All I know is at this point, I'm really glad that I never had to take a class from Ken or suffer through fifty minutes of listening to Reece argue with a teacher.

Ken, dude... It seems like all you've really got is implying that I'm not smart enough to appreciate something you thought was funny.

What are these aesthetic pleasures that I'm too much of a neanderthal to understand? Just saying there are some and leaving it at doesn't help much.

Sarcasm aside, I would go with that for the most part.

Carver is totally boring to me. I have no use for Welty or Cather.

O'Conner clearly has talent, but I find things like trying to figure out why she wrote that part where the shady Bible salesman steals the girl's wooden leg really annoying. I find reading her work like watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and missing the last five minutes. Sure, you get mood and character voice and irony and all that... but it's also nice to know what we were supposed to get out of the story.

And it would be nice if it's something a little more profound than, "the guy who hates his mom is just as screwed up in a slightly different way" or "sometimes, shit just happens."

For once, we agree on something. If you go back to that article I linked to, you might notice that some people are happier when a story actually has a point.

Where it gets irritating is when not having a point supposedly makes something better and more literary than the more conventional type of story with an ending that actually resolves something.

"However, when on another thread I suggested that SPIDER-MAN could be in certain ways superior to Nabokov's LOLITA, Charles disagreed (to put it mildly)."

In some ways, no, but in other ways, yes. None of it had to do with genre work being innately inferior, though.

Dumas,

I am only saying that there are other reasons to read than looking for insights - such as enjoying the action of a story and how it's portrayed, the way a cartoonist sets a scene, how he draws faces, his dialogue, etc . . . I think you are taking personal slights where there are none.

The fact is, I assume that you - and everybody, really - primarily read comics for reasons other than insights, though that plays a role. Other-wise we would all just read sermons and ethical philosophy . . .

"Where it gets irritating is when not having a point supposedly makes something better and more literary than the more conventional type of story with an ending that actually resolves something."

Who said this -- not me . . . I like dramatic closings (such as the gunplay in the end Clowes's David Boring - ) or the open-ended lack of resolution in a lot of Tomine's stories.

And I teach a class in crime and detective fiction -- lots of conventional resolution there.
In my short story class this semester, the vast majority of stories we have read have conclusive endings: Poe, Hawthorne, Hurston, Cather, Dunbar-Nelson, Glaspell

[And I have never come in contact with a single work of art that only makes one point.]

It's not that I argue with your tastes - I sometimes teach stories I love and my students hate - but this doesn't phase me. All I ask is that we talk about the stories that I assign. I just think you are often arguing against a postion that very few people - and no one on this board that I have read - holds. If there every was a consensus against genre fiction, there isnt now.


"Where it gets irritating is when not having a point supposedly makes something better and more literary than the more conventional type of story with an ending that actually resolves something."

This opposition between the literary and conventional is false. If you equate the literary with Carver and the conventional with Peter David, then (maybe) you are correct. But once you move beyond this, it falls apart. So many witers taught in lit courses have familiar kinds of plots and endings.

If you don't like O'Conner, fine with me. But your explanations and justifications are open to discussion.

"For once, we agree on something."

We also agree on Blankets.

Kind of - in the sense that I often feel, as I just mentioned in my reponse to Dumas, that you are arguing against a "type" that I haven't seen, outside of -perhaps- a few of the maybe 500 people (a guess) that have written for TCJ. You seem to think that this kind of position that you oppose is widespread - I just don't see that.

For instance, EVERY SINGLE "indy comics" fan I know likes some kind of genre comics: superhero, teen comics, newspaper daily strips, magazine gag panels - things that often follow conventional expectations.

"you are arguing against a "type" that I haven't seen, outside of -perhaps- a few of the maybe 500 people (a guess) that have written for TCJ"

As you said to Dumas, this is "open to discussion." The problem is agreeing on what kind of comment might be considered as a statement "privileging" certain sets of discourses over others. What I might consider prejudicial (and I'm sure I'd find more than a "few" examples, and not only in TCJ), you might consider simply an expression of personal tastes. And then we're back at square one.

"EVERY SINGLE "indy comics" fan I know likes some kind of genre comics: superhero, teen comics, newspaper daily strips, magazine gag panels - things that often follow conventional expectations"

I wouldn't give this much weight in the balance. As I argued to Charles in another context, every human being pretty much has to start out with conventional narrative (what I called "straightforward" or "representational") as a means of learning the basics of storytelling. Later, one can glean an understanding of narrative forms that break, or appear to break, with convention, but I'd be surprised if there was anybody on the Planet Earth who didn't have some sort of affection for certain genres experienced in youth that continued into adulthood.

Maybe you just haven't met the ones who ease their dread of literary illegitimacy by speaking of "guilty pleasures?"

"EVERY SINGLE "indy comics" fan I know likes some kind of genre comics: superhero, teen comics, newspaper daily strips, magazine gag panels - things that often follow conventional expectations"

"I wouldn't give this much weight in the balance."

Well, I do . . . I see at as evidence for my case.

"Maybe you just haven't met the ones who ease their dread of literary illegitimacy by speaking of "guilty pleasures?"

I haven't, though I have heard that phrase - I just dont think it implies "dread." Most use it in a light-hearted way - If there is even a twinge of guilt for not reading "literary" works that goes with the phrase, it likely only lasts a few seconds.

"ease the dread of illegitimacy" - You really think they are plagued by dread . . .? You make them seem like the narrator of a Poe story . . .

And, comics are pretty legit these days, anyway, what with Clowes and Ware in the NYT, positive reviews in major publications, comics on college syllabi, etc . . . So all of us can rest easy.

Ken,
It's my perception that you haven't met nearly enough indy posers to judge their prolificity.

Ken, meet Snoid from his own description from "how did you develop as a fan"

1. Saw the cover to OMAC #1 by Kirby, freaked me out, still does, had to have it.
2. Soon realized that Marvel was a million times cooler than DC.
3. Became Marvel Zombie-Spidey was my man.
4. Rinse repeat.
5. Early 80's becoming VERY bored with superheros.
6. Discovered the Comics Journal, 'nuff said.
7. Discovered Crumb and ZAP comics, was never the same.
8. Stopped reading 99% of the comics I had been reading.
9. Started to seek out all the good stuff. Undergrounds, Classic comic stripes, etc.
10. Rinse repeat.
11. Became the snotty elitist dickhead I am today.

I think Gene may be referring to the likes of this attitude, from a post by Neil McAllister:

You can see the full context of Neil’s (PCM2's) post, and my response to his points, over here . (I think I won the argument, but I admit I do like his Twinkies analogy.)

I guess I'm not a "real" comic book fan because I'm just not into artwork to the degree that even if I'm not digging the story I'll still be happy if the comic looks good.

Take Kingdom Come for example. I hated the story so much that Alex Ross's ability to paint like an unholy hybrid of Norman Rockwell and George Perez couldn't make up for it.

Nah, Charles would never claim that genre work was innately inferior.

Except on 5-28-06, and maybe a FEW other times:

"One wouldn't really live a deprived existence never having encountered SPIDER-MAN, but the same isn't true when considering LOLITA or other literature of equal import. The issue of waste comes in when one reads the former at the expense of the latter."