/lit/ - Literature

>>19385131
South /thread

New England, because we are based and spookypilled.

>>19385131
None, it's redundant to explain

>>19385131
None

Idaho

South > New England > everything else

>>19385131
Texas should be its own category

>>19385131
New England in the 19th century.
The South in the 20th century.
Nowhere in the 21st century.

>>19385289
based

>>19385289
>he doesn't know about the Alaskan Avant Garde of the 2030s

>>19385289
It's literally only New England and the South and the South absolutely moggs the yankees.

>>19385131
>Texas
>South

>>19385131
New England probably.

We should make a list where we choose the best authors from each state. I'll start.

California: Jack London.

>>19385131
Washington State, because the ending to The Dharma Bums & the first half of its sequel Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac is the finest and most moving prose of 20th century American literature.

>>19385289
We'll probably have some pretty kino writers when shit hits the fan in the latter half of the century. Embrace the struggle.

>>19385447
>latter half of the century
Try in the next 15 years lol

>>19385451
My parents will be dead by then and then I'll have to get a real job :(
I'll never be a writer at this rate.

>>19385447
>>19385451
Not really on topic, but I just realized that nobody can conceive of a good future for humanity itself. The optimists think a superintelligence will make us obsolete ("and that's a good thing!"), the pessimists think modern civilization will self destruct (either through climate change or general hubris) in a way that would make rebuilding to the present state impossible.

Everybody says south, but the only southerner I can think of is Faulkner. What other good writers come from the south?

>>19385429
what the hell is it then jackass

>>19385131
new york
california
that's it

>>19385535
The Republic of Texas

>>19385571
which is in the south

>>19385151
NO U DA HO

>>19385589
So is California by that logic

>>19385131
Shit map. You won't learn anything from this. Pic related is a more accurate breakdown.

>>19385599
texas is culturally southern, california isn't

>>19385507
Shelby foote

>>19385605
>texas is culturally southern
no it's not

>>19385507
Thomas Wolfe.

>>19385657
Texas is a desert shithole and actual southerners know as much. Only met one person that ever went there and stayed. Everyone else avoids that beaner dump

>>19385131
Vermont should be by itself, they consider the rest of the New Englanders to be eternal outsiders.

>>19385507
Robert Penn Warren
All The King's Men is one of the books I try to shill every chance I get.

>>19385131
I hate being stuck here but objectively Eliot alone makes the Midwest the best by far.

That's not to mention Twain, Hemingway, Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Hart Crane, DFW, the list goes on.

>>19385492
>I just realized that nobody can conceive of a good future for humanity itself
I can! The future will be a world with scattered communes relying on green energy. Culture, art, science, spirituality will all prosper here.

>>19385775
Eliot doesn't count.

>>19385775
Tennessee isn't in the midwest and I would argue Dallas-Fort Worth isn't either.

>>19385131
In terms of literature/culture I would expand "Florida" to include the bottom halves of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. That region alone produces pretty much all Southern gothic literature and has almost nothing in common culturally with Texas or Appalachia.

>>19385801
He was born and raised in St. Louis, in the very center of the midwest. How the fuck does he not count?
>inb4 because he moved to England
Cope

>>19385507
>Tennessee Williams
>Flannery O'Connor
>Harry Crews

>>19385867
>Harry Crews
I see Penguin is releasing a book of his, I think it’s The Gospel Singer. Can you redpill me on him? I’ve never heard of him and I’m in a bit of a slump finding some book I really want to read

>>19385884
Unfortunately I haven't actually read him or even talked to anybody who has, he's just one of those guys that gets mentioned in the same breath as authors I like who's perpetually sitting on my "see if a bookstore has anything from him next time you go in" list.

>>19385139
I hate it, but you’re right. East and west have some great all-time writers. But the south (excluding Texas) is the only area in the continental U.S. that has an unbroken literary tradition spanning from the 19th century to today.

>>19386002
I don't mean this in a reactionary way, but from my European perspective the South is the only region of the US that has soul. A distinctive one, anyway. The rest of the country is rather culturally generic to me.

>>19386016
>>19386002
I'm a Southwesterner but I agree the South proper is soulful and distinctly American.
>tfw ywn read Faulkner for the first time again

>>19385131
Writers from the South get special treatment. We hold them to a much lower standard than writers from the rest of the country so whenever they publish something decent we hail it a masterpiece. The best come from either New England or the Mid-Atlantic.

>>19385782
That's bullshit but I believe it

>>19385782
>I can! The future will be a world with scattered communes relying on green energy.
maybe
>Culture, art, science, spirituality will all prosper here.
definitely not

>>19385289
I like the Midwest, but this is actually the correct answer here.

>>19385507
You don’t understand. Part of what it means to be American is to be as bombastic as possible and overhype a handful of instances, implying that not even 200 years is somehow “a tradition”.

>>19387356
How can you say definitely not? the greatest works of oral story telling and visual arts have all been located in the pre-civilizational primitive communism of our ancestors.

>>19386016
It wasn't always that way, but it certainly is today. For example, bluegrass is alive and well while the New England folk music tradition barely even has enough of a pulse to count as "on life support". There is no distinct personality to any larger American city I have been to, with the exception of working class areas in Boston and Philadelphia. Most places just aspire to be Californized Bay Area colonies. Granted, I am not the most well-traveled person, but in recent years Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, the northern Maine sea coast, and Prince Edward Island, and South Carolina all had more distinct local feeling in an acre than Tampa, Boulder/Denver, San Francisco, Baltimore, and NYC combined.

>>19385131
does anyone know of any rocky mountain writers?

>>19385940
Yeah I have the same type of “I’ll get around to them eventually” list that is embarrassingly large

>>19387597
>oral story telling
ok
>and visual arts
kek

the uk

>>19385492
I’m a pessimist and think that it has self destructed from this point of civilization before and will again repeatedly like waves on the shore until the sun burns out, but that also means that there will probably be a future wave where the peak is better than this one will be. Does that count?

>>19385447
>when shit hits the fan in the latter half of the century
Literally nothing is going to happen. We live at the end of history.

>>19385310
Alaskana is such a waste of space in book stores. I don't understand why people read that shit. Just go outside. Like, nigga, you're already in Alaska, you don't need to read about it.

>>19385507
Margaret Mitchell, Harriet Beecher Stowe

>>19385507
Mark Twain

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Indiana_Literature

>>19388340
Imagine being such a christcuck you write an epic novel about a mighty jew. The Heston film is fucking good, though.

>>19387649
>no distinct local personality
>philly
pick one

>>19387968
Not according to the map

>>19385884
I love Harry Crews. His books are usually very violent, very filthy and very funny until they inevitable bloodbath leaves you a little queasy
Favorites are The Gypsy’s Curse; The Knockout Artist; Body and A Feast of Snakes

>>19389437
I gave Philly as an exception, bro. I love that City Hall.

>>19387692
Stegner?

https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/literature/20-best-american-authors/

Region Count
Mid-Atlantic 8
New England 7
California 3
Midwest 3
South 3

https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/literature/20-best-american-authors/

Region Count
Mid-Atlantic 8
New England 7
California 3
Midwest 3
South 3

>>19389468
just busting your balls because even the shitholes have soul here, too much really.

>>19385131
All of them, but South is my favorite. Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor slap ass and balls. New England/Mid-Atlantic and Cali ain't bad either. Obviously SW and Rockies are the worst, Mid-West pretty low.

>>19389598
>South 3
Harper Lee is only here because every single high school-level educated fuck in America knows him from school. Flannery O'Connor or Penn Warren instead for Southern representation.

>>19385131
Unironically the South. I'm not gringo, but reading southern US works is comfy.

Damn yankees killed the aristocracy so there won't be any more southern literature kino

New England did before the civil war. Industrialization and Radical Republicanism turned it into a soulless proto-globohomo zone. The south took up the mantle in the 20th century, but it's been pretty much sucked into the soulless American mainstream at this point.

>>19385131
Masschusetts, New York, and California in that order. Southern literature is marginal.

Why does the pacific northwest suck SO bad at writing?

>>19390387
I disagree with this statement.
I think that the PNW is unique, in that it gives nearly equal amounts of great literature as it gives female trashrotica.

>>19390387
Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey is one of my favorite books. I always try to shill it every so often

>>19390275
Leave site, newfag

>>19390508
Still angry about General Sherman?

But I've been on here since 2005. For every Poe and Faulkner there are a dozen northerners who are usually better than them. The South never has and never will produce someone as refined as Henry James because it's always been a cultural backwater.

>>19390387
It's in a sense the newest part of the US and it wasn't settled at the time the US was still producing great literature.

>>19385507
Corcob

>>19390534
>But I've been on here since 2005.
Ahahahahaha

>>19390387
Hey, Harold Covington's Northwest Quartet was pretty good.

>>19390534
>I've been on here since 2005
There is literally no easier way to give yourself away.

>>19385131
The UK