really, really, really good point (about ulysses, about "philosophical" novels, and about literature in general). i, too, have spent a long time grappling with this question of whether or not literary works should have "point" or a dominating perspective or a message, and i think i ended up at a position similar to yours- the way i see it, no work of literature should have to "justify" itself with a message or a meaning. to me, all literature is self-justifying (art for art's sake <3).
back in the early-to-mid twentieth century, there was a school of literary analysis called New Criticism (or formalism). The New Critics argued that every literary text has a particular unified and objective meaning, a central theme couched in the language and the plot of the work, and that the critic's job in reading a text was to decipher its meaning (often a sort of capsulized fortune cookie type phrase) by paying careful analytical attention to its language. to me, that's just garbage! literature records thoughts, feelings, and ideas, but i've never cared for this tendency to reduce its complexities to a central point or a basic ideas. i prefer your literature-as-encyclopedia model- i think that literature is and should be a source of complex pleasures, not nutshell wisdom. in a way, i think that a definite sense of one's own views can compromise he artistic quality of a literary work. part of the beauty of ulysses is its ambiguity- the way stephen and leopold's ideas clash without an overriding narrative perspective telling us which of the two is "right," or how the circe/play chapter can't seem to decide whether it's one of the characters or the narrator who's hallucinating. ulysses can't be reduced- it's joyce trying to entertain us, compel us, move us, make us laugh, make us think, wow us with his knowledge, etc. i mean really, ulysses is about how james joyce loves to hear himself talk, but that's part of the fun. the best "novels-with-a-point" are the ones where he author gets swept up in literary concerns on the way to stating their theme. camus was a really good prose stylist with a knack for character development, so the stranger feels fuller and more satisfying than a mere fable. same with madame bovary, although i haven't read it all. (honestly, i think that voltaire just tried too hard)
well, i'd say that the best example would have to be something russian- the brothers karamazov, say. dostoevsky is so adamant about saving our souls (sorry it took me ages to get back to you, by the way. i'm heinously irresponsible about comment box stuff), but his obsessive and rather childlike christianity can't quite compete with the sheer power of ivan and fyodor and demitry and alexey as literary characters. you see the same thing in tolstoy.
and drama is weird. sometimes i find myself wondering just how "literary" a genre it is, but then i realize that everyone studies english literature with the assumption that shakespeare is the top dog, and it's like---- well. drama is interesting. i mean, in a way, we've had it for so long because nobody invented movies until the late 1800s, BUT ALSO: nobody but the clergy could read until like whenever, so morality plays were probably one of the most prominent intersections of art and ~real world shit~ ever. so i dunno. i mean, i think that drama is one of those cases where you have to cop out and be all "well, i guess it depends on how you look at it," but yeah.
and i totally feel you on the "it's never a combination of styles" thing. i love romanticism, for example, but that's almost a liability in these days. i mean, you can be a "romanticist" or w/e, but you can't honestly say "yes, i acknowledge that it's 2012 or whatever the fuck year this is but that being the case i want to write poetry with an unabashedly romantic influence and not have to ironize it or feel bad about it and i don't want it to seem anachronistic either, i just want it to be the poetry that i care about writing and that i think best suits my artistic temperament and i want you to take it as it is and if you like it that's fine and if you don't like it that's fine but please don't make a huge deal out of anything but the words themselves, and also i really like borges," y'know?
ultimately, i think that postmodernism is at its best when it acknowledges that, yes, our view on life is a matter of perspective and attitude, and at its worst when it refuses to let us accept that awareness as a fact and move on- like somehow because we're aware of our subjectivity the only thing left for us to do is acknowledge it until we die of old age. i want art to be beautiful and pleasurable, on whatever terms that that's possible, and i still enjoy joyce and wordsworth and all that, so hey, it's worth something
and i think the problem with gulliver's travels is a distinctly 18th century problem: everyone was too damn amused by the idea of long prose being ~a new form~ to just move on with it. swift was a gorgeous ironist, but he should've been born like 200 years later imho
I'm currently reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm a big fan of Ulysses & Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, Neuromancer, Foundation, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, and On the Road (Kerouac). But poetry is usually my forte. Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, William Blake, John Keats, and T.S. Eliot are my favorites.
And I forgot Appian The Civil Wars
back in the early-to-mid twentieth century, there was a school of literary analysis called New Criticism (or formalism). The New Critics argued that every literary text has a particular unified and objective meaning, a central theme couched in the language and the plot of the work, and that the critic's job in reading a text was to decipher its meaning (often a sort of capsulized fortune cookie type phrase) by paying careful analytical attention to its language. to me, that's just garbage! literature records thoughts, feelings, and ideas, but i've never cared for this tendency to reduce its complexities to a central point or a basic ideas. i prefer your literature-as-encyclopedia model- i think that literature is and should be a source of complex pleasures, not nutshell wisdom. in a way, i think that a definite sense of one's own views can compromise he artistic quality of a literary work. part of the beauty of ulysses is its ambiguity- the way stephen and leopold's ideas clash without an overriding narrative perspective telling us which of the two is "right," or how the circe/play chapter can't seem to decide whether it's one of the characters or the narrator who's hallucinating. ulysses can't be reduced- it's joyce trying to entertain us, compel us, move us, make us laugh, make us think, wow us with his knowledge, etc. i mean really, ulysses is about how james joyce loves to hear himself talk, but that's part of the fun. the best "novels-with-a-point" are the ones where he author gets swept up in literary concerns on the way to stating their theme. camus was a really good prose stylist with a knack for character development, so the stranger feels fuller and more satisfying than a mere fable. same with madame bovary, although i haven't read it all. (honestly, i think that voltaire just tried too hard)
and drama is weird. sometimes i find myself wondering just how "literary" a genre it is, but then i realize that everyone studies english literature with the assumption that shakespeare is the top dog, and it's like---- well. drama is interesting. i mean, in a way, we've had it for so long because nobody invented movies until the late 1800s, BUT ALSO: nobody but the clergy could read until like whenever, so morality plays were probably one of the most prominent intersections of art and ~real world shit~ ever. so i dunno. i mean, i think that drama is one of those cases where you have to cop out and be all "well, i guess it depends on how you look at it," but yeah.
and i totally feel you on the "it's never a combination of styles" thing. i love romanticism, for example, but that's almost a liability in these days. i mean, you can be a "romanticist" or w/e, but you can't honestly say "yes, i acknowledge that it's 2012 or whatever the fuck year this is but that being the case i want to write poetry with an unabashedly romantic influence and not have to ironize it or feel bad about it and i don't want it to seem anachronistic either, i just want it to be the poetry that i care about writing and that i think best suits my artistic temperament and i want you to take it as it is and if you like it that's fine and if you don't like it that's fine but please don't make a huge deal out of anything but the words themselves, and also i really like borges," y'know?
ultimately, i think that postmodernism is at its best when it acknowledges that, yes, our view on life is a matter of perspective and attitude, and at its worst when it refuses to let us accept that awareness as a fact and move on- like somehow because we're aware of our subjectivity the only thing left for us to do is acknowledge it until we die of old age. i want art to be beautiful and pleasurable, on whatever terms that that's possible, and i still enjoy joyce and wordsworth and all that, so hey, it's worth something
and i think the problem with gulliver's travels is a distinctly 18th century problem: everyone was too damn amused by the idea of long prose being ~a new form~ to just move on with it. swift was a gorgeous ironist, but he should've been born like 200 years later imho