Literature

Outlander, the book, was released approx. 20 years ago by Diana Galbaldon. Just last year Starz bought the rights to the book and created the TV series. The series has received great reviews worldwide, although non-US TV audiences are behind the US release schedule.

Questions to consider:

1. Why did it take 20 years for the book to be turned into live action? The book has a certain edginess and rawness that is unique (in my opinion) and requires an extremely strong female lead. Was TV (or film) actually capable of creating such a show before 2014?

2. What is the audience's reception to seeing not only their favourite characters alive on the screen, but also some very graphic and unusual scenes? Episodes 15 and 16 received a lot of hype.

3. How was the story line for the TV series altered from the book in an effective way? What changes did the TV writers make that didn't do the book justice?

Victorian, Georgian, Modernism, Postmodernism… What now? A lot of time is spent, especially in academics, understanding the movements and patterns of art and culture. Thanks to an English Lit education, my best understanding of these eras springs from literary history, and from what I've heard and felt in class and even online, we are entering a new phase, a new movement in art.

The past half decade or so, since the end of WWII, has been a period scholars call Postmodernism. Built from the aesthetics of Modernism, the Postmodernists have mixed "high" and "low" culture (that is, what is considered serious art and what the masses seem to enjoy) to create a playful environment in the face of larger oppression: nuclear war, surveillance, genocide, eugenics, you get the idea. There was still an ongoing search for self and place despite all these things though.

As we go deeper into the 21st century, we separate ourselves from the last 50 years of the 20th, from the Cold War and cultural climates as variant as the 50s, 60s, 70s… you see what I mean. What are we experiencing now? What kind of art and literature is post-Postmodernism, what sort of culture do we get to create in?

So far this century, we've seen an expanding global culture, multiple wars on foreign soil, the looming threat of terrorism, economic devastation and reconstruction, and most recently a wave of progressivism: new civil rights movements, marriage equality, healthcare reform, etc. Are these influences in art and literature? My favorite works published in the last 10 years have been pieces of historical fiction (Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies, Max Brooks's World War Z) and the culminating episodes of fantasy cycles begun before the 21st century (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final Dark Tower novel and even its expansion piece The Wind Through the Keyhole). These fantasy works certainly employ a sense of history as well. Musically, I see a sense of history in my favorites as well, whether personal (Sufjan Stevens's Carrie & Lowell) or national (Titus Andronicus's The Monitor).
Maybe I'm biased and just want to believe my own theory. But it looks like this newer phase of culture is very aware of what has come before and is learning or reconstructing for its own sense of place.

Sherman Alexie has written several novels, short stories, and poetry. He wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film Smoke Signals, which was based off his collection of short stories Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fistfight in Heaven. This article can explore a few of the themes that Alexie incorporates in his writing. His work is taught in some classrooms, yet his novels have been challenged and/or banned by libraries. This article can even open up a bigger discussion into the lack of diversity in literature.

We could call it "the reading challenge", as electronic reading is apparently having a great success – even though I will always side with paper books. Which one is going to survive? Is paper really going to collapse under the Kindle novelty, or will it eventually prove superior? Here it could be also cosidered and analysed how our brain receives and elaborates readings differently depending on whether we read on paper or from other devices.

Recently, I read an article revealing that American families have stopped reading books and novels, and that the average American read one book per year. Literature is so crucial to our understanding and growth: it teaches us creativity and imagination, how to understand and relate to people that don't share the same experiences, while making us critical thinkers of the world around us. As our technology becomes faster and even more hi-tech, I can't help but think that the fears of Ray Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451" have come true. Does literature still have a role in our post-modern society and is it an issue that so few Americans read more than a book a year?

After the success of the Harry Potter series, the YA market exploded. The books released by publishers under the YA category today are not as "dumbed-down" or childish as was the trend for a long time — offerings for the last decade have tackled many social issues and provided bleak scenarios of the future. As with HP, the success of the Hunger Games series has also inspired a number books and series, except the HG wave is filled with post-apocalyptic or near-apocalyptic settings.

My initial reaction to the premise of the Hunger Games series was sadness — I was not interested in reading about children fighting to the death for food. Recently at a convention I asked the group about whether or not they believed the dystopia trend signals a despondency amongst the young people reading them — a lack of hope for the future of the world. A junior high teacher spoke up to say no, that she hears that a lot but she believes the trend is a hopeful one, because even though the main characters of these novels are struggling to stay alive in ruined worlds, the fact is that within the story, humanity has survived whatever collapse has been portrayed, and the young people in the story are re-building a better society.

I'd be interested in seeing a well-researched article from a psychological perspective that compares several different popular YA series, and discusses the issue of hopefulness within those series.

I'm putting this in Literature, but it could also be an article for the Writing category, depending on approach.

Is there any way that writing in literature can fall back into the writing styles of classical books. So much of writing has changed and evolved but are there any current books or any possibility of an audience that would enjoy modern authors writing in the style of classical going from Tolstoy, Austen, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Orwell. With Harper Lee's "new" book coming out onto shelves this next week, it'd be interesting to see others following in her path and falling back towards those times, settings, and styles of writing.

When Samuel Beckett was asked what "Waiting for Godot" really meant, he waved a hand and said it was merely a play about two men waiting. But it is clearly so much more. Or is it? Do we over-analyze authors' simple ideas or do they purposefully sneak in symbols and themes for readers to uncover?