/lit/ - Literature

I think Mary Shelly Wrote Frankenstein when she was very young. The Outsiders was also written by a 16 y/o but it's not very /lit/.
the only other thing comes to mind isn't literature, but that movie Kids. it was written by Harmony Korine over the course of a week when he was 18 or 19. On top of that, he said he did zero outlining before writing and then did close to zero revisions after writing. A lot of people talk about how realistic the movie is but I really like it because to me it feels unnatural and clear that it was written by a freshman at NYU that spent all his time skating. It's a more fun movie with that in mind

Johannes Valentinus Andreae wrote The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz when he was in his 20s.

>>15349565
Honestly yeah they are, literature is just not something you can fake being good at if you’re writing fiction or poetry and expect history to care. The amount of good books written by people age 20-24 is already very rare, teenagers had no chance

A bunch of kids, including Jarry, wrote King Ubu.

>>15349722

Bruh the post is about literature and you went on a tangent about a 90s movie, stay on task

>>15349972
its good/entertaining writing bruhva. and >>15349960 is right, so theres not much out there to talk about

>>15349565
Rene Radiguet

>>15349722
harmony korine didn't direct the movie, though. and you don't know how many script doctors did revisions because they don't get credited

>>15349565
it depends an awful lot on the time period. during stagnant eras older writers are common, during really dynamic eras younger writers often come to the fore
>mayakovsky was 19 went his first poems were published and 37 when he an heroed

>>15349565
Thomas Chatterton

>>15349565
Can I rape that?

>No one even mentions Keats

>>15350120
Veraline had dibs

>>15349565
Kids can write but most people must go through life a bit. You take yourself too seriously when you're 17 and chances are you're going to write about the sorrows of a young individual who's just like you. It takes time to make the mundane universal.

Many of these young geniuses die young or stop writing eventually, it's the price they pay for blooming so early.

True prodigies tend to exist only in hermetic, self-contained fields that don't require huge knowledge of the world. So music is a good example; similarly chess and mathematics. And gymnastics insofar as it depends on physiological development.

Literature, not so much. Also, in my opinion, it's impossible to produce truly great literature in any form until one's sexuality has matured.

Girls tend to mature ahead of boys at this key point in life (early teens). The average girl of 15, for inexorable physiological reasons, pretty well knows what life is about. The average boy of 15 is still running around with a blanket over his head shouting I'M BATMAN! This is why most of the prodigy singer-songwriters have been girls. (Kate Bush, Alanis Morissette, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Swift etc were turning out pretty decent 'adult' stuff in their early teens. I can't think of many male equivalents.) When we look at literature we see the same thing. There have been several women who have produced startlingly "mature" works when young. I think Dodie Smith did. Also Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein; Carson McCullers 'The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter', etc.

Male prodigies in the literary arts tend to be in those fields that only depend on pure verbal IQ - so translation, pastiche, abstract poetry-as-pattern, etc. Thomas de Quincey, for example, could translate Latin and Greek verses superbly at a very young age. J.S.Mill was fluent in Greek at 3. Thomas Chatterton also falls into this category because his work is mostly based on what he'd read, rather than experience of life itself.

Of course you do sometimes see young male authors looking outwards. But this tends to be the result of extreme circumstances forcing them to confront reality at an unusually young age. An obvious example is Norman Mailer writing "The Naked And The Dead" in his early twenties.

>>15351429
>I can't think of many male equivalents.
Varg Vikernes. Ishan from Emperor.

>>15349989
*Raymond

>>15349565
at that stage we're too busy just experiencing life. why waste time writing?

What about Emily Dickinson?

>>15349972
Shut the fuck up

>>15350038
This anon is right. Also, Giacomo Leopardi.