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[Book Spoilers] EP510 Discussion


Ran
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And I think this is right. I don't think the fantasy genre has ever produced a work comparable to Cormac McCarthy or Toni Morrison or Faulkner or Hemingway. They aren't in the same league stylistically and in terms of cultural importance.

Only very small handful of writers (like Atwood) manage to straddle the razor's edge and get classified as fantasy and literary at the same time, but it's not because that very small handful are the only ones in the same league stylistically, or even the best.

Many of the best just don't get counted as genre writers even though they clearly are--Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Kurt Vonnegut, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Mark Twain are all found in the literary fiction aisle, not the SF/fantasy/horror aisle. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie are so hard to consider non-genre that critics had to invent a new non-genre genre for them so they didn't have to tar them with the "fantasy" brush.

And many of the best do get counted as genre writers, and never escape the genre ghetto. I'd put Philip Purser-Hallard, or even Bruce Sterling at his best (Zeitgeist), up against Hemingway or Faulkner, but nobody's likely to write a thesis about them.

Anyway, this used to bother me, until something Neil Gaiman said. He was asked what he thought about some university offering a course focusing on Sandman, and he said something like, "If Sandman gets placed between Gatsby and Catch-22 in the Great Canon, that won't make me any more of a success than I am today. If Neverwhere affects more people than Sandman did, that will."

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I thought parts of GoT season 5 (particularly Dorne) were absolutely as bad as True Blood got. Plus, at least True Blood had Pam coming out with some entertaining snark even when it was at its worst.

Yeah, same here. At least True Blood had Pam. Maybe she should play Cersei, she would definitely not be Carol.

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God help us if it ever gets to True Blood level awful. In all fairness, the Sookie Stackhouse Chronicles are nowhere near as good as ASOIAF. not even in the same league.

I couldnt stand true blood, but i dont think a show needs 'amazing indepth' storylines to be good fun.

Rome was not particularly well written, but it was very enjoyable indeed after a slow first episode.

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Yeah, same here. At least True Blood had Pam. Maybe she should play Cersei, she would definitely not be Carol.

She would definitely make an entertaining Cersei.

I gotta say though, I like Lena and think it's the writing of the character that has led to Carol (Larry too, NCW was excellent when he was actually playing Jaime). I think Lena could have pulled off the transition to crazy Cersei very well if the writing had actually gone that way.

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I couldnt stand true blood, but i dont think a show needs 'amazing indepth' storylines to be good fun.

Rome was not particularly well written, but it was very enjoyable indeed after a slow first episode.

That's the sad thing however... an adaption of ASoIaF should be far more than mere fun; it should be a cinematic masterpiece.

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She would definitely make an entertaining Cersei.

I gotta say though, I like Lena and think it's the writing of the character that has led to Carol (Larry too, NCW was excellent when he was actually playing Jaime). I think Lena could have pulled off the transition to crazy Cersei very well if the writing had actually gone that way.

Oh, yeah, I have no problem with her, it's the writing, like you said. I was just picturing Pam as Cersei, made me laugh.

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I couldnt stand true blood, but i dont think a show needs 'amazing indepth' storylines to be good fun.

Rome was not particularly well written, but it was very enjoyable indeed after a slow first episode.

I enjoyed True Blood for the first few seasons. I'll admit it got pretty bad towards the end though. I think everyone involved actually quit trying a couple of years earlier. It's my understanding that True Blood strayed further from the source material than Game of Thrones has (I haven't read the southern Vampire Diaries though) so I'm not sure.

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My mum was really in a tizzy and to keep her from actually losing it, i told her im pretty sure hes not dead. And she was like "MELISANDRE CAME BACK! SHES GONNA SAVE HIM BY BRINGING HIM BACK WITH THAT FUNKY SHIT LIKE THAT ONE GUY!" So yeah.

But it is scary. Its the feeling i had when i read it. That feeling of "OH FUCK YOU, MARTIN!"

I agree with this. I cannot understand anyone taking joy out of subjecting themselves to something they hate so much. I didnt hate-watch despite me being displeased with a lot this season. Im not gonna hate-watch next season. I dont subject myself and waste energy on things that i loathe so much.

thank you...........a breath of sanity among the book-kooks

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I think it's fair to say the bias exists against "sword and sorcery" -- elves, magic, wizards, dragons, and the like.

Great list of authors! I'll have to check out the ones I haven't heard of. (And "The Road" is certainly sfnal.)

Most of the authors whose works are still read a century later are the popular authors of the day. The 'literary greats' are usually forgotten.

The idea that one form of entertainment is inherently more worthwhile than another is bunk. Classical opera is not actually deeper or more insightful than the Beatles.

Blue jeans and rock and roll brought down the Berlin Wall.

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Most of the authors whose works are still read a century later are the popular authors of the day. The 'literary greats' are usually forgotten.

The idea that one form of entertainment is inherently more worthwhile than another is bunk. Classical opera is not actually deeper or more insightful than the Beatles.

Blue jeans and rock and roll brought down the Berlin Wall.

Hallam, are you sure of this? There was a rich vein of popular literature in 19th Century and nearly all of it is forgotten. The classics are not. Same goes for early 20th Century. Hell, even the mid-20th Century popular novels are forgotten.

I just don't think this holds up. I too love the Beatles more than the Opera, but they inhabit a strange place all of their own, and in any case, music is consumed over and over and over again, in a much different fashion than books are.

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Most of the authors whose works are still read a century later are the popular authors of the day. The 'literary greats' are usually forgotten.

The idea that one form of entertainment is inherently more worthwhile than another is bunk. Classical opera is not actually deeper or more insightful than the Beatles.

Blue jeans and rock and roll brought down the Berlin Wall.

Here is a really great article on the subject: http://www.academia.edu/4032721/Seriously_Popular_Rethinking_19th-Century_American_Literature_through_the_Teaching_of_Popular_Fiction

To quote:

So who was reading Hawthorne or Melville in the 19th Century? It's not such a silly question. After all, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter sold a meager 7,800 copies of the 10,000 printed during his lifetime, netting him a whopping $1,500 in 1864 . . . . [H]e couldn't quite laud all contemporary literature. . . . As for Melville's Moby Dick . . . the numbers are decidely more modest: 3,000 copies were printed . . . and not all of them had sold.

Anyway, it's an interesting read. In fact, the opposite of what you assert has been true for the somewhat brief history of the novel (only since 19th Century really), but what is popular for contemporaries is not what is lauded by scholars and academics and readers later as "classics".

Edited by Spilt Pea Soup
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Anyway, it's an interesting read. In fact, the opposite of what you assert has been true for the somewhat brief history of the novel (only since 19th Century really), but what is popular for contemporaries is not what is lauded by scholars and academics and readers later as "classics".

But there are definitely plenty of exceptions to that. Mark Twain was enormously popular in his day. And, while I can't think of any 19th century examples that were popular but ridiculed or ignored by critics and scholars of the time, there are plenty in the early 20th century--my copy of The Maltese Falcon says it's #56 in the Random House Greatest Novels collection, for example.

So I don't know that being popular is the opposite of being enduring, I think it's more that it's almost irrelevant to being enduring. (Except that obviously something has to be at least popular enough to get noticed in the first place; there aren't that many great novels/plays/songs/whatever that were discovered in someone unknown guy's basement in a pile of rejected submissions.)

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This explains everything. And it's a pathetic attempt to gain pity when the commentator was being figurative, not literal. Take your pity party somewhere else.

Making fun of someone's mental illness because they don't like a show you do? That's a might bit cuntish don't you think?

Also book readers should really take stock in the type of people who are critiquing them, people with names like khal boner or 420, we're you really expecting them to be intelligent in any way.

Spilt peas there is only a level you can to without sounding completely fucking ridiculous and you reached that level. Brienne was better in the show? Literally all she did was accidently stumble upon a main character and then sit outside a castle for 8 episodes. That'd better than her fighting biter?? I refuse to believe that any sane person would believe that her killing a wounded man is more exciting than her killing the new hound and then have half her face chewed off. If you want to delude yourself that somehow doing nothing> something then you're clearly just here because you want to bitch about the show haters bitching, which honestly is fucking stupid too "you guys are so full of hate and are soooooh nitpicky, so fuck you guys, let me nitpick your nitpicks and then complain that only an insane loser would continue to rant about something they hate"

Guess what dipshits thats exactly what you're doing when you come here and write 50 posts trying to disparage the people you hate.

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Guess what dipshits thats exactly what you're doing when you come here and write 50 posts trying to disparage the people you hate.

That's quite charitable on your part.

There is literally no comparison between disparaging a TV show you believe is a piss poor adaptation of your favorite books, and throwing insults at actual people because they find your favorite TV show lacking.

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