/lit/ - Literature

>>11160794
>No excuse

Mate, you know there are lots of great writers and artists who went unnoticed in their lifetimes.

>>11160799
like who?

>>11160804
John Kennedy Toole

>>11160804
Me bruv, although I'm getting noticed in the movie industry :( Its not exactly what I want but for now it will do

>>11160823
>John Kennedy Toole
a formidable mediocrity
>>11160828
very cool man, I want to be a screen writer.how important are industry connections?

>>11160804
Melville was relatively unpopular and very poor when he died, if I remember correctly

>>11160833
As someone whose dad was a succesful screenwriter.... very important. If you think your stuff is good enough then I advise you to enter the high tier competitions. They are a quick way to get noticed

>>11160857
>high tier competitions
what are these?

>>11160833
John Kennedy Toole is probably better than the faggot in your OP

>>11160857
yeah its like everyone says its impossible to win those kind of thing because they're all rigged to pic an alum of some places the judges went or whatever, but like probably most people just aren't that good

so here's the question? where did herman diaz go to school? he just randomly won this competition and pulitzer out of no where, but then later we find out he went to yale or something

>Mr. Diaz, it should be clear, is a western writer who hates guns. He said it sickened him to think that telling Håkan’s story would require imagining and describing acts of murderous violence. “I came very close to not writing the book,” he said. “But I knew something really bad had to happen to him to make the plot plausible.”
Pansy

oh so he's director of the center for latin american studies and a professor at columbia with a phd from nyu and did undergrad at oxford

sorry neets and dropouts

>INTERVIEWER

>What does a novel like yours about an immigrant to the United States in the nineteenth century, and the foreignness that haunts him, have to say about how we regard immigrants in the United States today?

>DIAZ

>It took me a long time to write this book. I started it late into Obama’s first term, and I finished around his last Fourth of July in office. So, of course, nothing of what is going on now was on my mind as I wrote it. What was always at the forefront, however, was the importance of immigration in this country’s history, from the very beginning—of immigration often coexisting with exclusion. Who has a voice, and who doesn’t? Who gets to tell their story, and who is silenced? Is there really room for everyone in a country as vast as this? All of these questions are part of our history.

>Then, of course, this awful thing happened—DACA was repealed yesterday—and this touches me deeply. My parents were political refugees in the seventies who went to Sweden fleeing a dictatorship. I obviously care very much about this, and I feel lucky that this novel is coming out now. I couldn’t think of a better way to say what I think about this country—which I love despite its enormous flaws—than through this book.

>>11160895
>oh so he's director of the center for latin american studies and a professor at columbia with a phd from nyu and did undergrad at Oxford
I really doubt this matters

>>11160930
not sure if serious

he already published a book on borges too, they made it sound like he was some random dude working in a taco stand in the middle of flyover country...the dude is a professor at an elite school in nyc, sorry this story of "being discovered" is suddenly much less interesting to me

>>11160949
seriously. what a fucking dirty trick by op.

>>11160893
>a western writer who hates guns
>>11160908
this awful thing happened—DACA was repealed yesterday
At least I won't have to read this to know that it's garbage. I'll give it a 2/10 just because his prose might be alright. Would not reccomend.

>>11160794
>There is no excuse for those with talent to go unnoticed
Except that the Pulitzer board is just a few specific people, who likely have tastes just as capricious and personal as the entire rest of the population.

Getting noticed by the literary establishment doesn't necessarily mean you have 'talent' or are doing 'quality writing' or whatever it just means that the specific people who make up the literary establishment enjoy your work.

The best books have all almost certainly been buried by time.

Fight me.

>>11160833
>screenwriter
Your best bet is to write for television, unless you want to adapt comicbooks for a living.

Anyone actually read this book? Seems good.

>>11160794
It sounds like one those books that tries to recast American's mythic past as a history of exploitation and racism. That's why he's likely to win, not due to any innate talent.

>>11160804
Blake was literally self-published and only sold about 100 copies of the Songs

>>11163014
It's dreadful. I finished about a quarter before I had to stop. The prose is trite and full of cliches like, "The wind was a hand pushing him on." Given /lit/'s hatred for this sort of thing, I'm surprised to see this thread. The only explanation I can think of for its award success is Diaz's politics and personal connections. The work itself is shallow and unreadable.

>>11163056
Sounds like The Alchemist.

>>11163024
>American's mythic past

>>11163056
That's a shame. I was imagining a Conan like character fucking shit up in the wild west with a battle axe.

>>11163197
You think there isn't an American mythos?

>>11160804
kafka

>>11160841
melville started out as a best-selling novelist, though

>>11160794
>Diaz
>>11160930
>director of latin american studies
>professor at columbia, studied at nyu and oxford
>>11160908
>immigrant novel

So we have a Latino author who is also a director of Latin American studies who has studied at all the right Progressive institutions and went on to write an immigrant novel, is now making #POWERFUL statements about immigration and how it pertains to Who We Are As A Country, and based on >>11160908 he is in all likelihood a Communist whose Communist parents fled Chile before Augusto Pinochet could throw them out of a helicopter. Definitely no political motivation here, no sir.

>>11160799
There is NO excuse when communication is instant like it is today. The internet separates the shit from the rest real fast.