/lit/ - Literature

>>18328455
Melville

>>18328463
he died like 100 years earlier

>>18328455
Don and Philip are the two greater authors than cormac and Thomas.

>>18328455
pynchon > delillo > the two literal whos

>>18328455
Roth is not great at all. McCarthy is the one that most likely will be remembered years from now. Bloom said BM was already canon.

>>18328500
DeLillo is a literal who, mostly just a regional writer in the US. Cormac is the most famous of the bunch and known elswhere.

>>18328496
Roth is the worst author out of these.

>>18328455
4 names nobody even knows or cares about. Americans cant write.

Roth > DeDildo > Pynch > Cormuck

>>18328546
This but backwards

>>18328533
McCarthy is known and read outside the US.

>>18328568
Astroturfed and a "one hit wonder". Americans cant write

>>18328500
>postmodern shitter

>>18328455
Pynchon is the most irrelevant one.

>>18328455
Pretty sad list desu. McCarthy is great and deserves, the rest....
A neurotic jew only read by other jews or hipster lit crowd and 2 crappy literal whos that write books for pretentious young nerds. Besides, all the other 3 were Bloom's fast friends. America definitely have had better writers albeit less famous.

>>18328606
Such as

>>18328628
Bellow was alive when the list was made, so was Updike.
Roth is just discount Bellow desu.

be american send more people than ever before in history to college none of them can write a half decent book

>>18328578
Most writers are "one hit wonders." Not everyone can be Shakespeare or Dickens. Furthermore, he has various book that are popularly read. The fact that you only know one says more about you than about him.

>>18328647
i can tell you're american because you think everyone reads your shit

>>18328578
Most writers are "one hit wonders." Not everyone can be Shakespeare, Dostoyevksy or Dickens. Furthermore, he has various books that are popularly read. The fact that you only know one says more about you than about him.

>>18328659
I'm not American and I never said everyone read their books.

>>18328644
because american idea of college is protestant: just a factory

>>18328660
ding ding ding

>>18328513
>Cormac is the most famous of the bunch and known elswhere
He's also the worst of the lot by far. Not a coincidence. Lesser writers are always more popular with the normalfag masses.

>>18328737
>He's also the worst of the lot by far.
Most brainlet take I've seen on this board for some time

>>18328737
Both Dedildo and bucktooth were more famous among normies in 70s and 80s, but father time puts everybody in their place. They are irrelevant now because people saw through their shit and only pseuds give them time anymore, while Cormac is now earning acclaim for his older books that got ignored.

>>18328455
>calling any of those writers literal whos, even ironically
The state of /lit/

>>18328578
>muh americans
is it just the same guy every day or are euros just that obsessed? can someone get the window and let the fly out?

>>18328455
yep, McCarthy. genre fiction hack only beloved by soiboys and foreigners because of movie adaptations.

>>18328789
lit is rife with edgy malcontent neets that have and will never produce anything of substance; there are few truer idioms than misery loves company

>>18328734
kus reddit scum

Both DeLillo and Roth get notoriety because they are NYC area authors and in the case of Roth, a Jewish NYC area author. That’s how this whole thing works now.

>>18328546
You have it backwards

>>18328455
He must have forgotten about me

>>18329046
Pynchon is also a /lifelong/ NYC author. He was a fellow alumunus of Cornell with Bloom.

>>18329068
But do you think that’s detectable in his writing? I’m referring to their writing here, not necessarily where they’re from or lived.

>>18328546
>he doesn't know how to use less-than and greater-than

>>18329068
>Cornell
>NYC
I invite you to consult a map of New York State

>>18328606
McCarthy is the worst on the list

>>18329629
The second is independent of the first. I think you missed what the OG anon was getting at.

Toni Morrison was alive then and better than all of them except maybe Cormack.

Maybe she was retired or maybe Bloom is retarded.

>>18329637
Ok

>>18329656
there is a more obvious explanation: bloom is an incel

>>18329642
>The second is independent of the first
What?
Also Pynchon lived and wrote in California for a time

>>18328455
R. Scott Bakker is alive and better than two of these authors.

Blocks your path.

>>18329656
sorry nobody here can read jive

>>18328635
David Foster Wallace, an author of considerable talent, was alive as well.

>>18329668
>Pynchon lived and wrote in California for a time
He was in new mexico at one point but I don't know about Cali.
>What?
The OG anon meant that NYC critics are biased towards NYC writers. NYC - Pynchon - Bloom - Cornell. Connect the dots.

>>18328455
>harold bloom
Irrelevant figure.

>>18329693
We know Bloom's take on that albeit not then...

>>18329701
This.

>>18329629
To his credit, a lot of that is the same general sphere of cultural influence. I grew up Northeastern Pennsylvania and currently live in Southeastern Pennsylvania and I’ve personally noticed there’s this NYC literature scene thing that extends out from NYC into the surrounding areas of NYS, NJ, and CT and out to the more prestigious universities in CT, NYS, NJ, and PA (Penn). It’s particularly obnoxious because it’s this whole thing with with middle or upper middle class, often Jewish, writers from those areas who get published simply because they write with a sort of flavor that they have from being from those areas. The people in NYC publishing think they’re the center of the universe so the experiences of an upper middle class Jew from Bridgewater Township is either totally universal or interesting enough to be worthy of publishing. Case in point: Philip Roth, Joshua Cohen.

>>18329693
Overrated desu. The guy was a tortured soul, which is unfortunate, and a half decent writer but none of his stuff is half as profound as first year undergrads in English departments seem to think it is. It’s also strange to me that for a guy who spent so much time complaining about television and commercial literature dominating attention spans, he decided to write a total door stopper.

>>18329696
Cornell is still not in NYC

>>18329689

>>18329763
Never said it was.
>second statement is independent of first
Can't you read?

> be me
> 2 friends shill me that I should read Pynchon
> pick up The Crying of Lot 49
> it's shit

>>18329763
Learn to read, retard.

>>18329763
But it is filled with people from NYC with connections to NYC and they go to NYC after they graduate

>>18328455
>failing to mention his inclusion of Harold Brodkey and Cynthia Ozick

I like Cormac McCarthy but can someone explain to me why his books are praised so much? I get the impression that the single biggest reason is that they’re different from the rest of stuff that’s really praised right now. I’m at a loss in trying to describe how they’re different though. They’re less stuffy or post-modern or something. I don’t know. Hopefully, one of you knows what I’m trying to say and can explain this to me.

>>18328789
>>18328847
Kys tranny

>>18329696
I think you’re generally barking up the right tree (I mean John Crowley was literally his colleague at Yale, and of course the inverse argument holds for Bellows who Bloom hated) but the Bloom->Pynch connection is a bad one. Pynch was legit heralded when V came out, GR was a landmark (and of course Bloom would like it considering his reading of Gaddis), and M&D is prime post-Melville American fiction. I think Pynch just hits a lot of the right marks for Bloom independent of any incidental personal bias.

>>18330016
Watch the Amy Hungerford Yale lecture

tl;dr he actively engages in a living tradition by developing not only a resuscitating but a transcendental rhetoric (at least in the earlier works). It’s not just that he has swallowed Faulkner and Melville whole, it’s that he is committed to their active literary engagements as well (whether that be Symbolist aesthetics, Shakespearean dramatis, Biblical cosmologies, all with the traditional American Protestant spirit if sef-reiance, ironic daemonhood). It’s as earnest of a job as you would want of any writer in this hyper-skeptical postpostmodern aesthetic hellscape we inhabit where most engagements end up being disingenuous parodies, lowbrow imitations, or hauntological diatribes.

Only one of them is even good, and he is the author of Blood Meridian

>>18328578
>one hit wonder
bitch this isn’t music. writing a good book is accomplishment enough.

>>18330040
>I think Pynch just hits a lot of the right marks for Bloom independent of any incidental personal bias.
I don't disagree. The same can be said for Ashbery (in context of modern poetry atleast). But there are a lot of really good writers that didn't get the time of the day despite being as great. It's a sad truth but literary criticism has too much power over the overall standing of a writer and it always did. Irrespective of merit, that connection might be a slight blotch for me forever not so much as it is unethical but moreso that it calls attention to itself. His general feelings on DFW only strengthens it.

>>18328455
Why isn't Mailer among them?

>>18330016
In short: nobody writes like him (major one) and he is one of the few writers who has a real, personal philosophy that he has written over the course of his 10 books and plays. (minor)

>>18329884
Oh dude thats so funny

>>18328516
Don't you like ethnic gross-out humor? You disgusting anti-semite!

>>18330155
He is. Look up Ancient Evenings. Bloom ranks him along with Sinclair Lewis as potentially period-piece confined but ultimately socially relevant writers.

>>18330136
The Wallace hate comes down to the stuff in IJ about Bloom. Look at his beef with someone like Bellows, clearly Bloom was reactionary. But also at the time Wallace came out you gotta remember Bloom's vantage point of having seen the whole pomo schtick run its course from the black comics of Gaddis all the way through the Anne Beattie's who had taken over the university depts. We have a radically different vantage point as Wallace fanboys who didn't live through the weird post-war American literary fights. Hell, do you even care who Gordon Lish is? because I sure don't, which is blasphemy to our parents generation (if you parents read the likes of Carver, Updike, etc.).

>>18330316
Wasn't Wallace trying to break free from pomo through IJ? I haven't read it in full.

>>18329920
No, second statement contradicts the first.

>>18328500
Based

>>18329656
She had one good book.
>>18329666
kys satan

id never read roth desu

>>18328737
Shakespeare is the lesser, lesser writer then.

>>18329693
I don’t take Harold Bloom seriously but DFW is smoke that can only be bottled in college. He’s good but not great, much like his mortal enemy Bret Easton Ellis

>>18328509
>>18328516
>>18329046
The reason that you think Roth doesn't belong or is significantly worse is because you've never actually read his work.
>>18328635
>Roth is just discount Bellow
Holy fuck the state of this board

I assume you mean Roth but you probably dont understand what makes his writing great

>>18328455
Is pynchon a good writer?

>>18330273
Yeah, I'm anti-semite. Jew brain is too different to gentile brain.

>>18332914
elaborate

>>18328493
thats what you think

>>18334392
Yes, Mason and Dixon is a masterpiece. Now go read it.

>>18328546
That symbol means greater-than

Why would you blindfold a horse. Its not like it knows what a gun is

>>18328675
There are Catholic and even Orthodox colleges in America.

>>18335501
Which are neither prominent; Catholicism must.