/lit/ - Literature

>>5038371
No.

>>5038382

Why?

Great is what you make it, brah. John Kennedy Toole spent his entire life thinking he sucked monkey nuts and wasn't fit to breath our air.

>>5038383
Otherwise, you will have no idea what other amazing ideas writers have come up with. You will learn technique, style, content, imagination, and form from other writers that you would likely not ever develop on your own.

>>5038371

I read this as

"Can I be a great, renowned intellectual without doing any studying?"

>>5038391

Nah, I'm no writer. I am a musician, however. This idea stemmed from talking about musicians who have very limited background knowledge of the music of their genres before, yet still find great success.

I wanted to see how it'd fit in other practices.

>>5038389
>learning technique and style from other writers.
>not finding one's own style

Motherfucker what do you think being great means?

>>5038389
this
if you don't know what your competition is, you'll probably find your genius idea has already been done a million times
plus literature exists as response to tradition, if you don't know the tradition you can't respond to it

>>5038392
Of course it's possible. Just like you say about musicians. It's just unlikely not because it is necessary but because people that enjoy writing also usually enjoy reading.

>>5038393
You are most capable of creativity when you're aware of what exists.

>>5038371
No, probably not.

>>5038396
>genius idea already been done
>response to tradition

He didn't ask how to get rich or famous from writing, he asked if he could make something great. You don't need ANYTHING to that except an artistic vision and a pen and paper.

>>5038392

If you ask me I'd say it's apples and oranges.
Music (classical, jazz especially) has a kind of technicality which I don't think exists in literature except for certain forms of highly technical poetry.

Therefore formal training (ie, with a teacher) is not nearly as important as say, learning to play the piano (where one has to learn fingering technique, endless theory, stylistic varieties etc.)

I would think novelists and the like learn "how to write" more in the way that a rock musician learns how to write songs-- lots of exploring of other people's work and a kind of creative spark unique to their personality.

I dunno OP, try it.

>>5038392
Could you name artists/bands who were not 'avid listeners' of music? Why would they even pick up their instruments?

I can see a certain truth to people who don't know much about technical musicianship doing well (extreme example: see Beat Happening), but the same thing happens with writers, not everyone comes from a critical background. But there were still bands that inspired Beat Happening to pick up these instruments they did not know how to play and make music in the style of music they had liked before

Yes, it's very much possible.

See: outsider artists.

>>5038464

Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys says in multiple interviews that he picked up a guitar because his family played Bluegrass, and that he didn't listen to blues style music until after he started playing it.

>>5038464
adding to and to actually answer the OP, potentially yes.

Although I would imagine you would still need an avid interest in something - story to tell, and an understanding and (significant) appreciation of speech and dialogue.

Would be best for plays, but a conversation driven novel might just make it to 'great writer' status still.

One can be a great writer in the sense that one still has a good chance of appealing to those who are not overly fond of reading, yet one is unlikely to appeal to avid readers, as a writer, if one is not an avid reader oneself.

>>5038470
I haven't listened to much of the black keys earlier work (also, not aware of whether he was considered 'good' in the relevant time-period) - curious though: is his playing bluegrass influenced at all?

>>5038396
>competition
>why can't I hold all this ideology

No, not at all. In fact, I would say the more you study literary form, the less likely you are to be a great writer. Note, that this doesn't necessarily mean being well-read. Reading a lot can be advantageous for a number of reasons, but many times people just synthesize their favourite writers into something hopelessly derivative.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that "great" is a relative term. What might be considered great right now could be considered trash in a few centuries, while other works might be revered as something truly fantastic in the future and go largely unrecognized or even universally panned today. Similarly to the dimension of time, greatness also runs along sociocultural lines as well, and conceivably by type as well. A great technical manual is a much different style of writing than great poetry, and great literary prose will be much different than the writing in a great screenplay. It's all about context, and while some exposure might be helpful, it can also be a double-edged sword if it leads you to the stagnation of an output bound solely by response to established tradition or contemporary themes.

>>5038477

I'm more of a fan of their earlier works, specifically Magic Potion and Thickfreakness. Nothing that I would consider bluegrass influenced really shows up until Attack and Release, which was a turning point in their career.

>>5038393
I bet you make your own meaning of life and don't read philosophy because you'd rather make your own

>>5038488
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJRJAXolk4

>>5038488

>Repetitive sentence
>Doubles

heh.

>>5038503
add double doubles to that list >>5038499
I wish that had been me samefagging to give it another layer

the repetition was for effect. specifically, to emulate the simple-mindedness of the retards I was mocking

The question is: why would one even want to be a writer in that case?

Why would you produce something out to the world that you don't have the desire to take it in yourself?
I believe this is crucial and it may expose a deeper problem than quality of material, the problem of whether the impulse to write isn't it just for the fetish of that title, a passing fad that crosses someone's head rather than a course of life.

You know, it's not that writers have to read in order to be great writers. Take any great writer (whatever that mean to you, it doesn't matter) and you'll see he has read quite a lot, so it's only natural that you get to that conclusion. But truth is, reading is natural to him, a passion in itself. "Read!" is not a good advice, because it shouldn't be an advice to begin with, you should have already done this if you ever flirted with the idea of writing. Otherwise, consider how you came across the idea of being a writer, if it isn't the image of the writer itself and not the product of his work.

Then, in that case, don't even try. And this is not to discourage new writers, on the contrary, it is to encourage people to do what they are passionate about. If you spend all day playing videogame, don't go becoming a writer, go create a game of your own and work hard on it.

I believe everyone has something to talk about, something to show, express in some way. As multitaskers, changing channels every 5 seconds, everyone flirts with every possibility. But the means to express those things are almost always right under the person's nose. As nice and romantic as it may sound to be a writer, go find another way to let what you have to say out of your chest if you are not interested in what others have written before you. Art is also about us and the others and to be in the other's position.

Not all readers are writers, that's true, but all writers are readers. And don't transform this into an advice to read more, but to make you question: if reading is not for me, why would writing be my thing? And what is that thing?

This interests me because while I'm not much of a fiction reader, I'm firmly a fa/tg/uy, and I have so many story and character ideas that I try to get it out through tabletop. Problem is, I'm thinking in terms of comic/movie scenes anyway, and certain scenes I want to do can't always be realized in a tabletop game.

>>5038393
You should read more Borges. He can be said to be the author with one of the most original styles yet one of the most well-read authors.

>It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

https://sites.google.com/site/jimeikner/home/borges/the-fearful-sphere-of-pascal

The idea that style is originality without precedence is stupid because in the first place you need to know old styles to come up with new ones. That's why a main postmodernist fiction weapon is intertextuality and pastiche.

Also the main thrust why one becomes an author is in the first place a love for Literature, which can't be fostered if you haven't read much. You wouldn't have Rimbaud coming up with his drastic aesthetic theories if he didn't read Baudelaire and Hugo.

>>5038408
yes you do u melon
the idea that all you need is a pen and your natural genius is a load of horseshit. talent helps a hell of a lot, but the whole 'it's only genius' thing is largely bullshit perpetuated by people who put a whole lot of time and effort into not being shit but don't want to admit it because it's cooler to act like you just sat down one day and crapped out a golden turd without even trying.
every writer you love read a lot and practised a lot, and probably wrote a lot of embarrassing rubbish before he figured out how to do it properly.

>>5038552
>the whole 'it's only genius' thing is largely bullshit perpetuated by people who put a whole lot of time and effort into not being shit but don't want to admit it
no, it's bullshit perpetuated who failed or, much more likely, needed a convenient excuse to never put work in and tried.

>>5038568
by those who* failed ...

>>5038552
people say its a myth because they fucked up and want to justify wasting all that money on an English degree and can't write for shit

Not saying you don't need to practice. FOR SURE you need to practice because you need to work out on your own what your style is.

But you don't to study the greeks or anyone else or have any education.

Yeah everyone who writes reads. No shit otherwise they would be illiterate. Alot of writers enjoy reading great literature, and some read the sunday comics. Neither one changes your potential or your vision.

As Buk said "Don't try."

>>5038568
that too
>>5038600
where the fuck did I say you need to read the greeks?

>>5038464

lots of rock musicians are avid blues or jazz fans, simmiler to a james joyce or william burroughs mostly reading genre fiction. i suppose you can be agreat writer if you read alot of work outside your field, but i supposed you must be reading something

>>5038600
>Neither one changes your potential
>implying there is such thing as latent "potential" to be a great writer independent of your life experience and [not just formal] education

if youve read the right books. and understood them..

the last author i read avidly was faulkner and he singlehandedly has made me very good at writing in a way that may be considered "uncommon" , and i feel that "uncommon" way of writing is what truly makes writers great and able to stand out

>>5038371
No.

>>5038389
you are disgusting.

>raising the ideas of others above your own
>not just coming up with original ideas even if they have already been conceived by others without your knowledge

>>5038600
If you did not read them you would not know much about writing and would not have 'potential' or 'vision'. Even the most 'free spirited' authors like Hunter S Thompson, Kerouac, Rimbaud and Henry Miller had their influences from a wide array of great great literature. Reading a lot may not make you a good writer but definitely not reading alot of good literature will make you a bad writer.

For example how would you be able to learn control and hard minimalism if you did not pry it from Hemingway or Flaubert's 'le mot juste'? How would you know sensuality if you did not experience how Proust stimulates the senses? How would you know the power of frightening expression without Kafka? How would you know the brilliance and splendor of images if you did not see the startlingly different feasts of words that every major Shakespeare play has? How would you know the smoothness of dialogue without Salinger? How would you know the weight and seriousness of ideology if you did not read Dostoyevsky and the other Russian Social novels? How would you know the startling transmogrification of the world that is satire if you did not read Swift, Rabelais and Heller? How would you know wild capacity if you did not read the Beats? How would you know what it meant to write emptiness on paper without Beckett? How would you know how to put the world in a book without Joyce or Mann?

>>5038657
>hard minimalism
>sensuality
>power of frightening expression

Good luck with your degree. I'm sure you're rolling in pussy and publishing advances and royalties.

None of those things are necessary to understand to make a great work of fiction. Most of the authors you listed wouldn't know shit about any of it.

Read what you want to read, write what you want to write.

Don't try.

It's that simple.

There has never been a great writer who was not also a great reader.

Until someone can indicate otherwise, speculation is useless. You have to read if you want to write.

>>5038662
The writers of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Check and mate.

>>5038464
>Could you name artists/bands who were not 'avid listeners' of music? Why would they even pick up their instruments?

Daniel Johnston, Jandek, Jason Molina, Gary Wilson, Peter Grudzien, R. Stevie Moore, Bobb Trimble.

Werner Herzog says he never watches movies.

>>5038672
>Werner Herzog says he never watches movies

True. I was gonna mention that one but thought it would be over everyone's head. Thanks for restoring my faith in /lit/.

I remember when he made the Nick Cage remake of Bad Lieutenant, the director of the original, Abel Ferrera, got all pissy, and Herzog just went on the record and said "I've never seen the original."

>>5038371
I am a published writer and I read maybe one work a year if that.

>>5038371
depends if people like their writing.

>>5038686
>I am a published writer
good thing OP said "great writer" to except the scores of terrible published writers

>>5038476
>One
>one
>one
>one
>oneself

Takes one to know one.

>>5038661
>Good luck with your degree
Of course you would assume that a person who reads great Literature would have to take a Literature degree. That he would not be animated by the books purely and by their spirit. I'm far from acquiring a degree in that field and I'm even farther from official publications.

>None of those things are necessary to understand to make a great work of fiction.

This I won't contend with, but I will add that it sure as hell helps. It's like you've got a whole entire stack of help and you don't want it because you are 'animated by the spirit of chasing startling originality'.

>Read what you want to read, write what you want to write

This too I won't contend with. But usually people who read what they want to read develop a fundamentalism that prevents them from widening their reading. And people who want to write what they want to write fall into a solipsism that makes them forget that to write is to discourse with the world, not just to satisfy one's self. I would change this maxim to "Read what you want to write, write what you want to read". It was Sontag who told me that 'every act of writing is also an act of reading'.

>>5038371
No, look at the books from Sam Harris,Dawkins, hitchens; every book they publish just makes them seem like they write chapters in 10 minutes while on the shitter.

>>5038753
Why would atheists spend more time debating those so intellectually inferior?