/lit/ - Literature

you really typed out a good amount to say absolutely nothing.

Wallace is the only one of those who writes didactic books you bitch

Metamorphosis and Of Mice & Men are short af and on are every other rec list.

Wholeheartedly agree. I've nothing substantial to add but a recommendation to this book which discusses a similar topic.

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

(google search for it + mobi and you'll find it)

>>6504780
Y'know, I could get behind you if you were talking about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, two infamously crude moralists, but your examples of 'didactic' and lacking in aesthetic experience are Pynchon and DeLillo? Top fucking lel.

Wallace is half-and-half.

>>6504795
>dialogue in White Noise isn't didactic
>muh imaginary Jacobean revenge play isn't didactic

>>6504791
>reading books over 50 pages long

>>6504803
>hating on imaginary Jacobean revenge plays

BIG

>>6504803
do you understand what it means to be didactic? Can you explain why those elements are didactic?

>>6504801
Not all Pynchon. Mason & Dixon is my favorite piece of fiction ever, but Gravity's Rainbow and Lot 49 don't come close to it.

White Noise is my main experience with Delillo and I'll wholeheartedly defend my assessment there. The dialogue in White Noise is stilted and didactic. Everyone talks like they're giving a damn lecture and its grating. Not to argue from authority, but I don't personally know any English profs who like it aesthetically and yet it keeps popping up as an essential postmodern novel.

>>6504817
The characters in White Noise are consistently preachy and long-winded. Lot 49 includes several passages that are essentially just teaching you about the play, so that's didactic the same way sections of Moby Dick are. I personally enjoy Moby Dick and Lot 49 but there's a lot to be said for not not talking down to the reader.

>>6504812
4u

>>6504834
teaching you about the play isn't didactic if it doesn't exist.The play is just a part of the novel and needs to be described in accordance to its importance to the novel. That's like saying Borges is didactic. I'll give you White Noise though

>>6504780
Y'all bourgeois don't even formally critique cereal packets.

Was this professors name Einstein?

>>6504940
Nah that's the kid who keeps pwning him every time our class has an epic debate about Jesus and guns.

>>6504780
So name some of those little books you think are superior.

>>6504803
>that disapproving face towards the manlet

That's a big book

>>6504799
Also The Stranger and the old man and the sea

OP, the difference between you and your prof is that he has his own taste which he is secure in. The lesson you should take from him is not to ape his preferences but to form your own like he did.

godamn North America is comfy

>>6505018
I've lived in 9 different states. None of them look like this.

>>6505034
Military brat detected

>>6505034
That's like saying I walked into five buildings and none of them were restaurants, so restaurants don't exist.

>>6504780
>>6505018
i wish more american places looked like this

>>6505037
Er, no, because to go from one state to another you do have to pass through others.

I said I've lived in 9 states. I've been to almost all 50. And none of them were like this, except ONE BLOCK in a notable part of town, usually called "Old _____". These pics >>6505018
>>6504780 are more indicative of towns in Europe than in the USA. In fact, these photos probably only exist because they are such notable, rare exceptions.

>>6505050
I know three neighborhoods in Ohio alone that look like that. And I've been to a few elsewhere as well, none of which are even in the North East (where this architecture will be a hell of a lot more common).

>>6505034
There are areas of Connecticut that look like this

>>6505055
Congratulations, you know of a few blocks that look like the notable pictures posted.

To say "North America is so comfy" based off these photos is completely erroneous, since less than 0.000001% of North America even looks like that.

>>6505034
>>6505042
>>6505050
Its mostly the towns settled in the 1800s or on the East Coast like New England. I grew up in an old town in Ontario that had that kind of vibe.

White Noise is about self-important academics, though? So it wouldn't work if they weren't all bloviating all the time. The punchline of it is basically that humanities professors might actually be dangerous if they can convince themselves of their own bullshit.

Anyway, I'm sorry that your personal aesthetic judgments are so inchoate that a professor can crush them and substitute his for yours, but I suppose that's what college is for.

>>6505062
>butthurt european detected

I think I may agree. I mean, Dostoevsky, Cervantes, and others are clearly better than the post-modernists.

Anyway, tell us who your professor is. We ain't gonna ruin his life, we promise.

>>6505062
that still means millions of people often see places like that.

>>6504780
>resorting to...overblown dialogue like Delillo
this entire post sucks but jesus cristo, what a doozy

>>6505075
Often? Heh. Sure, kid.

>>6505012
We definitely have different tastes. I write far more discursively than he does, and enjoy more of these big discursive novels than he does, in addition to other less relevant differences. What he said made me question why I read those novels and whether reading them makes me a better writer. I've begun to suspect that perhaps I was reading doorstoppers for the satisfaction of tackling them the way one tackles a math problem, but wasn't engaging personally with the text, which I think is an important distinction. To be honest I just wanted to shitpost about how cool my professor used to be and accuse people of being plebs.

>>6505018
I think you mean New England

You have not truly experienced comfy until you have experienced small secluded New England summer coastal/beach village

>>6505081
>>6505065

>>6505072
Might as well just post my address while I'm at it. This is certainly not an attack on postmodernist literature. Just trying to provide some incentive to think about what you want out of fiction.

>>6505104
So you suck that professors cock that much that he knows you browse 4chan? How the fuck could he trace that back to you, you paranoid faggot?

>>6505091
can't beat europe at comfiness though

they invented it

>>6505106
Quite the opposite. I don't let anyone know I browse 4chan and I'm aware there are some people form my university on here. Schools and departments aren't that large and it wouldn't be hard to triangulate people if you run in the same circles. Some friends of mine have figured out other students' Reddit accounts and found pretty embarrassing posts. I like being seriously anonymous on here.

>>6505112
europe is a spook, you can find comfiness anywhere you want to.

>>6505081
>>6505092
I don't personally think it's shameful that it's fun to work through a big, hard-to-read doorstopper novel. And I don't think you should be worried about having maximalist writers stunt your own writing style, but it's not a bad idea to use the opportunity to explore whatever your prof likes. (What does he like? Hemingway? Kincaid?)

I don't like the label "postmodernist literature" anyway but that's a different thing.

>>6504780
>clever linguistic tricks like Pynchon
The hell you on about? Of the many things you could say about Pynchon...

>>6504780
>more of an aesthetic experience you'll find the aesthetics of IJ and GR lacking in comparison to more personal novels written for the reader.
I disagree, "more personal novels" bore the shit out of me. Would agree with the sentiment that Big Books are carrying more than they're worth, but somehow some of them still provide a worthwhile experience that short fiction doesn't.

>>6505122
>having a social life

haha faggot

>>6505122
Oh, come the fuck on. You don't even have a posting history here.

Just fuck yourself, you pretentious fascist, and kill yourself.

>hurr I have a famous professor
>hurr I ain't gonna tell his name cause anononous

>>6505122
Yeah you're a paranoid faggot. I'm sure you make the anal sex exciting with your professor since you think every sound is the spooky Big Other trying to figure out your reddit history

>>6505140
He hasn't been close to famous for a long time. You really wouldn't give a shit if I told you.

>>6505133
It's not a sin, but I know plenty of CS nerds who only read doorstoppers because they can't shift out of that problem solver mentality. Just something to be aware of, especially if you're the 4chan type. Last time we spoke I wrote down a list that included: The Octopus, by Norris; Germinal by Zola; The Way We Live Now, by Trollope; The Financier, by Dreisser; Fathers and Sons, Turgenev; and Nostromo.

>>6505165
IF I WOULDNT GIVE A SHIT WHY DONT YOU FUCKING TELL ME YOU FILTHY SCUM

>>6505172

bump
WHO'S THE TEACH
IS HE REAL
WHY YA GOTTA PLAY A HOMIE LIKE THAT

>>6504780
The only way our narratives will be told is if we write them ourselves. I urge you to write your own selves, your true and complicated selves. My scribbling sisters. We are amateurs. We are dilettantes. We are all those terms they use to dismiss the girl writing. We need, perhaps, to reclaim these terms, as well as the categories of "minor” or “outsider” or “illegitimate.”

If I have communicated anything to you I hope it is the absolute urgency to write yourself, your body, your own experience. The absolute necessity for you to write yourself in order to understand yourself, in order to become yourself. I ask you to fight against your own disappearance. To refuse to self-immolate. Or to launch yourself as a burning, glorious spectacle into outer space. To scratch yourself out and begin again, to die and resurrect.

A different sort of nerve is needed. To say fuck you to these internal and social prohibitions dictating what literature should be about. Fuck you to the objective correlative. Fuck the canon. Fuck the boys with their big books.

>>6504780
>As a bit of a Pynchon nut myself, I had my eyes opened when a writing professor I respect revealed to me in conversation that the only Pynchon he has read was Lot 49, and that he found it distasteful. This is a man who once shared an agent with Pynchon and has flipped through the original manuscript of Gravity's Rainbow where it sat in a closet. He hasn't read Wallace at all. At least he shares my dislike of Delillo.

I, too, value people's opinions on writers they've never read.

>>6504780
>flipped through Gravity's Rainbow
>claimed GR's aesthetics are lacking in comparison to more 'personal' novels

Some of the most astounding moments of beauty I've ever read in all of fiction have been in that book. Reading shouldn't be solely based on challenge, nor should it be based primarily on aesthetics, and I'm surprised a professor is silly enough to assume that either the one or the other is on anyone's 'reasons why I read' list. Don't let him reduce such an experience down to such inadequate words anon, read whatever you want to read

>>6504780
I had a professor who was good friends with Updike and another who personally corresponded with Pynchon and edited a scholarly journal focusing on his writings. They were pretty cool. Yours sounds like a toolbox.

>>6504780
I figured I'd start with easy Pynchon, so I read Lot 49 and Inherent Vice. Nothing special, lots of clever-clogs show-off stuff. The guy gets so much acclaim I figured I'd press on, and I was starting with minor works after all. I then started V and got halfway through before I realised I really didn't give a fuck. Stopped there and haven't touched Pynchon ever again.

>>6505018
It truly is. I've lived here all my life and can confirm that every suburb and small town look almost identical to this one, yet they all somehow have their own character. America is truly a magical place. I don't think I'll ever step foot outside of it.

I feel the same way as your professor, OP. What books does he like? I bet he likes Barbara Pym. Quartet in Autumn is such a beautiful book.

>>6504780
What about Martin? I really find that he changed the fiction genre for the better with his "A Song of Ice and Fire"

>Implying any book but animal farm changed society.

>>6504780
I was pleasently surprised by White Noise after reading the really quite bland, to my eyes at least, Falling Man. I don't think WN was great but it was pretty good, good enough at least for me to probably read Underworld in the future.

>>6506901

Underworld is DeLillo's masterpiece. White Noise is great too but he has a few other books that are better than it I think.