What do you call this type of person -- I like ideas but not literature

cormy3 · January 17, 2011, 9:34am

Hey, dude.

You basically compared literary analysis to solving a maze. You solve a maze to get to the end – in this case, the interpretation or idea – and the experience of solving the maze helps you only if you want to solve other mazes. Essentially, what you’re saying is that doing literary analysis is good because otherwise you won’t know how to do literary analysis.

Therefore, you say, I will never know how to do literary analysis, and I will always rely on other people’s work. Well, you are correct. I never denied that my reliance on second-hand sources was going to lead me to rely on them in the future. My question was whether this is bad, and if so, how and why, and what kind of person does that make me? Saying that it makes me a person who doesn’t know “where to start or where to go” when doing literary analysis, well pardon me but that’s not very informative.

Though most of your post is just running in circles, there is a scanty argument buried in there that addresses my inquiry. Your argument is that those doing the literary analyses are being creative, or original. Again, I don’t agree with that. People who derive themes from literature, and do so first-hand, are just deciphering some code in which the ideas of literature are written. If I can get to the ideas without handling the code, what’s unoriginal or uncreative about that? Especially when I can do creative and original things with the ideas once I have them in their pure and distilled forms. That hardly makes me analogous to the math major off of whose theories the business major makes practical application. In fact, I am more the theoretician, and those adept at interpreting and constructing rhetorical devices are the narrow-minded practitioners. They rarely see the theoretical structure of the novels as well as I do. Perhaps you will say that there is originality and creativity to be had and demonstrated in the distillation of the ideas from prose form to expository form. Well, sure, I can accept that. But that simply begs my original question: what is the value found in this distillation of ideas that we call literary analysis? What am I missing out on?

leolibby · January 17, 2011, 1:00pm

I respectfully disagree. Literary works are not about communicating “ideas.” There might be some political or social message, but It’s not some clear-cut, clinical thing. good stories are about the caracter or characters, and becoming emotionally involved with the character. That’s why literature is supposed to be enjoyable. So, I think that is what’s missing.

For example, Shakespeare’s “The merchant of Venice.” (Well all of his plays were meant to be entertainment at the Globe.) If you don’t care about the characters in "A merchant of Venice, then you won’t appreciate the humor. If the characters are not worth caring about, then colleges won’t be spending time of it.

chillt · January 17, 2011, 4:49pm

I think it’s just laziness. I’m the same way. I’d rather get to the main point and discuss it than read the whole book. It’s part of us being in the microwave/movie/internet generation. We like things fast and now. Books are slow and take hours to go through.

leolibby · January 17, 2011, 4:56pm

I can’t wait until they invent a pill that makes us not need sleep, so we can spend so much more time eating and playing x box… creativity is so old-fashion.

leolibby · January 17, 2011, 4:58pm

BTW there is no “main point” of literature. Just like there is no “main point” to a painting.

chillt · January 17, 2011, 5:08pm

If there wasn’t a main point, how do SparkNotes/CliffNotes exist? Their purpose is to summarize the 1000 page book and give you the take-away “main points”. The same goes for books that are turned into movies.

leolibby · January 17, 2011, 5:35pm

I’ve never seen those… what i’m saying is literature is ART. You’re supposed to read it for it’s own sake. It’s not some code. BTW, how come none of you can provide examples using actual literary works?

justtotalk · January 17, 2011, 6:58pm

Sup, bro.

Here’s my thinking: original sources are more ambiguous and maybe even complicated than secondary reviews. If you can’t break down literary prose into manageable chunks and analyze them (much like the writers of cliffnotes do), then why should we believe you can break down complex real world situations into manageable pieces and understand them?

Maybe you want to become an economist. There’s so many market forces, currency exchanges, individual firm decisions, going on all at once. You don’t even have the concentration or ability to read a book and pick out key themes, how the hell are you going to weed out the irrelevant details to create a useful model or gather useful econometrics?

So, you ask why it matters that you don’t read a book. Just like most things, it doesn’t specifically matter that you read books. The question is if you could analyze the book, and whether you practice this analysis in other situations outside of some lit class (in your chem class or econ or job or whatever).

If you can’t, then you can’t be the guy forecasting problems, developing theory, or running firms because you can’t break down issues. You’ll be the guy hand-fed ideas and asked to apply that to closed situations that you can handle.

I call that middle management.

justtotalk · January 17, 2011, 7:10pm

And hey bro, maybe you got all the skills and reading just slows you down. Just write the source code to decipher prose into fundamental concepts. Don’t let the slow folks dim your brilliance.

cause none of us read

cormy3 · January 18, 2011, 12:08am

Awww yeah justttotalk, you gave me exactly what I needed. You handed me my epiphany… mm… let me kiss your feet… uhhuhh… boy, you are too good to me.

While most of your post is laughable, I came across the answer to my inquiry while reading it. But carrying book analysis over to chem class? Being a better economist by looking at the economy as a bunch of literary “issues”? Hehehe.

Anyways, you were onto something about literary analysis being about seeing large issues in certain ways. But the question has always been about what that certain way is. I realized that while to me literary analysis is just communicating through an artificial haze, to some people – to most people – that haze is not a haze and it’s definitely not artificial. Rather, having ideas be conveyed through literature enhances rather than detracts from understanding of the ideas.

That is because, I just realized, while literature is not the simplest or most rigorous way of expressing an idea, it is the most social. I think leolibby is owed some credit for this insight, with his constant hammering of the importance of enjoying the characters in literature for their own sake. For the average person, reading all 500 pages of some novel to arrive at the essential idea is not a chore; it’s a necessary condition for those ideas to stick. When one views all of life in terms of characters and stories, one cannot come to terms with ideas but through characters and stories, too. Conversely, when one does not appreciate life as a grand story, then the plot in a book becomes superfluous and a chore to read next to the ideas that it contains. Some people are better understanding of ideas in an abstract realm, others crave its transmission from a more social vehicle – literature, film, the humanities in general.

What does that make me? Someone who can’t navigate large social issues per se. I can create complex and often very apt theories about them, but I can’t really feel, or live inside them. Emahaveel was right that we all probably think in different ways. But this is the difference in how I think: not socially, but abstractly (or however you want to put the terms). There are going to be situations in every day life that draw not upon the particular skill of literary analysis, but on broader, real-life skills that come from the same motivations and general toolkit as literary analysis. Lacking literary analysis means I lack those motivations and the general social toolkit. It is that which condemns me – to, perhaps, not see and resolve things in a social way. But I still stand my ground that someone like me can run a good company or innovate a product or develop creative theories. We probably just don’t make interesting people socially.

Finally, what am I missing out on? I don’t see skipping literary analysis as losing something, as much as it is not expressing what already is lost – the tendency to see the world as social story. Yet I’m curious whether there actually is something missed out on. If there is, my intuition would be that doing literary analysis reinforces one’s social tendency, just as one’s social tendency leads to doing literary analysis. I think that must be true to some extent, so essentially I am depriving myself of what I am most deficient in, which can’t be a good thing. Thus, I’ll make a better effort to take the whole ordeal seriously. There is value in the process, and not just the result. Thank you all for your patience and leading me to the answer, at least my makeshift personal answer.

ECazndb8r · January 18, 2011, 5:17pm

what exactly are you posting this thread for? other posters has already hammered most of this, you’ve (respectfully and disrespectfully disagreed)

For me, reading sparknotes is the same as eating baby food, are all the nutrients there? Sure. But you’re missing the nuances that make literature great, oh, and YOU DIDN"T GET THERE BY YOURSELF. I can read sparknotes and turn out a decent essay, but there’s no way you can actually cite and create theories or details in a book if you didn’t read it. I might miss a theme or two by doing it on my own, but it’s MY work I’m turning in…

What you’re doing is saying, I can’t digest the raw literature, I need someone to digest it for me so I can regurgitate it back to the teacher after I do something with it. Basically, you want it handed to you.

The econ example is pretty apt, analysis is analysis. If you can’t do it in one form, you’ll have trouble with others. As someone who claims to enjoy ideas, why is this one difficult for you?

That aside, literature does have themes, but you’d have to be hopelessly naive to believe Paradise Lost is ONLY about the inevitability of sin, or that Heart of Darkness is ONLY about the errors of colonialism, or that Frankenstein is ONLY about man’s hubris.

Sparknotes will give you enough to write decently about, bc you’ll have grasped the main theme, but it can’t give you all the varying interpretations, (or more importantly, your OWN), and it can’t shade in the nuances for you. Oh, and don’t count on being able to write well without reading good writing…

I realize that you will discount whatever I say here, but for the sake of anyone else who might read this, here it is.

cormy3 · January 19, 2011, 1:23am

Of course I’m going to discount what you’ve written, when it’s so clear you haven’t even read what I’ve written, and you’re writing about me and my situation.

When I said I usually read Sparknotes, I was using that as the most basic and easily understood example of what I do. I’ve said, repeatedly, that I also read the literary criticisms that are assigned the class, as well as those from outside the class. By the end of my “research,” I know everything I need to know, including the plot and characters, to be well-versed on the books both in class discussions and on essays. If you gave me a multiple choice test on just the plot and characters, I suspect I would do better than those who actually read the book. If you gave me an essay assignment on deeper themes and ideas, well, I’ve already said I consistently do better than my peers who read the whole damn book. There is nothing, in the end, that my peers have that I don’t have – except having arrived at their conclusions through literary analysis.

This was my point all along… what exactly is the value of literary analysis, given that the end result seems so similar (or even superior) when I do no literary analysis?

When you say I can’t digest raw literature, and that I need others to regurgitate ideas to me, you are basically presenting my original premise in grotesquely biased form. Behind the metaphors, what you are saying is that I don’t, and I can’t, do literary criticism. I’ve said that all along, and here you come in pretending to bestow new information. Weak, man, very weak. Again, trite phrases like “you didn’t get there by yourself” is just another repackaging of the same idea, that I didn’t do literary analysis, and says nothing substantive about the difference between doing it and not.

Then you say that not having read the book, I can only give shallow interpretations when writing my essays, and that they will be both unoriginal and few in number. Hello, didn’t I address this in several posts already? The depth and variety of interpretation that I deal with in my essays are far greater than the immature impressions (aka “analysis") that those who stick to the book can manage to put down on paper. Why is this? Unless you are an expert in the field, your first-hand interpretations are going to be far weaker than the first-hand interpretations of experts who write the literary criticisms that I read. It seems that, without having read the book, I can incorporate expert interpretations and do a lot with them. I’m still not -doing literary analysis- but it is at this point that I begin questioning the value thereof. I don’t deny that someone who reads both the book and the literary criticisms should be able to do a better job than me. It’s that so few have. That’s why I no longer stick by the cliches of “reading the book equals doing deep, creative work, like omg!” when: a) I don’t read the book yet do deep, creative work; b) dozens of others, under my witness, do read the book but don’t do deep, creative work.

Now just a few minor issues to address. Of course if you put the idea so simply as “the sins of colonialism,” there’s going to seem more to the book Heart of Darkness than that. But if you were to view the corpus of literary criticism and expository writing based around the book, you would much more likely see that there is a body of ideas that undergirds a book. Though the distinction between the ideas and the literature is one that is roughly made and definitely not a strict dichotomy, I feel comfortable in using it. Until you provide an argument that isn’t substituting the actual most basic idea for what I meant as the whole body of ideas, I will continue to use it.

The econ idea is apt? Analysis is analysis? Hey guys, did you know there is an upper level math course called Real Analysis? Given how many English majors I’ve seen who couldn’t handle basic Calculus, maybe the problem is they weren’t put directly into Real ANALYSIS. Someone who reads books all day should be placed in classes suitable to their skills, so I would have to advise all Humanities majors looking to fulfill a Natural Science requirement, to take Real Analysis despite the prerequisites. Why would they currently be discouraged from doing so? Obviously this is a failure of the administration not to recognize that if you can do analysis in one form, you can do it in another.

What your entire post rests upon is the self-congratulatory feeling of “I did the work myself, all on my own, hooray for me!!” My questioning of the value of literary analysis was basically a questioning of the legitimacy of that feeling, which I bet you get every time but which I believe is quite unfounded. So… what did I get out of this thread? I learned a lot, spurred on by the thinking of others, if not entirely adopting any one poster’s ideas. I really did get my epiphany while thinking about justtotalk’s post. And I’m certain leolibby’s tangents played a peripheral role. Meanwhile evanhaneel’s comments gave me something to wrap up my own conclusions. Read my previous post if you want the details, which I think I spelled out pretty clearly for the sake of bringing this thread full circle. I enjoy your mischaracterization of this thread as a bunch of posters all laying out the answer to me, and me stubbornly refusing to receive said answer – when, as should be clear as day, the other posters in this thread are a group whose views are not even internally consistent. My valuation of literary analysis has changed a lot since my original post, and I feel I better understand what is inherent to the task, as well as cleared up what isn’t. I know I’ve been incredibly rude to some people, and I’m treating this forum more like a blog in which my personal thoughts can flow rather than a forum where I’m communicating to people rather than against them, but I do sincerely hope that this is of some value to someone other than myself.

I realize you won’t understand half of what I’ve written. I’ll just leave this here. Maybe someone else will read it.

leolibby · January 19, 2011, 1:58am

hmm, so you want people to acknowlege that literature is not for you, but we still like you and your analasis and synthesis skills are fine? lol, I realize you’re using the thread as a blog/ to bounce around ideas.

actually I think I know why literature does not appeal to you, you’re seeing it too intellectually. Your diatribes are somewhat articulate (but not succinct or organized) Can you analyze/ explain a poem I wrote?

Atop the great flood plane
Four sided sails divide pale waters and sky
Fishermen cast their nets
A weathered crow nestles into stillness
And resolves as to where it should fly

In the village, bamboo strips criss-cross to form homes
Wet garments hang in the gloomy heat
Steeped in warm colors

A mother stares
Time nestles into eternity
Within her dark eyes
Her face is shrouded in sorrow
Shrouded in mystery

leolibby · January 19, 2011, 2:03am

There are inductive or deducive reasoning. as far as I know, all notions of analysis fall under those headings.

Emaheevul07 · January 19, 2011, 2:22am

Well, when I can become a mathematician with no mathematical knowledge besides how to use a calculator and a solutions manual, we’ll applaud your skills!

leolibby · January 19, 2011, 2:36am

You need emotional sensitivity/depth to read and write literature. start out by analyzing your dreams… to some extent, you have to know how the subconscious communicates.

justtotalk · January 19, 2011, 3:22am

Don’t be too quick to reveal your stupidity–Real Analysis has nothing to do with the standard definition of analysis… Real analysis involves two PURELY MATHEMATICAL concepts: the theory of functions and their spaces (i.e. analysis) involving the real number field.

You think you’ve given a counterexample to “analysis is analysis,” but you’ve simply used an alternative mathematical definition. Normally, analysis is evaluating and interpreting by breaking big chunks into smaller chunks. Whether you’re a critic analyzing a novel or a fed reserve economist analyzing reams of econometrics in hope of forecasting aggregate GDP, you’re using the standard definition of ANALYSIS.

You lack that skill. Until that changes, you’ll never read original sources–whether it’s literature, scientific journals, or any business trade journal–because reading and appreciating them all involve similar analysis, even if they involve different specialties. Unfortunately, self obsession and an uppity attitude don’t remedy your deficiency.

justtotalk · January 19, 2011, 3:38am

And EC’s post is spot on; you’ve learned to regurgitate and now you’re trying to idealize this “talent.”

silence_kit · January 19, 2011, 7:52am

My kneejerk reaction: you are overrating yourself and this talent. Getting an A in lit 101 isn’t proof that you are excellent at writing papers that analyze fiction.

If your goal is just to get the best grade with the least amount of effort and if your approach is working, then you should continue to do what you are doing.

If your goal is to appreciate literature, then you should practice your ability to be able to extract meaning from literature. Just like in any other hobby or endevour, reading what other people have to say about the subject and copying them instead of doing the thing yourself is a poor replacement.

I wrote the paragraph below in a thread about solution manuals in science and math courses. I think that if you change some of the words around, what I write also applies to this thread too.

=====================================================

cormy3, this is a bit hyperbolic (analyzing fiction and being able to understand a journal are different skills I think), but there is a good point here. Knowing how to make an independent evaluation of something is a pretty useful skill. Scientific researchers, CEOs, etc. don’t always have the luxury of having someone make their argument for them before they make important decisions.

cormy3 · January 19, 2011, 3:30pm

To emaheevul:

Why take cheap shots? Have I not written enough that there isn’t something you can address substantively? I believe that despite my irreverence, to my credit I’ve taken everyone’s arguments seriously. More important, why the false analogy? Understanding and analyzing literary ideas is not the least bit similar to memorizing an answer sheet. If you actually think they are similar, I will be happy to explain why I disagree. But I don’t think I need to. Please don’t post unless you can contribute. Don’t snipe from the sidelines.

To leolibby:

I never said I wanted to be convinced that literature is not for me. In fact, I wanted the opposite, to be persuaded of its merits. But not as means to understand deep or complex ideas, as I do that plenty well through second-hand sources. And also not just to be able to read more literature, as that would be circular logic. You can rephrase my inquiry any way you want: why should I read literature as a story? What is the value of literary analysis? What is the process of turning a story into more idea-based concepts? These are my concerns, and I wanted answers. The motivation for such an inquiry was that I trusted literary analysis to be a worthwhile activity, and as such I wanted someone to explain exactly how. That is quite diametric to your depiction that I don’t care for literature.

On the second page of this thread, you can see that my goal was attained, my concerns largely satisfied, though not by the words of any particular poster. It simply happened when I was reading and disagreeing with people’s posts. But I still give credit to other posters for creating the environment that allowed the answer to happen. See? I don’t share your absurd dichotomy between “my own idea” and “someone else’s idea.”

You are right on the mark when you say that I’m seeing novels too intellectually and not using enough emotional sensitivity. That’s basically my conclusion, too. Again, see my post on the second page. The magic ingredient is the social nature of literature. The social nature finds essence in the novel as story, not necessarily the novel as idea. I’m not sensitive (that’s a good way of putting it) to the emotional or social tones. They are crucial to reading a novel because it is through these tones that literary ideas are conveyed. I am unhappy with that format, which I see as superfluous and distracting. Many others, however, find the literary format to be crucial for idea acquisition, as it is easier for them to receive ideas in this form. I am unhappy largely because I just don’t get it. I am not attuned to the social rhythms of the story. I’m like the guy who doesn’t understand why people make small talk, sees it as a waste of time. I much prefer an expository format, because I think in an expository way. Other students want the social cushion of arriving at literary ideas, replete with plots and interesting characters and tangible scenarios. I, on the other hand, want just the ideas themselves. So I reach for the literary theory – and also the Sparknotes.

In doing so, I might be damning the part of my mind that is responsible for doing literary analysis… the part that analyzes issues using characters, stories, themes and symbolism… the part whose scope includes not just books and poems but the narratives of our larger lives. With all that said, what I realize I’m missing is the particular way of viewing the world that is, in a word, the social way. Before I made this discovery, the act of translating a story into ideas – literary analysis – seemed to me an act of decoding an artificial language. Now that I realize more fully what that language is, I understand that it’s not so artificial, in fact it’s very basically human. To the extent that my aversion to literary analysis is the effect of my asocial perception, that is a shame, but one over which I have no control. At not least in the context of this discussion. But to the extent that not reading books is a cause of seeing the world asocially, that is something that I can change, and must change. Therefore, I have already said, I have resolved to take more seriously the task of novel-reading.

Where do I think this has real impact? The consequences exist maybe not in English, since I do as well on all measures as my well-read peers. And certainly not in Chemistry or Economics. But perhaps in the actually social realms of life for which second-hand sources don’t exist. As I’m living my life, I have no choice but be the first-hand interpreter. If I don’t make sense of it, no one will. Furthermore, I can’t abstract away the plot and characters of my life as I can a novel. I am the character, and the plot is my life. The actual experience of living socially leaves little recourse to abstract ideas. They matter, but so does the lower-order content.

To justtotalk:

You know, you were kind of cute before. With your child-like understanding of ‘innovators versus middle management.’ Now you’re just being a dummy. And quite annoying.

The point of bringing up real analysis is that the previous guy presented no standard for what analysis is. He just said analysis is analysis, so I brought up an extreme example. It’s stupid. That’s the point. And on what basis are you saying that real analysis doesn’t fit the “breaking bigger into smaller” definition? Just because it’s also mathematical terminology doesn’t mean that that can’t apply. In fact, what cognitive activity in the world cannot be construed as analysis? I’m curious, enlighten me. It’s your burden because you chose to rest your case on such an ambiguous word, and how all instances of it are alike.

And that brings me to my second point. Not all instances of analysis are alike. Even if economics and chemistry qualify as analysis, by whatever broad definition, it does not follow that the human capacities needed to do them are going to be cognitively related. Remember you were arguing that if I can’t do literary analysis, I can’t be a good economist, or I can’t be a good chemist. Now you’ve widened that claim to include basic things from those fields like reading science or business journals. Ha, ha, ha. A slow laugh, because you are funny in that sad kind of way. Do I really need to say this? There are so many people who love analyzing science journals but can’t analyze literature. There are even more people who can do such with literature but can’t even touch a science journal. To be specific, the economist in your example will be looking for patterns in data, in numbers. According to highly technical models. When he ‘predicts’ the future of the economy, he is not some fortune-teller looking for literary themes. He and the literary critic are not at all related except in the most fanciful conceptual ways. Who cares if they even fall under the same definition? Just because you’ve drunk the academic kool-aid and love literary analysis so much, you inflate it in your mind to become some global virtue. Oh no, I’m being blasphemous and reading Sparknotes, hence I’m going to fail at every part of life. I expect that’s the emotional logic coursing through your little mind.

To silence_kit:

Most of what you posted has already been covered by my earlier posts. Just wanted to point out that my doing all of this does not mean I am taking the easy route, nor does it mean I am not doing any analysis. In fact, I think deeply about a lot more information than my book-reading counterparts, and I am told so by my professors. I simply don’t do the first-hand literary analysis of putting story and character into ideas and theories. I do a lot with the ideas and theories, though.

Your primary worry is that by not practicing the skill, I won’t be able to do literary analysis in the future. Well, I don’t deny it. The question is what is the value of doing literary analysis besides being able to do more of it. You’re not addressing that more important question.

What you said about scientific researchers and CEOs having to make independent evaluations, point taken. But I see that as more a personality trait than an academic skill, so it’s pretty irrelevant in my opinion… unless you’re saying using second-hand sources with literature cultivates a timid personality or some such. I would disagree. I’m quite ambitious and aggressive with how I handle the ideas that I work with. Besides, the domains of business and science are sufficiently different from literature that confidence to make independent evaluation about a contract or research situation is not affected in any real way by inexperience at evaluating a novel. They are quite independent in practice, if not in theory. I think this intuition would be borne out if you talked to successful businessmen and scientists and asked them how adept they were at deciphering rhetorical devices in English class. I bet a large number used Sparknotes.

What do you call this type of person -- I like ideas but not literature

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