/lit/ - Literature

I've tried listening to some of his lectures but the man is a horrible speaker. A fat flem filled turtle who speaks at 3 words and 30 coughs a minute. And he doesn't even talk about the subject (moby d or hamlet for example) he just references other authors or art and never says anything. Hubert Dreyfuss' lecture on moby d by contrast was much better and very enlightening.

Reddit has Neil Degrasse Tyson. /lit/ has Harold Bloom

>and that's why Exile on Main Street is superior to any of these so called albums these modern 'artists' produce, ah yes I think it might even be as good as Astral Weeks or even Abbey Road

>>20351411
Read something of his.

>>20351569
I don't read anything written by Jews

>>20351411

I used to have respect for him but I personally think his whole approach is kind of shallow and actually opposed to critical engagement with the "canon" he defends. The concept of a canon itself is stupid, too, in my opinion. If these books are really so good their value will last regardless of whether some dusty old fucks try to enshrine them in the vaults of untouchability. Plus I heard he was a bad professor and a total creep. I can't really remember why I formed this opinion, though, it was a long time ago that I even cared enough to think about him.

>>20351488
I always thought he’d be more into Progressive Rock and Metal, especially considering how epic and theatrical they are.

You’re called to your door by an unexpected ring. Greeting you pleasantly, a somewhat disheveled old man in a rumpled cardigan, wishes to convince you of something urgent for your own good. His doleful eyes and sincere manner convince you to let him in and and to take a seat. He launches into a long winded lecture about the importance of Shakespeare in our daily lives.

Stealing a moments break from this dry yet interesting speech, you offer to fetch some drinks from the kitchen. Upon your return you see he has started some kindling aflame in your fireplace and presently is cracking the spines and rumpling the pages of your collection of Lovecraft horror stories. Looking up at you he tosses it on the kindling.

”I’m sorry to have to inform you, but this will never be anything other than cheap schlock. And never considered for the canon. You’re better off without its presence embarrassing you on your shelves. Not even tucking it away in a dusty cardboard box in the attic could you escape the shame. Let it go lad. Let it go”

>>20351889
>and a total creep
Story time?

>>20351411
Because he wrote books. Books document human thought. This is what we are interested in.

>>20351889
>The concept of a canon itself is stupid
I fucking hate it. Its the antithesis of creativity. And I hate the effects it has on the culture here. Some many anons have been mentally colonised and its sad - you see it in the write threads with people aping the style of the 19th century three volume novel because they've imbibed the idea that this is what good literature is. And poetry threads can be even worse.
It's such a waste that creative intelligent young men are dutifully ploughing through the same tired classics instead of immersing themselves in contemporary writing which they could actually respond and contribute to in a creative way

>>20351973

>>20352029
>immersing themselves in contemporary writing
Name five great books written in the past 5 years.

>>20351411
Forced by the juden press and promoted by jews and newfags on here

>>20352078
>great books
You are part of the problem nigga. A book doesn't have to be 'great', whatever that means. You aren't going to mine any fresh gold from Crime and Punishment 150 years after the fact, no matter how great it is
The purpose of art is not to collect all the pokemons

>>20352098
>A book doesn't have to be 'great'
Yes, it does. Our life is short, our time limited.

Show me a really nice contemporary book and I might give you my time.

>>20352029
You can't write avant garde without knowing the canon. Nobody is seriously suggesting that you should mimic the great classics. That produces subpar and unoriginal works. But the concept of a collection of the most influential works is a necessary one if you ever want to appreciate, understand, and engage in a dialogue with any contemporary literature, because it is necessarily influenced by prior works. If I never read Shakespeare's sonnets, then tried to write my own sonnet, it would turn out trite and derivative. I wouldn't even be aware of the tropes to avoid. Don't be silly.

>/lit/ used to love and defend him
>now they hate him
My, how things have changed in a decade.

>>20352098
>Baww why are people reading good books
>When they could read mediocre and bad books instead
>People have a duty to suffer so modern literature can be "saved"
Yeah I'm pretty sure your two braincells haven't crossed paths in the past few months.

mike silverblatt is the true king of /lit/

>>20351488
Imagine thinking a Rolling Stones album is nearly as good as Astral Weeks

I can't believe he's gone bros

>>20352152
is this supposed to be a bad thing

>>20352098
Alright, I'll take the bait. Name one interesting recurring theme in literature of the past 5 years then.
>inb4 trannies
>inb4 niggers

>>20352152
As much as he champions good literature he has said a lot of stupid shit, like the first five books of the Old Testament being written by a woman.

>>20352098
>You aren't going to mine any fresh gold from Crime and Punishment 150 years after the fact, no matter how great it is
Well you clearly missed the point of reading the classics. It's not that you're going to discover something new to the world, it's that you're going to discover something new to YOU and get CAUGHT UP to where everyone who already read Crime and Punishment IS. How the fuck are you going to contribute anything good to contemporary literature if you haven't read the classics? On accident? Are you going to revolutionize mathematics without learning multiplication?

>>20351411
Anyway I don't like Bloom based on what I've heard from several of his lectures. I've used his list of "the canon" as a starting point but there's more value in the critiques other people write than in slavishly following his list. In fact I rather think pic rel is more useful.

>>20352029
Except contemporary literature is almost always utter fucking garbage. I remember when I was 12 years old or so, I picked up a copy of Frankenstein I saw at an airport, thinking that I'd find the typical scifi story that one would've expected through pop culture. 20 pages in, however, I was blown the fuck away upon seeing how high the English language can be elevated and how beautifully thoughts can be expressed. I'd read the entirety of Harry Potter and the Rick Riordan garbage by that point. Yet it was in the course of half an hour that I had my entire literary overturned forever. Ask any literate person; the Augustan and Romantic style is the very peak of our language.

>>20352526
literary conscience*

>>20352029
Correct. I still hate that bloomian mentality for making me waste 4 or 5 years of my literary formation doing stupid shit like reading *thousands* of Renaissance sonnets and copying down hundreds of Greek verb conjugations.
Not that those things are bad, but as Samuel Beckett said: "Don't waste too much time on erudition. It's a trap." Fortunately I managed to develop my own critical consciousness eventually, and finally became a writer with a personal style. This happened one year and a half ago. It could and should have happened much earlier.
My problem is not with studying and learning the classics, which you should do in order to avoid them, but with this whole "mentality of reverence" which is so common among students, including here on /lit/.

>>20351411
A better question is why is literature so intellectually bad? You wouldn't believe the sort of shit people say on this board or what renowned literary critics say. It's nearly as bad as politics. Profoundly ignorant of most topics they confidently speak upon and as superficial as popular opinion (cowardly narrativisation, half-truths). They seem to believe reading stories elevates them and that's substantial enough.

>>20352029
I'm reminded of people liking P&V translations for this very reason. You have to disregard good writing or even proper English to maintain this. It's not just the status of the books, classics of Russian literature, but how the popularisation of translations works commercially and academically. They are so enveloped in this that they cannot distinguish status from writing and honestly evaluate what they are reading.

>>20352098
Kys

>>20352629
>"Don't waste too much time on erudition. It's a trap."
What do you think he meant?

>>20352152
/lit/ is always a pendulum. Whenever someone gets a bunch of threads praising them a few months later there will be a bunch shitting on them for no reason. The cycle continues.

>>20352629
Bloom never said you hafta read stuff in Greek or read poems by Petrach/Dante. You just gotta read Shakespeare very well and closely so you can come off as well read.

>>20351411
>>20351433
>>20351889
Resentful commies found

>in American universities, colleges, secondary schools and academies, throughout the Anglophone world, a tremendous debate has been going on now for about the last twenty years or so
>it is akin to the debate between the Moderns and the Ancients during the 17th and 18th ce in France and England.
>One the one hand, you had the moderns claiming that the literary output of their contemporaries was better than the one from antiquity thanks to increase of knowledge during that time span.
>On the other, you have the ancients defending the literature from antiquity who claim that the moderns stand upon the shoulders of ancient giants: there would be no Pope without Horace, Shakespeare without Seneca, Racine without Aeschylus, Ariosto without Virgil, Moliere without Plautus, Cervantes without Apuleius, Ronsard without Ovid and on and on and on.
>In a paradoxical manner, the very same modern authors and poets who were lauded as being superior took the side of the ancients, thereby acknowledging their debt and inferiority.
>In the anglophone world, the notion of a canon has been politicized and as a result denigrated by our universities. As a consequence, the average reading ability and comprehension of even ivy league educated individuals pales in comparison to the ones educated two or three generations back who were nourished upon Mount Parnassus.
>A secondary result of this is that our literary critics have dull aesthetic judgement; a literary work is useful in so far that it furthers a political goal; the use of language, the play on themes, the gem-like form of thought expressed escapes their attention.

>>20351411
The publishing industry was consolidate around this time a century ago, largely in NYC. Pre-internet dramatically limited information flow through legacy media, so you get ordained court scholars and jesters like this one. There you go.

>>20353076
>What do you think he meant?
He worked under James Joyce on things like Finnegan's, he'd know. You can only have one foot in the past, or one in the future.

>>20353477
>misuses "paradoxical" when he meant "ironically"
See this is why I can't take these "authorities" seriously. You read a couple pages of their actual writing and suddenly you realize they're really not that smart.

>>20353562
>he thinks the meme zoomer use of ironically is proper
Like literally lmao though

>>20352329
>the first five books of the Old Testament being written by a woman.
I think I saw an interview where he mentioned that but more in a way of 'oh, well here's a neat theory. Anyway...' Did he ever write at length on the topic/take it seriously?

>>20353610
>Did he ever write at length on the topic/take it seriously?
He has a book on it called The Book of J.

>>20351889
There's nothing wrong with the idea of a canon. Everything has, and must have a canon, or else the ideal form of a thing wouldn't even be recognizable.

>The word "canon" comes from the Greek kanon, which in its original usage denoted a straight rod that was later the instrument used by architects and artificers as a measuring stick for making straight lines. Kanon eventually came to mean a rule or norm, so that when the first ecumenical council—Nicaea I—was held in 325, kanon started to obtain the restricted juridical denotation of a law promulgated by a synod or ecumenical council, as well as that of an individual bishop.

>>20351411
Because he reads. And for /lit/ that’s enough.

>>20351889
>total creep.
Tell me again why someone's social graces matter in the grand scheme of literature?

>>20353598
No, it's literally irony. He's describing an argument over who's better: the ancient writers or the writers of today. He says it is paradoxical that the writers of today say the ancient writers are better, but that's not a paradox (a logical inconsistency). It's irony, that a group would be arguing over the relative position of another group, and that group disagreeing with the first group. Only a logiclet who doesn't know geometry would think that's a paradox.

>>20353716
>The Book of J
Robert Alter BTFO Bloom's sloppy scholarship on that book.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-alter-2/harold-blooms/

>>20355141
The paradox is that asserting the better writers are modern requires asserting that they are poorer judges of quality (because they think the ancients were better), which we would typically take to be a sign of being a poorer writer.

>>20353762
>Everything has, and must have a canon, or else the ideal form of a thing wouldn't even be recognizable.
Fuck Aristotelians.
t. Plato gang

>>20355364
That is a paradox, but I don't think that's what Bloom was describing based on the quote that was posted. His overall thesis appears to be that the ancients are superior to the moderns and he found it interesting that the modern writers would say the ancients were better, even when a selection of critics were saying the moderns were better. There's not even an apparent paradox in that statement, it's just irony. Similar to if in an election, after a bitter and hard fought campaign Candidate A says he agrees with Party B that Candidate B would be the better choice and votes for them.

>>20355391
>Irony refers to situations or dialogues where the apparent meaning of a statement or action is inconsistent with its intended meaning
>Paradox refers to the juxtaposition of situations or statements that lead to an unexpected result

>>20356371
Irony: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.
It is IRONIC that after the literary critics argued that modern writers are superior to the ancient writers, the modern writers announced that they thought the ancient writers were better.

holy fuck this thread is trash
what the fuck happened to this board?
>>20357279
why are you so ignorant?

>looking at the stack of newly bought manga pile up on my desk as I watch harold bloom explain how life is short and one shouldn't waste it reading trash

>>20351411
His romantic interpretation of Shakespeare is stupid.

>grotesque goblin man
Cool it with the antisemitic remarks

>>20351411
Go home stephen you're drunk

>>20359820
He doesn’t really look like a goblin, honestly. Looks more like a bulldog or a basset hound

>>20353477
>thanks to increase of knowledge during that time span.
Kek this is so on the nose. Nowadays faggots bolster this with claiming moral superiority as well. OMG A GUY FROM THE 17TH CE SAID A NONO IM LITERALLY SHAKING AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SAVE ME

>>20360747
forgot pic

>>20353477
>>A secondary result of this is that our literary critics have dull aesthetic judgement; a literary work is useful in so far that it furthers a political goal; the use of language, the play on themes, the gem-like form of thought expressed escapes their attention.
That's like 90% of literary critics throughout history. Fuck Bloom and his "golden age" mythology.

>>20353610
He wrote about it a bit in the Western Canon.

>>20358539
Well if nothing else mangos are quick to read, you won't waste too much time.

>>20351488
wtf i love bloom now

>>20351411
He is what could be considered conservative for a literary critic and stands up to critical theory and leftist attacks against the canon. He's also an anglo. Those are the the main reasons why he is popular here instead of, say, Erich Auerbach, who was a much better theorist but less politicized.

>>20351889
>If these books are really so good their value will last regardless of whether some dusty old fucks try to enshrine them in the vaults of untouchability.
Have you been asleep for the last few years??

>>20351411
A critic is always a somewhat tragic figure because in his heart he would rather be a writer. James Wood embraces this contradiction by writing novels that are ignored, but it is basically a universal.

>>20351973
As I observe the deed this vile bug-eyed goblin of a man did to my personal belongings, I reach for the knife I had recently purchased at a small quaint op-shop on one of my road-trips. Pulling out the blade silently, I lunged at his neck and sink the cold metal deep into his wrinkled turkey-throat. His already bulbous eyes pop out of his misshapen skull even more as he lets out a gurgling gasp and reaches pathetically at my person, as if to throttle me in a final effort of life. He slumps down next to the fire where he had burned my possessions, the blood spurting at intervals from his throat and hissing devilishly as they hit the nearby flames. I sardonically crouch down to his gurgling and gasping form and titter to myself hilariously, and as he nears his final departure from this mortal plane, I lean into his over-sized ear and whisper....
"Nigger"....

>>20362214
Ah I fucked up the tense a little, but whatever

>>20352029

Oh boy, I can't wait to read "Immigrant Racism Story", "I Hate Being a Woman", or that special classic "My Opinions: by Right Wing Twitter Grifter". Truly sensational works, that nothing from the past could ever hope to match.

>>20352141
>>20352495
Read the posts you are responding to. The problem he's complaining about is precisely that people read the classics and go no further, and slavishly imitate them, and if you've spent any time on this board you know exactly what he's talking about.
Instead of actually engaging with literature as it is, anons tend to stay in their rooms, studying the blade, and respond to literature as it was a hundred years ago.
Yes you need knowledge of the canon, but you can't stop at 1922 and expect to have anything relevant to say.
To continue the math analogy, you don't study all the math up to 1950, then refuse to engage with any subsequent developments because they aren't part of muh canon of great math which is the only thing a gentleman like myself could possibly deign to recognise.

>>20352098
ideas about guilt after a heinous act and the path to redemption will forever be timeless

a book written about dancing on tiktok and gender identity is laughable today, and will be alien when the west unfortunately implodes.

>>20362153
Not him, but have you read Bloom?

>>20363061
This is why I read the classics AND read absolute trash light novels and web novels and send emails to the authors.

>>20363061
Your comparison works against you. Today americans get teached math as common core Version, which is retarded compared to "old math" not to speak of all the idiots who try to bring identity politics into it now, which only degenerates it further. You would be smarter if you ignore all the modern math stuff and just stick to the old stuff.
Same applies with todays books. There are no new great works, no improvements anymore.You only get pseuds who write garbage and say they break ground because they do it different. But the only thing they do is break traditions that work for non working solutions.

>>20352078
>>20352139
>>20352308
>>20352526
>>20362735
>>20363120
>>20363658

>>20363658
Frankly I'd like to see how a bunch of children taught Treviso arithmetic turned out. "Casting Nines" just sounds so cool even if it will occasionally fail.

>>20363061
t. Rupi Kaur

>>20352029
You don't have respect for older literature?

He is just ok. Readable criticism, sometimes enjoyable. Marred by an obsequious desire to have his big ideas respected.

Yale, or something. I couldn't tell you, honestly.

>>20365408
Not that guy, but even having a canon is like "literature by numbers." It's little more than a laundry list of "important" works, as deemed so by some myopic people who never made any important works themselves.

>>20365719
Though your concern is valid, it's worth mentioning that the concept of canon is quite old, and not a more recent innovation. There were people in the past that thought of the Matter of Britain, the Matter of France, and the Matter of Rome.

>>20365408
(not that anon) Why are you a faggot? Why should you "respect" literally any text, of any age? Books are made to be read, to be praised and criticised, not fucking "respected". Nobody cares about your respect, art is not meant to be a cult.

>>20355371
>he bought into the Plato and Aristotle are philosophically incompatible meme

Leave this board and don’t come back until you read what actual platonists thought of Aristotle.

>>20366461
>>20365719
Let's get practical here. If we choose to have a canon, what actions are taken? What circumstances do people end up in? Now if we choose to not have one. What then?

>>20366579
participation trophies

>>20352219
I punched a v-card while Astral Weeks was playing; I came during "The Way Young Lovers Do."

>>20365408
Lots of old literature is great. But the problem with Bloom and his acolytes is they put it on a pedestal as some untouchable pinnacle we mere mortals can only gaze up at. Bloom seems to think like this:
>Don Quixote/Shakespeare/Dostoevsky is the best literature possible
>this is literature
>therefore it is inferior to Don Quixote/Shakespeare/Dostoevsky
It's a cucked, backward looking attitude from which nothing good or original can possibly come.
I'm not saying [insert modern writer] is superior, but I'm open to the possibility that he is. Canon fags are not,they treat literature as a solved, dead, form.

>>20351411
>Why do people care what this grotesque goblin man thinks again?
Because he said Shakespeare created the humane.

>>20352098
>>20352029
>>20351889
YWNBAW

>>20363427
are you me

>>20366579
(I'm the first anon there) I primarily addressed the part about "respect". A canon is not about respect. But I'll respond anyway.
>If we choose to have a canon, what actions are taken?
A canon is hardly "chosen", it was/is a given, in one form or another, as long as there exists a community of readers.
>What circumstances do people end up in?
(Texts, not people, are in the canon.) As they always have, through tacit agreement of at least one generation of learned readers (critics and literary historiographers and educational institutions playing an especially influential role) on what are to be the reference points in our understanding of (the history and nature of) literature.
>Now if we choose to not have one. What then?
As I said, there is probably no community without a canon. Bloom was not arguing against people who wanted to remove the canon from existence. He was arguing against those who would wish to reform it. I still do not know of anyone who would reject it altogether, it seems a rather absurd and useless idea.

>>20367540
You haven’t read Bloom, have you?

>>20367556
go back to your containment board