/lit/ - Literature

This is why each age produces classic works of their own flavour and style. It's also why that when in a later age if somebody tries to reproduce, out of his admiration, the style of literature of the older age, it always fails. Byron and Shelley wrote about the romanticism of nature because in their time nature really was that romantic, that is the song that the muses were singing. Now if a young, amateur poet of today were to try and reproduce this style of romantic poetry he would only have the ECHO of that song to go by, because the muses of that time are long dead and only the echo of their song can be heard, and so if he were to try and write romantic poetry he would have to strain his voice to try and get it to match the romanticism of Byron and Shelley. This is what happens when a budding poet tries to write romantic poetry today - it always has the character of a strained voice.

So what is the "natural voice" of today, of our generation? What does the song of today's muse sound like? Answer: silence. The muses don't sing anymore. This isn't to say that there can't be any classic works of poetry or literature made today, it only means that a classic work of poetry or literature must have this quality of silence, just as Homer's had the quality of the epic, Aeschylus's had the tragic, Virgil's had the majestic, Dante's had the theological, Shakespeare's had the dramatic, etc. Tao Lin and the alt lit crowd are making absolutely asinine literature, but that's only because the muses of today are singing a very asinine song. Tao Lin and his crowd are actually pretty close to producing the classics of today. I'm not sure if they've quite hit the mark, but they are certainly pointing towards the mark where others are going in completely the wrong direction.

Now, I'm not a poet, and the muses don't sing to me, so it's only through reflection that I could have discovered what the song of today's muses sounded like. It occurred to me about 15 minutes ago when I tried to talk to my pet. I said something like, "come here, pet", but in the intonations of a crooning pet lover, somebody who fawns over his pets. The strange thing is - I'm not a crooning pet lover, so why did I speak like one? Answer: because I needed a way to speak. Now this might seem very trivial, but it is not at all trivial. It is very profound and reveals a very important truth about our age. The truth about our age is that it is mute, it has no voice. That Baudrillard guy wrote a lot of obfuscated literature on how in our age there is no "real", there is only "simulation". His explanation of this is very complicated (too complicated for me), but let's apply the most basic form of it to my situation - I didn't know how to REALLY speak to my pet (in what voice), so instead I chose to simulate a voice that wasn't mine. All modern conversation has the characteristic of this strained voice. All modern conversation has been reduced to merely "chat": you can see this reflected in Tao Lin's novels, where the characters are trying to speak about things that really affect them but they don't have the appropriate voice for it, so they have to speak in the chatty mode and are never able to express the gravity of their situations and emotions.

>>4037160
This is why our politicians are chatters instead of grand orators in the Roman style - if they tried to be grand orators in the Roman style they would seem pathetic, it would seem as though they were straining their voice. This is why it is difficult to speak romantically to your loved one without seeming like your an imposter dressed up as an 18th century poet.

Why has this happened? This is a large question that needs a large explanation, but I'm going to give you a small explanation anyway because it's more amusing to do that than to simply omit explanation. The reason why we have no voice is that we have abandoned "objective" truth and morality. I'm not trying to be "reactionary" here. The reason that I can't speak to my pet properly is because I have no objective sense of truth or objective sense of good and evil. If I had those things then I would know the RIGHT way to speak to my pet, but in the total absence of right and wrong I have no idea what the right way is to speak to my pet, so I speak it to him in a borrowed, simulated voice that is not my own. This is also why we are clumsy in greeting each and showing each other admiration and respect - there is total obfuscation as to what is the RIGHT way to do things is, so we have to talk, act, and make gestures purely from hints. We have to look out into the big emptiness of the crowd and by observing their actions try and piece together what the "right" way to do things is.

>>4037162
Instead of having our morality decided by learned philosophers and theologians, we have our morality decided by the weird, amorphous mass of the "public", the crowd. It's also why it's hard to introduce yourself romantically to a woman without seeming like a total jackass by relying on clichéd "ice-breakers" - because there is no proper decorum on introducing yourself in this way and the propriety of your introduction being assessed by how gracefully you live up to the decorum, instead you a huge formlessness, an absence of decorum, where you have to try and guess what the best way of introducing is. This is why there are so many books about female psychology in the "dating scene", because you can no longer rely on decorum and manners to perform social actions, you have to turn to mystical arts like psychology to try and give you a upperhand.

I'm digressing, but this more or less completes your introduction on how to write a literary classic. This is what the muse of today sounds like, so listen for her voice - this will help you write literature that has the correct form to secure it as a classic, as a work representative of the age that it belongs to. I'll give you an example for the sake of illustration - perhaps you could write a straightforward realist novel where people fall in and out of relationships, except you use language borrowed from ALL of literature - this would show how our age needs to use simulated voices in order to express itself. You could borrow Byron's voice for the romantic scenes, you could borrow Shakespeare's voice for the dramatic scenes, you could borrow Dante's voice for the introspective scenes concerned with the character's soul, etc. I know Joyce already did something like this, but who cares?

>>4037168
You do realise that Joyce, after the dissapointing reception of 'Dubliners' decided to intentionally write a novel geared to what turns critics on? A book filled with obscure references, quotes in foreign languages, puzzles, hidden messages and style figures? The result was 'Ulysses'.

>>4037264
What was Portrait all about then in the interim between Dubz and Ulysses?

>>4037168
i really doubt any of the great authors you mentioned actually consciously attempted to attune themselves to their literary zeitgeist. it's only in retrospection that we forge these connections between their works and their environments. they wrote honestly- "from the heart", to use a cliche. self-conscious introspection kills this honest creative spirit.

and our time is no fucking different. if fags like you are out to "create a classic" or "be the great voice of our generation" or whatever and you use a shitty formula and make some frankenstein patchwork of dead literary styles then fine, but realize that our time isn't some unique dystopian relativist shithole and that you're better off writing honestly from the self than attempting to reflect your environment.

>>4037281
> they wrote honestly- "from the heart", to use a cliche
>that you're better off writing honestly from the self than attempting to reflect your environment.

that's exactly what I was saying with the muse metaphor.
this is the literal meaning of the muses.

>if fags like you are out to "create a classic" or "be the great voice of our generation" or whatever and you use a shitty formula and make some frankenstein patchwork of dead literary styles then fine

it's only a suggestion or example, I don't know if my conclusion was right but I think my logic was valid.

> but realize that our time isn't some unique dystopian relativist shithole

that's arguable but I think it pretty much is.

>>4037155
>The Muses don't sing anymore.
>The Muses of today are singing a very asinine song.

U wot m8?

>>4037270
How does POTAAAYM not fit in with what I just wrote?
I don't understand.

You're pathetic

I like you OP. Decently written, novel ideas.

So would it be horribly tacky to have 4chan threads in a novel? Homestuck pulls off something similar with a fair amount of success, but I'm still trying to find a subtle way to implement this in a traditional printed media.

>>4037306
POTAAAYM is at least quite interested in a sense of reality beyond the text that the text in portraying Stephen's psychology tracks with reasonable fidelity and precision (at least for a perceptive reader). The agenda is very different in Ulysses where textuality itself as a representational medium is frequently toyed with in chapters like S&C and the Sirens; some parts at the very end are full of words and small phrases that scholars have blown up to signify massively in the putative physical world of SD/LB. This progression suggests that the literary agenda in question is much more complex than you would have us believe (although it's probably not worth anyone's time demonstrating this fully, because your comment was after all a fairly casual one).

>>4037162
right

bump