/lit/ - Literature

women aren’t real, faggot

>>16406926
>>16406931
Honestly can you please fuck off? Why do you guys despise female authors so much? Is it because none of you could write anything of worth and get pissed when a woman does it? You guys will never contribute as much to any culture or literature out there than Lispector did.

The OP made me realize that I've probably only read one or two female writers in my life. And one of them wrote under a male pseudonym. Am I a misogynist for this?

>>16406966
yes

>>16406966
No

Is just that overall males historically published more books than females, thus they have more works of quality. The reason besides that could be misogynistic, but for publishers and society overall a few decades ago and even today in lots of countries.

>>16406908
beans

>>16406908
nice thread, I hope you keep it going.
for me it'd be Emily Dickinson

The ecstasy to guess
Were a receipted bliss
If grace could talk.

>>16407029
kek

>>16407029
I enjoy her works, but I'm not very into american literature anyways.

Another author I like a lot is Conceição Evaristo. Pic related is a really good read.

>>16407077
You might like Claudia Rankine, though she's American too.
I've only read an extract from Citizen in an anthology but I liked it

Women are fucking retarded

>>16407158
I will take a look
>>16407167
Where is your successful novel or anthology anon?

>>16407201
Women are stupid

>>16407240
Not one good book

>>16407215
>>16407257
Can you please fuck off or elaborate?

Tartt is our girl

>>16407276
Women choke on my cock

>>16407280

>>16407280
I like to shit on women

>>16407295

>>16406952
The fact that there needs to be a "Woman Literature General" just shows how irrelevant they are
I'm not sexist, therefore it escapes me why do you need to associate a writer with its gender? Can't you just make a thread about Clarice Lispector instead of making a whole thread about women?

>>16406908

Ursula K. Le Guin because Earthsea is comfy as fuck and The Dispossessed is pretty good.

My least favorite is Virginia Woolf because I was forced to read Mrs. Dalloway when I was still a brainlet and I resent that.

>>16407315

So you want a thread for each individual female author, anon? Interesting.

Got this delivered the other day. Haven't read it yet, but I've liked some her poems I've read online

>>16407327
No, just like there's no threads about each individual male authors.
The question could be phrased as
>ITT: What's you favorite author and why? For me, it's Clarice Lispector.
I don't really see a point in dividing authors on male and female to begin with

>>16407315
Anon, I'm making a Woman Literature General because I never see woman authors being commented here at all. I agree you shouldn't associate an author with their gender, but you simply can't deny that most woman literature is underappreciated and not commented on here. I made this thread because I want recommendations and discussions about a topic that isn't spoken a lot and is underappreciated for me.

That's the same reason I enjoy Spanish Literature generals and Latin American ones. I would also love to see one on Chinese / Southern Asia or Arabic one, /lit/ is simply too eurocentric.

>>16407327
Based

>>16407345
There is the rest of the board to discuss non-woman literature. I would love to do a thread on her alone but it would receive only 3 replies telling me to kill myself. That's the same reason generals landlocked by region/country/cultures exist, anon.

>>16407434
Makes sense, alright then

I’m a big fan of Austen and Eliot. Yeah, I know they’re the most obvious classic female authors but they are for a reason. I love to reread pride and prejudice, though I know persuasion and Mansfield park are particular favourites of many literary people. I feel like I really know Austen’s world—the land and the people—when I read her work. Within the pages she’s written are everything you need to know to visit the bubble where her characters live. Eliot I love because she’s perfect. The writing in the mill on the floss made me appreciate the English language like no other writer (except Nabokov, maybe, but he’s male, so ignore).

>>16406908
Recently I've read my first short story written by a woman, although I've read many non-fiction written by then.
It was Bliss by Katherine Mansfield. It was a delightful read

>>16406952
>Why do you guys despise female authors so much?
Honestly because all the female writers I've personally known wrote like shit or wrote about shitty themes. That could made me biased.
And there are few female authors in the canon and that sort of thing.
However very recently I began to read female authors, good ones. Sappho, Katherine Mansfield, Lispector. I won't get out of my way just to include a female author but I'm free of my prejudice now.

>>16407557
Could've made me biased. Sorry.

>>16407557
I'm glad to hear.
>>16407527
Absolutely based, I've already read pretty much the entirety of Eliot bibliography and as a Brazilian who hated prose written in English, it really opened my eyes to how well you can structure beautiful texts using it.

>>16406908
Agatha Christie

She did mystery pretty good, and I really like how she added little bit of analysis of human psychology without layering it too thick. For example, how miss Marple will make one of her polite remarks, comparing a person from now to someone she knew from the past.

>>16406908
She's irrelevant normalfag tier trash in Brazil. Daily reminder.

>>16408227
... no? She has heavy influence in contemporary literature and was one of the most important writers of her time? What the fuck are you on about, do you just enjoy being a contrarian?

>>16406966
It means you live in a sexist society and went with the flow

I've just realised that the only woman who I've read a book from is Agatha Christie. I think I might have to get some Woolf or Austen the next time I buy books because that's pretty bad. I do like pic related's poetry quite a lot too, though I've not read too much of it.

Doing a reading group with my sisters on Audre Lorde. Where should I start?

>>16406908
>women
>literature
lmao fuck off

>>16406908
Yourcenar is really god tier. Le Guin writes great fantasy (though she has a somewhat weird prose). I also really enjoy Hiromi Kawakami's novels (it reads like josei romance manga, which I enjoy from time to time).
I just enjoy reading in general and I'm not an incel so it's never crossed my mind not reading something only because it was written by a woman. Maybe I've stayed away from several books from checking the synopsis (married life, rising children, that kind of thing) but I've sampled a little bit of everything.

>>16408300
Reminder to disregard latinos' opinions on this board since 3 out of 5 of them are edgy resentful fags and aggressively contrarian to the establishment or whatever. They seem to think anyone cares about their hipster ways. Truly a juvenile I-must-be-different-to-these-normalfags-or-else-my-whole-persona-is-going-to-implode way of life. Or else, they'd actually bother to explain why writers like Cortázar, Lispector or Bolaño are hacks or shouldn't be read.

>>16408335
>be at Costco with family
>family is checking out
>I’m looking at books
>find silly hardback collection of Jane Austin
>have bought other books in this gaudy set, so why not get another
>run back to family at checkout line
>over weight mid twenty’s lady checking us out
>toss book onto pile
>lady picks it up and looks at me with a smirk
>”I realized I don’t read enough women because I stick mostly to classics or post modernists, and I don’t wanna be that guy, because I know I’m that guy, so I thought some Jane Austin might help”
>she stares at me and blinks
>looks down back at stuff she’s scanning
>she mutters “I hope she does”
>put it on shelf next to others of the set
>never fuckin read a god damn page of it

>>16408371
The problem that I, and probably that other Brazilian have with Clarice Lispector is that her prose is too sentimentalistic, too abstract (as in filled with abstract nouns), never touching at anything real, always abounding in *imprecise pseudo-philosophical generalities*.
This is why she seduces first-time readers so strongly: she uses a lot of big words in a supposedly serious tone which gives one that impression that she is some sort of deep philosopher, when in reality she gives no evidence that she knows how to think.
Lispector is specially popular with (female) teenagers here in Brazil, a sort of Rupi Kaur avant-Kaur (although, unlike her Indian counterpart, she was a real writer - I'll grant her this). What both have in common is the love for abstract nouns and the cliche psychologism.

Sample:

>Estou desorganizada porque perdi o que não precisava? Nesta minha nova covardia - a covardia é o que de mais novo já me aconteceu, é a minha maior aventura, essa minha covardia é um campo tão amplo que só a grande coragem me leva a aceitá-la -, na minha nova covardia, que é como acordar de manhã na casa de um estrangeiro, não sei se terei coragem de simplesmente ir. É difícil perder-se. É tão difícil que provavelmente arrumarei depressa um modo de me achar, mesmo que achar-me seja de novo a mentira de que vivo. Até agora achar-me era já ter uma idéia de pessoa e nela me engastar: nessa pessoa organizada eu me encarnava, e nem mesmo sentia o grande esforço de construção que era viver. A idéia que eu fazia de pessoa vinha de minha terceira perna, daquela que me plantava no chão. Mas e agora? estarei mais livre?

In short, a bunch of new age-tier claptrap about "trying to find yourself" and "becoming free".
"Cowardice", "new adventure", "great courage", "losing oneself", "finding oneself", "the lie in which I live", "that great effort of construction which is living", "am I freer?" - I mean, is this not the vocabulary of the Nicomachean Ethics adapted for teenagers who are not smart enough for philosophy?
Now imagine 100 pages of that same drivel, repeated ad nauseam, going nowhere, and never revealing any true philosophy, never revealing any original thought, never descending upon the real world of actual human beings and objects.

I only read A Paixão Segundo G.H., so maybe her other writings are different. But time is short and I have better things to do than "explore her oeuvre" in the hopes of finding something I might like. I gave her a chance already, so let this be the end of it.

P.S. I am not saying Clarice was a "bad" writer in the sense that, say, J. K. Rowling is bad. Clarice was a serious writer and wrote real literature, but it compares badly with the stuff other BR writers were doing.
P.P.S. I read a few short stories by Clarice's great friend Nélida Piñon and had the same reaction.

Fuck women lmao

>>16406908
>women
>reading
women don't need to read. just make my dinner and suck my dick. simple as.

For me, it's the schizophrenic Jewish lesbian.

>>16406908
Mary Renault is fantastic.
I fell in love with her "The Persian Boy"
Her historical novels about Alexander are my favorite.

>>16407029
Seconded, I connected with her poetry at an early age. Made me feel less alone

I haven't read much, but I want to bump this thread so I'll shill Gabrielle Wittkopp, who wrote a great novella/short story "the Necrophiliac". Which refutes the retard incels here who say women can't write transgressive fiction.

>>16406908
Also, forgot to mention, Alison Bechdel if we’re counting cartoonists/graphic novelists

>>16408497
I can't really argue because I've never read her, but sounds like you got filtered or that you have a somewhat strict measure for what Literature (notice the capital) is supposed to be.
Originality is overrated and philosophy in literature--in fiction in particular-- is just one theme or focus a writer MAY have. The Aristoteles connection is honestly just a half assed attempt at a critique.

I'm currently reading pic related and it wouldn't pass any of your standards. It's just an Austrian dude's take on Molloy, but with Wittgenstein's life as subject matter (supposedly), and 'autism' at its center. There's no "concrete language" nor ideas. It's not particularly original because Beckett already tried it. It's still a good book even though I'm on the half way mark and the writing is so circular and abstract it would drive someone like you crazy.
I could reduce it to something that it isn't and claim it was a bad book. Dismiss it because "it's for pretentious hipsters and tryhards who can't into real stream of consciousness". But I'm not going to bother doing that.
Speaking about abstractedness and "sentimentality", Sartre took 150 pages to describe what it feels like being aware of one's existence: a fucking nauseous feeling, lmao. Take that for an imprecise pseudo philosophical generality, that just happened to be almost ground breaking.
Again, I'm not praising Lispector, but from your description, it's hard to tell why she's bad.

I don't come to /lit/ very often but this is the kind of shit thread I find on there first page when I do visit.

You're not wrong in that women authors aren't talked about as much, OP, but if you want a good thread about something that's not discussed very often or at least not very thoroughly, you have to contribute to a lot by yourself too. For example, check out this thread on /a/ >>209001862
I you wanna have a lively discussion, you have to contribute to it a lot yourself too to encourage that kind of discussion.
As for me, I almost never read anything outside of manga/LNs and books from my own country, but I have been getting into Western Literature (I'm currently reading On the Origin of Species). I could name some great female manga authors and their works, want me to do that?

>>16408654
Nonsense, Bernhardt is very different from Lispector. For one, he can think. Secondly, he knows how to write a fine scene, he knows how to describe things and how to give life to a character or some occurrence. His words are picked out of real life speech, not out of the dictionary of new age terms.
And he is not a victim to that unbearable kitsch pseudo-philosophy of "finding oneself" and "cowardice" and "courage'.

I haven't read that particular book of his, but I did read half of The Loser (I didn't finish it because it was on Kindle, but the book is very good). Not the same thing as Lispector. Here is a random quote from The Loser, which I've gotten from Goodreads:

> “We study better in hostile surroundings than in hospitable ones, a student is always well advised to choose a hostile place of study rather than a hospitable one, for the hospitable place will rob him of the better part of his concentration for his studies, the hostile place on the other hand will allow him total concentration, since he must concentrate on his studies to avoid despairing,”

That is all very direct, very simple, and there is no pseudo-philosophizing, no big abstract nouns in it, no emptiness hiding behind big words, because it is not empty: it is an actual, almost tangible idea that is being proposed. You can even act based on that idea. The abstract nouns he does use - place, concentration, study, despair - are all extremely commonplace and *mean something*.
Unlike a sentence such as "In this new cowardice of mine - this cowardice is the newest thing that happened to me, it is my greatest adventure, this cowardice of mine is a field so large that only the great courage could take me to accept it -, in the new cowardice of mine, which is like waking up at morning in the house of a foreign man, I do not know if I will have to courage of simply go." A sentence which means precisely nothing, and a proof of this is that you could substitute those nouns for some other randomly chosen abstract nouns - say, "cowardice" for "timidity" and "courage" for "audacity" -, and it would still sound more or less the same. Nobody would notice the sentence was originally written in another way. Meanwhile, if you substitute one word from Bernhard's sentence, the meaning is lost - why? Because it actually means something.

>you have a somewhat strict measure for what Literature (notice the capital) is supposed to be.

Yes, it has to be strict, otherwise you will have no standards at all. The J.K. Rowling fan will consider Harold Bloom's view "too strict". The 50 Shades of Grey fan will consider the J.K. Rowling fan's view "too strict".

>Speaking about abstractedness and "sentimentality", Sartre took 150 pages to describe what it feels like being aware of one's existence

No sentimentality whatsoever in Sartre. La Nausee was one of the driest books I ever read. It's also extremely visual and concrete.

>>16408743
>the courage to simply go

Fix'd.
Anyway, Clarice's prose is all like that: "great courage", "new cowardice", "greatest adventure", "below the pain".

Looking at another random page from the Paixão, she doesn't write "I wanted to smoke". No, she writes:

>Eu me consumia na vontade de fumar
"I was consuming myself in the desire [or "will"] to smoke".

Another paragraph:

>Mas descubro que não é sequer necessário ter esperança. É muito mais grave. Ah, sei que estou de novo mexendo no perigoso e que deveria calar-me para mim mesma. Não se deve dizer que a esperança não é necessária, pois isto poderia vir a se transformar, já que sou fraca, em arma destruidora. E para ti mesmo, em arma utilitária de destruição.

"But I find that it's not even necessary to have hope. It is a lot more serious. Ah, I know that I am once again touching on the dangerous and that I should keep silent to myself. One shouldn't say that hope is not necessary, because, since I am weak, this might be transformed in a destructive weapon. And, for yourself, in a utilitarian weapon of destruction."

If you think it's good, that's OK. But I personally can't stand that sort of writing. "The dangerous". "Hope". "Weapon of destruction". It seems to me to be emptiness hiding behind (not so) well-arranged sequences of words.

>>16408575
>thinks in non-linear ways that we typicalfags can never understand
>comes from a millennia-old religious tradition of criticism, study, and debate
>personally indulges in the aesthetic qualities of being feminine while also being sexually and emotionally attracted to femininity
yep, anon, I think we found the most based category of person/writer

Fyi I fucking love Clarice Lispector, and I'm ashamed that this board has such an eye for logic and concision that it can't appreciate such a wonderfully mystic approach to writing.

Emily Dickinson is probably my favorite woman writing in English. Her work is great but her persona makes it even better—goth femcel with a crush on her sister in law who shut herself in her room and crafted hundreds of great poems then just stuck them in a drawer.