/lit/ - Literature

>>10835194
Nope. Awful taste. Franzen is a faggot. Fuck her and then tell her she has a shit taste in books.

franzen is such a fun punching bag. i wish he was still relevant.

but no, op, obviously no.

>>10835194
Franzen is The-New-Yorker-core.

His essays are okay

>>10835198
Seconding this but spit on her as you orgasm

>>10835216
Yeah I enjoyed his essay on hard literature. I also liked The Corrections. Its got some simple truths in it.

>>10835198
top kek

/lit/ wants to think it's above Franzen but it's really not.
The good news is this means you probably had a shot.

>>10835194
is this the guy who was DFW's lover?

>>10835194

Depends on her face while she was reading it. If it wasn't anything like pic related, she's a pleb.

>>10835368
yes, his passive fuckboy, because dfw was a chad.

>>10835361

does this mean hes a cuck or /ourguy/

>>10835410
It doesn't have to be one or the other.

>>10835415

everything is binary, just like gender

>>10835421
Cuck, then.

I like him. Like Fitzgerald, he caters to my emotionally stunted sensibilities, just...not as elegantly.

>>10835194
if you're posting on /lit/, it means she has better taste than you. not least because it's possible she decides for herself.
but the corrections really is pretty good. it's not life-changing, but it's pretty funny and it does encourage you to think a little about what ficiton ought to do. and just because someone is reading it doesn't mean it's a favorite. casting a wide net is a concept beyond this board.

>>10835387
Do you think he killed himself because he saw the stills from this interview?

>>10836299
>dude a talking turd tells an old man with dementia that he's racist lmao

Yeah, that really encouraged me to think and wasn't a bitter screed against harmless flyoverlandia from insecure flyover diaspora who desperately wants to be an East Coast elitist.

>>10835194
What’s her number? I’ll text her thanks

He's okay, but not worth reading.

>>10836299
ugh

>>10836499
>says this on a board that worships pynchon
>describes one 20 page scene in a 600 page book
>doesn't realize that 'bitter screed against harmless flyoverlandia by diaspora [sic] who
desperately wants to be an East Coast elitst' applies to an entire tradition of american literary greats
franzen thoroughly trashed

>>10836521
>comparing Franzen to Pynchon

Kill (you)rself

>>10836536
just mad cuz you didn't finish ulysses either but ur not a nyt best seller who also publishes articles about gaddis in the new yorker

pynchon and franzen are buddies irl

>>10836521

Guess what? They both suck.

>>10836475

I hope not, it's just a goofy nervous pseud, nothing more

>>10836546
That article, like everything else Franzen wrote, is pseud garbage, and he was put in his place by Phil Jourdan in his response "No Thanks Mr. Franzen, I Like My Novels Difficult"

>If you've never read William Gaddis, you're not alone. His name isn't exactly unfamiliar, but you're not likely to find three or four people reading his novels on the subway. Not that subway-goers are dumb — it's merely that Gaddis wrote brick-thick novels of such erudition, scope and sheer difficulty that you're better off at your desk with Wikipedia open if you want to read them. It's not necessary, but it will help. To Franzen, however, this is a bad thing. Why be so impenetrable? Why not be kind to your readers? Why, in the end, should a writer spend his energy creating books that will scare off even a potentially intelligent, sophisticated audience?

>So why should you read it? You don't have to. That's the first point — unless it's on your college syllabus, you can probably get away with not reading it. The idea that what Franzen calls Status writing is the writing of intellectual bullies and their sycophants is just weird. No, you do not have to read Gravity's Rainbow. You don't have to read the Cantos of Ezra Pound. Most of us never do, and life continues, and Franzen goes on making his money and building his literary reputation, and so forth.

>>10836568
>y so u mad bro? it's like, whatever floats your boat, you know?
Yep, really put in his place.

I used to hold an extremely negative opinion of Franzen and largely still do, but I now feel he is a semi-important, ahem, literary figure for these times regardless of what we want to think. What I've read of the Corrections is shit and I assume Purity is worse. He uses the typical story lines jewish publishers love about fucked up white families, has nothing important to say, and his later writing is stylistically unimpressive to put it mildly. But his first two books are actually well-written and not as shitty (the St. Louis one and Strong Motion), and he has through his essays shown that he is more keen than most and gave a good critique of postmodernism. But he...

>>10836521
desperately wants to be an East Coast elitist.
And was willing to sell his soul to our current hebrew literary gatekeepers to do it. You can sense this when he writes about his first two books, the first of which was full of pretty deep literary allusions, and how no one cared. So he took a different path. I'd recommend people read the beginning of Strong Motion though, his talent and hard work comes off well, even if it in typical Franzen fashion drags on and has little to say afterward.

>>10836603
Franzen is a strong anti-semite... Did you not read Freedom?

>>10836639
Counter-semitism will not be in any way allowed until whites regain control of our publishing industry, you know this.

>>10836669
You don't think that's what Franzen is doing? Someone's head has to be the first through the wall and it will inevitably be so bloody as to be unrecognizable

The only reason anybody dislikes Franzen is because they're jealous and don't like what he represents politically

He's the single most important American writer still active (yes, better than DeLillo and Pynchon) and will be remembered in a century as a defining figure of our time.

He's the go-to whipping boy for jaded teens and pseuds because white-bread dads aren't considered cool or edgy. The pseuds like to read somebody who they can hang a poster of on their dorm wall and sneer when they hear somebody mispronounce his name.

But in reality, the fiction Franzen's pushing is technically superior and more emotionally relevant than anything the pomo crowd has done since JR. He's warping the limits of American culture and finding kernels of insight deep within topics that are hated by wannabe-revolutionaries, topics like familial relationships, upper middle class milieu, and higher education. Topics that are more urgent and important to the average person than trash like meta-fiction, media, and identity politics, and yet ignored by the pseuds because they offer no image of contrarianism or mindless individualism.

I wouldn't be surprised if he earns the Nobel before his death. I'm looking forward to what will be I'm sure a long and fruitful literary career

>>10836893
I hate your post exactly as much as I hate Franzen himself, and for the same reasons

>>10836893
I'm the one a couple before who conceded that Franzen was an important literary figure and I also hate your post.

>>10835198
>>10835202

Any rational reason why the hate for franzen instead of name calling?

>>10836961
>>10836903
>so thoroughly missing irony
>claim to know literature better than franzen

>>10836893
I feel like I’ve read this pasta before.

>>10836536
>book you wish you'd written
>infinite j... I mean this neapolitan book series.

>>10836893
>better than pynchon and delillo
>will be remembered

Nice bait.