/lit/ - Literature

Just because the problems affect affluent ('white') people, more-so than the poor, why does it makes them any less serious?

>>1973673
Because it could always be worse, and it is worse for a lot of people. Most white people don't realize that.

>>1973674

>Which is why terms like "white people problems" and "first world problems" are used almost exclusively by white first worlders.

No implication of their non-seriousness.

But it's an interesting concept that white people, or generally anyone who is not confined to enter a vicious work cycle, tend to think more and their problems are more subjective.

>>1973674

Why do you hold 'white' people to such a high standard?

Why should they be able to effortlessly disregard their own problems and connect with problems that they don't understand?

>>1973684
They know it could be worse. All of them us know it.

Yes, I am a white person. Yes, I have a heap of problems. But, I know that it could be worse. It could be a lot worse, in fact.

Holden's problems were all internal. (Mostly)

White people don't deal with large doses of reality.

This. I'm very grateful to have been born American and not Somalian or Saudi Arabian.

Though honestly I often think I'd rather have been born British.

>>1973692
OP's photo could be any of Salinger's works. I interpreted it to be Franny and Zooey.

>>1973689

Imagine a poor American worker. He complains that barely makes any money to feed his family, but does life endangering work.

That is a true problem, no?

But then, people living in the Global South would look at him in disgust. He makes much more them than them, probably with better conditions and benefits.

I understand that we as 'white' people have it better. But I find that is idiotic to expect us to be any less human by ignoring the problems we do have.

>>1973696

Franny and Zooey has a green spine

>>1973696

Old editions of Catcher often have this cover.

Nevertheless, white people problems are usually internal whereas working class and such deal with much more realistic and consequential terms.

Entertaining fake/shopped covers.

>>1973700
You were saying?

>>1973707

Shaped like a Children's book. LOL

>>1973707

My Catcher in the Rye has the same cover.

I assumed that the same cover wouldn't be used for a different book.

My mistake.

>>1973712
All of Salinger's books have been published with this cover, believe it or not.

>>1973718

Well fuck me!

But back to the point.

I don't think they're just white people problems. Pretty much anyone who has free thought goes through these internal conflicts. Outside factors such as work, bills, children, all slowly lessen an individual's time and want to think.

the pic is originally from a tumblr blog (don't ask how i know this) and it distintively details that it's a shop of Catcher.

>>1973728
Regardless of that fact, the parody title "White People Problems" is more suited to Franny and Zooey than it is to Catcher.

This is hardly the point of the thread, however.

Salinger died a while ago. Think his post humous works will be released soon?

I can't wait to read this in my White Literature course this semester!

things could be a lot worse but they could also be a lot better

>>1973671

White people problems? More like WASP problems.

And JD Salinger was a fucking badass, one of the best writers of all time. I think the reason a lot of people don't like Salinger is because they've only read Catcher. I didn't like it either. Nine Stories and RHTRBCASAI are good, Franny and Zooey is very good.

>White people problems? More like WASP problems.

Smoking crack, Sunhawk?

Holden Caulfield is a WASP. The Glass family are half Jewish, half Irish Catholic. JD Salinger was Jewish. Of course he got heavily into Buddhism but I think you need to understand there's an additional element to Salinger-----he was a Jew born into a Jewish family, then discovered at some point that his mother (like Bessie Gallagher Glass) wasn't actually Jewish. (Hence the story in 9 Stories which is about anti-Semitism.)

>>1974431

I didn't mean WASP literally, I meant WASP as a byword for a posh, wealthy person (at least that's how people in the UK use it).

Franzen writes about white people problems (and does this well, I think). Just don't read The Twenty-Seventh City.

%s/WASP/JAP/g

same shit different toilet

>>1974436

Is WASP really just used as a synonym for "posh and wealthy" in the UK? It was coined as a sociological term, by E. Digby Baltzell----it stands for "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant", i.e., white English-speakers who aren't Jewish, Irish or Roman Catholic (or anything else that might try to "pass" for WASPy).

>>1973671
Haha

>>1974118
Hahahah

>>1974450

I know what it means, yesyesyes, I'm saying it's a byword for posh and / or rich. It's usually 'old money'. Personally, I want to marry a WASP heiress.

>>1974118
lol anon, lol.

>STOP KICKING ME IN THE FACE
>THAT OTHER GUY OVER THERE HAS TO EAT DIRT WHILE HIS FACE IS BEING KICKED IN STOP COMPLAINING

Well maybe if minorities were more introspective which leads to higher pay jobs they wouldn't have to work at KFC and could have problems like white people do.

if you mean

"humanity that has enough leisure time to ponder the serious questions of person to person relation that has no ties to finances and cannot thus be hidden under them (ie. needed-to-survive , ruthlessness OK'd! as opposed to, ruthlessness is ruthlessness on every level.

CAN HARM BE JUSTIFIED? CAN ONE DO NO HARM?)

but, it's cool to tear down geniuses, right? it's cool to be a hack.

you never were a glass, were you?

I pity all you urchins. you phony bastard entitled collars of work.

>Angsty white teenage wunderkind from rich family who's faced a tragedy struggles to find himself by blowing money on hookers and drugs.

What would be astounding if someone bothered to write about someone who wasn't an underachiever with 150 IQ. You know, about AVERAGE people?

>white
suburbanite problems is probably a better term, you racist

>>1973692
>White people don't deal with reality so poorly that they struggle to meet their basic needs.
fixed

>>1974602
you've achieved so much by having white skin bro, congrats.

>Displaying this much hate for something that never has or never will effect you or make your life worse in any way, shape or form.

Sure is Holden in here.

>>1974589
It doesn't really pack as much of a punch, though

I would think that a well-off person of any ethnic background could enjoy a number of "white people problems", just like a poor person of any ethnic background could have the pleasure of being described as a "broke ass nigga" and a sufficiently thrifty person of any breeding a "dirty jew bastard"

then again, my grasp on social norms is pretty feeble and is determined mostly by the years i've spent on 4chan

>>1974604
I'll allow that I've had some advantages from the fact that my parents weren't fuck-ups, and they had some advantages from the fact that their parents weren't fuck-ups, and them from theirs.

But the main one in each case was inheriting the genetic traits and being educated in the culture of non-fuck-ups.

There was no God of Races that dropped prosperity and power on some, and decreed that others should struggle and suffer. Time and chance happeneth and all, but on the average, you get what you have the strength and will to make or take.

Even if all of this persecution complex stuff wasn't whiny self-pitying bullshit, what would be the excuse for ending up in a position where you're powerless to prevent this persecution?

Looking through history and around the world, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that it's the norm outside of modern western culture for one group to think it just owes other groups good treatment as some kind of obligatory charity.

Am I expected to apologize for strength AND pretend not to have it? The world is not such a ridiculous place, and I don't think about it in such ridiculous ways.

If you read books like this, especially outside of school, you probably are a "white person," or an affluent person. People that work long hours trying to make ends meet typically don't have time to read.

People read about things they can relate to. Besides, books about being poor, working a lot and yet still never getting ahead just aren't that interesting IMO.