/lit/ - Literature

Because there is no adventure anymore. Everyone in America who is educated enough to write a book and get known for it had the same exact childhood, upbringing, school, collegiate, etc. experience.

Couldn't help but notice you didn't include DFW in your photo. Just escaped your mind, or delusional enough to think he doesn't fit right in?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0

>>5740414
this, and also in general there is a sentiment among a lot of people to trivialize personal experience.
you are seen as a total faggot if you value your own personal story a certain way; woe be the person thinks their story is actually worth sharing.

so instead of someone giving us genuine and well written stories of whatever they might want -- people buy autobiographies of porn starts as if the novelty of a certain type of life is enough to make something worth reading.

>>5740390
> Why is contemporary american literature... all insular little stories about the author's immediate experiences[?]

>>5740414
> Everyone in America who is educated enough to write a book and get known for it had the same exact childhood, upbringing, school, collegiate, etc. experience.

>>5740447

>you are seen as a total faggot if you value your own personal story a certain way; woe be the person thinks their story is actually worth sharing.

Reading comprehension is helpful.

>>5740390
>Why is contemporary american literature so flat earth?
Because the frontier is gone. Wait for FTL. Until then enjoy hamfisted and insulting insertions of political ideologies in every piece of literature you read.

>>5740414

I feel like DFW was aware of the problem, but his attempts to escape it were so incredibly backwards that he's really one of the worst offenders. His style consists mostly of aloof rigmarole, technically clever but deliberately empty of any sublime or dangerous ideas.

>>5740390
Because writers who aren't fans of that insularity have turned to increasingly experimental ways of trying to bridge the gap between their work and the reader's attention, which means that there's less broad appeal and, in some cases, a sort of disdain for the very idea of saying anything.

>>5740525
so DFW

>>5740517
THANK YOU

>>5740390
Do you not read science fiction, fantasy, or historical novels?

If you're complaining about why literary fiction is none of the above....well, because it's literary fiction.

>>5740527
I was thinking older and more experimental people, honestly, but sort of, yeah, although he doesn't really have the disdain.

MFA programs needed a "right" way to write that they could teach their students, something accessible enough that anyone could learn and use to produce passable but unambitious literature.

Cormac McCarthy, Will Self, Donald Ray Pollack.

>>5740553

'show, don't tell'

>>5740553
MFA writers' quality aside, I don't think you can blame that for a matter so widespread.

I tend to think it's more about our own attitudes than anything - we've sharpened our sense of irony and grown tired of 'naive' lit, so if a work really wants to sell itself to us, it needs to be couched in either irony or absurdity or to be incredibly persuasive about why we should care.
>>5740596
Self's a brit. But McCarthy's a good point (haven't heard of the other guy, so I can't comment one way or the other).

Because we can all read things that are unique to our experiences or interests. If I want to read about lesbian chemistry professors experiencing ennui and bed death in the American Midwest, I would wager such a novel exists. If I want to read a counterfactual novel about the long and fruitful reign of Heliogabulus, such a novel probably exists. Everything has become compartmentalized.

What is this, a nation's dick waving contest? I don't actually give a fuck where the authors I read are from unless it's important. Just this last week I realized Pynchon was American and I'm halfway finished Gravity's Rainbow

>>5740655
When discussing literary trends, culture and language are extremely relevant.

>>5740517
you're basically complaining he wasn't tryhard enough:^)

>>5740672
he was extremely try-hard, just in the opposite direction 8n)

All three of those authors in the picture have written novels that cover a wide array of cultures and experiences.

Operation Shylock?
All of JCO's horror novels? And Blonde?
Underworld? Libra?

Come on.

>>5740635
The other guy explores wretchedness, pathetic existence, squalor, mental retardation, violence, sexual perversity, rural hopelessness. Sort of like Gummo except far better executed and interesting.

>>5740679
whats your favourite book

>>5740701
Taipei

>>5740681
Yeah OP is a dumbass. Every author the OP mentions has a panoply of works that explore a wide variety of different themes. I don't know what the fuck OP could possibly be looking for. I guess it's bad that they're all at least semi-realist, are all about white people and most take place in America

>>5740538
Pls, genre fiction is absolute crap.

>>5740390
Because they are provincial. They mostly market to their national readership which like comforting fiction with characters they can understand and relate to. Most of the public, even the very educated public is also barely even well-read, plus most of them grew up isolated in sub-urbs and the only knowledge of human nature they got is from tv, magazines and cheap pop-psych.

I mean look at the dude above, some of these people actually really believe that genre fiction is good literature.

>>5740553
This

>>5740666
What literary trend is involved in contemporary and post-modern literature that is exclusive to a nation?

I'm curious.

>Why is contemporary american literature so flat earth? it's all insular little stories about the author's immediate experiences; tentative, idiosyncratic observations that say ultimately nothing.
Could Hawthorne, Twain and Henry James be described this way? Could Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald be described this way? How about Edith Wharton, Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston? I guess the fact that not everyone writes surrealist, discursive, meta-fictional wank is somehow a bad thing.

>>5740701
space jam: the novelization

>>5741385
All dead.

Who does America have now?

Pynchon and DeLillo are from another generation and at the end of their careers,

Rachel Kushner? Chabon? Adam Johnson? Yeah seriously who?

>>5741458
You'll have to wait 50 years to find out :^)

>>5741458
Who the fuck cares?

What kind of manchild do you have to be to have some sort of despotic attraction to your rulers? Nationalism is such an outdated concept. The ire of globalization assures us this.

>>5741517
are you retarded

>>5741517
It's not a question of nationalism.
It's a question that national literary scenes are what foster the young talents of tomorrow.
All young writers necessary have to start at a local level.

Also as a writer that worked both in the us and in europe I can tell you that few things are less globalized than literary taste.

>>5741528
No, who cares where you were born? You did not choose to be born there, nor did you choose or have any meaningful input on the laws there.

>>5741537
No, what matters is the central tenets of what the author is trying to say. For me, writing style and themes are important as well. None of these are excluded in any country's authors. And in fact, one should judge the quality of a book on its central message, not even how or what is said.

>>5740390
I read somewhere that western cultures tend to be more egotistical in their writing.
They asked a bunch of american students to write about their day and then they asked the same of some japanese students. All the yanks wrote about how they interacted with the world, i.e. they were the main part of the story whereas the japenese students wrote more about the world around them and they were a much smaller part of the story.
Could be BS but maybe culture...

>>5741538
Well it's great that you can break completely free of your national roots and be a cosmopolitan but you still used the word "manchild" (one of the worst memes on this board) to describe people who care about their own country and you don't even know what the word "despotic" means

>>5741568
But what I don't understand is why this sort of information, i.e. that culture impacts a vast amount of a nation's inhabitants, should impact how you view what the author is trying to say.

I know you all want to hear the inevitable: America's education system is shifty. Because, trust me, it is. But people still write in America and some of them are rather good.

>>5741569
Sure I do. A despot is a ruler. A tyrant if you will.

If you don't understand the phrase 'despotic attraction' then you are the retard.

>>5741587
So you think average American people are like tyrants in how they are "attracted to their rulers." Please work on your diction, and learn how not to be so autistic that you can't understand something so basic as caring about the place where one was born

>>5741604
Nope, you fail in reading comprehension.

And my point is exactly that: it is a very simple concept indeed.

>>5741582
>e: America's education system is shifty.
This just isn't true though, unless you mean for poor highschools. American universities dominate the academic world and constitute 24 of the 30 best schools.

>>5741582
Hey, I like American literature.
I was just replying to OP's post and he was asking why American literature is so insular and all that. Like I said maybe it's the culture and the way western people think. If OP doesn't like novels which focus on a protagonists immediate experiences then maybe he could try some oriental literature.

>>5740390
No one cares about writing good stories anymore. Everything has to be this constant critique of capitalism, culture, some other facet of modern humanity. Its so loathsome. Who aspires for being greater than a fucking footnote to some political scientists future observation that "the people of the 21st century didn't feel very content." We need a Nabokov now more than ever.

>>5741458
There are plenty of established recent authors like Franzen, Erdrich, indeed Chabon, among several others, but they're all over the age of 50, and unless you write a book like Gravity's Rainbow at age 35, you aren't going to become so famous at an age much younger than that. And even if you do become an established author in your lifetime, it's not entirely clear that anyone's still going to care about your work another 50 years down the line. There are so many promising younger authors writing today that it's nearly impossible to guess which ones are ultimately going to be considered geniuses based on the 2 or 3 books each one has so far written.

>>5741385
OP said contemporary.

>>5741458
Well, McCarthy's got another decade or two of writing, I'd say. Franzen and Vollmann would be some of the most obvious notables going forward, and while Franzen's insular and tentative to a "t," Vollmann, whatever else he may be, is not.

>>5741313
I'm not claiming exclusivity, merely correlation. For example, hysterical realism is pretty endemic to American lit, but by no means is it exclusively American.

>>5741619
And even the High schools aren't as bad as we make them out to be (not that they're great). Their is a good article about this in this months issue of the New York Review of Books about how China has the best education system in terms of international scores but the worst in terms of creating independently functioning and creative, real world capable students. I think you, and some others iit, would be interested.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/myth-chinese-super-schools/

>>5741614
>Nope, you fail in reading comprehension.
No, you fail at basic English diction, and are indeed too autistic to understand very fundamental, universal human concerns.

>>5741554
>And in fact, one should judge the quality of a book on its central message, not even how or what is said.
> For me, writing style and themes are important as well

>>5741630
I thought the problem was the opposite: There are too many people willing to just write the literary equivalent of realist slice of life without experimenting with form, prose, content, and so on. And a lot of these stories either tread over ground already made by others, or only offer very shallow insight into more serious or complicated topics and politics. The problem isn't so simple as abandonment of "good" narratives.

>>5741604
He's saying that the attraction is tyrannical in how it exerts control on the people in question.

>tfw Pynchon, McCarthy, and Wolfe will all be dead soon

>>5741651
This. And it doesn't help that neither the Pulitzer nor the Nobel - the awards that your average "aspiring writer" high school/college student most probably pays attention to - really give a shit about form or experimentalism in general.

>>5741651
>There are too many people willing to just write the literary equivalent of realist slice of life without experimenting with form, prose, content, and so on.

Yes exactly, that is why I said we need Nabokov. People aren't striving for any sort of perfection anymore. Its either inflammatory or redundant. I can't detect a real sense of respect or admiration in a work anymore.

>>5741651
Non that anon but I agree.

That's because there is a mistrust in the us society of aesthetics both on the right and the left.

The left doesn't like aesthetics because it's in contrast with ethics and it is tied to excessive consumption and individualism. Basically the left is the heir of the puritans.

The right on the other hand doesn't care about art but only about entertainment that sells. So they have no interest in serious novels, and prefer paperback bestsellers to sell in airports.

The little part of people that still care about aesthetics usually go in the art world or fashion or music but they are too busy fucking each other and doing drugs to actually read.

>>5741653
I don't think so, and if you think that isn't a loopy way to say that, then you're a moron

What contemporary American writers should we be reading?

>>5741663
>>5741661
>>5741660
>>5741651
Good lord this is a bunch of pretentious, uninformed horseshit

>>5740517
Sincere question, did you actually read IJ or any of his better essays?

>>5741656
>tfw the entire old guard of American lit is approaching death
>tfw people probably say this every fifteen years for a new group of writers
>tfw I rationally know I'm being an overdramatic doomsayer but can't convince myself that I'm not right

>>5741673
Wanna explain why you think that?

>>5741673
Ah you can't tell that it's not true that there is a general distrust of aesthetics in american culture.
The motto in the last 40 or so years has been that literature has to teach and entertain.
Even DFW never got beyond this dichotomy.

>>5741676
What we're going to have to do, Anon, is become great writers ourselves in order to replace them.

>>5741682
I don't feel like it so I'll just say that none of those people have actually read much contemporary Americna literature

>>5741675
not that anon, but dfw was really an average man when he wasn't dealing with solipsism.

The piece at the end of Wittgenstein's mistress is pretty good.

But besides that his whole effort is an attempt to go back to the middleclass normality that he felt deprived by his disease. The suburbs are for DFW the ideal ethical community.

>>5741696
>The piece at the end of Wittgenstein's mistress is pretty good.
You mean his essay on it?

>>5741690
I have read plenty of contemporary american literature.

Just a list of stuff I have read recently:

Jamie Cuatro
Ben Marcus
Emily St.John Mandel
Mary Gaitskill
Eugene Lim
Amy Hempel
McCann
Joseph O'Neil
Adam Johnson
Tom Perotta

>>5741704
Yeah it's now included at the end of the Dalkey Edition.

>>5741696
>But besides that his whole effort is an attempt to go back to the middleclass normality that he felt deprived by his disease. The suburbs are for DFW the ideal ethical community.
Fuck. I really enjoy his work, but this is a pretty good point.

>>5741710
He doesn't want to engage, so don't bother.

how is underworld about the author's immediate experiences at all

and i mean obviously that's true about philip roth but that's like the gag so it's not really a criticism

>>5741696
>>5741712
What? IJ is clearly a rejection of "filling the void" with drugs and mindless entertainment, which is the way middle and upper middle class operate(Or to some extent, everyone in America/The Western World). He is basically saying that that way of life is rotten to the core. I agree that he is desperately looking for some form of clear moral compass but saying that "the suburbs are the ideal ethical community" is just wrong. (I hope we all agree that middleclass normality is a farce anyway(Which DFW probably knew as well, see his obsession with Lynch))

I think it is much more disappointing that the best thing he came up with to combat this is to basically suck it up and make the best out of it because there is no way out. (This Is Water, which is excellent advice for getting through the day but avoid the problem instead of solving it). Still love his work though.

Sorry for the messy post.

>>5741739
Well in a way his a right winger, that is he is pining for a sort of purity to be retained.
The middle class is about respectability and hard work ethics, doing your best. To this you can add the mid-western ideal of warmth and kindness. Basically The View From Mrs. Thompson is his way of depicting his ideal of ethics (kind suburban grandmas).

Drugs are never a middleclass solution, they are either the hedonism of the leisurely high classes (who break the work ethic) or of the lower classes who lack the will to face the world and work to improve it. This is the whole problem of addiction, it stops you from being willing to work for the good.

Entertainment on the other hand is what for dfw has corrupted the middle class by distracting them, by playing on their value of warmness and huamanity and by making them think that they can buy a perfect world instead of working for it. Entertainment was promising all the middleclass wanted while giving the impression that they would not have to pay for it.
This is at the bottom E Unibus Pluram, the distraction of entertainment in IJ and also, notice, that the negative character of The View, who is snearing and being ironic, is wearing a Slaryer cap (he is corrupted by the media),

Again his view of the perfect ethical community is the suburb where he grew up, with his mother teaching him grammar, and his dad talking about philosophy. And probably, if he lived, he would like some hipsters not own a tv, limit his children's time on the internet and buy them old fashion toys while all the while teaching them the good values of hard and honest work.

Literature doesn't need to "say" anything. It just needs to be entertaining.

>>5741739
>>5741787
Maybe he should have just joined a church.

>>5741385
>Ralph Ellison
>not surrealist, metafictional wank
Did you read Invisible Man?

>>5741807
He did after joining AA. He accepted the higher being and started to go regularly to church (not without a few doubts).

>>5741807
He actually did and said he voted Reagan, for that matter. >>5741787
Good points, I'll reply in full later, just for now: We will have to define middle class if we wanna stick with the term because we seem to have different conceptions what middle-class means in the context of DFW, for me its closer to what one might sneeringly call the bourgeoisie, what you are talking about are not exactly exclusively middle class values are they?
>playing Tennis
>going to a good to ivy league college
>prime education
>listening to NPR
>self medicating with alcohol or marijuana
>moderately liberal political views
>no financial worries ever
>given all the advantages in the world
>fitter happier etc.

>>5740553
>>5740603
hit the nail on the head
There are so many group now days following all these writing 'tips' and 'rules'

>>5741806

Kill yourself.

>>5741806
Pleb. We all know the only good literature without underlying symbols and metaphors is Lord of the Rings.

>>5741840
I'm not saying that having something to say can't make for a very good piece of literature. I'm just saying that it can be good and not say anything. Like some of E E Cummings's poems.
Or are you trying to tell me that the Hitchhiker's Guide has some underlying meaning I'm not getting?

>>5741836
The middle class is a spectrum that can oscillate left and right.

When it goes to the left is pluralistic, enjoys the occasional cigar and cognac. When it swings to the right can be more traditional and religious.

The center of the middle-class values are two:
1) Work defines the man (success and money are proof of being hard working).
2) The ethical dimension is the most fundamental dimension. That is the efficient work of society and self-preservation and reproduction are the ultimate goals.

Incidentally this interpretation of the middleclass can be found in Thomas Mann (Hans Castorp represents perfectly both sides).
But also Franco Moretti in his The Bourgeois gives a very good representation of it.

>>5741837
I blame a lot of this on Strunk and White. They've sceptered English departments for half a century now, and their influence has only harmed writing. Only half of their rules are actually even remotely correct, and even when they are they're either incredibly obvious and intuitive done, or stated without any offer of guidance.

>>5741901
English is not my first language but my wife is a professional editor for a big publisher in ny.
You would not believe how many people would actually try to correct my stories because they'd read Strunk & White and thought they'd know better than a dude with an accent.

>>5740390
What about this semen demon?

>>5740553
>>5741837
Do you honestly think that if ANY great writer, like say, Faulkner or Hemingway or Joyce or whoever it is that we don't hate on this board these days, had attended a modern MFA program, that their writing would then be any less brilliant?

I think that there IS problem, but it's that MFA programs make mediocre writers into passable/sellable writers; not that they turn every writer into a passable writer.

The market is too saturated, there are too many people with lives (read: wealth) that allows them to pursue a career/legacy in writing without having to really suffer enough for it to make it into a passion.

At the same time, the dream of being a "professional writer" that literally wakes up in the morning and writes and makes a living is becoming more and more impossible so you end up in a place where many of the people making the content (especially content of the non-YA or genre-fiction variety), are NOT spending the same amount of time on their craft as the giants of the past had.

Sure, there ARE still people doing this, but it is becoming less and less common and the writers who are doing it are becoming less and less comfortable.

>>5742406
i really don't get the complaint here, if the additional time spent didn't turn into the better quality or at least quantity why should one be proud that he spent it and did not have a job instead

>>5741582
>But what I don't understand is why this sort of information, i.e. that culture impacts a vast amount of a nation's inhabitants, should impact how you view what the author is trying to say.
I don't think you understand how culture works. You can't step out of your culture. It's like a purer, psychologically more primitive form of ideology.

>>5741806
it doesn't need to say anything. but it should be beautiful

>>5742406
One thing is that Faulkner, Hemingway and Joyce wouldn't have done an mfa, which would put them at odds in the publishing market.

The fact of the mfa is that they work as big network creators and then people in there just collectively help each other to have success.

I mean that's how the modernists did it through Pound and Stein. Except where they were selected for exceptional geniuses, mfa select for wealthy authority compliant kids that do their homework.

>>5743008
>mfa select for wealthy authority compliant kids that do their homework.

Kind of agree, kind of not. The top 50 mfa according to that shitty list fund most of their students, it's only the shitty MFAs that nobody goes to save as a last resort the ones that charge you for their degree.

I've read interviews with MFA professors, the people who select the new students. They say they DONT want the people who followed the rules and complied with authority, they want people who finished school and left to travel asia with no money and ended up stuck in Peru without being able to pay for a ticket back home. The thing is, none of their applicants are doing that, so they settle for the next best thing.
There is one Top 25 program that explicitly says "We will not accept you if you are just coming out of college. Go live your life for a bit and then come back. We don't want another story about your college romance."

And then there's Brown, a Top 10 program, and they're famous for being experimental. Haven't read anything that came out of there, but that's my fault.

>>5741806

maybe for you.
I don't read books I can't learn things from.

>>5743211
Well, that's a bit sad.

>tfw DeLillo has terminal cancer and "likely won't live until Christmas"

>>5740390
Gene Wolfe still writes.
Be happy.

>>5740390
>>5740414
>>5740447
>Zuckerman Bound Trilogy
>Sabbath's Theater
>American Pastoral
>White Noise
>Underworld
>Blood Meridian
>Lot 49
>Mason & Dixon
>"why is literature so bad?"
>"why isn't my personal experience relevant?"

Fucking retarded nihilists on this board.

>>5743812
i hope you're not serious with that bloom shit.

>>5743889
Oh wow get a load of this edgelord here.

Other people than Bloom like those books you know.

>>5740390
'Contemporary American literature' is people like Gene Wolfe, Gaiman, Gibson, Rothfuss, etc.

Who the fuck the cuntrags in your picrelated are I have no idea; some sort of insular self-published circlejerk, presumably.

>>5744096
Well obviously, the guys in the picture don't even have leather jackets or beards.

>>5741292
>I mean look at the dude above, some of these people actually really believe that genre fiction is good literature.
Two points:

a) realism and modernism are also genres
b) Homer, Dante and Shakespeare all wrote fantasy.

>>5744126
That's irrelevant. The point is that the people in OP's picrelated are literally a circlejerk. They don't influence minds either at home or abroad.

The people who _do_ influence minds are the kids of people I quoted here >>5744096

(Note that I didn't say anything about 'quality', however you choose to measure it.)

>>5744135
>a) realism and modernism are also genres

Not in the same way I'd argue, but you already know that when he used/others use that term what kind of genres they're referring to.

>b) Homer, Dante and Shakespeare all wrote fantasy.

Again, not the same. You wouldn't call 2001 or Solaris 'genre films,' nor Don Quixote 'genre fiction.' 'Genre fiction' refers to works limited by genre, not works that utilize genre elements and transcend into literature.

>>5744135
>a) realism and modernism are also genres
Wrong, these are movements.

>b) Homer, Dante and Shakespeare all wrote fantasy.
Wrong again. There's a difference between utilizing genre elements and writing full blown genre fiction.

>>5744193
>They don't influence minds either at home or abroad.

OK, I thought you were just trolling, I was trying to make a joke with you. But you're actually this stupid.

>>5744252
>There's a difference between utilizing genre elements and writing full blown genre fiction.
>>5744243
>'Genre fiction' refers to works limited by genre, not works that utilize genre elements and transcend into literature.
these are the definition of spooks. there isn't any transcending going on other than in your pleb mind. they all work within their genres. the only difference is you are oblivious to them because you haven't read enough.

>>5744275
Why would someone in India read Franzen?
Why would someone in Brooklyn?

>>5744193
Nobody reads gaiman ruthfuss or wolf outside the English speaking world. Even there influence is limited to middlebrows. Also there is the limit that they are middling writers so they don't have much to teach.

>>5743812
>Zuckerman Bound Trilogy
Heh. No.

>Sabbath's Theater
>American Pastoral
Looks like you're just barfing out recent titles, here. These books--and Roth in general--aren't worth mention.

>White Noise
>Underworld
Puffing Delillo up well beyond his talent and stature.

>Lot 49
>Mason & Dixon
Lot 49 was published when LBJ was in office. Are you fucking serious, with this shit? Pynchon is the only author in this list that's worth mention and M&D is the only book in this list that even fits.

Lot 49? Really? Your dad didn't even have pubes yet, and you're trying to call this contemporary?

>>5744243
>>5744252
So lovecraft wrote literary fiction with elements of horror, fantasy and science fiction all mixed up?

>>5745206
No, he wrote genre fiction. Poe, on the other hand, wrote literature.

>>5745219
Ask me how I know your high school English class read Poe but not Lovecraft.

>>5741639
>an 81 year old has another decade or two of writing

m8 he could be dead next month

>>5745180

You having a laugh mate? Underworld is one of the best American things to come out in the last half of the 20th century for my money. It is incredible.

>>5745242
I read both Poe and Lovecraft in my own time, sorry.

Although I should clarify I do think some of Poe's stories are genre fiction, but it's difficult to say because a lot of it only became 'genre' due to his writing.

>>5745219

Although Poe's stories often leave their mark and several are pretty viscerally chilling, the man truly could not write for shit. His prose is just so cluttered and terrible and nearly threatens to destroy the effects of his stories

>>5745277
I completely agree, I can only stand to read some of his poems these days, mostly for the nostalgia value.

But I wasn't using 'literature' in the 'quality work' kind of way, but to denote a certain kind of work.

>>5745256
>for my money.

Underworld is silly garbage. Try it again in 5 years and maybe your money will magically obtain a value beyond Delillo.

>>5745296

What makes it silly?

Also, I know you guys like to think you're much better than the people who post on /mu/ but you're pretty much the same in terms of generally being douchebags, having very little to say, and having uninteresting taste in most things.

>>5740390
American Pastoral was released less than 20 years ago, and that's a masterpiece.

>>5740390

roth and oates, maybe. but not dellilo. he is not provincial and inward looking.

>>5745306
This. This thread is full of tasteless know-it-all cunts who think they know better than the whole of modern literary criticism. American lit is fine.

>>5741630

OP is saying the exact opposite. and i agree with him. no idea where the fuck you're coming from.

>>5741619
>>5741640
But the American highschool system currently is shit, the only this it can ensure is that the very best and most privileged students will succeed. Academia has little to do with the quality of highschool education, as long as you make sure that the top 2% student are well-trained.

The world ranking are also shit though.

>>5745380

guys, you know we cannot have a serious discussion about literature if you're going to get all insecure about the topic even being raised, right? please.

>>5741710
what did you think of St. John Mandel? what did you read?

>>5742406
It's strange that we imagine one needs to have suffered through destitution or poverty to be a good writer.

Many writer lived the contemporary equivalent of middle-class lives, which doesn't mean no suffering, but middle-class kind of suffering.

>>5745413
I read Station Eleven.

It pretty bad. Both the mediocrity of sci-fi and the bleeding heart sentimentality of mainstream literary fiction i.e. all people want is not be alone, which is an easy way to flatter readers since it is a lonely enterprise and in fact everyone is quoting the line "Hell is the absence of people you long for."

Bottom down the big problem is the problem that a lot of sci-fi has: you can see in a very surprising way the mind that is pulling the strings behind the scenes. And what it is is the minds of a fairly intelligent woman in her thirties that doesn't know much about life.

The result is an unimpressive novel that is not very intelligent and that disguises a lot of gossip in comic-bookish sci-fi setting filled with "dorky" references to star trek.

Also a lot of people commented the writing being exceptionally good but to me it seemed mediocre for literary fiction standards. Yeah she is very clean but also extraordinarily boring and barely ever lyrical.

>Fuck Oats! Fuck Updike! Let's bring REAL literature back!

>>5745573
gr8deb8m8

>>5740494
>implying the problem is political insertion

It's the lack of politic that makes American literature so dull. When the choice of political angle is band-aid capitalism and capitalism, you just get boring as fuck "Great American Novels" whining about the lack of band-aids the entire time.

It's the lack of scope, probably because widescreen TV is still too narrow for reality.

>>5745596
Just trying to show how stupid some of you look, is all.

>>5745573
>mfw Heisenberg changed the game

>>5745612
Oates is a pretty silly writer though.

>>5745611
I agree with that.
It's a whole lack of literary culture and lack of ambitions. People that read feel uncool and defensive and they feel like they have to justify themselves in front of a readership that dislikes being challenged and wants to self-insert themselves in the narration.
I mean, think that people complain when you use words that they don't understand.

>>5745380
> Pynchon is the only author in this list that's worth mention and M&D is the only book in this list that even fits.
>Outright ignores that BM was on that list

Your credibility isn't looking too good, m8.

>>5745573
Updike's dead.

>>5745697
Fuck, meant for >>5745180