Personally I'm a total sloot for spoilers. I read moviepooper.com religiously and love wikipedia and the imdb.com forum boards for helping me uncover everything I may want to know about a plot/character/thing. I am fully aware that this could be the result of my pathological loathing of the uncertain, but I also think it's good fun - ultimately I never find myself caring that much about a plot that I'll be upset if elements of it are revealed to me beforehand - that seems to me to be taking something which should be entertainment a bit too seriously. Of course, saying that, some people do like to get scarily into their fandoms, and take that as part of the wholesale experience, so meh. Horses for courses, I guess. Mmmm, fences are comfy. :)

I've never understood the big deal about spoilers either, for exactly this reason. I'll refrain from telling too much if I know somebody wants it that way, but if the only thing that's good about something is the surprise, there's not much there. And anyway I get the surprise just as much with the spoiling as with reading, right?

For the fifth HP book I remember I happened to read something on the day the book came out that told me Sirius died. I was surprised--I knew somebody was going to die, but didn't guess him. Had I been reading along in the book by that point it probably wouldn't have been as much of a surprise because the story started pointing that way long before Sirius fell through the curtain. Seeing it casually mentioned on the Internet was probably the most "surprising" death I can remember in HP for that reason. But it didn't change my reading experience much either way.

If there's something t a story, even if that story has a big surprise, it should improve upon knowing the information. That's why soap operas are never worth much in reruns.

Heck, I didn't realise Sirius was dead even after I read that scene. The guy fell through a curtain; it seemed so ordinary and prosaic, I didn't connect the dots until two pages later, then I went "Oh, wait, that curtain."

As far as deaths go, falling through a curtain is pretty dumb. The only way it could be made more silly if an old-style vaudeville-type crook had emerged from behind the curtain to yank Sirius forcibly offstage...

Good Lord, I've inadvertantly been completely uncontroversial. I must try harder.

I always think of Sirius's death as a Worms prod death. But as Sister M says he does basically spend the book going around with a neon flashing above his head reading "Wouldn't it be, like, tragic and ironic if I DIED" - mmm, that's quite a long sign :)

Have fun!

Curses, misclicked! Anyhow, I'm going to come out and say that I hate spoilers. Part of the fun of experiencing something for the first time *is* not knowing what's going to happening, or at least not knowing the specifics of how something will happen. More selfishly than that however, I don't like other people getting spoiled either, because it compromises our ability to compare experiences meaningfully. Half the fun of discussing things with people is the presumption that you experienced it under similar conditions; there's something special about a shared experience, and when someone is spoiled in advance then it dilutes that 'you had to be there' quality.

No, that's fair - obviously the article is polemical because I'm generally peeved at People On The Internet so it's not an entirely accurate depication fo my views. I guess what I was trying to get at is the idea that there are certain aspects of books, films etc. that are set up to be relevations (like, for example, whodunnit or how precisely Harry defeats Voldemort), in which case it's just good manners for people not tell you about them, but that there's also a wealth of plot stuff that's exactly that: plot stuff ... and it irritates me when people get self-righteous over the latter.

With reference to the shared experiences - which, you're right, are always very pleasurable - I can't help but think that it's actually pretty near impossible to come at a text with the same sort of assumptions and presumptions as someone else, regardless of whether one of you has heard things about it previously or not, because the way you approach something, and what you get out of it, is always going to be individualised and partially influenced by your history, personal experiences, knowledge etc. etc. To quote Only Forward, "everyone is alone in their world." I shall put a smiley here :) to make that appear to be a less depressing statement.

I quite agree that no-one will come at something from exactly the same cognitive position, but I think in a way that's why I prefer to lock out more direct differences in the experience. When I have (roughly) the same experience as someone else, then the difference in our reaction tells me something about them or perhaps about myself.

The other thing which I do find myself thinking is that given the order and manner of a revelation is a decent part of a creator's input, then I think it renders one slightly less capable of fairly judging a work that you haven't consumed in the intended fashion. I think that there's an implicit expectation in most works that the audience not know what is going to happen in advance. If you defy that expectation then you have to accept that you may not receive the work at its best, and I like to feel that I've given things an entirely fair chance and hopefully gotten the best possible experience that was available.

Really? I think most of the time there's an implicit assumption that the audience will, while not necessarily knowing the precise details, at least have a fair idea of the general sort of thing which might happen in a book or TV series or film. These things are not, after all, handed to us in plain brown paper wrappings with numbers for titles and no blurb. By the time we sit down to watch or crack open the book we've seen cover art, read a blurb, probably seen a trailer or two, maybe even caught a review somewhere. In those rare cases where we come to a presentation "blind" - by flipping around TV stations, maybe - it normally takes only a few seconds to grasp what is being presented to us. If there is someone in a big trenchcoat and a heavy metal soundtrack and stern government agents in sunglasses we are probably not watching a serious drama, and there may well be a lot of shooting and fighting in store for us; if there is a babysitter alone in a darkened house with ominous music playing in the background then we know damn well that someone or something is going to try its best to kill her.

Now, it would appear that to many people there is a difference in kind between saying "In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry fights the schemes of Lord Voldemort" and "In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the kindly old mentor-figure of Dumbledore is killed." The thing is, I actually struggle to see where. We are reading a fantasy series in which we have a hero and a Dark Lord and an aged mentor; we would surely expect the aged mentor to be shoved offstage so that our hero can't use him as a crutch in the battle against the Dark Lord, just as surely as we would expect the books to mainly involve the hero battling the Dark Lord's schemes, because it's precisely the sort of thing that happens in that sort of series. Heck, even in A Song of Ice and Fire, a fantasy series that's almost entirely about the plot, it's almost not a spoiler to say "Character X dies" (or, even, "Character X is rumoured to be dead, but is in fact alive"), because it's like saying "And then, get this, the Sun comes up in the morning, having gone down in the evening!" Not only is a devil-may-care attitude to the survival of major characters something we expect from Martin, but we can also make a fair stab at who is going to survive and who is going to die off. (I mean, was there ever any point in the first three books where any of us honestly thought that Tyrion was going to croak it?)

I think there's an important distinction between assuming the audience will be familiar with the tropes of the genre and assuming that they'll know exact details of your work. Creators can choose to defy genre expectations, or to play along with them in some way that is especially novel, and part of the fun for me is that I won't know until I get there.

Sure we may expect Dumbledore to get offed- but that expectation could have been wrong; finding out whether our predictions are right is part of the fun of reading the book. Furthermore we might not expect him to get killed in that particular book- she could have been saving it for a dramatic point in Book 7.

I think the point is that for some people spoilers *do* make things less fun. If they don't for you, then great, that's fine. But its only common courtesy not to spoil things for others- if you're on the internet then mark your spoilers, if you're discussing things with friends then give people who don't want to hear some fair warning. These things don't take much effort, so where's the harm?

You make fair points - actually one of things I really appreciated about the Farseer books was the character of Chade, especially because - as velnerable mentor figure - I thought I knew exactly what was likely to happen to him (notice the cunning way I have expressed that in order to not to spoil it =P)

I think my moderate (i.e. real) position on the subject of spoilers is that ultimately it comes to down to personal rights - obviously everyone who doesn't want to be has a fundamental right *not* to be spoilered and, as you say, it's a simple matter of common courtesy not to inflict spoilers on people. But equally the attitude of self-righteous hysteria from the anti-spoiler crowd rubs me up the wrong way. It's like you can say "there's a real cool shot of Christ Church in the movie" or "I really like the bit when he's in the alternative dimension" and people will be going "Avaunt bitch! How darest thou" (or words to that effect) as if you've just done something utterly morally reprehensible.

Haha - I guess what I'm basically getting at it is that people should be nice to each other, m'kay =P

Also although - as you have uncontrovertibly shown - there are perfectly sensible and understandable reasons for not liking spoilers I think there are also annoying reasons which, I would (and did) argue spring from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of fiction.

In general I take the position that it's entirely fair to discuss details of the plot of something if you are writing a review, on the basis of two things:

- People who especially dislike spoilers shouldn't be reading movie reviews which extend further than, say, a couple of paragraphs. I fully respect people's right to come to a film or book without being tipped off as to what's going to happen (there's plenty of instances where I feel the same). On the other hand, the price of not knowing the details of the plot is taking the chance that the plot will just suck.

- Not only is it actually quite difficult to do a decent review of a book, film, or whatever without discussing the plot, there are some cases where, in my opinion, I'd actually be doing the readers a disservice by not mentioning certain things. I am currently reading a series of Warhammer novels with the intent of reviewing them for Ferretbrain; in one of the books, there's a gobsmackingly stupid scene where our hero helps a Chaos-warped mutant recapture her essential humanity by having sex with her, and then kills her. This scene is just as dumb (and mildly disturbing) as it sounds, and while I could say "there is one scene in particular in this book which is very very silly, in a kind of sick way", in this case I don't think I'd really get the point across without saying "he fucks this chick and then kills her and it's a good thing because he's reminding her of what it is to be human".

On the other hand, I think (especially on mediums like Ferretbrains) it's more interesting for reviews to be "analysis in retrospect" as opposed to "recommendations ahead of time". Certainly, my favourite review on here is Dan's epic breakdown of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and that'd lose 99% of its hilarity if he wasn't able to share spoilers like "In this chapter, Harry and his friends sit in a tent and do nothing" and "Harry defeats Voldemort using a loophole in the magic item rules".

I think this is one of those situations where we're all basically loudly agreeing with each other. A case of "Your 3% Uranium tax goes too far/Your 3% Uranium tax doesn't go far enough".

I think Joe is absolutely right that being "spoilered" does make a difference, and I don't think anybody is actually going to disagree with that. The only disagreement, I think, is what counts as a "spoiler" and that's difficult to define because it's so entirely subjective.

To take Arthur's two examples, while it's all good fun (*tremendously* good fun, in fact) to be mean about JK Rowling, the reason that *I* wouldn't have felt "spoilered" by being told about the death of Dumbledore ahead of time isn't that I saw it coming, but that by that point I had so little investment in the book as a whole that I didn't care if Dumbledore lived, died, or turned out to be Voldemort's father or Ron from the Future.

I think it is (perhaps) easy for people like us, who tend to read books with a careless detachment and smug sense of superiority to forget that not everybody reads the same text in the same way we do. For an avid Potter fan, my review of Deathly Hallows would have completely ruined the experience (not least because I was very, very rude about it).

I think the thing people often miss about spoilers, then (and I think this is, ironically, the crux of both Kyra's argument and Joe's objection to it) is that they're entirely context-dependent. "Snape Kills Dumbledore" is a spoiler for somebody who is invested in Harry Potter, and not a spoiler for somebody who isn't. JK Rowling and the Guys Who Yelled Spoilers are both making the same mistake, assuming that there is only one right way to read any given book.

I think nothing quite compares to the freshness of a first reading where all the possibilities still lie open. It's true that really they don't - the genre constrains what's possible and the ending is usually predictable - but what I find satisfying is reading as if anything were possible and then on reflection realising that the unexpected events were inevitable all along. It's good to be able to re-read and some things are widely spoiled in advance e.g. Psycho, Star Wars, and in those cases you might concentrate on non-plot elements, enjoy the plot anyway or , as I find with fantasy novels that I obsessively re-read, enjoy the tension between what you know will happen and what you feel could happen, as if the plot could be different. But this doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with something that you can only read or watch once, and there's something I love about the one-off experience of reading something for a first time. It's a bit like the difference between timeless and disposable art. There is a kind of sadness at the end of knowing that you will never again be able to read it for the first time and that's why alongside re-readings you have to read new, unspoiled stories too. Sometimes spoilers are irrelevant, sometimes it's fun to spoil a book for yourself by starting in the middle of the series, but at least sometimes I want to have the suspense and freshness of an unspoiled read, even if it's something that it won't be worth re-reading. That latter being particularly true for comedies and horror films which do rely very strongly on suspense.

Other stuff:
1) Harry Potter. The part-spoiler of knowing somebody died but not knowing who died in book 5 I found really enhanced the reading of it. Because any time anyone was injured or knocked out you felt they could die. Which isn't to say I was reacting as if they were real people - but just because one doesn't genuinely mourn the death of a fictional character, it doesn't mean that the unexpected death isn't shocking and exciting. Though I did think that it was a bit crap when Sirius did actually die - I barely noticed. My philosophy tutor thought it showed something about how we don't always instantly grasp it when someone dies.
2) Lord of the Rings. Isn't it interesting how this is a plot that can't be spoiled because it does not rely on suspense or a secret plan by the bad guys? Unlike most of the subsequent fantasy based on LOTR that rely on plot twists.
3) What about real-life stories - anecdotes, news stories etc.? Aren't they instances showing that we do treat stories and life the same - and doesn't the drama of stories like elections come from not knowing the ending? Though on the other hand we can take pleasure in hearing anecdotes we've heard before. But thinking about that one, don't we often take pleasure in knowing the ending because we enjoy watching how people who don't yet know will react and fondly recall how it felt to hear this story and not know the ending, or else we enjoy a sort of power over the story because we know where it's going.

3) What about real-life stories - anecdotes, news stories etc.? Aren't they instances showing that we do treat stories and life the same

No, I'm sorry, but we really don't. We do not sit down and discuss the literary merits of a press conference. We don't write essays (unless we are especially up ourselves) about how it would be more thematically appropriate for George Bush to have invaded Iran instead of Iraq. Journalists who introduce metaphors and sly implications and interesting subplots to their stories get told off by their editors, because when we follow the news we're interested in the facts, and the sort of flirtatious shell-games we tolerate of authors is frustrating when you want to read the latest about crazy Austrian men and their cellar-families.

The fact that we talk about news "stories" does underline that we human beings have a sort of narrative instinct, a driving desire to put events into a logical order which we can follow in a linear fashion, but as Kyra points out fiction is more than a narrative. Don't mistake this for literary snobbery - it's equally true of lowbrow fun as it is of serious weighty tomes. The plot of Star Wars is as thin as a rake and flimsy as tissue paper, but that doesn't mean that Star Wars is a bad movie.

and doesn't the drama of stories like elections come from not knowing the ending?

Personally, I find that the drama of stories like an election involves in having a personal stake in proceedings; I voted for politician X of party Y, so I'm happy when X and Y do well and disappointed when they do badly. The most dramatic election I can remember was the 1997 one, and we all knew damn well the Tories were going to lose that one. The excitement came in seeing the likes of Portillo lose their seats.

A final point: stories about World War II are fascinating to a great many people, even though we all know full well that Hitler loses. History is inherently a narrative subject, and yet it comes refreshingly pre-spoiled.

It is definitely true that there are definitely cases where narrative is less important or is still compelling when unspoiled and I should have qualified 3) more carefully (it's more a case of my thinking aloud). But the fact that there are cases where the outcome is known in advance and an exciting story can still be told doesn't mean that there isn't a distinct kind of excitement arising from a narrative where we don't know the ending. Not that either kind is better, I think you just need a mix of different kinds.

As to treating stories and life the same - I guess that's rather too huge a debate for a comment. Really I just wanted to raise the point that as much as I agree with Kyra that we do treat life and stories differently, the distinction can't be drawn absolutely - the perspectives we take on things we are personally involved with are not discontinuous with the perspectives we take on stories and art. The big difference being that the material is 'given' so that we can't argue about Bush invading Iran not Iraq but we can argue about thematically appropriate ways of narrating what did happen, we do react to it and involve ourselves in it in terms of symbols and narratives etc. Though this is all obviously drifting a little from talk of spoilers!

Hmm the second paragraph of my last comment is filled with vague generalisations and I've had a good dog walk now to clarify what I wanted to say:

It is true that the virtues of literary fiction includes more than narrative, but that's also true of non-fiction stories. We can criticise or appreciate the same kinds of things in non-fiction stories as in fictional ones - things like style, use of symbols etc. The case of editors slapping down journalists is exactly this - criticising them for inappropriate style for that particular type of non-fiction story. Those criticisms wouldn't hold for other kinds of story about reality e.g. anecdotes we tell down the pub. And there are many examples of non-fiction where we can talk of the literary merit of the style, or where we can say that that is a better way of telling that particular story.

However, while there are elements other than the narrative that are important to both types of story, it is the way we react to the narrative and the constraints upon what is narrated that differentiates fiction from non-fiction. You give the example of how we can't criticise the literary merits of a news story by saying that it is thematically inappropriate for Bush to invade Iran not Iraq, because the constraint on what is narrated is that it has to be true. And we react differently to a (true) narrative about a loved one dying than to a narrative about a fictional character dying.

Some points from this (because numbered points make me happy):

1) There are clearly some blurry lines here. Anecdotes and urban myths are purportedly true but there is usually a blurring of truth in the telling that is more acceptable than it would be in journalism.

2) While we can't offer literary criticism to the story about George Bush invading Iraq not Iran because of its subject matter being thematically inappropriate, we could offer "literary" criticism to a story about George Bush going to Mount Doom and saving the world on the basis that it is thematically inappropriate for a news story not to be true. Truthfulness is a rule of that type of story as are the rules about not using symbols, sub-plots etc. just as other considerations might apply to other types of story. There's also of course the factor of WHAT true material is thematically appropriate and should be included, and which should not.

3) It's a sliding scale obviously, but I'm also not convinced that we never react to real life stories in the way you described. Sometimes things happen and we think "No! That wasn't what was meant to happen!" Let's say when Obama doesn't win in Texas, or when Heath Ledger dies young (not particularly good examples, just the ones recently that made me think of this). To some degree my reaction there is because these are real life events that I have a stake in - I am sad because I want Obama to win, because I liked Heath Ledger as an actor. But it's also the case (perhaps because I have a fairly tenuous personal stake in those true stories) that it frustrates my aesthetic sense of what was meant to be happening in terms of a meaningful narrative - having already interpreted the present in terms of an imagined future where Obama wins in Texas and Heath Ledger goes on to ever bigger and better roles. It's a rubbish story for the democratic election to keep going on and on or for Heath Ledger to die young - the way things are doesn't mean anything.

Now this really has absolutely bugger all to do with spoilers. That was the first paragraph of my previous comment - some real-life stories are more exciting because the outcome is uncertain, even if others are exciting despite or because of knowing the end. I wonder if we had accurate prophecy if they would have to give spoiler warnings?

Andy:

I think you're misunderstanding Arthur's use of the term "thematically appropriate". News stories being untrue isn't "thematically inappropriate", it's just plain illegal. A story about George Bush going to Mount Doom and saving the world could address the *themes* of personal responsibility against the rise of evil perfectly well. It would still be untrue, and therefore not a valid news story.

As for the US election and Heath Ledger, as you yourself admit your reaction to those events has *nothing* to do with whether it makes a good story and *everything* to do with your personal investment. In fact, I'd argue that the events you describe would, in a work of fiction, *absolutely* improve the "story". Heath Ledger's death brings his "story" to a satisfying and unambiguous conclusion, whereas if he was still alive there wouldn't be a story at all, he'd just be some actor. As for the Democratic elections, in every *fictional* election I've ever seen, things always go right down to the wire until the last possible minute, again an easy early win for the guy you like is a *bad* story.

You really can draw a sharp, clear, dividing line between real life and fiction. People react to the two things in very different ways.

You can criticise different kinds of stories for different reasons. An appropriate criticism of a fictional story might be that the chosen plot is thematically inappropriate, an appropriate criticism of a news story might be that it is untrue. I think it is possible to view these kinds of criteria as the same types of thing. The problem with an untrue news story isn't just that it is illegal - after all, plenty of untrue news stories aren't illegal and round the world plenty of true ones are - but that it fails in respect of what is required of it as a news story. Addressing themes of personal responsibility and evil through a fictional narrative is inappropriate for a news story, even if that same text would be good if published in a volume of weird and wonderful short stories.

Regarding Heath Ledger and the US election - I think really they are indications of the sliding scale. The death of Heath Ledger stands between the death of a fictional character and the death of a real family member in terms of my personal investment in the death. And this is why I am able to take a perspective on it that is closer to that I would take on a story. As Arthur agreed, we interpret reality in terms of narratives and we interpreted Heath Ledger in terms of a story in which he was going to grow up and be the next Jack Nicholson or whoever. Him dying was like finding that the second half of the paperback you had bought was actually blank, or aliens invading earth halfway through Jane Eyre - it interrupted the narrative flow, didn't fit with the expectations of the future we had based on our interpretation. Perhaps you can fit the sudden death into a different kind of story - a tragedy - but this involves a new interpretation. Brokeback Mountain becomes his one great role rather than the one promising many more (admittedly this assumes you like Brokeback Mountain as much as I do). But I think that when we experience events as meaningless, we are experiencing them as not fitting into a story. Ledger's death was an end but not a satisfying end. And no series of West Wing could sustain the election campaign going up and down and up and down interminably.

I'm not quite sure how to precisely make the case for the other extreme, about how where we do have a clear personal investment we react in ways parallel to how we react to art. Except to say that art and stories both reflect and form the ways we interpret reality and the roles in which we act and view ourselves. There are differences - as I said, I agreed with Kyra's comments about the cases in question - but I really don't think a very sharp, clear line can be drawn. Especially once you start talking about non-narrative art as well.

On the other hand, once you boil things down to the level of "Well, this reflects something fundamental about the way we function on a cognitive level" you're essentially saying that the parallels are meaningless; they're just an upshot of the way our brains work, and it's going to turn up in every field of human endeavour. That doesn't mean, for example, that you can approach journalism as if it's art or science as if it's journalism or art as if it's science.

I think though that there's definitely a case to be made for the fact that there are not unquestionable divisions between the different fields. I think we can approach journalism like art - there are types of questions that it might not make sense to ask of a journalistic piece, but I doubt there is any question that would be appropriate for each and any piece of art. Journalism can be seen as just one particular approach among many ones more normally considered artistic which aim to express or understand a real event.

Oh gosh.

Um, just to rewind the discussion away from Heath Ledger (didn't see that coming...), I just wanted to say that I actually sort of agree with this the central tenant (I think):

"the perspectives we take on things we are personally involved with are not discontinuous with the perspectives we take on stories and art"

At least it's interesting to think about the effect the one informs the other and so forth. I think the problem lies when people (the actually quite amorphous concept of 'people' I had when writing this article, I think perhaps indicating just people who annoy me on the internet) automatically assume there's literal correspondance i.e. that the shock and grief you could feel for Sirius is directly comparable to the shock and grief when, say, your grandfather dies.

I know I've just said the same thing about a thousand different ways (well, about three times) but I suppose I just wanted to affirm my position is actually less extreme than the article suggests it might be ... and equally that I have do, in fact, respect and agree with the more sensible aspects (as articulated here) of anti-spoiler argument.

Oh I didn't you think you sounded extreme - in fact I think this discussion rose from me saying that while I agreed with you I could also think of a way of disagreeing with you. I think you're right that people do lean too much towards the one extreme of taking fiction as real and spoilers as categorically bad (rather than the other of seeing absolute divisions everywhere) - but I wanted to make some sort of case for that side of the argument anyway.

I think we can approach journalism like art - there are types of questions that it might not make sense to ask of a journalistic piece, but I doubt there is any question that would be appropriate for each and any piece of art.

I wouldn't, however, compare journalism - a very particular pursuit - with "art", a word which bundles together a massive heap of pursuits. I think there are questions which it is appropriate to ask of each and any piece of, say, creative writing, which it would not be appropriate to ask of a journalistic piece, just as there are questions you could appropriately ask of a symphony which wouldn't make any sense if you asked them of a portrait.

Journalism can be seen as just one particular approach among many ones more normally considered artistic which aim to express or understand a real event.

Is it the point of art to express or understand real events? Only, in my view, if you broaden the definition of "real events" to include abstract philosophical concepts, emotions, religious impulses, and other thoughts and processes and things that occur entirely inside people's heads. And would be considered considered very bad journalism to write a piece which explores in a metaphorical subtext your personal feelings about God, for example, but it might be very good fiction.

My claim was more modest: that some art does aim at expressing or understanding real events. There are poems, plays, films, novels and journalistic stories about real events. Similarly, you could write a poem or a scientific thesis about a rainbow.

As you say yourself, art bundles together a massive heap of very different pursuits - my point is that journalism is not fundamentally different in kind from some of these pursuits. There are no questions that could be sensibly asked of each and every one of these pursuits - no question that could be sensibly asked of creative writing, symphony, portraits, journalistic accounts etc. But in fact there are a lot of questions that could be sensibly asked both of journalistic stories and fictional stories e.g. about language, style, structuring, narrative technique etc. There are other questions that could not be sensibly be asked of a journalistic piece e.g. "Why didn't you have George Bush invade Iran instead?". However (warning, another numbered list):
1) Even 'fictional' writing can be criticised for poor research and unrealistic psychology - criticisms not disconnected from criticising a news story for being inaccurate
2) On the matter of how you can criticise a fiction story for having X happen rather than Y but not a non-fiction story: well you can criticise a journalistic story for what it does or doesn't mention. We can criticise a story about America that fails to mention Iraq or a story about Iraq that does mention Abba. So there is an extent to which you can make related criticisms of journalistic pieces. And on the other hand, there are limits on making those kind of criticisms of literary fiction. You could say that Harry Potter would be better if, say, Harry hadn't whined so much and been less passive, but it wouldn't be meaningful to say Harry Potter would be better if it had the text and plot of Ulysses. You've gone past modifying the text and instead replaced it. It's like saying a chocolate cake would be better if it were made with carrot instead of chocolate. With Harry Potter it's not clear where you reach this limit before the book is no longer Harry Potter, but with journalistic pieces you reach this limit when you stop dealing with true events. You're saying this truth cake would be better if it were made with interesting falsehoods rather than truth. The same kind of limit exists for fictional literature, it's just less obvious where the boundary is.

I'm not making the point that journalism IS art, any more than poetry is prose or portraits are music. But as a pursuit and in terms of the approaches we take to it, journalism cannot be sharply cut off from art.

Similarly, you could write a poem or a scientific thesis about a rainbow.

I think you're confusing form and content. You could write a poem about a rainbow, you could write a scientific thesis about a rainbow, but the criteria by which you judge the merits of a scientific thesis are completely different to the criteria on which you judge the merits of a poem.

But as a pursuit and in terms of the approaches we take to it, journalism cannot be sharply cut off from art.

The thing is, I actually think it can. Yes, you can criticize both a newspaper or a novel for being badly written, you can criticize both a car and a person for being dirty and smelly, it doesn't mean that we can't draw a sharp line between cars and people.

"I think you're confusing form and content"

I'm not claiming that the poem and scientific thesis have the same form - obviously two things with the same form and the same content would be the same. I'm claiming that there are continuous gradations from one form to the next and also between the criteria used to judge different forms. There are examples of where you meet in the middle - genuine science fiction, non-fiction novels, urban myths, sensationalist journalism, poems or plays about news events. Journalism and science aren't somehow hermetically sealed off from other kinds of writing and the criteria used to judge those types of writing.

I'm not sure where the argument goes from here though - you can say that two things that are sharply divided can be judged on the same criteria, and I can say that two things that are judged on different criteria, e.g. a poem and a play, are not divided sharply.

I'm not sure where the argument goes from here though - you can say that two things that are sharply divided can be judged on the same criteria, and I can say that two things that are judged on different criteria, e.g. a poem and a play, are not divided sharply.

Except surely the fact that we do judge these two things by different criteria is proof of a sharp division, because if they were not sharply divided we would not judge them by different criteria? In fact, it could be argued that the criteria themselves represent at least one sharp division?

The logic you are espousing suggests that there is in fact no distinction between any object, and the world is just one incoherent mass in which oranges blur into coatracks blend into black holes blend into the weak and strong nuclear forces. Once you reach such a state it becomes impossible to firmly say anything about anything, ever, because we cannot (or refuse to) make any distinction between different things. I would say that suggesting that there is no firm difference between science writing and journalism and poetry would irritate a great many scientists, journalists, and poets, except for scientists who secretly envy journalists or poets, or journalists who harbour frustrated desires to be scientists or poets, or poets who admire journalists and scientists.

You're assuming that you need sharp divisions for there to be meaningful differntiation. That's just not true. Artistic genres are different but not sharply divided - poems and songs, poems and plays, prose and drama, writing and painting, all merge into one another.

In terms of reality, lots of apparently absolute differences have been questioned by science and philosophy. I don't know to what extent there are sharp divisions and and to what extent it's an incohernt mass. But that's slightly beside the point - the question is as to whether writing / art has sharp divisions within it. To say there are no sharp divisions between different forms of writing and art is not to say it is unstructured and incoherent. Nor is it to say that there are no differences. Clearly, a poem is different from a newspaper article. But this difference, and the difference in criteria on which they are judged, do not constitute sharp divisions because you can trace a continual line of forms from one to the other, which are also continuous in terms of the criteria used to judge them. Between poems and newspaper articles you have the various non-fiction forms I mentioned above. The criterion of judging a newspaper article for being true and accurate is connected to the criterion of judging fictional stories for having accurately-researched settings, convincing psychology. The criterion of objectivity and avoiding metaphor is also used to judge naturalist drama. Science or journalism as a way of writing about the world can be and has been criticised on artistic grounds - for being sterile and dull, for being committed to questionable ideas about objective access to absolute truth etc.

Having had a long dog walk, I now have some more to add to that:

It is arguable that lots of differences between concepts or objects are in fact matters of degree and dividing lines are indeterminate - when does blue become purple, when does the German language become the Dutch language, when does ape become human etc. - but whatever one thinks about the other cases it is definitely true when it comes to art.

The criteria/values/purposes of artistic works and perspective range continuously between such contradictory and varied extremes that it is impossible to find any one approach or definition encompassing all art and possible to find continuities between art and all sorts of other fields and objects. The contradiction means that the same reason why some art might be clearly distinguished from science will be the same reason why science will be found to be similar to other art and subject to similar approaches.

It's also why any statement about, say, the difference between art and life or the importance of narrative / spoilers can only be provisional and limited to a certain region. So that on the one hand, it's ridiculous to react to the death of a symbolic character with emotion as one would to the death of a real, particular person - but then other on other views, a particular piece of art has no significance beyond itself, art should raise emotions and art and reactions to art are not separate from life but part of it.

Which is my long-winded attempt to have my cake and eat it.

Except, to me (and I think to most people), reacting to the death of even a beloved fictional character in the same way you would the death of a real person of your acquaintance isn't so much part of life's rich tapestry as it is a sign of insanity. The two experiences simply aren't comparable; not in intensity, and not in the mixture and type of emotions you feel. A person who has never personally experienced bereavement can't pretend that they have any great insight into the matter just because they've read a few sad stories; the best they can hope for is that the thoughts and attitudes of the authors in question, and the manner in which they present death in their books, are reasonably true to life.

We might learn a lot of things we didn't previously know or appreciate through art, but it can't impart in us a genuine emotional experience of bereavement or loss or true love; at best, it can present us with a sort of two-steps-removed facsimile of it. I know plenty of people (I was one of them myself) who had no patience for romance subplots before actually getting into a long-term relationship, simply because they had no sympathy through their life experiences to the subject matter at hand.

Again, not the *same* way as reacting to the death of a real acquaintance but in a way not categorically divided from it. We don't have wholly unmediated reactions to real-life events and people. There is a degree to which we react to both acquaintances and fictional characters as particular people in specific ways, and there is a degree to which we are reacting to them as a symbolic role. When Dumbledore dies, it's both the Death of the Old Mentor and the death of Dumbledore; when a parent dies it's both the death of that particular person and the Death of the Father. We love both a particular person and a symbol. The difference between art and life is of degree. Because we can reflect on our own perspective, we can take universal as well as particular perpsectives on our own life, which is why we can interpret our particular actions in an artistic way.

It's not just a matter of art though - it's also why we can have certain moral dilemmas . It's the difference between personal loyalty to a particular person, who we see as an exception to general rules, and viewing that same person just as one person among many, stripped of individuality and subject to the same rules as everyone else. Either extreme is insane.

Again, not the *same* way as reacting to the death of a real acquaintance but in a way not categorically divided from it.

If it is not the same way, then there is a categorical division, because, as you point out, it's not the same - we can look at the differences and say "well, this is the set of reactions which have these qualities, and this is the set of reactions which have these different qualities", and presto! Categories!

Again, you seem to be saying that anything not the same as something is categorically/absolutely divided from it. Things can be different by a matter of degree, not category. Art differs from non-art in this way.

And you seem to be only willing to define categories in broad, abstract terms, under which your position is obviously true. I, personally, tend to slot things into reasonably tight categories, and if something doesn't fit precisely then it clearly belongs in a new category I haven't come up with.

It's like the difference between regarding jazz as "jazz" or as hard bop, bebop, fusion, trad jazz, free jazz...

It is arguable that lots of differences between concepts or objects are in fact matters of degree and dividing lines are indeterminate - when does blue become purple, when does the German language become the Dutch language, when does ape become human etc.

It is not only arguable, it is categorically true, but that does not make it meaningful or useful.

Blue and Purple are quite literally part of a spectrum, and obviously the dividing line between the two is not sharply defined, but your argument seems to be going further, to the suggestion that *because* you can imagine a continuous spectrum between Blue and Purple, that therefore it is meaningless to say "blue and purple are different colours".

The point made casually in the original article is that we react differently to real events and to fictional events. Now obviously there will be some similarities between your reaction to - say - the death of a fictional character and the death of a real person, just as there will be some similarities between your reaction to (for example) eating a delicious biscuit and having your legs cut off with a chainsaw. Both involve your brain interpreting nerve impulses and translating them into sensory information, which your conscious mind interprets as either pleasurable or painful. It would not, however, be sensible for me to make a biscuit and say "I really think that this biscuit gives the person who eats it an insight into what it's like to have your legs cut off with a chainsaw".

To put it another way, I'm sure that the vast majority of Dutch people would be grossly offended if you told them that their language was basically no different to German.

Things can be different by a matter of degree, not category. Art differs from non-art in this way.

Ironically, you seem to be viewing the difference between "absolute, categorical differences" and "differences of degree" as absolute and categorical when they are, of course, actually differences of degree.

The electromagnetic spectrum, being a real, literal spectrum, is an excellent example of this.

We define "visible light" as light which has a wavelength between 400 and 700 nanometres (more or less). This distinction is of course arbitrary, and the difference between light with wavelength 399nm and light with wavelength 401nm is essentially meaningless. However we categorize this range of wavelengths as "visible light" because it is the light which is visible to the human eye. If you try to light a room with light of wavelength 500nm you won't be able to see anything, because it won't be visible.

Visible light and infra-red light are categorically different. One is visible to the human eye, one isn't. Now of course there's a borderline where things are "sort of just about visible" and "not quite visible" but nine times out of ten those borders simply don't matter.

Essentially you're falling prey to a sort of abstract version of Xeno's paradox. Starting at fiction, you move halfway towards reality, then halfway again, then halfway again, and then declare that it is impossible to distinguish between the two.

Again: I am not denying that there are differences between things. As I have said, poetry IS different from prose, art IS different from science, art IS different from journalism, Dutch IS different from German. I did NOT say that it is meaningless to say "blue and purple are different colours." What I am saying is that it can be meaningful to say X and Y are different and for the difference to be a matter of degree, without a determinate boundary.

In terms of how broad the concepts are: clearly, art has sub-genres like music, which in turn has sub-genres like jazz, which in turn has further sub-genres. These genres and sub-genres are different from each other but are not perfectly, absolutely divided off unless they are rigidly and artificially defined e.g. a haiku. Where there are not rigid divisions of this kind, there are problem cases - not everything can be neatly slotted into different categories. Indeed, artists are always trying to question apparent borders. Even where there are rigid definitions which is by far and away the exception, these definitions do not mean that haikus etc. are utterly alien to other poems. Haikus and non-haiku poems will be susceptible to similar approaches and criticisms.

In terms of the art/life or art/journalism division or whatever, I am not denying there is a difference, nor that art is replacement for life. What I'm maintaining is that:
1) Journalism, scientific writing etc. are not absolutely divided from art in terms of suitable approaches, common properties etc.
2) The perspectives we take on life are to some extent the same as those we take on life, and vice versa.

In 2) I am talking about perspectives at more than just a cognitive level - I am talking about conscious reflection and cultural perspectives. I am not denying that life and art are different but rather that we cannot sharply divide the two.

Frankly, I really don't think you're attacking the weak points of my argument. If I were attacking my argument, I would focus on the fact that it's a bit paradoxical and seems to make artistic debate pointless if I have my cake and eat it by claiming both sides are right.

When Dumbledore dies, it's both the Death of the Old Mentor and the death of Dumbledore; when a parent dies it's both the death of that particular person and the Death of the Father. We love both a particular person and a symbol

Sorry for the triple post, and sorry to be blunt, but I really think this needs saying.

What you say here is simply not true. It's also borderline offensive.

The "death of the father-figure" in fiction is a symbolic process of growth and maturation. It's a part of the hero's journey. In real life the "death of the father" is when you recognise that your father is a real, fallible person who makes mistakes, and that you can get by in your life without him watching over you. This is almost *never* related in *any way* to the actual physical death of a real man.

My grandfather died a couple of months ago. My mother did not experience any great symbolic growth as a result, she was not liberated by the experience (except insofar as she didn't have to deal with his horrible, debilitating cancer any more). Her relationship with him did not change (except, again, towards the end it involved dealing with a lot more shit and dribble), she did not undergo any kind of personal discovery or revelation. He just died, and it was slow, and lingering, and humiliating and there was nothing symbolic or thematic about it, it wasn't a story, it wasn't a narrative it was not in any way *fictional*. Nothing changed, nobody grew or learned, he just *died*, not as a symbol, not as an idea, but as a frequently unpleasant old man who was so broken down and ill he couldn't swallow.

I was talking about bereavement as a hypothetical example because of the original post and had absolutely no intention to be offensive. Sorry. My own grandparents died in February and I would not want mix up my feelings about that with this discussion, so I will use different examples.

I say 'will', but I don't want to continue this argument if it is going to cause offence. Again, sorry.

Woah ... I'm sure nobody is offended but this discussion is getting rather heated.

So, um, look a bunny rabbit. See its little nose.

Thank you all this very interesting discussions but perhaps, as Andy suggests, we should wrap this up here.

Although it seems that nobody is actually offended or pissed off by the discussion - so if you all promise to be good do feel free to continue ;)

(honestly, boys *tsk tsk*)

I think nonetheless that I'd rather call a ceasefire at this point - but thanks for a good argument! My brain feels more alive than it has done for months.