/lit/ - Literature

>>6761959
What about Yuropoors that makes them so asspained?

Is it Shariah law in general that is to blame?

great thread. simply superb

op would you say they're... problematic

It's the financial heft of the american literary industry, it makes them arrogant as fuck, read this and try to disagree

http://www.buzzfeed.com/nellzink/social-status-zero-to-hero#.awrZjZyPr

>>6761959
Why does that Franzen guy get so much shit? I don't know anything about him. What's wrong with him?

Hyperconsumerism and middle class suburbia has rendered them sterile

Fuck I'm glad I'm not American

>>6761997
Does anyone have the link to the article on nice writing?

>>6761997
He just isn't a good writer, yet as you see in the OP he's vastly overrated in contemporary lit.

>>6761997
He is just at the trough of his cycle at the moment. Give it a couple of years and /lit/ will be into him again.

>>6761977
nice rebuttal

t. anti-inflammatory yurofriend

>>6762173
To be honest, Franzen is one of those authors that /lit/ has always been against. He isn't part of the cycle

>>6762179
>reddit

>>6761990
>buzzfeed

>>6761959
Invisible style.

>>6762182
He's DFW's inferior sidekick in audiencepussying.

American literature (which I'd call before a certain point the greatest in the world) has simply run out of a willingness to engage itself. People talk a lot about how science fiction in the west is out of ideas, how it's all steampunk and space opera and other types of fantastic escapism, but really that's just a genre form of a wider malaise in western literature, a reluctance to engage with things outside of itself. Genre fiction in the US is now about paying homage to genre - literary fiction is now about the lives of writers themselves, their fears and pains. It's become a neurotic middle class bubble, still escapist, but not through space ships and detectives; instead through a magnification and fictionalisation of the writer's own experiences, a morphing of their messy, discontented late capitalist existences into harmless waffling narratives.

>>6762016
Underground urban circles were our last hope but even they too succumbed to hyperconsumerism and suburbia, all under the "hipster" brand, and anything that can't be packaged neatly was given a negative social stigma.
"Those snobby hipsters", they would smugly say, all while guzzling filth at the nearest McDonald's.

>>6763035
>which I'd call before a certain point the greatest in the world
nigger we don't even have any shakespeare or milton tier writers, how could ours possibly be the best.

>>6763035
It's because no one's willing to publish or buy anything significantly different from whatever's "in" at the moment these days. I wrote a book without any regards to profits, popularity, or being "relatable" in that bland inoffensive way people like and no one's willing to risk representing it so far.

>>6762016
Isn't this how all of the West is

>>6761959

It's because we don't have that sweet sweet catholicism clogging our historic arteries

>>6763056
Because we have others

>>6763070
I know, but we don't have anyone of that level yet.

>>6763075
>>6763055 here, as a foreigner I've always found that from the 19th Century to maybe the 1970s or so America has produced some amazing classics, especially for such a young nation. For Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow alone the US deserves recognition.

>>6763097
Or I can fuck up linking to my own post, that works too. I meant >>6763035.

>>6763066
That hasn't stopped Russia or England.

>>6763117

Do you mean

>Russia and England have no good authors

Because I don't think we can actually have a /lit/ board if we're discounting all the writers hailing from those countries

>>6763127
No, I mean not being Catholic hasn't stopped those two countries from producing good writers.

>>6763127
He obviously didn't mean that, though we could easily have a good /lit/ board without Russia

>>6763137

Good, but not great.

>>6763143
England alone would make it great tbh

Why do Brits have to shit up every board and thread with shitty nationalistic dick waving and shit flinging?

>>6763156
stay mad oleg

>>6763161
No really I wanna know why? Why are Brits such shit posters? The few Brits I've encountered in real life have been pretty chill but British 4chan posters are just god awful annoying shitheads.

>>6763167
Sorry for loving our nation, Raheem.

>>6761959

Well, it's not like anyone else is writing anything worth reading.

>>6763167
>browse /int/
>every other nationality has chill threads about whatever
>go to /brit/
>ALRIGHT M8 TOP BANTS FUCK MUSLIMS UKIP WILL SAVE US CAN'T BARRAGE THE FARAGE BLOODY HELL JOB CENTRE FISH AND CHIPS WALKER'S CRISPS PINTS AND SLAGS WE WON WORLD WAR TWO IMPLYING FRANCE IS A REAL COUNTRY

>>6763177
What's there to love?

>>6763188
Every field and hedgerow.

>>6761959
David Franzen isn't your average American writer. He is a rich kid that went to Swarthmore that is vain enough to write a novel and call it Freedom

>>6761959
-America

>>6763065
It is, but tons of people love to self-fellate by saying America has it worst. In reality, things are about equally terrible everywhere, we just have different (arguably worse, but that's a debate for /pol/) social nets and spending priorities.

>>6763035
I disagree with you heavily. You're viewing the present with the lens of the past. An artist who is great enough to be remembered is very rare, and with the scope of information processed and categorized in the modern times, imbeciles seem far more present than geniuses. I believe that the general style of an era has little to do with the skill or the greatness of the individual artist's work. The bubbles which people view the history of art within is nothing more than a categorization, a label. And with that, to say that America is declining, you do so without thinking of all of the second and third rate writers of history.
tl;dr You're being a hysterical reactionary.

>>6763177
Apology accepted, Muhammed

>>6763279
I'm not saying there aren't good writers out there who'll be remembered in the future, I don't think I'm being hysterical and I'm not a reactionary at all. All I'm saying is that there is a trend towards myopia in literature now - in fiction - that's easily observable, and with a special acuteness in American literary fiction.

>>6761959
Same reason writers from every other country are so cancerous: contemporary culture and technology impede intellectual development. I suspect the next great authors of the next century or so will emerge from developing countries.

“Although he, like all people, secretely enjoyed the smell of his own farts, the smell of his shit was somethig else. It was so bad as to seem evil in a moral way.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

>The Next Great American Novel

game of thrones is pretty good :-)

>Steinbeck
>Fitzgerald
>cancerous
ayy

what is it about eurofaggots that they are eternally shitter shoah'd over a nation who's inhabitants never consider them? Your impotent rage is honestly ridiculous. Literally stay mad.

The amount of great people is constant no matter the age. And yet, every other murican kid wants to be a famous novelist, without even bringing anything to the table. The good stuff simply gets burried in an avalanche of medioctiy.

>>6762173
Ignatius Reilly likes this post

>Great
>American
>Novelist

Two out of three ain't bad.

>>6764068
Not at all. Ignatius would hate Franzen.

>>6762156
On /lit/ being popular to the masses is the easiest way to be considered a bad writer. I won't take these claims seriously until I've read the work myself, which I never will.

>>6763182
>implying you can read any of the other generals
They're pretty much the same.

>Be European
>Can't go a day without trying to make my existence seem less shitty by trashing Americans

B-british master race

>>6761959
Yurocucks and their inferiority complexes never cease to make me lol

>>6762016
Better than socially neutered Europeans

>>6762016
Enjoy your new Muslim nation Yuropoor leeel

>>6764169

What would we be if not for the ancient wisdom

>>6763410

The next great writers will emerge when America returns to a Third World Country.

Right now, Democracy, not Technology, is what impedes thinking.

The 'right not to be offended' has killed profound thought.

All. Of. It.

>In the world of Mad Max,
>Profound work is written
>Pleb reads book.
>"This book triggers me!"
> *BAM BAM BAM*

This is how shit used to be, before Post-Modernism. It was also why governments have historically been exclusionary; they had a tremendous fear of the nightmare we live in.

>>6764473
Ah to be a shitposting 12 year old again.

>>6764481

Exactly what I talk about.

>Doesn't address the point.
>Relies on Ad Hominem insults
>Incapable of dealing with the stressful topic.

Plebs @ work.

>>6764481
Looks like you were ... ... triggered.

>>6761984
Underrated post.

>>6762179
can someone tell me what

>t. [name]

means?

>>6764648
It's Finnish for "sprölölö".

>>6761997
B/c he sleeps like a haiku

>>6761997

Read his essay on Gaddis. He's a huge pleb.

>>6764473
Actually, you just have to get rid of the cultural marxism. Democracy is not bad in and of itself. Look at Britain, it has been democratic for ages, but only has this same problem in the last decade or so.

It s really about people being spoiled more than anything else,

>>6764481
https://www.tumblr.com/

>>6765008
>Look at Britain, it has been democratic for ages
Really? Last I checked, Britain is still an absolute monarchy in 2015, you fucking cuck.

(And no, just because your absolute monarch is too inbred to actually exercise xer power doesn't suddenly make your country a democracy. The Qing "cuckold empire" Dynasty wasn't democratic, and neither is 'Great' Britain.)

why do europeans ALWAYS talk about americans

>>6764473
>before Post-Modernism
citation needed

>>6765008
Sorry bud.

>>6765157 is right.

Literature may be hyper-democratic, but our government itself isn't actually so.

Oligarchy has made a mother fucking mess of things.

It refuses to stop the anti-intellectualism, and our nation is absolutely god awful because of their excessive wealth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

Government really ought to lean toward democracy, but literature cannot be refuge for the narrow-minded.

Somehow, we swapped those processes. It's intriguing to contrast, now that i think about it.

>>6765175

Pic related.

I can also take a picture of the sky, if you need further proof it's blue.

>>6765008

Also. I would read On Liberty again. I'll even link to Plebbit's best, Kotaku-in-action.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2n2y1z/john_stuart_mill_explained_why_private_censorship/

'Cultural Marxism' is really for morons who can't tell the difference between Marxism and Post-Modernism.

Because Conservatives think Post-Modernism is a Communist plot, they keep kicking the corpse of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the Post-Modenrists take absolute power, and then degenerate society down to pre-civilization/Identity Politics.

Right Wing Americans are too stupid to live, effectively. If the had enough brain cells left in them, they could've saved America.

But somehow, they can't even realize Post-Modernism is an invention of the CIA.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

http://www.namebase.org/steinem.html

https://books.google.com/books?id=mVQLi3l2eKYC&pg=PT79&lpg=PT79&dq=CIA+post-modern&source=bl&ots=8O24wriR74&sig=8qnOTgPMl3_1rpkfkGJ6_uskQBY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=20CUVYC_MtScygTO2oa4Bw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=CIA%20post-modern&f=false

Cultural Marxism may actually be a 'Psy-Op' term designed to confuse Right-Wingers. It's brilliant, because Karl Marx takes the blame for what the CIA is doing for the 1%.

>Pic related.
>Just to get minds to explode.

>>6765245
You are simply interchanging words. Nobody in their right mind would blame "Cultural Marxism" on Marx, Neither should you blame Post-modernism, it s just an art movement that came in way before the issues discussed here.

(off-topic: You claim that the term is misleading, but offer an alternative that does simply not fix it.

Post-modernism is as much of a CIA invention, as realism is an invetion of KGB)

IMO there are way better alternatives, such as The Ideology of Political Correctness.

>>6765307
>>6765245
If you look carefully, you'd see that _every_ tenet of so-called 'cultural marxism' is just a tired rehash of Gnostic cult ideologies. Gnostic cults have been a fixture of Western Civilization since forever; Gnosticism is the cosmic background radino ation of western thought, and it's silly to think that it would just go away as Christianity wanes.

P.S. The lack of solid nomenclature is a common fixture of Gnosticism. All Gnostic cults were anonymous and had no self-describing names, labels like 'Cathar' (or whatever) were invented by their political opponents much later.

>>6765157
That Queen is so bait, it almost baited Freddie Mercury from the grave

>>6763458
>It was so bad as to seem evil in a moral way
Holy fucking shit

>>6762173
In a couple of years he will probably be already forgotten.

>>6765324

Post-Modernism is a cognitive process, more so than a coherent set of beliefs.

>All Gnostic cults were anonymous and had no self-describing names, labels like 'Cathar' (or whatever) were invented by their political opponents much later.

We see eye to eye, but I also consider alot of the Late Roman Cults to be another expression of that behavior.

Interestingly, I also believe that the 'Tower of Babel' is a metaphor for describing the process of 'Post-Modernism' as well.

Nobody will ever be happy with a term given to the process, though, so I can only shrug my shoulders.

>Post-Modernism, in its essence, is about personalizing ethics.
>It leads to tremendous disaster, because most of humanity fails to do so.
>Its better to teach a moron to behave well, than to let an idiot figure out how to behave well.

>MAH UBERMENSCH -Nietzsche, being unaware of history.

Once again, we will relearn to unlearn Nietzsche.

>>6761959
No. You're just not reading people who matter. This is like claiming it's all over because some pop idiot won a grammy on a terrible pop album. Check out Evan Dara, read Richard Powers, for fuck's sake read Denis Johnson or Cormc McCarthy or Don DeLillo (other than White Noise) or William Gass or Thomas Pynchon or Donald Barthelme. America's not the greatest literary power but it has some kickass folks living right now.

>>6765909
>Post-Modernism is a cognitive process, more so than a coherent set of beliefs.

The CIA was always aware of this process. and used it to undermine Soviet Ethics, with a lack of Ethics.

Get people the people to believe in nothing, and you won't have any enemies at all.

>>6764473
Oh, fuck off. Take your boogeyman somewhere else.

It's as if people lack the ability to remember anything past the last three fucking years. What's going on today is no different than when Bradbury got sent angry letters about how he didn't portray white people fairly enough, or how his female characters were too meek, or not meek enough.

If you'd be cowed by moral outrage you probably don't have the fucking gall to be a creator anyway. The ability to distinguish actual criticism from the drek that fills your inbox is an essential tool regardless of medium.

>>6761990
>buzzfeed

I would honestly rather live in Uganda than America.

America seems like such a fucked up place. Just look at the politicians and the laws.

No wonder Postmodernism became so prominent in America, so much fucked up shit is constantly happening you have infinite source material.

>>6766095

Is this bait? America isn't that bad jesus you tumblrite.

>>6766102
You're probably numb to it because you're used to it.

>>6766102
Judging from the exchange students we get from it, it is.

My classmate got phisically assaulted during a lesson only because he spoke against their ludicrous ways. They are so conditioned they cant even handle hearing the other side of the argument.

>>6766142
>solitary experiences are grounds for broad generalization
Yes, your level of thought is certainly a treat for the classroom.

>>6766095
Yes america is a shithole, whatever you do, do not come here.
Please don't come.

>>6761959
What is it that makes Europeans posts so vague and inflammatory?

Is it the penis envy that is to blame?

>>6762016
>the average european isn't a complete cultural pleb too

>>6766153
Solitary experience my arse.

I had seen it over eight thousand times on the internet before I saw it irl

>>6763177
>>6763161

cancer thread? cancer thread

>>6764031
> two drops of water in a bucket of sewage
> "Look guys! We can drink this!"

>>6764055

embarrassing post

>literally stay mad

worst namefag

>>6761959

>generalizing this hard

america has brought greatness upon us, but also a lot of shit

>>6766411
>on the internet
My sides
If I judged people from the internet, I would assume that Europeans are assmad pussies who think in childish platitudes

I actually think writing is the one area where Americans do bretty gud. America has never had much in terms of 'high' music, dance, cuisine, but they've cranked out some amazing writers... Emerson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc... All good writers.

>>6761959
You can always tell how great America is by how much hate it gets from European countries living 200 years in the past and thinking they still have a say in things that happen on a global scale.

>>6765245
I hope this is satire but knowing the type of self-righteous idiots in GG I wouldn't be surprised if this was sincere.

>>6766142
Is this post forreal

>>6766703
>>6764482
No need to do anything myself.

swag

>>6761959

Franzen's face is about what you'd get if you pressed the randomize button for appearance sliders during character creation stage in a given MMO game.