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Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

parkerhiggins.net

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Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#81
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental ideas behind the movement led to things like universal public education, national investment in the sciences and arts, as well as universal public healthcare. These are all things which almost every modern nation recognizes as good ideas. There are many people who disagree 100% on that point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Thanks, since the post I was replying to was clearly an example of this, I'll assume you're just being helpful.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not even close" Really? Because while Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes are far from perfect, they are quite useful in pointing out movies that have more rather than less quality.

Those are aggregated peoples' opinions, which are subjective. I was thinking of objective metrics.

"what other people are willing to pay" is also "aggregated peoples' opinions"

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#83
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is the statement applies equally even if you switch the roles of Amazon and Hachette!

Amazon intentionally delayed/prevented the shipment of Hachette books to customers. What actions did Hachette take that would be similarly punitive (or punitive at all)?

False. Hachette didn't have a contract with Amazon, and therefore Amazon wasn't under any obligation to pre-stock (i.e., donate warehouse space to) Hachette books. There was no prevention of shipments. Any delays were due to Hachette not having the same responsive fulfillment capacity that Amazon has.

Similarly, offering Hachette books at Hachette's list prices is being spun by Author's United as something negative. If Hachette wanted competitive prices--change the list price.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#84
post #17

Sorry, I admire her writing, but I call complete and utter bullshit on this speech. Books are commodities, not some magical elixer from the gods. Some are good, some are terrible. I buy mine from Amazon and Audible. New technologies, and they are helping more people to read more books than ever before.

I watched the video (rather than just relying on the transcript) and while I am inclined to agree that books are commodities, I think the only failing in her speech was the conflation of concerns that produced an incoherent thesis.

On the one hand, she had a call to action for authors (and perhaps others in the publishing industry) to respect quality, to produce quality and to seek quality. But she ended up out of her depth by entering the Amazon/Hachette dispute with a poor understanding of the forces at play, and a lack of awareness of how Amazon has enabled new outsider authors to find broader recognition that she started her talk complaining about how it took her and her peers a half-century to find.

The lamenting call for quality was inspiring. But the lack of awareness of how the industry has changed, and perhaps suffering from what JA Konrath calls the "Bookholm Syndrome" of being inside the publishing world too long that you start to empathize irrationally with your exploitative publishing company--that was bad. Or at least some kind of cognitive dissonance at work.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#85
post #64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even from a hardcore free market perspective, you can't really say books are a commodity, insofar as they they have limited substitutability. There is no way to make up for quality with volume. You can't just take a masterpiece of human literature and say: "Suppose the Ulysses was never written by James Joyce, well I can just have the same utility by producing 10^9 pages of teen Twilight fan fiction".

But I think that's my point, although I didn't express it very well. I happen to be reading Ulysses right now - amazing book. But what about Danielle Steel's books? They're also books, right? There's a tremendous range, so I don't think we can have these blanket statements that books are special and that we need protection against companies like Amazon.

No, that's exactly the opposite of your point. The history of thought would not be the same with or without Ulysses, we would not be more or less the same with enough Danielle Steel. And books are not special, many other forms of human expression deserve this kind of protection.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#86

> Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I never really studied history in any depth. Do you think this is just hyperbole? By which I mean is she simply overstating or exaggerating the role of art in historic events? Am I taking it too literally - that art is the first step towards cultural upheaval? Can anyone give some examples of art effecting some kind of huge social…

I just finished http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide

Great book, I got the Peter Constantine translation. It was published 30 years before the French revolution.

To answer your question, the fact that the powers that be at the time took the trouble to ban the book is some indication as to the potential they felt it had for disruption.

If you want a behavioral explanation, you should consider the morale of any kind of resistance. Such morale depends on some kind of foundation and support. Inspiration for these may be found in art.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#87

> Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I never really studied history in any depth. Do you think this is just hyperbole? By which I mean is she simply overstating or exaggerating the role of art in historic events? Am I taking it too literally - that art is the first step towards cultural upheaval? Can anyone give some examples of art effecting some kind of huge social…

IMO, no, it's false, it just sounds _so_ good. There is obviously a feedback loop, but that doesn't mean that change begins in art. Art is, like everything else, as much a factor as a product of the growing mindset changes. You can certainly find examples, but if you think about it, 99% of the art didn't cause any shift. Is the US socialist after "The Grapes of Wrath", or has race become less of an issue after "To Ki…

You are correct; Good art has an amplification effect on what already exists. It translates an experience that affects one person (the artist, or a character in the artist's imagination) to an experience that resonates for a larger audience.

If a work of art has enough emotional impact to change the habits of thought, then it is plausible that it could change behavior as well; but here it may be difficult to discern the primary work of art from second-order effects: the discussions that arise in response to or in criticism of the art. These second-order effects may drive the actual impetus for change.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank Project Gutenberg instead.

P.G. deserves most of the credit, that's correct. But Amazon also deserves credit for integrating it into the Kindle system. They didn't have to do that, and they make no money off of it.

Well they sell kindles for it and they know most people will get bored of classic literature with aging dialect.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are aggregated peoples' opinions, which are subjective. I was thinking of objective metrics.

"what other people are willing to pay" is also "aggregated peoples' opinions"

You've never met people whose stated opinion did not match their behavior? I find that rather normal.

Re: Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what other people are willing to pay" is also "aggregated peoples' opinions"

You've never met people whose stated opinion did not match their behavior? I find that rather normal.

"Nobody has found a reliable metric to determine the quality of art, not even close, other than what others are freely willing to pay for it."

"You've never met people whose stated opinion did not match their behavior? I find that rather normal."

Are you retracting the freely paying method as a way to determine quality then? You're claiming then that there's no way at all to determine quality?

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