/lit/ - Literature

>>13900449
Not reading Don Quixote as a writer should be a crime against humanity. Fuck these bozos.

What good books has she read? It'd be absurd to expect a writer or academic or anyone at all really to read every single piece of writing ever considered classic. Surely she's read other classics, and likely some of which having been influenced by those you listed?

Imagine judging a writer based on what she read instead of what she wrote

>>13900449
>>13900449

I'm currently reading The Man Without Qualities. Finding Rachel's chapters pretty boring but otherwise loving the book

>>13900449
>Do you even need to read to be a good writer
You (usually) have to read some books to become a good writer, but you don't need to read all of the classics. Being well read and stuffing your writing with allusions doesn't make you a good author. If anything, writers probably benefit most from reading contemporary stuff, not the classics; it gives them a fresher edge. Look at early Whitman: loads of allusions to contemporary books and ideas, not so much to classics.

>>13900484
Those two are kinda related and it shows here.

>>13900510
>If anything, writers probably benefit most from reading contemporary stuff, not the classics; it gives them a fresher edge.
Borges and Joyce prove otherwise. That's why literature is dead these days. Because of shit opinions like yours.

>guardian
>anglos
>reads easy non-fiction
>name-drops titles to virtue-signal
I'll skip other obvious arrows; a terrible writer with nothing interesting to say.

>>13900533
Of course allusions to classics can be brilliant, but part of the pomo trend has been to disassociate with Eliot-esque literary elitism. Pynchon mixed allusions to classic literature and operas with references to Hollywood movies and comic books. The idea that one requires a basis in classics to forward a great literary project based on a tradition of important texts is a defunct modernist idea.

>>13900533
Of course allusions to classics can be brilliant, but part of the pomo trend has been to disassociate with Eliot-esque literary elitism. Pynchon mixed allusions to classic literature and operas with references to Hollywood movies and comic books. The modernist idea that writers need to forward a great literary project based on a tradition of important texts is defunct.

>>13900596
>The idea that one requires a basis in classics to forward a great literary project based on a tradition of important texts is a defunct modernist idea.
You know what else is defunct? Contemporary literature. Authors like Zadie Smith are nonentities. Reading the classics helps more than just for "allusions".

>>13900484
If you don't know art, the art that you create would be shit.

>>13900484
>he doesn’t know what thinking is

She, like the rest of the the Marxist diversity lobby, are revisionist philistines. Of course she hasn’t read books that are absolutely essential to understanding the past 500 years of literary tradition. It’s intentional.

>>13900679
It’s almost like she’s more of a tool than an artist even if she herself does not see that truth. She’s larping at art, and being an author.

>>13900449
So the losers in this thread think you need to read the classics in order to be a good writer? Seriously? What about Plato? There was no literary classic for him, or Aristotle. What about those Indo-Aryan guys you guys are always rambling about inbetween COOMER and CATH-O-LARPING threads? Who was their literary canon? Go to bed, maybe when you wake up you'll realize that you're more than the thoughts and ink of dead people. That your lives belong to you and that your words don't need some antique sugardaddy to give them value YOU can be your word's sugardaddy. JUST FUCKING BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN ABILITIES!

>>13900449
DFW claimed he never read Pynchon, there's also a video where DFW's editor or someone claims she tried to get him to read Dostoevsky but he never would. His top 10 favorite books list was also filled with Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham.

>>13900703
Unfortunately she's no Plato and it shows.

>>13900725
>there's also a video where DFW's editor or someone claims she tried to get him to read Dostoevsky but he never would

He literally wrote the introduction to the world's most acclaimed Dostoyevsky biography. Also he claimed only to have not read The Crying of Lot 49.

Get out of here, you fucking garbage man.

>>13900725
>His top 10 favorite books list was also filled with Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham.
Those were the readings for his college class- His real list included Socrates, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, Joyce, Keats, Carver, Melville, McCarthy, et al.

>The Man Without Qualities

Should I read this? What's it about? What makes it a quality work?

>>13900652
You don't appreciate naïve art?

Who is this and why should I care

>>13900449
Anon you can't read all the books.

Even if you were a machine that could it would still make no sense, what it makes sense is reading some books and creating your own worldview, the issue with standardization of the reading curriculum is that turns very quickly into dogmas and the reading itself becomes a matter of did you read this or that.

Instead of the joy of reading.

How the fuck can you take reading and writing seriously and not read DQ. Fuck even as a le pomo fag

>>13901194
Yeah, the same way i appreciated the draw of my nieces.

>NOTHING BUT WOMEN WINNING LITERATURE """AWARDS"""
>HMMM IS CURRENT LITERATURE BAD?
WHAT DO YOU THINK, RETARD???

>>13900607
You're defunct.

>>13900449
>who is this person
>goodreads quotes
>oh, her debut novel, "white teeth"
>“It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

literally a livejournal post, what a fucking moron

>OMG X HASNT READ X!!!!?!?!??!!
>I JUDGE EVERYTHING BY WHAT I PERSONALLY HAVE READ
>THEREFORE ANYONE WHO HASNT DONE THE SAME AS ME IS LESSER THAN ME

This board is infested with children

>>13901392
>greentexting strawmen while accusing random people on the internet of being immature
this is your first day here, isn't it

>>13901397
Go away 17 year old

>>13900725
DFW has an essay on a dostoevsky biography though and it shows an intimate knowledge and understanding of his works, so unless someone else wrote those details for him? it seems like you are mistaken.

The Pynchon thing seems to be him just avoiding admitting to his most obvious and major influence. He didn’t want people to think he was copying Pynchon.

>>13901392
>>13901271
I agree that you can’t read everything as a writer, but Smith has been publishing literary fiction to critical acclaim for like 20 years, and she hasn’t read Don Quixote or the Brothers Karamazov? Those are two of the most indisputably great novels in world history, they are not niche titles, but the first great novels to come to mind basically. To be a writer of novels for two decades and to not have read Don Quixote or Dostoevsky is ridiculous.

>>13900449
>Hasn’t read The Man Without Qualities
no one has desu

>>13901842
>she hasn’t read Don Quixote or the Brothers Karamazov
>two of the most indisputably great novels in world history

Both novels are peak pseud-core. Don Quixote is important for historical context, but the text itself is hardly a "great novel". The Brothers Karamazov is literally the pseud bible. No one finished high school considers this among the greatest novels of all time.

>>13901972
>No one finished high school considers this among the greatest novels of all time
Hormone-ridden social zealots aren't usually considered a good authority on what is and isn't a great novel, anon. Make a stronger argument.

>>13900449
I think everyone here understands that Zadie Smith is a diversity prop for the jewish publishing industry. Why anyone would expect a negress to be well-read in the white literary tradition is the question.

>>13902047

>>13901972
>not enjoying Don Quixote

>>13902218
Good one, but silly opinions of non-Hispanophones are essentially irrelevant.

>>13902222
>Not among the greatest novels of all time
>"How do you not enjoy it anon"
I enjoy both Don Quixote and Karamazov for what they are, like I enjoy Infinite Jest, that doesn't make them "the greatest novels in world history". The state of this board when saying "The Brothers Karamazov" is the first great novel to come to mind.

>>13902218
>The text he used was the translation of Don Quixote by Samuel Putnam, published by the Viking Press in 1949
OHNONONONONONONONO HAHAHAHAAHAHA OPINION DISCARDED

>>13902254
What are the greatest novels if Cervantes and Dostoevsky don’t make the cut anon?

>>13902276
why?

>>13902320
He read it in a translation done in contemporary English (already rendering his opinion invalid) but also he hated the story itself because he was SJW and thought it was "cruel". The pervert who wrote about paedophiles fulfilling their fetishes and about undesired incest thinks DQ was cruel... Give me a fucking break.

>>13901170
Not the man, that's for sure

>>13900571

"oh my god, have you read tahneseesaw coates?I'm told it's something you need to read"

The house of cards falls apart gracelessly if art establishments elevate those who are simply good over those who are politically good. As soon as they do the former and it's 95% white men, their dogma about the past being an irredeemable epoch where female/PoC "voices" were silenced becomes inoperative, and they're all either out of a job or have to face the fact they wasted their lives over an ideological fad. It's a feedback loop for the conscience of white progressive types, and neither themselves nor the world moves an inch in understanding.

>>13902293
I'm not opposed to Don Quixote for historical, just not for the text itself, and acting as if reading it gives a writer some transcendental value as the OP did.

Karamazov not at all.

Not sure how many you want but I will name a dozen or so;

The Metamorphosis, The Trial, Ulysses, War & Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Dead Souls, Lolita, Les Misérables, The Count of Monte Cristo, In Search of Lost Time, The Sound and the Fury, Too the Lighthouse, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, Heart of Darkness and I'm sure more I have forgotten.

What would exactly be the list it is hard to say. Novels are a very young, so putting more than handful in the greatest of all time would be insulting to the rest. Taking more than a handful of books from each century would defeat the point of saying "the greatest novels", but saying "The Brothers Karamazov" is the what comes to mind when you think of "the greatest novels in world's history" is peak 16-year old's first book.

>>13902432
>The Metamorphosis
>novel
okay, lad.

>>13902432
>shits on brothers k
>says old man and the sea should be on a list with the likes of temps perdu
I read old man and the sea in like an hour or two. I think the entire book has about as much substance one of Proust's better pages, to say nothing of Dostoevsky

>>13902432
Don Quixote is waaaay superior to Lolita. Not even close.

>>13900679
Correct, and they’re getting away with it because we’re in the age of Pattersons and Dan Browns so the masses are easily impressed.
It’s all so tiresome.

>>13900458

A cruel and crude old book.

>>13902452
I included Novellas. Disregard them if want.

>>13902456
>didn't get it

>>13902463
>OLD IS GOOD
t. pseud

>>13902481
nice strawman, faggot.

>>13900703

This.

>>13900703
>>13902492
Never gonna make it.

>>13902481
Hemingway would laugh in your face if you told him you thought he outshined Cervantes. Even an egotistical man like him would know his limitations.

>>13902700
Not an argument.

>>13902492
Definitely not that.

Spics coming out of the woodwork and overrating Don Quixote because no diego produced anything of value at least 200 years after it is always hillarious.

>>13902975
>what is the Siglo de Oro

>>13902991
good question

>>13902432
At this point it’s very fucking obvious you haven’t read the Quixote, otherwise you wouldn’t be making so many stupid comparisons. Maybe 3-4 of those books are comparable but the others are not even close. Just drop the LARP and read it, it’s amazing.

>>13903001
Yep, I guess we need to leave it to literate people.

>>13902975
>because no diego produced anything of value at least 200 years after it is always hillarious.

*ahem*

>>13900449

Anon, I'm afraid after reading this I STILL want to lick Zadie's feet. You'll have to try harder next time

>>13903138
If this Joel Supremo guy is worth shit, why isnt he translated into English, ha.

>>13903999
post

>>13903999
She's cute. I would love to be her obedient footboy.

Hilarious how ignorant people are of Ms Smith itt, proving yet again the pseudery of lit ca. 2019 - back to pol with ye!

Who is this delightful jiggaboo and does she ever write about her feet?

>>13900449
>It’s never a question of not liking them – it’s always a question of time and other commitments. I hate not finishing books. I always blame myself.
>The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
It’s hard to single one out of the Tower of Shame but probably Proust.

pretty cute desu so I'll say its forgivable

>>13901392
Go back.

>>13901392
reddit faggot tourist

>>13900449
I mean you don't necessarily have to read the classics in order to be a good writer, but if whatever talent you have isn't at least modulated by culture, or you're simply culturally illiterate, it is less likely that you'll find a palatable avenue for your talent and more likely that you'll make avoidable mistakes in your own published writings and progress will be slower. Why would you deprive yourself of an education? I'm sure there are the odd cases in which some temperaments would benefit from this, but if you plan on writing, it's probably best to do some reading. And like it as well.

Anyway. Is this person any good? Does she write as she poses and presents herself? What's a good intro to her work?

>>13900458
trash book

>>13902477
fuck off nabokov

>>13905125

She has the right attitude. She's not like reddit or tumblr complaining about le ebil white men writing hard books. And she's not Jonathan Franzen.

>Even as an adult, I consider myself a slattern of a reader. I have started (in many cases, more than once) "Moby-Dick," "The Man Without Qualities," "Mason & Dixon," "Don Quixote," "Remembrance of Things Past," "Doctor Faustus," "Naked Lunch," "The Golden Bowl," and "The Golden Notebook" without coming anywhere near finishing them.

>>13907077

She has the right attitude. She's not like reddit or tumblr complaining about le ebil white men writing hard books. And she's not Jonathan Franzen.

> I grew up in a friendly, egalitarian suburb reading books for pleasure and ignoring any writer who didn't take my entertainment seriously enough. Even as an adult, I consider myself a slattern of a reader. I have started (in many cases, more than once) "Moby-Dick," "The Man Without Qualities," "Mason & Dixon," "Don Quixote," "Remembrance of Things Past," "Doctor Faustus," "Naked Lunch," "The Golden Bowl," and "The Golden Notebook" without coming anywhere near finishing them.

>>13907080

meant for >>13905125

>>13900484
well, people on /lit/ don't read, so all they can judge her by is the names of what she reads.

>>13900703
no one on this board writes

>>13900449
>he thinks one must read the classics in order to be a good writer
The sign of an objective man. You'll never amount to anything like this.

>>13903002
not him but blatant shilling like this should be ban worthy

>>13900484
Imagine not doing this

>>13907392
if you want to be a great writer, you ought to read the classics, if you want to be a simple writer, sure why not, laziness is infinite

>>13902347
>he was sjw
opinion disregarded

>>13907406
The problem with "reading the classics" is that the definition of "classics" keeps changing. Given enough time, some classics look like absolute trash.

>>13907415
t. SJW

>>13907080
she sounds really reasonable, actually. I'm still not interested in her work but frankly she deserves any success she has more than half the people in this thread do.

>>13907426
Can't get any more trashy than contemporary fiction.

>>13900449
Clownworld.

>>13901386
She wrote that when she was 24. Give her a break.
>>13902059
>>13902407

This is such a cliché - there are so many mediocre black writers given credibility for the sake of politics, but Zadie Smith is absolutely not one of them.
>>13905370
Swing Time is probably my favourite of her novels.

>>13900449
she´s a philistine, oh i wonder why she wanted to become a writer in the first place, she belongs to the trash

>>13900703
>What about Plato? There was no literary classic for him, or Aristotle.

Are you retarded? Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Alcman, Archilochus, Sappho, Aeschylus etc.

>>13907487
only philistines want to become writers

>>13907590
Who did Homer read that was a literary classic?

>>13907614
He didn't read he was blind. He listened to oral poetry. Pseuds need to gtfo.

>>13900449
>>QT
>>Published
>>Acclaimed

the fuck have you done with your life?

who keeps bumping this shit thread? fuck off all of you

>>13907642
>>>QT
she´s ugly

>>13907653
Fuck off Zadie

>>13907631
>He didn't read
AHA! So he didn't read some great work in order to make a great work!? Just like I FUCKING SAID!. Don't even bother with replying with "B-b-but I-I said he listeneded (<--This is a typo you would make in your rage) to great oral poetry!" because my response will be "well who did they listen to in order to become great?" and eventually you'll be forced to realize my point. My point being that someone told a great story based on the world around them and their sharp view of it not because someone else told them a great story already, NOW GO OUTSIDE!

>>13907653
never posted in this thread before but I read your post telling me to fuck off and I gotta say buddy you can fuck right off

>>13907642
>>Published
>>Acclaimed

Neither of those require you to be a good writer in the 21st century.

>>13908279
cringe and gay

>>13908336
listen here pal, I didn't have a stake in keeping this thread alive before, but now you've made it personal. You think I have a job? I will stay up night and day, I will resort to mobileposting to rapidly change ips. I will make sure you see sadie on the front page of this board every single time you click your /lit/ bookmark.>>13908336
listen here pal, I didn't have a stake in keeping this thread alive before, but now you've made it personal. You think I have a job? I will stay up night and day, I will resort to mobileposting to rapidly change ips. I will make sure you see sadie on the front page of this board every single time you click your /lit/ bookmark.

>>13900757
>His top 10 favorite books
>real list included Socrates

>>13907661
she's gorgeous

>>13910384
Nah

>>13900449
>Luckily this woman hasn't read 3 different classics, otherwise I might have read her to form my opinion, and that sounds like a lot of words :(
White Teeth was bretty gud, y'all mad as fuck lol

>>13910388
She's a 5.8/10

>>13911188
>y'all

>>13910384
Yep, cucks disagree.

Isn’t she publishing her first short story collection next week or something ? I’m too baguette to read her novels without cringing – I guess it’s a matter of tone… – but I might look into it.

>>13911339
it will probably suck like everything she's done

>>13902349
lol

>>13911272
Seething

>>13911626
cope

>>13904829
oracle lookin bitch

>>13911339
baguette?

>>13912222
it means french you fucking stupid bastard

>>13912222

>>13900484
The former constructs the latter, and what she wrote isnt very good either

>>13907415
Nabokov himself also disregarded the opinions of people greater than him because they were 'reactionary'

>>13907395
How can you shill a 400 year old novel?

>>13907614
It’s likely Homer didn’t exist, or if he did, he was simply a great poet in a long line of great poets who modified and pretties up the story of the Trojan War which they had heard from their predecessors.

>>13900449
It's always cute when women attempt to write literature

>>13900449
Literally who?

>>13912282
Dude c'mon... You don't even have to read her, but c'mon...

>>13912282
exactly my thoughts. I never heard of this woman.

>>13912239
but what would that have to do with a zadie smith novel without cringing?

>>13900449
>It’s never a question of not liking them – it’s always a question of time and other commitments. I hate not finishing books. I always blame myself.

relax, shes just lazy. At least she admits it and isnt talking sjw shit about them. I could not finish Gravity's Rainbow or Brothers Karamazov in high school.

I'm sorry to break it to you. But she probably read classics such as the Bronte sisters or George Eliot just because she hasn't read novels that are inclined to your tastes doesn't mean she isn't well read. I'm surprised she even knows what the man without qualities is.

>>13912353
Have you read her ? Have you ever read french contemporary fiction ? Matter of tone.

>>13911248
Cope faggot

Shes a q.t 3.14

>>13913231
I've read her but not any French contemporary stuff. If I had to characterise the tone of her narrators it'd just be the typical detached, coolly ironic, dry and cynical style you'd expect from English prose (and especially from a female writer). She writes well on the sentence-level and has that self-conscious restraint you can always see in English writers. How is French writing different?

>>13913731
she is, yes

>>13913731
kek terrible standards. whores in my country are better. and of the cheaper side.

somebody snatch that pot holder from her head.

>>13900703
based and writerpilled

The Chad Zadie Smith

>Hadn't read /lit/ favourite classics
>Acclaimed author

The incel average /lit/ user

>Autistically obsesses over classics for the purpose of showing off
>Writes complete diarrhea and has accomplished nothing

OH NO NO NO

>>13915267
True

>>13900449
First of all, literally who?
Second, it's shameful to have started but not managed to finish The Brothers Karamazov, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. It's not that fucking hard. But not finishing all the classics does not say anything about the quality of her writing, she's not writing literary criticism after all.

>>13900679
>It’s intentional
Why would she have started reading them then? Why would she claim to be ashamed not to have finished them? According to herself she did not even dislike them. Did you even read the article?

>>13915267
The Chad Zadie Smith
>Hadn't read /lit/ favourite classics

The virgin /lit/ poster
>Hadn't read /lit/ favourite classics either

>>13915322
Even more true

>>13900484

Imagine judging a painter by the paint he employs.

Imagine judging a sculptor by the techniques he's learned.

Imagine judging a musician by the instrument he learned

Imagine judging anyone by anything that has informed them lmao

>>13915267

>contemporary acclaim

Call me in 50 years and see if anyone knows who she is.

>>13916294

Who honestly gives a shit? I'll be near dead at that point and Zadie Smith will be dead at that point too

She'll still have lived her life as a successful and acclaimed writer regardless of how quickly the universe forgets her

>>13916592

>a life's worth is determined for all time by transient critical acclaim

Call me in 36,750 days and tell me how much that matters.

>>13900703
plato literally sucks off the great poets of his time every 6 seconds what the fuck are you talking about

>>13900449
I read On Beauty a few months back, what did I think of it?

>>13915093
definitely

>>13917060

Life only matters if you're living

>>13913231
>>13914026
still waiting for this idiot to explain

>>13901386
This could make a pretty good 4chan post.

>>13902432
>Lolita, Count of Monte Cristo and Old Man on the Sea in that list
>having the gall to accuse others of being 16 years-old pseud

You shall henceforth be known as John Gall.

Let this fucking thread die and stop bumping your own posts.

>>13900703
>Plato never read the classics
This has got to be one of the dumbest posts ever. You can never return here or I will have to commit suicide to cleanse lit.

>>13907692
What is this?

>>13908265

>>13923147
The truth?

>>13907653
I told you

everytime i scroll past this picture seeing her dumb hat makes me a red pepe.

>>13900607
Eliot himself has mixed “high-brow” references to the classics with “low-brow references” to popular culture. Joyce did the same.

>>13907653
They want some of that socially lucrative hiroshimoot harassment, poems about Zadie's juicy tush or comely tootsies, whatever their PR people can circulate for buzz

>>13900449
Wouldn't matter at all if she were a good writer, though of course she isn't.

>>13903999
>>13904829
>>13905102
Working on a literary criticism of Zadie Smith's feet

>>13900449
The Man Without Qualities is a minor work.

>>13907653
What did I say

>>13926171
I've never encountered one single person who finished it and came to that conclusion. It's always people who barely moved past the introduction.

Anyone have good pictures of Zadie's feet?

>>13900484
this
imagine getting knocked out by a boxer while criticizing their training regimen

>>13926171
You tapped out page 50 ?

>>13900449
>The knowledge of the craft is somehow confined to a handful of books
You know how I know you fuckers never wrote anything that wasn't pompous, soulless trash?

This thread should have died days ago. Let it.