Why does /Lit/ hate John Green so much?

He's the richest and most popular one

hurr normies hurr YA hurr plebs REEEEEE or something

>>7608149
it's because c/lit/s have probably come into contact with girls who read his stuff and see it as somehow "outsider literature" and therefore intellectual. it must be grating. twilight or the hunger games doesn't have that tinge to it. the perks of being a wallflower does. perhaps now you understand.

I dislike him not only because of his shit books, he also is a redditor, and has a yt channel dedicated to cuck-tier historical revisionism
He has some retarded sjw opinions. Etc

>>7608153
>>7608152
So it's just a meme? There's nothing actually specifically wrong with him?

The whole YA genre is engineered by the publishing industry to cash in on a thriving demographic who suddenly have a lot of money and get to make their own consumer choices.

>b-b-but he allows teenagers to see different ideas and helps them to cope with their struggling identities

Sure, but in the shallowest way possible. Instead of dealing with actual problems he just throws in cancer and suicide, and makes already edgy teenagers even deep*edgier. He sells kids what they want, which is to feel oppressed, lacking in what they feel the world owes them, and deeply misunderstood. Green just spews out this dreamy, paper-thin tripe which is then bought by the movie business to cash in on a vulnerable audience.

Green has no respect for either suicide or cancer. Cancer in Green is quirky, because his cancer is not the kind that makes you shit blood and throw up every time you eat. It's cancer for cheap effect. Green's sob-fest about cancer framed in this "we're so deep and quirky" mindset means that whatever sentiment his story ever had is immediately devalued as soon as he set one of his bony fingers to the keyboard.

In fact, having a "genre" for young adult lit is part of the problem to begin with. To look at literature through the lens of "genre" is miguided when one should instead look at it in terms of originality and sincerity. There are books written about teenagers that are good, but looking for some central theme running through them all is pointless. Trying to extrapolate a whole genre from this is even more pointless, and it exists only to cater to a specific market demographic. Confining oneself to a YA "genre" is precisely that: to confine oneself, in this case to a specific emotional or intellectual state that isn't developed yet.

>>7608154
?? Actually I didn't understand that at all

>>7608159
/lit/ doesn't consider YA to be literature.
he's also an sjw and hates aristotle

>>7608149
It is largely attributed to his popular YouTube show "Crash Course," were perceived biases in his descriptions of historical narrative tend to demonize western culture's influence on historical events.

>>7608162
Okay I see, so it's more about his promotion of the "special snowflake" mentality?

>>7608164
well read this
>>7608162
and then keep in mind that we don't care about twilight or the hunger games or whatever else sells now because they don't delve into this fake "misunderstanding".

>>7608170
>>7608157
But surely a yt series like that is good if only for educational purposes? Does he encourage viewers to do further reading or recommend good historians?

>>7608179
>Does he encourage viewers to do further reading or recommend good historians?
"no"

>>7608149
> If people were air masses I'd be an occluded front and she'd be an warm-core tropical cyclone.

> If people were nuclear power plant accidents I'd be The Mile Island and she'd be Chernobyl.

> If people were pathogens I'd be Herpes simplex and she'd be Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

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John green is absolute dogshit.

>>7608327
Nah man you only dislike his work because it's popular. It's well bought because of how good it is. You just don't understand it. You're a hipster. You don't really "read" the books you talk about.

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>>7608331

>Implying I'll fall for this bait. Nice try buddy.

I don't get the hate for YA literature either.
My sister for example, who is twelve years old read this book called 'the perks of being a wallflower' and subsequently got into contact with The Smiths and Salinger, because apparently they are mentioned in the book.

>>7608341

How does this make YA fiction good?

>>7608374
I think he's saying while not they're not the best works of fiction they do get people to read, which will ideally lead them to better things.

Because he's the quintessential white social liberal cuck who writes gushy young adult books, has a huge audience, a cosy life, and is admired by many.

>>7608341
>The Smiths and Salinger
why bother. She doesnt even like them for their artistic values, she only likes the idea of them due to some trash book. Pretentious cunt

>>7608149
>"If people were rain I'd be drizzle and she'd be a hurricane"

Lol what a cuck

>>7608179
No, it's not. His Crash Course series is SJW propaganda through and through.

>>7608380

Yea, I figured that's what he meant, but I think I disagree. While it's probably better to read trash than reading nothing at all,

I don't think reading Harry Potter will interest people in Plato. A pretty extreme exemple I'll admit, but say the following happens.

> Some guy reads YA fiction
> A good author/book is referenced
> Reader is interested in said book/author because it's mentionned in a book he likes and thus he thinks he will enjoy it
> He reads said book
> Unable to appreciate it to its just value because his only point of reference is YA fiction
> Could end up believing something stupid, like thinking the book is on a level of worth equal to his YA fiction, or perhaps even lower then that

I'm not gonna say John Green is "objectively bad", whatever that means. I'm not even going to say he's a mediocre writer. What I will do is point out the two kinds of producers of culture.

There are those interested in discovering some sort of truth, or offering a true and realistic message, a moral that applies to the real world or a description of the world as an inherently amoral place. Such people would fit quite snugly in categories like 'philosophers' and 'artists'. Contemplative is another word. These people have often gone through a lot, they've struggled, they've tested their own value system and those of others. They've done their dues and they understand the human condition enough to make something that is honest and open about it.

Then there are those interested in selling a fantasy, possibly to make a quick buck, possibly because they are naive enough to believe in the fantasy. These are marketing types and pornographers, generally speaking, but even an author like Tolkien fits into this category in some respect since his books were effectively "Why Catholicism is Right and True: The Metaphor". Did Tolkien's works have complexity and depth? Yes, he invented fucking languages, he thought long and hard about what 'sounds good' and what 'sounds evil', the only problem is we've since discovered it's merely what 'sounds familiar' and what 'sounds different'.

John Green definitely fits in the latter category, but without any of the depth or complexity as Tolkien. His books are cheap, tacky, romance novels veiled in false depth. "Did you know there are an infinity of infinities?" He said, as if the concept of "infinity" is inherently meaningful. In a book like, say, Slaughterhouse Five we're treated to a story about a good, educated, hard-working man who marries a fatty and becomes a prisoner. In The Fault in Our Stars a defective girl meets her prince charming and it's, like, so totally cute and romantic.

>>7608177
its a lot of things

>>7608421
How doesn't Tolkien fit into
>offering a true and realistic message, a moral that applies to the real world
Don't neglect that he fought in the Great War.

>>7608412
Yeah but how are you going to make people interested in literature then?
The desire for literature comes after the desire for reading I think, although >>7608421seems to suggest otherwise.

>>7608421
>There are those interested in discovering some sort of truth, or offering a true and realistic message, a moral that applies to the real world or a description of the world as an inherently amoral place.
>he doesn't read for the prose
pleb

>>7608149
>If people were rain I'd be drizzle and she'd be a hurricane

that sounds like a shitty pop song made by Arctic Monkeys or One Direction.

Now I understand why girls love him

>>7608149
basically this>>7608152 and also because he uses his popularity to politicise impressionable children

pretty scummy guy all around really

>>7608341
I really like when I'm reading a book and it namedrops some other books and i discover a new author

>>7608431
Everyone does shit in real life, his books are still fucking fantasy you mong

>>7608154
Exactly what happened to me. I'm sure I can be accused of following /lit/ trends on certain topics, but I hated John Green long before he became a household name on the internet because I knew a girl who was obsessed with his shit and would read long excerpts and show off his videos.

He's absolutely drowning in audience pussy

Why is he so afraid of Nietszche?

why is everything so awful and shit

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>>7608152
>John Green is the richest and most popular shitty YA author

Because this place is filled with contrarian hipsters. If no-one had heard of him everone would love him.

Just accept it's true you fucking hipsters.

>>7608476
This could definitely be an arctic monkeys single

>>7608489
I hate when Borges does that

>>7609069
Yeah, because reading classic literature, which are literally some of the most popular works of all time, is so fucking hipster.

>>7609064
Rowling appeals to a far wider audience of plebs than just YA plebs tho

>literature does not exist in a vacuum
>writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportioned to their ability as writers
>if a nations literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets it's literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts ~ Ezra Pound

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>>7608421
this is a good post

>>7608331
Joyce and Kafka are popular. We don't dislike them.

>>7609064
We all have a connection with Rowling though. Her books were obviously only meant to be small time. She didn't write them for the billion dollars she has today.
John Green wrote for nothing but money. That makes him worse.

>>7609064
Go to bed, John.

He has infinite jest on his shelf

>>7608228
yes he does. Confirmed for never actually watched his show

>>7609768
I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

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>>7608323
Post more

>>7610496
Yes, old Bloomer is correct. Harry Potter is not a fine work of literature, nor is it very creative. That doesn't make it worse than John Green, who might have been able to have some writing chops if he didn't sell out to the teenagers he spent his entire youth not banging.

>>7608179
No, it's complete and utter shit. Just read history books

>>7610512
Thank you.

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>>7608149
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjMqMLZIt30

>>7608323
>> If people were pathogens I'd be Herpes simplex and she'd be Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
dead.

>>7608341
She didn't 'get into' the Smiths

The Smiths' lyrics are entirely about male feels, faults and desires. Women LITERALLY cannot get anything out of The Smiths

>>7608472
>he reads for only one thing

This is like saying

>he watches movies only for the cinematography

Prose without purpose is meaningless, just as a beautiful movie without purpose is meaningless.

>>7610813
>>>/r9k/

>>7610813
the smiths are pleb

>>7610821
you're a pleb
that other dude is a ruseman
but you're a pleb

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So you think you can talk shit about reddit all day? That your racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance will be accepted?

We redditors don't tolerant intolerance - and my katana isn't just for show.

Well done, you got a reaction from the bad boys of reddit. That's what you wanted, right? Now we've decided we're taking over.

You've sensed it already, haven't you? The memes becoming better and better the responses more hilarious - that's us, pushing you out. When you say something intolerant about minorities or women and get called out like the bigots you are - that's us, taking your board.

You have no idea to the extent of fear which you should be feeling now you have drawn reddit on you. Your zombie Jew fairytale can't protect you now. This board is ours and all discussion will be as intelligent as on reddit.

You think I'm giving you an empty threat? Believe that. But the 'internet hate machine' already seems a lot more tolerant and forgiving then it's reputation. The 'hackers on steroids' have been outsmarted by the kind and souls of reddit.

You have lost your board.

Track my IP if you want to 'hackers' but I am smart enough to use the university library computer - and I'm even in incognito mode for added security.

Sent with true euphoria,

An enlightened redditor.

PS - DFW belongs to us.

>>7608162
>There are books written about teenagers that are good

gimme some

>>7610860
you should have chuckled at the concept and closed the posting window

>>7610865
Abhorsen series, House of the Scorpion are a few off the top of my head.

>>7608341
>read this book called 'the perks of being a wallflower' and subsequently got into contact with The Smiths and Salinger

ahaha is this for real

>>7608149
>that copy of IJ on his bookshelf
lol, John Green confirmed a middlebrow pleb wannabe once and for all

>>7608162
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH CANCER?

>>7608341
I know a 25+ year old man who gave a copy of that book, a 'mixtape' burned CD full of dubstep, and a $10 bill to his crush.

I was forced to watch one of his crash course videos he made on globalization, this was for my cultural anthropology class.

I was a bit disappointed, but it did say it was a crash course, so I did not expect depth.

>>7611404
I HAVE CANCER

>>7610825
except he's completely right. have you ever listened to a word moz said in his music?

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Honestly the hate for him is just a reaction to the great praise for him that's completely overwhelming. Ever since a Fault in Our Stars and the subsequent movie came out John Green is some kind of "literature" now in late high school-early college aged kids' minds. There's this depth that people constantly refer to that isn't there.

There's a place for YA books, and its in the hands of YA readers, aged about 10-16ish. Just like there's a place for pop music and easy listen music. It's when the pop and easy listen music gets branded as something profound that it incurs some kind of hate. That's what's happening to John Green right now, the emotional core of his book is getting misinterpreted as some kind of deep literary complexity, but it isn't.

I mean, that's really the story of John Green in all of his pursuits, he appeals to laymen with some kind of false complexity or depth, the laymen and fans push what he says as the truth and his videos and books as substitutes for actual professional material.

Fucking hell I'm in uni and still after three years of taking history classes someone quotes or directly lifts one of John Green's arguments from his videos. It's just so incredibly frustrating. All the "haha the renaissance don't real" and "the mongols were the best at everything and totally humanistic guys!"

His books cater to an audience that is really only reading a novel for the lukewarm feels, and want to feel good without much effort. He isn't a terrible writer, just terribly boring, who happens to be the sort that incessantly panders to squealing teenagers and squealing teenagers only.

John Green is a whore.

>>7608162
>as soon as he set one of his bony fingers to the keyboard
He looks kinda chubby to me, actually.

>>7611437
Nope, because the Smiths are trash and anyone who listens to hem is trash. Go back to /mu/.

>>7611467
>I only listen to solo violin improvisations and abstract sonorism. if you listen to anything else youre a pleb and should go back to /mu/
kill you are self

>>7611471
>doesn't listen to aforementioned
Way to out yourself as a pleb, bub.

>>7611474
>implying I don't
get cucked pal

What disgusts me personally about YA is that the term should refer to persons aged 18 to 22 or something. Legal adults who are still rather young, college aged. The works in the demographic are, however, written as though for a 12-year-old. Unfortunately, those 18-to-22-year-olds are mistakingly reading these works, taking the term 'young adult' at face value, and end up wasting their time reading children's lit passing itself off as acceptable reading material for a grown person. And the worst part is society just lets it happen, and it's considered perfectly fine for a college junior to read middle schooler books but I am weird for disregarding them and preferring Ulysses at my age of 21 years

>>7611478

>le ebin cukold mem Xd

What an intellectual response.

>>7611494
Please enlighten us Mr. Patrician Man.

>>7608149
Specifically because we don't talk about YA on here because it's not literature, yet you cunts want to keep talking about him. No one brings up the other YA authors incessantly.
fuck the fuck off. This is the only answer.

>>7608162
This is probably one of the best posts I've read on here in months. Good shit anon

>>7608162
Well said

>>7608162
while I agree whole-heartedly, I don't think it's THAT deep man. YA readers read for personal enjoyment, not gain. My younger sister reads the same amount of YA as she does classic Russian lit, which she is currently studying. Genre's don't need to be homogenised, they're not exclusive.

>>7610813
It's one-dimensional sad bastard music that revolves around being lonely and wanting a shag. It's certainly not sex-segregated.

>>7610860
>implying this post is anything but bait
>implying DFW's fiction isn't supremely Reddit-tier

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>>7608162
Aptly put.

Also pic related.

Alright let's be honest here /lit/

How many John Green books have you read?

>>7610886
For some reason I laughed at this post instead of the bait one.

>>7610886
>>7612863
I do this all the time. I make a really memey post, laugh about it alone and then don't post it.

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>>7612860
Zero.

But I do read a lot of light novels nowadays. That's the Japanese equivalent of YA, although obviously they differ in many thing. I don't pretend there's anything profound in most of them, just some quick fun and light exercise in Japanese.

Reading pic related now, Nejimaki Seirei Senki: Tenkyou no Alderamin volume 1. I believe the first and second volumes are even fan-translated to English by someone.

>>7612860
Nothing, although I did watch a video he made about Heian Japan, and thought it was decent for the audience it was going for.

>>7612886
Jesus, what did he talk about in it?

>>7612880
LN are way superior to YA 2bh.

Do you read actual Japanese books too?

>>7612892
Interspersedly.

Mostly older up to Taishou era.

>>7612890
Everything that I already knew about the period, but with unfunny youtube humor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnZEoOJ-cxE

But it was not as inaccurate as To The Distant Observer, so it get a pass.

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>>7612865
I wish you did that this time.

>>7612901
Rude!

>>7608149
What does YA stand for?

>>7609464
lol

>>7608149
Most punchable face
Most annoying voice
Most inexplicably successful

>>7610865
Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, The Mysterious Stranger

>>7608162
Great post. Would you mind answering my thread.>>7612986
Sounds like you might have some valuable insight.

>>7608149
i feel like juan verde made it acceptable for grown adults to read children's books by making his teenage characters incredibly pretentious and verbose, which retards think makes the book sophisticated or intellectual or some shit.

>>7609768
>She didn't write them for the billion dollars

She even went on benefits to write them. She wrote them for money, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. She basically got paid to write them and then got paid for them.

She and John Green are horrible writers.

>>7608159
because his writing is shit, why should we like him?

>>7608162
Well put.

>>7608152
this

>Personally.
I agree as most people do: Young Adult literature is DEFINED by it BEING bad. There are books or literature that young adults can find accessible, or that they might empathize with. And then there's "YA fiction". Its almost like an artificial genre of pulp-fiction shite.

I think that he's authentic, and I think he has some respectable ways of thinking, but i can understand why he's hated. At least he's not egotistical about it.

>>7611404
TERMINAL, JERRY

>>7612906
Your Anus

>>7608162
You make it sound like John Green is at home laughing at people who buy his book.
I don't think that is true, I think he is a master of self delusion and truly believes that the stuff he is write is "good" for teens.

I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

>>7609761
Speak for yourself.

>>7611412
does he have autism

>>7610837
If u truly only read 4 prose
You have fallen for a meme
Mon frere

>>7608179
Well since he doesn't his work is actually harmful. That is a teenager that never read John Green might stumble upon someone worth his salt. While the YA slurping gutter-head is just going to be content with his slime and never move on.

Why the hell would a YA author want his reader to graduate to higher works? He needs the cash and the best way to do that is to monopolize their interest. YA readers rarely go onto read real books they read more YA trash.

>>7613749
What the hell is his problem

>>7613781
He's a dumb fuck.

>>7613749
How could you be comforted by fucking Twilight in a romantic sense?

I'm female and it terrifies me.

I can't talk about actual romance or erotica with anyone.

>>7613749
I hope he gets fucking raped

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>>7613749
>Do we really believe tens of millions of people are merely wrong

what a fucking garbage thing to say

the average person believes HUNDREDS of millions of people are wrong about their religion or government or preferred form of sex or what the fuck ever, of fucking course we believe that people who like twilight are aesthetically bankrupt zombies

I had ignored John Green hate until now but goddamn this is the worst fucking thing I've read in a while, what a useless appeal to to lowest common denominator plebbery, 10/10 I mad as hell

>>7613749
It's all a circlejerk.Shit tier writers jerking off and pandering to each other in order to stay relevant.

>>7611445
>the emotional core of his book is getting misinterpreted as some kind of deep literary complexity, but it isn't.
Basically, that's it in a nutshell. I really dislike John Green because he's so pedantic in his videos and the protagonists of his novels are so precious and "adorably" quirky.

>>7613895
>I can't talk about actual romance or erotica with anyone.

you can talk to me bby ;)

I mean I'll only respond with pretentious sneering how romance is a crypto-fascist spook but you weren't very specific on what sort of talk you wanted

>>7613749
The dangers of severe people pleasing, take note and avoid this awful behavior.

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>>7613749
>isn't our disdain FAAAAARRR more misogynistic than anything in the stories?

What does he mean?

>>7613749
How often do men write Twilight tier garbage, and how often do those books reach the same level of popularity?

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>>7610496
I saw this going around Facebook today being touted as evidence of her creativity...

>>7613980
Criticizing women is misogynist.

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>>7614036
but she wasn't being criticized for being a women.She was being criticized for shitting out literary abominations.

wtf is he even trying to convey ???

>>7614084
Check your privilege you shitlord, like, ugh..

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>>7614088

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>>7614084
>implying every decision you have ever/can ever make is not based solely on subconscious misogyny

>>7614114
You're acting in bad faith because of your status as anonymous. Why deny your freedom?

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>>7613944
Now let's watch him talk about how bad the Nazis were

>>7613749
if that was just a stealthy ad for the twilight movies mission accomplished im in the mood for an unironic love story time to torrent that bitch

>>7614181
You cry every time, Bobby.

>>7613749

Cynical. There's a high probability of considerable overlap between fans of JG and Twilight. Fans of Twilight are likely to be offended to the point of not buying JG books over trivial shit like him making fun of it. Hence, the lengthy rebuttal of his own integrity on the part of JG.

Crafty little fucker.

>>7608149

Because he is a cuckold.

>>7613749
John Greene is the absolute embodiment of Nietzsche's Last Man. I hope this man gets falsely accused of being a pedophile so his insufferable fanbase can harass him until he regrets ever typing one shitty word.

>>7613749
Man what the fuck

>>7613400
He has a Bachelors in Philosophy and a managerial job at Wal-Mart.

So maybe.

>>7613749
Is meth really so bad? Plenty of people seem to like it.

>>7610496

>lewrong generation

Harry Potter is just literature for kids
I've read it when I was a kid and at the same time I was reading things like Moby Dick and Dostoevsky. I remember the HP series much more fondly.

>>7614275
You just have bad taste.

>>7608162
Well written argument

>>7608341
>this book called 'the perks of being a wallflower'

Sure

>>7610496
We need new clichès *sniff*

>>7614275
>wrong generation
>73 year old man
At least stop to think about what you've just absorbed before you begin responding you fucking faggot.

>>7608149
Never read his work beyond some awful excerpts posted on here, but his YouTube videos are anti-European civilisation so that's why I don't like him.

>>7614088
>>7614094
>>7614036
take this strawman feminist boogeyman bullshit back to your reddit echo chamber m8

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>>7608157
>cuck-tier

I can't like or respect cuckolds

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>>7608412
>I don't think reading Harry Potter will interest people in Plato
It worked for me.

Although the process was not direct.
>Harry Potter
>Eragon
>Infinite fantasy shit
>The Prince
>"Huh, that was exactly as awesome as I thought it was, let's check out a similar Everyman's"
>Republic
I fucking hated it though. Mostly because of pic related.

Also my history teacher recommended I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but I only remembered the Zarathustra bit and ended up confusedly reading about Zoroastrianism.

>>7610821
Beauty creates enjoyment which is its own purpose you terminal retard.

>>7608684
Gosh, can't have fantasy.

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>>7610496
>It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
I always find these kind of statements fucking retarded, because exactly what happened to me. It was what first got me into books. Before then I was convinced they were wastes of time and space that didn't further mankind in any significant way.

And I mean "exactly". It got me into Kipling, and Wind in the Willows (well, let's be honest, seeing as I live right next to the places it's set in I was never not going to read that). And Le Guin, and all the rest.

I also always hated Stephen King. So fuck you, and fuck the guy you copied that from.

>>7608154
yea an ex now identifies herself as a 'nerdfighter,' and is a tumblr-john-green collision studying with dreams to become a YA librarian.

she's 24

>>7616565
>with dreams to become a YA librarian.
You mean a librarian.

>>7611412
whoaaaaa

>>7609064
rowling has more depth to one of her characters than green can fit into an entire book.

>>7616586
her words not mine, senpai.

>>7608149
He is a half-decent historian, but instead of sticking to what he is kind of good at, he tries a bit of everything and fails, being praised universally.

Reminds me of an overpraised younger sibbling, really.

>>7616592
not really-- it's just that her characters are likeable, and don't exist to 'make a point'.

I honestly don't think harry potter would've been such a success had it started

>>7616602
>He is a half-decent historian
In no way, shape or form is this true. He's worse than Guns, Germs and Steel.

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>>7616607
>I honestly don't think harry potter would've been such a success had it started

>>7616490
Would you read a book only for descriptions of things? Even if the prose is really excellent, there has to be events. Prose is very important, but only one part of the whole.

And you even say that beautiful prose creates enjoyment, but that's extremely limiting. Purpose is created through things other than prose.

Literature is not sculpture.

>>7616618
>Would you read a book only for descriptions of things?
Yes.
>Even if the prose is really excellent, there has to be events
Description of an event is description of things.

But looking at it, it seems like this argument comes from me misunderstanding you more than anything else. What do you mean by "purpose"?

>>7616609
His crash course series is grossly incomplete. So what? It s for high school kids anyway, they wont manage to pay attention for longer than 15 minutes tops.

Nothing wrong about understanding your audience. I mean, art is not for the audience in the first place, but 1. History is not exactly art but 2. If everybody was a highbrow L´Art-pour-L´Art madman like me, art would have gone extinct millenia ago.

"Hitler was a rare individual who really did change the history" made me cringe though. Everybody knows he was barely an icon.

>>7616628
>His crash course series is grossly incomplete. So what? It s for high school kids anyway, they wont manage to pay attention for longer than 15 minutes tops.
Fuck off, shitstain. Secondary school kids are way more intelligent than you give them credit for. Think back to when you were a kid. Unless you were a retard, you could handle decent history.

Simplification is fucking fine. You need to keep things relatively short, sure. But he sensationalises and just plain gets things wrong. He's a bad historian.

>>7616623
I mean not an empty work. It's really hard to define because I haven't read or experienced enough things in life. I would say that it would have some sort of meaning, however obscured it might be.

Anyway the more that I think about it, one's prose would be fairly unified and through it one would see a point or meaning. It would be possible to write meaningless prose, but I feel that if you were to write just descriptions one could find meaning based on how these things are described.

Apologies for being unclear, I feel like I'm trying to catch the wind in a net.

>>7616633
Kids then=/=Kids now
And even if,
Kids then in Europe=//=Kinds in Murica now

Given what passes as great young fiction nowadays, no, I dont want to give them any sort of credit.

>>7616719
>Kids then=/=Kids now
I *am* kids now. I'm still in secondary, even if I'm about to leave it. And my brother's very much a kid today.

>Kids then in Europe=//=Kinds in Murica now
Look, I don't know much about American kids, but I'm sure they're bright enough to grasp nuanced, well-researched history.

Besides which, YA fiction is not the fucking be-all-end-all of what kids read.

My wifes kid loves his books

>>7616733
Ebin.

>>7616733
Go to bed, John.

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>>7610496
>I'm 73 years old.

Are you serious?

>>7613895
L O N D O N

>>7616777
It's not him you fucking retard. Don't you at least look stuff like this up on google?

>>7612860
Stumbled across this thread, voicing my opinion as someone in his TA (17).

I've read Looking For Alaska and The Fault In Our Stars recently and frankly, I do know what is happening in the plot and it is predictable but they're still enjoyable. I found TFIOS to be the lesser, likely because I read LFA first.

I bought/borrowed them because of hype and they have some decent characters (I feel for Van Houten) and moments it's like he thought of phrases and makes characters and stories around them. They were light reads, and not my usual thing, but they were perfectly middling.

>>7616633
I studied Globalisation at 15 and the material was way more nuanced than the good/bad shit he presented. He is a terrible educator

>>7608149
Dime a dozen cucked nu-male we've been seeing so much of lately.

>>7612618
I suppose anon could argue that the lyrics are about being a sad homo

>>7608341
....and another preteen reading salinger and listening to indie crap is a reason to celebrate because?

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>>7616807
Thirteen year old detected.

>>7616812
Do you watch your wife get BLACKED?

If so, your a cuck

/lit/ hates pop fiction just as /sci/ hates pop science, because it eases other people into their respective exclusive patrician fields, supposedly incomprehensible by the common man. You, /lit/, are the true "special snowflakes".

>>7616846
There is nothing incomprehensible in good literature. Anyone can pick up Mobydick and appreciate it whether they are PHd's or filthy peasents

>>7616865
Learning is always a curve and Moby Dick is just a point on it. The problem is not where reading begins, but it should be a smooth continuous curve, and bullshit YA literature and Harries Potters help fill it out.

>>7608154
He didn't write The Perks.

>>7616846
>he thinks people who start with pop fiction 'upgrade' to actual literature

That's like saying people who start with internet falseflagging end up as politicians

garbage in, garbage out.

>>7616926
What did you start with?

>>7616931
The greeks XD

People hate Green because his books are shit trying to pass off as deep statements about the human experience. Since it's been brought up in this thread, compare Fault in our Stars to Harry Potter. Fault is almost unanimously hated, but Harry Potter is tolerated if not liked, and the reason for this is that Fault is quirky pop shit trying to pass off as depth, whereas Harry Potter is entertaining pop shit that never buries its head up its own butt. Ironically enough, I'd say Harry Potter's ultimately simple statement about death is more universal and far deeper than the trite romance in Fault.

>>7616777
That quote is from Harold Bloom you pleb.

>>7616931
Greek and Norse myth in 3rd grade, if you want to go all the way back even younger, Calvin and Hobbes and the Hobbit.

The people who exclusively read Hank the Cowdog didn't 'naturally progress' along some hypothetical curve of literature, they just went from 'trashy children's books' to 'trashy young adult books.'

Note I read 'pop' literature for entertainment, but it sure as shit isn't Harry Potter that gets credit for sparking an interest in 'real' literature.


>>7616932
You're memeing but you're right desu. The only thing that holds younger people from reading classic literature is antiquated language that they have trouble parsing.

>>7616963
Now that you put it like that, you have a point. That said, I *did* start with Harry Potter, even if I knew all the Egyptian myths before that. Unless you're suggesting you can degrade from one thing to another, then get back up to better literature.

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>>7616976
really what I'm saying is that it's not a 'curve' upon which all books rest, more like a tree of branches and multiple trunks

Harry Potter at least is a twig that is attached to the larger branch of some western mythology, which is a branch that leads back to trunks of western history and philosophy, which then lead out to other places. It's not a mighty branch, but it's connected to other concepts.

But stuff like John Green fiction doesn't have a connection to anything else. It doesn't lead you anywhere. It's like a fruit fallen far from the tree. The fruit was once connected to some branch that led somewhere once, but you can't actually follow that connection to get somewhere anymore. If you already know about the tree you can point to where the fruit grew from, but if you don't know about the tree already you just eat the fruit, then move on to the next fruit, never thinking of trees at all. It's the sort of literature that entertains briefly, then rots away, is produced seasonally and doesn't add permanent substance to the tree itself.

>>7617027
/thread