Is there truth in mass market literature? Are we the plebs for

I can't stand lit snobs who only read pynchon and joyce and whatever.

I read just about anything, it's all good. Life's too short to be a stuck up, unlikable faggot.

I think you can do an interesting analysis on something like the hunger games, even if you don't agree with it.
It's about a totalitarian system with many good characters, after all.

>>7581285
hello reddit

>>7581285
whatever the opposite of "go back to reddit" is, i present you with it. thanks for being a grownup

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>most people are average or stupid
>mass consumption produces mediocrity

Some great works are universally popular.

>>7581285
>Life's too short to be a stuck up, unlikable faggot
And, given our short lifes, you decide to spend it reading literature for plebs? That's like saying "Life is too short, sleep all day"

>>7581285
>I read just about anything
because
>Life's too short

lol it should be the other way around. You can only read a limited number of books in your life so why don't you choose to read the greatest artistic achievements of mankind rather than pleb trash?

It would be like passing over the complete works of Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner in favour of Chart music and Hip-Hop....

I'm OP

I disagree with poptimism and I think that these works speak for themselves. The hunger games pales in comparison to anything Cormac McCarthy writes. John Green cannot hold a candle to David Foster Wallace.

It is an important thing to distinguish masterpieces from generic works. Credit needs to be given where credit is due.

>>7581307
Hey, if you want to sleep all day, whatever, I don't give a shit.

I like it all. I like a good Faulkner novel, but I like stephen king too. If you can't stand that, I really don't care.

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>>7581312
>Credit needs to be given where credit is due.

who really gives a shit. I read and enjoyed the Hunger Games novels, I thought that they were pretty damn good for what they were. They're meant for young adults and who knows how many young adults are going to get into literature because of them.

I'm a 28yr old lit/phil double major steeped in all of the good stuff that comes along with that, but I enjoyed HG as a fun read. Shit's brutal too.

>>7581334
Wait wait....So you're saying that you don't feel the need to read only classic literature in order to reinforce the pseudo-intellectual fantasy version of yourself that you've created as a defense mechanism, so you can tell yourself that everyone hates you because you're superior to them?

How is that even possible?

>>7581285
Bad books are literally intellectual poison.

>>7581377
"Bad" is pretty subjective. Personally, I think Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses are bad.

Not that I care if anyone else reads them and likes them, whatever.

>>7581310
just off the record, there's a lot of great hip-hop out there ya know

>>7581273
Is there nutrition in a big mac?

>>7581298
>>most people are average

true, but most people can't be stupid

>>7581285
>>7581334
Whooooaaaaa

You read really popular young adult novels and dislike more complex ones?

Shit, what rebellious free spirits.

Truly you must be the new generation of intellectual leaders. Why bother reading something with some objective merit when you can read Winnie The Pooh? Damn... Whoa...

>>7581394

yes, there is.

>>7581433
I said I read it all. I like more complex novels, but I don't think that just because a novel is more complex that it automatically makes it better.

>>7581394
Yes

>>7581353

It usually happens narually in your mid 20s.

>>7581273
Why the fuck is my beloved thom yorke in the same sack with that people?
>>7581310
I think that the point is to do whatever you want/enjoy since we are going to die anyway(and soon) and in the end nothing really matters.

>>7581462
Because Thom Yorke makes pop music.

>>7581285
Have you ever considered the idea that you can stick to reading classics and highly literary works without having to act like a pretentious ass about it?

Just a thought

>>7581477
Nope, as evidenced by you being a complete pretentious ass in this post.

>>7581273
>Is poptimism necessary in literature?
I am so fucking sick of /mu/. It's easily the worst board on 4chan, below /b/, below /pol/, below /v/, below /mlp/. I knows it bait but it doesn't matter, I want to physically hurt every single person who posts there when I see these superficial freshmen coming to /lit/ to fish for approval of their favorite rapper, who can only speak and think in memes, who have never read Infinite Jest but post ten thousand screenshots from that stupid fucking YouTube video.

Go ruin some other board, seriously. If you don't read books then why are you coming here? /lit/ is not your big brother, it is not there to coddle you and give buttpats of approval. I sincerely mean this, fuck off

>>7581473
Radiohead it may be popular ,but its alternativr music. It has messages against the system and shit.
Plus the quality of their music is very high nad not comercial

>>7581481
I already explained my position on this and you are alarmingly vitriolic.

>>7581492

Please stop.

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>>7581492
>It isn't pop because it has messages against the system

>>7581496
Why?
They are musical geniuses.
Juat listen to 2+2=5

>>7581273
>Is poptimism necessary in literature?
yes. shitty books are vital to the publishing of good literature in my country. part of the money they make selling trash is used to translate and publish books by authors that don't bring any profit to the publisher (gombrowicz, pynchon, marai, sebald, bernhard, modiano, barthelme, etc)

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>>7581492
wew

>>7581518
Im talking about the musical genre

>>7581521

lol

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>>7581492

Fuck you guys you dont know the spiritual experience i had watching them live and high.

>>7581479
How does my post sound anymore pretentious than >>7581285?

>>7581353
You're argument falls apart when you realize people who dont read classic lit also dislike HG. Liking classic lit and disliking pop lit are not correlated. Do you really think anti-poptism is exclusive to /lit/?
>>7581462
>Nihilistic hedonism
smskull
gb2Nietzsche

>>7581561
See, you sounded like a pretentious ass in this post too.

>>7581562
Yes of course. Its the only reasonable answer to life.

>>7581493
I apologize if I'm coming across as rude or upset; I zippered my penis as I was getting dressed this morning and I'm in a significant amount of pain. I'm not going to read this thread or look for your post where you explain your position because I can immediately tell you do not know much about literature and do not regularly post on /lit/ (your awkward use of the adjective "vitriolic" combined with a fucking adverb gave it away). Because of this, your opinion is unfortunately worthless.

I'm going to ask you to reread my previous post now because I'm very serious about it. Go do it, right now. 4chan is more than just a hobby for me, it's an integral part of my life, and you are causing me significant grief with your idiotic and ignorant babbling. Please, either read a book before posting or just close your mouth.

N.B. Most of my fellow /lit/izens would probably prefer if you chose the latter

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>>7581285
>it's all good

>>7581320
>Caring about spooks, ever.

>>7581492
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foC7lLXFiPc
Eat shit and die.

>>7581473
>>7581496
>>7581531
>>7581544
>>7581540
you may not like their music (which is fine by me, i personally like them) but in no way is thom yorke a popstar. He's not big on social media, he's actually kind of a recluse and sometimes timid individual. You could consider him to be one in the OK Computer era but that's almost 20 years.

>>7581657
I kek'd but hes awesome anyway

>>7581681
Thanks for defending me, buddy
These plebs dont know shit.
You cant compare thom with bieber or rihana.
Oh the pleasure that Radiohead has given me. Pure.

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>>7581570

>>7581285
this place has gone to shit

>>7582263
>>7582263
why though? what happened? It happened so quickly

>>7581273

There is good and bad stuff. Page turners are an actual thing. The Lincoln Lawyer was a great book and I enjoyed it, which is how I know it's plebeian.

But I have tastes, I'm not an indiscriminate reading machine. I remember deciding to alternate between pleb and patrician ("fun") books. After reading pale fire, then trying some sort of sci fi book, I instantly realised that this distinction was dumb.

Fantasy is generally shit though. Page turners are great by definition. When I realise that I'm enjoying a book, this is a mark of plebitude

>>7581298

Some great works are exceptions. The universally popular works are so known that the average person feels smarter by consuming them.

In cinema this would be equivalent to Tarantino movies. People like them, but if the same exact movies had a different director they woulnd't necessarily like them, because there wouldn't be a "I am smart for liking this" quality attached.

No, no, no, no, and what.

>>7582832
Also, they have to be easily digestible with no effort put in. Tarantino and Orwell are known/ loved by them for their simplicity but they will view Joyce and Tarkovsky as too hard, boring or elitist.

>>7581562
>not being a nihilistic hedonist

why are you lying to yourself, anon?

>>7582810
imgur top 100 post and the /r/all reddit post about hyperion.

>>7581285
>Life's too short
Exactly, why waste it on genre trash

>This thread

Oh /lit/ never change

>>7582986
Because some of it is good. Also, everything that isn't literary fiction isn't necessarily genre fiction either.

>>7581334
The Hunger Games novels are absolute dog shit
That's cool that you like dog shit but a lot of people don't get enjoyment out of reading it.
I honestly believe John Green is a better writer than that bitch.

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Depression has refined my taste. I used to get enjoyment from YA books and shitty fan service moe anime, but now I don't enjoy anything. Literally nothing, not even masturbation. Reading literary fiction is however all I spend my time doing, since I have to fill the void somehow and I can at least appreciate its aesthetic superiority.

>>7581273

95% of the people on this board with sophisticated taste in english lit are pure, unvarnished pleb when it comes to higher art. that's not counting all the undergraduates.

there are OxBridge exceptions but not many.

you don't want such aesthetic gluttony that you vanish up your ass. that's a problem for high society -types who come to this shit late in life as fundraiser adjuncts.

but for most people who are trying to piece together emotional coherence with an above-subsistence-level lifestyle, historical and cultural ignorance is the real problem.

feel good that you have a relationship with art, but not so good that you delude yourself into feeling like an english major is a good life decision.

>>7583258
I was the opposite, it's when I was depressed that I didn't care and would just consume utter trash. Although I do miss the cheap thrills sometimes. Hard to get too excited about most literary fiction.

>>7581285
The first line is true, especially since there is a time when someone wanders off /b/, comes here, reads pynchon, and thinks he is a patrician.

The other part however is false, because there are many, many shitty shitty shitty books out there.

I think the hunger games is much too far, but if you're trying to ask if the mainstream has some kind of value I think you should look towards like the Patterson tier of books. Using YA throwaway trash is cheating and making the question unnecessarily extreme.

>>7582829
>Actual literature is boring because I think it's boring.

What kind of twisted logic is this?