/lit/ - Literature

>>20193438
>>20193437
These are also valid points and bring up a meta-literary discussion — literature as enjoyable vs. literature as profound and life-altering (the greatest works ideally having both). I think there’s a difference between the inexhaustibility of some writers I mention, versus the really aesthetically crafted but shallow jewels DeLillo creates. However, this may be from my own inclination (not everyone shares) towards philosophy, theology, the classics, and great religious and mythological texts — one which almost causes me to easily despise a lot of fiction simply because I find even something as apparently out-there as the Koran as a more satisfying spiritual experience to read (and that’s without even being a Muslim), than a modern American author’s perspective, as a rootless postmodern outsider to these traditions, on, for instance, subjects like Islamic terrorism (also touched on in Mao II). The aesthete in me loves him, the philosopher/theologian/mystic finds it lacking that ineffable, timeless resonance that apparently diverse figures as Shakespeare, Faulkner and Old Testament prophets alike variously seem to share.