/lit/ - Literature

What about books where the main character's weight is not mentioned. how do you know they aren't fat? That would go even farther about fat normalization to the point that being fat isn't even important enough for the author to mention it.

halt you are under arrest for incitement to shitpost

you have the right to remain silent

>>2804544
>a book with a fat main character that wasn't written by a fat person, and isn't a book about being fat, losing weight, body-image, etc

A Confederacy of Dunces?

>a book written by a man with a woman for a main character, which neither objectifies the woman nor projects a feminist (or protofeminist, quasifeminist, etc.) agenda? Hard mode: name such a book in which the story does not address that woman's romantic life as its primary concern.

The Crying of Lot 49?

>a book written by a white author, living in Europe or North America, featuring characters of black African descent as its main and supporting characters, either including no non-blacks, or only as background presences and not as major influences in the setting or the plot

Currently writing it.

>>2804545
>Tripfag
>Criticizing shitposting

nice 1

>>2804550

op's post isn't a shitpost

it is, however, custom tailored to elicit shitposts from other posters, which is a crime of equal magnitude

Ppeperecha
I think that's what that book was called written by that Japanese dude.

>>2804552
what do you think about racial equality? I am unsure whether different races can coexist due to the inherent biological differences between them. What do you think /lit/?

>>2804544
Writers write what they know.

>>2804559
Well you can know and understand a fat person.

The writer I was talking about wasn't fat from what I know

>>2804547
Yes, you'd be right about that, and if that were happening, we wouldn't be able to tell simply by looking at those works. However, we might expect to see some "transitional" works which mark a phase of de-agendized but not fully "second-nature" fat normalization that indicate that some circle of literary society passed beyond the point where "being fat isn't even important enough for the author to mention it."
This reminds me of a somewhat memorable shitpost I read on /lit/ attempting to "prove" that Dune's Duncan Idaho did in fact have "Oriental" facial features. It rested on a single mention of a very specific part of Idaho's anatomy. Despite appearing in (as far as I can remember) all the novels in the Dune series, his race or even physical features connected with his race are, essentially, never mentioned. If Frank Herbert had a racial identity in mind for him, but kept it undisclosed except for one accidental mention of his "epicanthic folds," it would seem to indicate that at least that particular author held a particularly "normalized" view of racial diversity. Of course, that isn't really in line with the rest of the content of the series, which is at least racially conscious throughout for many of the other important characters and groups.

What is the point of a writer attempting to write a novel in which they personally cannot relate to the main character. I read Joyce to get a Catholic's view of the world, James Baldwin for a negro perspective, &c. I can see how the challenge to address another race or whatever as an author would be an interesting experiment, but I don't see how it could be good.

>>2804559
Not the same way a fat person can. Why write about what you believe a person's life is like when you can write what you know from personal experience rather than assumed knowledge.

>>2804567
>Why write about what you believe a person's life is like when you can write what you know from personal experience rather than assumed knowledge.
Well, that's like 99% of all fiction.

V- Thomas Pynchon.

This is a stupid thread.

basically there is no need for someone to write outside their idea of the norm unless it is to criticise that norm with politically-motivated protagonists of different "category". it's partly a narrative device but it's also a flawed part of our culture

>>2804564
>>2804559
Yes, I think this reason is undoubtedly part of the explanation for the apparent lack of these kinds of works. Most authors do seem to write at least in some way from their personal experience or context. Nevertheless, you'd think it would've happened that someone would write such a work at some time or another, don't you?

>>2804549
The Crying of Lot 49 was the example I thought of for that category as well. I'm still believe that the fact that the main character is a woman is significant, but I don't think I can call it "feminist" or anything like that, so I'll let it stand as the best example of this so far.

The other example I had thought of was the book that made me start this thread in the first place. I've been reading Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense as of late, and Luzhin, despite being built heavily out of Nabokov's personal experiences as a child of moderate privilege and a Russian emigrant, happens to be a fat man. Nabokov never lets me forget that Luzhin is in fact physically large, but it hardly seems to have any bearing on the story one way or the other: it's just a detail, a point of realism in characterization, at best.

I still haven't thought of an example of the last category yet.

>can you name a book written by a man with a woman for a main character, which neither objectifies the woman nor projects a feminist (or protofeminist, quasifeminist, etc.) agenda? Hard mode: name such a book in which the story does not address that woman's romantic life as its primary concern.

First novel in the Ballantyne series.

>>2804589
Ironic how it (arguably) satisfies the second and so spectacularly appears as the antithesis to the last.

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
Hey, Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
No idea, because that's silly.

lrn2challenge, negro

Not really a book but an anime called "Accel World" fat kid is the MC and is lusted by his best friend and the cutest girl in the school

>>2804544
Nana and L'Assommoir both have female main characters, are not about their romantic life, and are not feminist.

That image is funny. I know most people would assume that's racism, but it's not. Czechs just don't have a lot of black people in their country, so the ad would be non-sensical for them with a black person in it.

>>2804696
It's Polish, but that isn't the point. I don't consider it "racist" that no one can think of a book written by a white guy about black people that doesn't have some kind of "progressive message" about relationships between white people and black people either.

In both cases, I'm just supposing that there might be signs that we are still in no way "colorblind"--even if we are ingrained with the belief that "racism is bad," we still haven't fully internalized a disinterest in it.

>>2804557
>inherent biological differences

Because you know, differing skin colour makes it impossible for people to live together (irrational prejudices and superstitions aside).

>>2804544
>If you can do all that, can you name a book written by a white author, living in Europe or North America, featuring characters of black African descent as its main and supporting characters, either including no non-blacks, or only as background presences and not as major influences in the setting or the plot (no missionaries bringing cultural turmoil to the Congo, no white aristocracy or apartheid).

Sure.

"#1 Ladies detective agency" by Alexander McCall Smith

Old white man writes about a big black independent lady in Botswana who opens a Ladies' detective agency and solves crimes. All characters of importance black Africans, the themes are African, and the setting is African.

I guess you want us to find a white author who writes about a bunch of black people "in da hood" or whatever, but you won't, because dat wud b racis.

>>2805773
No that was actually EXACTLY the kind of thing I was thinking of (an actual "Africa story" that isn't about how white people made everything better, or how white people made everything worse, or white people at all).

I think now we've managed to come up with at least one example for each of the scenarios I posed. We've even managed to come up with examples that are considered "good" books! This goes to show that it is in fact possible to write effectively about characters who don't physically resemble yourself--but for whatever reason, it still seems to be a rare phenomenon. Why? (We've made several stabs at answering that, as well. It seems to be a multifold issue, at least.)

>>2805781

>an actual "Africa story" that isn't about how white people made everything better, or how white people made everything worse, or white people at all

uhh probably part of the reason these are uncommon is that most of the countries in africa have been independent for barely 50 years?

well... for some reason the guy who made peanuts started putting a black kid in the comics. there's no agenda behind it... he just kind of showed up.

that's the only fucking thing i can think of

>>2805781
So you basically just want writing that isn't political in any way, shape, or form?

>>2805790
No, I wouldn't care if the black people were establishing a socialist society or something, and the plot of the book was all about their political struggle, as long as it wasn't a retro-active self-insert for the author trying to justify or apologize for what his "ancestors" or "countrymen" or "fellow light-skinned people" did. Like, just take any regular book written by a white guy, and make all the characters black "just because." Or make them fat. Or make them women. That's what I'm talking about.

The day where everbody will be judged by the content of their character alone will be the day you would see such a book.
The reason it have yet to be written is because it would be an unrealistic book.

>>2805793

a writer making important choices like that "just because" is pretty much a foolproof recipe for a bad book

>fat main character
The Good Soldier Svjek
I think Socrates was a fatty, does that count?
The Simpsons

>male author, female protagonist
Bleak House
The Turn of the Screw

The third is just sort of problematic so let's say Othello I guess.

Still, if you look at film and other expressive media you'll certainly find much more diversity (e.g. Night of the Living Dead [which was actually visually modeled after Wells' Othello, but that the main character was black was by chance of casting]). I heartily recommend you check out the beloved American staple, Amos n' Andy

>>2805803
Number 3 is obviously Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, you absolute gutter-fish.

>>2805855
Dreams from my Father is way better though; it's a white man writing about a young black foreign boy's amazing success story.