/lit/ - Literature

I'm a fan of early Japanese naturalism - Katai Tayama, Kunikida Doppo, etc. Mostly for its influence in creating the I-novel genre, which is one that I love.

I don't think I've read much from other countries' naturalist periods, but I may soon. The late 1800s/early 1900s in general are very interesting to me.

I like these predictions. Years from now I think there'll be a war between the nyt book review and a wave of corny books (ie new sincerity). the masses will love the corny and eat it up like fascist pigs. And then, in the second year of the cuomo presidency, people will ask what the postmodernists like wallace were so mad at.

There will be more epics like @mayoremmanuel's book. kind of a techno-maybeselfaware-internety-new sincerity.

WIll probably be very funny, epic and remind me of the feeling I got when I finished Eureka Seven (except maybe more inteeligent? idk)

Right now I'm pretty interested in more experimental stuff, I'm not really a fan of pre-1900 works because of their narrative structures, I'm a fan of Nouveau Roman and Post-Modernism because of their plays on convention. Oulipo is very gimmicky.

I'm a big fan of Latin American stuff, specifically Argentinian writers, I've been meaning to get into the Crack Movement lately, they aimed to "return to the complexity of plot and style as found in the works of Latin American authors such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges" and provide "a means for Mexican authors to find their own voice and write beyond magical realism."

It's not really the movement itself I like but the actual conflict between them: that being Bush Romanticism vs Realism in Australian literature.

It's a struggle that has grown and morphed into a beast that pervades everything in our culture in not only literature, but history and politics. The very divide between viewing things through a harsh sense of reality or sentimentalism, is one of the key parts of Australian culture and elevates writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson (who from a sheer aesthetic and technical ability don't hold a candle to guys like Patrick White) into canon (at least in this small part of the world), and make their work far more interesting than it ought to be.

And then there's Australian modernist poetry which is one of my favourite literary movements precisely because it barely existed and most significantly, because it was pretty much destroyed by parodying fraudsters in the "Ern Malley" affair.

I also have a soft-spot for the Theatre of the Absurd (Beckett, Pinter et al.) for actually getting me into contemporary theatre and also for having the same ability to have a "theatre in the mind" (rather than one I have to pay to see) that plays like King Lear possess, in my view.

don't really have any favourite movements but I like formalistically experimental stuff. Irish lit, with the exception of Joyce and Beckett, is so underappreciated on /lit/, and I think it is easily one of the best countries for lit, especially with writers like Joyce Cary and Flann O Brien.

>>1965615

I've got Flann O'Brien's the Third Policeman booked at the library funnily enough. Looking forward to it.

Honestly, there's a lot that's underappreciated on /lit/. Like literature from Africa (except for Achebe), or anything Asian that isn't Japanese or the four Chinese classics. Or mainland European literature that isn't French, German or Russian.

Or even English language literatures like that of Australia or Canada (outside of Margaret Atwood).

It's partly why I make an effort to have a look into these things.

>>1965627
I guess it's understandable being on a board with mostly brits and americans, but still. checkout at swim-two-birds

>>1965627
I feel the same. I always try to contribute to the occasional Chinese and Korean lit threads with recommendations though. And Czech and Hungarian writers are a budding interest. I think there's a pretty decent-sized Italian lit readership here, but it's mostly concentrated on a few authors (Calvino, Eco, Dante, etc).

>>1965632

>I guess it's understandable being on a board with mostly brits and americans,

Of course. But said people's reading range is also partly the result of the narrow-mindedness of the Anglo-American publishing behemoth itself, and it's mild tendency to ignore or trivialise "foreign" work (even work that's already in English!) outside of obsessions like Latin American modernists/magical realists or Swedish crime novels written be ex-communists. Or maybe people are too caught-up with playing catch-up with the canon, like I used to be. Most of us are late adolescents after all.

> but still. checkout at swim-two-birds

Duly noted. Thank you, anon.

>>1965639

I forgot about those occasional Italian threads. And I'm actually quite interested in the Czechs and Hungarians myself.

Especially when I realised the other day that the only Czech writers I knew of were Kafka (who is of course, German Literature's Sudetenland) and the guy who wrote Good Soldier Svejk (which I really need to read one of these days).

And then on the Hungarians all I remember Arthur Koestler who sort of doesn't really count. Kind of like how Conrad isn't really a "Polish writer".

And on the Chinese front - I've got Gao Xinjiang's Soul Mountain sitting on my bookshelf although going by what I've heard and what I've read of the first couple of pages, might have been one the worst possible introductions to "modern" Chinese literature outside of a propaganda novel. I should have got some Mo Yan.

>>1965648
Mo Yan is great! I'd maybe recommend starting with a Lu Xun collection for modern Chinese lit, though I don't have as much experience with it as I should. I'm going to be doing a rehaul on the Chinese literature recommendation chart soon though.

I can list you the guys I have on my lists!

For Czech:
>Bohumil Hrabal
>Josef Skvorecky
>Ivan Klima
>Jaroslav Hasek
>Ladislav Klima
>Paul Leppin (mostly Czech, like Kafka was German)
>Gustav Meyrink (ditto)

The only ones I've read so far are Hrabal and Capek, but I'm really loving the former. Picking up some of Meyrink's work soon too. I'm pretty sure we have some Czechoslovakians here on /lit/ sometimes, so they could probably give you better recs. But that's what I'm working off of!

Hungarians:
>Dezso Kosztolanyi
>Gyula Krúdy
>Imre Kertesz
>Antal Szerb
>Frigyes Karinthy
>Magda Szabó
>Péter Esterházy
>Frenec Molnar
>Peter Nadas
>Imre Madach

And again, I've only read Kosztolanyi but a lot of the others look damn interesting and I loved the hell out of Skylark. An anon yesterday gave a bunch of well thought out Hungarian lit recs, so there's at least someone around here who knows it pretty well.

There's also Twisted Spoon Press (http://www.twistedspoon.com/)), and they publish a lot of strange books from the lesser-read European countries. And of course, New York Review Books Classics, who introduced me to both Hrabal and Kosztolanyi, and from that sparked my interested in their countries' literature.

How about you? Any recs for other less popular countries? I've been trying to separate out my "African Literature" list into the actual countries, but that may be a while.

>>1965664

No Kundera bro?

Also, Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for 20 years.

>>1965672
Huh, I guess I didn't know what people who live in the Czech Republic are called and automated to that. Czechs I meant!

I haven't read him myself, but I suppose he's one too.

>>1965673

no problem man, it's better you found out from me that if you called a czech a czechoslovakian to his face

also does Žižek count as Slovenian literature? How much of his stuff is translated from Slovenian?

WHAT ABOUT THE BAROQUE MOVEMENT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS

>>1965677
>implying zizek, that dumbass, writes literature

>>1965677
He's not on the Wikipedia page for Slovene literature, but that doesn't really mean much. The page itself is weirdly specific and list-like though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_literature

>>1965692

I guess it's not really surprising that he writes exclusively in English, he's said repeatedly he doesn't feel any patriotism towards Slovenia.

I remember he said once that 5 mins of a good film means more to him than his entire country.

>>1965664
other hungarian writers you could consider are sandor marai, miklos banffy, karinthy's son ferenc, geza czath and attila jozsef.

anyone have any recommendations for socialist realist fiction? the only work i've read that'd come under that heading is valentin kataev's Time, Forward.

>>1965690
What about it?

>>1965704
Thank you for the recs, anon! Ferenc Karinthy and Geza Csath look especially interesting.

Literature isn't headed anywhere. It's roots spread out in all directions, the only new developments are bifurcations.

>anyone have any recommendations for socialist realist fiction?

Are you sure? Here's two Socialist Realist plays and a novel. If you want more fiction, read more Gorky:

Gorky's The Mother / The Lower Depths
Kirshon's Bread

>>1965664

fuck skylark is one of my favourite books

have you seen new directions just released the first ever translation of his kornel esti?

>>1965751
I did, and I have it checked out from the library right now! I think it may have been you who called my attention to it last time. Someone on /lit/ did, at least. Have you read Anna Edes by him yet?

>>1965664
>>1965757
>>1965751
Can you describe some of these authors' work?

I liked the Beats.

Bump

New York School, but mainly just for Frank O'Hara.

The romantics are not dead,
no mortal wounds were struck
that couldn't outlive
blood smeared poppy fields.

suburban social realism is awful

Franzen, I'm looking at you.

>>1965981
+1

Bump