/lit/ - Literature

There are probably good authors right now, they're just obscure. Herman Melville was not a popular or financially successful author when he was alive, he only became famous after he died.

>>20836221
Harry Potter was a forced meme. I recall they kept setting it for schools. Library published tons of them. Then those low quality films came out so it had a Marvel effect.
Anyway your picrel sums it up anon. It's a fake picture by a data-tool that generates unlimited photos using stolen data. The future belongs to big tech, data companies harvesting human knowledge and regurgitating it back.
It's possible they might try to revive the serialized novel but when they do it'll be even more forced and removed from the natural state of things.

>>20836221
greatness is an exception retard
literature is one of the oldest art forms there is and we've had the luxury of all the garbage being filtered out with time
by the time you're old as fuck on your death bed there will have only been less than 5 great authors to pop up in your life time because that's just how it is

>>20836349
>BECAUSE... THAT'S JUST HOW IT IS, OK!?

>>20836221
What is this picture?

>>20836396
soulless ai art from midjourney.
>>20836349
My point is that no-one cares about reading anymore, therefore there is no reason for there to even be great authors. OK, there might be great authors, but their works will never be read to the degree those in the past have been.

>>20836413
>soulless ai art from midjourney

Oh. I love it

>>20836331
>It's possible they might try to revive the serialized novel but when they do it'll be even more forced and removed from the natural state of things.
Already been done with light novels, which are surprisingly popular, albeit if low quality

>>20836448
I was unironically impressed by the art of this soulless AI that I generated upscaled it. How is it that a soulless AI is capable of creating more soul within a piece than mere men? (You are incapable of answering this question)

>>20836221
Why millennials complain about things that they made, do and propitiate into zoomers and following generations?
kek, get some self-awareness

Technically great? maybe. Great in any other or holistic sense? No.

>>20836349
It's been at least 3 decades and not a single great author has been identified.

>>20836221
people still read they just read shit like where the craw dad sings

>>20836413
Great Western art has never been popular. The question is really not about whether the work will be well-received but whether it will be made, and in my opinion, that would-be writers are grown in an environment saturated with low brow pop media is more important than what specifically the popular masses are interested in. In the end, this artistic appreciation of the prose novel medium might only correspond to a very particular time period. We might come to think that no prose novels are actually great or artistic at all.

>>20837998
Who was the last "great author"?

>>20838156
Probably McCarthy but he's not written anything really good since Blood Meridian.

>>20838191
So it's been 40 years since the last good book was written?

>>20838284
Probably, yeah.

>>20836221
This sounds pulled outta the ass, about the same as if people stop fucking due to advanced vibrators and cyberskin dolls. Why do you feel that people content with just TV shows and TikToks would be avid readers in any other period?

What are the qualities of a great author, how does one comes to be? If they weren't constantly recalled by living generation, either by academics or marginalized social rejects, they would fade away. Why are they recalled? Because people keep having similar issues for thousands of years

>>20837857
I can't answer it. I never pay attention to art but I can't stop looking at this. I can't believe i'm this engrossed by something that an AI created. It's freaking me out

>>20838156
Unironically probably David Foster Wallace

>>20837857
Who holds the copyright on something like this?

>>20836331
All books are forced memes by that logic. That’s called marketing. Just stick to 4chan produced literature like F Gardner or whatever if you don’t want to read mainstream shilled stuff. But yea all books are essentially forced memes if you want to abide by the logic that they were marketed toward a specific demographic.

>>20836413
>>20837857
what impresses me is just how mediocre ai art always achieves to be. it's like they purposefully made it so the art it spouts out looks like it was made by those twitter or instagram artists who constantly get hundreds of thousands of likes but have zero ambition to create something that's not generic

>>20837857
Because it’s “artistic ability” is an amalgam of almost every single one of these mere men who produced beautiful art works for centuries before it.

I think that we’re simply living through the twilight years of the postmodern period, it’s been going on since the war and is simply tired. That’s why everything’s so stale these days.

I think that once the Cold War generations start dying out we’re going to see this theoretical new movement start to form with some good shit to get the ball rolling. Who knows maybe the foundational work is already somewhere out there.

>>20836221
Yes, we have them now but you refuse to read them.

>>20836221
Yes but the literary scene is going to change. The problem is that all institutions are controlled by bland people. Narcissists who know how to posture well and take credit for work, and some other useless people like those hired because of nepotism or girls who the boss thought looked cute. In the future you'll see new schools and credentials by the actually competent. Expect to see a greater synthesis between long reading and short adhd-approved media like tiktok. Wouldn't be surprised if a software came about that made it easier to read longer books by creating pictures or even videos, simplifying or explaining some things, and cutting it up to be more bite-sized.

>>20837857
>How is it that a soulless AI is capable of creating more soul within a piece than mere men?

lol

>>20839838

>>20841843
Not a bad idea. I long to monetize idiots, but am unable to, because I don't understand what they find difficult to pay to have it solved for them. I hate idiots and the only way to get revenge on them in this society is by monetizing them.

>>20836221
Yes when I finish my 4-5 novel sci fi adventure series it will be known as the greatest series of this century, probably all time

The problem is not talent. The problem is the specific time and place in which you live and the characteristics of those. The culture is just not productive, and at the same time, the book medium seemingly cannot compete with the screen for attention and in a world where a screen is basically attached to your hand, the book doesn’t stand a chance.

All that said, if novels are what you want to write, you should just write them. So they won’t be appreciated by the masses? So what? So they might not ever make it into some imagined great canon of works? So what? Great works have never been popular, and even Shakespeare will be forgotten one day. And Shakespeare is not even known for novels by the way…

>>20841953
Houllebecq has already pretty much captured what it's like to live in our society anyway.

>>20837998
>>20838156
Bolaño

>>20836362
not OP, but I'll kindly ask you to fuck off on his behalf.

>>20842154
What does that have to do with what I said?

>>20842189
He probably wrote most of those novels before th

I've been thinking about that
The only books that make it nowadays are masterpiece tier
Like the davinci code, the winter of the world or the tower series.
Well I don't know much about the tower series. But books that are very heavy on research.

>>20836241
bro he was, just not for moby dick

>>20842478
retard btw

>>20836221
I don't know about others but most books I own are PDFs my phone.

>>20841953
Best post ITT. Why would anyone want the loving adoration of the masses? You know they're retarded, so why do you seek their recognition?

You really have to take an elitist view of things when it comes to anything regarding taste. I can be as economically populist as anyone, I want people to have a good life - but when it comes to art and culture, the things I like are the only things that matter. Simple as. Leave the swill to the swine.

Just think, a masterful book like Stoner was almost entirely unknown thirty years ago. There are probably countless great works hiding in time's shadow that few appreciate. And so what? Even if only ten people appreciated a novel, that wouldn't change the nature of it.

Reminder that a succesful light novel was a weekly print of 100k and dozens come out every single week all year round.
If you make books and promote them people will read, there's just no industrial interest in the west.

>>20844054
I'm the same. I can do more reading on my phone because I don't have to explain myself to people. I can't read a physical copy
of American Psycho or Industrial Society and its Future in public, but if I put it on my phone no one will ask annoying questions

>>20844394
Yeah you do.

However, there is something to be said about the appropriateness of the medium for a time and place. Maybe novels leave you frustrated but you start thinking in terms of movie scenes and the muses start dancing. Who knows?

All cultural production is valueless propaganda since women decide who gets to be heard from. Suck mommy’s tits or die.

>>20838156
Salman Rushdie was already an OG, but now he's the only writer to be stabbed half the fuck to death in front of a live crowd before brushing it off. He'll return with an eyepatch to receive his Nobel and giving an impassioned speech calling for the murder of all Muslims while Michel Houllebecq sits behind him blowing wisps of cigarette smoke into the air as he tries to grope the female waiting staff.