Seinfeld Is Unfunny/Literature: Difference between revisions

* [[Dr. Seuss]]. When he started producing books for children featuring nonsensical word usage and surreal art, he was considered both genius and highly controversial, which tends to go right over the heads of modern readers.

* ''[[Dracula]]'' being the ultimate vampire [[Trope Maker]], has been so thoroughly ripped off, parodied, retooled and revamped that even many [[Goth|Goths]] are sick of him.

** Dracula is an interesting case, in that he has become so [[Lost in Imitation]], those who read the original novel are generally shocked by his inhuman appearance, total amorality (Stoker's Dracula never showed any signs of guilt or love), and clever schemes, rather than the endless tales of tragic beauty and [[Vampire Vords]] that he is incorrectly remembered for.

* ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' started the [[Dragon Rider]] trend in the 1960s, and you would be hard-pressed to find current fantasy writers who ''don't'' make dragons a [[Bond Creature]] in some way.

* [[Jane Austen]] and to a lesser extent the Bronte sisters suffer from this. Their novels have had a massive influence on romance novels to the point that they may appear hopelessly clichéd and even a bit low brow because of the countless imitators.

* ''The Joy of Sex'' and ''Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex* * but Were Afraid to Ask'' weren't trite when they were published.

* ''[[Lost Souls]]''. While [[Poppy Z Brite]]'s novel probably didn't originate of a lot of vampire clichés -- bisexual, seductive vampires, New Orleans, Goths, [[Ho Yay]] -- these tropes were a lot fresher when she and [[Anne Rice]] wrote their books.

** Rice's ''[[Vampire Chronicles]]'' suffer from this even harder, if only because she was more prolific than Brite and she's much more well-known in the mainstream. Lestat in particular is the poster child for this. The "sexy Eurotrash rebel-without-a-cause in literal leather pants" character is so cliche in modern vampire fiction that people groan when they see it. Somewhat hilariously, it was a major criticism of the ''[[Queen of the Damned]]'' movie.

*** But this still leaves us with, well, defining the stock races as mostly used today (elves existed prior in many different forms in different mythologies, from little wingy tinkerbells to something you'd call a dwarf in modern fantasy, while now everyone thinks "pointy ears"; orcs were new, at least the name; elf-dwarf relations; dwarfs as always bearded miners) as well as other more general formulae. Actually, quite a bit survived, especially in the common aspects of most fantasy.

* [[Michael Moorcock]]. A good bit of his work falls into this, especially ''[[The Elric Saga]]''. Like ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' he created or expanded upon many fantasy tropes that are commonplace now. Hell, even one of the introductions to the new paperback collections of Elric's tale states this. Also all that crazy-ass, sexually deviant, creature-of-their-time, lone wolf super spy stuff (different from the way [[James Bond]] does it, mind you)? Well, that's [[The Cornelius Chornicles|Jerry Cornelius]], possibly Moorcock's second most famous creation.

* ''[[The Neverending Story (Literature)|The Neverending Story]]''. Similar to ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'', it can seem an awful lot like a rather standard read, albeit a [[Doorstopper|long one]] for children. A child finds a mysterious book that appears to be a gateway to another world. He appears to have found himself written into the story of this mysterious new world, and finds himself embarking on all sorts of adventures in a realm of fantasy powered by human imagination, becoming part of it all along the way, then finally departing home at the end after almost losing himself to his own fantasy and defeating the [[Big Bad]]. Even if the entire story wasn't replicated ''too'' too much (''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Video Game)|Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' comes close, however), a lot of the book's themes seem a bit...well, cliché. The plot itself doesn't seem to be anything new either.

* ''Paul Clifford''. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's fifth novel, was an immense commercial success when first published. Today, it is remembered only as the origin of the notorious "[[It Was a Dark And Stormy Night]]".

* ''[[Annie On My Mind]]''. The villains are one-dimensional, the romance develops in a short time (a month or so), and the heroes, [[Woobie|Woobies]] or not, make some stupid decisions. These tend to turn people off the to the book. They forget that this was ''the'' first book to portray lesbians in a positive light, without having them [[Cure Your Gays|turn straight]] or [[Bury Your Gays|die]].

* Science fiction in general. Technologies that used to be completely fantastic tend to become [[Truth in Television]] decades later. See also [[Technology Marches On]].

* [[William Morris (Creator)|William Morris]] (1834-1896) attempted to revive the [[Chivalric Romance]] genre with novels ''The Wood Beyond the World'' (1894) and ''The Well at the World's End'' (1896). Creating "an entirely invented fantasy world" as their setting. These works and his earlier [[Historical Fantasy]] novels influenced writers such as [[Lord Dunsany]], Eric Rücker Eddison, James Branch Cabell, [[JRR Tolkien (Creator)|JRR Tolkien]], and [[CS Lewis (Creator)|CS Lewis]]. Problem is that they are among the founding works of [[Medieval European Fantasy]]. And had a noticeable influence in the development of [[Heroic Fantasy]], [[High Fantasy]], and even the [[Cthulhu Mythos]]. There is now nothing innovative about creating an invented world, and his works were considered dated by [[The Seventies]].

* ''[[The Great God Pan (Literature)|The Great God Pan]] (1894)'' was a prototype [[Cosmic Horror Story]], notable for "the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph abounds". It was cited as a major influence by [[HP Lovecraft]], and (more recently) [[Stephen King]]. But part of the suspense is killed for the modern reader, who knows what to expect from the genre.

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[[Category:Seinfeld Is Unfunny]]