@eyrea Hmm, that's the most interesting answer I've heard so far, and I always enjoy an interesting answer... 😁
And I agree not everything that is labled as depressing actually is, but I'm sure some are. And as others have expresed on this post, the best books for them are the ones that make them cry. I'm not trying to say that's bad, I'm more curious why... 🤔
@NickEast Traditionally in literary criticism, that's attributed to catharsis -- empathy lets us relate to the fiction and experience it by proxy. Hence stories of struggle and conflict resolving to poignant or bittersweet endings.
I find what gets omitted often are genre action stories. They ought to be very depressing with the big body count and questionable heroes, but they create euphoric endings. How messed up is that?
@eyrea It is kind of messed up, not a lot of discussion about trauma in action stories.
But perhaps fiction is messed up because reality is messed up? 🤔
I'm finding, since COVID, I'm preferring more stories which are person/people vs nature than the traditionally more popular person vs society or person vs person. Things like Thirteen Lives, or Apollo 13 (huh, both Ron Howard films). People are out in an awful situation, work it out together, and (mostly) get to live.
No villains. I'm tired of villains to a large extent. There's so many in real life.
@eyrea However, it could be said that in the people vs nature stories, nature is mostly given the postion as "the bad" and the people are the heroes.
But is that true in reality? Or should we be the bad and nature is just trying to defend itself? 🤔
@NickEast Hm, the way I was taught to look at it is nature just is, and it's foolish of us to think it wishes us good or bad at all. Farley Mowat's Two Against the North (also titled Lost in the Barrens) is very clear about that, as are the two films I mentioned earlier.
I mean, the mountain the boys are trapped under in Thirteen Lives is worshipped and loved as a goddess.
It's more about recovering from mistakes and misfortunes and working together.
@eyrea I certainly understand it's about cooperation and perseverance. But just thinking about it a bit further, if nature is always neutral.
That would mean that people always represent to good or the bad in that conflict. And I'm not convinced they more often than not represent the good? 😜 😆
@NickEast Person vs nature can go all sorts of ways. The person or people can be the villain, like in all those stories about land developers wanting to spoil an area to mine its gold or whatever, and then getting killed by an avalanche their greed caused. Or they can be people who respect nature and heroically defend it.
Or they can be average folks who have to survive in a bad situation. There don't need to be goodies and baddies. It turns a lot of western literary tradition on its head.
@NickEast Lots of things can happen. Thirteen Lives: thousands of people come together, and while there are conflicts about the best course of action, in the end everyone works together and the boys and their coach are saved. It's an epic story with no villains (er, except humanity-caused climate change in the background).
Part of my current interest is there's very little blaming. The focus is on the solution, not retribution. I need that right now due to (waves hand at world in general).
@eyrea I do get the appeal of something solution based when so much humanity in reality seem to be about causing problems 😇
Still, even in your example "people" are sort of the villian through causing climate change... 🤔
@NickEast Yeah, which turns out into a person vs self conflict... but it's something those New Critics never defined, because they meant that as an individual in conflict with themselves, having a growth journey. But for things like climate change, people collectively are doing it to themselves.
@NickEast@bookreviews@bookbubble@bookstodon@humour i read that book young and found it depressing too. Later i could appreciate the beauty but imaginary tales that demand lots of death because that's reality... never made sense when aimed at children. Most of our friends will live longer than one summer.
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