/lit/ - Literature

>>12376553
Shut the fuck up, nerd.

>>12376553
>Prove that beautiful prose (whatever that is) is by definition better than non beautiful prose in an objective way.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

>>12376632
>>>/reddit/

>>12376553

>>12376634

>>12376553
Well, why do you ask? Just read what you like, that's it. It's sad that uppity /lit/ fags are much more interested in sounding intellectual than actually enjoying the fucking medium they proclaim to love. If you do not get Shakespeare, Joyce, Nabokov, just don't read them, these books are not for you. Maybe you will change your mind in the process of getting acquainted with a wide range of texts in your lifetime, maybe not. who cares? you are not missing out on anything by not reading those books really.

a non-meme answer :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVWiwd0P0c0

>>12376817
>>>/reddit/

>>12376553
what makes a work superior to another work? what is the metric?

>>12376553
NYPA

We aren't doing your homework for you , fuck off.

>>12376553
Calvino said something like, “A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.” I agree with that definition.

As for the classics being boring, to me it’s just self-evident that the classics are entertaining, beautiful, and more rewarding with each subsequent reading. Reading Homer in a couple translations side by side was just fun for me, it wasn’t tedious. I relish rereading Moby Dick because a lot of stuff goes over my head but I catch something new each time. On the surface, it’s a fun revenge tale, a buddy comedy, and a tragedy, and as I continued to reread it, I began to understand the more esoteric sections about the challenges of free will vs determinism, the problem of evil, the hubris of man, etc. reading classics isn’t a chore for me, I don’t do it to tick off a box. I also recognize that there are some books that I’m not quite ready for, but I don’t interpret that as meaning that the book is shit just because I don’t get it. I’m not that smart, it took me until my 4th time rereading before I felt I really understood Dubliners. The first time I understood and appreciated one story, the second, a handful more, and so on. I try to be humble about making judgements.

>>12376679
>Steven Pinker
>>>/reddit/

>>12377234
Calvino also said you could see the books from today taking from the classics,. You could say the new authors are writing the classics again.
My edition of "If a traveler in a witer's night" had an interview in which he developped this opinion.
>>12377701
Pinker is great.

>>12376553
The classics aren't taught because they are superior in themselves, but because they are representative of the development of culture. An author from today has an arsenal of narrative techniques that Homer didn't, and therefore, he problably can catch the attention of readers better than Homer could, but Homer had to break new ground to write his book, which means you might end up "writing his book again" and you should be aware of that, while also representing the thought of that era.
You shouldn't see all of that as an individual understanding chalenge but as a collective effort to keep pushing forward

>>12378094
dumb post

>>12378094
Maybe where you live, but in the anglo sphere you don't teach books for the supposed development of culture. (implying any poet is better than homer<) You teach kids "classics" to develop their reading comprehension and introduce them to art (you don't see HS essays about how Virgil differed from Homer and Dante from Virgil, but you see them asking kids to analyze moral situations and literary devices). I think this is because back then people used to actually read books as entertainment, so you would be uniting two factors, entertainment and reading comprehension. Nowadays that obviously isn't the case, and in some years (actually right now in some schools, even colleges) you'll see film replacing literature. It's a medium everyone watches and understands and you can apply the same "reading" comprehension to the "text".

There's a depth and richness to these works that you will not find in more popular media. You know it when you know it, there's nothing else to say, the fact you have to ask says it all.

>>12378132
>just believe in it bro

>>12376553
Not your personal army. Do your own homework you COMPLETE brainlet.

>>12377234
You can analyze anything for any amount of time and it will never exhaust its "meanings" because it's you imprinting the meaning, though, of course there are texts that help you, but anyway, the existence of things such as Buffy Studies already demonstrates how you can create a humanities field out of anything.

>>12378143
Like I said, you know it when you know it. It's like asking someone to prove the Good is better than Evil. If you have to ask, the discussion is already over.

>>12378179
Literally read the first chapter of the Republic.

>>12376553
>>Prove (or at least give us a compelling argument) that The Illiad or The Odyssey is a inherently superior form of art, compared to say, ASOIAF or Harry Potter, or that Ulysses or Hamlet is (or should be) aesthetically more pleasing than Dan Brown's Davinci Code or Ready Player One.
Homer is a bit overrated, and Ulysses is a meme (a great meme, but still a meme). Can I choose some other text as an example of great literature to defend?

>Prove that beautiful prose (whatever that is) is by definition better than non beautiful prose in an objective way.
Why should I? I don't need "beautiful prose" in a text. I might be reading a work of poetry, so there is no prose in the first place. Also, a text is a whole, and it needs the sort of prose that it needs, not just beautiful one. Beautiful prose describing a scene that is actually supposed to be unpleasant is a failure of the writer.

>What separates these feelings? are the feelings of aesthetic beauty and joy different? What are they in themselves? Is it a matter of complex vs simple feelings? If it is so, why should complex feelings be prefered to "simple" feelings? What the complexity of the complex constitutes in itself?
I can't enter other peoples' minds, and emotions on a physical level are still not very well understood. I'll pass.

>The public for long has prefered the "least common denominator", the low brow, the cheap, the vulgar etc etc in terms of novels, movies, music and art in general.
It always has. Homer's poems had to appeal to as many people as possible, or his listeners would literally just walk away and forget him.

>Do you think the average person can comprehend Ulysses, if he really tries it?
Comprehend - not. (Nobody can, like any other text.) Enjoy and interact with it - yes.

>Now, the canon has been largely assembled by academics and writers
Most canonical texts were actually very popular at some point in history. And the canon wasn't literally assembled by some committee, it was formed by numerous factors and tendencies throughout the ages.

>Assuming they aren't lying for monetary reasons, and that they can, in fact enjoy Ulysses and other classics, then how can an absolute minority, constituting less than 1% of the public opinion, can assemble a "literary canon" while disregarding the opinion of the 99%?
This 1% these days is quite skeptical of the very idea of a canon, so...

>If you can't defend the classics or your literary states on the spot then you're no better than the average plebbitor. The average plebbitor is actually passionable about the "low brow" sci-fi and fantasy he reads. He buys and reads mountains of YA, scifi, and fantasy, and enjoys every minute of it. It's day 9 of 2018 and you haven't started your first "classic" of the year.
It's no big insult to me to call me a redditor, because I do visit reddit. Also, I'm in the middle of reading Aeneid, thank you very much. :)

>>12376679
Imagine the smelle

>>12378094
I've been obsessively reading different translations of Homer, and I've lost interest in all other literature. Is something wrong with me.

>>12379140
No something is very right.

>>12376632
>Le elements of style
Yikes

>>12376553
>Prove that beautiful prose (whatever that is) is by definition better than non beautiful prose in an objective way.
That's a tautology you illiterate fucker.

>>12379140
based and redpilled, I do the same thing.

My dad used to read Chapman to me before bed, I read Fagles in school, and now Fitzgerald and Lattimore to myself. I enjoy how reading the different translations has illuminated so many different sides of Homer for me.

>>12376553
did you write this yourself, or get it from somewhere? if you did it yourself, kudos. I think you have some good points like the joy of an average YA reader being the same as one who really digs the illiad or whatever it is.

It's something I've thought on for quite some time. Why have the classics remained with us for so long? After I read a few (Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, The Right Stuff) I realized that this is some really good shit!

Aint gonna be no Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele read in 100 years. Yet, aesthetic value is subjective you say. That may be, but then why is it that we, thousands of years later, find beauty in a Michealangelo or Shakespeare? Something objectively Good and Beautiful must infuse these works.

I shan't take a position, other than a very small percentage of all works in any age are likely to contain this "IT" factor. which is why the classics remain the classics, and in every next age, there are some new classics (see your LOTR and, I dunno, something like Into Thin Air (maybe).

>>12376553
....too many words

>>12376817
>One cannot be happy about the 35 million copies of Harry Potter
>I think that's not reading
>There's nothing there to be read
absolutely based Bloom. the man is a Godsend

>>12379322
based frogposter