/lit/ - Literature and Writing

You think I've read any of that?

Catcher in the Rye is good

>genre fiction is the only fiction from the 20th century worth reading
That alone would make lots of fags seethe.

>>4732
It's funny, I've been reading up on where this attitude came from lately. My view of things is still incomplete, but I think what happened was, after the industrial revolution, a lot of families began sending their kids to work in factories to make some extra money. But when the people saw how bad the conditions in factories were in those days, and especially how children were treated, it provoked a public outcry against the very notion of child labor. Many intellectuals began to argue that childhood should be a time of innocence where children are shielded from at least some of the horrors of the world, and one of the ways they did this was by creating literature specifically for children. These stories always had strong moral lessons, but wrapped them in things children enjoy reading about, like magic, adventure, and exciting events, kept them free of sex and the uglier parts of life, and usually had them end on a happy note. They even began to take some older stories of valiant heroes and repackaging them for kids.

A consequence of this, however, is that those elements (magic, adventure, exciting plots, valiant heroes, lack of sex or real-world problems, happy endings) came to be associated with children's literature and childishness in general. This was also around the time of the realist movement that tried to push back against romanticism (itself a reaction against the Enlightenment) by highlighting the mundane and depressing aspects of life, with special emphasis given to socio-political issues since the public was now mostly literate. The pseudo-intellectuals of the day, insecure trend-chasers as those types always are, decided they needed to show the world how mature and with the times they were by writing stories which were the complete opposite of children's literature; dour tales of horrible people, full of sex, social issues, and psychological angst, that always end in tragedy. They then began to dismiss anything that failed to live up to those standards as childish escapism. Not only that, but they went back and did the same thing to older works which also didn't meet those standards. Robinson Crusoe, Waverley, all the old chivalric poems from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, works that had been celebrated as monuments of Western literature by the greatest minds of their times, were now labeled as children's literature (although Greek mythology seemed to escape this treatment for some reason).

The problem was that most people still enjoyed all of those so-called escapist elements and continued to read the authors still willing to write escapist books, much to the chagrin of the pseuds. This led to the literary world being divided into to two streams: the lowbrow stream of penny dreadfuls, dime store novels, and pulp fiction, and the highbrow stream of "serious literature". There was some pushback against he latter from within the intelligentsia itself, such as from Chesterton and the Inklings, but it was never able to heal the divide. The lowbrow stream evolved into what is now called genre fiction, while the highbrow stream evolved into the psychological modernist novel, and finally into post-modernist self-wankery. And that's where we are today.

As I said, my understanding is still incomplete, but I think this is what happened.

>>4737
The more I get into "real art", the more I realize there's probably less of a separation between it and the stuff I was enjoying before anyway.
People don't tell you that classics are often actually funny. There's such an air of pretention to how all of this stuff is presented culturally.

>>4690
So you dislike humanist literature and 18th century novels, but like Walter Scott? Weird, but I suppose I can see where you're coming from. Here're some of mine:
>the Bronte sisters are boring, just read Dickens instead
>Gide, Cocteau, Beaumont and contemporaries are all shit
>courtly love poems have literary merit
>Italian comedy is the best theater to grace Europe
>Guénon is a decent writer
>Lovecraft is the gateway to a lifetime of trash taste
>the Upanishads surpass Aristotelian metaphysics

Edgar Allen Poe is boring, poetry has no value, and theater is a cultural std.

myorar is good except for the ending

Boomer writers were the ones who had the greatest impact on literature, for better or for worse
>>4755
I agree about the peotry take, but I disagree about the other two.

>>4847
what did you mean by that?

All genre fiction written after WWII is garbage for babies. We get it, your dark lord is an allegory for le nazis, nobody cares.

>>4873
Only among shitty writers.

>>4884
>there were good writers
What a lovely, lovely voice.

>>4873
The Wheel of Time books are comfy. Not great, but comfy.

>>4885
>jewzach is the one with a shit take
imagine my shock

>>4893
>emojitroon is the one who can't handle the truth
imagine my shock

>>4893
What did you expected from a jewich mexican?

Are these bad takes or just contrarian ones in your opinion?

Ernest Hemingway is without any doubt the better author from XXth century and the only people who disagree are either chuds assblasted by him or never read his works.

>>5258
Hemingway has tricked generations of writers into think that consciously unpretentious minimalism, devoid of any poetic quality, is not an acceptable way to write, but the best way of writing prose.

>>5258
>>5290
He's meh at best and "shilled" at lot for being a "save" belt to force kids and teenagers to read, while also being in the Marxist side of the things.

Cormac McCarthy isn't a "genius" and his works are really overrated. Blood Meridian is 3/5 at best.

>>4755
Poetry is indeed pure trash, any guy who likes it is a massive red flag.

Becky Chambers is the best sci-fi author in decades and the chuds are afraid of her talent.

>>4766
Creepy ass looking bitch

>>4690
There is no more horrifying Lovecraftian creature than niggers, who right now are pushing to abolish the basic rights of self defense. Tolkien unintentionally popularized racebaiting:
>Goblins are jews
>Orcs are nignogs
>Elves are also a minority you shouldn't trust
Forcing the D&D manchildren to be more fragile, excluding basically anyone with a sense of humor from their circlejerks.

>>5404
You probably never read any Lovecraft or Tolkien work, let's be honest here.

>>5430
>Industrial Society and Its Future was written with the logic of a research paper because it was never intended for a general audience
I think it was intended for a general but a)Ted was an asperger who, as a professor, was only used to writing academic papers and b)he had to cut a lot because of the limitations of newspapers. He admitted that it lacked a lot of critical information and said that the Anti-Tech Revolution, which he wrote in prison, was a more complete version of what Industrial Society and Its future was supposed to be. Although I think the Anti-Tech Revolution has the opposite problem where Ted just rambles too much about barely relevant topics.

>>5431
I don't think IS&IF was intended for a general audience for a few reasons. It constantly references other parts of the manifesto without referring to the relevant paragraphs as progresses and expects the reader to understand the connections between them intuitively. It references Republican Chinese literature and philosophy, something the layman has never read, just like his bombs. (Ironically, he references many figures who would become authoritarian as time went on due to their exposure to the Chinese masses. This is particularly true of Sun Yat-sen, a cornerstone of the Republican movement who shifted from an ideology of completely direct democracy to democratic republicanism to transitionary dictatorship and eventually gripped with how the average Chinaman is unable to understand the concepts of personal and political freedom at the end of his life.) He intentionally uses dated and caustic language to refer to minorities and other groups. While he abandons any notions of reform in the work and sidesteps religion, he always entertains the idea that dictatorship is better than democracy.

We're in agreement that this his chosen structure is due to his history of writing research papers, but I think that, despite him saying he committed his bombings so people outside of a niche of intellectuals would read it, his target audience was those who would otherwise have dismissed it or been unable to read it normally but able to understand it if it was given to them, students and intellectuals and well-read dissidents. Alternatively, he may have been naïve about the nature of the public despite being able to accurately recognize and state social trends. He expected the public or government to understand his message through his bombings, but neither did. (At least, not the men on the ground. His attacks were part of a string of civil unrest that may have been coordinated by government agencies as a competing plan to government coordinated foreign terrorism.)

As for Anti-Tech Revolution, I believe what you recognize as rambling is particular to what we've recognized in his writing of IS&IF, the necessity of context for structure. ATR requires an understanding of the development of his ideology after the publication of IS&IF and his arrest, something that is fulfilled by reading a majority of his works to this point. Contextually, it's a post-doctoral thesis compared to the doctoral dissertation of TS and the master's thesis of IS&IF. Personally, I think IS&IF is his magnum opus because of the context and mindset of its author at the time of its writing. Despite serving over two decades in a supermax by the time of ATR's release, he had gone soft from factors such as his return to academic work in physics, consistent lifestyle, advanced age, and knowledge of outside support.

>>5430
>>Lovecraft's best works weren't novels
Yeah no shit out of all the thousands of works he wrote only one of them was a novel.

>>5437
Sorry that I didn't use the term "novella" and conflated Dunwich and Innsmouth with Charles Dexter Ward. Here's an even more contrarian opinion based on what I stated. Lovecraft's best works aren't part of his mythos.

Cormac McCarthy is far from a genius and an extremely overrated writer.

>>5462
I really liked No Country and Blood Meridian. The Road wasn't great.

Octavia E. Butler is overrated. I literally had a soyboy trying to sucker punch me for saying it back at college and the entire class got mad at me, including our teacher.

>>5481
Dickens remains as the favorite of all time only because of Christmas Carol, lots of self-pity progs tend to cannibalize mediocre works as propaganda.
>Quixote
Became popular during Spain conquering and forcing aborigines to regurgitate their shit, just another overrated work of literature of a schizo who never left his cave, but god forbid if you criticize it, its reputation is almost on par with the Bible (the main reason why you exist plebeians).

>>5496
I'm curious as to how true this is cause if you just mean classical fantasy I think you might be on to something.

>>5591
Dickens was a great storyteller but it books are often bogged down by all the social commentary. It's obvious he didn't have a solid understanding of economics or politics in general. I think that's why his most popular novel to this day is A Tale of Two Cities. It's set decades before he was born so he couldn't engage in nearly as much social commentary as usual and what commentary there is in the novel is just taken from Thomas Carlyle.

Shakespeare's best plays are not his tragedies or even his comedies but his historical plays. Specifically the ones dealing with English History like Henry IV 1 and 2 and Henry V. Not having to commit fully to either tragedy or comedy frees him to portray a greater variety of moods which in turn makes the characters and the plays themselves feel more well-rounded.

Michael Moorcock is the best writer from 20th century

He is right, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis Robert E. Howard, Philip K Dick and all those pulp and conservative writers should have their books burned.

Moorecuck is outrageously overrated. His only decent books are just outright ripoffs of Barsoom. People suck off the Elric series, but I read the whole thing and it was incredibly boring.

>>5632
lol you are assblasted

>>5639
Yeah. Assblasted that I wasted two months of my life on the moorecuck meme.

George Orwell was a hack. People only remember his books because of their political commentary. They don't actually have any literary merit. Same with Ayn Rand.

>>5592
Can you read well?
>Charles Dickens' mediocre work got cannibalized by progs as long it fits onto their doctrine
I didn't say it was MY favorite, but the favorite of the others.
>Not the Quixorinos
Face it, forcing everyone to read books produced by your slave owners doesn't mean it's any good, much like with TV shows: There was nothing else. Mexcrements, or whatever the mediterranean breeds they refer themselves as, are doomed eternally sucking off mediocrity and if they feel punk, Karl Marx's is ready to unzip his pants.

>>5614
And Shylock was the best Israeli PM that never existed.

>>5643
It wouldn't be surprising if he plagiarized from actual wrongthinkers who have been calling out the globohomo agenda and sterilized for his leftwing kind, as if his beloved socialism didn't kill anyone opposing it.

>>5646
>It wouldn't be surprising if he plagiarized from actual wrongthinkers
Funny you mention that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

>>4690
>Literature was only in Europe and America
>What is Russian literature?
>Oh, is that Dostoyevsky?
LMAO

Join the /lit/ server where we are currently hosting a Don Quixote book club.

https://discord.com/invite/VAmzWpKh

Just for lols I decided to post your opinion in a thread about Don Quixote on cuckchan /lit/.
I have to say I wasn't disappointed with how butthurt they turned out.

https://boards.4chan.org/lit/thread/23551276#p23551307

>>4690
Canterbury Tales, Faulkner, Joyce suck I agree with. Disagree about Don Quixote. The rest I haven't read yet

>>4690
join a youth group they said

I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of "sinning their way to Jesus" or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, "spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment's plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked-placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment-by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia's greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

For some reason, I just didn't like Kafka's short fiction as much as The Trial or The Castle. I recently read DFW's essay about Kafka, and it convinced me to retry the short stories to see if I can force myself to enjoy them. Perhaps specifically trying to find the humor in each one, as was part of the purpose of Wallace's essay.

Readers are retarded and most of the time, they just want to shoot you down.
>write direct prose with short sentences
>OH MY GUCCI, LEARN TO WRITE! YOUR PROSE DOES NOT PAINT ENOUGH OF A VIVID PICTURE UGHHH DO YOU THINK IT"S THE READER'S BURDEN TO INTERPRET YOUR TEXT WITH XIS IMAGINATION?!
>write slightly fancier prose
>OH MY GUCCI, LEARN TO WRITE! I AM LITERALLY SHAKING RIGHT NOW, AND HERE IS WHY: ONE, YOU DID NOT READ THE MEDIUM.COM WRITING GUIDELINES FOR AN EASY TO DIGEST TEXT WHICH IS WHY YOU ARE DESCRIBING THINGS, UGHHH WHY DO YOU DESCRIBE THINGS THIS IS SO OPPRESSIVE, AND TWO, YOU USED A METAPHOR HERE, DO YOU THINK I CAN READ YOUR MIND, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT THE READER MAY NOT GET THIS METAPHOR?! CONCLUSION: YOU ARE A HECKIN' PROBLEMATIC BIGOT THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE.
>*Cormac McCarthy writes an incredibly obtuse passage with no punctuation*
>GENIUS!!! :-OOOOO I LIKE HIM ALMOST AS MUCH AS JOYCE (I AM VERY SMART)
Yes you are very silly. After many years of blaming myself and thinking I'm a hack after receiving feedback, I have concluded that most people don't understand shit of what they read, but keep canned responses on the ready if the author is famous. If my slightly fancy prose is unintelligible you should hate Joyce or McCarthy with a passion because they're incredibly more difficult to parse.

>>5700
direct prose with short sentences is the best. simple, elegant, and to the point.

>>5725
I disagree, most of people who don't like complex and poetic prose are either women or manchildren who only like shitty fantasy slop.
Direct prose should only be used if you are writing something really complex and dense.

Machiavelli was not an original thinker. All he did was document what rulers in his day were already doing.

>>5761
I disagree with that one, but there's merit in it.

Non-fiction is more interesting than fiction. And when it comes to fiction, I'd rather read old escapist stories than navel-gazing "proper lit'rature."

Y'all chuds incels should read Hannah Arendt.

>>5632
elric sucks

Sándor Márai is incredibly superior to overrated writers like Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel García Márquez who write pretentious and emotional slop for midwits without real density and poetic soul.

Laurence Sterne and Cervantes are the OC redditors

Satire in general is pretty boring. It can sometimes work for short stories, but a novel length satire is going too far.

Lolita didn't make the nips lolicons, they have had a long history of it before that. I do think the book might have helped in injecting jewish poison into their minds since the authors wife was a Russian Jew.