Has literature lost its themes involving romance and honour/integrity?

[razz]

Call me a romantic if you wish but has literature changed so much as I seem to believe?

I used to love reading but in the past decade or so, it has seemed that current stories seem to focus on the macabre, the really violent and evil in humanity and skip the goodness in mankind like developing and following high life principles, honour and order.
To Kill the Mockingbird talked about duty and honour as one example to prove that a story can be realistic but set a high standard. Gone With the Wind was a classic with strength of character and a developing person story.
Westerns for years focused on responsibility and honour/integrity so it is not just the highbrow lit that I am talking about
The Help touches on this personal growth of characters very lightly.

What new stories have you read where the villain doesn't win or destroy in the worst imaginable evil manner especially innocents .
Why does the so-called romance have to state every physical step of the sex act with an element of cruel violation involved? Don't people know how this sex act works from personal experience with tenderness and love vs violent lust?

Mysteries seem to compete to be crueler and more violent so now I simply skip them.

Am I nuts for even asking these questions?

[treehugger]

I think these are rather strange generalizations to make. Literature (basically, fiction) is such a broad category. There are tens of thousands of books published each year, meant to appeal to all sorts of tastes. The trick of course is finding the ones that appeal to you, which often, in my experience, means avoiding the bestsellers. Popularity is (of course) no indication of how much you personally will like something. That said, fiction goes through trends like anything else, so there is certainly a glut of supernatural topics right now.

Just spend 30 minutes browsing through the shelves at your local library and you are bound to find lots of books that look good to you by authors you've never heard of. And that way you find older, undiscovered gems as well, instead of just focusing on newly-published books.

Have fun searching!

Kara

P.S., I don't have any specific recommendations because books are so personal. I prefer to find things to read on my own.

[domestic goddess]

There are trends in literature as in everything else. Right now, stories with vampires and evil seem to be very much in vogue. It is more work even to find stories for my granddaughters that don't involve vampires. And I love mysteries, but not the gruesome kind.
We are going back to older books and classics for reading material that bucks the current trends. I like the "cozy" mysteries of Laura Childs, Susan Wittig Albert and others. Dgd1 is reading The Mysterious Benedict Society, and I have to confess I don't really know what that is about. When I ask, she just says she really likes it. Dgd2 likes The Inkdrinker Series now, Which is about a vampire who drinks the ink from books. I download some non-fiction on my Kindle, and it keeps me busy enough. I also like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers for mysteries. I've never had to keep up with the New York Times Best-Sellers, because I don't seem to be looking for the same things in books that a majority of people do. I'd rather see character development than a lot of bizarre or gruesome stuff.
So I would suggest looking to the past for some good reads. Christian fiction seems to be heavy on romance, from the blurbs I've read on the Internet.

[Tussiemussies]

Hi razz, I too like the themes you like. But for the same reasons I have stayed away from the movies and much of the media because of the forms of negativity I see in one way or another. You are not the only one who notices this.:)

[Gardenarian]

"Libraries trying to stem the tide against rudeness and vulgarity are fighting a losing battle, because the vulgarity is woven into the culture and thus must manifest itself in libraries." -- Annoyed Librarian blog

You are not alone. As a librarian trying to select the best books for our students, I am troubled by the quantity of graphic violence, sordid/brutal sex, and - yes - vulgarity. I just tried to read "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami and it was so dark and creepy that I gave up on it - and it got fantastic reviews.

A couple of authors that come to mind as being a little more civilized are Alexander McCall Smith and A.S. Byatt - and of course the many wonderful classical authors.

I was just thinking this morning that it's time to re-read the great Russians.

(note: I am not THE Annoyed Librarian, just an occasionally annoyed librarian.)

[razz]

"Libraries trying to stem the tide against rudeness and vulgarity are fighting a losing battle, because the vulgarity is woven into the culture and thus must manifest itself in libraries." -- Annoyed Librarian blog

You are not alone. As a librarian trying to select the best books for our students, I am troubled by the quantity of graphic violence, sordid/brutal sex, and - yes - vulgarity. I just tried to read "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami and it was so dark and creepy that I gave up on it - and it got fantastic reviews.

A couple of authors that come to mind as being a little more civilized are Alexander McCall Smith and A.S. Byatt - and of course the many wonderful classical authors.

I was just thinking this morning that it's time to re-read the great Russians.

(note: I am not THE Annoyed Librarian, just an occasionally annoyed librarian.)

Interesting points made. Since I have heard many times that art reflects life, I wonder if that is why society is facing such a despairing state of mind and youth are thinking that the way to solve a problem is with a gun or joining violent gangs. What they read and see in the various media seems so dark and depressing with few really positive heroes exhibiting strong character and qualities rather than strong weapons.
I do like Alexander McCall Smith mysteries.
Ok, I guess that I am back to the classics as well.

[iris lily]

Certainly there is a trend toward more violence in some kinds of literature but I wouldn't say the gore etc. is new--true crime books have been popular for 60+ years, ever since In Cold Blood came out. Stephen King has been writing for, what--40 years? He and key others produce popular gore and mayhem books.

Currently what I don't like are the heroines in chick lit books who seems to drift from man to man or job to job without seeming to have any real core values and/or core personality. They just seem so vague and so easily influenced by any random outside force. They annoy me!

[fidgiegirl]

Currently what I don't like are the heroines in chick lit books who seems to drift from man to man or job to job without seeming to have any real core values and/or core personality. They just seem so vague and so easily influenced by any random outside force. They annoy me!

+1

Few recent books have the "sticking power" for me that the classics have. Like, books that you look back on and reminisce about and puzzle over the lessons within. But perhaps time has already done the work of weeding out the crap from the classics, and in 50+ years only the best of our time will stand the test. And we're the ones who will have to figure out which those are. :)

The only current author with that "sticking power," at least for me . . . Louise Erdrich.

[Rogar]

I read more non-fiction than fiction, but I think I would agree somewhat. I wonder if books are having to compete with increasingly sensation video media with computer enhancements and attention grabbing sensationalism as entertainment.

A gold standard for contemporary fiction for me is probably Steinbeck. But how many Steinbecks come along in a generation? I have actually read a few quite pleasant books lately that go back to the old standards. "The Snow Child" was really a nice story. "Cutting for Stone". "The Help". A few that seemed to go back to the basic principals of duty and honor with a touch of romance. Maybe it just takes a little more patience to find or wait for the right ones to come along.

[JaneV2.0]

+1

...

The only current author with that "sticking power," at least for me . . . Louise Erdrich.

I've never read Erdrich, but I read Michael Dorris's The Broken Cord. Later events make me really curious about their family dynamic. I wonder if her later book is a roman a clef. Maybe I'll dig into it.

[pcooley]

Voldemort didn't win in the Harry Potter series -- though that's not really adult literature, and it gets pretty dark, but I admit I was dragged along into it. It's a compelling read. It's very interesting, that my Harry Potter obsessed son, (obsessed to the point that a day has hardly gone by since he was a toddler that he didn't have me reading one of the books to him at night, or spent time listening to the book on tape), has only one section that is so bad that he refuses to listen to it, and that's when Harry's father behaves cruelly to Snape.

As far as adult books go, I have just finished John Nichols's "New Mexico Trilogy". I liked The Milagro Beanfield War and The Magic Journey, but I felt that the Nirvana Blues was too self-indulgently sexual with little -- ok, I'd say nothing -- redeemable in the plot or the writing. Currently I'm reading Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, but that's not really contemporary. I can't recall reading any fiction hot off the shelf, (though I'm editing to add that I did read "Cutting for Stone" and enjoyed that). My next book lined up is a collection of Edith Pearlman's short stories, "Binocular Vision." I've never read her work, but she's going to part of a lecture series I manage, though her particular lecture is arranged through another office in the college where I work. I hope Edith Pearlman is a good contemporary writer.

[flowerseverywhere]

I second Cutting for stone and the rest of the books by Verghese- truly inspirational

Tracy Kidder books, "Mountains beyond Mountains" is perhaps the most spectacular but "Strength in what remains" is mindnumbing in it's message.

Of course Louise Erdrich writes wonderful stories.

Some of the young adult literature seems to be so far above what I would classify as young adult. I loved the Hunger Games series as well as the movie, but it was full of violence. The message was good will triumph over evil.
The Jackie Faber series "Bloody Jack" etc also is so full of violence and mans inhumanity to man I was surprised at the classification as young adult but I loved the stories.

although "outlander" series is very dissed by historians as being inaccurate, the characters have a great amount of integrity, but you also have some super steamy love scenes mixed in.

Even the recently popular "the help" as you mentioned, had a great theme of integrity of some of the characters.
the Game of thrones series was full of violence, and when I got to book 4 I gave up, a whole cast of new characters was introduced.

Great books continue to be written, it is just a challenge to find them.

[razz]

Thanks, you all have given me some authors to look for. I wondered why I had gone away from fiction over the past decade and then a friend gave me an old book that I simply loved. I wondered when the magic of fiction disappeared. Walking the dog is when I do my deep thinking and I realized that I had not found an inspirational hero/heroine who grew in the story and succeeded against great odds due to strength of character as I had read in earlier years. I tried writers like Stephen King and his genre years ago and never tried again - not my choice of recreational reading. I rarely watch TV for the same reason.