/lit/ - Literature

>>2992117
HA!

>>2991888
Nice trips!
Your assessment of Vonnegut is basically every critique of him ever written. It's like you've read the Cliff's Notes on the Wikipedia article for him, and your 9th grade teacher told you to "put it into your own words", and you did.

But no, if "700 pages of random tangents" is your 'thing', then Vonnegut is not for you.

>>2991874
Thanks!
But I don't celebrate things that I already knew, or things are mundane (in a similar way to how plotless novels are not celebrated lol)

>>2991855
see:
>>2991678
You'll have to do your own work, sorry.

>>2991837
You know, I could easily be thwarted if someone were to post a plotless novel along with citations of its notable artistic merit. That would really shut me down!

One hour and counting for that though, LOL.

>>2991803
No, Zed WAS an /fa/ tripfag. He changed his name at my request, keeping his old tripcode, which, to anyone capable of paying the slightest bit of attention to anything at all, is very different from mine.

Keep trying, failanon.

>>2991799
> a panel of writers, critics, and academics whose opinions are undoubtedly worth more than yours.
No question.

There's also no question that 2002 was a slow year. Point being, someone MUST win every year, and just because you pick the least-stinking of all the stinking pieces of garbage, doesn't mean you've picked a rose.

>>2991789
And to think I've already used my favorite facepalm image in this thread.

>>2991776
>>2991782
Empty, vapid ejaculations will do nothing to forward this discussion. Please stop shitposting, it's really the cancer killing /lit/.

>>2991747
It would help, some. The fact that "The Life of Pi" and "The sense of an Ending" also won a Booker prize, doesn't.

Why don't you just tell us what you think you found, and we'll take it from there, hmm?

What I'm seeing here is a bunch of Anons becoming very, very frustrated when it becomes apparent that I'm just utterly right, as I said I was, and there's nothing they can do about it but become angry, hurl insults, and try transparent sematic ploys to gain some imaginary advantage.

It's a good day to be anonymous, Anonymous.

>>2991648
>>2991655
Nice try, but I'm not going to do your work for you.

If you disagree with my postulation, then the onus is on YOU to disprove it, not me. Therefore, YOU must name the novel, and YOU must show that it has artistic merit. Anything less is tantamount to confession that I'm right and you're wrong. If you can't handle that, perhaps this isn't the thread for you

>>2991636
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_and_shortlisted_authors_of_the_Booker_Prize_for_Fic
tion

Show me Crash on that list.

>>2991620
Clearly, your idea of "noted artistic merit" and mine differ wildly.

>>2991598
I thought this would happen. Look, you (et. al.) are naming lists of books that either have plots (albeit ones that you are apparently unable to discern) or books that are of no noted artistic merit.

Keep trying though!

>>2991571
>Crash
>noted artistic merit
Try again.

>>2991560
>Thinks Ulysses doesn't have a plot.
Hoo boy. This gon' be a long thread.

>>2991464
>Luckily a novel isn't explicitly a story then, huh, mr. tautological tripfag.
Cite one novel of any noted artistic merit that does not have a plot.

>>2991303
>But how the characters change is the fucking 'story' you pleb.
Everyone's character changes all the time. It doesn't mean it's worth reading about-- unless your own life is so devoid of content that you find that kind of thing positively scintillating.

Good stories need... well... STORY. Character cannot be developed or revealed in any interesting way without it. I mean, this is just common sense shit people. How can you claim to be knowledgeable about literature and not know this?

>>2991249
I don't read plotless books. Ask some of the plotless book readers in this thread for examples.

>>2991240
You're still confused. I VERY CLEARLY got your point. Now see if you can go back and get mine.

I'm starting to see why plotless books are so fascinating to you, lol.

>>2991221
LOL!
You're right. "Normal people" was a bad word choice. I should have said "laser space ninjas doing laser space ninja things" so you could understand the point a little more clearly.

>>2991205
Apparently, you're not alone. Plotless garbage is currently selling like hotcakes. The only theory that explains it is that the people who actually enjoy it have led lives in which nothing much has happened, nor meaningful relationships ever made. It's as if reading about normal people doing normal things is equivalent in their minds to the way normal people feel reading about astronauts or heroes or fabulous lovers.

Perhaps this is the largest demographic that is still buying and reading books?

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules of Writing:

1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that they will not feel the time was wasted.
2) Give the reader at least one character they can root for.
3) Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4) Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the plot.
5) Start as close to the end as possible.
6) Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8) Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The only one I have a problem with is #4. To my mind, in a lot of modern literature WAY too much emphasis is put on character development, in some cases to the complete exclusion of actually telling a story. In those cases, the writing is just... people doing things. That's not worth reading about.

Therefore, every sentence should BOTH reveal character and forward the plot. This is particularly true (and very much easier) when writing dialogue.

What say you, /lit/?