Is it actually a conflict?
I am not entirely convinced that there are two kinds of readers who like entirely different kinds of texts*: Those who are diverted by the offshoots of 19th-century realism - the historical novel; fantasy; fiction with a well-rounded plot and characters, and “conflict” - will find all residues of poetic language and modernism, with some of the features I’ve mentioned, repugnant and boring. On the other hand, addicts of poetry and modernist narrative will find conventional narrative, plot, characterisation and linearity difficult and tedious.
(And I'm already thinking, are those the only two kinds of ways it can be???)
Is there really [A]n ongoing war here, where different people have radically opposed ideas of what’s difficult and resistant and what’s open, accessible and free. Of course, the troops gathered in this battle on the side of immediate accessibility significantly outnumber the fighters in the opposing camp.
I am not happy with this metaphor.
In Aspects of the Novel EM Forster said something like, Henry James was a great novelist, but enough is enough, or words to some similar effect.
I also recollect that Dr Johnson said anyone who tried to read Richardson for the plot would end up hanging themselves.
I think this argument also overlooks the ways in which modernist techniques came to be deployed in a wide range of types of narrative.
It also supposes that readers either/or rather than both/and: a point I recollect making about Stevie Smith and her claim that either you are or you aren't the kind of person who will like Novel on Yellow Paper.
Readers are large and contain multitudes.
*I am also not convinced that a) verbal complexity has entirely migrated to TV and b) that this is a very new phenomenon.) This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2510088.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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