Mindfire
Istar
Let's talk about the doom of human civilization: shorter attention spans. This exchange occurred in another thread. I'm moving it here to prevent further derailing.
The floor is open.
I think the use of italics have become the standard tool of great modern authors because:
- Modern readers are not as smart as their predecessors.*
- Using italics is internal dialogue, this allows the author to cheat by using dialogue to disguise info dumping.
- It is easier to use internal dialogue to show the reader where the narration ends and the MC thoughts begins.
*Don't get angry. You can't convince me otherwise. I've read older books. They used what is now called "purple prose" extensively. Sometimes a whole scene can be written in metaphor and the reader understood (based on the successes of these books). Consider the complex words that authors used. Back then, no one told the author "That word is too difficult, it makes your writing stand out. Change it."
I wouldn't go so far as to say that modern readers are dumber than earlier generations, but they do seem more impatient and lazy when it comes to prose. I was reading some of Robert E. Howard's stories a while ago, and while he enjoyed a lot of success as one of the pioneers in the fantasy genre, I for one could not get away with writing prose like his without reviewers complaining about excessive floridness. Don't get me wrong, I like his prose most of the time and would love to write like him, but it has fallen definitely out of fashion in the last fifty years.
I don't think the change in style is necessarily due to modern readers being idiots. You're a modern reader aren't you? Rather, I think what's happened is that the standard for books and what readers want has changed. "Classical" authors were expected to be masterful and descriptive because that's what was wanted at the time. Readers wanted those extra details to aid immersion. Modern readers don't need or want that so much. We want the author to get out of the way so we can get to the story. The bare bones of it and nothing else in many cases. Also, what with the rapid advancement of visual media, lifelike images are so common to us that we can summon them into our own minds without difficult. Readers in the olden days had never seen movies, and would never have thought of stories as such. They probably went about the process of imagining a little differently than we do now, thus the need for more details.
Mindfire,
I can't believe that. In reference to the digital media providing imagery for readers, thus removing the need to describe elements of a fantasy world, I once read an article where authors didn't want their characters displayed in any format that may be considered official. Think of Game of Thrones. Everyone know pictures Jon Snow as Kit Harington. They picture Ed Start as Sean Bean. The problem is, I didn't picture those characters precisely as such in my mind. Now, if book 6 ever comes out, I'll find a clash between what I'm reading and the image gathered from the TV show.
Also, after a quick search, I found this article which talks about our attention span dropping from 12 minutes to 5 minutes. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could easily find more articles about this subject. The modern reader IS unable to focus on what was once purple prose.
Honestly, from how I imagine the degeneration of our potential audience, I can see books going the route of Apps. Someone created a thread about HTML 5 to be the main language of new ebooks. The article linked talked about the power of HTML 5. Among them is: having music for each scene, clickable links that give Character Portraits, Creature Portraits, Weapon Concepts and Fantasy Landscapes, videos, commentaries, and any digital media you want. Basically, its a hybrid animation/book. I'm afraid what I see written on the wall.
Our modern reader pales in comparison to the predecessors. In my opinion, there isn't anything that can convince me otherwise.
Lower attention span does not = stupid. Many highly intelligent people have lower attention spans. Furthermore, I'm not sure that the current disdain towards purple prose is bad or stupid, just different. Just because "that's how it used to be" doesn't make it automatically superior. In my opinion, that's a very rigid and untenable way of thinking. Also you're ignoring the evolution of the novel itself. Books like Moby Dick (which I hate) aren't just hard to read because they were written for people with longer attention spans. They're harder to read because the novel as we know it was still largely unrefined. People hadn't gotten the formula down yet. Purple prose came from, I think, the transition from writing epics, plays, and poetry into writing what we now think of as books. The floridness was an artifact from an earlier style of writing that eventually got dropped because it was plain unnecessary.
What's more, I don't see how e-books with music, portraits, concepts, etc. are somehow a bad thing. Audio books have had music for forever. And books have had illustrations since the dawn of time. But now that those illustrations are clickable instead of in an appendix at the back or folded into the pages it's somehow the Doom of Civilization? I mean no offense, but your arguments are all starting to sound like "You kids nowadays! Back in my time..." and "Get off my lawn, you rascals!"
EDIT:
Re: Attention spans, in the modern world, shorter attention spans can be an asset because of the way we're constantly bombarded with information in the modern age. If someone from your "golden age" of novels were alive today, they'd probably have a huge sensory overload to go along with their culture shock.
Re: Actors, what's wrong with picturing characters as actors? I sometimes do it for my work to get a feel for how the character looks. People are free to imagine as they choose. If they want to use a real person as a template, that's fine.
I disagree, Mindfire. Moby Dick is a nice example of the novel, and hardly an instance of an author not having the form down. The same is true of many classic novels. They are hardly unrefined works.
If Moby Dick is such a great novel, why does the author constantly interrupt to give lectures on whaling that are completely unnecessary and add nothing to the plot? In fact, a lot of things in that book are unnecessary to the plot. Like when Ishmael visits that church. He just kinda goes there, and then its never mentioned again. By "unrefined" I don't mean "unskilled". I only mean that they didn't really have the "formula" yet. Perhaps "undefined" would have been a better choice of words. This observation isn't completely mine. It was pointed out to me by my literature professor. Who taught Moby Dick.
Older novels also tend to seem dry to modern readers because we expect more action. That doesn't mean we're stupid, only that we have different tastes. Also, I don't hate the classics. Count of Monte Cristo is one of my all time favorites. But some "classics" have not aged as well as others.
Maybe you're making Ankari's point for him, and are too hindered by the generic modern novel. Melville put the whaling chapters in on purpose, of course, to educate the reader a bit about whaling. It's not like it was some oversight where he didn't realize they didn't relate to the story at large. They weren't meant to relate to it. That should be apparent enough to even the casual reader. It's a stylistic choice and not evidence of a lack of refinement or understanding of the form.
Also, Ishmael goes into two churches, and the contrast between the sermons in them relates to competing views of the world contemplated by Ishmael as the story progresses. The black church is also seen to set up racial stereotypes that Melville attacks later. The fact that the churches themselves are not mentioned again is irrelevant, as the reader is supposed to have the intelligence to draw meaning from them even as singular events. Perhaps you would have been better served by another professor, because this isn't difficult stuff to see if you think about what Melville is doing in the novel.
I disagree with your point on a visceral level and am having difficulty articulating why. But I'll try anyway.
Over time, as humans practice things, we have a way of stripping away things that don't work and getting to the purer form underneath. Computers were once the realm of hobbyists and experts, but now I'm holding one in my hand. Everything becomes more user friendly with time. The novel is no exception. Some art is always lost when we forsake the old in favor of the new, which is unfortunate. Craftsmanship has largely been abandoned in favor of mass production for instance. But this is not the bane of civilization.
Novels now are more straightfoward and the plot now takes precedence. When I read the Codex Alera, I don't do it to get a message about the triumph of human ingenuity, egalitarianism, learning to understand other cultures, or the power of diplomacy. I read it because the plot is interesting and I like the characters. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Those bits of Moby Dick feel unnecessary because they're largely extraneous to what we now look for most in books: the plot.
The floor is open.
Myth Weaver
Minstrel
Maester
Scribe
