Writing.Com General Discussion

I think you got it right with that "superior work of lasting merit" stuff. While everyone might bring to the table their own assessment of what makes a work superior, there's a lot less wiggle room with the "lasting merit" part. By definition it would eliminate any titles currently appearing on one or other best seller lists. In fact, it's fair to say that most titles published five years ago have dropped off the radar, if they ever got there in the first place. It's axiomatic that to be lasting, something needs to actually last.

It would be great if we could quantify what might make a work "last," transcend it's era, but the factors involved are not only forever mysterious, they're completely beyond your control. Why are Hemingway and Fitzgerald still read today (and still worth the effort), but an equally fine writer like Dos Passos far less so? Fitzgerald wasn't trying to write literature, he just wanted to get published. Hemingway started out as a journalist; he was writing for a deadline and a paycheck.

Check out the Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction over the past six or seven decades. For every Old Man and the Sea or To Kill A Mockingbird, there's something like Alan Drury's Advise and Consent, the first of his series of massive political potboilers, none of which appears on anyone's Must Read list today.

The trouble with the plethora of MFA programs and writers workshops is they've turned out competent writers by the yard, all of whom are obsessed with being significant. Usually the result is that folks just shake their heads and say, "Oh my. Aren't we pretentious." Meanwhile, the storytellers and the real creative energy have migrated to the genres, graphic novels, cable and the Internet.

Don't try to write literature. Learn to write a story and do the best job you can. Let history take care of literature.
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"A screaming comes across the sky."
'Gravity's Rainbow