"Niska" književnost

William Murderface wrote:Pade mi sad na pamet da bi možda zanimljivija rasprava bila o tome kakva čitanja Tolkina su najrašiernija ili najzalužnija za njegovu popularnosti. Kišjuhas nije u pravu da je LOTR prosto epski eksapizam, ali meni se čini da ima nešto u tvrdnji da je popularnost LOTR bar delimično zasnovana na epskom eskapizmu, onako kako je popularnost Amelije Pulen zasnovana na samoinfantilizaciji, iako je taj film suštinski o odrastanju i ostavljanju detinjih stvari iza sebe.

Authors who switch between genre writing and “serious” fiction introduce a further dimension to this question. Is the literary work “authentic” and the genre work not? Georges Simenon wrote seventy-five detective novels featuring Inspector Maigret and, starting somewhat later, forty-four serious novels that many believed should have won him the Nobel Prize. Frequently autobiographical (and we remember here Simenon’s boast to have made love to ten thousand women), the serious fiction endlessly reworks the same territory—like it or not, this does seem to be a hallmark of literary authenticity. Life, in Simenon’s literary novels, is ruthless self-affirmation, “Some [people] seem powerful,” remarks one character typically, “and maybe for the moment they are. But they’re never—and don’t forget it—as powerful as they pretend, because no matter how powerful they are, there are always others who are more powerful still.”
The resulting struggle may occasionally be quieted and contained in mutual understanding, but more often leads to open conflict and catastrophe. In one of the strongest of these novels, Dirty Snow, a young man seeks to assert himself by theft, murder, and deceit. But paradoxically he contrives to do so in such a way that he will be observed by a “good” neighbor whose adolescent daughter he seduces and betrays in the most ugly fashion. Monstrously provocative, the young hero seems simultaneously to seek recognition and condemnation, victory and defeat. Flashing around money that is the reward for theft and murder, he knows he is attracting attention, but reflects, “Why say he was worried when he was perfectly calm, when it was he, of his own free will and in full awareness, who was doing everything to bring about his own destruction?” It’s hard to imagine more conflicted books than Simenon’s romans durs.
What has all this to do with Inspector Maigret, whom the author had invented years earlier as part of a lifelong project to become extremely wealthy, and then trotted out four or five times a year for much of his adult life? Inevitably the plots tend toward the formulaic and are often wearily mechanical. Clearly, the temptation to read all of them amounts to a form of addiction, rather than the kind of fertile engagement one associates with literary fiction. Yet Maigret himself is absolutely sui generis and, for all the far-fetched action that surrounds him, convincing. In the rapidly sketched world of suburban Paris or seedy, small-town France, ambition, passion, and consequent conflict has led to murder. This is the territory of the serious novels, but reduced now to caricature.
After the crime has taken place, the murderer enters into a different kind of conflict, this time with Maigret. It is a battle of wits and wills. Bovine, dogged, and brilliant, Maigret always wins. But he wins not through violence, a mere assertion of power, but by understanding his quarries on a human level, to the point that, having arrested them, he often personally “forgives” the assassins. It is as if both sides of the conflict in Dirty Snow had been resolved in one fantasy figure; Maigret was the kind of man who would have understood and forgiven Simenon himself for his endless philandering (some of it bordering on rape), and the ruthless ambition that produced all those books, often provoking outrage among family and friends who felt they had been grossly misrepresented.

fentazibaba wrote:Mr Ishiguro said to the interviewer, “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
Well, yes, they probably will. Why not?
It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.
To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response.
Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
‘Surface elements,’ by which I take it he means ogres, dragons, Arthurian knights, mysterious boatmen, etc., which occur in certain works of great literary merit such as Beowulf, the Morte d’Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings, are also much imitated in contemporary commercial hackwork. Their presence or absence is not what constitutes a fantasy. Literary fantasy is the result of a vivid, powerful, coherent imagination drawing plausible impossibilities together into a vivid, powerful and coherent story, such as those mentioned, or The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland.

Писци „високе” књижевности се и даље обилато користе
обезвређивањем и релативизацијом, као што рече
Киш, мрште се и дижу своје прћасте носиће на помен
речи „тираж” и „читаоци”, држе промоције
пред поспаном публиком по провинцијским
библиотекама, објављују своја празнословља по периодици
коју, углавном, нико не чита, да би после по тим истим малотиражним
и маргинализованим часописима њихови другари писали
критике-хвалоспеве. И кукњава не престаје, наравно.
А кривац је увек исти. Водитељке, фудбалери и писци
жанровске литаратуре. Замислите Варгас Љосу како
кукумавчи да му каријера слабо иде због Паола
Коеља. Замислите Кормака Макартија како се жали
да не може да пише јер га нервирају велики тиражи Данијеле Стил. Замислите
Лајонела Месија како своју лошу игру правда чињеницом
да локални кошаркашки клуб има високе центре.
Не иде, зар не?

А онда отворите културни додатак Вечерњих новости
и прочитајте интервју са писцем „високе” литературе
за коју нико не мари и читајте кукумавку о томе
како „ниска” литература угрожава „високу”
јер има читаоце.

То је слика и прилика данашње српске књижевне
сцене, затуцане и заостале, у којој још влада превазиђена
подела на „ниску” и „високу” књижевност. Али већ ће се наћи
неко да нам јави како не постоји ни једно ни друго,
већ да постоје само лоше и добре књиге, исто тако
– талентовани и неталентовани писци.

објављују своја празнословља по периодици
коју, углавном, нико не чита, да би после по тим истим малотиражним
и маргинализованим часописима њихови другари писали
критике-хвалоспеве.