Share your contrarian literary opinions

Long books are never as good as short books by the same author.

nothing wrong with massive sprawling quoted dialogue

>>7584692
Gass is the best prose writer since Joyce.

Reading for prose ignores the fact that literature is fundamentally a storytelling medium, and if you honestly believe that the prose is more interesting than the story something has gone wrong in your education or upbringing.

>>7584697
>Joyce disproves
>Pynchon disproves
>DFW disproves
Tri-tailored contrarianism, nice job

JK Rowling and her ilk are written for a population of mentally-deficient retards, whereas writers like Joyce are the true literary paradigms who deserve attention and respect. There, there's my contrarian opinion.

>>7584711
thanks, i wrote it myself

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>>7584706
I... hm. I kind of feel like I should disagree with this somehow, but I really can't. I guess you're right.

Delillo is better than Pynchon.

>>7584697
mega biblion, mega cacon. Nice job, man!

>>7584921
Gaddis is better than both of them.

Harold Bloom has literally never been right about anything.

I think Cormac McCarthy is a pretentious hack

>>7585033
>I'm illiterate

>>7584692
Once you've read The Bible, you've pretty much read every other book.

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>>7585046
mad

>>7584706
What if the text blurs the line between prose and poetry or it's a poem ith a story?

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>>7585033

>>7584692
Harry Potter is a well written series

J.K. Rowling is unattractive and I wouldn't fuck her.

>>7585076
GOT EM

Pynchon actually fucking sucks

thats the default position

>>7584692
you losers are all just posers
read a god damned non-meme book you fags
y'all just wanna get the cred without wanting the knowledge in your heads
AND desu you're all not very bright in the first place
go back to watching anime if all you want to do is pretend and stay close-minded

>>7586092
>desu

Point invalidated, please kill yourself

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>>7586107

>>7584720
It said contrarian opinions.

>>7586107
there's a word filter, newfriend. t.bh gets changed to desu

desu

>>7586124
This desu senpai.

>>7586132
baka desu senpai

>>7586173
b-baka desu s-senpai!

DFW will be read in 100 years.

It's okay to read translations.

Aescylus's Oresteia is better than Homer's Odyssey - and is the finest piece of literature ever written.

>>7586214
delusional redditor detected

>>7586222
you already made a thread about this faggot

>>7585049
wethebest

>>7584692
The Greeks are actually really not worth the effort of reading past a few of them (mostly Plato and Aristobabe).
Start with the Germans, seriously. Don't waste time, not if you have been thinking for yourself for a while already.

>>7586225
>you already made a thread about this faggot
Nope, nice try fag. I have responded to it, though.

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>>7584706
>the fact that literature is fundamentally a storytelling medium

>>7584921
Correct.

>>7584692
Don't know how contrarian this'll actually be here, but to kill a mockingbird is hunger games level shit. Also I hated Gravity's Rainbow.

All of Pynchon's works are excellent; except Gravity's Rainbow.

Edgar Allan Poe is the greatest American writer of the nineteenth century.

>>7586865
Now you're just lying.

>>7584711
DFWs short stories and essays were way better than IJ as was the Pale King

>>7586865
>>7586868
? he's right

well, toss-up between him and melville

it's a pretty thin field

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>>7586897
Stop it, I can't take it.

>>7586912
hello reddit

>>7586922
That's a fine ruse my boy. Now back to bed with you.

No woman will ever produce anything of literary merit

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>>7586890
Fully agree. Pale King would be regarded as his magnum opus and likely win the pulitzer, had he finished it.

>>7584706
>Not realizing philosophy is the most important form of literature.

>>7584720
There are three types of opinions on /lit/: Meme, reddit, and contrarion. I believe your post falls under "meme".

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>>7585008
GaddGadd is getting ever closer to becoming our next meme author.

>>7585117
Considering how it inspired the hearts and minds of millions of children, it's pretty hard to refute that.

>>7586214
>Assuming Tao Lin won't write the defining novel of the first half of 21st century living in the next couple years.

>>7586841
Most people will agree on mockingbird, but the only reason people dislike GR is that they view it as a literary train wreck written by a lunatic, when in reality Pynchon is recreating the chaos of WWII for us through his genius.

Literature is suffering the last of its death throes. Never again will there be writ a book considered classic. The gate has closed. Now is the era of television an shit

Soon enough the cultural moment will have moved far enough away from the invention of the printing press that books will be completely alien to the vast majority of people.

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>>7585076
>Harold bloom being rustled by memes

I love this.

>"When you read harry potter you are, in fact, trained to read stephen king"

>>7584692
The Corrections was an amazing novel and Franzen deserves all the praise he gets towards it.

99% of people have no awareness of their cosmic stupidity much less engage with their ephemeral insignificance and conviction despite that is man's ultimate absurd fact

>>7587014
You are either very old or very young. With access to the internet, the era of television is already dead and people are developing a greater appreciation for literature. We can finally analyze the post-modernist era as a whole; in the twentieth century literary memes were non-existent. Being engaged with literature is almost fashionable in contemporary society, considering the fame Franzen and Lin have received for years.

>>7587050
>literary
Looks like your one of the dumb ones, friend.
Now on your way to your next existential crisis.

>>7587053
When I said "and shit" I was referring to the internet and related future technologies

>>7587053
Franzen and tao fucking Lin aren't even at Z grade celebrity, get real.

>>7587066
it stems from having reread moby dick and trying to talk about it with people where the conversation usually ended at the common criticism of the 'overwinded whaling chapters'

in literary terms i guess it'd be that the whaling stuff is the apex casual filter of lit alongside Shakespearean language but idk if that's very contrarian and we're all merely airing laundry otherwise

Don Delilo is massively overrated

>>7587014
humanities ain't going nowheres so long as academia is an institution desu and insofar that it fosters and contributes to an industry

>>7587092
Franzen is relatively famous, if only for being a cunt

>>7587117
Humanities != literature
Academia != literature

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Oedipus Rex is the greatest piece of literature ever written

>>7586222
Highly respectable opinion

There are no guarantees.

>>7587014
people have been saying exactly this as soon as writing was invented lols

>>7585076
In summation, Harold Bloom is an unbearably pretentious asshole.

>>7587012

WTF?? Recreating WWII is probably the last thing he's doing in GR.

>>7587182
And it's been a contrarian opnion since the very beginning

>>7586214
>assuming human civilization is not doomed

>>7587098
I've still never read a convincing defence of said cetology chapters, but I'm open to one.

Go.

Dune is the best thing ever written.

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>>7587245
>plebian opinions

>>7584706
true

>>7587023
This is a contrarian thread anon

Reading nothing is better than reading the trash 90% of people read exclusively.

>>7584706
You. I like you.
>>7584692
I find it hard to just pick up books to read because a lot of them turn into cultural or philosophical posturing and ruin everything before them.
I know I'm a coward for it, but it's a pain for me to get over, and I find it hard to take book suggestions seriously as a result.

>>7587254
Fear is the mind killer.

>>7587345
DUDE SPICE LMAO

Harry Martinson was a worse writer than his wife.

>>7584706

Where were you when I got shat on in a thread yesterday for saying The Sun Also Rises' narrative was weak and Hemingway's minimalist prose didn't account for justifying said weakness?

It doesn't matter if your story about rats shitting is written with virtuosic and beautiful or otherwise profound wordplay, it's still a story about rats shitting.

You can be a good writer without using references.

George RR Martin's sci-fi and short story material are better than his fantasy book series, which plebs who only discovered through the TV show will go back to forgetting about as soon as it's over.

>>7584692
Infinite Jest isn't super well-written. Much like Soundtracks for the Blind or one of those indie animated films done by one person, its attention comes from the effort put in by the creator rather than any legitimate quality

Ulysses didn't need to be as long as it is

The Picture of Dorian Gray isn't "one of the greats"

Harold Bloom is generally right, but likely has some form of autism

>>7587951
>It doesn't matter if your story about rats shitting is written with virtuosic and beautiful or otherwise profound wordplay, it's still a story about rats shitting.
It's like you've never even read poetry.

If you can't appreciate poetry, you can't appreciate literature.

>>7588008
you swine


I hoppe ur not wright about that

>>7588024

haha, upvoted!

>>7587327
I realised after several failed attempts to recommend classics to friends who read this stuff that it's a mistake to judge genre fic by the same rubric as belles lettres. Though they may both be words on paper, they're fairly unrelated in terms of the needs they're fulfilling. Genre fiction's actual peers are sappy rom-coms, pornography, video games, and the like--that is to say, it's just one cheap thrill among many cheap thrills, none of which are even feigning at artistry, their main purpose instead being merely to entertain the bored, exhausted, or possibly retarded. And so I think when compared to these other mind-numbers, while genre fic is certainly not made 'respectable', it's not terrible either.

>>7588043
zozzle, nigger, it's all yours my friend

>>7588055
actually insightful

>>7588055
I think the discriminating factor is whether Genre fic readers are aware of what they're missing. There's nothing wrong with distraction for its own sake (if you're in a state deserving distraction anyway - if you're exhausted after a long day or too depressed to think, for example). It may be error to assume proper lit should be judged by the same standards as genre fic, but surely that relation should be symmetric.

>>7587159
Book != literature

>>7586966

This.

>>7587014
>Implying that ebooks and e-ink reading devices that don't make your eyes bleed like traditional screens don't exist.

>>7587023
Yep i agree with this one and have been so damn disappointed by his subsequent works.. He showed so much potential in that novel but got so afraid by DFW's meme'n that he now refuses to try experimenting or even attempting to make something great. His dialogue and character's chemistry are undeniably realistic, but he's stuck playing DFW's emotionally mature friend who won't succumb to actually making something interesting.. which does require crawling up your asshole to some extent

>>7586966
That's like saying a description of a thought is better than a thought. Philosophy is a translation; literature is the original.

>>7588055
It's a fallacy to assume that traditional literary value is the only valid kind of value in human creative output. Regardless, though, there's a strong distinction between pre-d&d 'genre' and genre books written in its wake. Stuff like The Glass Bead Game and Blood Meridian and Book of the New Sun inherit tropes from their predecessors just like everything else in literature, but they use 'genre' as an aesthetic choice. Conversely, Mistborn and Hyperion and 50 Shades of Grey are products sold to an audience based on a totally codified set of creative standards, rather than tools in the realisation of artistic aims.

>>7587977
apt analogy with IJ and SFTB

>>7584705 #

Gass is so underrated.

symbolism is just an excuse for people who can't explain things with more elegant language

Alan Moore, and maybe with the addition of Brian K. Vaughan, is the only writer out there who can simultaneously write both a graphic novel and a piece of literature.

Dostoyevsky is an awful, boring writer.

>>7585076
>previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller.
Know what these guys and Bloom have in common? I like Bloom, but fuck's sake, he isn't even trying to hide it.

>>7588688
>Know what these guys and Bloom have in common?

No, why don't you say it?

Proust > Joyce

If you only read literary fiction, you don't actually enjoy reading.

>>7588694
Yes you do. I see that you are trying to quite masterfully reveal me as a disgusting human being. The fact remains that he is biased towards them. I have no problems with that noble group of people, but his efforts are pretty transparent desu.

James Joyce wrote absolute nonsense that is not worthy of anyones time

Negative opinions are easier to form than positive ones.

>>7588150
I largely agree with you but I think that for a genre fic Mistborn actually did read for something greater. It failed to grasp it but, particularly in the third book, there were attempts to make greater statements about religion, spirituality, godhood that had some level of insight. The ending of the series is legitimately thought-provoking for what is essentially YA genre lit.

>>7588721
How does the series end?

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>>7588712

>>7588722
A servant character essentially becomes God and remakes the world in the Mormon image.

>>7588723
You are either a moron or being deliberately obtuse. Neither possibility reflects well on your character. Please refrain from posting further.

>>7588729
You need to learn how to make claims like a grown-up rather than tiptoe around what you're trying to say like a frightened child.

>>7588733
THEY ARE KIKES!
I knew you had some pathetic reddit reasoning for your being intentionally obtuse. Maybe you should take your own advice.

>>7588737
OHHHHHH

I thought you were trying to call them out for being white males and telling Bloom to check his privilege or something. I never realized they were all Jewish. I get you now.

>>7588740
Oh shit, sorry familia.

>>7588747
np bb

With just a bunch of fragments and a overall lack of systematic thought, the Presocratics are more deep and truthful than literally every philosopher of the 20th Century onwards.

>>7587166
>Oedipus Rex is the greatest piece of literature ever written
Shit taste
Even Philoctetes is better
Although I recognize that the line "Ὦ τέkνα, ποῦ ποτ´ ἐστέ;" has to be one of my favorite ancient quotation

>>7584706
>and if you honestly believe that the prose is more interesting than the story

What? Are you speaking universally? I don't see how that makes sense. What if a novel has great prose but a cliche-ridden, uninteresting story? Is it not in your opinion legitimate to factor that into your evaluation of the novel or are you saying if the storytelling is bad then the novel is bad full stop?

>>7588960
what the fuck do those squiggly lines mean, O Enlightened One?

>>7586222
This actually rustles my jimmies.
The Bacchae is better than Oresteia.

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Perhaps objectivity is a vast majority of judging a book, but a part of it is also the taste of the reader.

gatsby was black

>>7591172

WE

>>7591173
>>7591172
WAZ

>>7591172
GATZ N SHIT
GAT GAT GAT

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R/books is the pinnacle of literary discussion

>>7591862
For light reads as such, skip whatever

>>7591862
Capitalistic mindset. Casual readers don't care about the author's atmosphere or vision. They only want to be entertained and to get personal takeaways from what they're reading. It's pure narcissism.

>>7584692
Post-modernism is a garbage, fake movement made entirely to hide a lack of technical merit. It uses overly complex form for no other purpose than to gain an artificial high ground by saying, this is true art and you are simply to lowly to understand it in it's entirety and complexity, when in reality it is as I state in the previous argument, a sham. Post-modernists are shams and not worth reading, noting, or even making mention of in any serious literary discussion.

>>7591870
If something is truly important you shouldn't skip over anything. However, they were talking about genre fiction, in which case, I would skip the whole book.

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>>7591862
R/ books take on James Joyce.

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>>7591891
Proof of Redditors coming here and curious Redditors wondering if Joyce is anything like Terry Pratchett.

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>>7591891
CRINGE FUCK

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>>7591884
> something is truly important

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>>7591921
Jesus. It's just too easy

>>7588737
You realize that Roth puts Jews in the absolute possible worst light. If you think his portrayal Mickey Sabbath has anything to do furthering any Jewish cause you have not read anything he has done.

Seriously, I would say Roth has done more damage to the image of the Jewish people in America than any modern author. If anything his portrayals are almost /pol/ish

>>7591990
>You realize that Roth puts Jews in the absolute possible worst light
Doesn't matter. Most ppl won't notice

I like Stephen King...

>>7586955
Had he finished it, it probably wouldn't be shorter than IJ.

>>7584706
Yeah, I can agree with this.

>>7585008
Gaddis is trash and only pretentious hipsters pretend to like him

Fantasy is the most important genre for exhibiting and exploring the world, humanity, and our interpretations of them because all fiction is a type of fantasy.

>>7584692
I think Achewood has the best characterization of any work in the English language.

>>7591921

>Proof of Redditors coming here

>>7592266
>all fiction is a type of fantasy.
Some more proof for you.

Harold bloom a shit

>>7584692
The serious literature of the past 50 years is more analogous to avant-garde popular music than art music, and avant-garde popular music is much more thematically and emotionally fertile than art music.

There's no inherent distinction between 'genre' literature and real literature, in that genres are really just sets of inherited aesthetic choices. (which happens in all literature) However, the overwhelming majority of 'genre' books are commercial products marketed to an audience.

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>>7588663

The Hugo Awards' votees hate speculative fiction with a passion; their obsession with progressive genre fiction stems from wanting to destroy literatures Eurocentric legacy.

>>7587338

With /lit/ rattling out '>>>/reddit/' on a hair trigger these past few months I'm fucking disgusted that shit like...

>You. I like you.

...farts by completely unchallenged. This anon is *literally* spewing stock reddit humour - whenever I read that 'I like you'/'you sir are a scholar and a gentleman!'/'nailed it!' bullshit I develop another stress tumor in my stomach lining.

Fucking disgusting.

I have read every post ITT and these are the only posts that are correct:
>>7585033
>>7585049
>>7586218
>>7586865
>>7588720
>>7592285

Some controversial opinions of my own:

*Finnegans Wake is Joyce's masterpiece, and thus the masterpiece of the 20th Century.
*Virgil is at least the equal of Homer.
*Howl is actually a good poem.
*Modernism and New Criticism have had an awful influence on literature.

>>7588720
I agree, and i find the thought very depressing

>>7592554
The people telling others "go back to rebbit" are actually the newfags themselves.

>>7592567
That's the point I'm making, they're fine with cluttering the board with shit memes but where are these noisy faggots when a genuine redditqueer pops up and uses language that affronts me.

>>7592558
>these opinions
>correct
And half of those you listed are incorrect even if they weren't claimed as opinions.

>>7592567

I've been here since summer, newfag. Go back to reddit.

>>7592623
I wasn't talking to you?

>>7592554
This.

>>7586865
Not the greatest, but he's definitely up there.

Twinks > Traps > Cute Grill > LGBT SJW Supporter = Bears/Fatties

>>7588663
There's no hope for you, son.

>>7588717
Dubliners and Portrait were actually very coherent. This is a post written by somebody who has heard of the reputation for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake but hasn't actually read anything by Joyce. Embarrassing that your kind are allowed here.

>>7592554
Upvoted

>>7592054
So do others on here but they keep it hush-hush because… well, he's Stephen King.

Writing fiction in prose is stupid, unless you're doing it to be ironic. It should all be done in verse.

>>7592587
I don't know if that guy is a Redditors but there have been far too many bait/ Harry Potter/ John Green threads lately. Worst of all, they are getting serious responses and discussions.

>>7592817
interesting, I want to hear more about why you think this

assuming of course you're not just baiting which is honestly much more likely

John Green is the greatest living writer.

>>7593145
That's Murakami, and I'm actually serious.

>>7593158
what purpose in comparing grains on sand on a beach

>>7592626
Still go back there you stupid redditor you people think you can say go back 2 Reddit and we wont know go back Ok

>>7585076
>reading teleologically, picking your books carefully so that they will "lead you in the right direction"
>treating reading as if it was some video game
>literary quality is determined by universal, objective qualities, yet we must be trained in order to fully appreciate these qualities
Bloom confirmed for pleb.

>>7588055
If it's only value is to entertain, you'd better spend your time watching a film, it's likely to be far better than a book which is designed only to entertain.

>>7588088
That's the thing for me. My dad insists that all books are literature, and that I'm a snob for saying otherwise, and it pisses me right off.

>>7586993
>implying it's a challenge to inspire children

>>7593682
Only if your imagination is worse that the filmmaker in question's work.

>>7593687
Coming from a fine arts background, this is easy to defeat.

Accept all books are literature, but reframe by saying that not all books are good literature, and that most of the time ppl use "literature" as shorthand for "good literature" in conversation.

>>7588705
Can you explain this in more detail? I feel like literary fiction over religious and philosophical writing isn't required to convey ideas or principles, and can be more free to just exist for aesthetic purposes or imagination.

>>7584706
>storytelling medium
But this could mean many different things. The way that words are used and juxtaposed can have a deep impact in the way that the story is conveyed.
Plot is not the only element of telling a story, and if it was Books would be written like narrative recipes.
>something has gone wrong in your education or upbringing.
Somehow this is actually the most snobbish thing I've heard on /lit/ and I don't know how that is possible.
At least, second after this comment >>7584720

>>7587951
How was the narrative in The Sun Also Rises weak? I thought it was terrific. You do realize there was much more going on in any given scene than what was literally written on the page, right? E.g. the bullfights were about more than just bullfights, and the guys fishing was about more than just two dudes bagging some trout.

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>>7593701
To inspire a child and influence them to do good for a lifetime is difficult; not that this is something Harry potter did.

books are shit

>>7587951
>Where were you when
When english sucks barking

>>7586949
Ayn rand

>>7594510
>Ayn rand
>Woman
Suuuuuure

i don't even care that Grass and Heidegger were Nazi's

>>7594519
also i like to put arbitrary apostrophes into random word's

>>7594517
>>7594510
>ayn rand
>anything of literary merit
fify

>>7584692
>boys make the best kind of children

and

>women make grate currency at times

>>7584705
yep

Hmm interesting way to think about it

The House on the Borderlands is pretty fucking bad weird fiction.

>>7584692
I sincerely pray that OP dies today.

>>7596613
I'm torn on this. I enjoyed it and thought it had some pretty unnerving sequences, but the more I think about the book after reading it, the more I realise how paper-thin the characters are and that it doesn't really have much to go on other than the character sees some weird shit.

I'll re-read it a few years down the line and I'd recommend it if people were looking for easily accessible weird fiction, but I couldn't say it was one of my favourites within that genre.

>>7596646
Ouch

>>7584692
The following is an incomplete list of terribly overrated authors (not including ones /lit/ likes to shit on because they're popular with plebs, like Camus and Hemmingway):

Virgil
Pope
Blake (muh mysticism)
Wordsworth
Dickens
Memestoevsky
TS Eliot (aka the "I don't like poetry" favorite)
DFW
Basically every single western philosopher who ever lived, especially fools like Plato and Nietzsche

>>7598018
Similar to this, while I like western philosophers, I think eastern ones are underrated. Especially their influence on Schopenhauer and western philosophy. They aren't given enough credit.

>>7598028
Thinkers in India recognised the futility of Being almost 3000 years ago. In the West we ended up with nihilistic scientific rationalism and its opposing "muh happy dappy Live Forever Personal Jesus" shit

>>7598018
>Virgil
This guy is shit that is only remembered because he had a fucking emperor backing his propaganda swill, and because for a few hundred years Latin was essential to intellect life in Europe and Virgil was one of the only halfway decent authors who wrote in the shitty language they had to learn.

The rest of that list, nah dude.

desu

>>7598281
I didn't know that youit really changes tb.h (to be honest) to desu

>>7584692
Joyce is a hack. He's a perfect intersection of pretentious, opaque prose and simplistic subject matter. Nobody reads Joyce because he makes them think or feel, the read Joyce because they think it makes them refined and intelligent

>>7598297

>early 20s
>superiority complex
>newer to reading than other anon his age but will never admit it even anonymously

Quote me on this: There is no such thing as a good writer. Just good people who have taken enough language classes.

>>7584692
Holy fuck I hate that word.
>believe in something others don't?
>You're a contrarian lol, you dun believe what u say lol XD

>>7598427

This is the stupidest thing I've ever read here.

>>7598427
Sure, I'll quote you right now
>Look at me, I'm retarded

>>7598427

This thread has been great comedy fodder.

Thanks.

>>7598427
11/10

>>7584720

This is true though. It amazes me when adults talk about reading Harry Potter as if it's something good or something to have pride in.

Kids shouldn't even read it because it's so bad and lacking.

Dostoyevsky is superior to Tolstoy in almost every way. The Brothers Karamazov is the definitive novel of nineteenth century Russia.

>>7598411
I mean you just described 70% of /lit/ so... you're not wrong, but it's kinda a moot point.

>>7598535
>Crime and Punishment is the definitive novel of nineteenth century Russia.
FTFY

>>7598044
which thinker in India?
elaborate please?

>>7598044
A belief in scientific rationalism and Christianity can coexist imo.

>>7598535
Well, at least you know you are completely wrong on this account.

War and Peace is unparalleled in history.

>>7592509

This applies to the Nobel as well.

>>7584706

You are 1/3 right.

There are 3 main things in literature, and you can produce a book that is worth reading if you only achieve one of the 3. If you achieve all of them your work is sure a masterpiece.

They are:

a) An interesting history, a compelling plot (Breaking Bad was almost destined for success when we consider how great the embryonic idea of the show was);

b) Great characters, characters that are memorable and that will live forever in the minds of the readers;

c) A sublime language: the working of the written word with so much beauty that the work can stand alone only because of its verbal texture (a lot of poetry falls on this category).

I would also like to say dialogue, but I guess that it is a thing that is divided between points b) and c).

It’s no wonder that Shakespeare is so famous and respected: he can hit the spot in all categories. But many justly famous books lack points in some of these tree categories (Dostoevsky and Hemingway are examples).

As for movies, many of them fail in points b) and c). Star wars, for example, is a bore when you realize how weak the language of its dialogues are and how cliché and empty are its characters.

>>7592054
I know it's pedantic to say, but that statement isn't really an opinion. Assuming you are telling the truth, "I like X" is a factual observation about your opinion, and cannot easily be disputed. "X is good" is an opinion.

>>7584706
yes, but bad writing takes away from the story
and good writing should add to the story
So they shouldn't be mutually exclusive

Sci fi and fantasy can be literature

>>7599613
I see some merit in your approach to literature, but I don't think it's fair to judge film by the standards of another medium.

The Star Wars series provides an excellent example. Though many have argued that its scripts do not repeat clichés so much as they reinvigorate classic archetypes, I will concede that the series did not succeed or win respect on the merits of its writing. Instead, it draws strength from charismatic acting, a majestic score, and imaginative, well-executed visuals. All of these represent important elements of cinema, yet your standards for written works exclude them entirely.

>>7599615
>"X is good" is an opinion.

Oh boy here we go

>>7584706
This is completely true. Seeing literature as pure prose should be punishable, and is this board's main flaw.
Poetry can neither be reduced to wordplay and prosody.
No author's genuis is entirely expressed through prose.
Except Nabokov's. But he's a hack

>>7599740
>Except Nabokov's. But he's a hack

Lolita is a great book, there is no doubt about that. Few writers created a single book that is this good.

>>7588960
"Eyo babies! Where the fuck yo' at?"

>>7599763
>structurally flawed
>good book

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>>7598441
btfo

>>7599769

>The main characters are interesting and the narrator is one of the best characters in all of literature;
>The book is immensely funny, one of the funniest I have ever read (Nabokov is greater in comedy than most stand up faggots of today);
>Nabokov had the courage to swim against the current and use a greatly poetical and metaphorical language in an age where you either wrote a bone-dry and extremely simplistic prose (like Hemingway) or that pseudo poetical prose of the beatniks and other mediocrities;
>The novel fuses very realistic passages with phrases of Shakespearean poetic beauty;
>The work has transcended the literary world and became a major world icon.

And then you said this is a bad book? Really, you don’t know what good art is (most likely you started your reading life with Dostoyevsky and is mad with Nabokov for his low opinion about the older Russian writer, who, btw, is really inferior to Tolstoy in every way).

>>7588398
It's a shame that this is even a contrarian opinion. I've never the hipster/elitist's reflexive disdain for Moore.

>>7599840
*never understood

>>7599740

Nabokov is great as a novelist when it comes to the weird ideas he had for his novels. They aren't intellectually interesting, but they're fun. Academia has essentially turned a very fun novelist into a postmodern breadwinner postmortum.

He didn't have "much to say", though, sure. But he's a very fun novelist, especially to teenagers and young adults.

>>7598535

I agree.

>>7599840
Radical contrarian opinion ya got there, Mr. Iconoclast. Sure are breaking new boundaries with that opinion nobody else shares (not even a single guy.)

>>7599613
>(Dostoevsky and Hemingway are examples).
Where would you say they're lacking? Prose? I could see that argument for Hemingway, since he's famous for blunt sentences and all, but it's still not possible to judge that objectively.

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>>7584692

okay time for some actual contrarian opinions

> John Milton was one of the blandest poets in the history of English literature, and destroyed the concept of Poetry for over a century
> There will never be a literary movement again as great as the English renaissance nor the Modernist renaissance. People don't read enough or care enough about good books anymore for this to be the case.
> Most "experimental" poets and novelists of the 20th century took the easiest possibly route to the canon, and once we get over our obsession of formal innovation, we're going to forget them: Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, later Nabokov novels, most of the french nouveaux romans, all of the New York School except for Ashbery, all of the Beats, all of the San Francisco Renaissance, John Cage, Morton Feldman, basically anyone like this. They will be irrelevant later in the 21st century, and forgotten by the 22nd.
> There are no living poets in the public eye that will be considered "major canonical poets" historically.
> DeLillo will make the canon, even though I don't like him.
> McCarthy will be forgotten in half a century.
> Pynchon will only be remembered for Crying of Lot 49.
> The best literature of the 21st century will be in Spanish and Chinese. American Literature is beyond saving. Americans no longer have the drive to do anything worthy of the canon.
> Postmodernism will be renamed "the lost era" in 100 years, because it'll be seen as an age of charlatans. Novelists of the era like Marquez will survive and most of the novelists you guys like will be totally forgotten, except for Nabokov. Borges will be remembered. Most others won't.
> Videogames will never be literature or be artistic in any way. Film is already more successful and important than Theatre, and will remain the most important art form through the 21st.
> We will see a huge revival of Emersonian romanticism in the 21st century, except all over the world. America will not participate in this, and will decay because of it.
> We will have another Shakespeare.

>>7599860
word play never mattered for me as long as the writer can still evoke emotion and convey wit
I'm pretty sure most of /lit/ is lying when they say they feel moved by Joyce

>>7599905
>> Postmodernism will be renamed "the lost era" in 100 years, because it'll be seen as an age of charlatans.

I agree.

>>We will see a huge revival of Emersonian romanticism in the 21st century, except all over the world. America will not participate in this, and will decay because of it.

I disagree.

>>7599957
>I disagree.

that's fine, that was one of my shakier opinions. I have no idea what's coming next myself. If I did, it'd be pretty easy to jump on it and be a charlatan myself.

Dom Casmurro is not a good book, and the first half is completely useless

>>7599905
Let's go for a drink some time.

>>7599905
it is indeed easier to dismiss than to praise

>>7592460
>>7592791
Soz bros but trying to stay interested in Demons after 200 pages of dreadful character interactions, needless descriptions and 70 odd pages of introducing two characters that could be halved only for their fucking children (equally as vapid creations) to be the centre piece.

It is a dreadful novel that is far too long for what it is trying to be.

Have read Notes and The Double which were alright though.

Also Celine's Journey To The End of the Night is too long and needlessly descriptive yet is heartfelt and brilliant when on point.

>>7599905
I like you, like, a lot.

> Postmodernism
> Borges
Nigga, he was more modern than René Descartes, more modern than the fucking wristwatch.

>>7600361

well he's lumped in there with others who don't fit the mold like Beckett and Nabokov.

Oh, and Beckett will be likely seen as the most important writer of the 20th. He will survive more than anyone else. He's more than the Ibsen of the 20th, he's the Tolstoy. He shows why the 20th century for what it is, and what it's done to us. He was entirely right all along, and he's going to be immortal for it.

And DeLillo is going to survive for that reason. I don't consider him more than a more-talented Orwell, but Orwell survived, and DeLillo will survive even more once Orwell is forgotten. I think it's somewhat safe to say that he'll be one of the most contentious and rebellion-inspiring authors of the 21st.

I'm looking forward to the 21st. It is very safe to say we've survived the nihilism of the postwar era. If anything, we're on some sort of super-weird neomodernist slant right now. I don't like that much either, since we're not seeing the talent connected with it like we did with the first one, but maybe it'll go somewhere pleasant.

>>7600392
> he's lumped in there
Nah, that's for retards. His cosmovision was def modernist, he happened to be in a period where people don't read their works and just interpret the Wikipedia blurb.
idk enough for Nabo or Beckett. Intuitively, I'd say the latter fits the category somewhat more.

>Pynchon will release one more door-stopper before he finally croaks
>German literature completely dominated the 20th century
>Indian/Pakistani/middle east literature will dominate the 21st century canon.
>There has never been a great black novelist
>Jose Rizal's novel, "Noli Me Tangere" is the greatest Spanish language novel written since Don Quixote
>Bernhard was better than Beckett
>Beckett was better than Joyce
>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is better than Moby Dick
>Another great American Author will emerge within the next ten years and have a career as prolific as Faulkner, Mellville, James, Hemmingway
>he will be of latin descent

>>7600392
1984 will forever remain iconic and is something even plebs / non readers can relate to or reference.

He will outlive Del-Boy

>>7584706
12/10

>>7600414
>>"Noli Me Tangere" is the greatest Spanish language novel written since Don Quixote
That's a funny way to spell "Pedro Paramo"

>German literature completely dominated the 20th century
I second this.

>>7594519
Pls don't conflate them. Grass fully turned around, and I think it took a lot of courage to admit it so close to his death (knowing the effect on his legacy). Heidegger turned from individual dasein to German Volk dasein as soon as he was offered the chair at Freiberg.

>>7584705
>>7588175
>>7594896
In /lit/ terms, what is the difference between William Gass and William Gaddis?

>>7598119

I fully agree with him on Pope. Technically proficient but fuck him he sux.

>>7600527
>Grass fully turned around, and I think it took a lot of courage to admit it so close to his death (knowing the effect on his legacy).

More cynical tongues would say he turned around to increase sales of his new autobiography.

>>7598297

Read the first 3 episodes of Ulysses after reading Aristotle and tell me again that Joyces subject matter is simplistic.

>>7586124
Follow that thought to its logical conclusion. The poster wrote "desu" ironically and is a confirmed hack, the poster wrote "desu" accidentally and he is new, and therefore reddit.

I still agree that the rest of us are posers

>>7600527
I agree... But Grass kinda made it seem like he was essentially a prisoner forced to be a nazi and i'm not sure i totally believe that... He was kinda just going along with everything to ensure personal safety and happiness. Someone like Grass is expected to take a better stand at times like that. It's not fair to expect more out of him than Joe fucking average who became a nazi to preserve his current life in Germany but we do... compare Grass to someone like Bernhard

>>7587338
Shut up with your retarded ass reddit speak

>>7600548
The t.bh -> desu filter is relatively new though. And the development of idiots constantly using t.bh is relatively novel, too.

This place is going down the shitter is what I'm trying to say. But it has always been going down the shitter.

>>7585117

Harry potter is for children. It should be used as a gateway for larger works. When teenagers and young adults read it, that is when we experience a decay in the collective intellect of the world.

>>7600555
Everything is falling you know

We could hit the ground any moment now

>>7600563
The problem is kids reading Harry Potter are the kids that will move onto john green and Stephan king, etc in highschool when they should be starting to challenge themselves with Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, etc. And even diving into some early philosophical works.

Lord of the Rings is puerile genre fiction with no more literary merit than Twilight.

(this is not actually a contrarian opinion except on sites like /lit/ and Reddit)

Here's my contrarian opinion: Harry Potter is not going to melt all earth's children's minds, I know plenty of people who read HP as a child and have never picked up a King book, and even if they had, who fucking cares. A lot of you are quick to dismiss the argument that *anything* that encourages reading is a good thing(specifically when it comes to Rowling it seems). But in a generation that's obsessed with digital media consumption that's exactly what's needed. Not every kid has patrician parents willing to put the time in to turn their kids into little literati cunts; a series of books that kids are interested enough in to queue up for to get a copy, to take on car journeys rather than their ipad or to read at home rather than go on their laptop, is beneficial to a child - it's not the intellectual poison you're all guffawing at each other about. Please try and rinse atleast some of Blooms Jizz out your mouths.

Why are so many posts ITT just baseless predictions that soon there's gonna be some groundbreaking new writer who'll be to be canonized forever? Is everyone just referring to themselves?

>>7592271
It's true. Achewood is the most poignant and accurate representation of the mind of 21st century males.

>>7600715
Go to bed Bloom.

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The nauseating pretentiousness surrounding anything Joyce or Faulkner is off-putting but made 10x worse by pretentious "elites" who think (Joyce particularly here) is and will always be the epitome of the written medium

IJ is probably the best book to come out of the last half of the 20th century and DFW is probably the best American writer there is, he was just memed too hard to be recognized as such

Come at me, I guess

>>7593650
Bloom knows his shit. I heard he can read really fucking fast at this point. Don't try to fit him to your standards made merely for yourself.

>>7600813
i heard in interview he has read about 200,000 books in his life which would make him the memeking of lit

>>7600813
16 pages per minute

>>7600804
Agree on both of these. Maybe it just depends on the person, but I didn't really feel anything reading Joyce except exhausted by having to reread each page over and over and figure out what was going on. IJ had lots of issues but they're totally overshadowed by the complex and real emotions it evokes. I hadn't experienced anything like it since I was a depressed kid escaping my problems with fantasy novels and shit.

I think it just comes down to why someone likes literature. If it's to try and like, parse out each sentence for meaning and references like a puzzle, then I guess I can see why they might like Joyce.

>>7599905
>Emersonian romanticism


can someone kindly explain to me what this entails?

>>7600859

Agreed, my only thing is you don't need the whole 2manyreference4u thing going on for a book to feel thorough and layered. IJ had references, some honestly I didn't get after my first read-through. But whether or not I got those references reading IJ was an experience that stood on it's own and made you feel and spend hours looking through footnotes becaus you WANTED too. Ffs I don't know what other non-academic book I would be willing to play through footnotes about a deceased character's filmography.

Joyce just seems to have this "teehee did you not get that reference?" feel about it.

>>7587245
there is literally no way you think this.

the book is over hyped reddit garbage literally.

>>7600352

This desu

Demons is horrendous, I suspect however its because we aren't in tune with the social conventions present in the novel, u feel me?

I'm sure it wouldn't of had been half bad if it was read under a present point of view.

James Royce's books feel like the ramblings from some crazy guy on crack. I couldn't read a sentence from that ignoramus.

>>7584692
There's nothing wrong with books that are written by conservatives, and conservatism has a solid intellectual tradition behind it.

>>7600947
Agreed. Conservatism has nothing to do with war-mongering neocons talking about the rapture.

If you've read Burke and have a little knowledge about the consequences of the revolutionary thought to the people of your time you might have a rather impressive teaching of humillity.

We always want to change the world. The problem is that there still has to be a world after we change it. So many failed at it.

>>7600947
Conservatism gets a bad vibe not because the people care about the intellectual tradition but because asshole university teachers bring their retarded political opinions into literature.

>>7600947
Anyone who would tell you otherwise is a moron.

>>7584720
Yeah I never got harry potter and hunger games type shit, it's just gay and generic.

>>7600956
>We always want to change the world. The problem is that there still has to be a world after we change it.
I like the way you put that

>>7600755
yes desu

>>7591879
You know, I've been reading about capitalism lately, and it's effect on society. Haven't looked at skipping pages that way before, you really gave me something to think about.

>>7600956
>le good old days

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>>7601236
>>7591879
> I'm confusing hedonism with capitalism
mfw

>>7601244
>implying widespread hedonism isn't an inevitable effect of capitalism

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>>7600414
>Jose Rizal's novel, "Noli Me Tangere" is the greatest Spanish language novel written since Don Quixote
lmao

>>7600899
>>7600804
>>7600859
ITT people who were too dumb for Joyce

>>7584706
you're speaking from a time at least before modernism, my guy.

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"I am right plebs"

Science fiction is more patrician than philosophy books and the greeks

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>>7601450
I hate bloom and all the faggots that suck his peen.

>>7600930
I persist with it but it feels like a chore which isnt a good sign

>>7591862
this hurts my soul

>>7591883
0/10

>>7599555

Read the Upanishad. There is not particular author it is a collective oral philosophy.

>>7601472
>sci-fi is more patrician than the works of actual, literal patricians

n i c e m e m e
i
c
e

m
e
m
e

>>7594065
Apparently that was her intention, and that's whence comes the shoddy and mish-mash moralistic and morally simplistic final ending-- desu the last book might be the worst.

>>7598284
reddit

>>7598428
>you dun believe what u say
not what contrarian means you memefuck

>>7600768
I'm dreaming of Shakespeare, shh.

>>7599905
> Videogames will never be literature or be artistic in any way. Film is already more successful and important than Theatre, and will remain the most important art form through the 21st.

Film is more successful/important than theatre in a commercial sense, so why does that same logic not apply to video games being "successful and important"? Also I can agree about video games as a whole being unliterary, but what how much allowance do you give for exceptional stand-alone works of the medium? I'm no vidya apologist but the way it's phrased now your opinion comes off as edgy rather than valid.

>>7600428
This is a shitty and unfortunately true statement.

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I read books to have fun

fuck me, right?

>>7601765
>how much allowance do you give for exceptional stand-alone works of the medium?

not much. Sure, it's POSSIBLE that there might be good experiments in the medium.

But we know gamers -- even the ones who play "art" games -- and we know already that anything complex will go right over their heads. We know game developers -- basically, gamers who can program or draw -- and they don't have complex thoughts, they don't read, they don't watch decent films, they don't study art, etc.

No, even if it becomes "important" in the commercial sense (already is) it's not going to be similar at all to film's success. Film is actually art. It's recorded Theatre. It's certainly art. Video games are a drug.