/lit/ - Literature

Who here has read any of the midcentury "popular" American writers? I mean from the period after Hemingway but before the 1990s, the guys who were kind of a household name at the time. Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Philip Roth, guys like that. They were about as famous as a writer can get in their heyday, but these days I can't think of anyone who actually reads them. Cormac McCarthy came from that period too but it seems like he wound up outshining all of them.

>>23063164
The average WASP unironically blows the average Jew out of the water in terms of intellect and capability. Who do you think BUILT the institutions and systems that the Jews have taken over through their subversion, and why do you think those institutions and systems have started to go to shit now that the Jews have achieved full power over them?

>>22200624
Over and over Mailer just seems like a retard compared to Vidal. I don't think there was ever a point where Mailer got the better of him in their feud. Not to mention Burr and Julian are both better than anything Mailer ever wrote.

So basically, nobody remembers this guy anymore right?

Anton Chekhov because he was not a writer but near the end of his life wrote great works.

Gore Vidal because I want to write essays so that my bitching about how horrid things are right now can be memorialized

>“That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.”

>of the most bitter public feuds in the history of American letters raged between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal from the early 1970s all the way into the mid-eighties, when they finally reconciled. It was conducted in print and in person in various joint television appearances, most spectacularly on an episode of the Dick Cavett talk show in 1971. Away from the public eye, the feud most memorably manifested at a party in 1977, when Mailer punched Vidal in the face over the latter’s scathing review of his book on feminism The Prisoner of Sex. Legend has it that afterwards the latter looked at his assailant and said, “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.”

>He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the US.

Thoughts?

Since watching the Netflix documentary "The Best of Enemies", reading some essays, and watching interviews, I've been interested in reading some Gore Vidal's fiction. Anyone have an opinion on what book I should start first? I have "Burr" and was thinking of starting that one.

>>14926391
“EVERYONE IS CAPABLE OF BEING BISEXUAL!”
What did he mean by this?

Gore Vidal loved to trash Norman Mailer's writing. One time they were at a party together and Mailer got on Vidal, who then proceeded to start shitting on him in person. Mailer punched Vidal in the face; lying on the floor, Vidal said, "Once again words fail Norman Mailer."

Is there a single more overrated American writer than Gore Vidal? None of his stuff actually holds up, yet for years he was lauded by Boomers as one of the great American men of letters. The only American writer I can think of who might be more overrated is Norman Mailer.

Gore recs, particularly interested in nonfiction and literary criticism, but fiction is good too.

Bump.
>“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
>"It is not enough to win; others must lose"
>" “The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.”

>>9515325
He's easy to read through. Wrote almost entirely short stories, the majority of which are hardly longer than 6 pages. He's a perfect companion for the bus and subway.