/lit/ - Literature

>don't publish anything for most of undergrad because i assume i need a few years of concerted practice to get my writing chops
>finally start looking at publishing in final year
>go look at all the local short fiction competitions for university and city and even country
>every poem is "i read ee cummings in high school and alSO I'M A WOMAN, WITH A VAGINAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
>every story is either about fart rape, or about teenage ennui on par with a movie inspired by the wikipedia article for catcher in the rye
>literally direct ee cummings ripoff poems except it's about a college girl waking up next to a dude she fucked and remarking that it's only 5:30 and she has to go back to sleep
>look into all speculative fiction publishing competitions nationally and internationally
>it's 90% infiltrated and overrun by I CARE ABOUT ISSUES!!!! shit like limp-wristed feminism and post-post-colonialism
>major traditional awards are either ruined this, or ruined by being split by backlash against this, which just makes the ISSUES!!! people intensify their ISSUES
>look into recent nobel prize winners to see what really captures the contemporary zeitgeist in high literature
>2013 some fat old lady's senile ramblings about old senile ladies
>2014 mbingu ukwonkwe's yams aplenty
>2015 mitsubishi chikibriki's elegy for a tampon salesman
>desperately search for any vestiges of traditional american literature
>all that's left is an empty room that jonathan franzen sometimes visits so he can describe upper middle class suburbia to a wall, and neo-hemingway cowboy schlock for perpetual 21 year old hipsters with man buns
>tfw everyone is special and no one is
>tfw all western men are wieners