Contemporary literature is just as good, if not better,

>>9098963
What works of contemporary literature are you basing your opinion off?

>>9098972
Bump, I'm geniuenly curious

>>9098972
>>9099010
I don't think OP has actually read any and is just trying (and failing) to troll.

>>9099225
Franzen, Zadie Smith, ekt cetera

>>9099230
You joke but I can think of a number of good authors to mention but no one on this board is interested in them

>>9099315
Please tell us

>>9099325
Javier Marias, Enrique Vila-Matas, Laszlo Krasznahorkai (ok sometimes people talk about him I guess), John Crowley, John Banville

Are DeLillo, Roth, and Pynchon contemporary?

>>9099369
On the older side, but sure. Roth and Pynchon are great (haven't read much DeLillo, but he seems good too)

>>9099369
Actually Roth probably doesn't count since he stopped writing

>>9099230
>>9099369

>americans in charge of contemporary literature

>>9099569
This is an English-language board so mostly we are going to talk about English-language literature

Krasznahorkai will be included in the canon soon.

>>9099569
>t. nobel prize committee

>>9099615
Reminder that the nobel didn't become shit now, the nobel was shit from the very first nobel, when they gave it to Prudhomme rather than Tolstoy,

>>9099618
To be fair it was perfectly fine from about 1920 to 1980 or so with only about five exceptions (populist choice Pearl Buck, political choices Russell and Churchill, nepotistic choices Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson). It's a decent rundown of hte most important writers from that period. Before that point the winners are a bunch of nobodies because the criteria for selection were weird, and after that point, a lot of the choices are clearly informed by identity politics (higher quantity of non-whites and females) and populism (Dario Fo, Bob Dylan), though plenty are still some of the best writers who were alive at the time (I'd say at least half, in fact). So it's degrading in quality, and if it keeps up what it's been doign the past couple years, then there's no saving it. But it had a good run.

>>9098963
But it's true.
Krasznahorkai
Wallace (yeah the memes I know)
Cohen (Wiz, Book of Numbers)
Bolano
Knausgaard (although a bit on the pleb side, still think the work has artistic merit as an object more than as a book)
Di Salvia.
That's just on the top of my head. All of these authors would not come short of any 19th century novelist

>>9099353
Glad to see another patrish
The best contemporary lit is in spic america

Rec me some ESSTENTIAL contemporary novels

>>9099877
there's plenty of recommendation in this thread. Read it faggot

>>9099885
I said ESSENTIAL

>>9099903
There's nothing literally essential in literature. Shakespeare is not essential, Homer is not essential, Leopardi is not essential, Joyce is not essential.
But you'll find plenty of great novels in this thread.

>>9098963
Balls. "Literary fiction" is a genre like any other. You can find some diamonds in the rough if you look hard enough, but ultimately it's about publishers shifting units.

I like my writers dead. It's an imperfect test of merit, but it's the best we've got.

>>9099325
>>9099010
>>9098972
>>9099877

The Buried Giant
Brief History of Seven Killings
Laurus
On the Edge
Soumission
The Vegetarian
Dream of the Celt
Disgrace
Eileen
Neapolitan Novels
A Little Life
The Fishermen
Bleeding Edge
The Devil all the Time
Matterhorn
The Book of Night Women
Austerlitz
Wizard of the Crow
The Corpse Exhibition
Never Let Me Go
Abril Rojo
2666
Sandalwood Death
The Feast of the Goat
War at the End of the World
Zero K

And if we push "contemporary" back to the 80s and 70s you get the great McCarthy, Roth, Pynchon works, Krasznahorkai, and stuff like Remains of the Day and Song of Solomon, and the end of the South American wave like the latter Marquez novels.

In essence, OP is completely right, and as usual, /lit/ only reads what is on beginner reader charts, mandatory reading lists for school, and are working their way up from the Greeks. In defense of /lit/, the majority is basically 19-2216-20 so that is what they should be doing.

File: tmp_22989-1486530331784-433304723.jpg (10KB, 350x490px) Image search: [Google]

10KB, 350x490px

>>9100053
>zero k and not white noise or underworld
come again?

>>9099618
>>9099707
Reminder that Mo Yan, Modiano, Alice Munro, Svetlana Alexeivich, Llosa, Orman Pamuk, Coetzee, Naipaul, and Saramago are all excellent contemporary literature. As the Nobel always has, it whiffs every other year or more.

>>9100064
Came out in 97, I was trying to be contemporary as /lit/ thinks.

If we push back what contemporary means, than of course you are correct.

>>9100053
>Ferrante
No thanks. For the rest of the list I mostly agree

>>9100116
I agree she isnt for all, but read as a sincere diarist with nothing but regret and disdain for herself I found it very entertaining

>>9100126
Did you read it in translation or in the original?

>>9100137
I cannot read Italian :(

>>9099840
None of those are as good as Tolstoy or Flaubert

>>9100053
A lot of this stuff is trash. Please at least don't get memed into reading A Little Life, as it's probably the worst book that's received any acclaim from middlebrow rags lately

>>9099942
Well, the BEST one is having taste, but I know better than to ask that of most /lit/erally whos.