/lit/ - Literature

goddamn he ugly

i don't necessarily view that as a problem, if true. nothing against the artists in the latter category, they're all wonderful, but the artists in the former are more attuned to my tastes.

>>4969248
I've never agreed with a word that Bloom's written. He's the ultimate smarmer, and the literary equivalent of a jock.

>>4969329
but he appreciates where appreciation is due

>>4969248
Bloom's problem is that he's looking for more-of-same. But the magnificent writers of the 21st Century will not be more-of-same. They'll couple their talent with innovation and show the world new modes of expression and use forms of art that are as of yet undreamt.

To look for a "21st Century Joyce" or a "21st Century Picasso" is to look for something quite recognizable, where those artist were, before them, not recognizable. Nobody called Picasso a "20th Century ____enterolderartisthere______" because the comparison would have been false out of the gate.

Same for Bloom's. The comparison is false even before it can be made.

>>4969366
And I dare say when the first few major artists of the 21st Century do appear, Bloom will discount them as not worthy of attention--simply because they'd be unlike anything we'd seen yet, and therefore wouldn't wedge neatly into Bloom's preconceived idea of what the canon is.

>>4969366
i dont think hes necessarily looking for exact counterparts of older artists
i think hes wants to compare them in terms of the innovation

>>4969396
He already hates DFW.

>>4969403
What was innovative about Shakespeare? Dude literally plagiarized almost all of his works. Don't get what was so innovative about Dante either. Just seems like another big epic with some political ideas thrown into it.

>>4969422
>Dude literally plagiarized almost all of his works.
Citation needs

>>4969422
you mentioned joyce and picasso in your previous comment, who were innovators and that was what i was referring to

as for shakespeare and dante - they are literary giants, they might not have been the biggest innovators of their times, but their work is of such brilliance that it eclipses any need for supreme 'originality'
they were masters of their language and of humanity

>>4969403
That's how he presents it, but I don't think it's true. Bloom may voice a spirit that welcomes innovation, but he has a track record of being very closed-minded and stuck in the past. When he says he wants a 21st Century Joyce, I think he means literally he wants a 21st Century equivalent.

>>4969438
Not me, bro. Don't rope me into this "hurr, Dante just wrote shit. wtf, that's not innovation" retardation.

>>4969422

You... you don't see what was innovative about Dante? You're not serious right? Nobody could be that stupid could they?

Anyway he invented the modern conception of Hell. When you think of Hell, whoever you are, you imagine the Hell Dante invented. That's no mean feat. And also by writing his epic in the vulgar common Italian (opposed to Latin) he was innovating hugely in that language.

Christ you are some kind of stupid fucker.

>>4969248
Doesn't Bloom think Pynchon as some second coming of God though?

>>4969248
Old man's babbling. We don't even know if we already have a genius, maybe geniuses don't care for literature anymore, the present day Shakespeare may be a ceo or something.

>>4970798

He never said no geniuses but there have only been two geniusee of the calibre of shakspeare and dante in like 4000 years of written history, you can maybe throw in Goethe, Milton and Pushkin if you want, still that's one every 850 years or so.

>>4969422
plagarism, of course, meaning contrary your retarded post-romantic notion of what plot creation is... you think shakespeare plagarized because you don't understand how people regularly composed plots until well after shakespeare's death

hurr durr king lear was a folk legend so shakespeare was a plagarist

>>4970793
no, pynchon's just his favorite living american novelist

>>4969445
>he has a track record of being very closed-minded and stuck in the past
since when? what artist has he dismissed for this reason?

he was on the forefront in the 70s and 80s by acclaiming at a higher than average level both ashbery and pynchon who were the sort of artists who were controversial for being more or less innovative and forward thinking, and he regularly dismisses artists for being too like past artists

where is this track record? if anything i think bloom is too obsessed with innovation

>>4971112
im just going to assume you aren't counting homer b/c you think you can't count him as a single person or that he's a scribe or w/e

>>4971112
nah youve not taken into account the increase of population which will increase the odds of such a genius being born which means that one will come into being in less time as before

>In the early 21st century, Bloom has often found himself at the center of literary controversy after criticizing popular writers such as Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou,[39] Stephen King,[40] David Foster Wallace,[41] and J. K. Rowling.[40]
And now all of the butthurt becomes so clear.

there wont be any 21st century genius of art because postmodernism marks the end
there cannot be any more innovation
everything has already been done at some point
wohooo

>>4971160
how dare he criticize DFW

>>4971169
I wonder how many people have said that.

>>4971169
postmodernism in literature didn't really do too much new anyway so i don't see why it would run the innovation wells dry

>he thinks mozart is "better" than louis armstrong

what a fucking idiot

>>4971198
i think he actually personally likes louis more but he acknowledges mozart as of higher canonical importance. he listens to pretty much exclusive jazz iirc

>>4969248
>To hope for a Dante or Shakespeare, a J. S. Bach or Mozart, a Michelangelo or Leonardo, is to ask for too much, since gifts that enormous are very rare.
But our population is much bigger than it ever was before. The chances are therefore much higher.
Can anyone work out the genius-to-sheep average in recent history and extrapolate to today?

>>4971206
that almost makes him more of an idiot. had he said beethoven instead of mozart, he'd have a better argument for him being equal to armstrong, but nobody these days who knows what they're talking about and isn't a senile old racist would make the case that mozart is more important than louis armstrong. bach maybe. but comparing musicians separated by like 150 years and in vastly different economic and social circumstances is foolish, no matter what criteria you use

>>4971229
mozart is better than beethoven though unless you are a romantic faggot who likes to stand over stormy seas and jack off to how misunderstood you are

>>4971208
>But our population is much bigger than it ever was before. The chances are therefore much higher.
Not true, as the chances of someone being a genius in a given field decrease more quickly than the population grows

>>4971239
Why should it? Unless "genius" is a relative term in which case there would always be a relative number of geniuses.

>>4971234
>unless you are a romantic faggot who likes to stand over stormy seas and jack off to how misunderstood you are

I do quite enjoy that.

The mental imagery capacity of newer generations is declining rapidly due to increase in pictorial media. The greats like Beethoven, Shakespeare etc grew up when your mind was free, free thought was present and you weren't bombarded with media from all around, people did not try to shape your thought processes to sell you anything, you weren't constantly subjected to futile mediocrity motivating ideologies. Semantical knowledge of a person determines the limits of their imagination. People nowadays don't experience life first hand. Every experience since childhood is biased, some opinion is always crammed down your throat by your parents, or school or the media you consume. Mind is never free enough to truly expand and explore the limitless world of our imagination.

>>4971234
>unless you are a romantic faggot who likes to stand over stormy seas and jack off to how misunderstood you are

that sounds great actually

I guarantee there are great geniuses on par with Shakespeare and the like alive today.

But they aren't lucky enough to be born in the right place or time.

>>4971274
>people did not try to shape your thought processes
are you joking

>>4971169
*farts*

>>4971198
Don't get me wrong, Louis Armstrong is probably the greatest improviser to ever live. But mozart mastered ever single form of his time, surpassed everyone, and was very, very rarely surpassed. Mozart is the single greatest composer to ever live, and to a further extent than Louis Armstrong is an improviser.

>>4971229
Mozart is so much better than Beethoven. His symphonies, operas, choral music, and concerti are all far more impressive than any of Beethoven's. I will admit it's a pretty fair tie in the chamber department, and beethoven's solo piano music was greater than any solo instrument work, but Mozart clearly beats beethoven.

Bach does come close, but he wasn't nearly as versatile.

>>4971234
All of these pale in comparison to Lady Gaga.

>>4971153

Yeh that's why, but even counting Homer it's still six dudes in the absolute top tier with silver medalists being like Tolstoy, Joyce, Milton, Chaucer, Proust, Virgil, Kafka, Borges and quote a few others... Eliot, Dickinson, Whitman, Baudelaire, Blake, etc.

All Bloom is saying is that it's statistically unlikely for a genius like Shakespeare or Dante to appear in any century, whereas there will be a half dozen Keatses, Joyces, Yeatses and Prousts every century.

>>4971338

Why do you guarantee that? Are there any painters on par with Remrandt, Da VincI or Michealangelo?

>>4971274
I'm still pretty much against the idea that "new media" is changing people all that much. Dumb people use it vapidly and are vapid because of it, the same way dumb people use everything vapidly and become vapid because of it throughout all of history. The tiny fraction of smart people in the world, like always, will still have the same cognitive and creative abilities. The media just makes the dumb people a lot louder, and louder in a different way than before, but I don't see all of this being a profound change in society at all.

>>4971274

People actually get smarter every generation, and the generations born after the advent of the Internet are significantly more intelligent than boomers and the generations prior to boomers.

>>4971528
What the hell are you talking about, Bach INVENTED the same harmony that mozart merely used>>4971529

>>4971580
bach didn't really invent anything. he was fairly old fashioned, he just wrote really really good music.

>>4971516
>i listen to classical because i think that's what smart people do

mozart is precious as fuck, not a big deal

>>4969248
Wasn't Shakespeare considered just a genre writer back in Ye Olden times?

>>4970786
>When you think of Hell, whoever you are, you imagine the Hell Dante invented.

First off, that's just flat out untrue. Most people do not think of Hell as any kind of tiered structure and they certainly couldn't tell you the specific punishments that Dante outlined.

Second, Dante's Hell may not have come from Scripture, but that doesn't mean he invented it. Torturous and gloomy afterlives abound in ancient faiths.

>>4971234
>>4971528
>>4971516
>get a load of these classiplebs

this is a good thread please continue

>>4969415
DFW is literally unknown outside of America

>>4972202
i'm from bongland and i know him m8

>>4970786
Actually I think of Erebus

>>4972206
and America's bitches aka the whole Anglo world

>>4971543
all these great artists have one thing in common:

luck.

no matter how talented you are you need an insurmountable level of luck - being born in the right time, being born into a household + family + means to nurture a childhood where they can discover their craft, not dying before the age of 5 (very common in earlier times), not being killed in a war, not being killed by disease, + many other factors

statistically there are probably a few million 'geniuses' alive today - and only a very small portion of them (like the average person) will amount to anything noteworthy

>>4972206
thats because you browse here

>>4971160
He asks for innovative writing and then he criticizes DFW? Counterproductive, much?

What you're all missing is that the greats all had a classical education, a great understanding of the 'perceived canon' as well as being some of the brightest minds in the respective times.

Most morons in here still seem to think that genius is just whatever is brand new.

>>4972832
DFW is hardly innovative. Anyway that has taken their time and analyzed his prose is well aware his misuse of words.

>>4969329
>the literary equivalent of a jock
shit that is true.

If all writers were Shakespeare tier, we wouldn't find Shakespeare so exceptional in the first place.

>>4972849
>shakespeare
>never directly read most greeks, even in translation
>never read dante
>weak latin and weaker greek
doesn't sound like a great understanding of the canon to me

>>4973323
>never directly read most greeks, even in translation
>never read dante
>weak latin and weaker greek
How do we know this?

>>4973343
there's no translation of dante or most greeks he could have read. ben johnson says shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek", plus knowing the social class shakespeare came from, plus lack of textual support for an intensive knowledge of either language... the orthodox opinion is that shakespeare read basically no original greek texts, though he probably translated some selections in school

>yfw you realize that image looks like Shrek

>>4973361
As Fran Lebowitz says "there's no such thing as a writing prodigy." That's because to be a good writer you have to KNOW something.

Always hearing people say that shakespeare had some kind of native genius has led me to be a bit more creative in my approach to how he might've learned stuff.

I know that shakespeare hung out at bars alot (he even alludes to a specific one by name in the twelfth night). He did this so that he could use the candle light there to write since candles were expensive back in the day. Bars attract all kinds of people, and I don't have any reason to doubt that lawyers or academics stopped by every once in awhile. There's no reason he couldn't have engaged with them and asked them to explain the studies they concerned themselves with.

Shakespeare isn't just some solitary entity.

Information is around us everywhere we look nowadays. If you wanted to get into academia without being an academic back then I'm sure you had to be a bit more resourceful.

>>4971528
>bach
>not versatile

He wrote in every musical form of his time (with the exception of opera).

We're not yet 15 years into the century and we already have Kanye, Tao, Roggenbuck, Shia LaBeouf, Murakami, Bianca and Sierra Casady, Jonathan Franzen, Mira Gonzalez, Dwight Howard (his collected tweets, not his rim protection), Marina Abramović, Michael Bay, and Lil B. I think the century is looking pretty good.

>>4973550
>Dwight Howard
lel

Bloom only hates DFW because he took a potshot at Bloom in one of the endnotes to Infinite Jest - calling Bloom and his work 'turgid'

If I recall, Bloom showed some small amount of admiration for The Broom of the System but said that it was unfinished.