Follows: What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 1
But then...there is the case of Chetan Bhagat.
Chetan Bhagat wrote 'Five Point Someone.' I have many friends for whom it was the first novel they had ever read, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave them the confidence that they too could read books! I myself had not been able to put it down till I had finished it, even though I had an exam a day later.
Yet, when I searched on him, I realized that his books are not regarded very well by the 'literature' folks. I culled the following lines from a NY Times write-up on him:
'Mr. Bhagat and his publisher, Kapish Mehra, of Rupa & Company, have an easy retort to the critics: the books sell.
“He is not a literary writer,” Mr. Mehra said. “But, more importantly, he is a successful and popular writer.”'
The writer and his publisher himself admit that he is not a literary writer, but a popular one, thus regarding the two as distinct and mutually exclusive categories.
Out of all the books that I've read in the last few months, the few that were genuine page-turners were 'Almost Single' and 'Devil wears Prada.'
Yet, both of these have been conveniently labeled off as 'Chick-Lit' and nudged to a corner.
A writer who has written just these kind of books is not considered great enough. A reader who reads just such books is not considered good enough. I want to know if that should be so.
Given below is a list of a few 'works of ideas'. Which one of these do you consider a part of 'Literature'?
1. Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat.
2. You Can Win by Shiv Khera.
3. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dale Carnegie.
4. Chacha Chaudhary comics
5. Calvin and Hobbes
6. The Panchatantra Stories
7. The stories published in 'Champak', 'Nandan', 'Chandamama', 'Sarita' or other popular magazines.
8. The novels sold in bus-stands, railway stations and airports.
9. The Joke Books of Khushwant Singh
10. The poems of Wordsworth.
11. The film songs.
12. A play.
13. The script of a movie.
I am looking forward to your reply.
P.S. (Dated Oct 25, 2008): I've made my rule to discern what is literature and what is not.
Friday, October 10, 2008
What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 2
at 5:58 AM
Labels: The Discussion Forum
10 comments:
I read your piece on what's literature and what is not....for Indians literature means hardcore literature alone...thrillers and mysteires have been given a goby. i have recentlywritten an article on Indian Crime writing in English- and if interested, i can forward the same to you. just drop an email at advnarayan at gmail dot com with subject tag- indian crime writing in english (so that I do not mistake it for spam.)
good article...and i regard Bhagat works as literature.
Panchtantra stories and wrdswrth's poems - I will count them in literature. Nothing else in the list seems to fit into the term 'literature'.. but then there is no fixed definition of this wrd as u urself pondered on what is literature and what's not.
I feel something (whether commercial or not) that has been written for the joy of writing, making the entire piece more than just a book, making it a piece of art... that's literature. More the creativity involved, better is the quality of that literature.
A writer should write what reader should find interest in, ofcourse keeping the decorum.
I think there are no boundations of being called a literature, its the art that one posseses should be more significant than whether that art allows you to touted as a good literature writer or something else.
And ofcourse one can always mend her ways later if by any chance she is not touted as a literature.
Going into the knitty gritties of whether you will be considered a good literature writer or not, would somehow bias your pure writing skills and therefore the TRUTH will not come out, which everyone is waiting eagerly to ReAD :D.
Therefore as they Say, WRITE ON!!
this is with reference to your link on the 'poetry n writing' community on orkut.
you have raised an interesting point on literature thru your two articles.
to me, what is literature n whats not, is a very relative term. it depends on what the readers have been reading since their childhood, and what is more often called as 'popular' literature.
in practice, the world today recognises 'literature' as that which wins a booker or a nobel prize.
this connotation is absurd because the judges in this case are the highly literate few, whose tastes of books are beyond the comprehension n intellect of the common man on the street.
i feel that literature should be that which is common, accepted by masses, easily accessible & simple to understand. Much like the contrast between linux n windows :)
of course, theres a rider here - the literature should not cater to the base instincts of humans, but should also send a message to the readers, add some value to their life, change the way they think in a significant manner.
so be it the stories in chandamama, popular fables of panchatantra, or even the works of chetan bhagat, i consider them works of literature. these, i can safely hand over to the future generation as works worth reading.
these works need recognition as literature. and that recognition will come only from the collective 'we' !
I agree with the 'storm rider' on one thing-> the works that l can safely hand over to my kids one day, l would consider it literature and definitely, worth reading! For example, yes, Chetan Bhagat is popular and realistic and so he's liked by people.. his Five-point someone I could relate to,and many people could relate to, and it is one of the books l would forward to others,to read!
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dale Carnegie - This book is actually not by Dale Carnegie but by Stephen R.Covey is another good one, but we've plenty in this category!!
A lot of books like Ruskin Bond's or Roald Dahl.. are an all-time thing unquestionably.. The Panchtantra and poems of Wordsworth,definitely literature !!
The rest of them, l think depends on who's readin them, in what mood they're and what made them pick up that book!
For example, l know a 45-yr old, woman, who would read nothing,but Mills&Boons, because she thinks she has a hectic job and no time for anythin heavy! l wouldn't call Chetan Bhagat heavy,but some people might be used to reading one sort of thing and they desire and expect a particular taste out of whatever they've.. so its a very individual thing..
Yes ,film songs.. could be literature, if you talk about a song like..'yeh raatein ,yeh mausam ,nadi ka kinaara,yeh chanchal hawa..' or 'aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai' .. these beautiful songs've deep meanings and emotions and they make bloody soo much sense.. but you cannot term this as literature->' very happy in my heart,dil dance maare' ...
so again, its all about perspective!
I would also compare literature and pulp fiction to paintings... a painting is sometimes specifically made to sell...its a commercial painting..with a typical landscape or a figure of a woman or whatever, because the motive is to earn money out of it, whereas, an artist might make somethin abstract reflectin his emotions or thoughts, and for him, he doesn't care about money!!
So the bottomline would be it's an individual's choice , his perception, his vision and his thoughts!!
:) oh gawwd, this looks like a blog in itself!! :D
@Narayan: Your point about thrillers and mysteries gave me a hypothesis- Indian writing in English does not have much tradition of thriller or mystery writing. Is it because in India, we do not give very high regard to that genre, and so not many writers try their hand in it, because they think there is not enough prestige in it?
@Shivani: This is precisely the point I was making. Why regard only 'Panchatantra' and Wordsworth's poems as literature? Because, we have read them in our text books, in schools. So, they have these 'intellectual' and 'respectworthy' connotations in our minds.
The stories in Champak have speaking animals too. They teach, and entertain. Quite like Panchatantra tales. Then why leave them out of the mainstream of literature? Because they come in a commercial magazine, or because a new stream of stories will come every fortnight?
What I mean to say is, that suppose we collect thirty stories from Champak in a book.
And, we collect 30 Panchatantra stories in another book.
And, we bury both the books in a capsule.
A thousand years later, that capsule is rediscovered. Hindi is extinct by then. By the help of ancient manuscripts, the people of that civilization decipher those stories and translate them into whatever is their prevalent language is.
Will they be able to tell the difference between the two books?
That is the main idea I am trying to understand.
That, do we regard something as 'great' because we genuinely feel it is so, or because we are programmed, through subtle influences, to perceive it as so.
@Yogesh:
"Going into the knitty gritties of whether you will be considered a good literature writer or not, would somehow bias your pure writing skills and therefore the TRUTH will not come out"
You were bang on!
To admit the truth, the reason why I brought up this question was that as I am working on my own book, I have sometimes pondered over what will it be branded by the critics. But, I must say, as the writing progresses, this insecurity is disappearing on its own. The confidence has been steadily growing.
@Storm Rider: Thank you very much for giving so much time to the comment. :)
I found your comment very wise (which means that I completely agree with it :))
@Himanshi:
I was much delighted to get a comment that 'looked like a blog in itself'. Thank You :)
'Oops!' about that Dale Carnegie slip-up.
You know the songs you quoted reminded me of having read a long time back that even film song lyricists face the same discrimination that we are talking about here. They are not considered 'shayars' enough.
I really liked your analogy of the paintings a lot.
"a painting is sometimes specifically made to sell...its a commercial painting..with a typical landscape or a figure of a woman or whatever, because the motive is to earn money out of it, whereas, an artist might make somethin abstract reflectin his emotions or thoughts, and for him, he doesn't care about money!!"
Very apt!
I was reading about the British novelist A.S. Byatt, and I quote here a part that is relevant to the present discussion:
A. S. Byatt caused controversy by suggesting that the popularity of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of books is because they are "written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." In her editorial column in the New York Times newspaper, she scathingly attacked adult readers of the series as uncultured, claiming that "they don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had."
After the column appeared in the newspaper, her editorial was described by Salon.com contributing writer Charles Taylor as "upfront in its snobbishness." He also suggested that Byatt's claims may be due to jealousy towards Rowling's commercial success.
In an article in The Guardian, the author Fay Weldon defended Byatt in this controversy over Harry Potter, and praised her courage for speaking out. "She is absolutely right that it is not what the poets hoped for, but this is not poetry, it is readable, saleable, everyday, useful prose," Weldon said. She said she found the sight of adults reading the Potter series troubling, adding: "Byatt does have a point in everything she says but at the same time she sounds like a bit of a spoilsport. She is being a party pooper but then the party pooper is often right."
wikipedia quite simply defines literature as "the art of written works". Going by this definition, the entire list you laid out qualifies as "literature". But "literature" has been used in other senses as well, more specifically in the sense you propose to understand it, i.e. - "good literature".
Not all the works you list would qualify as good literature in my opinion. Even within the realm of human subjectivity (since there is no certainity of an absolute god up there, who is to say "shatranj ke khiladi" is better than "golmaal 2") there seems to exist a psuedo-objectivity where it comes to art, which is self evident (just as the difference between the depth of a puddle and a gorge, or the differance between the complexity of a differential equation and 1+1, is self evident). That is perhaps some works survive more than others, and there is some unanimity about them being "greats" or "classics".
Intent, i dont think is the crieteria for diffrentiating good literature from not so good literature. All, or at least most artists create from recognition, in addition to the joy of creation itself. To say that an artist creates solely for creating, is to say that guitarists start for the love of the instrument. They also all start to impress girls for heavens sake!!!
Defining good literature is hard as hell, but here is my take.
One good criteria for judging good literature is the vision and talent of the writer, even tho it may be motivated partly by desire of fame and fortune (booker, nobel, best selling, a name amongst the "greats").
Good literature has subtely (it seems to target the so called higher dominants of of our senses, rather than "animal" dominants, such as violence and blatant sexuality).
It is more than simply a story (like chetan bhagat) and captures certain universal themes which correspond with the variety, mryiad shades, tremendous complexity and ambiguity of the human condition.
To speak in terms of psychology, it seems to draw directly from the "archetypal consciousness" which is universal to all humanity.
It has complexity (rather than the straightforward tales of enid blyton, and its desciptions of lunch with lemonade and scones).
It has complexity and mastery of language (as opposed to the "cool", exclamation ridden language of one point someone).
One or more of the above could make for "good literature". Well, i know ive started to sound increasingly like an elitist, but thats my take.
This is an article worth reading. It's about Matthew Salganik, assistant professor of sociology, Princeton University, who did a related research.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S21/30/38K93/index.xml?section=alumni
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