Audiobooks

[sus]

Cheers I didn’t really want a job anyway.

Is your job in jeopardy? I'm very sorry to hear that

 

[version]

I actually suffer from Sarcastic Voice Syndrome and it’s very annoying.

 

[sus]

I'm not sure why we're calling it "STEM propaganda." STEM majors have millions of six figure and seven figure jobs to choose from in the States. Lit majors have a few hundred, maybe a couple thousand, five figure jobs. People are making rational decisions for their futures. As a lit major I experienced this firsthand and learned to code.

 

[sus]

Maybe people "undervalue" literature but this always seems like bitching and whining to me. Do you blame the consumer or the producer when the consumer isn't interested? There's no right answer, because blame is a social construct used in group politicking, but if the producer's PO'd and the consumer is indifferent, than practically speaking the onus is on the owner. We could also say that no one has figured out how to make money off literature at scale.

 

[pattycakes_]

Dan Brown

 

[version]

I'm not sure why we're calling it "STEM propaganda." STEM majors have millions of six figure and seven figure jobs to choose from in the States. Lit majors have a few hundred, maybe a couple thousand, five figure jobs. People are making rational decisions for their futures. As a lit major I experienced this firsthand and learned to code.

One feeds into the other, I think. A field offers good prospects, more people become aware of that, it gets packaged and discussed a certain way to encourage growth, the original argument gets distorted, the field becomes oversaturated, eventually the bubble bursts and the process starts again elsewhere.

 

[shakahislop]

Maybe people "undervalue" literature but this always seems like bitching and whining to me. Do you blame the consumer or the producer when the consumer isn't interested? There's no right answer, because blame is a social construct used in group politicking, but if the producer's PO'd and the consumer is indifferent, than practically speaking the onus is on the owner. We could also say that no one has figured out how to make money off literature at scale.

writer and audience is a single assemblage. there's no onus on anyone. you can say something about the affects and what literature as a form does to people in the long run and make a judgement from there. there's a lot to be said for literature as an empathy machine as compared to other forms, maybe the best one there is

 

[sus]

Clearly storytelling is alive and well

Clearly dramatic fiction is alive and well in television and film

Clearly people read constantly all day long on their phones, write and read more daily words than ever in history

So we seem to be very worried over a very small and specific subset, with great cultural prestige, which we ourselves rely on for our own social standing.

Literature As Literature was only even a mass consumer good for a century, which happens to be the century of world war, so I'm not sure the Learyesque acid dreams of popular uprising are real. Before that it was always a small elite. Why are we so sure that everyone needs to read longform fiction—a subgenre of storytelling, arguably provincial—in particular?

Im familiar with the standard arguments for why reading Literature is good for you, and I love Middlemarch, but moral education is medium-agnostic. People are still creative with language over SMS. They swap social observations and expose interiority on TikTok. Stories are still our principal artform; they've merely morphed their manifestation. The 19th C novel was a good tool for a civilizational stage but it's not necessary anymore.

 

[version]

The most compelling form of storytelling for a lot of people seems to be the digital curation of their own lives. Ballard predicted this. You can see it at its most potent in certain celebrities. What they're known for eventually becomes a branch of a life turned entirely into media, e.g. Kanye going from a musician to "Kanye".

 

[pattycakes_]

In the narcissistic times of right now yes, but that's because they were not at the lock in down the smoke filled pub with beer soaked carpets near the docks at 2am in the 80s

 

[shakahislop]

Clearly storytelling is alive and well

Clearly dramatic fiction is alive and well in television and film

Clearly people read constantly all day long on their phones, write and read more daily words than ever in history

So we seem to be very worried over a very small and specific subset, with great cultural prestige, which we ourselves rely on for our own social standing.

Literature As Literature was only even a mass consumer good for a century, which happens to be the century of world war, so I'm not sure the Learyesque acid dreams of popular uprising are real. Before that it was always a small elite. Why are we so sure that everyone needs to read longform fiction—a subgenre of storytelling, arguably provincial—in particular?

Im familiar with the standard arguments for why reading Literature is good for you, and I love Middlemarch, but moral education is medium-agnostic. People are still creative with language over SMS. They swap social observations and expose interiority on TikTok. Stories are still our principal artform; they've merely morphed their manifestation. The 19th C novel was a good tool for a civilizational stage but it's not necessary anymore.

yeah 100%. you can draw the through line between forms. but it's also obvious that forms have different capacities and do different things to us. what are the capacities of TikTok? on an affective level it's a completely different thing to a novel, it's undeniable

 

[shakahislop]

the principal affect of a lot of TV fiction is numbness from my experience. not always but it's formulated for that

 

[version]

There are still masses of books being sold, tbf, but the bulk of it seems to be romance, fantasy, YA stuff, self-help, and celebrity memoirs.

 

[GhostofKinski]

I don't mind. Too many people write these days. Everyone's a writer. Everyone thinks they have a book in them. Everyone sends out newsletters and calls themselves a critic.

I'm not a fan of Gore Vidal's work. He said something once though that is probobly objecttivly true about something as subjective as writing.
"People have been writing books for two thousand years, only about 50 of them are any good."

 

[version]

And he thought all 50 were written by him.

 

[sus]

There are still masses of books being sold, tbf, but the bulk of it seems to be romance, fantasy, YA stuff, self-help, and celebrity memoirs.

As is Lindy.

 

[version]

Maybe people "undervalue" literature but this always seems like bitching and whining to me. Do you blame the consumer or the producer when the consumer isn't interested? There's no right answer, because blame is a social construct used in group politicking, but if the producer's PO'd and the consumer is indifferent, than practically speaking the onus is on the owner. We could also say that no one has figured out how to make money off literature at scale.

Think this depends on your view of literature. Should go without saying that commercial success isn't the only measure of quality, or perhaps a measure of quality at all. Is Moby-Dick a bad book because nobody liked it at the time?

 

[sus]

there's a lot to be said for literature as an empathy machine as compared to other forms, maybe the best one there is

Yeah I think this is the major thing. Probably the main thing to mourn.

 

[sus]

Is Moby-Dick a bad book because nobody liked it at the time?

Literally every book we think is good now, nobody liked at the time

 

[version]

Literally every book we think is good now, nobody liked at the time

That's an exaggeration.