/lit/ - Literature

And just to add on, I’ll happily accept recommendations. It seems most good recent books either are set before current times, or if they’re set in present day they’re postmodern shitflinging contests obsessed with “being” set in present day. As if life IS technology and love and hate and all the rest of life no longer happens.

>>19679086
>Is the screen superior in representing current life to literature?
Ram Dass' once remarked that LSD introduced America to spirituality because a material society required a material prophet. In this sense I agree.

>>19679086
I, too, am I balding mafia boss who lives in a world of wacky people with funny accents

>>19679163
Pretty snarky, unfortunately it doesn’t change the fact that not one great “piece-of-life” novel has been released about 21st century american life

>>19679176
I’m not a medieval prince of denmark yet I still understand existential dread and revenge

>>19679086
Books, these days, tend to be written by the overeducated and self-important. David Chase was a depressed and, apparently at times, alcoholic Newark-born Italian with a love for cinema and a great understanding of irony. Also: The more WASPy Americans tend to be humorless - especially when compared to Italians - and the non-Whites are just boring, stupid, and ugly.

>>19679180
Hmm? I'm agreeing OP. I think it translates the dynamic of modern family and professional thug life well because of the script yes, but the medium of TV series is generally made that writing immensely absorbable to the same americans.

>>19679086
The Wire is also like this.

Americans can't write.

>>19679264
Wasn't that based on a book?

>>19679176
its called new york

>Why is there no book which touches on 21st century life as well as this show?
that was easy

>>19680591
I don't think so. The showrunner was a longtime journalist who lived in baltimore. I think he mainly took inspiration from things he'd seen in his life.

>>19679086
Any book recs for someone who loves this show? I'm starting too worry I'll never find anything as good...

>>19679086
it is just a really good tv show, dog

>>19680647
please stfu

>>19679086
it's completely dated and literally has nothing to do with life now

>>19681933
I never have the motivation to write my thoughts well on this site, so I’ll just use a cliche word and say the “aesthetics” of it are very resounding to me. I also suspect you’re the exact “overintellectual” type whose image of a contemporary novel is post-modern gymnastics trying to represent the horror of technology and the Internet. Something like “Selfie, Suicide,” which is pure hogwash. When the Sopranos is closer to a Russian doorstopper set to modern day suburban America. If that’s the case, that you think it’s dated because it doesn’t have smartphones, you’re an imbecile and the reason no one is writing anything accurate to our lives.

As for those aesthetics captured in this series, I’d say the closest match I’ve found is in the better segments of “The Tunnel” when the narrator is writing more straightforwardly. In general, Gass’ prose touches on metaphors which are simple and pure images taken from contemporary life, such as dirty dishes and worn out steps.

>>19682099
trust me, lack of motivation to express them well is the least of the problems with your midwit thoughts

>>19682143
Sorry, honey. Burgerpunk isn’t a genre. Just keep to the wojak videos on youtube

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

>>19679176
Way to miss all the themes of the show.

The show is about societal decline. It's just told from that particular view of it. But it all universally applies.

One of the better scenes late in the series is when a couple mob guys try to get protection money from a chain coffee shop. The manager says he'll just be fired if he gives them anything and if they beat him up it won't do anything. They leave frustrated and complain about it being hard for "the little guy" these days.

The joke is "haha, these sociopaths are the little guy". But it nonetheless is a real societal trend: destruction of small businesses and the expansion of large businesses wrecked the middle class, which in turn is wrecking the mafia. They do go hand in hand.

The same forces of unionization and small businesses which produced such a healthy middle class also was a goldmine for organized crime. It's all about decline. Even Tony speaks about this theme in the opening, how the best is over.

And Anthony Jr. being a 4chan slob loser is extremely fitting for the era. It was so prescient on what would become of middle class white guys, including people like you!

>>19680591
I believe HLOTS was based off of David Simon's book

>>19682289
No offense but the point about small business would seem localised to that singular instant of the episode. Unless of course you can bring up other times its mentioned, I don't really remember.

Anthony Jr. representing disaffected youths of interior existence is a fair enough point, and a concept best fleshed out in Infinite Jest through Hal Incadenza, a novel I believe that encapsulates modern existence better than anything else I read yet. So I guess that and its logical conclusion the Pale King are my answers to your post.

>>19682852
>No offense but the point about small business would seem localised to that singular instant of the episode. Unless of course you can bring up other times its mentioned, I don't really remember.

It's just one point of many. Meadow trying to date the jiggaboo in college, throwing on all the social justice talk, only for him to end up being a prick and dumping her. Tony and Carmela going through a near-divorce, yet always professing Catholic values when it suits them. Every scene with therapy showing how little it actually does for anyone, and how "self discovery" ends up being bullshit. This is especially true of Janice's therapy scenes. Or Meadow's college roommate, showing what happens even you over-pathologize everything.

Virtually every character and plot in that show has commentary on the decline of America.

>Anthony Jr. representing disaffected youths of interior existence is a fair enough point, and a concept best fleshed out in Infinite Jest through Hal Incadenza, a novel I believe that encapsulates modern existence better than anything else I read yet. So I guess that and its logical conclusion the Pale King are my answers to your post.

Thats fine that alternative sources point out similar things, there aren't ultimately any new things to say in literature if you really tread widely enough. And of course any one piece of media will look small if you compare it to dozens of other works simultaneously.

The Sopranos is just the best television show, and covers its themes well. No more complicated than that.

>>19683112
This is all fine, I was simply defending Infinite Jest, and somehow literature in general due to the nature of this post, as being a fair representation of 21st century existence.

Calling The Sopranos the best television show is fine, I would simply rather people not have it compete with literature as they are two separate modes of entertainment.

I wouldn't feel confident saying that there is nothing new to be said in literature, because of course who am I to say it?

>>19682289
>>19683112
If the Sopranos is a statement on societal decline then it makes you wonder why so much literature today refrains from critiquing society in the same way. In the past literature was synonymous with challenging norms and exposing the intricacies of our modern condition. Do we really see books today do the same? Do they openly criticize liberal democracy for instance? No, they show issues within liberal democracy (inequality, racism, greed) and then posit that the answer to these problems is just that we need more liberalism. This is how most media today works. It’s completely self-reinforcing and literature is even worse than cinema in this regard now. The top selling books are consistently YA fiction or thinly concealed leftist propaganda books about why we need more diversity and equality if we want to improve our declining system that’s already based on freedom and equality. It’s the most boring art ever.

>>19683348
I don’t have a problem with that as much as I do the soulless attempts at what you’re describing. There’s plenty of books which try to capture the decay in the sweatiest manner ever. Unironically, the largest literary event of the 2010s was the short story Cat Person in the New Yorker.

It's really more of an examination of late 20th century USA even though it takes place from 1998-2007.

>>19683376
>the largest literary event of the 2010s was the short story Cat Person

imagine believing this, even a rupi kaur book is influential than any short story written the past decade combined. literature does nothing to advance the world today.

>>19683497
I don’t have to imagine it, as it’s true. It’s the widest impacting piece of writing in the past ten years

>>19680647
>non fiction polemic
wipe my goddamn asshole into the next room you lardo

Anon... are you forgetting...

>>19683567
Is that a cum stain?

>>19683574
It's a cloud

>>19679163
>ram the ass
don't mind if i do

>>19683600
I mean, next to the cloud

>>19679086
Sopranos has to be the most overrated show to exist, it functions pretty well as a comedy but as a drama its just sorta of mediocre and it hasn't aged particularly well.

>>19683640
you are wrong on all two accounts.
It's great drama and has influenced every other tv series that came after it, and it has aged very well, just see how many people still love it, including young people.
You got the humor right, a lot of it is so subtle it's great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsqf6IY-3oo

>>19683690
Well I do agree that it was influential towards many tv series that came after it, I don't think the drama aspects have aged that well, many tv series that came after have done drama better. The humor carries the show for me atleast.

>>19679086
Imagine how shit the book would be.

>>19679180
Because you're too snobby to appreciate Franzen

>>19683640
Drama is overrated. The Sopranos shows the utter mundanity [sic?] and absurdity - sue me - of life and human nature. There is literally no need for drama. A common refrain on the show is 'Always with the drama!' It takes life seriously to the extent that it doesn't embellish and is unafraid to show that's there's at least something wrong with everybody and everything.

>>19683640
Drama's for women.

>>19683640
To add again, there's an episode about Chrissy in which he laments his lack of an 'arc' in life and does stupid and impetuous things. The upshot of the episode is that no one gives a shit and that, at best, you get what you put into life - and nothing more, absent great luck. There's no need for grander meaning. The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart and if you can't hack it, just off yourself.

>>19683640
I watched it and thought it was great but would also respond similarly to threads like this. Recently I’ve been rewatching it, and it inspired me to make this thread. There’s just so much undeniable substance and quality to it, regardless of the television cliches like flippant crimes that never get pinned on the main characters and occasional paid-by-word subplots

>>19679086
That’s it, I hate television. This show has 86 50 minute episodes I seriously don’t understand why anyone would willingly spend so much time watching television. And then people actually rewatch shows like people who’ve seen the Office a thousand times. I could read War and Peace like three times instead of watching this

>>19683348
>Do they openly criticize liberal democracy for instance?
Obliquely, at any rate. The show depicts and number of different kinds of ethnic and cultural conflict - so much so that one wonders whether or not Chase seriously believes in the current American experiment in egalitarian pluralism. He certainly never suggests that more liberalism is needed. You are under some misapprehension there.

>>19684035
You sound like a bore.

>>19684067
I’m not talking about the Sopranos I’m talking about most art today in general. The Sopranos is so good precisely because it doesn’t shy away from showing our malaise

>>19684100
How is it boring to not feel good about spending hours upon hours of your daily life consuming formulaic television. Not wanting to sit on your couch for 80 hours straight is “boring” these days. Sorry for having actual interests and things I would rather be doing…

this show did it better imo

>>19683112
>The Sopranos is just the best television show
Can't wait for you to watch your second TV show.

>>19684200
The fourth guy is the fucking twitter meme gif

>>19684211
Yeah just wait until he watches zogged show #2617. So much better than Sopranos

>>19684227
>The fourth guy is the fucking twitter meme gif
i have no idea what you're talking about

>>19684227
You can't find a more zogged show that the basedpranos
>HEHE GABAGOOL!!! VARSITY ATHLETE!!! WATCH IT CRISSY!!!
>WHAT?!! YOU DONT LIKE THE EBIN TOUGH GUY SELF INSERT SHOW??!! YOURE LE REDDIT LOL.
>HEHE CLEARLY YOU CANT COMPREHEND THE SMART 500IQ THEMES IM SO MUCH SMARTER THAN YOU
>WOAW LE EBIN LYNCHIAN DREAM SEQUENCE LIKE MY FAVORITE DIRECTOR LE EBIN DAVID LYNCH
can you find me a more reddit show than this?
pro tip: you can't.

>>19684262
Struggled to read your post without wincing in embarrassment for you.

>>19684262
get off the internet

>>19684244

>>19684275
yeah, thats not the same person

>>19684200
Watched the first fifteen minutes of the pilot and can assuredly say this show isn’t even in the same league

>>19684200
This image looks like a joke.

>>19681933
I'm a zoomer and I related with it better then almost anything I've seen in a while. This specific scene hit somewhere deep within me. Some emotional memory I've lost about my own loss of innocence in my adolescence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN5rW6H9IHM&ab_channel=TheSopranosTVSeries

>>19679086
Jonathan Franzen does, Corrections and Freedom, read those OP

I guess you haven't read much

I'm not sure, ey?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtS6tmjMDfA

Listen to that fucking guitar solo at 2:40. Why hasn't that been topped?

>>19679086
Television shows make more money. Money attracts writers. Writers therefore write about the 21st century largely through the television they write for. You've mentioned the Sopranos; see also Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men. I don't think it's a question of the medium used to tell the story being inherently superior; television is simply more profitable and easier to consume than a novel.

>>19686165
Breaking bad is shit, watch The Shield instead

>>19684262
Don't you shit up /tv/ with the same exact line? Gtfo loser. Jesus Christ.

>>19685048
You already posted this. I’ll check it out, even though I’m sure it’s trash

>>19686165
The sopranos is the only serious show I like

>>19687494
I haven't already posted that

>>19687533
Someone else did earlier in the thread

>>19682099
good post

>>19687494
>I’m sure it’s trash

Freedom is supposed to be good at representing modernity

>>19681933
stupid zoomer

>>19684178
not the other dude, but isn't it the same for books? You're still consooming in the end. Not comparing War and Peace to Sopranos at all, or even remotely implying they're on the same level, but at the end of the day, it's still sitting on your couch for hours.

>>19687759
Reading is gerenally a more useful skill over film/kinomatography criticism however

>>19687786
I'm inclined to agree, but based on what? In the end they're still both consumerism. Define "useful skills" for me?

>>19683517
Re-reading this after finishing a book by Jane Austen to lose all hope in life

>>19680591
No, but it has a strong base in literary fiction and crime novels. Simon said they tried to structure the seasons like a book, episodes like chapters, and he used a bunch of novelists on his writing teams over the course of the show. Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and I think Richard Price all contributed at some point. He also mined content from both Homicide and The Corner, and then did a huge melting pot with that and all his crime journalist experiences in Baltimore.

Simon is a social media obsessed faggot like the rest now, but his work on The Wire and Generation Kill is great television. I wish series would more often write like he did for The Wire; at the very least the structure and characters until season five were very satisfying. Season two is near perfect.

This scene was so good, there's so much packed into it. JT is Chris' only real friend or anything like a real friend he's ever experienced, since his mob friends can never be real friends, because their whole lifestyle is fundamentally broken. JT and the whole situation with him are representative of Chris' "neither in nor out" relationship to the mob world. He's miserable, talks about being in hell, but he's also completely a creature of that world and has no realistic way to break out of it. JT represents the outside boring/normal but healthy world, both being where Chris wants to go, and where he can't ever go, and JT symbolically rejects Chris as an irredeemable creature of the underworld ("you're in the mafia!").

Chris is right on the border between the two selves he can't be, JT is like the gatekeeper. You can basically feel Chris die inside at the end of the scene, the tension he's had for the whole show between these two irreconcilable things just collapses into a mush. The acting is so good too.

>>19688213
nice

>>19688213
>>>not posting it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxNOVUoDwg

>>19688666
Warning: big spoilers

>>19688676
Whatever the scene is more intense the second time through. Just shows how well crafted the stupid show is.

>>19688213
This is also after a certain someone is gone and he can't rely on her to vent these feelings anymore. She was his one other option to feel normal human feelings and be a somewhat normal person with a life.

>>19688709
>someone is gone
adriana?

not sure where this cringe tiptoe DANCE comes from but your enjoyment of it is sickening


>spoilers
kys

>>19688722
I was trying to avoid spoilers for people who haven't watched the show while making it obvious to people who have. Try not to bite your handler today when she puts your helmet on.

>>19688213
>I've been completely fuckin' ostrafied!

>>19686165
The writers for The Sopranos quite often rebuke themselves and fellow writers of television for overestimating the medium's actual artistic capacities.

>>19688951
In the show itself, that is.

>If it was an Oscar, an Academy Award - maybe I could give you something. But TV?

>>19682253
He was gay, Gary Cooper?

There is nothing life-affirming about the Sopranos, nor does is it an unabashed glorification of evil, thus it is useless pomo trash.

There is nothing life-affirming about the Sopranos, nor can one come to understand good through its unabashed display of evil, thus it is useless pomo trash.

>>19679086
you do understand that good tv and movies are good because they grapple with the human condition so well as to be timeless right? that's why people read old shit and watch old shit still. people will still watch the sopranos a hundred years from now because its a good show with interesting characters and story, not because its set in early 2000s new jersey.

>>19689311
Wew, lad.
>pomo trash
Despite the many characters' different backgrounds, I'd submit that Chase is committed to a more or less singular human nature and condition, with minor variations according to particular ethnic/racial descent and culture.
>[one cannot] come to understand good through its unabashed display of evil
There's much to learn from the show about how everything you do and omit to do will change you accordingly for better or worse.
>nothing life-affirming
See the foregoing and also consider the show's recurring theme of depression and the very real possibility of its escape. Finally, it is about family - the smallest viable sociopolitical unit - and how its fragile and fissile nature makes it all the more precious.

>>19688189

This.
Sopranos Season 2 is some of the best TV of all time.

The episode with the stripper's story hit me like a sledgehammer.

>watching tv series
and then they ask why society is so shit

https://youtu.be/PHu9D8armIA

>one scene BTFO 4chan forever

>>19684211
I'll admit Deadwood is close to it. But everything else is way below.

But do please inform me, what amazing top tier literary shows am I missing out on?

>>19689311
Sure it's life affirming. It's fatalistic but you're supposed to be laughing during the whole thing. If you don't laugh your ass off after Junior says "you never had the makings of a varsity athlete" and Tony smacks the table and curses him out then you're a pozzed faggot who takes shit too seriously.

op doesn't read

hae you actually never heard of houellebecq, maybe the most internationally renowned author workign right now? he is literally the dostoevsky of today

>>19680604
*new jersey

>>19691633
op doesn't read

>>19679264
the wire is mostly a cop show that is severely overrated and not nearly as cerebral as the sopranos. Only seasons 3-4 are on par. Nothing else.

>>19681933
AJ and meadow, especially AJ, are suppose to represent millennials and their attitude towards the family and their lives is more relevant now than it was when the show was written.

>>19691603
the Turkish series Ethos is really good, though it's more about traditional religion (Islam) interacting with modern liberal society. has great writing and very beautifully shot

>>19684262
the sopranos is too smart for you

>>19691650
>is mostly a cop show
you probably haven't watched it didn't you?

>>19689311
>There is nothing life-affirming about the Sopranos
its nihilistic, bordering on absurdist if that fits the criteria.
>nor can one come to understand good through its unabashed display of evil
it shows multiple times how harrowing, taxing and unrewarding the mob life is to you and the people around you. What the fuck do you think the show is about, you're not suppose to want to be these people.

>>19691704
I dont think you've watched it because the show focuses far too heavily on McNulty and whatever group formed to pull a wire operation on whatever antagonist for the season.

>>19682289
>>19683112
sounds like the writer was just basically aware of what was going on around him. this stuff really was as obvious back in like 2000 as it is today if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention. this is like when people call that 1993 kids in the hall art class sketch mind-blowingly prescient satire of wokeness when it was relaly just depicting "politically correct" university life at the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1tFbZ5kaY8

or the same with that one about the russophobic red-baiting tv pundit, supposedly predicting bill o'reilly or rachel maddow or something, when it's obviously just mocking mccarthyism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83tnWFojtcY

might still be a decent show but i'm always skeptical when people call books or tv shows or whatever prescient, they're usually just showing something that hasn't relaly changed but maybe more people are talking about for some reason

>>19691603
not him but
>The Twilight zone (1958-63)
>The Simpsons (S2-8)

>my tv show do it better than books
Pathetic american.
But honestly, books are not for you, so you should stick to television.

>>19679163
Ok duncan

>>19679086
Are you fucking retarded? Where is "21st century life" boiled down being a fat wop criminal with a family of whores? Why are you even pretending that you can read, dumbass?

>>19682099
>he's unironically, legitimately, no-foolin, an autistic subhuman
It sucks to get secondhand embarrassment for a sperg who can't even feel the emotion itself.

>>19684826
I watched every HBO show, new and old, and I can say with certainty that yes, it does.

>>19684178

By a "bore" he means not fun at parties, social climbing, spraying your DNA all over haha you know

>>19679086
I never thought I would actually say this, but Tai Pei by Tao Lin.

>>19692365
It's incredible how many supposedly "literate" people fail to see the very clear themes of the show.

>>19688189
Fellow season 2 appreciator. Ziggy's arc is just fun all around, not to even mention the stuff going on everywhere else.

>>19688965
>They were giving it away at the gas station!

>>19693683
he is literally me!!!