/lit/ - Literature

Because the average fervent reader is not looking to be mentally challenged or posture as high minded like the people here. They want something digestable and unique.

>>20364476
Ironic that you have seemingly failed the mental challenge of understanding the book.

>>20364476
The thing is there is nothing unique about this book. I'm trying hard not to be a hater but there was only one part where I was truly captivated. It doesn't do anything special its just text on a page following the same format as some YA shit.

>>20364485
(You)
>>20364489
Maybe to you, but I’m assuming you’ve read weirder things, being associated with this shit hole after all. Also be a hater, I don’t give a fuck and the book may legit suck, I’m just giving my assessment of what’s going on here

>>20364476
I love being mentally challenged.

newest hot book in the genre of 'diary of a outsider loner freak' - previous entrants include l'etranger, the bell jar, notes from the underground, good old neon, american psycho, confessions of a mask, sorrows of young werther, and then obviously pretty much any film big with the sigma crowd - taxi driver, joker, king of comedy, mishima, raging bull, etc.

moshfegh's prose is, while not stunning, readable, the story re-markets what has so far been a largely male aesthetic (sigma wolf stuff) to the femcel crowd, i've heard it called 'aloof-core' but think that that name is pretty stupid, this is nothing new.

Despite being set in the 90s, it captures contemporary anomie very well. She writes well.
If it was 120 years old and about some devastingly handsome Russian nobleman drugging himself with laudanum because he finds the decadent society around him too much to bear /lit/ would consider it the greatest novel ever written

>>20364611
>Russian nobleman drugging himself with laudanum because he finds the decadent society around him too much to bear /lit/ would consider it the greatest novel ever written
Change Russian to French and that describes J.-K. Huysmans work in a sense, and Huysmans is considered one of the greats. So what you're really saying is it's derivative. It's just the same old schtick but now woman!

>>20364468
STOP READING FEMALE AUTHORS! Pierenesi and The Lathe of Heaven however are exceptions.

>>20364694
>just the same old schtick
Welcome to books fren, enjoy your stay.
But she writes much better than Huysmans, she doesn't have the laboured 19th century prose style

This is how the novel starts:

>Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed. I’d get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again. I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by. When I thought of it, I ordered delivery from the Thai restaurant across the street, or a tuna salad platter from the diner on First Avenue. I’d wake up to find voice messages on my cell phone from salons or spas confirming appointments I’d booked in my sleep. I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people. Early on in this phase, I had my dirty laundry picked up and clean laundry delivered once a week. It was a comfort to me to hear the torn plastic bags rustle in the draft from the living room windows. I liked catching whiffs of the fresh laundry smell while I dozed off on the sofa. But after a while, it was too much trouble to gather up all the dirty clothes and stuff them in the laundry bag. And the sound of my own washer and dryer interfered with my sleep. So I just threw away my dirty underpants. All the old pairs reminded me of Trevor, anyway. For a while, tacky lingerie from Victoria’s Secret kept showing up in the mail—frilly fuchsia and lime green thongs and teddies and baby-doll nightgowns, each sealed in a clear plastic Baggie. I stuffed the little Baggies into the closet and went commando. An occasional package from Barneys or Saks provided me with men’s pajamas and other things I couldn’t remember ordering—cashmere socks, graphic T-shirts, designer jeans. I took a shower once a week at most. I stopped tweezing, stopped bleaching, stopped waxing, stopped brushing my hair. No moisturizing or exfoliating. No shaving. I left the apartment infrequently. I had all my bills on automatic payment plans. I’d already paid a year of property taxes on my apartment and on my dead parents’ old house upstate. Rent money from the tenants in that house showed up in my checking account by direct deposit every month. Unemployment was rolling in as long as I made the weekly call into the automated service and pressed “1” for “yes” when the robot asked if I’d made a sincere effort to find a job. That was enough to cover the copayments on all my prescriptions, and whatever I picked up at the bodega. Plus, I had investments. My dead father’s financial advisor kept track of all that and sent me quarterly statements that I never read. I had plenty of money in my savings account, too—enough to live on for a few years as long as I didn’t do anything spectacular.

>>20364551
>and the book may legit suck,
And he reveals he hasn't actually read it!

Why would you pass judgement on a book you have not read? dare I say you are judging a book by it's cover?

Pseud behaviour if I've ever seen it. You should kill yourself.

>>20364713
>But she writes much better than Huysmans
I highly doubt this. But one day I will find out because both authors on are on my radar. I'll probably hit Huysmans first because I've been going through nearly the entire œuvres of some French authors

>>20364750
>stopped bleaching [my asshole]
Do women really?

>>20364975
>I highly doubt this
Why? Modern prose is much better than old prose.

>>20364998
I don't think /lit is ready to fully understand and accept this statement as the truth that it is.

>>20364755
Are you actually this retarded? Point me to the judgement I made about the book; I’m talking about what normies like. You must be one sad fuck to be this desperate to ebin destroy someone on 4chan. Consider going outside for a bit?

>>20364468
It doesn't suck, it's actually kind of funny and redpilled

>>20365061
Have you read the book?

>>20364998
>>20365050
Well, this is how Moby Dick starts:

> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land.

>>20365097
Have you read anything I posted?

>>20364998
You're right. Modern prose, as in modernism, is the best prose out there.

>>20365122
Fuck, now I'm going to have to reread Moby Dick. Thanks anon

>>20365137
Yep, and Huysmans is closer to it than contemporary scribblers

>>20365163
Ha, good luck, it's a great novel and you will also learn a lot about whales

>>20365129
Why are you in the thread if you haven't read the book?

>>20365219
Why are you responding to me if you’re not reading my posts?

>>20365254
What could you possibly contribute to the thread if you haven't read the book?

>>20365262
What could you possibly say of relevance to me without responding to what I’m actually saying?

>>20365272
You're a nigger.

>>20364468
Because the person who reads this schlock is a retard who listens to red scare

>>20364468
notes from the underground for women

>>20365428
couldnt be me!

>>20364750
>>20365122
both of these books rock :-)

>>20364468
All I've heard is its about a woman trying to sleep for a year.

Sounds based tbf

>>20364750
Oh. I think this might have ruined some portion of literature for me. This isn't even something that happened, or could happen to someone in real life. It's as much of a masturbatory fantasy about detaching from the world as it's possible to do with out inflicting friction burns. It's probably slightly mentally damaging for a normal person to read, too, in the same way cancerous memes are.

Please don't tell me Walden, or the books in >>20364591 are like this.

>>20365210
I see you said reread, nghhh. I actually read it twice myself.
>>20365549
What exactly are you talking about? Melville became a sailor as a 20 year old chap, spent 5 months on a whale hunting ship, explored some Polynesian islands. The average internet addict of our times cannot even remotely comprehend what that meant as an experience and the novel is quite authentic in all the little deails of whaling and living in the middle on the ocean.

>>20365549
you talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded

>>20365612
He's right, though. That shit's pure brain rot for people who need an onanist exercise of wound self-licking and ego-boosting detachment put into text.
No fucking wonder Wallace killed himself lol

>>20365647
have you read it?

>>20365647
i'm reminded of how SJWs hate classics like No Longer Human because the protag is a shithead and the author is promoting it and ruining society etc etc

Have you read the whole book? She's extremely unlikeable and isolates herself even from her only friend, who she thinks is too boring for her.I don't think that's an ego boost for anyone

>>20365438
fat lana :(

>>20365549
Why couldn't that happen? I've lived close to that life here and there when I was doing tons of drugs and only leaving to buy more.

>>20364556
Kek

>>20364556
i loled

>>20364750
I think this is meh but I can completely understand why someone would love it. Makes me think of picrel

>>20364755
Lmfao typical /lit/ strong opinion about a book he hasn't read.

>>20365122
As soon as I see anti-depressant references in poems or novels -- especially right off the bat -- I lose interest.

>>20364998
>they hated him because he told the truth
Prose before the modernists is like that goofy acting style you get in old Jimmy Stewart movies. I get it, that's how they did it back then, but anyone who pretends they don't find it goofy and fake is a pseud.

>>20364468
>Woman writer
>Cannot get past the 1st page without talking about underwear
>Cannot go a page without "reminds me of Trevor" (presumed ex)
>"I don't have to work, btw"

This is as shallow as any pulp romance but manages to actually offend by presuming itself to be more. I don't care that some upper-middle class new yorker is vaguely unhappy. Pass.

>>20367562
So you think >>20364750 is better than >>20365122

>>20365122
SOVL
>>20364750
soulless

>>20364468
So is this the female Houellebecq for art hoes?
It's weird that the cover uses that font, the Kubrick font? Did Adam Curtis make this popular with these people?

>>20368195
what the FUCK are you even talking about. the boogeymen that people itt build up over a novel is astounding. i suppose becoming pearl-clutchers is the last step for a group of perpetual contrarians

>>20368211
>female Houellebecq
its pretty clear what I'm talking about retard, I know nothing about this novel

>>20368211
You people are contrarian, he says being contrarian. What set you off buddy?

>>20364556
Jej

>>20366093
First of all, it's too neat and clean. The extent of letting go is right at the edge of what one could live with, ie dirty clothes and showering minimally. Real addicts who let themselves go wouldn't stop there: they'd be making friends with the roaches and mold would be everywhere. Second, the author spends a paragraph's worth of text describing the safety net the protag is lying on. It's not enough she has rental properties. It's not enough she has an apartment. She has to ALSO have enough savings to live off if "anything happens", and also her drugs are conveniently cheap and prescription. Oh, AND she's abusing unemployment, sticking it "to the man" with her hedonism and sloth.

It's just unreal. Like if you had a rape fetish and worked out this elaborate scheme to "safely" get "raped" and described the process of giving your friend a list of guys to choose from, having her pick out the location, having her take you out to get drunk, the guy showing up and talking tough, how she "gets scared" but then the man suavely makes it clear he's in on it but so her friend doesn't see the signal, so then she can pretend over and over and over that she's getting raped even though she knows it's fake, and then it happens. The next paragraph would be the performance review, where the protag "takes back the power" by grading the man on his performance in her little plot.

Like what depressed druggie gives a shit about property taxes? It wouldn't even cross their mind. But it DOES cross the mind of the functional depressed person, of just tired overworked person, as a reason why they can't quit their job and why they have to keep grinding even though they have all these other revenue streams and if they really were okay lowering their standard of living to only buying coffee, sandwiches, and laundry service, then they could take a year off right now, but no... I don't have enough savings yet... oh and property taxes... woe is me, but I'll read THIS BOOK and fantasize about it while doing nothing, or worse, fantasize that I can mess with drugs just a little bit, on the weekend, to see what it's like, and then get hooked and their life falls apart because having that many safety nets is utterly unrealistic.

>>20365612
I'm a recovering alcoholic, so I guess it just hits harder for me. Substance abuse isn't funny and it's not a cure for depression or burnout.

>>20368563
REEEEEE IM A DEPRESSED ALOCHOLIC AND IT WASNT LIKE THAT REEEEE

>>20368563

>>20368567
Yes.

>>20368195
it's called Helvetica zoomer

>>20364468
(((Moshe)))

>>20364468
So you haven't read it yet?

>>20368807
Doesn't look like it, no.

>>20368563
why do you assume she's an addict

>>20364468
Can you actually critique the book without resorting to buzzwords?

>>20365122
literally incredible

>>20369505
True, to put make the fantasy even more masturbatory, she's been doing drugs for years and ISN'T addicted to them, she just does them purely for the pleasure and suffers no ill effects. So I'll rescind what I said about addiction, obviously that no longer applies.

>>20364556
lmao

>>20364750
>has the means to be a carefree NEET
>wastes this opportunity
Nothing makes a wagecuck like me as mad as a hikikomri who doesn't appreciate how good they've got it.

>>20364468
A woman relaxing - how novel.
If a woman does nothing "she deserves it" - "you go, girl!"
If a man does nothing "he is a man-child", "selfish", "useless".

Whenever I have a day off and sit at one of the cafes in the city, early in the morning, I see two types of people: women and their children. Their husbands are off working somewhere. But women have it oh-so-hard. Eat, pray, love girls! So empowering. So deep. Mentally, women are between men and children. In contribution to society, they are often even below children as we are often inclined to give to women first, even before children. "Women and children first!" was the motto when disaster struck. But they were oh-so-oppressed.

>>20364468
Did you actually read it, or are you just posturing?

>>20370460
come back when you’ve engaged with the actual text instead of your DT hallucinations

>>20368211
YWNBAW and red scare is retarded, loser

>>20372248
Have you read the book?

>>20372248
i can’t catch all your monster-of-the-week references there, but you should go back to your containment board

the reason why houellebecq, goncharov, et. al. and the superflous man genre works is because men are interesting even in the limbo state of decay while being furniture is just the default state for white women.

>>20372260
>>20372254
>t.

>>20372371
what does your low-res selfie have to do with this thread?

Amazing how many anons miss the very obvious point made in the first paragraph. The narrator is writing in the past tense about a phase of her life that was sad and disgusting. She’s telling us this because we can learn from her mistakes. It’s not a book about how “based” detaching from society is; it’s a book about why giving into self-isolation is ultimately destructive. Her old lifestyle is portrayed as disgusting because she’s grown, and is now disgusted by it.

Fucking illiterate, the lot of you.

>>20372420
Post wrist

>>20372654
oh, anon, be-have!

>>20372626
Red scare piggies are not going to fuck you despite fucking most fat losers who simp for them

>>20372678
Thank God your mom doesn't listen to Red Scare then huh.

>>20364468
>>20364750
>I’m a trust fund kid jewess, look at me I’m LARPing as a decadent aristocrat of the 19th century
Anyone with good taste would feel nothing but contempt for this lowly parasite.

>>20372688

>>20367376
really sad, this

>>20367376
The fact that this schlock is read by predominantly larping retarded art hoes and effeminate men larping as intellectuals says everything you need to know about the book

>>20372696
have you read the book?

>>20372717
Have you read the book?

>>20372678
What’s a red scare piggy?

>It’s a fair concern. Six years into the game, Moshfegh knows you might already have an opinion about her. She’s built her reputation on characters who exist on the margins of society. They are murderers, substance abusers, deadbeats, pervs. She reveals them at their least refined: They fantasize about being raped, or are themselves violent; they vomit, they release “torrential, oceanic” excrement.

>If you are put off by her candor, by the impression she gives of being sure of her own skill, oh well. Modesty is a luxury Moshfegh can’t afford — life is too short. She knows when she’s going to die (she won’t say, too private), so until then she’s going to focus on accessing the spiritual corners of her being through narrative, and not on whether or not you like her.

>Frustrated with readers’ fixation on Eileen’s ugliness, Moshfegh gave the self-harming, unnamed heroine of her next novel, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” the looks of a supermodel. “It required me to imagine what it’s like to not be an outsider,” she said. Here instead was “an insider who wants out”: a beautiful, tormented 20-something trying, with the help of prescription narcotics, to black out of life altogether.

>“It required me to imagine what it’s like to not be an outsider,” she said.
Moshfegh was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1981.[3] Her mother was born in Croatia and her father, who is Jewish,[4] was born in Iran.[5] Her parents were both musicians and taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. As a child, Moshfegh learned to play piano and clarinet.[2] She attended the Commonwealth School in Boston[6] and received her BA in English from Barnard College in 2002.[7] She completed an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2011.[7] She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University from 2013-2015.[8][9]

Yeah, rough life on the margins, Ottessa. Can't wait to see what insights into the human condition I can get by reading a rich Bostonite writing about depressed twentysomethings who can easily afford prescription pills to abuse. I bet that kind of totally unprecedented narcissistic drivel, I mean authentic lived experience, was real hard to dream up during your MFA at Brown and fellowship at Stanford.

>>20372853
Leftist land whale that listens to Red Scare podcast

>>20364485
>>20364755
>>20365097
>>20365219
>>20365262
>>20365680
>>20367376
>>20368211
>>20368807
>>20369643
>>20371766
>>20372254
>>20372727
>>20372841
Stop spamming
>OH NO YOU DIDNT READ MY HECKING SCHLOCKERINOOOOOOO
>NOOOOOO HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOKERINOOOO
fuck off, insect, and go back to >>>/lgbt/ where you belong

>>20372872
She's everything I expected her to be.

>>20372932
Just answer the question chud: have you read the book?

>>20372964
Stop spamming the board with your infantilism.

>>20372959
I especially like how all the interviews with her note that they went to trendy upscale restaurants, or they did a totally wacky interview where they got pedicures where oriental slaves can tend to their feet while they talk about how they went to the same finishing schools.

Is this the most odious class in history? At least neo-Assyrians just enslaved you, these people enslave you and then want you to read books about how they're still authentic just like you, while immigrants wash their feet, and their dad calls in another favor at Stanford to secure another three years of them not having to work a real job or survive on their merits.

>based Ottessa triggering the chuds as effortlessly as she triggers the pompous lit-ho crowd

>>20372969
Ask yourself why you are on a board for literature when you don't read; even more confusing, ask yourself why you feel the need to interject yourself into a conversation about a book that you haven't read.

Now ask yourself who is the one being childish.

>>20372989
>Ottessa was born in Boston in 1981 to a Croatian mother and an Iranian father. Her father, Farhoud, was born in Arak, Iran, the son of a self-made millionaire of Jewish descent who had started out as a kid selling fabric in the Jewish ghetto. He left Iran at 19 to study the violin in Munich, then spent several years in Taiwan playing in a chamber orchestra before moving to Belgium to study at the Royal Conservatory.
Why do art hoe elites always like to clarify that their millionaire dads are "self-made?" It's like clockwork. I know Persian Jews who fled the Revolution. Ain't nobody "self-made" in that set. It's impossible to be, unless your well-established six figure expat relatives willfully refuse to give you money and connections as is customary.

Is this the end of history? The only producers of culture are now sons and daughters of indulgent millionaire daddies with elite society connections?

>>20372932
marking that one as a ”no”, then

>>20364468
>Ottessa Moshfegh
lol no

>>20372972
>>20373010
The Enlightenment, French Revolution and the downfall of monarchies has been a disaster for mankind.

>IF YALL AINT READ THE BOOK YA NEED TO LEAVE THE THREAD OK

>>20372872
hang on a sec, all the old dead writers this board likes to jerk off were aristocrats or leisure-class people. shit, isn’t the tagline of this place ”mass literacy was a mistake”?

>>20373030
the cognitive dissonance is strong

>>20373030
The difference is those aristocrats were educated and of breeding, the merchantable of today are consummate materialists that only care about money.

>>20373020
chill virgin

>>20373006
Cry more, pleb. I have read more and own more books than you.

>Moshfegh’s Booker-shortlisted novel Eileen (2015) was a 1960s noir about an inward-looking anorexic alcoholic young woman (“I hated almost everything”). This was followed by My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), a darkly funny book about a beautiful, twentysomething New Yorker who spends a year hibernating in a narcotic haze. In between these two novels, she wrote Death in Her Hands, which has only just been disinterred, and reveals Moshfegh is not only interested in jaded young women but jaded old women too.

>Ottessa Moshfegh has spent a great deal of her life alone. The vast majority of her characters are severely lonely.

>In these stories, Moshfegh’s most educated characters long to merge with a world of baseness and vulgarity. It’s not because they’re searching for “shabby chic” furnishings for their psyches; they want to make a sacrament of renouncing their elitism.

>The characters are echoes of the Harvard grad, Rebecca, in Moshfegh’s 2015 novel “Eileen,” who also crosses class barriers following her compulsion to fuse with the dark and defective.

>Mossfegh: Yeah, I think it definitely started in Newton, and going to school in the Boston area. Valuing prestige, accomplishments, career, and genius over happiness, pleasure, curiosity, and love. It’s kind of a cruel world to live in, but I didn’t really become conscious of it until I left New York City. My experience there was like that times a thousand. I went to Barnard, worked in publishing and with Jean Stein, and was privy to the world of the intellectual and creative elite.
>BN: Were all seven stories you wrote for the Paris Review written during that time of being broke and eating rice?
>Mossfegh: Most of them, yes. And then when I moved to Oakland, where I had a fellowship at Stanford, I was less broke
lol

>Occasionally, it appears to be ripening into a portrait of loneliness in old age. There’s a poignant description of the futility of running a bath when Vesta’s body now seems to her “so little, a little thing I had to keep clean, like washing a single dish one uses constantly”. But I struggled to see what Moshfegh wanted to achieve. It could be a send-up of lonely women who become obsessed with true crime. Or it could be a postmodern satire about the process of writing fiction. But it often feels more self-indulgent than radical. When the narrator is constantly asking what the point in anything is, the reader might be inclined to wonder the same thing.

So rich carefree narcissistic lady writes about being rich carefree narcissistic lady (who is sometimes "broke," but never broke enough to live a mundane life), then slowly transitions into being rich OLD lady who is sad she's now old. Sounds fascinating.

>>20373010
>>20373044
Posts like this are as dumb as some good reads bullshit about how she can't read Keats because he was didn't condemn the slave trade and that makes him problematic to enjoy

>>20373026
like niggers need help being loud ok

>>20373030
noblesse oblige*

* unless it's after 1945, then you can go to stanford and talk about being "broke" while writing novels about wasting your 20s on expensive drugs and never having to get a job

>>20373064
post bookshelf

>>20373078
have you read the book?

>>20372972
>Is this the most odious class in history?

Our ruling class isn't allowed to inflict direct physical harm on us dirt eating peasants anymore, so their leisure time is now spent devising ways to psychologically torture us instead.

>>20373080
mutt hands typed this post. why would i want someone who’s serious about writing to ”get a job”?

>>20373103
>”
amab hands typed this post on a macbook, I just keep spottin em today

>>20373092
>>20373018

>>20373112
>>20365219

>>20373100
>psychologically torture
kek what a pussy

>>20373116
>>20364556

>>20373084
Post your wrist and chin first like I said

>>20373110

>>20372932
It's how effete shitlibs argue. They don't defend their positions by providing excerpts of their favorite passages to try to convince you of a work's superiority. No, they just bark derisive laughter and tell you to "do the research and read the material" as if you're supposed to indoctrinate yourself or pay to have yourself indoctrinated like they all did.

>No, you're misunderstanding the author's intent! You need to read the book!
So far, the only pages posted ITT have made this woman seem utterly repugnant and her writing superficial and self-indulgent.

>But it's about an interesting perspective!
You could go on /r9k/ and find an authentic hikkiNEET story in ten minutes. Or go on /out/ and ask about the Hole Troll. Ottessa is on some "let them eat cake" level of disconnect from the average human being, let alone a shut-in.

>>20368195
I'd say the female Houllebecq is Lauren Oilers, but her star is still rising so /lit/ might not have heard of her yet. Check out Fake Accounts.

>she's 40 and childless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtNGWKanbyg

>>20373150
bUt HaVe YioU rEaD tEH boOk!?

>>20373157
>Check out Fake Accounts.
I shan't

>>20373150
>to convince you of a work's superiority
as usual, this is what it all boils down to for you faggots. a popularity contest

>>20373168
fukken based

>>20373168
based

>>20368563
I see where you're coming from, but you're presuming the novel is planning to do a lot of moral grandstanding. It's quickly establishing a fantastical framework in order to explore the self absorbed mindset of a self prescribed depressed woman who may, if the opening is anything to go by, just be a narcissist. Fiction doesn't need to be a direct copy of real life. Hope your recovery goes well.

>>20373173
>immediately confuses "superiority" with "popularity"

The shitlib mind reveals itself in funny ways.

>>20373150
What is the use in arguing an interpretation with someone who can't have one?

Everyone ITT hating on the book (including you) are going to hate the book anyway; nothing I write will change that. All there is to do is show people how shallow and close minded you people are, and the loose grasp of literature you have.

>>20364468
>superabundantly talented

>>20373185
>is autistic

>>20373186
>All there is to do is show people how shallow and close minded you people are
That's subjective.

>>20373150
>ywn be this mad about a book you'll never read and a woman you'll never meet

>>20373168
Darned you, anon!

>>20373186
>nothing I write will change that.
You are only right in the sense of contingent necessity, not in the sense of absolute necessity. Were this a universe where Ottessa Mossfegh is any good, then you could, should, and ideally would try to prove this by demonstrating it. It so happens that we are in a universe where, contingently, Ottessa Mossfegh sucks ass, but as you are denying this (however absurdly), the abstract form of your argument should still proceed AS IF you are living in a universe where, contingently, Ottessa Mossfegh isn't shit.

You are a living contradiction, and not because you are a woman trapped in a man's body (you aren't, you're a gay man).

>>20373207
Your writing is awful because you are trying way too hard to sound smart. Quit worrying about what others think of you and what you like; in the real world people don't call you tranny for enjoying a female author.

>pic rel is (You)

>>20373254
I never said she was bad because she was female, I just said she's shit. I know the HRT and sissy hypno is destroying your ability to think, but stay focused.

>>20373266
Funny, I never accused you of saying she was bad because she was female. You just latched onto that word because you are a virgin.

But good job on taking my advice though. Your writing in this post was a lot better.

>>20373207
>you have to prove your opinions, I don't have to prove mine
>proof of artistic quality is possible
Low iq post

>>20373254
>multiple editions of lolita
>tolkien boxed set
>goosebumps book prominently displayed
nah that guy is infinitely more based than the faggot you're replying to

>>20373296
That's not what I said. I said that if one believes something is good, one should always (i.e. necessarily) argue that it is good, on the assumption that argument is directed at reasonable people, and reasonable people are capable of recognizing the good.

If the thing in question is actually, factually, contingently shitty and not good, there are two possibilities: either the person arguing that it is good knows that it isn't good, and is lying, or they are unaware of its shittiness. In the former case we aren't interested in them because they're liars. In the latter case, since they still perceive the thing as good from their finite perspective, and as the rest of what we said still holds (i.e. that when something is perceived as good, its goodness should be argued for in earnest, on the assumption that all argument is aimed at reasonable people who will, ceteris paribus, submit to reasonable arguments), they should argue for its goodness.

The other retard is effectively doing this:
>Retard: Hey! This is good.
>Sceptic: Hmm, I don't know. Can you prove it?
>Retard: No! Read it! It's good.
>Sceptic: I don't read shit, though. Can you give me a hint that it might be good?
>Retard: It's not my job to convince you!! You'll never be convinced!
>Sceptic: Then I'm afraid I'll have to decline for now.
>Retard: No!! You must read it!!!
which is self-contradictory and retarded.

>>20373335
>If the thing in question is actually, factually, contingently shitty and not good
Taste is subjective: nothing is 'actually' and 'factually' bad. Argument btfo.

>>20373366
basado. dubs confirm

>>20373335
Not sure you understand what 'necessarily' or 'contingently' mean bro, but you do you

>>20373366
Then there is no use in ever trying to convince anyone of anything, all criticism is worthless, and people should take their pleasures where they find them without ever recommending them to others. But you don't believe that. The very fact that you are contradicting me requires that you think that I have argued "poorly" or that I believe something incorrect and being incorrect is somehow bad.

Once again you are in self-contradiction, most likely because your ideology of "everything is subjective! everyone can have fun and do whatever he wants :)!" makes you suppress your natural instincts to the contrary. Give in to your instincts, learn to care about things and take them seriously. Then you will learn how to think, how to argue, and maybe even experience the satisfaction of convincing someone of something.

>>20373380
AMAB hairline.

>>20373386
>Contingency: A proposition is contingently true if and only if it is true in this world and false in another world. A proposition is contingent if its contrary does not imply a contradiction.
>Necessity: A proposition is necessarily true if and only if it is true in every possible world.

>>20373395
I said what I said. You don't understand how to use these words in a sentence.

>>20373335
>>20373207
They can't prove it's good because it's shit.

Posting excerpts would only prove what we already suspect.

>>20373416
>I said what I said.
I see you're in the "I don't have to convince you of anything!" retard camp described above. I said what I said too, and what I said has the additional benefit of being correct.

>>20373388
No, because I take issue with you criticising a book I like without ever having read it. If you read the book and disliked it I wouldn't be mad.

And all this poorly written waffle on a novel you haven't read is still confusing me. Why are you so committed to tearing down this book anon? don't you have something better to do?

>>20373454
I'm here and willing to be convinced to read it. This is a court of law and the opposing counsel is raping you right now. You really need to turn this shit around or I may never read Ottessa "40 year childless old mega wealthy art hoe who calls herself broke" Mossfegh..

>I'm here and willing to be convinced to read it. This is a court of law and the opposing counsel is raping you right now. You really need to turn this shit around or I may never read Ottessa "40 year childless old mega wealthy art hoe who calls herself broke" Mossfegh..

>>20373460
NTA but what are some other contemporary novels you like? drop them and we might suss out if moshfegh is worth your time

>>20373475
How about you just post excerpts or precis of her work that don't make her look like a boring trust fund kid writing about her elite lifestyle from three or four different angles?