What is your favourite type of literature?

[marjoramblues]

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[duszek]

Why should a writer do extensive research about a world unknown to him while abundance of interesting life is going on where he is ?
It´s like importing fruit out of season (stawberries in January) while there is lots of juicy fresh stuff growing in your garden.

Science fiction novels are different of course. They don´t explore what is but what might be.

Or if you want to use historical events to a make a certain point about how human history has developed and why.

[duszek]

A good writer gives you a psychological view of a community he knows. Its workings and hidden strings.

Whereas a writer who wishes to entertain and to be paid for his performance is a completely different matter. He wants to sell a marchandise or a service rather.

Interesting concept - 'Entertainment':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment

Re different types of novelists - good, bad or indifferent - why else do they write, if not to 'entertain', to hold and keep the interest of an 'audience' ?

If a novelist - good, bad or indifferent - requires payment for his efforts, what is the problem ?

Perhaps I am an idealist but I have always thought that good writers wanted to share their valuable insights with the rest of humanity.
Simone de Beauvoir said in her memoires that she wanted to "serve humanity with her writings".

Most great writers usually live in poverty because what they have to say is not entertaining and pleasing the general taste.
Nietzsche and many more.

Writing real literature is a vocation, like entering a monastery and serving God.

I have no problem paying for good novels.

[marjoramblues]

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[The Voice of Time]

If one wanted to find out about life in Norway what could one try ? Knut Hamsun ?

Hamsun is about a century old. You'd get a century outdated information. I do not know myself any authors in Norway today which focuses on Norwegian daily life. But if you go for movies there are lots of good ones (in my opinion). Some are slightly old, like "Elling" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elling | 2001), my buddy have read the book the film is based on, btw, and says it's even better, so I'd recommend you try to book. Think it was: Fugledansen ("The bird dance", 1995), which was the one he read. There are four books. It's a comedy mostly based on the main person "Elling" which is portrayed as thinking in ways that may not be too unusual, but still appears rather odd and funny.

Other good ones are (where I only know the movie, I don't read too much): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Somewhat_Gentle_Man and if you dig into this list you'll find that many movies features ordinary life in Norway, usually with a twist however so as to produce a story: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_ ... _the_2000s).

(lol, just noticed "Burned Negro" (norwegian title: svidd neger, or alternatively, Scorched Negro) is banned in Australia and is marked as comedy/horror... which is really ridiculous since the movie's title has nothing to do with the contents of the movie except there being a black kid who doesn't know where he belongs and things he's a "Same" as those are the local indigenous people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people), it has no real horror elements except when a guy tries to chop his dick off and is really a pure comedy in the absurdist fashions that might make you think about Monty Python)

[The Voice of Time]

But real literatue is when you expose yourself to unpleasant truths, when you risk to get disillusioned.

Brilliantly said. Escapism I tend to view in the same category as "selective isolationism", that you isolate yourself within the confines of the comfortable or that which is more easy to deal with than ordinary life. But real literature is challenge. Not just that you don't know what's going to happen. But that you "may never" know what's going to happen. Maybe you have to figure it out yourself. Maybe you'll have to guess or be the detective yourself in the novel.

Maybe the book is an Easter egg with secrets you have to uncover. Meanings beyond the text itself, which only you may find. Those meanings may or may not be intentional, but that's not the point, the point is that you manage to search for them, and sometimes you find them. Not talking about conspiracy or that can kind of shit, but a kind of reflectiveness or even analytical thought concerning the contents of literature you consume.

[The Voice of Time]

'The Phenomenology of...[anything]' does sound seriously thrilling. Where can I get a copy? How would a knowledge of this enhance my life?

It's a subject, not any specific book. I was talking about me dealing with it as serious business. I have no clear answer to how it may enhance your life, as it's not like a technology with some predefined purpose and set of instructions for making and consuming. I do guess though, that feeling important as a reader might be more pleasurable than escapism. That being said, you'd have to believe it yourself first to be able to try and find your place in the idea, as if you're old with many years of being used to following an escapist path it might be hard to internalize the concept.

Returning to the point of 'escapism' in a novel, how does this trivialise someone as a reader?

It's analogous to being a bystander. Instead of taking action and being part of something you lift your gaze towards something more comfortable and become a passive consumer. But we are talking about feelings here, so hard to talk in more factual terms. It all becomes rather analogy and metaphor.

'Participation in the literarature phenomena' - you mean general reading ?

No, your participation in the phenomena of the book you are holding in your hand (alternatively the text displayed on your e-reader). By reading it. Thinking about it. Expanding on it in your mind with your own imagination (filling in blanks or continuing the story in your head). Associating with it and its author or other things in your own personal life that you can associate with it (perhaps somebody recommended it to you, there you already have a new association).

Reading a novel every so often, how is that following an overly dependent path?

We are talking about feelings and not facts. Feelings tend to overemphasize. So you can feel more dependent than you are. But the facts remain that you are dependent on it, you do not "engage" in its type, in the sense that you could not just sit down and write your own story for instance, and even if you could, you do not use your own imagination for escapism, for some reason, as you'd rather be using the book. Like a guy who needs pornography to tell him what he wants and cannot just fantasize in his mind.

Is this what Phen. of Lit. tells you? Tell me where?

A subject cannot tell me anything. I can tell myself by working within the confines of the subject. I'm not sure what "where" would denote, but I guess it would have to be an example of a book. So I'd say random fantasy books can be good examples. They tend to all feel very similar and seem made for only escapists and pure isolationists. They lack spice, they lack challenge, something you can engage your mind with. Makes me feel like a zombie just watching the same scene over and over again, my brain rotting for every new watch.

I would argue that novels can mean 'escapism' in a positive sense; an entertbaining mental diversion, silent private reading, which can open minds to worlds of different realities, time, place and people.

Maybe, but sounds strange to escape into somewhere you don't know or have some familiarity with. Because of that escapism for me is selective isolationism. Taking one to new places or challenging places would mean something quite different than escapism. I don't know a word for it, but might call it "literary thrusting", that you thrust yourself into new and challenging things. Btw challenge doesn't mean difficulty necessarily, but more in the direction of diversity and opportunity (it's challenging because it's not predetermined).

But most people understand that, don't they?

Positive is a matter of opinion. In my opinion it can be positive for many people, but better paths lay besides it.