[serious thread]

How can you distinguish good literature from bad literature? Are there any objective criteria?

It's good if it's patrician and bad if it's not/ for the plebs.

all art is subjective. don't start on the objectivity road, user. art is way more fun when you just let yourself enjoy what you enjoy.

what people sometimes mistake for objective quality is that which is enjoyed with intelligent and thought-out taste. this isn't something worth trying to replicate. just let yourself enjoy what you enjoy, keep reading (or listening, or viewing. this applies to all artistic mediums) and your taste will grow to be genuine, enthusiastic, and deep.

This is how I justify watching hentai

lesson one in pleb school

>all art is subjective

You mean you can't say that, for example, Lolita is better than 50 Shades of Gray or any other generic shit, then?

>art is subjective

found the redditor

>well I liked 50 Shades more so it's just better than anything Nabokov has to offer

I'm pretty sure he just explained that there are books which require more intellect and understanding to enjoy.

But you stupid fucks had to hold on to your flimsy egos.

>if the book I read isn't absolutely regarded as the greatest by everyone then how can I be intellectual

Of course Nabokov is a better writer and his work reaches the criteria better than any shit middle aged Mormon housewives write. But Nabokov has no significance to someone who doesn't understand him.

Art is both subjective and objective and the reason for that is you can view things through the view of what you like and what is done correctly.

OK, maybe let's turn this into a different direction: say, you're reading a book and know nothing about the author. How can you decide if the writing is good/shit?

We can generally agree that X and Y are qualities of excellent texts. We can also generally agree that Z and A are qualities of poor texts.

Like everything else, you follow a criteria.

You check the quality of the prose.
You look at the deepness of the characters.
You look at the dialogue, and how authentic it is, as well as how it helps the story along.
Plots are not planned, but they relate to theme and the characters and are completely important.
Check the themes and how they are established.
If there are any metaphors, allegories, allusions, etc. Then you must see how poignant and relevant they are to the story and the characters.

After doing all of this you can weigh the positives and negatives of a book and you can say what the book has done correctly.

Classic books are books that either do some things tremendously well, or have a cultural Impact, or present something new to the art of literature. Of course, there are books and parts of books that surpass definition and classification.

Which makes the whole thing half worthless. Critique is only around to explain why the book is the quality it is, and it has no ability to determine the best of the best

>You check the quality of the prose.
Define what makes prose good/ bad.

>You look at the deepness of the characters.
Explain how a deep character is "better" than a shallow one.

>You look at the dialogue, and how authentic it is, as well as how it helps the story along.
Explain why authenticy is "good".

>Check the themes and how they are established.
Explain what makes a theme "good/ bad" and what makes its establishment "good/ bad".

>you can view things through the view of what you like and what is done correctly.
Who decides what is correct and what isn't?

Art is inherently subjective desu senpai.

>>all art is subjective

>You mean you can't say that, for example, Lolita is better than 50 Shades of Gray or any other generic shit, then?
No, it's neither "better" nor "worse" because these concepts are meaningless outside of personal, subjective judgement.

>all art is subjective

I can't believe this retarded meme is still being posted. I really wish we could see a true revival of communism and these individualists will be forced to do something other than masturbate themselves.

No, for goods are good and bad for different reasons.

An easy way is just to establish your ideology first, and then see how the book responds to it.

not him, but youre legitimately a faggot

I'm a conservative and believe art is subjective.

Prove me wrong then.

no, because its 20 past midnight

>I'm a conservative and believe art is subjective.
guess what kiddo, youve misunderstood conservatism. a worldview that thinks art (and you seem to think everything) is subjective cannot support conservatism. did you fall for the conservatism = small government meme?

yes exactly. People who have been deluded by the cult of the self cannot bear the thought of the idea that their painting will never be a Rembrndt or their writing will never be of the quality of Gaddis. Its just a dysfunction of an ego which self-objectifies and sets itself up for disappointment

So one of you says I got conservatism wrong, the other says I got it exactly right...

who do I believe?

the number of stars

Agreed

>Prose
Good prose can be of any style and of any person. It makes no mistakes, nothing is filler, and it is either very beautiful, and provides a distinct theme and character to the work.
>Character
A character that's deep is more interesting than a character that isn't, even if the deep character is only in the book for a chapter. This is obviously because the deepest characters are closest to their criteria, a true human being.
>Authenticity
I suppose characters should not be authentic if they are parodies and caricatures, but if they aren't, then sounding realistic goes along with character development in the art of creating people who are also real.
>Theme
Themes are themes. Good or bad is irrelevant. Obviously, if the theme isnt established, then it's not really there. You feel nothing.
>Who decides
You are flawed in your thinking. Think bigger. Nobody decides it. It's just the ideal. If you apply these things in they way that they go, same as planting crops or building something, you will get the best results the closer you are to the ideal conditions. The same way a cracked brick is bad for building because it will break, a shallow main character will break against whatever positives your story has. People have taken it upon themselves to say what's good and what's bad by following the criteria set before them by works older than us all.

Art in the eye of the beholder is subjective. Art in the eye of those who study what has come before it and how well the writers tools are implemented, that is objective. The objective there is to criticize the art.

>Plots are not planned

???

You dont just make a plot in your head, or else it's a shitty plot and probably someone else's.

You don't just say "ok so then his dad dies and then he goes to the funeral, and then his sister is there and she tells him about how she feels"

It's something that comes to you, not something that you plan exactly. You have an outline, but you'll find if you try to force a certain plot that it won't turn out right, and therefore I think plot is not planned.

The fact that you take the time to arrange your characters in XY fashion for Z end makes it planned. Whether you do it intuitively or not is irrelevant.

Really, I'm of the opinion that characters make their own plot within the parameters you set up. So this idea of
>You dont just make a plot in your head, or else it's a shitty plot and probably someone else's.
Makes no sense to me. You simply take your characters and see what they'll do. But in the end you still are the puppet master; you still decide where and how a thing begins and ends.

Besides all that, "planning" is implied in the very word "Plot".

I believe that's exactly what I said.

If you have to wait to see what your characters do, how is that planned.

I never said that we don't create our plots and decide them, but we don't plan them, and if you try to make your character do something else at the end, it often doesn't feel right.

You didn't specify characters. Besides all of that I dont see how any of that isn't plotting. All the word really means on a basic level is that you're arranging your materials. Any good story requires it beyond first draft stage. You develop your characters and feel out what they'll do based on the parameters you've set up, how isnt that plotting?

Besides that, many people think of their stories in terms of key scenes and build to those. There's no set way, and to say the plot would be ingenuine otherwise is just incorrect.

Well, a plan is a list of things in a sequence that are supposed to together, and if something that isn't the plan happens instead, it's not according to the plan and is no longer planned. So I think plots are set up and thought out, but not planned.

AnD what I meant by saying that changing the plot would feel ingenuine, is that if you force a deliberate change, it wouldn't work, if you get another feeling about a scene, that's different, but you can't just say, "I'm gonna have him do this instead!"

>AnD what I meant by saying that changing the plot would feel ingenuine, is that if you force a deliberate change, it wouldn't work, if you get another feeling about a scene, that's different, but you can't just say, "I'm gonna have him do this instead!"
Thats just bad writing, anyone worth their salt always decides an arc of change and carefully progresses through it.

Besides that, you can always just change the plan based on new things that come up.

But if you can't deliberately make the character do something, then how do you plan it. If it's automatic, how is it something you planned. Its definetly your thought, but how is it a plan?

When I make my characters I think of people who will bring a certain effect that I want; people who fit the plan. So they're dancing to my tune from Day 1 even if I dont fully "know them" yet.

You can't plan for what you aren't aware of.

lol it dosent really change the fact that plotting is plotting, also, its pretty common practice to keep a flexible outline (see: plan) to keep your story ontrack. Not sure what the big deal is.

>the cult of the self
>conservatism
HAHAHAHAHA FUCKING PROLE

umm I meant more that he was an aesthetic subjectivist

The cult of the self is the polar opposite of the conservative worldview. Hence why I said you can't be a conservative and an aesthetic subjectivist.

Lmao making it a political discussion is the first pleb mistake.

The way I see it, art is subjective but my opinion is objectively better.

I'm not getting pulled into that noise. All I am saying is if you believe art is totally subjective and especially if you are some kind of postmodern retard then I invite you to kys.

so what, you believe art is partially subjective?

art is more objective than it is subjective, but the objectiveness of standards are relative. one still has to rely on textual evidence to argue something about an art work rather than saying 'this makes me feel such and such a way'

no but at least maybe I can respect that position. The one that says Harry Potter is high literature should be deplatformed if only for the damage it stands to do to culture.

Yeah I fully agree with that. You just don't seem to know what conservatism is.