/lit/ - Literature

This is pretty good. Better than most of I've seen on this board annyway.

I have a piece like that from either my junior or senior year (that's when I was into this girl), which I absolutely refuse to post except I'll say that the first line was "Ours was a history of furtive glances."

Predictably, it does not go well from there.

>>3089417
No, it's not.

>>3089422
Oh God, I can see myself writing something like that at that age.

>I sigh, forking over the cash. I'd Park in her Place.

haha, good show

It's better than the first thing I ever wrote. If it was the beginning of a much longer story, I'd probably keep reading.

>>3089423
bitch, this is good.
You want to know why its good?
cuz its real.

now enjoy your life of pretension and dick suckery

>I'd Marv in her Gardens

>mfw

Jesus christ, you've fucking posted this here before. It's both pathetic that you've done that, and just as pathetic that I even know it.

>>3089422
>Ours was a history of furtive glances
I've heard this before. I don't know where, but it sounds so goddamn familiar...

ours was a history of furtive glances
theirs was a history of dicks in asses
then there was one who stood in the sun
he left it alone with whiskey and a gun

>>3089633
This is great.

I enjoyed it.

>>3089552

IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR TO ME ALSO, BUT I CANNOT REMEMBER WHERE, NOR WHEN I READ IT.

PERHAPS IT IS A SENTENCE THAT ORIGINATES FROM THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS.

>>3089384
The prose isn't all that bad, bro.

>>3089384
>I'd Park in her Place.

Can you guys critique the first hundred words of a children's book? It's more for young adults but I'm worried it reads like pulpy juvenilia.

>>3089384
I like it, a little self-referential but not bad at all. For the Vermont Avenue joke, the punchline can be bigger/better than "OK that was bad".

"I've got to stop doing this" etc.

>>3089422
I want to read it. Please post some more of the beginning. Please do, it might just not be that bad after all. This is an anonymous board anyway.

>>3090177
Your silence says yes /lit/. Here goes.


The rain made dark patterns in the snow. Quiet patterns that ebbed and flowed as the water touched the ground, each drop a different sound, together a pitch-black symphony of notes. The figure listened for a while to the soft echoes fall and peered outside the shelter. It was the first light on a new day, the pale sun rising, dark on white in a monochrome world, humdrum drab and clockwork. Steam billows around the moving Fortress, clouding the outside city, her city. She saw those on the street - the old men in with the milk-white eyes, those blinded by work: a mist over the world as they begged.

And the City was all they would ever know. A place of Industry, now but an old shadow, faded brass pistons, that faint copper scent on the air. Money reigned now, the other Gods long dead and buried. The past glories of the Capital stared down on the Fortress as it rolled along the empty streets. It is, perhaps, a story for another time.

>>3090179
I wouldn't say that it was self-referential in any interesting way, rather that it was written in the first person.

"I'd Marv in her Gardens. She opts to do nothing, " that was cute, though.

>>3090203
I liked that.

>>3090203
Meh. Better than OP's, and if it's a children's book, I'd say it's sufficient. "Humdrum drab" bothers me. "Symphony of notes" is kind of redundant, because what else would a symphony be composed of? And if you're using "billows" as a verb, it should be in past tense. "Milk-white" is such a trite description, but it's better than going overboard in trying to be novel.

>>3090221
All valid points. "Humdrum drab and clockwork" does seem a little redundant.

>"I roll a two, and land on the jail space. At least she doesn't own that; she owns pretty much everything else. Everywhere I go, she's there. New York Avenue, Reading Railroad, the Water Works, English class, chemistry class. How do you tell someone that you can't stop thinking about them?"

Y'know I actually quite like this line.

>>3090254
Eh, it's kind of banal.

>>3089384
>"You just had to buy Park Place, didn't you?" I sigh, forking over the cash. I'd Park in her Place.
This is such a lame joke that it made me burst in laughter

>>3090280
You're kind of banal.

>>3090254
This is also my favorite. I love how he turns the game into an analogy for her everpresence.

OP, this is decent. It doesn't have that shitty voice that most of /lit/ has. That voice that sounds like a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual idiot blabbing on and on about some abstract concept.

>>3090361

abstraction gets us nearer to the heart of things than does the photographic, son.

When I was in Junior High, I had this strange convention of writing. I didn't plant the text at all outside the main idea (Usually it was the setting) and then started to write, write, write, write for hours, finish it in one sitting exhausted from it and not ever reading what you actually wrote.

I kinda shamed my works, but I got still good grades out of them. But I still don't understand what I was thinking.

>>3090363
I think you misunderstood my words. My attack wasn't on the abstract itself, but the writers who redundantly ramble about it.

>>3090373

It sounds like you're making a by-proxy argument for minimalism/realism

>>3090363
>minimalism/realism
Minimalism was a rejection of realism, and rejecting realism in favour of something more abstract fell out of favour in the 80's. Yes, Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Marquez and a host of other authors injected some life into the American Realism of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner that was starting to stagnate. Genres like Magical realism, minimalism, Radical disjunctionism and absurdism became used as a response to realism, an expression that felt like it was imitating contemporary culture.

The best way to get to the truth of a issue is hyper-realism, though; to analyze everything in excruciating detail. This may not be the most entertaining method, but it is the most effective. Thats why Tom Wolfes Hyper-realism mixed with New journalism was so effective at exploring things, even it it was quite dull at times.

>>3090389
What's next? As far as I can tell we have reached some kind of expression apex - and it quite possibly followed the burst caused by rejection of realism. We have peaked in finding new methods of Music, art, and literature, and are now wallowing around, scraping at the bottom of the barrel for ideas. We are no longer restricted or hindered by anything, and have nothing besides the mundane to rebel against. Nothing is shocking, no ideas are radical enough to demand attention, and all avenues are either explored already, or have been explored so many times before that they are now banal. Sure, there will be a few great novels, canvases, films and songs created in the coming years, but I honestly can't see any new genres emerging that will offer anything new. Consumerism is our final form, and we have reached our creative peak.

>>3090430
I think one of the main problems is that we are needlessly self-referential in our writing. There's this trite post-modern self-awareness that has become ever more frequent as readerships become more knowledgable about artistic conventions.

Just wait for the next big medium to emerge, an artistic space where we can taste visuals, visualise a symphony and directly download emotion, narrative and concepts into our subconscious.

>>3090430
worry not, anon, I'm working to correct this.

>>3090430
All to get rid of the pain of being human, eh?

>>3090430

it's a common thing throughout history to think of one's own place and time as the 'end' or the 'finale' to creative endeavor. This is simply because we don't have the vision to see what will happen next. There is no peak to be reached, only a furthering of the form.

>>3090200
Well, here goes;

>Ours was a history of brushed shoulders, furtive glances followed quickly by disdainful looks. When Samantha came back east, I didn't imagine her to have changed much. But there was something distinctly Northwestern about her. She suddenly exhibited a hardiness that had eluded her when she was still infected with the same vestige of Puritainism I suffer from,

This must have been around the time I read Less Than Zero, and she had gone northwest briefly, so I wrote about her coming back to school.

>>3090389
>hyper-realism
>not Hysterical Realism

Like it.

>>3089384
I have this sneaky feeling you just wrote this prose and are saying you wrote it in junior high so we'll all be less critical when we give our feedback.

I'm right, aren't I...

>>3092451
No. As someone pointed out, I've posted it before, years ago. And junior in high school is not the same as junior high school