thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-12, Elliot Wilen wrote:
Hi, Vincent. Thanks for the welcome. Nope, I didn't go to Hampshire.I can't really go for the "celebration" vocabulary because it's just too vague. However I can certainly think of crappy fiction which tries to coast by on imitating certain forms. Now, I think that certain schools of literary theory nevertheless reject the crappy/good, imitative/original, mindless/meaningful, lowbrow/highbrow distinctions, often heading into subjective realms. If you buy that, then there might be a problem with your claim. For example, there are works which struck a chord when I first encountered them even though I now might see them as atrocious derivative crap. And then there's crap which somehow crosses over, in some viewers' eyes, into sublime camp.
I used to be very offended by this sort of theory but I find that I'm becoming more sympathetic to subjectivity these days. Which conversely means that I'm less sympathetic to notionally objective characterizations of art.
Or another take on things, if we regard history as a collection of objective facts, we can nevertheless derive a wealth of meaning through our own observations and by encountering the observations of others. Ken Burns tells the same facts you learned in 7th grade history—but oh, what a story! So in looking for meaning in a narrative, I don't think you can separate the form or, indeed, the reader.
