/lit/ - Literature

exactly how much do you think you know about contemporary literature

There's no over hyped names any more you mean.

This is because the worth of literature, of music, of the arts is entirely subjective.

Unless the entirety of academia changes, it will be literally impossible for the canonized greats to ever be surpassed, let alone rivaled.

The value, as it were, of art is only "appreciated" long after the author dead. Sometimes centuries later.

What you are hoping for is something that critics and academics love. Good luck with that.

In Science, their results have objective outcomes that be can directly measured. They are "giants" because their works tower over everyone.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what you think you know.

Talented people in science discover things. They are known well in their fields. Talented authors, artists, musicians, etc. create. Creations aren't as publicized within the community unless they're by someone who is popular, they can go unknown for a much longer time.

>>2844314
Really?

Just go back to /sci/ already.

There's no time to do art in our modern world.

We will have to come to terms with the stark reality that art was part of humanity's teenage years, now we are young adults and the age of science is upon us. The future is bright and full of mathematical wonder.

We do have giants.
They just aren't recognized as such by people like you.

>>2844335
>this is what some people actually believe

holy fuck.

How do you know there aren't giants?
How would you know if there were new giants?
How is it decided that someone is a giant?
What qualities do giants have?

In the arts, of course.

Giants only exist in the past. You can't identify someone current as a giant. They need to stand the test of time.

>>2844340
Art is dead.
It has been neglected and withered away.
Deal with it.

>what gives
Capitalism.
Consumerism.
Money.
Societal influence
Cultural values
Pragmatism
Practicality
Has an actual effect on the world
So much more

There's been a fracturing of the arts, mainly due to the sudden widespread accessibility of such made possible by the Internet.

No longer do you have certain composers dominating the entire musical culture, no longer do you have certain authors influencing entire generations of writers - instead, you have a flourishing, egalitarian petri dish, in which culture evolves assisted by artists rather than the other way around.

>>2844350
Terrible isn't it?
99% of those people have no business doing such things.
Only the most elite are worthy of the arts.
As we are, the masses are happy to devour shit on a daily basis. The least we do for them is have only the best to feed upon, not that they would know the difference. We have to save the plebs from themselves. If I could, I would have all the publishing companies abolished and only allow academic literature critics have final say on what should be published. We would then return to a golden age of literature.

>>2844357

>Not seeing literature as the sum of its parts rather than as marked by its individual accomplishments

Seriously though, "99% of those people have no business doing such things?" That just reeks of an almost fascist aristocratic tone. I seriously hope you're trolling.

>>2844360
>fascist aristocratic
Indeed, that it was we must do.
For too long, our inferiors have not understood their position.
Once it was that art was the sole domain of the nobility, the greatest of which was reserved for royalty.
Democracy and Egalitarianism are the enemy of art.
We must have an Oligarchy of influence. By having few role models to emulate we purify our striving and proceed in homogenous harmony.

>>2844370

I don't even

>>2844370

visual art is best art

The last universally recognized giants in literature are from the beginning of the 20th century (Joyce, Proust, Faulkner). It's because it takes time, studies and time again to sieve everything. The giants of our era will be known in the next one.

>>2844370
Meanwhile, on /lit/...

>implying Pynchon isn't a recognized giant

>>2844384
>takes forever for academics to decide which authors to invite to their circlejerk, for whom they shall ejaculate in their own honor for eternity.

>>2844386
>>2844379
>>2844376
This is why we can't have nice things.
You are so disagreeable to idea that of submitting to your artistic overlords. You are all implicit in the rape of creative culture. You should check your privilege. You feast inside the bowels of mediocrity and seeing that they will exclude you from shitting in the mouths of others, you revolt.

>>2844389
Don't come to /lit/ and complain about how the method for judging literature works. That's like walking into /sci/ and telling them the scientific method is garbage and should be replaced.

Art is becoming increasingly decentralized. Science isn't.
Anyone can write a poem and post it on the internet, you need years of training to be able to preform scientific research.
I'm not putting art down, I'm recognizing the way it is produced has changed with the introduction of the internet. You don't have to create a masterwork to be seen or heard.

>>2844395

>check your privilege
>while raving about cultural tyranny

>>2844394
>le fereyabend face

>>2844395
that's nice

>we have geniuses like Einstein, Pauling
I don't know how no one has mentioned it yet, and I hate to have to break this to all of you, but Einstein and Pauling are dead.

>>2844401

Ya but they were alive in this centuryish

>>2844401
>assuming logic and rationality
Why would you assume this would ever be the case?

>>2844403

Hey, Joyce died in 1941, I guess everybody can shut the fuck up now ?

>>2844403
I don't know about you, but by my calender, we are in the 21st Century, and they died in the 20th, just like Joyce and Eliot and Woolf

>implying DFW won't be inducted into the western canon

>>2844416
Not into Bloom's one.

no one from 1900-2012 has done any giant art

>>2844418
How do you know this?
Can there ever be giant art again?

>>2844416

He will.

>>2844418

>Ulysses
>A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
>The Waste Land
>Absalom, Absalom!

>not giant art

>>2844370
>>2844357
>>2844395

Stimulation of conversation

If you don't realize this is trolling, then you have a problem.

ITT: Hipsters assert their favorites to be important.

a giant art is coming...

and you sir should check your cis-privelege
>>2844395

>>2844427
Huge Orson Welles.

>>2844429
and you should get back to /pol/.

I know of a giant.
It's in my pants.

>>2844442
>>>/b/

Tripfags are the giants of 4chan.

>>2844444

Why do we have giants in tripfagging but not as anonymous anymore?

For instance we have geniuses like Deep & Edgy and Quentin.


But we don't have anyone on par with them as anon posters , it seems like all the talented people are going to tripfagging...what gives

Art is Dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8

A song about how art is dead.

>>2844471
Disappointing song, funny concept.

>>2844471
Endless Art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pSdVWEHMZ8
A song about how art never dies.

Girls gone wild.
>A song about girls going wild.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7e2xzcNtzg

>>2844486
>>2844471
Excellent, now I just need a song about how art never was.

>>2844502

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlGh_okr5nI

>>2844507
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCgicEWD1Nc&t=10m

>>2844502
>>2844507
>>2844511

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2zcLBr_VM

Both of the people you picked are dead, OP, yet Pynchon's still alive.

Also, specialization has been increasing for decades and included in that is literature and visual arts being subsumed within a tidal wave of more accessible/quick forms of media. The reason those "giants" are so prevalent today has plenty to do with the fact that they wrote during a time period when film and radio were still young concepts. Now we have film, radio, television, internet and its various forms of entertainment, then books and art and the theater/opera/ballet. There's a class divide in the enjoyment of these things still existent, too, including lower-class people feigning or cultivating interest purely for the sake of its High Culture placement.
Also, general education in the past was far more, well, general. Nowadays, especially in the US at least, as a student you're basically nudged into this or that field of study as you go along.
The fact that "literature" as a subset (granted, an ambiguous subset) of general fiction has become more and more insular and self-referential as time has gone by doesn't help with the increasing specialization of different fields of study. This is why people like Palahniuk gain fame but you won't hear about John Barth outside of some class, somebody who's been in some class, a dedicated enthusiast, or The New Yorker: how many people are really going to laugh at a joke like, "...for every Oedipus, a city of feebs," and what about the many who won't even know what the pun is?
Which is only a subtle change, if you consider that pulp books since their invention have always been more popular than weighty tomes on the meaning of (or lack of meaning) of life, art, experience, etc. Hell, Orwell has at least 2 or 3 essays on this fact, as does Gass.

>>2844514
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbgr74yNM7M

Yeah, we live in a world now where the philosophy is mostly self help, where a cow carved into 3 pieces is art and literature is a book about a teenager who can't get a vampire to love her.

I promise you, there is so much wonder out there, it's just that intellectual snobbery gets the better of them. Most great artists went uncelebrated in their own time.

My only lament now is poetry. Modern poetry seems to be very dull and without artistic merit, but tbf they said that in the 19th century about Tennyson and Byron so I guess I'm a hypocrite.

Oh and Science is science. It helps us understand the world. It makes sense then that people should know of them if they made huge discoveries. Especially if said discoveries were made recently.

>>2844523
www.youtube.com/watch?v=85xlZuZ0AbE&t=9m35s

>>2844348
>>2844335
And how do you account in this worldview of yours for the fact that there are more practising artists now than there have been at any other time in human history, more art galleries, and more interest in the arts in the general public? And, needless to say, more practiced art styles than at any other time in human history.

>>2844423
No, he won't. He's just a fad. Completely middle brow

LOL I can't believe OP actually believes this shit.

>>2844633

reality is hard to believe

>>2845194
Yeah, for OP at least.

My god this board reaks of pseudo-intellectual snobbery and hipsterishness.

I read English at Oxford University in England and when i'm not battling through medieval literature and getting set Victorian reading lists that make Dickins look like Stephenie myer in terms of complexity of prose. I like to relax with a no-brainer sci fi book or even an epic fantasy or a militiary tale.

But there's no place for that here. Keep ordering kafka and milton off amazon and lauding it over people on the internet /lit/.

>>2845225

>finds English prose challenging