/lit/ - Literature

I listen to music that isn't distracting. It's the whole reason I got into Orchestral music. Sometimes Jazz on the radio, but if I know the song then I'm going to lose focus.

David Byrne, Robert Smith, Ian Curtis, S.J. Ballion, David R. Jones, Neil Tennant, David Gahan, or Morrissey.

Take your pick.

>>833223
Pretentious asshole, hangs out at diners at night with a friend who is usually on drugs. Doesn't know anyone who's read most of what he's read, so everyone he knows thinks he's smart.

>>832720

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_mythology#Sources

Wikipedia. Use it.

Fight Club.

Never thought I would hate anything more then Bukowski.

>>831203
This one is dangerously close to being real.

>>830577

and Grand Theft Auto is exactly the same as anything ever written by charles bukowski

It's definitely literature. It's a philosophical exploration of the absolute limits of freedom given to one man (or I think four it was in in 120 Days'). There's a lot to say about what that ends up implying.

P.S. Totally hot.

Yeats <3333

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cracker.

>>813171

>>Nitpicking my arguments without actually making any of your own or demonstrating any actual understanding of what I'm talking about.

Mmmkay, I'm just going to go off and read some more PoMo crit, since they're concerned with all of the things I am, along with most of academia today, and I can actually learn something from them. You should read some Adorno or Derrida or
Lukacs or the Frankfort school.

OKAY IT'S BEEN FUN HAVE A NICE DAY

>>813070

>>the vast majority of writers

But all writers want that, or at least the ability to sustain themselves and be able to write 'freely'. That's the whole problem.

What I want is an art outside that context, the demoralizing, subjugating aspects of capitalism, which is exactly what Dostoevsky might have been one of the last examples of, which is the reason he was on the tail end of a time when anything was worth reading. Because it was one of the last examples of an art that wasn't subject to mechanical reproduction.

All your counterexamples constitute entire problem with today's art. And it's the reason that only a tiny few shining examples (Raymond Carver, Eugine O'Neill and MAYBE John Updike are all I can think of offhand) are worthy of the Western Cannon.

>>813016

The point of all this is to demonstrate that we live in a monstrously fucked up society where, through the concepts of cultural texts, we should retain a constant awareness of what art is in our society, how it affects us, and why that affect is taking place.

Cultural theory is essential to understanding our society and freeing ourselves from it, so that we can return to a more legitimate means of creating art, outside a Capitalist context.

>>812755

You're right, I contradicted myself. I retain my previous position, that there is no legitimate art. There is just some crap I happen to like.

Also, you're failing to comprehend what I mean by our culture being different from anything before the 20th century. No matter what you say, Dostoevsky did not live in the time of pervasive, globalized capitalism that we live in. He did not know television commercials, pop music, Viagra, Car and Driver Magazine, and Nike. His motivations for making money to survive (and pay gambling debts) and continue to write are different from J.K. Rowling's, who probably lives in a massive mansion, has constant media attention, and who's books have probably been read by more college-age people then Dostoevsky's today.


If Dostoevsky was writing today, he would be Chuck Palahnuick.

>>812685

I'm not saying that legitimate art CAN'T sell. We just have to ask WHY certain artists sell and others don't. The fact is, today the best-selling acts are probably the most disposable (Sorry to all you John Mayer fans out there).

And you can by no means compare the economic climates of Mozart and Dostoevsky to Miley Cirus and J.K. Rowling. I'm sorry, but we live in a VASTLY different world now, and culture is created for far different reasons.

>>812693

This is officially the best thread I've ever seen on /lit/

>>812637

Well no one is saying I don't love it anyway. I love pop music, and I go to see movies, and I'm not above watching an hour of TV and playing video games. I'm right down in it, I'm a suburban teenage girl, I used to play with Barbies.

I just think it's important to be aware of what is going on around us, and the effects it has. That's why modern criticism and cultural theory is so important.

I LOVE the Mountain Goats by the way. And J.D.'s been drawing bigger and bigger crowds every time I go to see him.

I vastly disagree that art is more varied. When we boil down what makes good art to a commercial value, it reduces art to something that's built to be only garbage. Just like an old chair we put out on the street, the cans we held our spaghettios in, outdated computers, we are expected to buy CD's or MP3's, "support the artist", rinse, repeat.

Nothing built with the hopes to make a profit is built to last. We're supposed to consume and dispose. That's why nothing being made today will last. There's no longevity in today's art, other then as maybe a Barthesian cultural text.

This isn't some paranoid pseudo-anarchistic babbling, this is something we all feel all around us. It's the demoralizing force of capitalism, it's what we're all expected to do.

Twilight sells better then Stephen King, who sells better then Thomas Pynchon, and so forth ad infinitum.

>>812533

That's an extremely legitimate argument. There's no doubt that before the 20th century, art was delegated to the upper classes.

However... Is this really what we want? Isn't there a way to have legitimate, culturally relevant, sincere art, without having to get it through a TV or a Radio? The Internet is helping right now, but how long do we have before that becomes a totally homogenizing force, too?

>>812513

It's not money, it's the dialectic of capital, the psychological effects it's had on all of us, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, it's your favorite song on a commercial for Audi.

It pervades everyone in the modern world, anyone who's ever watched a television, it has an indomitable, homogenizing effect that has wrecked art entirely. It has nothing to do with money.

The end of the question is this: Poetry and Lyrics are two very different mediums that have been historically different since the two have simultaneously existed. The Odyssey and the Iliad are technically lyrics, so no one can say that it's not a legitimate art; however, in the 21st century, capitalism has so completely annihilated any level of legitimacy in any type of music that makes an attempt at being commercial (aka all of it) that there can be no sincerity or worth left in it, other then pure commercial value. Poetry has also felt this decay, but the bastardization of lyrical music, which started, arguably, at the popularization of jazz music, has been taken so much farther that it's become unrecognizable. Poetry is no less subject to this effect, but being less marketable inherently, it hasn't felt it nearly to the extreme that lyrics has, although there can be no doubt that it's been messed up.

There is no correct answer to this question. Capitalism has destroyed all art. And that's all that can be said.

"TIIIIIIIIIME / WHY YOU RUIN POETRY?"

>>812288

You don't like my song? I call it "Time by Hootie and the Blowfish" by Shakespeare's Sister