/lit/ - Literature

I don't like it.

you first, op

>>2806008

i like her, i think she's good but i am curious since most black or female writers are despised in /lit/

>>2806011

thanks for responding

anyway i dig the second sentence -- "anti-climb paint" is a really cool phrase -- but the paragraph as a whole has this william shatner cadence to it that's not working for me

what's good by her, if you've read other stuff

>>2806004
I disagree that most people on /lit/ hate black and/or female writers. Some of the most beautiful works in literature have been written by people comprising either or both of those categories. You may have encountered some criticism of the perception of tokenism, that is selecting a black or female writer simply because they are black or female and not for the text itself. I would also disagree with this practice as it is completely unnecessary given the many great woman and black writers that are already out there, but I would not make the mistake that /lit/ concurrently "hates" women or black writers. As for the excerpt, it is rather loose and dreamy bu itt is impossible to really judge out of context.

>>2806026
Shame that you aren't most people on /lit/, eh?

shitty mock-stream-of-consiousness pretention

Hamsun is rolling in his grave.

>>2806032
>implying stream of conscious can be done well

>>2806004
Meh

>>2806040
Faulkner, faggot.

don't really dig it.

She's very material in her descriptions, but I can't relate to them at all.

I've lived in the UK, with anti-climb paint fucking everywhere, and it never smelled sulphurous to me. she's in a hammock in her fence but talks about someone keeping in the shade on the streets, or is that her, keeping to the shade in the hammock, but she's not "keeping to the shade" implies effort to otherwise be in the sun, but she is in her hammock?

I mean I can understand this sort of fragmented thing if it sets a scene, but like, I don' t know, just don't like this instance of it.

Maybe it's just me.

>>2806040
>Ulysses is bad
>Hunger is bad
>To the Lighthouse is bad

>>2806004

It's hard enough finishing that snippet of sorry shit .... a whole book of that? Christ, time for a book burning.

>>2806045
yawll go'n to that durn barn over there yall here you dewey dell you goin and cut that fish you vardaman, YOu, Vardaman! get in that durn wagon there boy

Yeah, Faulkner did it right.....lol

That's awful.

I don't like it.

Though i wish i could like it because i'm so attracted to her.

>>2806060

Please destroy yourself. Oh, that " lol " did it for you. Nice.

> I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
>A good line

>>2806022

I'd say White Teeth. It's considered a contemporary masterpiece, but as everything, depends on the reader. I am sure there are people here who would say the opposite just because she's famous or something

>stream of consciousness shit

>>2806022
>>2806142
White Teeth is fantastic. The Autograph Man is not as great.

I like these first lines. I'd read more.

She's a shit writer like all those younger-generation postmodern twats. Like a cross between the sugary-sweet sincerity of Jonathan Safran Foer and the boredom-wankery of DFW.

I would give her the dick.

that was pretty unpleasant to read. Is this how she always writes?

>>2806149

conflabbit postmodernist whippersnappers, you kids get off my lawn

>>2806153
>Is this how she always writes?

Only read the Book Thief but yeah, pretty much.

trying too hard to be like Updike, but sort of readable in a slightly grating way

>>2806176
Updike is awful. I don't know why anyone would want to be like him.

>>2806185

you probably read the wrong updike, there's a colossal gap between his good stuff and his bad stuff

>>2806185
greatest American writer of all time

>>2806208

Interesting style, but its so truncated that I doubt I would enjoy it at any real length

>>2806236
1. John Updike
2. Ernest Hemingway
3. Saul Bellow
4. Philip Roth
suggestions?

5. Sylvia Plath
6. Salinger
7. F. Scott Fitgerald

8. Thomas Pynchon
9. Flannery O'connor

10. T.S. Eliot

>>2806246
Updike - shit
Hemingway - shit
Bellow - top 20, but not top 5
Roth - lol

11. Faulkner

can somebody please post a post explaining what their beef with updike is beyond "shit" and "awful"

Updike is an insurmountable genius

>>2806004
Why would anyone enjoy that? fuck.

I kinda like it. It's cerebral, not visceral.

>>2806307
http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-phallocrat-drops-one-is-this-finally-the-e
nd-for-magnificent-narcissists/

Sum is better than the parts. The hard-boiled tone is somewhat disarmed by something more subtle in the language. It ends up working out fine. The first two lines by themselves read a bit like bad Kerouac impressions.

>>2806004
>On the radio: I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me. A good line—write it out on the back of a magazine
Horrible, oh God, please kill me now. I really, really hate that pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, author-reflecting bullshittery.

I'd fuck her, of course, sure. But only while slowly torturing her to death for that prose.

>>2806423

I would definitely dick her down as well, but am I the only one who thinks her accent makes her sound like a mong?

>>2806441
That is even worse.

This reminds me of something I wrote a couple years ago:

Shrouded in black like Muslim women and camouflaged by the fugue of night, tepid Asians perch atop utility poles—their presence indicated only by the flicker of moonlight held in abeyance by their blades.

>>2806408
Given that, it is surprising anyone on /lit/ would hate Updike, as everyone here is a champion narcissist themselves, only difference being Updike is more talented.

would bang/would read

>>2806465

If one is going to be talented, a little humility is not too much to ask.

Talent in others is bearable. Narcisism is amusing. A talented narcisist is unbearable.

>>2806445
Wat.

Shitty simile stacked up on shitty metaphor terrible adjective choices, and put down the thesaurus.

Captcha writes better than you do.

>>2806040
>>2806082
> On the radio: I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me. A good line
I have not read any of her previous work, but I do know that she pretty well known for being a comedic writer, just because it says that was a "good line" doesn't mean it is to the author. It could be framing the main character as being a poorly educated college poet you wouldn't even know just based on that paragraph