I’ve never really analyzed my writing on the level ‘accordingtohoyt’ attempts here. I think as a living breathing person it’s inevitable that a piece of yourself shows up in your writing. We all have codes and belief systems of one sort or another and they play out in bits and pieces amid our characters. If those items happen to resonate with a reader, it can raise that particular book to a higher level for that individual. If we as writers are lucky, more than one or two people see themselves in the work and the book as a whole becomes something more than a few hours of escapism.
There are many theories of what makes a good book. The most prevalent/strongest one in our day is the social justice theory. No, I don’t mean the one propagated by social justice advocates, though they’re linked.
What I mean is that for a long time, what made a book “good” and gave serious people permission to like it was that it had classical references. That’s how you knew the writer was properly educated and thought deep thoughts. I think that started in the renaissance and before that it was “books that were good for something” the something being propagating the faith. Well, things go in cycles.
After WWI put vast cracks in the civilizational confidence of the west and we started doubting our roots, classicism because a mark of being “high class” and high class was, aesthetically and politically right out in the early 20th century. The trusted men from…
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Lee Dunning 