In a 2005 interview Green was asked, "And literature is

>>9055594
He's right, desu

Jesus first, others next, yourself last

>>9055594
He's absolutely right, but you flaming 19 year old philistines will find a reason to disagree

>>9055594
I agree completely.

If I'd read for joy I wouldn't read at all as there's much more joyous activities than reading some book.

This quote is by John Williams you fucking plebs

why did this become a meme?

>>9055594
I would argue that literature is primarily for the purpose of conveying deeper understandings of the world.

Being entertaining should be a side effect of achieving that goal.

So in a sense, yes, good literature should necessarily be entertaining

Entertainment necessarily leads to commodification.
Is John Green the final boss of critical theory?

>>9055620
Why do you read then

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>A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. That this technological order also involves a political and intellectual coordination may be a regrettable and yet promising development.

Define "entertainment"

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>“What is really required to defend ‘the West’ against the sudden rise of these barbaric and elemental forces is the strengthening, to an extent perhaps still unknown to Western man, of a heroic vision of life. Apart from the military-technical apparatus, the world of the ‘Westerners’ has at its disposal only a limp and shapeless substance – and the cult of the skin, the myth of ‘safety’ and of ‘war on war’, and the ideal of the long, comfortable, guaranteed, ‘democratic’ existence, which is preferred to the ideal of the fulfilment which can be grasped only on the frontiers between life and death in the meeting of the essence of living with the extreme of danger.”
This one is weird coming from him.

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You know, we meme on John Green, but his stuff that I see posted on here from time to time isn't bad at all for what it is.
I mean, he's better than most of the trash teenage girls read.

>>9055594

He's actually right though.

>>9055620
This desu. This was true in Willams time, perhaps. But nowadays there are other mediums for entertainment and pleasure: television, movies, video games, the internet etc.

>"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me"

But what did he mean by this?

>he isn't in agony while reading
leave this board plebs

>>9055682
>he thinks they're actually John Green quotes

>>9055767
I obviously mean the real quotes posted here every so often.
I know that John Green didn't call for the total annihilation of the Jewish race, bud.

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>>9055772
Yeah, sure ;)

>>9055594
>reading Celine or Pessoa or Ligoti with joy

yeah, okay

>>9055788
Conspiracy Against the Human Race is hilarious

>>9055787
I really hate how 4chan has devolved into a "gotcha" game.
Really toxic posting environment desu.

>>9055594
I agree.

>>9055810
This. I too find existentialism and all that rubbish so staggeringly funny

>>9055844
No, I mean parts of it are actively meant as a black joke

>>9055844
It is, Underground Man is one of the funniest characters ever wrote.

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>>9055819
>devolved

It's a quote by John Williams.

>>9055764
This

Reading should be a struggle. You should be taking notes, writing commentary, rereading large sections, and following up by reading various analyses

>>9055646
my diary desu

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"They tell us that suicide is the greatest act of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person." - John Green

Whoa...

>if it's entertaining, it's not deep

t. literary fiction authors

I write to be read - Michel Tournier

>>9055594
Immediately, absolutely lost my shit. It's gone, nowhere to be seen.

>>9055594
Jesus Christ, do you disagree with this OP? If so stop fucking reading if you don't enjoy it you pseudo intellectua faggot

>>9055594
And that's why his brother got a degree in biochemistry while he just became a shitty meme on /lit/

>The free artist creates without a commission. He seems distinguished by the complete independence of his creativity and thus acquires the characteristic social features of an outsider whose style of life cannot be measured by the standards of public morality. The concept of the bohemian which arose in the nineteenth century reflects this process. The home of the Gypsies became the generic word for the artist's way of life.
But at the same time the artist, who is as "free as a bird or a fish," bears the burden of a vocation that makes him an ambiguous figure. For a cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the "standpoint of art" can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a "secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.
--John Green

>>9060734
>propitiation of disaster

Am I thick or does that not read right?

>>9055761
>if i hyperbole people are gonna think it's good!