Improving Jewish Literature (merged)

red sea

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 3:52 pm

cdawnr wrote:

wif wrote:

HooRYou wrote:

That is part of the problem with a lot of Frum novels. The struggle is there, but it almost always has a very pat happy ending (child survives disease, single person completes dream shidduch, couple rebuild shalom bayis etc.) and then everyone lives happily ever after. But as we all know well life isn't like that and when and if you past the first test you get the next, sometimes even as a direct result of the first test that you thought you "passed".

All that is true...but the reason that reading Jewish novels for me is trial by fire is the writing! Oh Holy Hemingway, the writing STINKS! It makes me cry! I cannot read a magazine. I cannot read a novel. I cannot read any of that stuff unless I did something very very bad. Then I must read as a punishment.

The prose! The poems!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!! My eyes!

OMG I SO agree! And then everyone else in the community thinks they are so great. But I will say that there ha been improvement in the last 10 yrs...I really believe that.

I was a Creative Writing major in college, but after I became frum I found it very difficult to write within all the parameters of my beliefs (tznius, moral, etc) without it seeming horribly contrived.

Maybe soemday.

please write!

red sea

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 3:57 pm

Fox wrote:

I think about the problem of Jewish literature constantly -- why do we have such great writers and such lousy books?

One of the problems, IMHO, is that many of us who love books love them precisely because they provide an escape or a vacation from our day-to-day lives. Truthfully, I'm not sure I want to read a book about the kind of people and community I live in -- no matter how well-plotted or written. I'd prefer to take a trip into someone else's world for an hour, then come back refreshed to tackle my own.

I feel similarly. I dont like reading books that are real life around me. I just dont need a book for that. Reading is a vacation, escape.

I also dont like books that shove their jewish minded theme in your face. Just books that are on varied stories that dont go against torah values would be nice, nothing jewish educational, if I wanted that there are seforim in english.

waterbottle

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 4:06 pm

Conflict is what makes stories notable... Unfortunately conflict is usually something negative.. overcoming a bad home situation, overcoming poverty, pursuing love, etc. Certain writers *cough Naomi Ragen cough* are often insulted in the frum community because they write about conflicts in frum society which people perceive as a Chilul hashem or over exaggerated and false. (I'm glad someone is writing about frum Jews even if people think it's a mis-representation) Good fiction needs conflict! Unless we're going to write a million Holocaust stories, frum novels are going to be about current issues. Just read this forums "controversial topics" or "issues of concern to frum society" and there are tons of posts which would make very exciting novels.

Related: I wrote a number of songs back during my conflicted teenage years. Since becoming frum and much more settled in my life, most of my "struggle" is gone, and therefore my music has become less inspired. The songs I wrote are not tznius and I do not feel they are appropriate anymore. I feel the issue of improving Jewish Literature also applies to Improving Jewish Music. Right now, a lot of the approved "frum music" is boring, sounds the same and is missing the variety that is found in secular/"non jewish"/non-approved music. If we must be on a crusade against "non-Jewish" influences then we'd better get our act together and improve our fiction, art and music!

louche

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 5:38 pm

wif wrote:

Soul sister!!!!!!!!!!! I have found you at last!!! I knew I couldn't be the only person on the planet who cringed at the grammatical gaffes, the belabored usage, the sloppy spelling...to say nothing of the syrupy sweetness, the trite situations, the pat endings. And when it comes to children's books, I'm even more irked because there is ZERO excuse for bad language--by which I mean misspelling, misplaced modifiers, subject-verb clashes, etc.--in a children's book. The books are supposed to be teaching them how to use the language, not how to mangle it.

Yea, verily do I echo your clarion call: AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

wif

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 6:18 pm

louche wrote:

wif wrote:

"O, they have liv'd long on the alms-basket of words." quothe the bard in reply.

Sometimes, I would pick up a book and cry at the almost-talent lurking just beneath the overdone, cliched and grammatically incorrect prose... Jewish rag-mags are forbidden from my house as my husband and I would go through the entire glossy and pick it apart--content, grammar, style--and it was making us quite cynical. Was fun, though.

O Hemingway, Hemingway, wherefore art thou, Hemingway?

Louche, we stand together in pain.

wif

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 6:24 pm

Quote:

(I'm glad someone is writing about frum Jews even if people think it's a mis-representation)

Um...but it is a misrepresentation. And a harmful one. Why is that a good thing? Better nothing be said or written about us than something of the all-fum-men-are-perverts-beaneath-the-venear-and-women-have-affairs-to-expres-their-unhappiness-at-the-religious-confinement-and-who-can-blame-them-really-yuck-those-straggly-beards genre.

If you followed that, you get a cookie.

mimivan

Mon, Mar 31 2008, 8:04 pm

waterbottle wrote:

But does all conflict have to be of the controversial variety? Ladies, don't you also have conflicts in your live that don't question the very basis of your beliefs? And I don't mean whether or not to serve beef or chicken at the seder...

I do think it is possible to write about conflict in a way that will not be a chillul hashem...now if I had only time to do it...

What about Jane Austen (sorry for the mention of secular literature) which I remember from H.S....most of her books dealt with the conflict of whom to marry, or friendship. Chekov wrote about inner conflict, which even a religious Jew can have at times (yetzer hara, yetzer ha tov) without shaking the foundations of what she bases her life on...etc..Dickens and Hugo wrote about social injustice (one could write about unfair government practices, not about "bad rabbis")

I really think a frum Jew can adopt these outlooks and still write frum books...

the question is, if the publishers in the frum world are used to publishing sacchrine sentimental stuff, will they take a look at something real?

Fox

Tue, Apr 01 2008, 5:23 am

Another problem that often surfaces in Jewish literature is the need to appeal to a range of people with vastly different levels of understanding. In the secular publishing world, there exists an audience who understands things like metaphor, allusion, hyperbole, and various other writing devices. Just try one of those in the frum world, and you'll be bombarded by criticism from people who are kind, wonderful yidden, but who just don't "get it."

I think this is also a reason that so many books are weak: they were probably wonderful when they were submitted, but after being watered down by an editorial board in order to make sure no one could possibly misinterpret or be offended . . . well, you get pablum!

I happened to read a great quote from Oscar Wilde that reminded me of this thread: "The problem with a great many writers is that they are less interested in writing a good novel than in writing a novel that will do good."

Imaonwheels

Sun, Apr 13 2008, 7:02 am

As a frei person I was an avid reader.

I do think that part of our problem is cultural bias.
If a character "straightens her skirt and takes a quick glance at her hair on her way out" well, that's normal. But if the character makes sure her tichel is on properly and puts her hand to the mezuzah that is shoving it in your face. All women supposedly are concerned with appearances but not so much with their tznius.

Conflict is the essence of good literature. Like most living things death is in the static. The Gift of the Magi? Conflict yes. Bad, not at all. The more subtle and deep the conflict the more real the portrayal, the more fulfilling as literature. Conflict can make one grow. We can wrestle with our darker side and win or surrender. There was an excellent poem once in a magazine where a wife is jealous of her dh's mistress and it is the Torah he learns that she was subtly referring to. And the keepers of the holy screamed. How dare she. And how dare they print it. That magazine began putting disclaimers - on poetry and even divrei Torah. Of course they
folded.

I resent the implication that frum people's lives are devoid of drama and emotional change.Yes, few of us are debating whether our infatuation is worth trashing a stable but less than exciting marriage but who needs that kind of cheapening of love? In real life we know the answer. I believe a delicate misunderstanding or differences in a couple could be handled within the bounds of tznius. Certainly we have more than our share of religious complications.

The problem is that many of those writing are not even trying. They just want to write about a message and hide it in fiction so we or our children will have an easier time swalloing it. Happy endings are not bad or improbable. The trick is the finding of happy or blessed in all endings.

Raisin

Sun, Apr 13 2008, 7:33 am

Fox wrote:

I think this is also a reason that so many books are weak: they were probably wonderful when they were submitted, but after being watered down by an editorial board in order to make sure no one could possibly misinterpret or be offended . . . well, you get pablum!

I know someone who writes childrens stories for a frum magazine. In one of her stories she wrote that a child threw a toy down the toilet. SHe was told to take the toilet refernce out.

Victorian writers wrote under similar restrictions to a frum wrtiter nowadays, they wrote great books.

gryp

Sun, Apr 13 2008, 7:53 am

I personally can't stand fiction. There is so much trouble in the world already, and then someone goes and makes up more problems. Smile

The only thing that interests me nowadays is true stories, personal accounts or biographies. I'd rather even read about the last 5000 years of history than about some fictitious silly character who's jealous of her equally fictitious and silly next-door neighbor.
For light reading, I enjoy short stories but I haven't had a chance to find good ones lately.

wif

Sun, Apr 13 2008, 8:44 am

Imaonwheels wrote:

Well said. Beyond the problem of writing style, there is the huge problem of contrived literature. People just need you to be real.