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What is a Great Book? | ||
Tags: Literature | Book | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6429 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 9 28 August 2011 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
Elsewhere, it was asked:
Discuss. Edited by Volte on 28 August 2011 at 10:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emerald Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom languagedabbler.blog Joined 6235 days ago 316 posts - 340 votes Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 9 28 August 2011 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me a Great Work of Literature accomplishes several things
1. Written well. Not necessarily fancy or too stylistic, but accomplished with best use of words. Language that tells the story without verbiage, and where each word serves its purpose. Rhythm, syntax, and flow of the language all fit the story. 2. There is a purpose and story. There is beginning, middle and end. However wonderfully written, if it's just a bunch of pages without purpose, it is not literature. 3. The story transports me to the pages. Whether we are talking about historical world, a far-away universe, or contemporary Boston, I want to be in those places and have some feelings for the characters, even if they are negative feelings. Great literature inspires emotional response in the reader. 4. It leaves an impression on my heart or mind or both. Whether it is an idea it makes me think of, or a feeling it invokes, it creates in me a deeper response than mere entertainment. Sometimes, it even leaves one transformed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5756 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 9 28 August 2011 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me, a great work of literature is one that challenges the long-held views of the
society in which the work takes place - I remember how shocked I was when I first read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, for example. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to discuss the story's plot here, as it can be seen as quite disturbing, as I found it during my first read through. I hope it suffices to say, however, that one of the most important marks of a great piece of literature is the novel's capacity to question social norms, as it then invariably sticks in my mind. Nabokov also makes use of the unreliable narrator in almost all of his literature. You find yourself questioning almost literally everything the narrator says. In a few cases, Nabokov's narrators tell the reader outright that in some way, they may be unreliable - one of the narrators claims to have a bad memory and another tells the reader outright that he has a tendency to lie. Being the type to overthink things, I then wondered whether those statements in themselves were lies. Great works of literature may include repeated references to certain seemingly irrelevant themes which, upon a reread or further research into the author, turn out to be significant in one way or another. Again using examples from Nabokov, across many of his books there are references to butterflies and in one case, one of the characters bears the surname "Schmetterling", which means "butterfly" in German. Nabokov was a lepidopterist. Another aspect I find interesting and perhaps another characteristic of a great work of literature, is the author's ability to subtly allude to other works of literature by other authors. Nabokov's Despair tells the story of Hermann Karlovich, who turns out in the end to be mad - which is an allusion to Pushkin's character Hermann in The Queen of Spades. Nabokov also uses numerous other devices which are sometimes lost on the reader on the first read-through. He often makes use of anagrams - one of the main characters in Lolita is Vivian Darkbloom, which is an anagram of Nabokov's name. Also, Nabokov's The Vane Sisters is famous predominantly for its acrostic final paragraph, in which the first letters of each word spell out a message from beyond the grave. Okay, well that's my opinion. I hope I haven't gone overboard. Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 28 August 2011 at 1:17pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5756 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 9 28 August 2011 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recently my mom and I had a conversation in which a book she was reading came up; she told me it used very outdated vocabulary and constructions that any modern editor would simply refuse to publish. If I recall correctly, that book was written in the 1970s. We then started to talk about Erich Kästner and Kurt Tucholsky and some of their works that had been written half a century before the book that my mom had mentioned, and about how and why their clear-cut style of writing was easier to understand for us than the artsy, entwined writing of a more recent author.
For me, a "great book" is a book that is relevant to people even after generations or possibly centuries. That means that those people should be able to understand it (with the help of some explanation if the book is older), and that they should be able to relate to it. After all, what value is there to a book when nobody reads it? What value is there to a book when people feel forced to read it because of its prestige, but nobody really understands it? Edited by Bao on 30 August 2011 at 4:53pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6858 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 5 of 9 28 August 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I forget the genre of the book: sci-fi, western, fantasy, children', etc, because the characters are ones that I can really appreciate/ relate to, and the make even the most fantastic story seem believable because they themselves are believable, then it's well on its way to being a Great Book.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 9 28 August 2011 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been pondering this for a long time. What makes a book appealing for me? Why do I agree or disagree with choice of (Great) books representing literature at school? Aren't those lists biased too much by the person/institution creating them? (Yes, they usually are.) Where is the border between good and bad book? Is the distinction between low and high genres a good one?
However,after all those moments of thinking, I was never able to put the definition of a Great book it in words as well as Emerald just did. I would add something but it is probably less important (and worse worded). I hope Emerald won't feel offended if I dare to continue in the list with my own thoughts as I got quite excited by it. 5.It crosses borders between nations and time eras. It doesn't matter Victor Hugo died long ago, Notre Dame de Paris is still fascinating for thousands of people. Doesn't matter Pavić lived in Serbia and not some huge coutry, his Dictionary of the Khazars is not less genial because of it. 6.It brings something new either in content or form. It usually makes allusions on previous authors and books but it doesn't copy them. (Here I quite agree with LanguageSponge. A good piece of literature is a part of a literary tradition, it takes some aspects from it while it may reject others. Author knows he is neither first nor last writer under sun and the allusions are a display of it.) 7.I believe author of a Great Book must understand people. Society we create is only one of the displays of what we are and I don't necessarily need the long-held views on society LanguageSponge mentions to call a book a good one(that was one of the things I actually hated in literature classes. many people were pointing out how the society was described but often didn't notice the even more important parts). A good author creates people we might not agree with, we might not even like them, but we understand them. They resonate with something inside us. And it doesn't matter whether the book is considered classics or low genre. 8.(or rather my addition to 1): The author knows what kind and level of language to use. It should never bore the reader by being too simple and flat but it should not be overcomplicated to make reading a slow torture. At the same time it mustbe appropriate for the story. 9.(or perhaps addition to some of previous points): Good literature works as a kind of paralel reality. The things may have happened somewhere in past, may be happening now, may happen in future. May happen in different world where we would live with aliens but they still somehow may happen due to human nature. Therefore the story makes us think of ourselves and our own now and here. (don't know if this doesn't sound stupid, I am not sure how to say it properly even in Czech) Emerald wrote the point 3 perfectly. 10.(or perhaps 4b) A Great book is one you will remember for longer than just few days after reading. You'll probably not remember the story in high detail but something will stay inside you. A book you will probably want to come back to one day. I really liked the second paragraph of Bao's post. Very true. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6692 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 7 of 9 28 August 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think a Great Book is a book that grows in the reader's mind with every rereading. There are many books that I have reread and enjoyed the second time around, but I know that they're only offering the same roller coaster ride each time. I might enjoy the plot or the dialog or the descriptions or some other aspect to it.
Great Books are more than just those aspect; they help you look at the world, at society or ourselves and rethink it, and when you reread the book, sometimes you find yourself rethinking in other ways. I had never thought much about plastic surgery, but the way Thomas Pynchon wrote about it in V made me start thinking about it. Herman Melville's chapter about how Ishmael began to think about the brotherhood of man while squeezing whale sperm in Moby Dick is another piece that made me think. When the book points to things larger than itself and brings those things to life, too, I think that is what makes for a Great Book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emerald Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom languagedabbler.blog Joined 6235 days ago 316 posts - 340 votes Speaks: Hindi, Gujarati*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 9 29 August 2011 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||
Not at all offended. It's exactly the kind of discussion I would imagine Volte had in mind beginning this thread. It's great actually, because as language learners, one would hope that we are interested in literature which is what makes the best use of languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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