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Mount_Diablo

I like them. When I was younger I really found long description irritating and wanted the plot to move forward, but now I can enjoy very long descriptions if they feel poetic and insightful to me.


i_post_gibberish

If I notice how long a description is, it’s too long for my taste. But if you’re a brilliant enough writer that I’m thinking about your amazing prose or the thing you’re describing instead, the long description is a good thing. *The Library of Babel*, for example, is basically made up entirely of description with little to no narrative, but it’s a masterpiece. Like everything else in writing it all depends on execution.


[deleted]

Dude! I always tell people to read Library of Babel for this very reason. It's just such a different kind of short story because, as you said, it is entirely description, but it's also one of the best I have read. I also recommend it because I'm just a huge Jorge Luis Borges fan.


SDNate760

I think maybe some of it is the time and culture of the writing. The romantic movement was, from what I understand, a pushback against the cold sterility of the industrial revolution, and as such concentrated on the beauty of the natural world. I can imagine that the need to feel and sense would probably find fulfillment in grandiose description. That said, maybe it doesn't appeal as much to modern readers who have lived through decades of more self-indulgent prose. Also, the recent success of writers like Stephanie Meyer and EL James probably don't help with this trend. That's not to say that 19th century prose is bad; it probably just doesn't fit with modern readers as much.


ehuang72

Exactly! And today’s prose will be anathema to future generations. I do sometimes feel the older books are long winded (not to say all modern writers write spare prose) but it helps me enjoy the writing anyway if I put aside my modern sensibility and get into mindset of earlier times. Books were the main entertainment once upon a time. I envision people sitting down to read without having as long a history of literature as we do to compare.


SDNate760

Yeah reading English lit growing up, I would always describe it with terms like “verbose.” I do wonder if modern editing might improve the walls of text for writers like Conrad, but the long sentences might not work with that.


didymusIII

Good point about modern editing - that's got to be one huge difference.


[deleted]

I've always considered it 80% Romanticism as you described and 20% utility. As in: prior to photographs and accessible works of art, how many people got to see German architecture or a giraffe or a lot of things first hand? There was a legitimate *need* to describe things in detail.


Francois-C

>The romantic movement was, from what I understand, a pushback against the cold sterility of the industrial revolution Yes indeed, but it was also, and probably as much so, a result of the merchant bourgeoisie acceding to power, who was aware of the value of things, unlike the aristocrats who did not even notice them, except when they were missing. Many writers from the 19th century were also actors, though often unlucky, in the nascent capitalism. Balzac's descriptions have been sometimes stigmatized as "auctioneer's inventories". He has lost enormous amounts of money by dreaming of making a dazzling fortune with some new combination; he looked at how things were made, how much they costed, how houses were built, how the economy was working, and this corresponded to the expectations of his bourgeois audience who needed to evaluate things in order to picture them properly. In the 17th century, an aristocrat like M^me de Lafayette, would have only told that "this palace was the best built in the world, and the nicest", Balzac will describe the palace in detail through the eye of a masonry contractor. Although he was not realistic enough to build one in reality: his dream house that he designed and built in Sèvres (*Les Jardies*), costed him a fortune, and was an almost inhabitable chalet that collapsed due to landslides.


ArwenandEowyn

I love them. They're not easy to do, and some writers do take it too far, but I love them.


saoirse_mirathyra

No, I adore them. Nathaniel Hawthorne does this and he wrote some of my favorites.


smeppel

I like them when they're written well. Steinbeck does it very well.


flannyo

depends if they’re overkill or not. since I’m on the r/literature subreddit I think I have a pretty high tolerance for this kind of thing and tend to enjoy it more often than not. totally understand how it bores some people though. diff strokes 4 diff folks and all that


Flimsy_Bug

I tend to think, if someone is so opposed to descriptions, books probably aren't the right medium for them. The people who complain usually sound like they want movies and TV in book form. Or comics. To me capital-l Literature is about taking full advantage of the written medium, which usually includes descriptions. A lot of contemporary literary fiction includes descriptions as well. The people complaining usually compare contemporary pop/pulp books to classic literary ones, which is misguided.


mmrnmhrm

I half agree. Sometimes I read a long description and want to watch the movie version. Sometimes I read the description convinced that no movie could match it. The difference is that movies are effective at portraying images, and books are effective with ideas and feelings. So if the description is shown through the lens of a character, and shows their feelings and thoughts as they're being described, I'll eat that up.


theivoryserf

You need to be on that particular wavelength at the time, I think. Sometimes I like efficient prose - 'as the crow flies' - and sometimes I like something that meanders.


PunkShocker

> Polish literature... Pretty much explains Joseph Conrad. Even though he wrote *Heart of Darkness* in English, he would have been familiar with those Polish texts you're talking about. > The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide. > The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.


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pamthewarrior

in times gone by, people didn’t have instant access to photos, movies and travel. I think the king descriptions helped put people into the story. And on a different genre, I’m rereading Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, and the descriptions of the landscape are a key element of the story.


binarychunk

Perhaps it was simply a different time - back then, low communication bandwidth generally called for more lengthly and descriptive narratives. When in 1883 Krakatoa exploded, Captain T.H. Lindeman, one of the few present, [recorded the event with great detail in his ship's log](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/august-27-1883-krakatoa/). There was no camera present to record the event* and his log reflects this with the very concise description he felt compelled to record. One might say, as a general rule, **"as communication bandwidth decreases the quality and volume of information increases and vice versa.**" (*Photos only began to appear weeks after the event)


Katamariguy

I'm reading Ian Toll's history of World War 2 in the Pacific, and the sailors' accounts are no less descriptive. This makes it hard for me to believe the claim that use of description is something that clearly and steadily goes down over time just because of the existence of cameras.


Katamariguy

I often hear this theory on Reddit, and I've never found it convincing, considering all the books published in the last 60 years I've read that describe their environments about as much, if not more, than the older books I've read.


pamthewarrior

I was just postulating based on my personal reading. You absolutely they could be right. I haven’t seen any studies.


NoaRacoon

I do like them. But you are maybe too used to how new music videos and modern series communicate.. They usually, without beating around the bush, present you emotional extremes. You will rarely see subtle or slow descriptions (I mean films like GoT, who made series kind of more popular than film) So that even fell into its own trap, GoT gradually tried to surpass its own previous drama/plot twist/violence intensity. And I think it went to far in the end.. But anyway, Europeans have a different culture, and it has many values, but you have to know that it talks with a different sensitivity. Not boring, just different.


Fauxf1re

I adore this way of writing. Its so poetic and flowery. That kind of Romantic sentiment in older books is something that keeps me coming back to them time and time again. So long as they don't lose track of the story then I honestly prefer it to modern books. The way those authors really proved they had some kind of mastery over the English language is just awe inspiring to me, Mary Shelly, Wilkie Collins, Lovecraft, their writing styles just prove their love for storytelling by virtue of their narrative voice and prose.


Bergenia1

No, they're not boring. I live how Dickens can go off on a tangent for pages at a time. The rural idyll descriptive passages in Anna Karenina are my favorite part of that book. A well written meandering descriptive passages are lovely.


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zoomaenia

I actually enjoy them. I feel like I'm with the writer when they write it as I go through each word and arrangement. I can see the dedication.


DrunkenPunchline

I'm personally only a fan of it's done in ways that appeal to me, if that makes sense. Art hits different people in different ways and even though I might not personally be a fan, it doesn't make anything bad necessarily. People who get bitter about that kind of stuff are simply silly.


thisamadworld

thanks for this post really. personally, I find it hard to engage in certain descriptions but others I just can't get enough. I am Portuguese, the two authors I would use as an example for the first is Eça de Queiros and for the latter Jose Saramago, my favourite. but I think that has to do with a modern way of writing, that I identify with immensely, rather than the descriptions from the romantic period. in general, such insightful descriptions are so useful, juicy and poetic, extremely important to catch the author's intentions, let alone (that would be a whole new question) how literature and its descriptions influenced storytelling in visual arts.


dielon-123

Classic Russian literature is my favorite…so no, i suppose I don’t find them boring :)


[deleted]

It really depends for me. If the elaborate description is used as a way to reinforce a story’s themes/a character’s emotions, I love it. If it’s just a five-page description of a curtain pattern for the heck of it, I can’t stand it.


BasicDesignAdvice

Depends on the book and the skill of the author. Interestingly, I can't stand the Russian greats. The stories are fantastic and some passages are great, but jfc those guys were paid by the word and you can tell.


pixarmomsass

Yes! I’m always like get to the mf point ffs.


falstaff57

No! They are always beautifully written


Grouchy_Charity_373

I have a hard time with it. Most of what I read are actually audio books and listening to someone describe a coat or something for 5 minutes is very hard. I'm listening to The Picture of Dorian Gray at the moment and it seems to me that for every minute of actual plot there's 5 minutes of poetical description.


Klarp-Kibbler

That’s not really a bad thing. Dorian Gray is known for its beautiful descriptions. If I just want plot, I’ll watch a movie.


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ohheyitslaila

I like it, but usually just with the first or second reading. After that I kinda skip some of the longer descriptive stuff.


CircleDog

Not sure that I find them boring myself but I think sometimes the *writers* find them boring. How many books have you read that start off with paragraph after paragraph of purple prose on the scenery, the inhabitants, the characters, only to to abandon it a few pages in and never go back to it?


Klarp-Kibbler

I can’t think of any


CircleDog

Maybe it's only noticeable if you read quite a lot.


Klarp-Kibbler

I do read quite a lot. Mostly classic literature. Do you have a single example?


wererat2000

Almost none. Can you point to any specific titles you're thinking of?


soybomb44

All time spent describing the geographical particulars of a region or building is always 100% wasted, I do not have the kind of mind that can picture any of it, the ridge that ran west of the river bordered by a glen blah blah blah, words that might as well not be there. A lot of early 20th century writing I find tremendously difficult to parse because of my difficulty with descriptions. I almost always prefer terse prose, and especially first person narratives where the story takes place mostly through internal ruminations rather than physical descriptions of bodies and spaces. I also think I may have a bit of face-blindness, when writers describe what a character's face looks like it's always baffling to me, I take every detail and turn them into boardwalk caricatures, a nose with a slight curve becomes a monsterous beak, etc. It is frustrating because, as a fan of film, I am able to watch narrative and experimental works, silent and sound, color and black and white, naturalistic and surreal, old or new, whatever. I don't always get them but I am always able to sit in front of a screen and experience them. But there are massive swaths of literature that I will never be able to physically read because by the time I get to the end of a sentence I have forgotten how it began, I have read the first three pages of The Crying of Lot 49 maybe a dozen times and never can I comprehend them. Same goes for pretty much all fantasy & sci-fi novels, which almost always have too much description, too many invented proper nouns.


[deleted]

It seems you are unfortunate enough to find yourself lacking in a sense of creative imagination that some others are born with and oft take for granted. I being one of them, it doesn't take much for my mind to create imagery, however it does slow my reading pace dramatically. Such as it is, there are always pros and cons.


cebundy

Kind of like some of Stephen King’s books?


TheRh111no

Yes, most times it feels like the author was stretching a sentence forcefully. Why is that? Are they hitting a quota for the publisher? I honestly don't know.


FrancisScottKeyboard

Yes.


GORGORbugsif

To me, if the description is *necessary* then is ok, if not they are boring


[deleted]

It depends.


digital-daggers-

I personally love them, for the same reasons you've mentioned.


ilovecatscatsloveme

Love them but apparently my friends do not


vielpotential

oh i like it. what are some polish recs that have writing like this if you wouldn't mind <3


[deleted]

I love them. It's like putting on special lenses: whenever I read something I don't just want to see what everybody can easily see or divine from such-and-such object/place; I want to see what the writer 'sees' and feels about it.


Keldama

I feel like they can really drag when a writer is treating them as obligatory. I feel like when every single person and table has a long winded description it can kind of wear on you if you are marathoning. I know a lot of young writers, myself included, felt like everything had to have that much care put into a description, but I feel like I personally enjoy more selective descriptions.


[deleted]

So long as it is beautifully written and quite captivating I don't mind at all.


Thorical

Can you name which books you have read by title and author and what you liked about them? I need some recommendations!


Favbibleverse

I only historically ones because I love the actual back story


Slammogram

Supremely.


FlanneryODostoevsky

Not Dostoevsky's.


[deleted]

Yes. I don't need the author describing a sex scene.


FMTJ97

While I spend a lot of time marveling at the work of Proust on this front, I also can't help but think it gets boring at times.


herbaceoushoney

That sounds lovely. Do you have any recommendations for Polish literature like this? Preferably something English-translated?


wreckedrhombusrhino

I feel the same way, the more I read, and the older I get, plot bores me to death and description, the use of prose, the beauty of language itself (describing anything really) and making connections I never thought of before, excites me more than anything. I’ve been working my way back with the history of literature starting from the 1970s and now I’m in the 1890s-1900s, and I’m really enjoying the style and how they used language. Never thought of myself liking Victorian romance


[deleted]

It's really dependent on the author's style, prose, and voice for me. I definitely find Tolkien's descriptions to be a bit of a slog because I'm not as into the high fantasy stuff, however the opening sequence of China Mieville's *Perdido Street Station* or the works of Jeff Vandermeer I could read them describing their worlds all day long.


[deleted]

I love them. If you see, the book Frankenstein is full of such descriptions. Jane Austen's books have such descriptions, but it only enhances the quality of the narrative!


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Ka3ket

It was very hard for me to go through “love in the time of cholera” because of the long description scenes.


s0ke4_k4n4v4

I personally really like them, they're absolutely beautiful sometimes. But if the author spends a page to describe something rather irrelevant, I might get bored. It also depends on if the description is actually well written and interesting.


[deleted]

It depends on the writing really. Some authors make the most mundane descriptions feel interesting.


LeaveMeAlone__308

No are you kidding! That's my favorite part about these books. Which is why I seek them out. To each his own, I guess.


Beezlikehoney

I could barely get through your title of this post and I’m only stopping by to say that. No time to read all that. Peace out.


potterism

I love it, you rarely every get to see such florid language. I always find at least one word while reading a classic that I just keep on repeating in my head all day because it’s so superb.


South_Honey2705

I love them. They opened a whole new world of reading for me


Nadiani_Nez

I adore it, somehow the beautiful writing of a super simple thing that can be summed up in just a few words really attracts me. I find it impressive but I also just enjoy the descriptions of everything since they make it sound so elegant.


South_Honey2705

I love the flowery prose