Do You Feel a Conflict Between Writing "Literatute" vs. A Good Story?

>inb4 good literature reaches mankind where they stand.

Do you ever feel like you are torn between writing paperback fiction or a simple enthralling story written for its own sake vs. something... More?

I am not disillusioned to think I am the best or even a great writer, but what do you guys think? Should one publish a story that is decent and entertaining but fairly shallow or work and slave over something that could be a great work.

>its a meme but Pynchon won the faulkner award at 24. Should I just try to publish anything amd write anything, or should I follow art for arts sake?

t a bait thread and I'm not a pseud. Like I said I'm not cocky, I don't think I'm great, but I think I'm decent. I just want to know what I should seek.

> "Literature" vs. A Good Story?
You'll never write anything of value as long as you convince yourself that these two categories are diametrically opposed.

...

I think they are. I can enjoy dean koontz for the story in unto itself, but I don't think I'd call it literature, ya know? I think literature is an inherently good story, but I'm not highbrow enough to say that I don't like somethings just because its a good story.

>I think they are
Yeah, that's the problem.

Please explain, like I want to believe in a difference, but just like I wouldn't call a picture that is simply aesthetically pleasing art I would not call an enjoyable story literature. Maybe we just have different aesthetic theory?

How in absolute fucking world could you possibly believe these two ideas are mutually exclusive?

Pic is 100% related

The problem is that you seem to believe a story must sacrifice its entertainment proportional to its depth. The consequences of that belief are that a true literary masterpiece would necessarily be exceptionally dull and dry and that pleasure is never derived from a book's artistic elements, only its superficial ones. As if art exist on a rational plane alone and never penetrates another lest it lose some part of its "artfulness."

Is a scientific journal art? Is The Odyssey not art? Is literature something to be suffered through? Why read it then? If profundity does not exist alongside enjoyment, why obscure it in the form of fiction?

I guess I am agreeing with you guys in every way. Maybe I phrased it a bit wrong, I may have had a few drinks. I suppose I what I am saying is that is it better to just to write something that is entertaining and shallow, or ought one to write something that is beautiful. For me there is a difference. When I read pulp fiction it is pretty and interesting and of entertainment value. When I read Dostoyevsky it is beautiful and sublime and entertaining in that it makes one thing. I never said that there is something mutually exclusive, but I do think there is something different between Fitzgerald and Stephen King or T.S. Eliot and Rupi Kaur.

The only problem that the inclination to do more leads you to is simple, most artists and writers have nothing left to say. Art for its own sake can certainly be beautiful, however it seems that in the post-modern world it really has only come to exemplify hedonism and degeneracy. Write something honest for the sake of honesty, in doing so you've alreadydone "something more."

There is a difference, but not because the serious artists have mastered one sphere of a discordant aesthetic mass at the expense of every other. They master them all, coalescing and shaping them into an irreducible whole.

If there was an easy answer as to how that's possible, we'd all be greats.

Eliot and Kaur are, in many ways, similar.

Think about it.

Thank you for the replies. I guess I've just been thinking about it a lot.

Please elaborate. I think Eliot would laugh at her and for good reason.

I did it, and I shall agree you in every possible way. Although I think that Kaur is less a meme than Eliot.

I'll shove you in a locker, bitch.

.......... Have you never read 4 quartets......

>muh allusions

Nice meme, lad.

lel

She is literally a meme. Eliot was a brilliant theorist and writer.

Name your top 5 authors now.

This. You're a pseud. Go ahead and write your "powerful" doorstop that "wrestles" with "important" questions, and gets forgotten in three weeks, if it even gets published at all.

As other anons have said, these aren't opposed. Although there are limitations to what you can experiment or twist narratively with if you aim for a mainstream audience. Though some, like Kubrick, have managed to rope the mainstream with them.

You could try the 'Eva' method though, which is to start with an entertaining narrative that hides its themes & symbols & breaks down into itself by the end.

>most artists and writers have nothing left to say

This is the greatest literary myth.

To me, literature implies that it's somehow aware of its place within the literary canon.

Goodness of story lies on an independent axis.

*cooms*