https://www.theguardian.com/books/2 012/aug/06/paulo-coelho-

>>9808382
My boy! Glad someone finally said it. Ulysses is boring as fuck.

probably because coelhos occult level stopped at new age tote bags and overpriced coffee

>>9808382
>Writers go wrong, according to Coelho, when they focus on form, not content
What is literature ?

>>9808382
>Writers go wrong

>implying one can go "wrong" in art

nice bro, didn't know we were actually doing mathematics thanks for the heads up

>>9808382
He's absolutely right.

>>9808423
>period blood smears are now art

>>9808382
>2012

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Can't believe you guys listen to the fucking author of The Alchemist on good literature...

>>9808382
>reading for the plot

>>9808382
What are some books by other authors that are similar to the books he wrote?

>>9808603
David Foster Wallace

>>9808382
I generally agree. Unfortunately a lot of writers from last century, especially the handful of influential postmodernists who followed Joyce, were all form and no substance. I think the post war period infused western culture with nihilism and meaninglessness, so we got a bunch of books from people who had the will to become influential writers but ultimately didn't have that much to say.

>>9808382
>pure style
>somehow bad
Paulo Coelho is harmful to literature

>>9808730
Aesthetics are THE great virtue of humanity. Everything else should be there as a consequence to facilitate art for arts sake. There is no higher calling than "form over substance" cause form is the most important substance there is.

>>9808382
>There is nothing there. Stripped down,
Coelho can't read, who'd thought?

>>9808382
Bullshit self-help fable writers shouldn't have a say in what is good for literature

>>9808744
>the great virtue of humanity is assorted trinkets

>>9808382
>the entire scene about the lame girl on the beach
>not miles above anything this hack has ever written
"Okay"

>There is nothing there. Stripped down, Ulysses is a twit.

bullshit, strip Ulysses of style and it's still a masterpiece.

>>9808755
>beauty and art is nothing but assorted trinkets
kys.

>>9808744
I appreciate form as much as, if not more than, you. But it's perplexing that so few writers have been capable of integrating both. A 700 page book about walking around a city is fine, but there should ideally be more substance and meaning than there usually is.

>>9808382

He's right. Though, ironically for the likes of Bloom, Ulysses is no more indulgent and inane than anything by Shakespeare. He is THE Formalist.

>>9808770
You just outed yourself. You haven't read it.

>>9808765

What is it then?

>>9808777
I've read most of it but got bored after a while.

>>9808771
So not only have you not read ulysses, you haven't read shakespeare either.

>>9808785
Skimmed, you mean.
Literature might not be for you.

>>9808382
>i need to be spoonfed meaning from my literature, like i do in my horrible books

>>9808409
Wanna elaborate on this? Words being like magic, etc.?

>>9808382
He is right.
Byron thought the same thing about Shakespeare (he said something along the lines of "Shakespeare is a terrible model for artists"). Generally I think that all those great artists who manage to create and finish a style in their lifetime, should be ignored by who comes after. After Beethoven there's no need to write similar symphonies, after Joyce stream of consciousness is not anymore a literary tool, but rather a reference to Joyce's art, and so on.
Once an artist actually reaches perfection on his own terms, his masterpieces stop being good models, for they will be too mature, personal and framed in a structure of taste, values and preferences that might be simply unavailable to his successors.

>>9808821
What a terrible opinion.

>>9808796
No, I have just long surpassed you and obtained a higher state of consciousness. You remain at a child-like stage, still mesmerized by aesthetics. I have matured and moved beyond that to realize that writers like Joyce, Pynchon, and Wallace quite simply don't have much to say because they didn't understand the world very well.

>>9808770
>A 700 page book about walking around a city is fine, but there should ideally be more substance and meaning than there usually is.
>more substance and meaning

i don't get this meme. ulysses has a complex and fascinating plot and explores more and more diverse themes than any other single novel i've read.

>>9808836
>realize that writers like [three completely different writers]

>>9808836
>not realizing that Ulysses was a direct response to WW1

>>9808846
... Different writers concerned and associated with form, which is the topic here. Try to keep up.

>>9808842
They haven't read it, and if they have, they haven't understood it.

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When there's no formal content to the work, you can apply to the form whatever you like. Ulysses is abstract, but it's also thematically and formally strong, and really works for stirring the emotions.

Most good writers have shit literary opinions desu.
Dante legit thought Virgil was better than Homer, Nabokov was famously autistic, Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, Joyce thought Ibsen was a better playwrite than Shakespeare.

>>9808857
all writers are concerned with form. the division or opposition of "form" and "content" is a fucking meme dichotomy anyhow.

>>9808779
Aesthetics can't be clearly defined. It is beauty. It's emotionally evocative. It's the stuff that sustains the soul.

>>9808764
>Bullshit! I'll challenge his claim with this opinion!

>>9808865
Please stop implying Coelho is a good writer, literally no one thinks that.
Also, Ibsen was arguably a better playwright than Shakespeare.

>>9808879
>Ibsen was arguably a better playwright than Shakespeare
You've gone beyond madness my dude. Point 1 (one) genuinely good thing about Ghosts.

>>9808878
i'm not even trying to argue. it's a truth that is evident to anyone who has read the book. it is clear to me coehlo has not.

>>9808884
Besides the literally (L I T E R A L L Y) goat ending?
The implied incestual relationship, and the women have interesting inner lives independtent of their assumed social roles.

>>9808897
It's honestly unarguable. The style just takes it from a masterpiece to the greatest literary achievement in the modern era.

>>9808902
Dude it's the biggest clusterfuck of a play I have ever presentiated.
>le Shyamalan reveal
>jus one more
>OH NO I CAUGHT YOU FAGGOT THERE'S MORE STUFF
>CAN'T HOLD MAH PLOT TWISTS FAGGOT

>>9808865
Autism is not an opinion

>>9808866
Well, I don't care because that's not what I'm arguing here; I'm merely expressing discontent that more authors haven't been able to combine the two. I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy Joyce, Pynchon, and Wallace etc., but have somewhat tired of them largely due to them not having very much to say that I would consider profound. And that's fine, I can still appreciate the style alone while holding that opinion.

>>9808911
What? There are no real twists, all of the twists are talked about early on.
And no, the fire would not be classified as a twist.

>>9808921
I can see the other two (pynchon to a lesser extent, but still), but to say that joyce wasn't profound is actually ridiculous.

>>9808821

I really, really agree with this post.

>>9808830

Why do you think so?

>>9808788

Read what Tolstoy said about Shakespeare and compare to what Bloom said about David Foster Wallace, which applies to Joyce too.

>>9808807
hes on a totally different ballpark with the likes of joyce in that hes blind to the language. being a new age spirituality well sold author, it will carry a sense of entitlement as being somehow a crowned guru against differing sensibilities that are way out of his occult-lite audience.

>>9808836

To you, then, what authors do understand the world very well?

>>9808382
Surely anyone reasonable would agree that modernism and post-modernism have been extremely harmful to literature? He's not wrong just because he's a shallow hack who wrote a best-selling new-age novel.

>>9808821
I understand this from the perspective of a critic but as someone who enjoys writing the idea that there's ever a "need" to write anything seems kind of absurd. I like writing in a style so I'll write in it. It doesn't matter to me whether the canon or the flow of history needs me.

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>>9808963
duuuude he posted it again! hyuk hyuk dum neomarxists trying to ruin literature by writing ulysses..... clean your room lmao deus vult!

He's not wrong. Playing with structure will only get you so far.

>>9808948
I dislike the subtle implication of there being on substance in their art, although i'm not sure if it was intended.
And the idea of there being 'no need' to continue the tradition they created is just reductive. The idea of something being 'finished' is in the eye of the beholder, and someone could definitely make a stream og consciousness story surpassing Joyce (even though Ulysses is the SoC novel to end all SoC novels), using his style or another, although it would be seen as aping him if he used the same. It'd be like saying no one should write a frame narrative after Flaubert.
And he also implied that Joyce invented stream of consciousness, which has a fairly old history.

>>9808961
That's the problem I guess, and maybe the nature of the artist, that I feel so few relatively contemporary writers do. Maybe Joyce does better than others, it's been a while since I read something he wrote in full and probably didn't understand all that much myself at the time. Personally, the non-linearity of these types of novels has turned me off maybe even more than the lack of substance since it's a bit much to expect consistently profound, timeless statements from anyone.

>>9808983
which is why it's a good thing Joyce wrote such compelling characters, beautiful sentences, and profound insights on and perspectives of the daily rituals of life

>>9808949
>Bloom said about David Foster Wallace, which applies to Joyce too.
In what world does what he said about Wallace apply to Joyce?
Is it because Joyce was a stylist?

>>9808949
>Read what Tolstoy said about Shakespeare

Tolstoy rejected literature that didn't have religious aspects to it because "muh Russian hermit." Of course he wouldn't like Shakespeare. He whined on and on about the personal revulsion he felt at the actions of Shakespeare's characters and reasoned that it was because Shakespeare was a terrible author rather than it being his crusty hermit sensibilities.

>>9808993
>probably didn't understand all that much myself at the time.
>lack of substance
You definitely didn't understand all that much.

>>9808996
I agree. I actually like Joyce.

>>9808993
maybe you should read philosophy instead, I think literature should focus on aesthetics

>>9809034
Which, funnily enough, philosophers do too.

The endgame is realizing Aesop ended literature over 2000 years ago.

>>9808802
Do you know how you sound? Do you know that "spoonfeed" is as much a meaningless buzzword as "snowflake?" Every time I hear either of those words my soul shrivels up a little. Please stop contributing to the desecration of your language.

>>9809006
Then you should be able to put together a reasoned argument regarding the substance contained within Ulysses, because it's obviously not just me who ascertained that there wasn't very much. I want to hear it, since I've been considering giving it another front to back go. I actually listen to the audiobook of Ulysses from time to time because I like the style, and though I'm not doing that for the purpose of finding substance, it hasn't convinced me that I was wrong to assume there wasn't much.

So let's hear it. I am open and want to change my mind so give a reasoned argument about why myself and others are wrong to think this way.

>>9809058
Cool, I'll keep that in mind so I don't offend you in the future.

>>9809083
youre the reason lit is bad

>>9809034
I agree that it should focus primarily on aesthetics, but I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder why more writers in the contemporary era haven't been capable of including both.

>>9808865
Joyce thought Ibsen was a better playwright but not a better overall artist. He still thought Shakespeare was GOAT.

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Faulkner is the superior Modernist, there is actually plot and character progression in his works in addition to aesthetics.

That's right, fuckers, come at me.

>>9809106

thanks for reminding me to reread the sound and the fury

>>9809075
I'm on my phone, so i can't be bothered.
But listen to literally any lecture on Ulysses, or podcast (There's a great Bookworm episode).
Or just google 'Ulysses WW1'. Or, you know, read the wiki.

The only interesting thing about this man is Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord rewrote "Manual of the warrior of light" with quotations from the Koran and small unit tactics

>>9808996
Stephen Dedalus is my favorite character in all of literature. Anyone who genuinely believes that Joyce's writing is devoid of substance is an irredeemable pseud.

>>9808382
Pseuds on suicide watch

>posting this again
Swear I see this shit one every three months or so.

>>9808963

Pomo is the worst artistic development so far. Modernism was the last good thing to happen

>>9809002
this
>>9808949
read Orwell's essay on King Lear and Tolstoy. Calling Ulysses indulgent and inane is unfair. No other book does what it does to the mind after comprehending it. If you're down, honestly give it a close read and spend a couple months with it. Afterwards your thought process will change.

I get what he's saying. There's too many young aspiring writers who read Ulysses and think, "See! You can write about nothing and be one of the greats! That means my meaningless, rambling gibberish can make it too!" and not realize that it takes a lot of brilliance and genuine writing talent to make nothing interesting.

>>9808877
What is beauty? What is the benefit of evoking emotion? What is the soul?

>>9810129
Ulysses having no substance is an absolute meme though. There's still a deep and engaging plot beneath the genius style. Anyone who reads Ulysses and thinks that it's just style and about nothing is absolute garbage at reading.

>>9810139
Yeah, that's true too. But if you go with the argument that it actually doesn't have any substance, it still doesn't make sense.

But yeah, you do see that on here all the time.

>Pssh, plot is for psueds! Prose is where it's at. Look at Ulysses!
>But...isn't that a really complex story about a guy-
>NO!!!! LOL NORMIE!!!! IT'S ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL!!! NO FUCKING PLOT IN THE LEAST!!! JUST RANDOM, MEANINGLESS SHIT, WORD AFTER GODDAMN FUCKING WORD!!! JUST LIKE MY WORK! I'M A FCKN GENIUS BRO!

>>9810160
>The Odyssey
>Arguably the greatest plot in all of literature
>one of the greatest masterpieces
>all of the Greek classics involve deep, memorable plots
>haha, plot is for retards guys
>but start with the Greeks
People on this site genuinely know nothing about literature. And this is coming from what most people here would call a "prose fag".

>>9808744
Could you expand your argument please?

>>9810175
You can't take any of 4chan too seriously
Academia may be collapsing in on itself but it's still infinitely more valid than most anything on /lit/

>>9808764
No... You could strip Proust or Musil of their style, and it would still work. Not Joyce.

>>9810453
Anon has spoken.

End of discussion.

>>9808603
Herman Hesse is Paulo Coelho if he was good

>>9808821
Byron is an idiot and so are you.

>>9808865
No, Dante never read Homer because no-one in Italy knew Greek while he was alive. Yet he still anoints Homer as the "sovereign poet [quelli è Omero poeta sovrano]" in the Divine Comedy.

And Ibsen is a better playwright than Shakespeare.

>>9810453
>>9810475
Autism
probable samefag

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>>9810538

>>9810565
still autism either way
possible paint assist

>>9810175
Emphasis on "start with". One of the arguments for style being more important than plot is that all of the good plots have been written. Any plot you try to write will inevitably have been done before (possibly even by the Greeks) and better. However there's a lot more freedom with style. You can still tell the same old story in a new and interesting way.

>>9808382
>Mr. I riped off borges's stories name and sell them to middle age women to incite them into new age idiologies cries over a masterwork.

all right then.

>>9808733
He has been harmful to literature since he published The Alchemist and become a worldiwde recognized author with his self help books dressed as novels. And I would never call them paraboles for paraboles do tend to have some of the most beautiful stylistic qualities.

>>9810453
I don't completely agree. I think both Portrait of the artist... and Dubliners are examples of beautiful pieces of literature wothout the need of Ulysses's experiment in style.

>>9810175
Greek literature had the profound quality of culminating in works that both the plot (commonly sustained by myth and its historic tradition) and style were equally important. Most of the great novels in modern literature do the same, I'll argue that Ulysses is one of them. Ulysses's plot and its consequences are of big importance to the novel's change of style for, to quote Borges's poem on james joyce, "a day in a man's life is the life of everyman". To say it in other words, the one day odyssey of Leopold Bloom entails the new myth that the 20th century Ireland lived.

>>9808382
>drag out half decade old article for (you)s
>it actually fucking works

>>9808821
Byron was not a good model for anything except being a whore.

Subpar poet. Minor scribbler. Why do you even bother reposting anything he said? Read him.

>>9808785
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

>>9809106
>Faulkner is the superior Modernist
>come at me

he's not, now what?

>>9808489
lol

>>9808447
Yes, they are. If somebody is willing to pay for them and display them as art, they will be art.