Personally I doubt the drop of quality of education as a reason for substandard writing, since I don't see any degree making anyone a good writer. It's ultimately a skill that comes from voluntary investment on reading fiction, nonfiction and practicing writing itself.
I'll say how I understood what he meant - he meant that whole society has changed because education system can't be changed by itself, and it mirrored changes that society has undergone, unless someone had forcefully changed education system first with intention to change society through it, which is interesting thought too.
He meant that society as cultural enviroment has degraded so much that it poisoned education system, because all connected in society.
Same education system will bring different results in different societies (if it is possible at all to keep same education system in diffrent societies).
Judging what I know about western universities, they consequentially turning in a places that cultivate a mindless mob, that in same time a linching mob which is a good old american tradition on its own.
No matter what modern reasons and motivations are - they are not a whit better then previous ones, before you could be linched for color of your skin, today the reasons lies within SJW agenda.
Just a heads-up: Tolstoy was a very smart man who had a lot of great and important ideas, but his writing ability—i.e. the ability to put actual words into actual sentences to convey said ideas—is widely regarded as atrocious here in Russia. (And not by lazy ninth-graders, but by mature philologists as well.)
Never heard that. Heard that his "wording is mouthful" - and I agree with it, but that's not the same as "atrocious", otherwise I can't explain how he become so widely known and prised.
Just common sense.
His wording is clumsy maybe, but even then not to the point to be repulsive enough that people abandoned his War and Peace, and I mean unedited Russian version, not that stub that was provided to western readers.
The thing is, recently I've come to believe that games as a medium are actually generally better at being poems than at being novels, the feeling reinforced by many non-RPG titles that explore that area.
Maybe because said today's novelist are a shit, don't you think so?
It's not really ok though. Optional lore dumps are better than forced lore dumps, but lore dumps are still shit.
Stuffing lore into books like Bethesda loves to do shows that the designers have no clue how to integrate it into the setting, gameplay, and story moments. It makes it useless, creating a disconnect between the lore and the gameplay. And it reads like fanfiction.
Agree, I couldn't bring myself to read all shit they wrote for DA:O, it was so boring I only have read like dozen of them, so lifeless and dry.
"writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills."
That's the right explanation.
I ofter read in some autobiography that "I couldn't not to write, so I start to write". It isn't a set of skills, it is a demand to write, like a demand to breath.
They were introduced because students were understandably complaining that the cost of buying all these books was really high, and the library copies were often booked out. Ok, the latter part of that complaint was always bullshit - there was always a copy of each text on each reading list in the 'library reserve' (where you can only borrow for a couple of hours at a time - enough to read a couple of chapters and then let someone else have a go).
The idea was that you'd have the 'major bits' to be discussed in the lectures provided in one free photocopy-friendly course reader, and students would still go and read the full books themselves. Like fuck that was ever going to happen.
One fellow teacher once said me a story, how to the school where that person worked at was presented a new textbooks, funded by Soros fund. It was a common thing for Russian schools in 90s at least.
I don't remember what kind of textbook it was, but there were changes - some parts of textbook were placed on CD and it was suggested that schoolchildren should access it at home and read and do some homework with it.
Of course it almost never happened, thus some parts of textbook were effectively excluded from educational process.
That school chose not to use it in the end, luckily for children.
Post 70s fantasy and science fiction is mostly about "epic heroes," world-saving Messias, or stuff like that. It had not been like this before, though. Previously, fantasy was mostly about common people in uncommon circumstances or worlds (you know, fantastic stuff.) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (Fritz Lieber) are a just pair of brigands and adventurers, Conan (R. E. Howard) may become a king, but he is not involved in any Epic Struggle; Cugel the Clever (Jack Vance) is a glib sociopath always looking for himself, and the English knights from The High Crusade (Poul Anderson) are just normal medieval people who stumble upon a spaceship and (no kidding) use it to invade another planet, etc. It should be noted that these writers did not create any "deep lore" or serious worldbuilding, and most of them didn't take themselves too seriously. Unfortunately, it is obvious that most contemporary writers don't read these authors anymore.
I recently read interview with John McTiernan, director of Die Hard, he said same thing - movies changed not long ago, they are no longer talking about the people, and instead began to tell about gods.
I think if you'll search for it you'll find it, I read in in translation.
Books accomlished this earlier for obvious reasons - you need only pen and paper for book, so you are less restricted.
I belive these changes somehow tied with failed Christianity on a West, and falling into neo-paganism or even satanism which is what "new edge" is as I understand.
Good article, thou I also wonder if second part shouldn't have been axed.
No, because it is most important part - it is appeal to the reader to think about global reasons, which is really stand behind changes, not the immediate cause.
Tigranes don't understand your point - it looks in general as if you disagree, but I can't find specifically where.
Refering to "economics" is plain bullshit because said economics is a tool and and effect, not the cause.
It is more looks like post modernists move - "because the problem leading to something being bad is always due to some nebulous, unchangeable reason… or the problem doesn’t exist altogether."
