/lit/ - Literature

>>12156255
>Fagzen
>best writer
Don't make us. laugh. It was Bolaño, or maybe Sebald,

>>12156255
when a writer ceases to live only their work can be assessed for quality. We can evaluate Franzen, because he could come out with something extraordinary based on his work hitherto. But with the entity that was Wallace, we have the freedom to pick over its work and decide what was great and what wasn't.

>>12156255
Idk if he is the best, but Nathan Hill with his debut novel The Nix is now high on my radar. I think he will be a major author in the future. But perhaps he will pull a Harper Lee

>>12156255
I like Franzen, but I don't think he's the best writer in the last 30 years. I'm not even sure he'll be widely read in 50 years time. He's about J.D. Sallinger tier in terms of impact I think. He'll be read, but only in college and small New York reading circles.

Though he's a bit of a meme, my vote goes to Houellebecq. Too bad his latest novel got eviscerated/buried by the leftwing establishment. With time, I think we'll look back at Houellebecq's work with more appreciation. His choice of subject matter is definitely more topical than Franzen's.

>>12156320
What's your opinion on Wallace?

>>12156339
Not my cup of tea. I agree with Franzen that his magnum opus could have been pared down a few 500 pages or so.

I like his asides and I like his speeches/essays even more. Wallace was a philosopher larping as a writer imo (and Franzen a writer larping as a philosopher).

>>12156255
it's beyond me why people think of Franzen as best anything.

>>12156350
>Wallace was a philosopher larping as a writer imo
To think he was larping as anything is a little unreasonable. Wallace was a writer and a philosopher. Remember: TV is dangerous.

>>12156441
His stories have elements of dark comedy to them and his prose is breezy, yet still maintains some intellectual heft. Stylistically, I look up to Franzen more than any other modern writer. As far as content goes, though, I think he's a bit lacking as I said.

>>12156255
It’s definitely not either of those Vollmann maybe?

>>12156500
>it has to be an American

>>12156507
Not him, but American writers are the least boring fiction writers

>>12156596
Your taste has clearly been Hollywoodised. Franzen is boring. Vollman is boring. Every American writer in this century is boring. They're only two non-boring living authors are Cormac and Pynchon. Everything else is shit.

>>12156614
>Pynchon
CIA detected

>>12156596
>Imperial is a 2009 study of south-east California by American author William T. Vollmann. The product of over a decade's research, the 1,344-page published text is Vollmann's longest single-volume work. The book is divided into thirteen sections and explores the history, economics and geography of the region from 13,000 B.C. to the present day.
This is the American idea of fun.

>>12156666
Fuck you faggot

>>12156674
t. salty burger

>>12156666
Nice quads
>This is the American idea of fun
I mean yeah
I think if people on lit gave it a chance most would like it

>>12156666
I never said I liked Vollmann, but you shouldn't knock someones taste for fun just because it's informally driven. It's rude and irreverant to do on a board for people who want to enjoy books.

>>12156255
Me or lord Pynchon

>>12156765
You said American writers were the "least boring fiction writers", though. You were the one knocking someone's taste.

>>12156795
It just means that they keep me on the book longer. I'll read Tol for an hour, but I'll read Wallace for 3. Does that make any sense?

>tfw I have the same s o y lips
at least tell me he was successful with women

>>12156879
He had a wife and kid. I think at some point he said that he liked getting laid for Infinite Jest. A great talent that shouldn't have gone.

>>12156879
DFW Pulled
also what the fuck do you mean s o y lips you parroting faggot

>>12156879
He pushed her out of a car, so you tell me

>>12156255
make it 33 and it's cormac

>>12156900
David had no children, stupid.

>>12157009
My bad.

>>12157005
Based and redpilled

>>12156255
murakami

Maybe not the best, but I quite like Denis Johnson.

>>12156614
>vollmann is boring
top kek

>>12156666
Imperial is absolutely hypnotic. I didn't expect to like it. I couldn't stop reading it. Vollmann is a genius. Too bad he doesn't think women are really people. Otherwise, he'd've won the Nobel by now.

>>12157005
He also threw her THROUGH a glass table. He stalked another woman (mary karr) for about a year. Wrote her letters like "talk to me or I'll kill your husband and then myself." In grad school, he and his girlfriend got into a fight driving thru Arizona. He stopped the car, pushed her out, locked the door and drove off. Wallace was a gigantic shitbag for all except the last five or so years of his life.

>>12157136
Where should I start with Vollmann? He sounds based af.

>>12157122
He sounds pretty based. What would you reccomend?

>>12157136
Well shit. You really can't tell who's going to be a shitbag. Not everyone looks like Weinstein.

>>12156255
George Saunders, just don't start with Lincoln in the Bardo.

>>12157136
>He also threw her THROUGH a glass table. He stalked another woman (mary karr) for about a year. Wrote her letters like "talk to me or I'll kill your husband and then myself." In grad school, he and his girlfriend got into a fight driving thru Arizona. He stopped the car, pushed her out, locked the door and drove off. Wallace was a gigantic shitbag for all except the last five or so years of his life.
He was also unstable and on antidepressants most of his adult life so I can't really feel angry at him either. I think most great authors are like this. Correct me if I am somewhat incorrect.

>>12157005
Wallace was based af. I thought he was another submissive subservient liberal faggot

>>12157145
good q. Depends. You Bright and Risen Angels, his first novel, is a pretty good starting place. Pynchon ripoff? Eh, a little bit, but undeniably brillant. Riding Towards Everywhere, his book about trainhopping across the US, is good if you want to get used to his prose. Nothing really happens in this one. Vollmann just hops trains. An Afghanistan Picture Show is brutal and fascinating -- after college, Vollmann went to Afghanistan to talk with the Taliban. While he was there he watched a sniper kill his best friend and a landmine disassemble his interpreter. It took him 20 years to get this one published.

His best series imo is still ongoing. Seven Dreams is the shit. It's a series of seven (no shit) planned novels about American colonialism from the natives' perspective. I think he's written six? You don't have to read them in order. Start with the Ice-Shirt, about the Icelanders hitting North Canada, then Fathers and Crows, the one about the Iriquois and the French Jesuits. this one landed him on an FBI watchlist. His best novel yet is probably The Dying Grass, a novel about the Nez Perce indian war. Fucking brutally beautiful. Happy reading anon

>>12156255
Johnson McDwayne

>>12157160
...dude

>flaubert lived with his mom
>faulkner gave his nobel prize money away to start an award for young writers and to a black school in MS
>whitman was friends with every laborer in brooklyn

>>12157005
she cute

>>12157172
thanks for taking the time, anon.

>>12156255
David Foster Wallace?
More like Lameshit Imposter Clueless if you ask me

>>12157182
what's a black school?

>>12157182
>...dude
This tells me nothing. What are you trying to imply?

>>12157204
Many people on this board like David so I'm going to assume that this is bait.

>>12157206
In the South there were separate schools for white children and black children. I think schools were segregated in the North as well, they were just less obvious about it. There were also far fewer blacks living in the North before ~1950 so it was less of an issue.

>>12156320
Franzen isn't even widely read now lol, he isn't close to Salinger who has written one of the most famous novels in American literature and also some very well regarded short stories

>>12157228
>one book
>700 pages
>plot makes literally no sense
what a great writer

>>12157238
>blatantly wrong information
I am no longer going to reply after this. Neither should anyone else.

>>12157259
monumental cope for having to watch your meme book get deconstructed in 3 lines of greentext.

>>12157274
> watch your meme book get deconstructed in 3 lines of greentext.
b8

>>12157280
>muh b8
it's not bait you agitated mongoloid, some people are just not retarded enough to fall for meme books.

>>12157154

I like him a lot, but it seems like there's no consensus. Anyway, it seems like he's still plugging along and will have more to contribute.

>>12157292
there's no such thing as "meme books"

>>12157320
how do you like them apples jack?

>>12157320
>no such thing as "meme books"
Except there absolutely are. How many people who bought IJ actually read it? Like 1% at best?

>>12157313
I'm surprised he's not more popular here. He has so many stories that seem right in /lit/'s wheelhouse. Though this board doesn't seem interested in short fiction much at all.

>>12157326
>this book was printed and sold

>>12157329
But the people who do read the book and understand the book usually enjoy it.

Philip Roth, and it's not close

>>12157334

No one here reads much contemporary anything, I don't think. Saunders hasn't had much time to stew.

Watchmen has had more influence on pop culture then your postmodern wank novels

>>12157372
Alan Moore is a fucking god. My god at least.

>>12157393
You have to be 18 to post on this website

>>12156255
DFW is definitely better than Franzen

I don’t want to say DFW but he’s definitely good, I haven’t read IJ but “Good Old Neon” is a modern classic.

I will never not laugh at the greatly deserved ridicule of this hack fraud. DFW will be remembered by posterity as the most incompetent snake oil salesman western literature has ever produced.

The only sincere act of his life was when he kicked away the chair. His life was nothing but a series of ironies and lies predicated on the the joke that is new sincerity. The big punchline was the creaking of the rafter and the piss trickling down his leg to the floor.

his epiphany that the only viable thing for him to do was to kill himself was the best thing to happen to literature in 30 years since he began writing because behind all the self aware gimmicks and self help books and the drugs and the audience pussy there was no discernible talent

>>12157182
Flaubert was a chad

>>12157172
Don't forget: A nice break would be "The Book of Dolores." WTV is also a photojournalist and a crossdresser, and this is a big art book of photos and paintings, with essays on his Dolores identity and the archaic photo development techniques that he's experimented with.

Zadie Smith

>>12157358
This. Just don't let the (((alt-right))) find "Portnoy's Complaint."

ITS BOLANO U NERD

>>12157576
What's his philosophy behind dressing like a woman?

>>12156320
>JD Salinger tier
Salinger is a god and wrote the two best books since the end of WWII. Kindly abstain from implying anything negative about /ourguy/.

>>12157154
who I came to say. I'm reading tenth of december at the moment and it's ridiculously good
I loved Lincoln in the Bardo too

>>12157372
>influence = merit
if this were true then I Love Lucy would be the greatest thing ever written

>>12156507
OBSESSED

I like Walter Kirn.

>>12157879
Not knocking Lincoln in the Bardo by any means, I just don't think it's a good introduction to the rest of his work.

Tenth of December was the last thing I read and I loved it. "Escape from Spiderhead" and "My Chivalric Fiasco" seem right up /lit/'s alley, for what it's worth.

>>12157588
We're well aware of that kike and his smut-lit.

>>12156255
does franzen have fangirls?
>https://youtu.be/S5ccWLJDV4o

Yiyun Li is doing some good work.