Writers V Storytellers

'The one figure of undisputed literary greatness is Shakespeare' Zyv. Sorry to butt in like this so late in the thread, but i want to take issue with this. Not so much the statement itself, but with the truth of the assumption behind it. Yes, there are very few people who would dispute Shakespeare's greatness. Unfortunately. I've read 7 of his plays, including Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. And i hated them all. They all suffer from the same faults - paper-thin characterisation, plots that make no sense at all and terrible dramatic technique (how anyone can read the opening of 'As You Like It' without throwing the book across the room is beyond me). I also find them very dull. Andrew Pack makes an excellent point, which (and i hope he doesn't mind) i'd like to just alter slightly - it's now become almost impossible to read Shakespeare the writer rather than Shakespeare the establishment creation. At least for those who have studied him. I've sat through so many lessons of teachers bending over backwards to show why faults in Shakespeare plays are either not there or are actually strengths (efforts they don't make for anyone else). But i'm interested in the responses who come to Shakespeare fresh, without academic brain-washing. Andrew, you are mistaken about Shakespeare being dead in academia - he dominates English literature lessons from GCSE to degree level - i know, i've just finished my degree and did three of his plays in those three years. But here's a question. is Shakespeare the greatest writer of all time, people often claim him to be? Personally, i'd say a definate 'no' (obviously). I'd argue Arthur Miller is a better play writer for a start, and i read plays a lot less than novels so i know fewer playrights to put up against him than i do novelists. I'd put 'The Crucible' above 'Hamlet', 'Death Of A Salesman' above 'King Lear'. But to return to the first post, if you had a ghost writer for Shakespeare (and it's widely though Shakespeare didn't write the plays anyway!) you could have pretty much done away with the man altogether, since most of his stories are based on established myths and legends - most of the best remembered ones are those where he didn't have to come up with the plot himself. Anyway, i know that doesn't come together very well, it's just some random thoughts on your discussion. Vicki: stick to your guns - i've never read Hardy, but 'Oliver Twist' is possibly the most boring novel i've ever read. Sorry to be so negative, but the literary assumption that you have to love Shakespeare has been rammed down my throat so many times that it just really annoys me now.

I think a lot of this has to do with the age in which they wrote. Dickens as I recall (not that I am THAT old) serialized his books in the newspapers first before they were published as books. That places certain demands on the writer. Besides, I think this distinction between storytelling and "literature" is a very recent invention. Hardly anyone prior to WWII, and certainly not in the 19C would have made such a distinction.

That's true - literature for literature's sake is a late 19th/early 20th century thing. When Dickens and Hardy were writing, you wrote for a purpose - to influence people and teach them. I'd agree that there are some authors who are more 'story tellers' than 'writers', but I'm surprised you use Dickens, Hardy and Tolkien as examples. You may not like the way they write, but it's key to the success of their works. They didn't just have a film running in their head that they needed to write down - and their books would lose a lot if they were just screenplays. In fact, as far as stories go, I think Dickens can get pretty wretched. His all work out too conveniently for my liking, and I find it's his writing style that's the hook, if anything. The opening chapter to 'Great Expectations' - utterly excellent.

Dickens creates the atmosphere as well as the dialogue and storyline. He loved to read his books aloud at public readings, so imagine the difference between him reading aloud from say A Christmas Carol, and simply reading the dialogue with a few stage directions. I can't see the argument that Dickens would have been better off as a screenwriter.

To say that he "simply cannot write" - sheesh! Did you have a very bad experience with him at A Level, Vicky? I'm pretty sure I was the only one of my class to come out of GCSE English NOT nurturing a quiet loathing for Hardy. Our teacher, who went on to see us through A Level, later admitted that 'Far From The Madding Crowd' was a poor choice of text....

That reminds me. The Beatles. Were they a great pop band or just a bucnh loud-mouthed fools with silly hair? And Pele. Couldn't play football for toffee. Wouldn't get a game for Stalybridge Celtic these days.

No I have just read, on average, a book a day for a very long time and at age 26 that means I've read an awful lot. I have an extreemly retentive visual memory that allows me to remember a sentance verbatim in a book, in some cases which page, years later. I came to this conclusion by reading classic, modern and ancient texts with equal vigour and I stand by it. Yes it was a different era, yes they were often serialised and yes it was what selled at the time. Fair enough. Then don't hold them out to be genius. THEY ARE BORING. Difficult to read (and I'm bloody good at it) and far too highly praised unless you put them in a historical context. Which rarely happens. *DISCLAIMER Vicky did not hurt any deceased authers memories in the making of this literary thread, as her personal opinion is not an earth shattering phenominon*

"They are boring," you say. That's undeniable. If something bores, it follows, to an extent, that it is boring. But! One man's rubbish is another man's treasure. As is proven by such modern day phenomenon as Britart. Dickens doesn't bore me more than most books, I have to say. There are very few I find very exciting. Give me an example of something you find undeniably exciting and well written, Vicky - the anti-bore book - and I guarantee we can find a few people who think it's boring and badly written. I had to argue once with a person even younger than I over whether Shakespeare was in any way 'relevant' to modern day. Needless to say, she wasn't having any of this "finest craftsman of the English language to have ever lived" nonsense - all Shakespeare plays are about old, dead kings and unrealistic affairs. I mean, how pointless can you get?

I don't think Dickens was ever considered a 'great' author in his own time. Overwhelmingly popular, but not 'great'. Conrad, to name but one, was thoroughly pissed off that Dickens, a writer of popular trash, was so much more famous and respected than Conrad himself who, in his own opinion, was a far superior writer. As an engineer whose English education came to an end at 'O' level (GCSE for you youngsters), I used to have a sneaking suspicion that there must be something hidden in 'great' literature that was simply not accessible to me. On hearing the hype about (say) Umberto Eco, I read Name of the Rose searching for something more than just a story and an extensive knowledge of the day to day trivia of the lives of Benedictine (or was it Franciscan?) monks, neither of which would seem to raise the book to the level of greatness. Nowadays I don't bother myself with the debate. A few years ago I took the English Lit 'A' level just to satisfy myself that there were no secrets I wasn't privy to. Of course there aren't. I don't feel the need to do an English degree just to prove the point beyond any doubt - the balance of probabilities is well in my favour! Eco's book is no more than a story about monks. A good one, but just a story. Much of the time hype is just hype. A dream of mine (or maybe the subject of a novel?) is to kidnap Andre's brick heap from the Tate, or wherever it resides these days. I would then manufacture fifty other brick heaps, each slightly different from the original. The original and the fifty fakes would be placed in a warehouse, and the curators of the Tate invited to come and collect their special brick heap, if they could recognise it. But of course they could tell a work of genius from a lot of pathetic copies by an uninspired amateur, couldn't they? If the artyfarts can reliably and demonstrably receive an arty thrill from Tracey Emin's bed, and no other, then maybe there really is such a thing as great literature too. Personally, I doubt it.

An interesting point Zyv, and I do tend to agree that some books are feted simply because they are feted by critics, but IMHO there is such a thing as great literature, moments when an author does something more than just produce a book with strong characters, dialogue, plot and description, just as you can distinguish pop froth from excellent music - not everyone may agree on the examples as we all have different tastes, but it would be hard for me to believe that there is not something wholly different between the Great Gatsby and Bridget Jones' Diary. Or the Lord of the Flies and High Fidelity for that matter. I don't think that the very best books are mysteries to be unlocked - sure, if you don't know the context to Animal Farm it is just a book about pigs, but with most other truly great books it is the accessibility and way they tackle emotions common to all that mark them out. I just tend to think Eco was feted by critics simply for being a bit difficult (much as War and Peace and Remembrance of Times Past are more of a readers badge of endurance than anything else). As a personal view, I find Shakespeare far more relevant and enjoyable than anything produced by Hardy or Dickens - the language of Shakespeare may be archaic, but his subject matter is bare human emotions and flaws and that stays timeless in a way that, for me, Dickens simply isn't - he is a chronicler of an age, but an age that doesn't interest me. I wouldn't say he was a bad writer (although the "Marley was dead" passage in Christmas Carol is pretty risible), just not to my taste.

I was not a literature major in college either. I started off as one, but my first course so threatened to destroy any enjoyment I could ever possibly take from reading , that I dropped it after the first semester. I subsequently took a few isolated literature courses, but only if they were taught in the history department. They were quite good. I rarely read book reviews, though from time to time I read them now. As for Eco, he is one of my favorites. I've never read a review of his books. I just read each one when it comes out. I don't look at them as supposed masterpieces. I just think they're wonderful to read, especially Foucault's Penduluum. I love all that knight's templar and occult world stuff. I regret spending so many years in the so-called business world when I should have been doing something in the creative world, but I do not regret avoiding literature classes in college. I might never have read a book again had I continued down that path. That's just me, though. Other's mileage will vary.

I have to admit to overstating my case a little, and for the record I too enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum. All the same, having started down this road I am going to follow it to its conclusion... The one figure of undisputed literary greatness is Shakespeare. This is what I propose to do. I shall apply my memory eraser so that everybody forgets all they ever knew about Will Waggledagger and his works. I shall then ask the literary world to peruse the works of Marlowe, Jonson, Lyly, Peele, Massinger, Dekker, Kyd...and of course Shakespeare himself, and ask them to pick the gretest of them all. My feeling is that, without knowing the 'right' answer, the outcome would not be a foregone conclusion. All the above produced works of great merit and all, even Shakespeare, turned out some pieces that they would be less than enthusiastic to include in their CV. Does anyone think that Shakespeare would once again be restored to the epitome of literary greatness, beyond all compare, or just become one amongst many of the best playwrights of his period? Incidentally, when I was in the journalism biz, one of my colleagues used to bemoan the fact that he no longer read books, he 'subbed' them. The same might very well apply to studying literature academically - you can no longer appreciate the effect because you spend all your time inspecting the machinery that makes it work. Michael Frayn explores this in 'The Trick of It' - highly recommended reading. (But is it great? Darned if I know. I don't know nuffink about literature, but I know what I like! Luckily it's not Jeffrey Archer...)

Since I've read everybody's post, I'll just throw in a few comments. I think that some great works of literature are great because they're great. They're just so deep and so well written that they're hard to match. I don't know about Dickens or Hardy. They're not my favorites at all. I don't know enough about them to just dismiss them, though. Maybe Vicky does. I will say that my dad's an English professor who has good taste and he likes Dickens a lot. That tends to make me think there's something in Dicken's work. I think you have to be more wary about critics talking about new books. After a few hundred years, most bad books will have become obscure. But some new books are widely praised but aren't very good. For instance, I read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Abebe(I think that's the name). Abebe receieved a Nobel Prize for that book. I would sooner award a Nobel Prize to J.K. Rowling than to Abebe. "Things Fall Apart" is shallow, pointless and poorly written. That's my opinion. By the way, I meant no insult to J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series is excellent. It's just not literature.

Sean, an interesting fact is that a lot of good books also fall out of readership too. That's the joy of rummaging through charity shops, second hand book stalls, other people's bookshelves and libraries... You kind of put together your own cannon, which eventually says more about you than any checklist of good/bad, have read/haven't read judgements. The question of writers vs. storytellers is an interesting one, a one that isn't as simple as plot vs. style. A lot of books while deficient in plot tell a compeling 'story' or communicate something just as compelling in the way that they are written. William S. Burroughs books on the whole make a nonsense of storytelling, but still tell a story about dissaffection and isolation and disgust. George Orwell's books tell the story of a man restling with his feelings for his country and a battle with his conscience, regardless of the individual plots of his books. I think the difference between good story tellers and good writers is within what they throw at a 'story'. A good story is a good story and does not need ornamentation, the plot is enough to make the piece vivid and enjoyable. Where the writer becomes more distinguished is the accumulation of details and ideas that are 'useless' from the point of view of story, that is they do not advance the story or make it work better. This where you begin to feel a 'something' which you find really difficult to pin down. when you start to describe the story to others, you then start to describe other things within the piece, other threads, other feelings, that are not wrapped up within the plot. A good example of this is 'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad. Story wise a man goes on a boat to find another man, who dies when he gets there. When you try to explain it to others you begin to pull in ideas about civilization vs. chaos, Europe vs. Africa, ideas about colonialism, discussions about narrative. All these things were not essential to the plot, they don't advance it. They are an integral part of the book that need not be there for it to work as a story. So in this sense, certainly, Dickens was a writer rather than simply a story teller, as his books are overladen with ideas and information that serves no use to his 'plots', which makes them open to investigation and study now. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that great writing is a grab bag of pointless information. I myself, for instance, think that I am bearly a storyteller but not yet a writer by my own definition. A modern example of what I'm talking about is probably 'White Noise' by Don Delillo. try explaining that to someone only using it's story. You can't because there's so much else in there, that while not linked to plot, is a working part of the book's overall meaning. Sorry if this is garbled, I'm grasping at concepts like plucking feathers from the air or catching snowflakes. And no, I'm not an English graduate either, I tried, but couldn't do it...

Of course you can't separate Shakespeare the writer from Shakespeare the canonical writer, and in his own day of course he was very much in the shadow of Marlowe. I do tend to think that he would still come out alright - I'm no fan of the comedies and can take or leave the histories, but there isn't a tragedy writer to touch him. What Marlowe manages in flashes, Shakespeare sustained for entire plays. Like Mark says, an awful lot of literature just falls out of fashion - at the turn of the century, there was little doubt that Shaw, Wells and Chesterton were the three great authors of the age, but they are little read these days. I read an excellent article recently about a guy embarking on a collection called The Fifty Great Poets of the Twentieth Century and researching a book of the same ilk published in 1902, featuring at least 35 poets he, as a scholar of literature, had never heard of. I personally feel fortunate to have been at school in the years before Shakespeare was castigated as a dead white English male and thus not worth reading. I don't know if he's the finest writer of all time, but I can't think of another that could produce a love story like Romeo and Juliet and also a story of greed and power like MacBeth and jealousy and betrayal like Othello. It is his range and skill at everything bar comedy that makes him so respected, I think. Interesting that when I was at school (not so long ago) there was a very established canon - best writer was Shakespeare, best book was War and Peace, best painting was Mona Lisa, best piece of music was the 1812 overture - I have different views on three of these four elements of the canon, but when he flew, Shakespeare flew higher than anyone else imho.

I liked A Merchant of Venice and Wuthering Heights. I have only read A Christmas Carol and none of Hardy's stuff. I read the Hobbit a couple of times but TLOR remains unread apart from an abortive attempt many years ago. I think writing a story is not quite the same as telling a story. The device of having the author tell the story through the mouth on one character can work very well, as it did with The Time Machine. I have read War Of The Worlds several times and 1984. I am currently reading Wyndham's novels at present. I really wish they were used in English Lit, maybe they are I left school in 1980. iceman