/lit/ - Literature

Is alt-lit like alt-rock?

>>5250977
examples, please.

>>5250999

>>5250977
it's all shit but i secretly wish i was part of it and living the literary life in NY

>>5251007
Shit forgot about that whore Coates.

trust fund kids with twitter accounts

Top 3 i

1. Jos Charles
2. Steve Roggenbuck
3. Buttercup
4. Lin (he's fallen off)
5. Andrea Coates or Marie Calloway

>>5251028
Coates made that image

>>5251050
this

>>5250977
roggenbuck is the mac demarco of lit

>>5251117
le goofy goober amirite? xDD

>>5251131
yes him

>>5251107

Doesn't she dislike the alt lit movement?

>tfw /lit/ will never get together to start an artificial literature movement

>>5251154
u start a thread

>>5251154

Are you saying alt lit is a contrived renaissance?

>>5251028
Not bad.

>>5251174

Such a shame he's such a hyperfeminist anti-everything blowhard

>>5251165
it's not contrived at all.

it's definitely tapping into something real.

in general it's saying aloud a lot of the things "our generation" thinks non-verbally. a lot of the reactions we have made a little more explicit than they really are. but it's fundamentally honest and reflective. also usually self-critical, which is great.

>>5251191
She'd have to be a fun lay. Problem would be dealing with the before and after.

>>5251154
>>5251160
start a thread. i will contribute positive thoughts.

>>5251154
I think somebody once tried to start one that consisted entirely of stream-of-consicousness word vomit. It was in response to the Shia LeBeouf metamodernism thing and it never took off even on /lit/

Good: Tao Lin
Bad: Everyone else.

I'd wish death on Roggenfuck but that would give him undeserved recognition.

>>5251222
He's Whitman reincarnated tho.

>>5251195
>in general it's saying aloud a lot of the things "our generation" thinks non-verbally.
name a few

>>5251174
>>5251202

she is one of those unbalanced girls who finds a guy who thinks he wants or thinks he is man enough to cope with crazy and she is going to drag that misguided fucker down to hell with her

>>5251195
>G8 B8
It's "tapping into" what is perceived as the "realness" of "our generation." Which is to say that it isn't tapping into anything at all.
You say that it is fundamentally honest and reflective, as well as self-critical, but this is narcissism to the extreme. These blowhards are putting their "experience" of the "current generation" up on a shelf and calling it ideal.
As for "saying aloud a lot of the things 'our generation' thinks non-verbally" (whatever the fuck thinking non-verbally is) can be reduced to pandering. They have to appeal to some demographic, how else would they find publishers, crowd sourcing, and fans?
I bet you gave Roggenfag money for his student loans.
You're disgusting.

>>5251238
you're right. alt lit is bad. thanks for the wake-up call.

>>5251236
I've already been there, trick is to jump ship when the times right.

>>5251260
Then again results may vary, and she may jump with you and hunt you down with rape/suicide threats and pregnancy scares.

Crazy pussy

If Alt lit can retain it's poignant honesty, continue to cultivate a field of talented writers, and hone in -almost cultishly - on the particular set of political values that it holds, I really believe it could be the next lit movement in the upcoming 5-15 years.

alt-lit recommendations?

>>5251299
suicide

>>5251260

>that pic

fuck that noise m8 she is crazy personified.

>>5251291
You will attach yourself to anything that gives itself a name, won't you?

>>5251388
What do you mean?

>>5250977
pretentious shit for pretentious assholes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_literature

why does this list kristen stewart as a main author of altlit

>>5251411
Because it's funny right?

>>5251411

>why does this list kristen stewart as a main author of altlit

It's so full of fuckups and retards she might as well be.

>>5251396
>Guise give it 15 years and alt lit could be the next lit movement
>alt lit
>lit movement

Does anyone have a link to any of Ben Brooks' stuff? I don't want to give him any money and all I can find online is attack sites.

>>5251234

>I'm sorta bored
>Life is kinda vapid amirite
>Like, society, what even is that
>tfw no __

captcha: unpleasing romaryth

>>5251472
Then what would you classify it as?

>>5251586
Garbage.

>>5251411


My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball/Freedom Pole

I reared digital moonlight
You read its clock, scrawled neon across that black
Kismetly … ubiquitously crest fallen
Thrown down to strafe your foothills
…I'll suck the bones pretty.
Your nature perforated the abrasive organ pumps
Spray painted everything known to man,
Stream rushed through and all out into
Something Whilst the crackling stare down sun snuck
Through our windows boarded up
He hit your flint face and it sparked.

And I bellowed and you parked
We reached Marfa.
One honest day up on this freedom pole
Devils not done digging
He's speaking in tongues all along the pan handle
And this pining erosion is getting dust in
My eyes
And I'm drunk on your morsels
And so I look down the line
Your every twitch hand drum salute
Salutes mine …

i legit love andrea coates. she likes my poetry too <{*v*}>

http://youtu.be/Wr5wNKUf_-A

>Will it be looked back on as a serious cornerstone of literature? Will it be looked back on at all?

No. This is the end of the world. The Armageddon is coming. There's not going to be any scholars around to appraise this trash 500 years from now. If humanity is still alive by then it's because they will have dumped all of this garbage in the ocean and forgotten about it, recording it in history as a bubonic plague in the Dark Ages (not just "altlit" but all modern literature, art, and culture, along with its pseudoscience and politics).

Anyone who doesn't believes this is in darkness and has no idea how to read the sign of the times.

>>5251813
It's strange knowing that when I become a famous writer I might find myself becoming an acquaintance of her and then one night we'll have an awkward romantic encounter after a little too much wine and find ourselves hidden in each others works.

>>5251850
youre somehow more boring than evolakid

I can't get published.

Should I "publish" my new short story on /lit/? It's about 4chan, and I think being "published" on here and having interactions like getting comments as I post it would add a lot to the story.

The reaction would probably be insanely negative but it might be worth it.

>>5251813
>>5251873
>>5251920
Garbage. You are all garbage.

>>5251813
She has amazing breasts.

>>5252020
So you don't like my idea of publishing a story on 4chan?

>>5251813
Kill yourself.

>>5252041
>wants to publish a story about 4chan
>on 4chan
Please don't.

>>5252041
Fuck it. I'm going to do it anyway.

>>5252101
Where else would I self-publish it? No one wants to read a story about 4chan except maybe people on 4chan, if them.

>>5252108
How about you stop writing stories about 4chan? Think of that yet?

>>5252113
his peasant brain just exploded

>>5252113
I've only written the one. :( They say "write what you know" don't they? I know about posting on 4chan.

>>5252122
so to you, that means to stop learning completely and just start writing? do you know what research is? not everything is worth writing about - the alt-lit fucktards don't seem to
get this either

>>5250977
I think it's cross and obnoxious and filled with a forced enthusiasm and false positivity. It seems like a scared, desperate attempt to run away from the dark parts.

These kids on the internet have seen it all. Gore, Cheese Pizza, Abortions, Fluffy Abuse, the trigger warningiest stuff their is.

Like, they want to pretend there is a going back to innocence, that's the nature of it itself. These guys don't wanna face the elephant in the room and risk losing their tumblr landwhale demographic who just like him from their absolute fuck of a life. Feigned ignorance, like bad comedy.

>>5252121
I'm not a peasant.

>>5252145

peasant pls

>>5252139
>so to you, that means to stop learning completely and just start writing?
Yes. That's exactly what it means. Thank you for putting my stance is such an elegant and accurate little bundle.
>do you know what research is?
No, I don't. Please enlighten me.
>not everything is worth writing about
4chan is where I spend most of my time online. It's an important part of my life and one I feel deserves to be represented in fiction.

>>5252142
That was pretty succinct. Nice.

>>5252162
there's no fucking way a stupid website can carry an entire story on its own.
How bout only use some fictional version of 4chan as something in the background instead of the sole focus?
What drama is there in sitting at a computer complaining about bullshit?

>>5251174
I had no idea who this was so I checked out her page. And holy mother of cow tits, is she supposed to be a writer or something? Her website was full of shit similar to what an ADHD hipster twelve year old would draw and write.
Is this what it takes to be fucking "artistic" these days?

>>5252181
I'm going to press charges and file a restraining order against you. I've already contacted the police. You've obviously burglarized my apartment and read my story for yourself, to have such a deep insight into everything it's about and which it contains, which is a creepy as shit thing to do and you deserve to go to jail for it.

Seriously though, what do you think the plot of my story is? What do you honestly think happens, beginning, middle and end? Just beat it out.

>>5252193
She's probably living off of daddy's paycheck or some sucker she lays once a month.

There's nothing to suggest she's on a semisuccessful level like Tao.

>>5252199
you tell us, peasant

>>5250977

Romanticism

>Anti-industrial, pro-nature
>Anti-rational, pro-intuition and emotion
>Centered around the expression of ideal personalities.

Alt Lit.
>Anti-consumerist/commodity, pro-homemade/perishables (chapbooks, joke poems etc)
>Anti-formal & anti-irony, pro-sincerity/spontaneity
>Centered around the expression of "sincere" personalities.

It's just a resurgence of romanticism.

>>5252210
Additionally, the romantics were highly interested in folk ballads and 'common speech,' which we see reflected in Alt Lit's borrowing from pop music and modern vernaculars such as online chat.

>>5252199
You truly are a peasant.

How the fuck should I know?
You're the one saying you're writing stories about 4chan, and I'm saying that a story about 4chan sounds terrible.
You could maybe enlighten us as to what you actually mean there so I don't assume it's about people sitting on their computers and complaining about shit.
Or just keep sitting on your computer and complaining about shit with the rest of us.
Maybe even without a stupid name.

>>5252237
You're forgetting though that Romanticism actually produced great works of art.

>>5252243
When Romanticism was breaking out, it was treated as altlit is now.

There needs to be at least 100 year buffer for people to be like "wow, this is good"

>>5252243
also that gothicism was still romanticism.

>>5252248
not quite. romanticism didn't exactly last 100 years, after all.

>>5252248
>just wait guys, our grandkids will love it!

>>5252243

All the good stuff is under piles of experimental waste product. It's likely that as the authors move into mid twenties and thirties one of them will synthesize the results of the experiments and, with the skill that comes with diligent practice, produce something interesting. My bet's on Tao because he actually has a work ethic, and has been at it longest, but it's just that, a bet.

>>5252261
i wouldn't call it work ethic so much as autism, but if that's what it takes, then hey

>>5252268
muh savants

>>5252268
The motivation of the practice doesn't matter, what matters is that he's practicing. He probably writes more than ten /lit/ writers combined, and his writing is over different genres. It's pretty clear he revises for things in his interviews, so he's not going to suffer because of sloppiness like a lot of the other writers who are using poetry and fiction like social media and diary writing. He's also got a contract with a good publishing house, meaning he's got a good editor pushing back against any bad habits he has in his novels. He has a fair shot if anybody from that movement does.

>>5252207
Okay. Fine. I don't have the ODT on me right now otherwise I'd post it. Here's what it's about.

"Bad Vibes on the Internet--A Desmond Albuquerque Mystery"

Desmond Albuquerque (referred to only as "Anon") is a dishwasher living alone whose only human contact is posting on 4chan and his cat, Mr Peter. He spends his time huffing NOS. One day someone posts a suicide thread on /lit/. He takes a look at the metadata on the image file and it was taken in his own town. He contacts the user and they arrange a meeting at the user's apartment. He entertains fantasies that the user is a girl and that they will have sex.

He shows up at the apartment and meets a girl there, Samantha. They talk and he pockets her medication so she can't kill herself. He asks her why she was planning to kill herself and she says she isn't, and the insects would have killed her family if she hadn't made that post. The narrator loses consciousness.

He wakes up in an underground cell naked and tied to a lawn chair. There is a giant talking centipede named Geoffrey there. Geoffry explains that he works for an organization called the Medieval Illicit, a band of space pirates dedicated to evil, and that Desmond has been infected with a memetic thought-virus implanted through his use of 4chan, and that he will conduct psychosurgery on him to activate the virus, which will turn him into a Simulant, a being under the direct control of the Dark Archon. Desmond activates his latent psychic powers and summons a human-cat creature being named Tela to his rescue. She wounds Geoffrey and they escape together.

Tela explains that she is part of an underground resistance against the Medieval Illicit, and explains the secret history of the organization, which is publically known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has ties to the Third Reich. Desmond is torn over whether they should now attempt to save Mr Peter or Samantha, and Tela says that both are probably already dead, but he convinces her to save Mr Peter. They do so and decide to leave Samantha to her fate.

Tela and Desmond then do NOS together, and Desmond wakes up years later in a Mexican motel room with one leg missing. He surmises that his experiences with Tela were the result of his NOS addiction and never really happened. He escapes the motel room and recovers in hospital. Tela finds him there and reveals that it wasn't all a hallucination, and that she needs him for the final battle against the Illicit.

cont.

>>5252296
In a briefing room with other resistance agents, Tela outlines their plan. They plan to attack the Obsidian Obelisk, a fortress in Florida where the Dark Archon's current Simulant, moot, runs 4chan in an effort to mind-control Internet users with the memetic virus as a test for what they will later do to Facebook. The resistance launch their attack cubes and destroy the Obelisk, killing moot, and setting everyone free. Desmond returns to his apartment and finds Mr Peter living in the dumpster behind his old building.

The story has numerous footnotes.

>>5252241
So in other words you made an assumption and your assumption was wrong. Eat shit.

>>5252308
I have no idea if it's wrong.
For all I know you could just be lying that it was wrong and correcting your mistakes.
And you said it was about 4chan.
Not that it included 4chan.
Not that 4chan was an important part.
About 4chan.
I don't see any other way you'd do it than basically what I said.

I've disliked most of the alt-lit I've read but I did enjoy Taipei

But it seems like everyone else is just trying to be Lin and it's annoying.

I feel like alt-lit is just a race to "get there first," you know?

Most of these writers are too damn young

>>5252329
nobody's too damn young.
it's all a matter of how hardcore (autistic) you were with reading and writing in your teenage years.

>>5252314
The only one with a mistake to correct is you.

The people that don't like alt lit are the ones that don't get it. In terms of reconciling depth and honesty, it probably is the strongest artistic movement in the west in centuries, possibly ever.

I'm not trolling either. There's a consensus that it's all drivel, but that's usually the conclusion of the people that write it off anyway.

>>5252476
>you just don't get it
kek

>>5252476
what is there to get? it's just the juvenile ramblings of the casual pill popping privileged upperclass brooklyn hipster elite

>>5252302
>The story has numerous footnotes.
I laughed.

>>5252476
bangalan

lol

>>5252210
This can't be serious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuH5zP4782g

>>5252476
lately more often than not it's the people who do get alt lit that hate it because of what a masturbatory shitshow it is

>>5252210
>Anti-consumerist/commodity

Except alt lit isn't. They only pretend to be.
Roggenbuck tweeting from his iPhone, vlogging from his Macbook, personally branded with the mark of the beast. Whining about how much money it costs to be alive while he pays for his data plan and jumps up and down telling everyone that the internet and youtube (and international corporations) are love and life. BOOSTing the militias who use slave labor to mine rare earths in the mountains of the Congo. BOOSTing Chinese slave labor. Just a general BOOST to the exploitation of the third world.

Alt lit is not "anti-consumerism," it is consumerism's most insidious form. It hides itself, claiming that this and that are Necessities. At least some jackass teenager at Hot Topic buying garbage just to be a rebel might have some awareness that they don't really need this.

>>5252476
There is no honesty in alt lit and no depth. It is the coward's way out.

>>5252644
Kinda this.

Also a big problem with alt-lit is that it is incredibly ignorant and barely well read.

>>5252664
>There is no honesty in alt lit and no depth. It is the coward's way out.

This.

i think you have to be a little careful to dismiss an entire genre of writing as dishonest or without value without some pretty hefty substantiation. i think that's a bit problematic tho because 'honesty' is something that's usually intuited, rather than deduced. can we say certainly that people who, in interviews, claim their writing speaks from their true heart, are lying to our faces?

well, i guess some people can. i prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt tho.

also, i think alt-lit is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality, but is doing some really interesting things to expand the domain of literature amongst a disenfranchised generation, and that some of the techniques and styles used are subtly very powerful and technically gifted. :)

I want Tao Lin's tiny asian cock shoved in my nostrils

>>5252695
In reality your defense is proof enough of the dishonesty of the genre.

Let me state two points:

1) Any writer who has seriously tackled the question of honesty would know that it is unobtainable. Writing is in itself a form of lying and our apprehension of the world changes already in the moment we state it. If they claim to be honest it means that they already are not honest.

2) Be honest with us and admit that you are part of the alt-lit community. I've seen the post that Jos Charles has made on the altlit gossip page.

>>5252724
saying 'all writing is dishonesty' is a pretty broad generalization to make, and probably a larger philosophical conversation than we could hash out in any reasonable amount of time. i might just concede just to agree to disagree here, because i think the utmost pinnacle of human expression is honesty in creativity, whether that's in writing, visual art, music, theatre, whatever, and i believe it's utterly obtainable (and that alt-lit, while not obviously a bastion of it, is a place where it can be found sometimes).

also, i'll totally admit i like alt-lit, tho i don't know that i'd call myself a member of the 'community'. i did get linked here from the facebook post tho. just wanted to contribute to the discussion :) it's not my first time to 4chan, but i don't really come here anymore because i find the atmosphere to be to abrasive for extended use

>>5252741
>abrasive for extended use
o baby pls. I'll lube you right up and you can slide back in.

>>5252756
b-but... but i poop from there!

>>5252741
That's what all i consider wrong in the current cultural climate.
The pinnacle of human art is artifice disguised as spontaneity, not honesty.

>>5252766
i hope you'll at least admit that's a matter, if not of subjective preference, of arguable tenacity. i think there's a great value in the artifice of creation too (we can't really have levels of irony, post-modernism, avant-garde obscurity, etc, without it), but i think when ranking the ultimate goal of art, we have to recognize it's difficult to come to an objective consensus. i understand where you're coming from tho.

>>5252775
*maybe meant veracity there. i think they both work in different contexts. you probly knew what i meant tho

>>5252775
No it's not a question of preference, it comes from an understanding of the medium.
Literature is the creation of configurations of words to produce determinate effects.
It is a distorting field, because already the fact that you have NECESSARILY to go through a vocabulary and some rudimentary rules to make yourself understood it means that you have lost the immediacy with the content of the expression.
If you wanted to be spontaneous, you would howl, but you don't you write. You write because you want to produce an effect on the other. But then the better writing is the writing that produces that effect, no matter how dishonest, and not the honest writing.

That is why alt-lit is dishonest, it is feigned honesty, because it is honesty on show and on sale.

>>5252820
like i said, i think that's a pretty elaborate philosophical conceit to claim as absolute fact, and i don't feel a discussion's possible if you don't concede that. so, if that's the case, i'm happy to leave well enough alone :)

i think it's worth noting that just because an expression is concerted, however, means it's devoid of emotion, or artificial. to me, poetry is a more pure expression of human emotion because it conveys empathy and simultaneity of feeling in a way that can't fully be realized by merely being the observer of an emotion. simply because the act of influencing an emotion isn't analagous to the emotion itself, doesn't for me present any artifice to the exchange--akin to saying that choice of expression in any medium is inherently divorced from that which it wishes to express.

once more, tho, i suspect this is likely a matter of differing world views. i feel that honesty is palpable in creative expression, and you don't, and i guess that's where we can leave things

>>5252838
*doesn't mean. derp. you knew what i meant tho.

>>5252664
I see that mentality as an outgrowth of simple anti-consumerism. The ratioanlization for this sort of behavior is that you personalize commodities. For example, setting your novel in Taco Bell personalizes the Taco Bell by making it signify a complex of relationships rather than tacos.

You're definately right about it being psuedo-anticonsumerist. Internal inconsistantly always the case with versions of romanticism, however, because it doesn't require ratioanlity; Whitman (who Roggenbuck cites as an influence) and his "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself."

>>5252859
i think any movement claiming complete earnesty in a post-post-modern climate would frankly be instantly shooting itself in the foot--i think what alt-lit probably tries to do is use the absurd irony of life in a landscape devoid of honesty and real emotion as another way in which to convey the human condition. re: your taco bell example, the taco bell can also just be taco bell, but that's a real, tangible fixture of life in a millenial age, when our existence can be governed by things like the existence of taco bells--and maybe that's an idea worth exploring. :)

>>5252838
It's elaborate because I have thought and read a lot about it.

It's elaborateness says nothing about its factuality.

I appreciate your non-conflictual attitude, but all you are saying here is "I don't agree" without explaining why, and probably you can't explain why because as I said before people in the alt-lit community (which I have frequented for a while) are not that well-read.

>>5252872
that's a bit of an offensive statement to make--i don't see how i haven't clarified my position sufficiently. note that your refutation of my point in the post i'm now quoting didn't do anything to contradict my position that because all human expression is, by virtue of the nature of the world we live in, some manner of contrivance, that using it as a means to convey emotion thru methods other than direct exposure in some way spares it from the definition of 'artificial'.

if we're going to be reductive about what capacity humans have to express themselves, then sure, we can use that to advance the notion that all manifestation of directed communication is in a sense 'artificial' because a method of exposure to emotion/thought other than its direct conveyance (like you said, yelling, screaming, whatever)--but that just feels like an absurd semantic point of view that doesn't seem in any way productive to me. it's kind of in the same way that all philosophical debate about meaning or purpose eventually becomes nihilism--we have to, on the common ground of accepted interaction, agree that we're not going to throw out the divisions of definition. by that logic, if human expression can be anything one might define as 'honest', it has to be in a way other than the completely unrefined nature you're suggesting, because otherwise there's no point in having a discussion about it.

if a person experiences an emotion and wants to convey that emotion, it isn't always the most effective method to simply say "i feel sad". art, creativity, and communication become vectors for the sharing of emotion, and i posit that in doing so, they possess a greater 'honesty' because they enable a more 'true' experience of feeling. the reason i'm being non-confrontational is because i know the tendency on 4chan is to get aggressive about pointless quibbles, and i'm not interested in doing that. now that i think about it, i'm not sure if there's a point in having a discussion at all on a point that's so fundamentally disagreed upon and probably won't reach detante, other than i suppose i might hope to get some kind of intellectual stimulation from it. hopefully you're not similarly frustrated--if you are, i won't blame you for just ignoring me :)

>>5252868
>life in a landscape devoid of honesty and real emotion as another way in which to convey the human condition

Except that isn't the human condition. That's the condition of a few million middle-class hipsters who've banished themselves from the real world. Nobody put a gun to your head and said, "here, live your life on the internet; live in the world of artificial constructs and faceless words and crafted videos; post more selfies, base your self-esteem on the opinions of strangers; surround yourself with ironicists and their itchy typing fingers; get an MFA or die."
Most people do not do these things.

>>5252905
any condition of living is the human condition, regardless of the volume of people which experience it. i'm not sure i really get your point.

also, if you think all alt-lit is stuff like that, there's some other stuff i could point you too. sam pink's recent book 'witch piss' is a fantastically minimalist take on the life of marginalized people and homeless individuals that i found very emotionally powerful--and, yes, 'honest'.

>>5252890
What I believe you are not seeing is that by modifying the expression for communication you are obtaining a two fold result:

1) You do not know what effect it has on the other. You know that the other reacts how you would like to react crying/laughing/buying your book, but you don't know exactly what she or he has understood.

2) When you express a concept in words you can doubt that you know what you are expressing. You may say "I feel sad" and then doubt "but am I feeling sadness? Is it really sadness?" The expression never captures fully the intention.

You assume too much transparency both in language and in your self-understanding if you think that you can vouch for honesty.

Sometimes though you have a tendency to equate honesty with expressive force. That is honesty is "what makes you feel" and you alternate between the more common meaning of honest and this meaning of honest depending how weak you feel your position.

>>5252926
i think honesty is equivalent to 'truth' inasmuch as any mode of expression that enables the viewer/reader to participate the most fully in the understanding of that emotion is the most 'true' form of said expression.

i think the thing you said in point 1 would be more salient if we didn't possess the capacity to understand influence or the reactions/emotions of others. creativity is the act of understanding expression and how it effects others--as such, with writing, it's your job to understand the manner in which you convey emotion, which makes you palpably privy to what effect it will have on 'the other'. this is further possible through things like writing workshops, beta readers, etc., but that's all a distillation of what's supposed to be at the heart of that expression in the firstp lace.

dunno what to say about point 2, it's true that expression is in itself imperfect, but so is the direct manifestation of emotion, and it's much more possible to understand and work with things that are designed to convey that emotion than it is the emotion itself.

>>5252926
and this is why i think music is more of a pure expression than words

>>5252971
interesting to think that music creates emotion on a level that's beyond the cognizance of its orchestration--ie, if i play a minor key melodic pattern on a piano, and that causes someone to experience sadness, the manifestation of their emotion is unclouded by the difficulty of expression, but it's at the same time not necessarily the intent of my playing the music in the first place. so maybe you could argue that music is both more and less 'honest' as a form of expression? neat to think about :)

>>5251231
hell fucking no. roggenbuck is so self-important. he thinks he is so intellectual but everything he says is totally rehashed

>>5252987
See this argument re: every 'original' idea ever.

I have always wondered what avant-garde lit would look like or who could write a true avant-gard piece of literature

>>5251278
>pregnancy scares.
This wouldn't be a problem if feminists weren't fucking us with their anti-male contraceptive lobbying.

alt-lit spermjacked me and now i have to pay megan boyle's child support cheques.

thanks a lot, feminism.

It's evident in a lot of literary currents that there seems to be a return to Modernism, esp. easy to understand in terms of Tao Lin (as usual, he is the alt lit standard). Lin and other artists feel detached and obviously confused, simultaneously bored and anxious, etc. It's like they won't give up technology, so they choose to immerse themselves completely in it as a form of life-the way to experience in the 21st Century. I'm still trying to piece together this return to Modernism that I keep hearing discussed in academia but it is difficult to capture because the contemporary lit scene is so varied, I suppose. But I think alt lit is mainly where the return to Modernism is happening, from what I can understand.
thoughts?

>>5252992

Finnegan's Wake

>>5252318
I certainly agree, but it's hard not to imitate Lin in the alt lit scene because he is top tier, the truly original artistic fount. He understand American culture and exploits it through his minimalistic ( "bad" ) writing. The way he approaches culture is the only way that doesn't feel overly forced/introspective. Eloquence has no place anymore in literature (referring to the current that reflects the state of society and cultural movements), so I think everyone is trying to stay away from beautifully fluid prose. But then they don't know what to do, so they turn to Lin as an example.

>>5251813
i dare some one to jack it to this. I bet you could.

>imagine being with her in the forest
>her hairy legs spreading and closing like flowers in spring to winter and back again
>her big nipples seeping the milk of the earth
>drenching her hemp dress
>milk running down from her breasts, down your cheeks like tears
>she squats and screams and takes a shit
>forces you to masturbate
>nature is the only power here, child
>load blower

Has Steve Roggenbuck ever had an original thought in his life?

(Answer: No.)

>>5253095
i dunno i think some of his uses of parataxis to create emergent meaning as a product of absurdity are pretty novel. he's not exactly oblique about his influences either, he wears his love of cummings, whitman, etc. on his sleeve. for me, he's original enough to be enjoyable, and that's all i can really ask of anything.

>>5253096
I kinda did already.
Didn't blow a load though

>>5253103
the problem of Roggenbuck is not originality (even though parataxis is english lit is the bread and butt of anything post-victorian, mostly because of its masterful use in the king james) but the fact that he is an idiot.

>>5253196
well, like, that's just your opinion, man.

andrea coates is eve ever upstaging adam

>>5252920
My point is that your talking about post-post-modernism in a world that is barely modernist. Large portions of it are still medieval, and post-modernism doesn't exist outside the centers of capitalism and academia.
Half of the American population believes they have a guardian angel; a quarter of them believe they've personally witnessed someone healed by faith. They don't live in a landscape devoid of honesty and real emotion. But God's not real, you say? Well, of course He isn't. And we know that because we're ironically detached, over educated 20-something white men who hang out on the internet and have read too many books and work service sector jobs and make desperate stabs at originality like not using the shift-key.
Post-modernism is a playground, not a prison camp. Don't claim to suffer from it.

And stop with the passive aggressiveness. If you don't want to insult people and be a dick, then don't insult people and don't be a dick. If you want to be honest, then be honest. If people recognize it, then they'll recognize it, and if they don't then they didn't. Deliberately self-referencing, going back again and again to remind people that you were being totally sincere and nice, makes you come off cloying. The only time a human being should talk like that is when they're trying to sell someone a used El Camino or a reverse mortgage.

>>5253095
Original by what standard?
He's been effective at taking internet advertising tricks (the Google bomb, cross-promotion, mutual promotion, personal branding, etc) and turning them to his use.

I don't care for him as a poet or as a person, but he's an imminently respectable self-promoter and he managed to fling himself high enough to get a personality piece in the New Yorker. Dismissing him as an idiot is to miss the point(lessness).

>>5250977
Guys you upset them

>>5250977
>>believe they've personally witnessed someone healed by faith
>not believing the the power of prayer
>le_fedora_tip.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXYiKRQcEzM

My lord

>>5254275
Disgusting.

>>5253212
go to bed roggenbuck, you are so easy to spot because you are the only one who resorts to the "that's your opinion" trope.

>I will never be a Visceral Realist

Any non /lit/izens reading this. Please kill yourself.

>>5254275
>also it's silly that /lit/, a board primarily dominated by disenfranchised white twenty-somethings all worshipful of dead old men feel that a genre of literature with the possibility to motivate a marginalized generation and give voice to an amalgamation of influences which might enable us to properly reflect on the climate of post-modern irony we're working to emerge from is something without value. but, channers gonna chan :V :V :V

lmao

>>5254705
>they're dead and not even trannies, nothing they say matters
Such is life in American universities

>>5254705
that fucking sentance

>>5254705
What a Wallace drone this person is.

This whole "put an end to irony!" movement is just a thinly veiled desire to regress to childishness and its associated sentimentality

>>5254747
He wants you to make a thread about him.
Also, so everyone is aware, this thread is being monitored by alternative literature fags. Hide your sincerity.

>>5254747
>irony is some big thing that we as a generation need to be overcome, I can't just drop my hipster crap and go hang out with guidos and have a good time banging girls that don't look like androgynous hobos

>>5254705
>The teachings of Epictetus and the other ancient greek philosophers are nothing compared to my shitty 'genre'.

I wanna eat Moon Temple's savage cunt.

Besides that, the genre provides nothing for me. They pride themselves in being "for the people, by the people" as long as you fit into their narrow scope of political thought and are a tranny freak, involuntarily celibate "man", or complete slut.

would fuck the farts outta that slut coates

>>5254705
That guy used to write my little pony fanfiction. Not sure if you could consider alt lit a step up or a step down from that.

>>5254824
I find the androgynous hobo look attractive.

>>5251299
Heiko julien

>>5255322
Heiko julien is a smarter writer than all of you

>>5255307
Link?

>>5255342
This is shit:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/heiko-julien/2013/11/i-do-it/

>>5253438
A+ post

alt lit is cool okay?

in the near future when it is taught in classes and accepted as canon, you will all feel really dumb and really old.

>>5250977
Doesn't that ...ugh...human (can't tell if gay guy or butch dyke) know that a puberty mustache isn't the way to go..ever?

[pic related]

>>5252258
there are people who like it now lmao, this whole thing is so circular

>>5252294
yeah they told him to stop doing mdma at his readings

>>5252664
Of course it's somewhat anti-consumerist but the authors aren't attempting to reshape social reality, only to depict it and represent the mood of contemporary culture. I mean, that's what I think, but it is really hard to rebut what you're saying because I agree with it, too. But it seems like with Tao et al that they're frustrated but cannot do anything about consumer culture because our lives are shaped around it. i.e. oh, if only I could write this novel off the grid without having it published and put in Barnes & Noble, but, alas, I cannot because I need th emoney for drugs....

>>5252664
Of course there is no depth, that's the point of it as a art--a reflection of society.

>Does it have merit?

Nah, but it's 'new', so people automatically are curious and interested.

>>5252905
Okay, yes, most people do not do those things but most people also didn't live off heroin like Burroughs did. Sorry, this probably sounds mean but it's not, I'm just trying to think this through because I do understand with what you are saying. Because most people aren't artists. That sounds pretentious, but it's true. I guess this is also why it is called ALT-lit because it is an alternative to mainstream society...? I guess...

>>5254705
DON'T CALL ME WHITE

beta + cringe - autism

Reading this thread and reading the entire post on the fb group makes me really want to grasp for something here but I dont know what.

Both sides are generalizing the other and dismissing one another, but the fb group calls out this thread for doing it as if they arent. This thread is pretty unapologetic about it, most likely because anyone used to 4chan knows that whoever is generalizing in this thread is stupid for doing so and not worth worrying about since this thread will be gone in a day and you cant be sure if the original poster will read your critique, or, the poster who generalizes doesnt want to fully flesh out and specify what they mean because they know this thread will be gone in a day and no one might read it.

This isnt a justification, and I can hear the fb group calling this as a justification, in the same way they call out those in the fb group "defending 4chan", by saying 4chan has some amount of bad in it and you cant just dismiss that bad part. So they dismiss 4chan.

What is going on with that? If there is some part of a group thats bad, then you can generalize how it is bad since you dont want to pardon the bad part? This is weird since Im guessing those people are some form of neo-liberal that wouldnt do the same to groups the sympathize with. This is some embarrassing guesswork on my part but fuck it, Im all right with being wrong if it gets me somewhere.

I wish alt-lit people would talk to /lit/. They said reddit was far more constructive and that made me really, really consider how much they doubt themselves. 4chan and reddit are both echo chambers, they have to realize that reddit is just the slap-the-happy-face-on-no-hurt-feelings echo chamber.

And now Im afraid no one will respond to this and I might have wasted my time.

>>5258398
I'm not sure you know.

It's not really a question of hearing the other side or not being in an echo-chamber.

It's not like we don't get to read their ideas. Heck they are everywhere. They are on N+1, they are on the millions, they are on the new yorker and new york mag.

We get it, and we get what they are trying to do.

What they can't accept is that someone might look at their attempts, understand them and just think that they are bad.

Because let's face it there are plenty of reasons to think that they are bad. They are not great stylists, they are not that innovative, they are not that deep, intelligent or well read.

I mean look at their criticism: they just repeat that people are generalizing because of course that's a defense that takes no effort. No matter what the criticism is you can just answer with babby's first skepticism: "that's your opinion".

I think that bottom line alt-lit is terrible movement: it's populist, it's sentimental and it's tacky. It celebrates ignorant, in-group conformity and uses art as a therapy for their petty personal problems. But even worse: they are not that cool (reading thought catalog quickly gives you the idea that they are the lamest people to hang out with).
The sooner the people drop all that and start to look elsewhere for talented young writers the better it will be for everyone.

>>5258545
Deep down I believe this, but I also want these people at least have some drive to make great work.

I still wish the two sides would talk to one another more. I have bias for 4chan, but trying to extend a hand towards them might improve them, and then we get to read better stuff.

>>5251508
http://en.bookfi.org/?ft=on&q=ben+brooks

#4

>>5258660
how about you ignore these clowns and read some REAL good young writers

>>5258660
would this genuinely be something people are interested in?

say for example i am someone connected with the alt lit scene. would people on /lit/ willing to have a respectful discussion about their problems with the scene?

>>5258897
ask them why they're so eager to portray hedonistic self-destruction as cool and desirable
it makes me sick to my stomach

>>5258916
i would say its being portrayed as exactly the opposite, theyre just honest about enjoying it.

>>5258897
Yes, at least I would be

I cant speak on behalf of /lit/, and if you wanted decided to get something together, youd have to accept what comes with opening that floodgate unless you did it in a cautious manner. I dont know what that would be.

But yes, I personally would be interested in talking to these people and getting their opinion on several different topics, as well as giving my own for what its worth

>>5258943
you just don't get it do you?
it's COOL to be a piece of shit drug addict kurt cobain teen hearththrob
FUCK alit-lit

>>5259002
lol

>>5259002
interestingly, Steve Roggenbuck is straight edge and does not write about drugs at all.

people need to stop talking as if /lit/ is a collective. alt-lit is hit and miss. i've read some good stuff and some shit stuff but at least they put their stuff out there and seem to be 'shaking' up the literary world, unlike this place, which by evident by recent threads, seems completely content with reading the same old jerk offs.

>>5259045
Reminded me of this article.

http://htmlgiant.com/massive-people/why-do-you-treat-alt-lit-steve-roggenbuck-in-particular-with-such-scorn-ask-the-oracle-part-i/

Particularly,
>Straight edge is an affiliation. It’s not the same as saying “hey guys, I’m vegan!” In high school I knew some straight edgers. They liked to post outside of house parties and hospitalize anyone found really drunk and alone. Roggenbrand on the other hand does readings in bars. Which is a great example of everything wrong with current culture: the only belief is ego.

And

>True positivity is anchored and unafraid of negativity, it actually welcomes it. While asserting yourself as a Haitian mongoose, regardless of emphaticism, doesn’t negate being a human being who hates himself/herself ... the guy who won’t stop talking about what he is, has done or will do, is bullshit. Why is alt lit desperately trying to assert itself as a presence.

>Here’s a story about Steve Roggenbuck: after a reading, at an apartment, someone jumped on Steve’s unattended laptop and posted on his facebook. Ol’ boy discovered what had happened, came severely close to shitting himself, while seizuring, then admonished the person in his shrill voice because his “brand” had been tampered with.

>>5259129
I couldn't care less about "alt lit" and any of its shit writers, but I saw this post on the first page and I had to pop in and call this Faggenbuck dude a real homo.

>>5258897
How do you even communicate with these people?

Does this scene have a particular city as its home? Do we have to talk to them through social media? Do people even know who is and isnt in the scene?

>>5258398
there are so many blatant redditors on here

4chan actually isn't an echo chamber at all, so fuck off

>>5258961
email me

thealtlitconnection@gmail.com

>>5259251
add them on facebook, then talk to them

>>5259251
its not hard to get involved in the scene. just add a bunch of people on facebook, join the Alt Lit Gossip group, communicate in a productive way. thats really it.

I think Steve Roggenbuck should kill himself.

I'm not saying this to be deliberately inflammatory or over-the-top. I think Steve Roggenbuck should kill himself because the causation of his own death is the only contribution to society that he could possibly make that would be worthwhile.

I think it is a shame that Steve Roggenbuck idolizes Walt Whitman because that makes me feel like he could have possibly had potential as a poet, but despite wearing this influence on his sleeve it is clear that absolutely no talent bled through the time-gap between the two. The only thing that Steve Roggenbuck could ever do that would be a suitable service to Whitman would be to orchestrate his own death.

I think Steve Roggenbuck is wasting his life trying to build an image around his work that secondary to the work itself, and this pursuit is what will forever cause his output to fail at attaining any merit. It's clear that Steve Roggenbuck is more interested in the simple idea of being an artist than he is in actually creating art. I think Steve Roggenbuck is pathetic and his suicide would be as valid a contribution to the arts as any of his previous artistic pursuits, and by this I mean that this contribution would hold zero validity whatsoever because Steve Roggenbuck is, at his very core, incapable of making anything that resembles legitimate art no matter how much rhetoric his supporters try to exhume from their own assholes about how anything is art. Even assuming such a statement is true, the fact that Steve Roggenbuck produced something instantly devalues anything that would have made it remotely resemble art.

I think Steve Roggenbuck should kill himself.

>>5259394
hi, Steve :)

>>5251508
don't read that shit
it's just airport novel relationship shit with the occasional 'bukkake' thrown into dialogue

>>5259337
sent

how is roggenbuck 26 i thought he was about 16

Official girls of alt lit ranking

1. Moon Temple
2. Andrea Coates
3. Frank Hinton
4. Megan Boyle
5. Marie Calloway

I am reading Tao Lin and Ellen Kennedy's "Hikikomori" and it is so bad. This is the first alt-lit thing I have ever read.

i have joke texts with my best friend in this exact voice. we do this because his girlfriend talks like this to him. but in a baby voice to him because she thinks its cute but i dont think its cute because she is too skinny because she is a raw vegan living in new york and she is too skinny and her dad has the parkinsons and she cries about it and then i refer to something i just said that you sort of forgot about and then i cut to something else to jar my reader at the end.

this is how they write.

>>5259691
it is "how" they write, but it seems like you can't do it

>>5258916
I wish they did.
They are neither that self-destructive nor it comes out as cool nor desirable.

>>5258961
No one speaks on behalf of /lit/ fuck off

>>5259824
what does this even mean

anyone here share some of the works of these people? I know they're mostly ebooks.

I have read tao lin but none of these

>>5251071
>>5251107

>>5259712
Actually it seems like I can pull it off brilliantly

>>5258961
>I cant speak on behalf of /lit/
>>5259831
>No one speaks on behalf of /lit/

you got the tard
boy?

gabby bess is decent and she has a good style but the content is the same

a lot of the female alt lit writers basically attention whore by writing about their whoring around. it's never ground breaking or interesting.

>>5259920
This sophomoric paragraph:
>“He cheated on me.” April made her eyes wide and exaggerated to preclude interest in Maria’s story. Maria was always telling stories. Sharing fragments of her life with April, as if they were friends and not coworkers. Maria and April sat close together on a bench, watching the children play on the playground behind the rec center. Really, they should have been standing but the heat and the kids had beaten them down. Their supervisor wasn’t around to supervise either Maria or April, or the kids, so they simply sat and melted.

>She has a good style

>>5259860
Honestly, google will get you a decent amount

>>5259685
if that's in terms of attractiveness and not quality of writing then mira gonzalez should be on there for sure

>go to alt lit reading at bar in NYC
>bartender not checking ID
>most likely underage people consuming
>I'm terrified, try to call police. No service.
>girl reads "poem" about vegetables
>people genuinely applaud
>guy reads chapter of a book.
>says words "nigger" and "faggot"
>gay guy behind me starts shit talking him
>won't stop
>I turn and knock phone out of his hand
>threaten to hit his female friend if she touches me
>Roggenbuck starts reading
>LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

>>5259685
>Frank Hinton

I'd heard of everyone in the list except her, thanks. (And through her I now know of Guillaume Morrisette.)