/lit/ - Literature

Gaddis is modernist, most of Gass is modernist as well.

Vonnegut?

>>22709094
I almost exclusively read poetry now.

>>22709450
What is your problem with Vonnegut?

>>22709504
Which poets?

>>22709828
>Which poets?
NTA but i'm reading a lot of andrew marvell and philip larkin at the moment

Early post-war USA Boomer tomes are OK, rapidly becoming dogshit. Out of those Crying Lot, Slaughterhouse & anything Gaddis; spare yourself the trouble.

>>22709847
I prefer Larkin to Yeats.

Are you Irish? They recently replaced Yeats with Larkin on the Irish curriculum for teenagers. Woukdnt be surprised if they completely took him off the curriculum and replaced him with Sylvia Plath. These Feminists dont even read Emily Dickinson, othe only poetess worthy of any value.

>>22709869
Is Gass shit?

I appreciate Wallace for his style not themes. If I were to write a novel I wouod yse Wallace style but not themes. I suppose Delillo, Ellis and Franzen are similar but inferior to Wallace.

>>22709893
no i'm american. i like yeats. never really thought of yeats vs larkin as one or the other since yeats is firmly a generation or two prior to larkin. and larkin isn't irish as far as i know. i read yeats's mythologies recently which i enjoyed quite a bit. it really cements his symbol system in my mind reading about his exploits among the provincial irish towns hearing about all their local hangups.
>Feminists dont even read Emily Dickinson
dickinson (and moore, the other "great" female poet) aren't feminists, which is why feminists don't want to read them.

>>22709923
What about Pound?

I think Pound could have to taken a leaf out of Latkin's book in terms of style but the Cantos has great themes which are much more relevant to our times than another proto-modernist like Blake.

>Are you still reading boring meme garbage?
No.

>>22709951
haven't read much pound honestly. i have a collection of his early poetry but haven't read any of the cantos. what relevant themes are you talking about? i'd like to read more of his stuff just haven't got around to it. it always felt a little cold and insincere to me.

>>22709980
Well his themes particularly in the Cantos are all wound up with his political vision. If you arent in to that then maybe you wont be motivated to reas the Cantos.

A lot of Blake's poems are also political but I think Pound is like Blake modernized.

>>22709960
what's some good stuff to read?

>>22709094
This board hasn't cared about that stuff in years now

>>22710010
i see. i think a lot of political poetry falls flat for me, even if i'm in favor of the politics in question. i understand that there is an inherent morality in the migratory nature of collections of people, and that is all reflected in the politics of the times, but it can feel a little shallow and place undue significance in so many tiny and fleeting judgments.

>>22709893
haven't read a ton of gass, but what i have i loved. a lot more minimal, grounded, and measured than something like pynchon, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. a lot of american postmodernists are attached to this beckett sort of style of really dry, choppy prose so it can kind of feel like if you've read one you've read them all, but i like gass.

>>22709828
>What's wrong with Vonnegut?
It's mid, admittedly so, even by the authors standards. Slaughterhouse has interesting ideas to toy with, and coping with imprisonment during the war, which managed to be an entirely justified fight against evil tyranous invaders while still being fucked, nonsensical, and pointless. Being unstuck from time and still being in the prison camp years later was the feeling, aliens, time travel, Traflamagore was just some way of explaining it.
It's genuine and interesting in a way something like Catch22 is dark and irreverently examining the same feelings. Vonnegut understood that was the strength and power of his writing and brought that to his other works. Managing to find a way to say what it means to worry about killing himself like his mother hits so hard.

The writing just isn't great. It isn't bad. He deserves to be someone's favorite author.

Let's put it this way. My favorites, I've read all their books. I've read all his books. He's the worst of the best, which is significantly better than being the best of the worst.

>>22710026
This. At this point the meme trilogy is a shibboleth of sorts. Picrel and the postmodern doorstopper were big here but times are way different now. Fiction is general has disappeared

>>22709094
Just getting into it. Finished The Crying of Lot 49 yesterday. Love that shit. Only problem is that all the literary analysis I can find on it is from neomarxist feminist types, while I don't relate to that interpretation. I think it is more about the death of God and the inability of politics to fill the void. Funny enough, I find myself relating to Odepa more the more as I continue to plunge into the stupidity of the info at my finger tips. HaveI become paranoid? Am I paranoid? Oh no!

>>22709098
Incorrect.

>>22710181
Gass:
>I don’t know whether The Tunnel’s hole is a trope for the Postmodern because I never understood Postmodernism. I’m not a Postmodernist.

>>22710181
You realize that gathering was a fairly loose thing? There was no selection process, just a bunch of friends getting together to talk shop. Gaddis over and over referred to his writing as either modernism or high modernism. Gass's only work which even approached being post modernist was The Tunnel but it is not a difficult case to make the case of it being modernist which Gass would have agreed with.

>>22710203
>>22710256
They were not part of the Modernist movement; they were entrenched in the Postmodernist movement. That's my reasoning. I'll admit that their works may stylistically be closer to Modernism or "High Modernism," but it gets a little ambiguous at that point. For simplicity's sake it's better to refer to them as Postmodernist the way I see it.

Personally, I don't think it's necessary to force art/artists into stark divisions for the sake of simplification. And Gass said he's not a postmodernist. But if you disagree with him about his own writing, I'm open to being convinced. What about In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is postmodern?

>>22710367
This was meant for >>22710317

>>22710317
In what way were they entrenched in the post modernist movement? They both considered themselves modernists and wrote in the modernist style, so what makes them post modern? If memory serves the moniker for that photo/dinner was not applied by Barth, believe it was the title the photographer gave it, Barth just invited people he was interested in getting together.

Also, no reason to put high modernism in quotes, high in this use just means late, as in it happened after the primary movement ended, it is not some fancy use or suggesting it is better or more advanced than regular modernism.

>>22709094
Yeah, I'm gonna do Pynchon next month (The Crying of Lot 49, V and Gravity's Rainbow). First, have to finish Alan Moore's works such as From Hell, Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem.

I prefer Delillo

>>22710026
>>22710150
Yeah, sadly, /lit/ could at one time be accused of trying TOO hard, being TOO brainy, TOO dorky, using these big doorstoppers as a show of their intellectual enthusiasm and stamina in literary dick-measuring contests. Now, we can hardly even be accused of that, it’s just become outright anti-intellectualism instead of the at least somewhat salvageable pseudo-intellectualism. I’d rather we try too hard and be dorks making these repeated threads about, say, IJ, Ulysses and GR (where people have actually read it and are discussing it) then the same JBP threads/hot-take-with-a-vaguely-pretty-art-hoe-as-the-thread-pic-to-subtly-suggest-your-being-emasculated-by-the-more-popular-pretty-people/John Green threads/Christianity vs. atheism threads/minimum of five or six Nietzsche threads up at the same time/BookTuber threads/etc.

Even the Guenon school Traditionalism threads people ragged on had some interesting posts in them, because at least people were reading something at least somewhat intelligent and thought-provoking. I’m probably pathetic for caring this much, anyway, and /lit/ was always shit in one way or the other.

>>22711682
You're not pathetic at all and I do agree with the sentiment expressed in your post. Take shitposting aside, and most threads that contain at least a few anons willing to discuss a given work with some sort of earnestness are always a delight to see and something that is missing on /lit/. I hate the decrepit "wah wah I'm pussy deprived and want a gf" or the countless Nietzsche threads littered with people who either hate him or haven't read him at all, but usually go from some sort of wikipedia tier knowledge of his philosophy and play their charade to fool one another for whatever reason. Can't we all just retake the board and make it back into what we all came here for initially, to discuss works we're either currently reading or have read, or have a desire to and are inquiring about. No matter your knowledge or expertise, only sincere desire and a small modicum of honest effort to tackle something on its own accord is needed.

>>22711682
>>22711701
These

>>22709094
I enjoy reading them purely for entertainment and don’t give a shit about literary analysis. They sometimes become tiring the more you read but they also hit a spot that no other type of book can.

I don't know who Pynchon is.

>>22709094
>Gaddis
Good enough but i dropped it because i dont like reading on kindle. Maybe i resume it eventually

>>22710019
Beowulf

>>22711701
>Can't we all just retake the board and make it back into what we all came here for initially, to discuss works we're either currently reading or have read, or have a desire to and are inquiring about.
Yes, we can. The way is doing it ourselves. I try but I don't have much support. I know there are other people who try too but we are too little

>>22713106
It’s much easier to make a low effort shit thread than a quality thread. A shitposter can rail off 5 shit threads with no effort while a quality poster is limited to what he is reading, read recently, knows well, or is a favorite. Reading takes time and effort, shitposting doesn’t. It only takes a few to knock down what has been built up, and it’s clear that most here don’t care about quality in the first place. Most threads are shoehorned idpol topics, blogposts, or books for __. The shitposters won. /lit/ is basically social media for the west has fallen and we must save it crusaders

>>22713106