/lit/ - Literature

OP here again.

>>18584081
Write a high-quality novel, use a good editor, query the right agents. Full disclosure, as I've mentioned earlier I haven't had a novel-length piece of fiction published, but my cousin has.

>>18585201
No and no

>>18585224
Yes and yes

>>18587096
I don't know, anon. There are plenty of cosy Liberal arts colleges about. I went to a Grammar school in the UK with smart uniforms, very old buildings, Latin mottos, etc. Perhaps it's simply that education as a whole has become overly politicised, over-subscribed, and attenuated.

>>18587439
If you read the person I was responding to, they were asking for recommendations for authors rarely discussed *on /lit/*. Your hostility and insults puzzle me. I wish you nothing but the best and hope that, if you were in a bad mood when you wrote that post, it subsides soon.

>>18438488
Normies get off my board REEEE

Buddenbrooks by Mann and Middlemarch by Eliot will scratch the sprawling, family drama itch. You might enjoy the works of Henry James, too. Tolstoy's writing style is actually nothing groundbreaking - of the Russians, Chekhov and Turgenev were most concerned with prose style, and much of the music in Russian is lost in translation. Tolstiy's strengths are found in his scope, vision, characterisation, and the little 'life-details' he includes in his work.

Goethe's Faust deals with more metaphysical themes. If you prefer straight prose, there's Mann's Doctor Faustus. On the other hand, if you like poetry, both Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost are metaphysical masterpieces, rich with vocabulary, and I think Paradise Lost actually exceeds Moby Dick in English prose aesthetics, though both poems are tough going and rather lack the regular human element that I think makes Tolstoy great (though Satan's characterisation in the latter is superb). Ironically, Shakespeare has some of the strongest characterisation in Western literature, though Tolstoy disliked him, since he celebrated the human rather than the divine. Nonetheless, he was one of Melville's primary influences, so I'd still recommend him.

I don't mind Hemingway, but don't listen to the other poster who suggested him - not only is his prose style the virtual antithesis of Melville's, being sparse and clipped, the whole ethos of the 'Lost Generation' he belonged to and espouses in his works would have been derided by Tolstoy.

>>17352292
Your assumption is false. Since you've looked into those statistics, you can just as easily look up all the straight white men who have been published in the last few years. If your writing is good, your story is good, then you have a shot at getting published, which is a fact a lot of people on /lit/ don't like because they assume the schlock they post on royal road or self-pub on amazon really is good, and it's comforting to think they're the victim of oppressive diversity principles rather than simply mediocre. I have never ever seen a good self-published work that remotely compares to the best traditionally published fiction each year. For what it's worth, I'm a straight white 25 year old male in the UK, and I've had 4 short stories published in good journals, and 2 essays, and in December an actual real-life agent said they wanted to represent my work. Am I an outlier? Or did I just work very hard, write well, and be recognised for doing such?

In terms of self-publishing - the answer should be obvious. If you want to write as a fun little hobby without seriously working on improving your craft, sure, go ahead. If you're only focused on trying to make money (which I think precludes you from making any meaningful art anyway), then sure, go ahead - although churning out erotica will make far more than your derivative, breathtakingly insipid addition to the fantasy, sci-fi, horror, or other such genres.

But let me give you a warning, as someone who, autistic though I am, lives in the real world, in reasonably literary circles (I am an English Lit graduate student, have had the above published and secured an agent, and my uncle and a family friend both have their novels out in stores). At a gathering last summer some classmates and I encountered a man who was proudly babbling about having been published. It was, typically, a fantasy book, and he clearly was proud of the world he'd thought up. Who published it? someone asked. Oh, he replied, I self-published. Ah, the first girl said. And at that moment there was a change. Everyone smiled at him, patted him on the back, gave him the praise he so clearly craved, but nobody believe in any way that he had really been published. There are no barriers to entry, and that's a bad thing, because traditional publishing functions as a great net through which the mountains of schlock generally cannot pass. It shows that you have reached a standard few writers reach, that someone sees enough quality in your work to invest money and time in printing it and bringing it to the world.

So will the world always react to self-publishing. Friends, family, acquaintances will say how great it is, pat you on the back, and even offer some approval of self-publishing, how freeing it is, how you're your own boss. But they'll never read your book, never regard it as anything more than a pet project, and will always secretly believe you weren't good enough to make it otherwise.

An unstable teenager becomes obsessed with his male classmate. He is unsatisfied with the weak binds he shares with his classmates. Idolising Achilles, he wants a Patroclus, an experience of philia, true Platonic love, of indescribable intensity - someone who would die for him, and that he could die for - someone with whom he could share one self, and have total dominion over. The object of his affection, a young man from a rich UAE family, is wild and unlike, but also a secret homosexual, and wants eros, a sexual aspect, from the friendship - which unnerves and repulses his pursuer. An examination of power, control, frustrated desire, and the longing for meaningful friendships.

>>>/r9k/61806844

feels bad to know that a degenerate perv on r9k writes better than me

Two siblings - - a female police officer and a priest - - clash with each other in a city where children have started to go missing.

Inspired by The Brothers Karamazov and 2666

>>17092134