when people get all rationalist about fiction or art.

                                    You've never struck me as one of them though, Wyatt. At all. They tend to be a sort of wing stuck inside lit crit. They're alright as people, obviously. I just think their influence in fiction writing generally is a malign.

                                    You obviously need a touch of the rational in fiction to give it frisson and to ground it. But take something like 'The Wire'. It's great obviously, but it's true unreality is that it gives structure and form to something that has no structure and form. I can't explain that remark without having to write spoiler in block capitols. But reality doesn't have the tight focussed and revealing poetry that 'The Wire' is full of. I would imagine on the real streets of Baltimore drug lords don't get the chance to soliloquise before they get shot by other drug lords.

                                    That doesn't make it any less true or anything, it just means that it truth resides in the subconscious or the imagination where the truth of fiction should reside.

                                    I'm rambling now. I'll stop.

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                                      #43
                                      Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                      Yeah, I was doing this "banter" thing they're all talking about. Just call me Richard Keys.

                                      I think I'm probably not on top of what "rationalism" means in a lit crit context, though.

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                                        #44
                                        Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                        Heh, no I got that. The banter thing. I can do banter.

                                        I just have a proper bee in bonnet about this one, for some reason and will sound off about it given the slightest opportunity.

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                                          #45
                                          Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                          Matt P wrote:
                                          And all the best novels have a very open-ended approach to plot; they're not simply about their plots, the plot is a necessary literary device
                                          Oh come on, seriously!

                                          How can you have fiction without a plot? What would be the point?
                                          That's not what I was saying.

                                          I think the problem with these sort of debates is that they debase the integrity of the form, the vision of inspired imaginative flow needed to write a novel. It's more than just being able to write well isn't it? And that's the problem with the modern novel really. I reckon. Too much lovely prose, nothing new to say whatsoever.

                                          I blame Henry James. I really do. I hate that bastard.
                                          I went through a big Henry James phase in my 20s, thought he was the bomb. I haven't really revisited him since, but it's always good to renew one's perspective on past experiences. For now I think you're mad though.

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                                            #46
                                            Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                            Though I can entirely understand anyone's distaste for late James. Still, genius writer, and lit critic too of course. I remember his plots having a really appealing complexity to them.

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                                              #47
                                              Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                              You've got a point there.

                                              The last time I tried reading him was when I was in my early 20's. 'The Portrait of a lady'. Some of it was obviously pretty good, most of it really got on my nerves.

                                              I'll give him another go.

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                                                #48
                                                Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                                That's not what I was saying
                                                Yeah, I know it wasn't. Apologies.

                                                I went into rant mode.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Miscellaneous writers inferior to Dickens

                                                  No prob Bob.

                                                  If you can get past the writing style (if that's what mainly bothers you) there's lots of deep psychology in his character relationships to get all lit critty about. (As James himself went great and at times inscrutable lengths to explain to everybody.)

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                                                    #50
                                                    I've only just read (for the first time) the Orwell essay on Dickens mentioned upthread and it really is very perceptive as well as being beautifully and economically written.

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