/lit/ - Literature

>>17109159
You failed to read OP's question. He asked in terms of skill, whereas your answer made reference to emotion, influence, and talent. You've also outed yourself as a pseud, so please drop the tripcode, you are giving us a bad name.

Why am I calling you pseud?
Well, firstly because you failed to give a reason as to why you believe Shakespeare is great, you just name-dropped him for brownie points.
Secondly, you combined David and Solomon together, but actually, David's psalms are very different from the books allegedly written by Solomon. Also "Solomon" is clearly a collective of writers. Even the writer of Ecclesiastes states that "he is of the House of David", people just attributed it to Solomon.
Thirdly, you are calling Homer "the absolute father of epic poetry" which is the most retarded thing I heard all day, and I lurked on lit for a few hours, that is saying something. Homer was already part of a well-defined, age-old tradition when 'he' first started writing. Just because you can't name anybody who wrote other similar stuff before him, doesn't mean that it didn't exist. Have you ever heard of the contest between Hesiod and Homer?
Fourthly, I am surprised that you mentioned Virgil or Ovid before Horace. You failed to mention one of the most originals poets to ever walk this cursed Earth, and instead, you preferred to namedrop a couple of epigones, as Virgil was to Homer & Hesiod and Ovid was to Horace.

Now that we are done, to answer OP question:
1. Cervantes, please see what Martin Scorsese has to say about this.
2. Hemingway, he created prose minimalism
3. Faulkner, the only one that knows how to write stream of consciousness
4. Nabokov, he is pure skill, to quote a lesser tripfag.
5. YOU

>>16869787
>>16869906
Here, gentlemen, we have a species of seething brainlet, namely the pretentious pseud.
First of all, the reader can give its own meaning to the text beyond the context in which the work was already created. "Literally me" is not an interpretation of the text, it's just an exclamation of recognition by the reader, who feels understood by Dosto's text.
Secondly, the context of growing nihilism and champagne socialism in which the book was written is akin to our own globohomo international political climate. Thus, "he literally me" becomes a keen observation rather than inane interpretation.
Thirdly, basically what this anon said:>>16869766
To conclude, stop calling others faggot when te only faggot ITT is you.

>>16847424
depends on what you define as self-help. Most of them are garbage and a mere remix of "think and grow rich" by Napoleon Hill. Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday have some interesting books, but I wouldn't recommend leaving your life by the 48 rules of power and you would be better off reading Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. The only self-help books that I would recommend is "Rich dad, Poor dad", but if you are intelligent enough you could come to the same conclusions by reading any Economics 101 textbook. Still, the book has value because most people are stuck in (relative) poverty because they haven't been taught basic financial education.
Also, if you look at people who only read self-help you will see that they don't apply any of the principles that they've been studying.

>>16830679
We don't think that sci-fi and fantasy are devoid of any literary merit, it's just that in the medium of genre literature (be it YA, detective, romance, sci-fi, and fantasy) is plagued by cooky cutter tropes and cliches. For this sad state of facts, one might be inclined to blame the publishing houses, but I think that the fault lies solely with its readers who prefer the comfortable escapism provided by predictable storylines and characters.
In recent years, sci-fi has earned a lot more respect, but literary authors who publish books that may be deemed as such prefer the term ''speculative fiction''. Vonnegut, for example, was considered a sci-fi author before he garnered his respect. Furthermore, Margaret Atwood published two horrible science fiction, but because she was considered a literary author, they were deemed speculative fiction. A final note on this matter: look at magical realism for it is basically urban fantasy, but because the writers are deemed literary, so are the books.
To conclude, genre literature it's not shit because it's genre literature, but most of the writers who write genre literature are shitty. If you write a story with sci-fi and fantasy elements, you will ascend to magical realism and/or speculative fiction.

>>16807344
I don't think it has any literary value, but its cultural value is undoubted. It's out there with the Bible and the Koran. Why am I saying this? Because not only did it coin the term cyberspace, but in the early days of the internet every hip geek was reading it and it really opened people's minds as to what the internet can become. It's an example of fiction changing the world.