The "I Should" books vs. "I Want To" Books

[theWallflower]

Back to topic.

First, I think everyone is confusing 'classics' with 'essential reads', myself included. One may not necessarily imply the other.

Second, I think everyone who is talking about ignoring other writer's blogs are wrong. I'm not looking for a magic bullet to writing. I never said I was and I don't recall asking for one. But what the blogs do have is lots of useful advice, tricks of the trade. Every industry has them. Gaiman had a nice Q&A last week about effective approaches to writing (whatever gets something completed). Jim C. Hines talked about how booksignings work for him. Do I need that sort of advice now? Clearly not, but if I ever get to the point where I do, I certainly don't want to search and wait through the Internet to find out how. I agree that published books about writing follow Sturgeon's law, but that's because they're trying to show what works for everyone. I think it's more important to see what works for a single person, since that's how the industry works.

And that's why I read the blogs, to see how the industry works. Do you think that all someone has to do to become a professional athlete is just run every day? Just practice, practice, practice? And then some coach will magically recognize them and make them a professional. Do musicians just play gigs at dive bars, hoping some studio exec pops in on that night and happens to hear them?

Maybe they're not leaders on the field, but they're popular. They have a following. And they're doing something right. Should I ignore everything they have to say about writing? About how to write? About how they got in and what sells and what doesn't? These are the people who have their finger on the pulse of the industry.

If I follow that logic, then why should I listen to the advice of anyone on forums? Since they're dispensing writing advice right now.

Here's another way to consider this idea: If you had to send someone else to a desert island, what book would you choose to send with them?

'Cuz that is what we're really talking about here.

That is absolutely _not_ what we're talking about here. See my original question. We're talking about how essential it is for a new writer to be reading the essential reads of sci-fi versus the contemporaries. Or put another way, how essential it is that he read the things people say he 'needs' to read vs. the things he 'wants' to read.

[Fung Koo]

If you had to send someone else to a desert island, what book would you choose to send with them?

That is absolutely _not_ what we're talking about here... put another way, how essential it is that he read the things people say he 'needs' to read vs. the things he 'wants' to read.

The underlined portion of your post... pretty sure that's two ways of saying the same thing

First, I think everyone is confusing 'classics' with 'essential reads', myself included. One may not necessarily imply the other.

It's a pretty tall order to argue that there's such a thing as a non-essential classic. If it was non-essential to the tradition, it wouldn't be a classic of that tradition. A non-classic essential, though? You're on to something there. Cult followings, for example. This is actually a really cool area in historical literary research these days. Looking for the one-off successes -- the hidden gems. Books that were very much loved in their time and space, yet for no apparent reason failed to take hold or last in human memory. The precedents that produced no antecedents, as if they were sterile. Or perhaps simply Perfect. The unique experiments in the sea of sameness.

Do musicians just play gigs at dive bars, hoping some studio exec pops in on that night and happens to hear them?

Unless you end up on American Idol... yeah, pretty much. You might send out unsolicited demo tapes, but you're much more likely to be discovered through ground level buzz than through submitting demos. They call it putting in your dues, or slugging it out... the grind. It's why the record industry employs A&R reps.

It's different again for athletes. They run and run and run, while trying to win. There's an objective measure to say whether or not the athlete is good. Scouts find them. Art doesn't quite have that luxury. But it's still based on getting noticed by the right people at the right time.

If I follow that logic, then why should I listen to the advice of anyone on forums? Since they're dispensing writing advice right now.

I think the point here is more that you should take many different forms of advice from many different sources. Then make up your mind. Not that the advice you're taking in from the blogs is no good at all, but that it is part of something much, much bigger. I won't continue to belabour the point, but you clearly came here for advice so you must already be aware of this apparent contradiction!

So to restate my answer to the original question -- how important is it for authors to be familiar with the classics -- I think it is important to have at least a degree of familiarity with some of the classics in general, but I think it is very important to be slightly better than familiar with the particular tradition in which you wish to write. I think it makes people better writers.

If you would like some advice on some classics to try, so you can make an informed choice about how to proceed with your reading addiction, I'm more than willing to try to figure out a classic or two that might appeal to you. Just tell me what new books you've been most interested in, a few of your favourite books from when you were a teenager, and for what reasons, what classics you've really, really disliked, and why, and which ones weren't totally awful but still unenjoyable, and why, and I'll see what I can come up with Maybe your educational background would help, too. Then I can really tailor my suggestion to you and your interests. If you read my suggestion and you still totally hate it, then by all means avoid the classics. But if you're game, I'm sure between us contrary-yet-helpful folks we could help you find something that will appeal to you.

[RimWorlder]

Fung,

that earlier post was truly impressive.

I had cause to chastise someone in another forum after they complained that "the (implied bad taste) of the editors at the big publishers and their penchant for buying and marketing stuff that will sell" was the real reason for that person not being able to sell any of their fiction.

Of course that boiled down to "its not me that's crazy, its everyone else that's crazy!"

What I pointed out to that individual was that success as a writer (except perhaps in your own mind) requires three key skills:

minimally acceptable wordcraft
minimally acceptable storytelling skill
an understanding of the market

(I mean, look at Burroughs. Love him to death - and LOVE to emulate his purple prose - he's the guy that taught me you CAN string twenty adjectives together - but, yech and meh on the first two requirements if we're being honest. On the other hand, he wasn't just the right guy at the right time. He saw where the pulps were going and rode that wave because he understood it and was familiar with what had gone before. Norm L. Bean indeed!)

Good market analyst types DO NOT restrict themselves to a trend one week long, nor even one year long. They gather as much data as they can for as long a period of time as they can, and in as much detail as they can.

They know, for example, that there ARE trends and cycles and that something that was old can become new again.

The would-be writers who achieve success are the ones who will find that classic who's time has come to be re-interpreted.

[RimWorlder]

I am also collecting Hugo/Nebula winners. That certainly has helped in keeping up with things. Except for Ringworld... (pokes the old guy).

I have a lawyer...

[RimWorlder]

If you would like some advice on some classics to try, so you can make an informed choice about how to proceed with your reading addiction, I'm more than willing to try to figure out a classic or two that might appeal to you. Just tell me what new books you've been most interested in, a few of your favourite books from when you were a teenager, and for what reasons, what classics you've really, really disliked, and why, and which ones weren't totally awful but still unenjoyable, and why, and I'll see what I can come up with Maybe your educational background would help, too. Then I can really tailor my suggestion to you and your interests. If you read my suggestion and you still totally hate it, then by all means avoid the classics. But if you're game, I'm sure between us contrary-yet-helpful folks we could help you find something that will appeal to you.

I still say hold him down and force him to read them. We'll need a set of those eye-holders they used on Alex in Clockwork Orange, and some good Math Rock playing a bit too loudly in the background...

[homosap]

Some truly impressive, well thought out, responses here but I'm starting to feel like they may be in vain. I'm getting an impression of a very low boredom threshhold and of seeking an easy route. I haven't come across a writer that claims it's a piece of cake yet. Accepted that 'classics' can be a matter of taste but I've enjoyed far more than I've disliked so far. Into my 40's now and I still inhale books at the rate of about 3 a week. Like others on here I'll read anything rather than nothing and feel lost without at least one book on the go.

Probably the most salient point, from your perspective, is the one in relation to the editors that would be accepting/rejecting your work. They want as easy a job as possible and if it appears to them like you haven't done your homework, then you'll certainly not curry any favour.

Apologies if my impressions are way off, it just comes across like this to me. Like you're seeking a bare minimum 'to do' checklist that you can tick off en route to successful publication. But then the 4 movies you listed as hating, Dr Strangelove, 2001, Some Like It hot and The Graduate, I thoroughly enjoyed the lot and, frankly, cannot conceive of a mentality that would find them hateful. I find it hard to imagine anyone being successful in a genre if they're not passionate about it. That passion would normally require no prompting to devour all sorts of of books, be they modern, classic, pulp or popular.

[Bond]

Think about movies that people say are classics. Not as a movie-maker but as a storyteller. Those old movies that people consider classics or quality works like Dr. Strangelove and Some Like It Hot and 2001:A Space Odyssey and The Graduate - hated them. Felt like I was wasting my time. And others that I have seen and kinda liked, they're not in my DVD collection.

So what is in your DVD collection and why is it there?

Most of my favorite movies of all time are golden oldies but next to none of them appear on current retrospective Top 100 lists. The ones I enjoyed were somewhat commercially more popular not the ones critics have judged important long afterwards. There are biases at work in the way reputations of works are built or torn down over time. You should know the method used in making the determination. The best way to see that is to look at the source on your own.

I don't completely understand the contrast you make between "I should" books and "I want to" books. How do you determine an "I want to" book? What makes you want to read it? You want to read it only because it's current? You want to enjoy it? You want to discuss it? You want to learn from it? What do you want to learn?

I get the feeling you want to learn from current works because that is what is currently popular and conforming to current tastes and you think that will provide you with more relevant examples.

If you believe that the newest version is likely to be the best version because it is built upon what came before like computer software then that reasoning holds. If, however, you want to work with the building blocks reading older works will give you a different perspective. Most people nowadays probably aren't that familiar with the DOS command prompt and would not exchange their GUI interface for it. But it can come in useful should you ever need to perform more than routine maintenance on your computer. Also if you think writing a book has more in common with music then maybe you should ask the question of yourself if current music is superior to older music.

[RimWorlder]

Homosap,

I liked every single on of those movies he listed also. In fact, they're on the "will watch again and again" list.

Sometimes I wonder if its the context that something "old" is presented in. I wonder how a book or a movie or a piece of music would be perceived if it were presented as 'new' (if you could manage to pull it off convincingly).

Would the response be any different?

(Actually, a part of me is screaming "how can you not like Dr. Strangelove!?!". But then I remember that most people who don't like it never had to hide under their desks during air raid drills at school.

Then that makes me wonder WHY they aren't drilling them to hide under their desks now in order to save themselves from the islamo-fascist dirty bombs and then I realize how much the same things are now as they were then - and then I wonder "How can you not like Dr. Strangelove!?!")

Truly we're living in 'fear of the bomb part deux'. If I had a decent program for doing such, I'd be prompted to find a copy of that Civil Defense PSA Duck and Cover and do a mash up with new audio.

Its so much the 50s-60s era now its not even funny anymore.

And yet, those who didn't live through it don't seem to have much appreciation for the irony, or the appropriateness of the arts from that era.

(Why so many 'super hero' movies these days? Same reasons they made a glut of them the last time around: we need a hero to save us.)

[psikeyhackr]

Getting it out of the way was worth it.

That's exactly what I don't want to do. I don't want to read things just to say I did or get them out of the way. That's a waste of time, in my opinion. I'm just torturing myself. I think there's a quote that says "No one wants to read a novel, but everyone wants to say they did".

Lord of the Rings was not TORTURE. I won't read ANYTHING that bad. There were some portions I found rather boring but not the overall story. I think I could have found some SF that I enjoyed more for the amount of time I spent but I think there is some value in having one's curiosity satisfied. Assuming you are curious.

I'm afraid this thread is turning into "well, you should at least read X by Y", which is not what I wanted. What I wanted to know was how important it was to read the 'classics' as a writer, when I find the classics boring.

Think about movies that people say are classics. Not as a movie-maker but as a storyteller. Those old movies that people consider classics or quality works like Dr. Strangelove and Some Like It Hot and 2001:A Space Odyssey and The Graduate - hated them. Felt like I was wasting my time. And others that I have seen and kinda liked, they're not in my DVD collection.

Think about your favorite book. The one you would bring to a desert island with you. Is it considered an 'essential read'? I'm willing to bet not.

I started thinking a long time ago that you don't just read a book, the book reads you. In a way that doesn't make sense since the book is inanimate but my point is that why you do or don't like a book or what you see or don't see says something about you. One reason that it is good to discuss books with other people even when you like the book is that they often notice things in the book that you didn't. But getting into arguments over whether it is GOOD or BAD is just boring and aggravating. Sometimes you end up having to pretend to be polite to people that have no taste. LOL

Considering that Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein were regarded as the BIG THREE I think for someone to claim to be a science fiction writer without having read some of their stuff would be rather ludicrous.

You don't like Dr. Strangelove!!! Well I had to hide under desks in school too. I remember sitting on the roof of the fraternity in the summer of 1970 talking to a senior about what he thought of the possibility of a nuclear war. He suggested just dropping some acid and going, "Oh wow, ain't that cool." while watching your skin burn off. So I guess some stories must be viewed within the social psychology of their time because they are products of that time. But the Russian and American nukes are still there and the global environmental and economic conditions of the near future are going to be far worse than they were in the 60's.

Of course 2001 isn't nearly as mind blowing as it was in 1968. We had not seen astronauts bouncing around and driving on the moon. There were still people who doubted it could happen. I wonder if some people use the so called SF stories to do their imagining rather than as a trigger to inspire their own imagining. I always find it ironically fascinating that Verner von Braun had an American science fiction magazine shipped to him via Sweden during WWII. Do you expect people who think math and science to be fun to rate various sci-fi the same as people that can't stand math?

psik

[psikeyhackr]

Now this is funny.

I just now jumped to a blog with a picture from Dr. Strangelove.

http://discuss.epluribusmedia.net/



21 War Loving Senate Democrats
Give Bush $165 Billion for More War

psik

[Bond]

On Dr. Strangelove, I have to say I didn't like it too. Had one or two good lines but the comedy was drowned out by Kubrick's directorial aesthetics which seems hell bent on sucking all the life out of a scene. Neither do I particularly like Some Like It Hot. I think there's too much reliance on crossdressing drag comedy for my taste. My pick for Communist East vs. Capitalist West comedy would be another Billy Wilder directed movie: One, Two, Three (1961) starring James Cagney. It was popular with the viewing audience of its time and no less astute in its observations of society than the others. Another big plus: it's actually funny on a consistent basis.

theWallflower, are you still relatively young? If so I would suggest revisiting The Graduate a bit later. Mike Nichols is a terrific director of such interpersonal movies but you have to approach them in the right frame of mind and temperament.

Relating this to our current discussion I would note I could not make these claims with any confidence unless I actually saw all the movies mentioned. But I have; so I do. I have a clearer idea of what I like because I have a better idea of what I don't like. It's like having to understand your enemy to beat him.

The great value of reading classics is that they usually hold that distinction because they illustrate a certain concept or style very well and makes it easier to discuss such ideas with others. It is by acting as a common REFERENCE that they derive a lot of value. One of the things that makes Shakespeare so notable for example is that he can serve as a one stop dictionary for human situations.

[RimWorlder]

Strangelove was great on so many levels it pains me to hear people being critical of it.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in the war room!

Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all that stuff

Mein Fuhrer, I can valk!

OMG - I'm laughing just thinking about it.

And the camera angles. OMG - utterly classic. You could teach a whole class on movie-making with that one film. Like that pic above with that shadowy, hard focus. Incredible. Just nothing like it.

But, back to the topic at hand.

Despite his importance to english/western literature, I hate ol Bill. Read plenty of him, had to study him and, despite my utter distaste, I recognized that in order to achieve an understanding of my chosen field of study, I was not only going to have to read him - but learn to appreciate him. Not neccessarily 'like' - but appreciate. What did the scholars find so mesmerizing? How was his legacy interpreted today? What could I steal from him? So I did. Now, if my choices for an evening's read are Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Richard III, 99 times out of a hundred I'll grab the Heinlein. But that still leaves me reading Shakespeare every once in a blue moon - even if its only to remind myself why I detest him so much.

The important point being that I still will read him - even on my own entertainment, for-fun time.

And it pays off. If I hadn't read all that Shakespeare, I'd be clueless when it came to watching Forbidden Planet and would definately not be able to appreciate AND like it as much as I do.

[psikeyhackr]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...53959629734434

Sorry! Couldn't resist.

psik

[ArthurFrayn]

That is absolutely _not_ what we're talking about here. See my original question. We're talking about how essential it is for a new writer to be reading the essential reads of sci-fi versus the contemporaries. Or put another way, how essential it is that he read the things people say he 'needs' to read vs. the things he 'wants' to read.

You know the answer to your question without even asking it
-you don't have to read anything that you don't want to, any more than anyone has to read anything written by you if they don't want to. That's the stone truth of the matter. But I'd say that telling people how you don't want to bother to make the effort to read other people's highly regarded stuff, doesn't really set up a good example does it?
My advice is -if you don't want to read any of it -fine. Don't tell anyone but your cat. Especially at SF conventions. SF fans are often frighteningly smart people and if they catch you saying something uninformed, they will laugh you off the planet. Just maybe, your lack of reading wont show in your work and then you'll have the last laugh.

But that's not how it works 98% of the time...

The would-be writers who achieve success are the ones who will find that classic who's time has come to be re-interpreted.

No sarcasm intended at all -if you were looking for someone to give you a real insight by asking this question -Rimworlder has just given you one right here.

[homosap]

This has kind of run its course but just to clarify my last post. I wouldn't have any of the 4 movies listed as being in my top 10 films. But I do feel they all have more than enough merit to be a long way from hateful. There are very few books or films that have evoked such a negative response from me as to describe them as hateful. Probably the closest I've come to hateful is Heinlein, sacrilege I know, but there is an aspect of his work that really rubs me up the wrong way. I know this because I've read about 10 of his books. But even then there is enough in the way of ideas/concepts to keep him above the 'hateful' mark.

Back on the OP, I just can't get my head around the idea that reading classics is a chore. The few that have felt like hard work, for me, are far out weighed by all the good stuff. From a writing perspective I can see that a good grounding in the history of the genre would be valuable. On a personal level I love reading older stuff and comparing the futuristic ideas to reality and current futuristic ideas. If I were trying to write books then I'd find this aspect helpful in clarifying my own future perspective. My book shelves contain tomes from just about every era and style of SF(I love to trawl charity shops etc for books). I also have a lot of antholigies from early pulp publications to your modern 'best new' style collections. The diversity within the genre is actually quite staggering but you'd never know that from only reading a select few modern publications.

As Arthur Frayn states, if you can hack it by just sitting down and producing work then fair enough. If you fall on your face through lack of preparation, or passion, in the genre then you have been warned!