/lit/ - Literature

My friend wants to be a writer, even though he's an idiot.

He wants to write a story that is a cross between the hunger games and the walking dead.

I asked him if he wanted to put any symbolism in the book, to make it transcendental

>nah dude, that shit's gay

>>3216124
>I asked him if he wanted to put any symbolism in the book, to make it transcendental

>>3216130

that book will probably be a bestseller though

>Constantly dubbed by the shallow dipshits at my school as either pretentious or a genius for reading when I'm neither.
>Always asked, "So, what's that book about?" That fucking conversation always ends immediately after they reply with a flat "oh."
>The 90% of people who read in my highschool will only ever read Manga, hunger games, twilight, etc.
>The other 10% will read meh tier authors that i found moderately entertaining such as Kerouac, Palahniuk, hunter thompson and various other edgy teenager books that they usually never finish.

fuck off, OP, you condescending twat

>>3216193
more stories about high school and what it's like to read in high school please

>>3216130
>tfw that shit is gay, though

>>3216198

Yes how could I say that? She obviously knew what she was talking about.

>>3216198
>Being condescending while calling someone condescending.

Girl: How do I become a writer, how do I get good?

Me: Read the classics.

Girl: What's that? What are they?

Pause

Me: You know how you go into a book shop and there's the classics section?

Blank look

Me: Read those.

>>3216193
Where do you live, maybe we could meet up and do /lit/ stuff together.

>tfw no patrician friends to do stuff like discuss books and discuss manifestos and write poetry and go urban exploring with

>>3216211
Not telling her the real secret

to suck your penis

>overhearing girls on the train
>they mention The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter, in that order
>they only talk about how fast they read the books and how they weren't really interested in reading them until after seeing the movies

I bet they browse /lit/, too.

>>3216233
I've taken a break from reading /lit/ stuff to give reading manga a try.
Finished what is out of Goodnight Punpun last night. I have a bit more respect for the medium.

>>3216250
>I bet people who like these books browse places where those books are hated.

>>3216255
Try Saint Young Men

>be reading my kindle on the university bus
>Girl sits down next to me and asks me what I'm reading
>At the time it was Midnight's Children
>Ask her what she's been reading
>"supernatural books"
>Before I have a chance to ask any further, she gets off at her stop

This has bugged me for months, because she seemed like a nice girl. I just can't figure out what supernatural could mean besides Twilight, Laurel K Hamilton, et all.

>>3216124
>any time an adult mentions they are a harry potter or twilight fan.
Can't say that qualifies as "cute" though.

>>3216211

When I hear a girl say something like "I think I want to be a writer." I immediately know she's retarded. The girls who really want to write know it with absolute conviction and don't just bring it up as a conversation piece.

>>3216124
You think learning to be a writer is tough?

You should try being a comedic writer while being both very dumb and entirely unfunny.

>>3216233
>patrician
Stop. Lurk Moar

Friend : Are you going to write an ending?
Me: It has an ending
Friend: Um...that's not really an ending, like in an ending doesn't usually someone die or like, something big happens to solve all the problems?

>>3216989
>>that's not really an ending, like in an ending doesn't usually someone die or like, something big happens to solve all the problems?

Actually, I feel that a lot of novels don't have endings. I don't feel that one should necessarily be belittled for feeling that 'an ending' is more than just the point beyond which a novel does not continue.

>>3217004
You're bad at explaining yourself, that comment talks in circles.

>>3217008
>>implying I was explaining anything
>>implying you are not simply too dumb to understand the two sentence post I wrote.
>>implying there is anything circular in my post, when it is really just vague and unnecessarily byzanthine in terms of grammar.

>>3216193
you sound like a real twat btw
i think i would much prefer to hang out with the shallow dipshits

>>3217018
>only speaks in greentext
>double arrows when greentexting
>byzanthine

herp, meet your derp

>>3216284
Surreal? There's a section in some bookstores, these days, which, though called 'surreal', is just "Vampiron and Ghasto: The Unoriginal Odd Couple", and such shit.

>>3216410
>>3216410
>you think doing a thing you're okay at is tough?
>try doing a thing you're bad at!

>>3216284
Didn´t she mean books based on the series Supernatural? I don´t even know if there´s such a thing, but that´s what I would expect.

>>3217004

i agree with you. I don't understand movies/novels where they don't seem to end. They normally follow the same pattern: Life is good>they start getting in over there head with something>life turns to shit>Life turns to ultimate shit>the end. I honestly feel as though writers only do this to try to make the story seem more "deep." Just my opinion though.

>>3217046
Maybe the point is that there is no solution?
No grand harmony "everything will be ok in the end"?

I told a famous literary writer at a public meeting that he was talented. This infuriated him for some reason and he almost left. I've never seen someone as pissed off from just a simple comment.

I'm just a simpleton, I never understood why he got mad.

>>3217054

Who was it? Sounds like a bit of a cunt to me.

>>3217046
you know what is even deeper than that, non-hamlet ending? where the author writes this long, painful denouement, possibly even reaching into old age, perhaps only he sketches it out, but you get the feeling that all the rest of their lives was a trivial non-event, a bitterweet diliquescence, the gradual rotting and crookening and finally the appearance of a hearse in the driveway, all without any feeling, purely descriptive. you know those painful denouements that lead right to the grave, as if that were an afterthought, missing the tragic drama of mortality for some trivial action that preceded it.

>>3217054
america's got talent. welcome to 2012. 'talent' is for hacks, 'genius' is for writers. if you want to praise him, call him a genius. is that so hard?

>>3216124
>Cute things you've heard simpletons say about books or writing

Who the fuck actually says "courting," instead of flirting/trying to get with. Stop being a try hard pseudo-intellectual. I bet your edgy stream-of-consciousness 'work' sucks balls too.

You're a fucking simpleton too, dillhole.

>>3217086
i use it ironically all the time. i feel that the very quaintness of the term ridicules human affection, also because it connects 'flirting' to the past, as if it were, and it is, a timeless and banal ritual, acted out in every generation. i feel that every time i say 'court' that ridicule is understand and i try to extend and weight the word with as much mockery as possible.

>>3217093
understood*, what a HOWLER!

>>3217093
le_kornheiser_face_insufferable.png

>>3217079

Talent means a natural aptitude or skill.

Writing skills are not innate, it takes thousands of hours of practice. Calling it talent undermines the amount of work put into it.

It's like calling a virtuoso piano player talented when they spent all their free time practicing.

The best advice I ever got was from the girl I was sort of into in high school. She said "Just write a bunch of bullshit and there, you have a book." She started wearing on me after that, for other reasons though.

>>3216250
>studying English in Germany
>hanging in a literature class before it begins
>girls in front of me talking about Twilight
>they are seriously convinced it is a literary masterpiece
>dumbest of them brags that she read Twilight in a single day
>"So nerdy"
>they move on to The Hunger Games
>homely girl says she illegally downloads supernatural romance novels all day
>they ready them as pdfs on their laptops

>>3217093

court my dick you faggot

>>3217036
>>3216410
it's the little exchanges like this that make 4chan worth coming back to.

>>3216233
I live in a suburb near Houston. Have never met anyone on /lit/ that's from texas

>>3217170
i know someone who lives in houston but they're in college.

>>3217170
Why the fuck would anyone live in Texas? You've got a brain and you know how wheels work, gtfo of that readin-is-fer-faggits shithole, man.

>>3217093
I have a feeling you just pulled that out of your ass. Pretty good. You'll go far in lit.

That said, you do seem like an intolerable cunt, and your "stream of consciousness piece" is in all probability horrendous garbage you shouldn't inflict the mention of on anyone, much less a poor girl who's dumber 'n you are

>>3217240
i'm not OP, and i pride myself on being intolerable. nothing makes me angrier than being tolerated.

>>3217243

>>3217243

>>3217229
Austin is aiight. Otherwise you're entirely right.

>>3217243
What about being accepted?

>>3217258
Go to bed Wes

>>3217229

Not as bad as Los Angeles.

>>3217299
LA is pretty bad too. Too much crime. But I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Texas

>>3217307

>The overall rankings were determined by the rankings of each city in each of the six subcategories: bookstores, educational attainment, internet resources, library resources, newspaper circulation, and periodical publication.

http://www.ccsu.edu/page.cfm?p=8142

>tfw read alone
>tfw don't read when outside
>tfw don't talk about literature with friends

It's a good feel, I don't know why you can't feel it

>>3217313
Yeah, but it's still Texas.

>>3217041
there is such a thing. i love the show, but the books are awful.

back when I was in college I was having a get together at my place. one of the guys who was there who has an " I'm never wrong, I just misunderstood" attitude about everything was making a claim that every other line in Shakespeare is a sexual innuendo. I asked him if he meant to say that there are several throughout his works that are often overlooked but he couldn't be corrected, he stood by his claim. I ask for his source because I know he doesn't read. he ended up pulling up some shit tier website that holds no grounds in the academic world and I called him an idiot.

A few years ago I needed a copy of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, couldn't find it in regular bookshops so I went to a second-hand bookshop. The owner of this bookshop has a somewhat legendary status in my country, supposedly a book connoisieur or sth. He asked me what I am searching for, I replied. Then he said in a condescending tone: "Well then, you ought to go to a monastery to find that." It took me a few moments, but then I realized he can't tell the difference between Cartesian and Carthusian.

Missing the point of the thread, but my boss has been trying to get in my pants for months. I took great pleasure in telling him all the gross details about Lolita when I was reading it a month ago. He's left me alone for now.

>>3216284
She probably mean the sub genre of supernatural romance, such as twilight.

A friend of mine told me that he listened to music when he read so i said "oh like Jazz and stuff?" he said "no, i listen to rap". Then he tried to convince me that it actually helped your reading because you heard words and read them at the same time.

Another friend said that he doesn't understand how you can read a book without seeing the movie first. Apparently he saw all the Harry Potter films and then read the books (he didn't finish them all though, just the first 2). Yes i know, i was shocked and rustled when i heard it too.

The thing both of my friends had in common was that they pretty much never read a book before in their entire lives, then told me that they started reading (to which i say, cool, good for you) and then some weeks after they tell me this.

>>3217170
Texasfag here.
Currently perched in Austin.>>3217258


>>3217229
That's only in more rural areas.

>>3217545

I was traveling through Texas and stopped by a rural diner for some coffee. I brought a book in with me to read and the waitress said, "You look like a northerner. You trying to impress us with your books? We learn by experience down here."

HAHAHA THat's funny shit, OP!

>be southamerican
>go to american highschool for one year
>reading Alfred Jarry at lunch
>black girl looks at the book cover
>picture Jesus on a bicycle
>tries to speak spanish
>porquay tchiene jesucristo?
>why you read
>thats boring brah
>you wierd

>english class
>kids dont know what philosopher is
>man, i think its someone who works with plants or someting

>go back to chile
>hang out with friends who /lit/
>write poetry with friends who /lit/
>speak about southamerican literature
>with southamerican kids
>cant figure why northamerican kids are so dumb
>be thankful for not being surrounded with ignorant twats all the time
America is dumb, bro.

>>3217468
Maybe dont be such a slut

>>3217559
That's fucking awesome.

Isn't like that in Austin though, it's the heart of the Texas Book Festival.

>>3217086
It's a funny fucking word, asshole

>>3217559
What did you do faggot?

>>3217559
holy fuck! plz secede

>>3217562

My god is america really that bad?

>>3217590

Yeah, that one highschool represents all of the US.

>>3217559
>>3217562

'murrica never stops to impress me.

>>3217590

Yeah, it is. I'm not the guy that posted that comment, but I'm Mexican and I had an extremely similar experience.

>>3217598
>>3217590


>Went to China
>Dumb kids comes up to me
>"Hey anon! Here's a personal anecdote that reflects on my entire country."
>Personal anecdotes
>China sux

>>3216124
>simpletons
/lit/, you need to get things straight.

>>3217590
>My god is america really that bad?

Yes, there are only about 1 million people who read serious fiction. The rest read junk or nothing at all.

The US has 311,591,917 people.

>>3217459
this is like that story where the 18th century guy is in a small town and asks for leibniz and the guy thinks he wants "live nits" and so the guy acts all pretentious
who was that again i cant remember

>>3217613
[citation needed]

>>3216124
Look at OP and fucking laugh.
> Yeah I write stream of consciousness. Doesn't have a plot or anything. Real tough patrician-tier stuff. Poor little girl would never understand how demanding that is.

Guess what bro?
Fucking anybody could write a stream of conscious work: and its much less intellectually taxing to do so than to write something which incorporates experimental elements and also has a recognizable plot.
You're doing nothing new or challenging or even remotely interesting by writing stream of consciousness lit. Especially if you're the type of pseudo-intellectual that posts on /lit/. At least if a ghetto black girl wrote stream of consciousness with mutilated text-speak it would be somewhat interesting and different.
Why not invent a new style of narrative which reflects the evolving paradigms of of the post-modern age and the effects of new technologies or social situations on human consciousness instead of dick-riding modernists who did the same for their generation, and much better than you ever will? Oh, that's right, you can't, because it's
> surprise
easier to write stream of consciousness bullshit and pretend like it's significant and "harder" to get than shit like the Hunger Games.

TL;DR: writing stream of conscious doesn't make you a good writer or even remotely interesting, and what you're writing is probably pedantic shit.

>>3217459

>Cartesian and Carthusian

go to a Starbucks. Ask for a cappuccino. Guy says:

"You might want to go to the zoo for that".

realize he thinks i mean cappuchin monkeys

tfw. damn monkeys make FANTASTIC coffee...

>>3217592
>>3217605

>"They were so mad they couldn't contain their rage as the entire board dismissed their precious country as trash, the 'murricans, in unison; stood up and clapped. For there was one thing that the people of the star mangled banner was proficient at and that was the art of clapping, letting the rigorious rythm of the hands provide a gateway for their emotions to flow through their bodies. Warm tears came down from their eyes, their defences finally broken, the anger uncontrolled. As the clapping came to its end the 'murricans, now filled with even more contempt for the rest of the world, walked away in shame, for there was nothing more that could be done. They were defeated by the board and now they walked away, embracing each other like comrades, to never come back".

>>3217613
>The NEA's survey, which included more than 18,000 respondents, found that nearly 47% of all adults in the U.S. read a work of fiction not required for work or school in 2008, with the number of Americans who read a book growing by 3.5 million. -Time magazine

Quit making shit up, pleb.

OP here. I started this thread last night and can't believe how misunderstood it's become. I know stream of consciousness, unless done properly is a way for shitty writers to convince themselves their work has literary merit. It was for a writing project on SOC works.

And about being a cunt or whatever for how I refer to the girl, I have nothing against her and tried to be neutral, just because I wanted to get what she said across to y'all.

Take it for what it is, and it is kind of funny.

>>3217620
A splendid read.