/lit/ - Literature

I'll respond if you prove you're not trolling.

(You can't, because you are)

>>2073299
>Because he's not trying to impress you; he's trying to entertain you

>Read the Gunslinger
>Hundreds of pages of flowery scenery porn

Wat.

Gravity's Rainbow was extremely entertaining and Suttree wasn't even confusing.

>>2073299

EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE; OBJECTIVITY IS RELATIVE; RELATIVITY IS OBJECTIVE, LEADHEAD.

>>2073320

confirmed for pretentious.

I had a friend in high school who took it upon himself to read Finnegan's Wake in it's entireity. He was pretty much an anti-hipster, so he looked upon it as a challenge more than anything else. He finished it, and basically told me that he thought it was interesting as an experiment, but had no real redeeming qualities as literature. Now he and I make fun of shallow pseudo-intellectuals who go around defending it as a great and a fine philosophical achievement.

>>2073299
I could see how you would think all of this if you didn't ACTUALLY enjoy literature in all of its qualities. Although you do not have to be a writer in order to critique a novel, you may find attempting to write creatively may help you to appreciate the mentioned "boring" texts much more, and then you can read these books and say "I see what you did there." The type of satisfaction that comes from deep reading is not always easy to attain. I typically like to read super deep texts, and then when I've done all I can for one day, I go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and I take a shit.

I found all of those books entertaining. Sorry.

What motivates someone to play "Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition", or "Blazblue"? I mean, these games are not entertaining. They are confusing and boring, and require you to play and repay, and when you're done with that, go to Shoryuken to find out what the fuck is going on (if anything is actually going on.)

What motivates someone to watch "Wild Strawberries", or "? I mean, these movies are not entertaining. They are confusing and boring, and require you to watch and rewatch, and when you're done with that, go to David Bordwell to find out what the fuck is going on (if anything is actually going on.)

Never change, scrubshits of the world.

I don't see the difficulty to comprehend something as a valid criterium to judge quality by. The argument is basically "I can read X faster, so it's more fun". Which may be true, but I personally don't care much. Maybe I have to read GR half as slow as some cheap poplit, but that doesn't make it a waste of time as long as it's much more interesting, right?

And if you're at this point where you at least can read it smoothly (maybe slowly, but without having to reread and reread, like you apparently have to) and understand everything, well, you maybe realize what cool stuff is going on in these books.

I think it was Ulysses about which some famous literate said it was first and foremost a funny book, which many people unfortunately didn't get.

>>2073353

Nah your friend is just dumb and read it literally.

>>2073299
>he thinks the position of writing as only entertainment and not communication isn't pretense
You're pretentious, OP.

>2011
>not books with tree fucking scenes in them

I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

>>2073975

I don't know about that quote, and I wouldn't say "first and foremost a funny book," but Ulysses is hilarious. Some passages are pretty intense, but overall it's the most feel-good text I've ever read.

OP:
To not even get into arguments about art, let me just throw this at you: What makes you so sure that these texts AREN'T entertaining to some people? Some people actually enjoy intellectual >>stimulation<< (key word).

I would also like to agree with >>2073393 a bit. I'm not a big writer, but I occasionally write a bit and try to put a lot of thought into it, and so whenever I'm reading a text I get to appreciate it from that perspective. And with crazy experiments like the Wake, there's a definite appeal to want to look at what this writer did and what he was going for.

My favorite author is William Blake. You know why? Because he was ballin' out of control.

>>2073973
>You thought Wild Strawberries was a difficult movie?

>>2074002
only difficult to sit through

was the first thing that came to mind

>>2074019
Fair enough.

I liked the first dream sequence and the naturalism of some of the forest scenes, but otherwise, you really have to engage in the old man's nostalgia and death fear, else there's nothing to watch.

Bergman has a habit of fucking up traditional melodrama with bad pacing, (some would cite his history of suffering abuse as a child was what caused to lose all balance); Autumn Sonata, for example, ends with this gratuitously lengthy catharsis scene. Hence, Wild Strawberries, being this quite nicely paced meditative piece, compares favourably to his whole oeuvre. That said, Cries and Whispers and Fanny and Alexander are very strong and very tragic.

Moral for the rest of the thread. Don't be quick to judge.

>>2074019
why do confusing and boring things beguile the minds of man

>>2073299

Haven't read any of these books yet, but I plan on reading them.
Maybe these books are boring and not entertaining to you. Not sure if they will be for me, but I actually see it as a kind of challenge to read this stuff. Also I am greatly interested in these stuff, just because people say they are hard and that it is rewarding to read them.

Sure I enjoy simpl reads. I enjoyed Game of Thrones and The Malazan Tale of the Fallen. But on the other hand I also read Kafka and a lot of classics or philosphy related works. The fantasy stuff is simply entertainment, the other stuff I read, because its interesting and a lot of these books make you 'think'.

Also I want to improve as a writer, so I read all kinds of stuff.

Suttree is really entertaining if you are from the southern united states.

>plebs putting Gravity's Rainbow in the category of Finnegans Wake just because he's too mongo to understand anything that's not completely straightforward

Let me guess, OP, you probably thought The Sound And The Fury would have been better without the first chapter, didn't you? Oh, wait, you probably never even read Faulkner, because HUURRRR BIG WORDS ME NO LIKE ME GO READ SIMPLE BOOK SIMPLE BOOK AM FUN? And then you come here, implying that anything with the slightest semblance of linguistic, structural, or thematic 'strangeness' to you is pedantic and worthless?

Fuck, why do you even bother reading books? Just go ask your friend to tell you about his day, and there you go, you've got an entertaining story that's not trying to impress you. Your buddy just produced something of higher literary merit than any writer has ever achieved, good job.

Steven King's short stories aren't bad. And I'll probably never read Finnegan's Wake, not interested. But I do plan on reading Gravity's Rainbow at some point, and OP is a (pretentious) tool.

>Suttree
>fucking watermelons
>blowing up dynamite
>getting into fights
>helping your friend dump his dead dad in the river
>not entertaining
Eat shit.png

I took out Finnegan's Wake from my college's library because no one else had in almost three decades. Why not, they even had a guide book to read along with it too.

Plus I love the word bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner

>>2074182

Is it recommended to use guide books or stuff like that, when reading something like Finnegan's Wake? Or lets say Ulysses or Atlas Shrugged?

The fact is, that if I want to read them, I want to not only read them but 'understand' them, as far as that is possible for me.

The very act of reading should be challenging.

>>2074193
>I want to not only read them but 'understand' them
A guidebook would probably help then.

>>2074193
No, you don't need a guide book for Atlas Shrugged, but why would you bother reading it in the first place?

Might help with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, tho, especially if you only ever plan on reading them once.

>>2074250

Oh ok, might have mixed things up. Kinda thought that Atlas Shrugged was as 'hard' as the other two. Thought I had read something like that here.

Well not sure if I want to read them only once, might depend on what exactly I can get from the book. Well thanks, gonna look for a guide book for these two then before starting to read them!

subject of thread = "Are you pretentious?"

>counts the number of tripfags with deeply opinionated answers ripping OP's valid criticism
>laughs out loud in response, posts a picture of my face when

>>2074260
Not surprised you look like that

>>2074260
>2011
>complains about tripfriends on /lit/

The door is that way, dood. there's nothing you can do here. Have an internet for your troubles...

I don't pretend to have read Finnegans Wake or Suttree, but anyone who says Gravity's Rainbow isn't entertaining hasn't read it.

They are "good" books because they actually do have a plot and theme going on in them, whether you can understand it or not is your own problem. They may not be as simple, almost mindless reads that a lot of contemporary fiction is like today, but they are still around today because the messages in those books are meaningful enough that they applied to human thought the same way that they did ~100 years ago. This arguably gives them one facet of their literary worth, and simply one reason why they may be "brilliant," Op.

Because unfathomable beauty, OP.

"Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you."

>>2074314
Oh god, i'll never write.

>>2074314
>>2074335

Lyrical wank. No holistic image. No message but "Look at my pen wail." Equivalent to power metal. Headpains when asked where's the narrative going?

White man trying into rap.

>>2074314

Haven't read Suttree, had to Google the quote. Third result is from a SlutWalk. Thought you should know.

Believe or not, OP, you are coming out of this thread looking like the most pretentious person here, and you're claim to literacy is Stephen King. You also just wrote the longest diatribe that is, essentially, just saying, "I am a bad reader, but fuck everyone, anyways."

Good luck.

>>2074346
Agreed. It doesn't even sound that good, from a purely aesthetic view. McCarthy is incredibly overrated.

>>2074283

Tripfags are easily the worst part of /lit/. I was ready to give up on this board entirely until I decided, fuck it, and put ! into the filter. Now it's a real great board, highly recommend.

i loved suttree. i always hate it when someone doesn't understand something, so they assume pretentiousness is involved when someone else does. children and shit threads all over /lit/.

business as usual i see.

and stephen king is the equivalent to the brain dead shit on tv. he can write in a gripping way but it in no way pushes the envelope on the actual craft of writing literature.

I'll say in advance I've never read any of these books. But seriously, from the impression I get there is such an incredible amount of wankery involved in "canon" lit that I really would just write it all off as pretentiousness.

>No message

typical complaint from people who aren't capable of appreciating literature

>>2074370
>I don't know anything about this subject; people who are interested or talk about it are full of shit.

Ok so why is it pretentious to like these books? Haven't read them yet, but they sound interesting and I probably will read them soon.
Just because people like 'harder level' literature and aren't just reading stuff like Stephen King novels doesn't mean they are pretentious.

If I start talking to someone who never read anything apart from Twillight or Harry Potter and tell him what books I have read and that they are awesome, am I being pretentious in your eyes OP?
Am I pretentious, because I like reading at a coffe shop and am not sitting there with the newest Game of Thrones novel, but instead are reading Ulysses?

I read Gravity's Rainbow when I was 17. We had to choose an outside book to read for American Lit, and I didn't really know what to read. A friend of mine, an artist, but a really dorky one, got it into her head that we should read Gravity's Rainbow, I think because there was an illustrated version of it that was done by an artist she liked. And I, having no idea what I was getting into, said yes.

It was actually pretty good! I was the only one who finished it (the poor English teacher had to read it too so she could evaluate us) and it was extremely difficult, but I honestly enjoyed it and I think it's a great work.

Am I pretentious for this?

>>2074368

>he can write in a gripping way

Then he's a good writer. Good writing makes you feel something. The trouble with things like Finnegan's Wake is that it's written with the head for the head. You can get some emotion from it, sure, some of the phrases are beautiful, but there's no story to connect to.

>>2074382
>Good writing makes you feel something.

It only takes competent writing to provoke an emotional reaction. Really good writing makes you think.

>>2074378
It's the incredible elitism which surrounds it, along with the (erroneous) belief that reading fictional stories will somehow give you intellectual superiority. The very fact that you're willing to write off my opinion so soon really indicates just how cliquish the idea of higher culture really is. complexity does not equal quality, something which really should have been understood long prior to this

>>2074387
everything you say is basically true, but it's still possible for people to like these books on their own merits without being pretentious. it's still possible that they just think these books are good. you have no way to prove that they're reading them so that they can feel better than other people, any individual person may just enjoy them. you're trying to ascribe superiority to your tastes the exact same way the people you rail against do.

>>2074383

>Am I pretentious, because I like reading at a coffe shop and am not sitting there with the newest Game of Thrones novel, but instead are reading Ulysses?

Holy fuck yes you are. Jesus christ what a faggot.

If you had said you read on the bus or when you're waiting in a lobby or something it would be fine, but going to a coffee shop just to read Ulysses? Get the fuck out of here cuntbag.

>>2074391
What do you have against coffee?

>>2074387
>The very fact that you're willing to write off my opinion so soon really indicates just how cliquish the idea of higher culture really is.

I think I'm pretty justified in writing off your opinion when you're willing to write off the entire notion of literature as 'wankery' tbh.

>>2074382
not necessarily. a lot of shit made for tv is gripping to many people but it doesn't make it good.

i also think harry potter is gripping. the narrative is very close in time and acts more like a movie camera showing events, rather than close psychic distance with psychological exploration, in what it does or doesn't mean to be human. stephen king's sense of horror has much depth as rowlings' idea of friendship and comaraderie in her novels. i can read them for fun but they don't get me involved in the same way.

>>2074391
Duly noted. When reading in public, I will take care to read only the latest bestsellers in case I inadvertently appear pretentious or alienate somebody.

>>2074387
People appear elitist or cliquish to you because they get defensive when you tell them their interests are pretentious.

This is how to attract recruits to your treehouse of useless degree holders, imply access to privileged interpretation, let us divine these mysteries together:

>>2074376

>>2074398
quotin' dis

what do you expect to happen when you insult people, OP? do you expect them to say "oh you're right i have seen the light, i will now obey the gospel of dan brown"?

>>2074391

I also read on the bus or train or at the universty, doesn't matter. I just like to spend an hour or two in the evening at our local starbucks. I like the coffee and the atmosphere there. Also when I am at home I get distracted easily. I also don't care if people see me reading the book...

>>2074390
I am attacking the assumption that these works are superior and the pretentiousness associated with such a belief, one that has been expressed commonly and often on /lit/. It's true that I can't prove every reader of said work happens to be reading for appearance purposes, but given how often /lit/ name-drops said works and forms reinforcing cliques of "higher" literature, I'm willing to warrant a guess that a great deal are. I have no trouble saying this is bullshit.

The fact that these works have been enshrined as "superior" fiction by academic institutions and the like based on complexity also creates the argument that many persons read such works not out of personal interests but out of desire to conform and fit in with preexisting hierarchy. Hence, often for sake of appearance and pretentious.

I can only make generalizations based on what I see, and this would suggest superficial reasons as a significant motivator

>>2074412
cool, but i like this shit and it's not because i'm pretentious. that's the nice thing about being terminally unhip, i guess.