How about a huge argument?
What makes good literature? What makes bad literature? What isn't literature at all?

> The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
> -- Edwin Schlossberg

Good literature is literature that you, personally, enjoyed reading.

>>3
You're violating the whole [Vitriolic] nature of the topic. Please step outside until the conclusion of the thread. Thank you.

I think everything on the New York Times bestseller list is bad literature. I think anything very popular in its own time will turn out to be bad literature in ten years. I think that it takes at least twenty years for the worth of a book, its true literary status, to even begin to be realized.
I hate the da vinci code and I don't understand why people I thought were intelligent like it.

>>5
Da Vinci Code is terrible. I read Dan Brown's Digital Fortress too which was almost the exact same as Da Vinci Code. Both the books read like a movie script and insulted the reader's intelligence.

>>6 Cont.
But the mythology and story was entertaining. Digital Fortress was boring though.

Now, I would like to discuss further what >>6 has said.
What does it mean, to insult the reader's intelligence? How do the books of Dan Brown accomplish this?
I encourage >>6 or others who have read these books to explain this in detail.

I haven't read any Dan Brown books, but I have read this highly entertaining blog by a linguist who likes to mock Dan Brown and his horrid writing, at length:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001622.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001631.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001684.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001811.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002325.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002345.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002467.html

After reading some of that, I did open up a Dan Brown book at random in a book store, and nearly laughed out loud at the wonderfully stupid opening passage, which is also quoted in one of the articles:

> Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him.

>>8
Insult the reader's intelligence meaning that he assumes his readers are stupid. And LOL, the blog is funny. If you google Dan Brown, it comes up 4th.

>>10
I know that, I'm interested more in a deconstruction of his techniques. Although I guess the blog above might do that somewhat.

Good literature for me is literature which requires an intellectual effort to consume. Writing that doesn't concentrate on action, but situation. Writing that carefully places words.

>>9

The best part about Dan Brown's Digital Fortress is that the plot depends on basic math not working right. Also, someone invents "unbreakable encryption". Also, when they try the unbreakable encryption in the secret government magic unencryptor, it turns out to be a VIRUS! and deletes the Pentagon's network. Also they all stand around yelling instead of turning it off while it does this.

>>13 it's obviously a four dimensional religivirus

duh

>>13

So, was his technical consultant from First 4 Internet, or was it just a bottle of JD?
Oh, please tell me everyone gets fired after that. Please? Lie if you have to.

everyone gets fucking fired

>>16

Thanks!

Looking at a lot of this:

Did the bastard even READ Applied Cryptography?