And I see far too many graphs of things that probably shouldn't be graphed.
Dostoevsky, at least in the Brothers Karamazov, has many religious and philosophical discourses, and at the the same time much of the dialogue is of a high emotional (batshit crazy?) pitch.
Same with Melville and Moby Dick.
It was once said about the brothers William James and Henry James, that William was a psychologist who wrote like a novelist and Henry was a novelist with the insights of a psychologist. Now, that's interesting.
Yeah! When I first read Brothers K, we had to read it in a week, and honestly the whole class went a little crazy. (Don’t get me wrong: we loved it…) so much emotion packed into a small space and suddenly missing the bus was a tragedy of Russian proportions.
I first formulated this to myself years ago, beginning with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and moving on to other Russian writers (since that was my field), as orderly vs. chaotic. It didn't take long to realize these two strains could be found throughout the literature of other nations as well. As an orderly writer myself, I am most comfortable in the worlds of orderly writers like Austen and Trollope, but I'm fascinated and challenged by the chaotic writers and strive to integrate a little more of that chaos into my own work. I'd love to be able to explore the processes of all those earlier writers to discover whether there's any correlation between plotters and orderly writers on the one hand and between "pantsers" or intuitive writers on the other. I strongly suspect there may be.
oh, I don't know. It depends on the subject of the painting. Monet was very good when he was painting boats. I deeply dislike Cezanne's dancers, but the colour in his still lifes and landscapes is gorgeous. Then there is Renoir, whose domestic scenes are charming. It is Manet who leaves me entirely cold.
I think the ChatGPT analysis is too shallow, too easy, too 'safe', as it were.
For example, most people are probably thinking of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' when evaluating her work. Those of us who have read 'Villette' know 'Jane Eyre' only shows Bronte at the beginning of her powers. The 'intellectual' novelist George Eliot wrote after reading 'Villette': "Villette! Villette! There is something almost preternatural about its power." The balance between emotion and intellect in 'Villette' is almost perfect.
Charles Dickens' 'Hard Times' is an example of how classifying him as an emotional novelist doesn't cover his breadth. 'Hard Times' is on an entirely different emotional plane than most of his novels. The eccentric casts of characters is there, the blistering commentary on social ills is there, the message is read loud and clear as always, yet the story triggers analysis more than emotional response. There are multiple instances in his other novels where his description is vivid as ever, yet he quite deliberately pulls the reader back from emotional entanglement with the scene, encouraging analysis instead. 'Our Mutual Friend' does that frequently, but so does 'Dombey and Son', 'Little Dorrit', and 'Bleak House'.
George Eliot is not that easy to classify. What of the emotionally satisfying 'Silas Marner', what of the emotionally turbulent 'Mill on the Floss', what of the clash between head and heart in 'Adam Bede'?
In short, it is like ChatGPT has taken high school or first year college papers on these auhhors to give a facile response for an easy grade.
I think that’s probably true regarding the depth of its analysis. And of course, for an author with a wide scope of work that ranged over several decades, summing up the factors that could plot them along those dimensions would be really challenging and necessarily simplistic. Again, though, it would still seem to me to be a useful exercise if for no other reason than to disagree with it. One of the best things about an opinion (or a whole construct of opinions) is the ability to think with—and against—it.
Where would writers who primarily wrote short stories rather than novels fit in with this? O. Henry never wrote a novel but his stories share similarities with both camps.
Now we know what ChatGPT generated when you asked your questions. It seems facile to me. As a former art museum docent with a degree in both German and English literature, I'd rather have a heartfelt conversation with you than ponder the dry and superficial 'analysis' provided by AI.
I don’t think one necessarily precludes the other. And, you’re right, it could be facile; I think it would require more qualification to be truly valuable, but it’s an interesting starting place.
This is fascinating. Dickens is my all-time favorite, and I love Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I notice they're towards the middle. I also love Austen, but I detest Henry James. I wonder where Hemingway would land?
Detesting Henry James! I’ve got The Ambassadors queued up for next month (Lord, have mercy). I’ve not read enough Hemingway to have an opinion. But that could make a fun followup.
I'll be interested in your thoughts on The Ambassadors. I haven't read that, but in all the stories of his I have read, his characters are too tentative and paralyzed with indecision. It drove me crazy.
I’ve only read The Turning of the Screw before and that definitely describes those characters as well. I think that was actually part of the horror of the story—the fact that he painted so abstractly. It left more to the imagination. Primed the right way, the readers supplies the terror.
Interesting perspective (although the ChatGPT did make me frown). The graph seems overall accurate, but somehow strips the depth of these authors. When I think of Dickens, Tolstoy, or Eliot, I do so by feeling the world that I step into through their stories. These are worlds that I want to return to over and again. This is difficult to capture via abstract adjectives, although it's an interesting thought exercise. Also, I think if you sat long enough in front of a Monet (such as the 12m long water lilies) you might grow to like him too :)
Re Monet, I have my doubts. But you never know! I definitely think this sort of analysis could only ever be one lens—out of many. It’s necessarily reductive. But I think it does have some virtues, not least being able to get a sense of an author’s overall approach amid others. And I do wonder about some of those other dimensions—e.g., economics vs. aesthetics or philosophy vs. psychology. As part of a larger program of literary criticism and analysis, I think those might be useful dimensions to engage with.
Fully agree! I think this excercise just made me recognize how much I read from my heart/gut/soul. It also made me want to reread Gaskell, to see why she was left in a quadrant all by herself. Re Monet, you are tempting me to do my best to convert you. One day, we'll take you to the Museum in Basel (where you can also take in some Cezanne) and, who knows, you might come around :)
Dear Mrs. Gaskell, all alone!!! Though, I think if I were to group English novelists together I would put Gaskell and Eliot together (with Trollope, but not with, say, Austen). So now I’m wondering what dichotomy (or grid) I’m placing them in. (Intimate stories with strong moral voice set within expansive societal structures?)
Fascinating. I’m with you on that as well. I know that’s true for my preference of jazz over pop music. I like examples of both, but I usually find the intricacies of jazz more satisfying to listen to. And if you can get heightened emotional and intellectual engagement in one piece of music, I’m all in!
Strikes me as a false dichotomy.
And I see far too many graphs of things that probably shouldn't be graphed.
Dostoevsky, at least in the Brothers Karamazov, has many religious and philosophical discourses, and at the the same time much of the dialogue is of a high emotional (batshit crazy?) pitch.
Same with Melville and Moby Dick.
It was once said about the brothers William James and Henry James, that William was a psychologist who wrote like a novelist and Henry was a novelist with the insights of a psychologist. Now, that's interesting.
I get that critique. This also presumes some sort of average across an author’s entire body of work, which is tricky to say the least.
Yeah! When I first read Brothers K, we had to read it in a week, and honestly the whole class went a little crazy. (Don’t get me wrong: we loved it…) so much emotion packed into a small space and suddenly missing the bus was a tragedy of Russian proportions.
I first formulated this to myself years ago, beginning with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and moving on to other Russian writers (since that was my field), as orderly vs. chaotic. It didn't take long to realize these two strains could be found throughout the literature of other nations as well. As an orderly writer myself, I am most comfortable in the worlds of orderly writers like Austen and Trollope, but I'm fascinated and challenged by the chaotic writers and strive to integrate a little more of that chaos into my own work. I'd love to be able to explore the processes of all those earlier writers to discover whether there's any correlation between plotters and orderly writers on the one hand and between "pantsers" or intuitive writers on the other. I strongly suspect there may be.
oh, I don't know. It depends on the subject of the painting. Monet was very good when he was painting boats. I deeply dislike Cezanne's dancers, but the colour in his still lifes and landscapes is gorgeous. Then there is Renoir, whose domestic scenes are charming. It is Manet who leaves me entirely cold.
I think the ChatGPT analysis is too shallow, too easy, too 'safe', as it were.
For example, most people are probably thinking of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' when evaluating her work. Those of us who have read 'Villette' know 'Jane Eyre' only shows Bronte at the beginning of her powers. The 'intellectual' novelist George Eliot wrote after reading 'Villette': "Villette! Villette! There is something almost preternatural about its power." The balance between emotion and intellect in 'Villette' is almost perfect.
Charles Dickens' 'Hard Times' is an example of how classifying him as an emotional novelist doesn't cover his breadth. 'Hard Times' is on an entirely different emotional plane than most of his novels. The eccentric casts of characters is there, the blistering commentary on social ills is there, the message is read loud and clear as always, yet the story triggers analysis more than emotional response. There are multiple instances in his other novels where his description is vivid as ever, yet he quite deliberately pulls the reader back from emotional entanglement with the scene, encouraging analysis instead. 'Our Mutual Friend' does that frequently, but so does 'Dombey and Son', 'Little Dorrit', and 'Bleak House'.
George Eliot is not that easy to classify. What of the emotionally satisfying 'Silas Marner', what of the emotionally turbulent 'Mill on the Floss', what of the clash between head and heart in 'Adam Bede'?
In short, it is like ChatGPT has taken high school or first year college papers on these auhhors to give a facile response for an easy grade.
I think that’s probably true regarding the depth of its analysis. And of course, for an author with a wide scope of work that ranged over several decades, summing up the factors that could plot them along those dimensions would be really challenging and necessarily simplistic. Again, though, it would still seem to me to be a useful exercise if for no other reason than to disagree with it. One of the best things about an opinion (or a whole construct of opinions) is the ability to think with—and against—it.
Where would writers who primarily wrote short stories rather than novels fit in with this? O. Henry never wrote a novel but his stories share similarities with both camps.
Thanks Joel…..it’s making me think about my current reading tastes. They’ve changed. Used to be way more emotional but lately not so much
Interesting. That would seem a positive use of analysis like this, no? To become more reflective about our own tastes?
Now we know what ChatGPT generated when you asked your questions. It seems facile to me. As a former art museum docent with a degree in both German and English literature, I'd rather have a heartfelt conversation with you than ponder the dry and superficial 'analysis' provided by AI.
I don’t think one necessarily precludes the other. And, you’re right, it could be facile; I think it would require more qualification to be truly valuable, but it’s an interesting starting place.
This is fascinating. Dickens is my all-time favorite, and I love Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I notice they're towards the middle. I also love Austen, but I detest Henry James. I wonder where Hemingway would land?
Detesting Henry James! I’ve got The Ambassadors queued up for next month (Lord, have mercy). I’ve not read enough Hemingway to have an opinion. But that could make a fun followup.
I'll be interested in your thoughts on The Ambassadors. I haven't read that, but in all the stories of his I have read, his characters are too tentative and paralyzed with indecision. It drove me crazy.
I’ve only read The Turning of the Screw before and that definitely describes those characters as well. I think that was actually part of the horror of the story—the fact that he painted so abstractly. It left more to the imagination. Primed the right way, the readers supplies the terror.
Interesting perspective (although the ChatGPT did make me frown). The graph seems overall accurate, but somehow strips the depth of these authors. When I think of Dickens, Tolstoy, or Eliot, I do so by feeling the world that I step into through their stories. These are worlds that I want to return to over and again. This is difficult to capture via abstract adjectives, although it's an interesting thought exercise. Also, I think if you sat long enough in front of a Monet (such as the 12m long water lilies) you might grow to like him too :)
Re Monet, I have my doubts. But you never know! I definitely think this sort of analysis could only ever be one lens—out of many. It’s necessarily reductive. But I think it does have some virtues, not least being able to get a sense of an author’s overall approach amid others. And I do wonder about some of those other dimensions—e.g., economics vs. aesthetics or philosophy vs. psychology. As part of a larger program of literary criticism and analysis, I think those might be useful dimensions to engage with.
Fully agree! I think this excercise just made me recognize how much I read from my heart/gut/soul. It also made me want to reread Gaskell, to see why she was left in a quadrant all by herself. Re Monet, you are tempting me to do my best to convert you. One day, we'll take you to the Museum in Basel (where you can also take in some Cezanne) and, who knows, you might come around :)
Dear Mrs. Gaskell, all alone!!! Though, I think if I were to group English novelists together I would put Gaskell and Eliot together (with Trollope, but not with, say, Austen). So now I’m wondering what dichotomy (or grid) I’m placing them in. (Intimate stories with strong moral voice set within expansive societal structures?)
I think that’s part of what makes this exercise interesting. The visual provides another way to evaluate and categorize.
Interesting!!! Thanks!
I’m wondering if that’s why I prefer Bach over Handel, especially when absorbing it in quantity
Fascinating. I’m with you on that as well. I know that’s true for my preference of jazz over pop music. I like examples of both, but I usually find the intricacies of jazz more satisfying to listen to. And if you can get heightened emotional and intellectual engagement in one piece of music, I’m all in!