/lit/ - Literature

>>14828253
No one becomes an artist without effort and determination

>>14828269
Of course. I didn't doubt that.

>>14828253
Don't know why anyone would be a fraud. Not having talent doesn't mean one is a fraud or not an artist.
Anyway, nobody can really satisfyingly answer your question because a person's fate can be known only once it has already happened and been set in stone. Also, an artist being considered a genius very much depends on his surroundings, adequate reception, connections, caprices of various factors that have nothing to do with some idea of transcendental aesthetic value. Melville died in the shadow of many more popular and more positively regarded writers of his time. Until people like half a century after he had croaked realised that Moby-Dick is, in fact, the shit.
You're really just asking because you're afraid that you're the fraud, isn't that right?

>>14828253
that's a big headed fag

There is one thing to be said of a Noble Birth.
There is entirely another thing to be said of if your mom dyed her hair when you were twelve.
fgsdgs

>>14828253
Is that my guy? I like the floral couch

>>14828253
>>14828269
This lad has the right idea. It's undeniably that effort, practice, and determination are all nessecary for any sort of artist to access their full capabilities. Think about the sport of weightlifting. Nobody is able to do that before training. Effort and determination are required to turn the potential into the actual. I believe art is highly similar. While it might seem like some are innately better than others, I would think this a result of them having experience practicing other skills which would also aid in producing art. Something you may want to consider is "outsider art"; art made by people without formal education. As well, the existence Geschwind Syndrome (and the fact that Dostoyevsky had it) would indicate the existence of a very small number of "natural artists" (however "naturally art-oriented people" is unquestionably a more fitting descriptor).

>>14828253
>Are artists born?
Of course not. Nobody comes out the womb writing, composing, directing, whatever.

>>14829499
dont 'syndrome' art - its a cheap means to undervalue art and artists even more

>>14828253
I think most anons on /lit/ underestimate how much great writers like Melville, Joyce, and Faulkner read.

If you look into their biographies, yes they were really sharp, but they also read fucking everything, and then they read it again. Faulkner didn't just read Hamlet, Faulkner read every Shakespeare play many, many times over the course of his whole life. On an almost yearly basis.

https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/James-Joyce-Literary-Tastes.pdf

Joyce read so fucking much.

If you actually read as much as they read, you'd probably be able to write some good shit and you'd probably be really fucking smart. Maybe you wouldn't match them, but anons overestimate ability/talent/god-bestowed genius, and underestimate how much time, determination, and extended attention great writers gave to their predecessors.

>>14828253
Natural talent is nothing without hard work. However, hard work alone doesn't guarantee genius. As they said in ancient times, the gods had to have selected you as a vessel to carry their divine message to the rest of the plebeians.

I believe some people are gifted in arts.

>>14828253
Anyone can become an "artist" in the sense that even literal retards can smear paint on a canvas or whatever, and most people can probably achieve a decent level of skill with enough practice.

However, whether or not you will produce anything that actually has any real value comes down purely to talent.

>>14829611
the big issue is you can't do shit like that anymore without having someone to support you entirely (good luck) or happily being homeless/unemployed.

We're the least free to pursue art and passion than any that have come before us.

Natural born talent is a big fucking myth.
People choose to believe that successful people are born with a natural gift. That makes it much more easier to come to terms with their own shortcomings.

Think of people who are commonly said to be “natural prodigies” – people who display extraordinary skills with little or no training. Mozart, Picasso, Bobby Fischer, or Tiger Woods.
If you were to investigate further the stories of such “prodigies”, I can guarantee, you will not find a convincing case for anyone developing extraordinary abilities without intense, extended practice.

Consider Mozart, who was so accomplished at such a young age that there seems to be no way to explain it other than assuming he was born with a divine spark.
Upon closer inspection, however, Mozart’s spectacular abilities aren’t that inexplicable. For one thing, it’s not uncommon nowadays to have four-year-olds playing musical instruments with remarkable facility and better than most adults. Many of these “natural prodigies” start practice as early as age two. Mozart himself probably began his training before the age of four.
What about his compositions? Well, turns out his first serious compositions were written when he was fifteen or sixteen – after more than ten years of practice under his father. A father who was a famous music teacher at the time and pushed Wolfgang from a tender age.
So there goes Mozart’s legend of being a natural.

The same can be said for other “prodigies.” While normal kids play in the sandbox, they are practicing. They tend to start incredibly early and have parents who push them into inhumane practice schedules. It’s not a story of talent, but of hard work.

>>14829660
On the contrary, you don't need to make a lot of money to live well. Even the middle class today live better than the aristocrats did in Europe long ago, who used to shit in buckets. Not to mention, we have an enormous amount of work by scholars that we can read within a couple of hours that took them years to put together. We have ample resources to create, that would've taken our forefathers voyages by foot to reach, when we can do it with a click.

>>14829682
Then explain why everyone who trains as hard as Mozart will never have his level of mastery nor fame. If your logic was the case, we would have an immense catalog of musical geniuses, yet that list is very short, despite the hundreds of years of tradition. If some do achieve something with their insane hours put into training, it's the few who were actually born with something in their soul other than lessons from childhood.

>>14829692
the difference is the average man today actually has less "free time" (not including necessities such as eating/commutting) to do as he pleases, and it is continuously on the decline.
the modern middle class is only superior in materiel wealth and health. nothing more. we shouldn't be working 40 hour work weeks, we should be working 20 hour work weeks, max 30.

>>14829611
I’m 23 and just started reading again at 20, Im slowly progressing and reading has become my main hobby now. Once I read the entire bible, paradise lost, Divine comedy, homer, canterbury, aeneid, and complete Shakespeare I’ll be fulfilled.

>>14829732
>and it is continuously on the decline
I don't necessarily think so.
I don't know about US. But at least where I live there's been a big push for 6 hour work days and 4 day weeks. Some companies been doing these already with some real good results. Of course not every line of work can do such a change, at least without any major changes, but office jobs can very easily do that without losing much (if any) productivity.

In my own field of work (I'm a nurse at a nursing home) I don't see either happening any time soon though, considering how our country is already knee deep in trouble when it comes to workforce, young people don't like the line of work, it's more demanding than they think when they first get into it, so we're in trouble with that and cutting work hours isn't solving any of that.

>>14829822
USA would never do that even though they could.

>>14829822
yes, I am in particular talking about the US, where last I checked the average worker puts in about 160 more hours a year than a UK peasant did in the same time. Also it needs to be noted that the way they kept peasants content was by providing ample vacation and rest. This, in tandem with seasonal working structure, resulted in much more leisure.
Now you need to commute, work 8 hours, minimum usually, but there's a strong culture around staying 10, even 12 hours some days, commute home, cook and eat, and now you have all of about 2-4 hours to truly leisure.

>>14829701
>everyone who trains as hard as Mozart
Not many start learning instruments and composition as little kids taught by highly regarded teachers. Barely anyone does, as far as I know.
>will never have his level of mastery
Why do you assume that nobody has been comparable? How do you even check that?
>nor fame.
Fame depends on the audience, not the intrinsic value of the composer's music. I hope I don't have to give out specific examples, just taking a glance at the history of music until the present day shows how capricious fame is.
>If your logic was the case, we would have an immense catalog of musical geniuses, yet that list is very short,
His logic doesn't necessarily suggest that. You may also have a narrow idea of what genius is. Just because they're not memed to death such as Mozart, it doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of composers whose art is basically just as powerful as his.

>>14829833
>>14829842
Once some more European countries implement the shorter workdays and weeks I'm sure there will be more than enough evidence of not losing any productivity with the shift.
That gives a chance of it being considered in the US for sure. I'll give it 5-7 years and I'm sure the shorter hours and weeks will be standard all around the world, excluding Asia, Japanese and Chinese are kinda crazy when it comes to their work culture.

>>14829867
It's not about actual productivity in the USA though, it's about persistent puritan Christian values that uphold ideas of work ethic as the only way to prove worth to society.
If you don't work you don't deserve [to] eat, live, move, healthcare, etc.
People will vehemently fight against a 20 hour work week because it will be "unfair" to those who worked 40 hours all their lives and got the same, or less, and people will feel worthless, etc.
It's absurd.

>>14829866
For one, many children who have parents that expect great things of them will get them a tutor at an early age. Seriously, they are tryouts to preschools in NYC.
Second, I grant you that point. I'm not well studied in music.
Third, almost everyone hears his name or music at least once in their life (if they aren't third world). Can't say that about Liszt or Bach.
Fourth, he suggests that hard work trumps talent. My response was that talent trumps hard work. Look at someone like Woolf who meticulously edited her work and even had her husband proofreading. Then you have people like Nietzsche who produced Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spake Zarathustra and Twilight of the idols within a year, before going mad.

>It's not in vain that I have buried my 44th year of life today, because I have the right to -- that which was worthy for being saved is now immortalized by my work.

>>14828253
>can people become artists through effort and determination?
Of course. It's not even that difficult you just have to sacrifice and commit, even when the allure wears off, even when it stops being fun.

>>14828534
If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He’s been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it’s unbearable. Even though he was a petit-bourgeois writer, who only wrote for a petit-bourgeois readership. It’s uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petit bourgeois. With a greedy wife.

>>14829611
*blocks your path*

>>14830492
Calm down schizo

>>14828253
Everyone saying you can 'become' an artist is retarded and naive. You are born virtuoso at something, you have to discover what, but you can't turn into an artist if you aren't born one.

And this is how I can prove it. LOOK AT HITLER. He wanted to be an artist yet couldn't, he tried really hard and yet he couldn't.

Sometimes I think it would have been better for the whole world if he had just 'become' an artist. But he couldn't. Most people can't. Artist are born, not made.

>>14830494
Honestly I think Bloom faked a lot of what he read, or only read it once and then spent the rest of his life gleaning pithy remarks from other people about the texts in question, and refining his lectures more than rereading stuff. Remember he told people at his peak he could read 1000 pages an hour, so obviously he's someone prone to exaggeration. I have no doubt there were countless books he was ready to give an opinion on which he had never read.

Generally, I agree, but there is also the fact that Bloom wrote one novel and then never really tried again. He had to much ego to fail and take it in stride. Faulkner wrote plenty of mediocre novels beside his great ones.

>>14828253
>are hylics made?
Graft will hone craft -- nothing more. Tarantino is a fashioner of fundamentally disposable, stupid (quite often reprobate) films. The effort of effortlessness is not the mechanical output of sheer labour, some raw quantitative work that will accrue to an end goal of being better than you in essence ineluctably are.

>>14829735
>reading has become my main hobby now
Remove "hobby" from your lexicon -- this is how you pass the time, a pastime (improving your mind, and hopefully your writing thereby). Hobbies are intrinsically unserious -- reading adult romance novels, that would be reading:a hobby.

>>14829682
>>14829701
I attempted to look into creativity and genius a bit for a paper in school. I mostly sourced psychology assessments including fMRIs and written assessments (MMPI, 5-factor, and some creativity assessments) to learn about the neuroscience of creativity. For examples of genius, I mostly just looked at people who were lauded by the population at large and carried
voluntary influence (influencing people through their own volition/interest), i.e. Mozart, Marx, Nietzsche, etc. I looked at the daily schedules of lots of these artists, and when they weren't eccentric they were suicidal, or both. My favorite example is of Nietzsche, who would go down to the buffet at an inn he resided, and eat so much fruit from the buffet that he would get stomach aches. Also, Marx would walk around his desk generating ideas till sweat beaded from his brow. Obsession seemed to be a theme.

What I also found was that IQ and creativity are mildly correlated. There was an IQ threshold around 120 if I remember correctly, where the creativity stopped mildly correlating. Further, anti-social traits were also mildly associated with creative professions, however acting was the most correlated with psychopathy. Humor, tended to correlate with psychopathy also. Authors/researchers suggested that there was a necessary anti-social element to creating because doing so separates one from a crowd, one must irreverent to negative feedback if they believe in their idea.

In terms of the brain, there were several networks and modes observed by fMRIs that the brain would switch between when in creative states. Idea generation would be in what is called the default mode network, which is the network we use most of the day when idling. Further there was a theory about frontal disinhibition that would allow more disparate and discursive connections between ideas. Other networks included a rationality/executive network and another network (salience network) that handled the switching between.

That met my word count so I just stopped there.

My personal take: greatness and genius is validated through prescience and/or popularity. Being able to have ideas that are predictive of the human condition and those that resonate with the human condition are the basis of genius, we somehow feel that these people are almost more human than we are, for they are expressing things we feel but do not know how to express. For example, Nick Land was prescient of a manic and schizoid cyberpunk despair aesthetic, however he also felt it. He was authentic.

Also, I would guess that when creating, people workhorse a specific faculty. Some may workhorse their intellect, others may workhorse their empathy, but the genius is in the synthesis of the the two in pursuit of a pure authentic expression that is relevant. Breathing in life the same way rotoscoping imbued animation with soul.

>>14832658
Cont.

But of course, I think both of you guys are right. There is a where one is intuiting something that resonates with the world at large at some point in time. This intuiting is refined through practice, like sharpening an arrowhead that you use to seize emotions. Thus, there are people who aren't technically prodigious yet are highly expressive, and vice versa. Like different hunters, one who uses blunt instruments to kill abundant wild game, and another requiring great precision and execution to capitalize on a barren landscape. The asymptote of a highly precise hunters bound to abundant landscapes are geniuses.

And often they change landscapes by taking drugs.

>>14828253
correct answer: anyone can be an "artist", but to become a "canon great" artist would likely need effort and talent

>>14829560
of course they are: anyone writing, composing, directing, whatever came out from someone's vagina

>>14832658 (You)
Cont.

But of course, I think both of you guys are right. There is gift/talent in intuiting something that resonates with the world at large at some point in time. This intuiting is refined through practice, like sharpening an arrowhead that you use to seize/hunt emotions. Thus, there are people who aren't technically prodigious yet are highly expressive, and vice versa. Like different hunters, one who uses blunt instruments to kill abundant wild game, and another requiring great precision and execution to capitalize on a barren landscape. On the asymptote, where a highly precise hunter is bound to an abundant landscape, is where we see these career geniuses.

And often they change landscapes by taking drugs

>>14832658
Cont.

But of course, I think both of you guys are right. There is gift/talent in intuiting something that resonates with the world at large at some point in time. This intuiting is refined through practice, like sharpening an arrowhead that you use to seize/hunt emotions. Thus, there are people who aren't technically prodigious yet are highly expressive, and vice versa. Like different hunters, one who uses blunt instruments to kill abundant wild game, and another requiring great precision and execution to capitalize on a barren landscape. On the asymptote, where a highly precise hunter is bound to an abundant landscape, is where we see these career geniuses.

And often they change landscapes by taking drugs

>>14832745
After writing this out, I actually don't like this analogy, it's an intellectualized perspective on expression. My favorite works of mine are usually something that come out of me like an outpouring rather than something I search for. Maybe it's more of a channel, and people begin expression by building some sort of dam with irrigation. Some people do so and are just dry, others are just flooded. The perfection of which is a giant channel with a throttle connected to a full dammed reservoir.

>>14829611
thanks for pointing this out. its something that seems so obvious about great writers that its so easy to overlook-- they were even better 'readers.' i wonder, are there any writers who famously read a shit ton, other than the ones you mentioned?

>>14829822
nurse. respect

talent is innate but you don't need to have it in order to be an artist.
don't take this as an endorsment of your lazy, unproductive NEET lifestyle. no you're probably not that genius you think you are, but you can certainly bring forth the best in you and shape it in the best possible way by years of study and practice. browsing /lit/ alone won't turn you into that writer you aspire to be.

>>14834082
yes, almost all of them.

>>14834082
I think most of them did, but for example, I remember reading excerpts from a letter wherein Dostoevsky (in his early twenties) was telling his friend about is recent reading habits (I don't remember the details but it seemed like he was describing what he had been reading in the past few months). He had finished all of Shakespeare, all of Dickens, and said he would soon be finished reading all of Balzac soon (probably upwards of 30-40 volumes just of Balzac). I'm guessing he was reading 3-4 books a week.

Another, I know Flaubert read around 6-8 hours every day (its in his letters with Turgenev, I don't know exactly where).

>>14834082
>any writers who famously read a shit ton, other than the ones you mentioned?
Borges was very well versed in the Classics, as well as a lot of more obscure Renaissance literature

>>14835097
Have you read his lectures on English literature. That man knew his shit.