/lit/ - Literature

I think it should of been me who received the MacArthur grant.

>Writers writing about writers

Hmmm I'm on the fence

>>7173859
>Ben "Cunt" Lerner
lol hes really up there with the foremostest niggalectual ta nehisi coates
macarthurs are such a shitshow, our society is doomed

>>7173859
Go to ben Lerner

Sheltered cuck gets over half a mil to write more books for sheltered cucks. Please let the world end soon. Please.

>>7173859
i'll give his stuff a shot but i started to read the beginning of atocha station and i got this >>7174196 impression very much

>>7173859
>Cool, Ben Lerner was award the MacArthur fellowship. He's been given $600,000 dollars.
For what? Writing is literally free.

>>7174776
>For what?

For to buy hotpockets with so he can eat while writing for free.

>>7174797
If he's in any civilized country, including the US, they have social security and free food already, that's what taxes are for. People don't really starve to death anymore except in Africa.

Here is some of Ben's poetry

In my day, we knew how to drown plausibly,
to renounce the body’s seven claims to buoyancy. In my day,
our fragrances had agency, our exhausted clocks complained
so beautifully
that cause began to shed its calories

like sparks. With great ostentation, I began to bald. With
great ostentation,
I built a small door in my door for dogs. In my day,
we were reasonable men. Even you women and children
were reasonable men. And there was the promise of pleasure
in every question
we postponed. Like a blouse, the most elegant crimes were
left undone.

Now I am the only one who knows
the story of the baleful forms
our valences assumed in winter light. My people, are you not

horrified of how these verbs decline—
their great ostentation, their doors of different sizes?

•

I must drive many miles to deliver this punch line.
I must drive many miles in the modern manner,

which is suicide, beneath this corrigendum of a sky. Tonight
Orlando Duran went crazy. He smeared every doorknob,
lock, and mirror in his apartment with spermicidal jelly.
To expel air from the lungs suddenly

is not to live beautifully in the modern manner. Rather
one must learn to drive, to drive
in the widest sense of the word, a sense that seats four
other senses comfortably. Tonight Orlando Duran

delivered himself in the modern manner,
delivered himself like a punch line. Is this what he meant by

“negative liberty,”
by “sound of one hand clapping is a heartbeat”?

•

True, a great work takes up the question of its origins
and lets it drop. But this is no great work. This is a sketch
sold on the strength of its signature, a sketch
executed without trial. Inappropriately formal,

this late work reflects an inability to swallow. Once
my name suggested female bathers
rendered in bright impasto.
Now it is dismissed as “unpronounceable.”

Polemical, depressed, these contagious black planes
were hung to disperse museum crowds. Alas,
a generation of pilgrim smokers
has arrived and set off the sprinklers.

True, abandoning the figure won’t change the world.
But then again, neither will changing the world.

•

The left hand is a scandal. And my woman is left handed.
She neglects our middle children.
She deploys her powers on behalf of other nations.
Sleep is a synagogue. And my woman sleeps
The dreamless sleep of the pornographer. Mother always said,
“Worship me, and all this will be yours.” Father always said,
“Suffer common hardship and die in bed.”
Yet I reside with my woman on their acre of irony.
Yet I will die on the cross and I worship my death.

The internet is the future. And my woman rejects the
internet.
She rises up when I lie down.
She inflames divisions among the Jews.
Citation is exaltation. And my woman cites
her own unpublished dissertation.

>>7174809
it seems like you've never lived on social security before

>>7174813
•

I did it for the children. I did it for the money.
I did it for the depression of spirit and the cessation of hope.
I did it because I could, because it was there.
I’d do it again. Oops, I did it again.

What have I done? What have I done
to deserve this? What have I done with my keys,
my youth? What am I going to do
while you’re at tennis camp? What are we going to do

with the body? I don’t do smack. I don’t do
toilets. I don’t do well at school. I could do
with a bath. Unto others, I do
injurious, praiseworthy, parroted acts.

Let’s just do Chinese. Just do as I say. Just do me.
That does it. Easy does it. That’ll do.

•

Blood on the time that we have on our hands.
Blood on our sheets, our sheets of music.
Blood on the canvases
of boxing rings, the canvases of Henri Matisse.

The man-child faints at the sight of blood
and so must close his eyes
as he dispatches his terrier
with a pocketknife. Tonight,

blood condensed from atmospheric vapor
falls to the earth. It bleeds three inches.
Concerts are canceled, ball games delayed.
In galoshes and slickers, the children play.

An arc of seven spectral colors appears opposite the sun
as a result of light refracted through the drops of blood.

•

In those days partial nudity was permitted
provided the breasts in question hung from indigenes.

The clouds had an ease of diction,
and death had a way with women
and at night our documents opened
to emit their redolent confessions.

In those days whole onions, whole peoples were immersed
in the pellucid, semisolid fat of hogs.
The children ran lines of powdered gold,

huffed glue comprised of studs,
smoked burial myrrh and then shot up

their schools.
In those days police hauled in all bugs, then birds, then stars
and the sky fled underground.

Here's some more of his poetry

For the distances collapsed.
For the figure
failed to humanize
the scale. For the work,
the work did nothing but invite us
to relate it to
the wall.
For I was a shopper in a dark
aisle.

For the mode of address
equal to the war
was silence, but we went on
celebrating doubleness.
For the city was polluted
with light, and the world,
warming.
For I was a fraud
in a field of poppies.

For the rain made little
affective adjustments
to the architecture.
For the architecture was a long
lecture lost on me, negative
mnemonics reflecting
weather
and reflecting
reflecting.


I finished the reading and looked up
Changed in the familiar ways. Now for a quiet place
To begin the forgetting. The little delays
Between sensations, the audible absence of rain
Take the place of objects. I have some questions
But they can wait. Waiting is the answer
I was looking for. Any subject will do
So long as it recedes. Hearing the echo
Of your own blood in the shell but picturing
The ocean is what I meant by


You startled me. I thought you were sleeping
In the traditional sense. I like looking
At anything under glass, especially
Glass. You called me. Like overheard
Dreams. I’m writing this one as a woman
Comfortable with failure. I promise I will never
But the predicate withered. If you are
Uncomfortable seeing this as portraiture
Close your eyes. No, you startled


Unhinged in a manner of speaking
Crossed with stars, a rain that can be paused
So we know we’re dreaming on our feet
Like horses in the city. How sad. Maybe
No maybes. Take a position. Don’t call it
Night-vision green. Think of the children
Running with scissors through the long
Where were we? If seeing this as portraiture
Makes you uncomfortable, wake up


Wake up, it’s time to begin
The forgetting. Direct modal statements
Wither under glass. A little book for Ari
Built to sway. I admire the use of felt
Theory, like swimming in a storm, but object
To anti-representational bias in an era of
You’re not listening. I’m sorry. I was thinking
How the beauty of your singing reinscribes
The hope whose death it announces. Wave


Numbness, felt silence, a sudden
Inability to swallow, the dream in which
The face is Velcro, describing the film
In the language of disaster, the disaster in
Not finishing sentences, removing the suicide
From the speed dial, failing to recognize
Yourself in the photo, coming home to find
A circle of concerned family and friends
It’s more of an artists’ colony than a hospital


It’s more of a vitamin than an anti-psychotic
Collective despair expressed in I-statements
The dream in which the skin is stonewashed
Denim, running your hand through the hair
Of an imaginary friend, rising from bed
Dressing, returning calls, all without
Waking, the sudden suspicion the teeth
In your mouth are not your own, let
Alone the words

The fuck is this shit, sounds like a 13 year old /b/tard pretending he's in academia.

>>7174831
Why don't you show us what you've been working on, Wordsworth?

>>7174836
Sure, just look at my post history.

Finally, here's an excerpt from Ben's novel Leaving the Atocha Station

The first phase of my research involved waking up weekday mornings in a barely furnished attic apartment, the first apartment I'd looked at after arriving in Madrid, or letting myself be woken by the noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, failing to assimilate that noise fully into my dream, then putting on the rusty stovetop espresso machine and rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee. When the coffee was ready I would open the skylight, which was just big enough for me to crawl through if I stood on the bed, and drink my espresso and smoke on the roof overlooking the plaza where tourists congregated with their guidebooks on the metal tables and the accordion player plied his trade. In the distance: the palace and long lines of cloud. Next my project required dropping myself back through the skylight, shitting, taking a shower, my white pills, and getting dressed. Then I'd find my bag, which contained a bilingual edition of Lorca's Collected Poems, my two notebooks, a pocket dictionary, John Ashbery's Selected Poems, drugs, and leave for the Prado.

From my apartment I would walk down Calle de las Huertas, nodding to the street cleaners in their lime-green jumpsuits, cross El Paseo del Prado, enter the museum, which was only a couple of euros with my international student id, and proceed directly to room 58, where I positioned myself in front of Roger Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross. I was usually standing before the painting within forty-five minutes of waking and so the hash and caffeine and sleep were still competing in my system as I faced the nearly life-sized figures and awaited equilibrium. Mary is forever falling to the ground in a faint; the blues of her robes are unsurpassed in Flemish painting. Her posture is almost an exact echo of Jesus's; Nicodemus and a helper hold his apparently weightless body in the air. C.1435; 220 x 262 cm. Oil on oak paneling.

A turning point in my project: I arrived one morning at the Van der Weyden to find someone had taken my place. He was standing exactly where I normally stood and for a moment I was startled, as if beholding myself beholding the painting, although he was thinner and darker than I. I waited for him to move on, but he didn't. I wondered if he had observed me in front of the Descent and if he was now standing before it in the hope of seeing whatever it was I must have seen. I was irritated and tried to find another canvas for my morning ritual, but was too accustomed to the painting's dimensions and blues to accept a substitute. I was about to abandon room 58 when the man broke suddenly into tears, convulsively catching his breath. Was he, I wondered, just facing the wall to hide his face as he dealt with whatever grief he'd brought into the museum? Or was he having a profound experience of art?

Pretty cool, huh!

>>7174196

lol, couldn't have summed it up better myself. Even my favourite writer of all time, who is part of the northeastern USA milieu from this generation, is an undeniable cuckold.

I haven't read ben lerner but I assume that he's one of the ones with talent. tao lin / mira "4 out of 10 harvesting beta attention" gonzalez are awful and I will not be reading their stuff

Finally, here's an excerpt from Ben's novel Leaving the Atocha Station

The first phase of my research involved waking up weekday mornings in a barely furnished attic apartment, the first apartment I'd looked at after arriving in Madrid, or letting myself be woken by the noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, failing to assimilate that noise fully into my dream, then putting on the rusty stovetop espresso machine and rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee. When the coffee was ready I would open the skylight, which was just big enough for me to crawl through if I stood on the bed, and drink my espresso and smoke on the roof overlooking the plaza where tourists congregated with their guidebooks on the metal tables and the accordion player plied his trade. In the distance: the palace and long lines of cloud. Next my project required dropping myself back through the skylight, shitting, taking a shower, my white pills, and getting dressed. Then I'd find my bag, which contained a bilingual edition of Lorca's Collected Poems, my two notebooks, a pocket dictionary, John Ashbery's Selected Poems, drugs, and leave for the Prado.

From my apartment I would walk down Calle de las Huertas, nodding to the street cleaners in their lime-green jumpsuits, cross El Paseo del Prado, enter the museum, which was only a couple of euros with my international student id, and proceed directly to room 58, where I positioned myself in front of Roger Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross. I was usually standing before the painting within forty-five minutes of waking and so the hash and caffeine and sleep were still competing in my system as I faced the nearly life-sized figures and awaited equilibrium. Mary is forever falling to the ground in a faint; the blues of her robes are unsurpassed in Flemish painting. Her posture is almost an exact echo of Jesus's; Nicodemus and a helper hold his apparently weightless body in the air. C.1435; 220 x 262 cm. Oil on oak paneling.

A turning point in my project: I arrived one morning at the Van der Weyden to find someone had taken my place. He was standing exactly where I normally stood and for a moment I was startled, as if beholding myself beholding the painting, although he was thinner and darker than I. I waited for him to move on, but he didn't. I wondered if he had observed me in front of the Descent and if he was now standing before it in the hope of seeing whatever it was I must have seen. I was irritated and tried to find another canvas for my morning ritual, but was too accustomed to the painting's dimensions and blues to accept a substitute. I was about to abandon room 58 when the man broke suddenly into tears, convulsively catching his breath. Was he, I wondered, just facing the wall to hide his face as he dealt with whatever grief he'd brought into the museum? Or was he having a profound experience of art?

Ben Lerner shitposts about himself all the time

go away

>>7174839

>>7174813
>>7174848
Lerner's work and the reception is gets is symptomatic of the increasing distancing of writing culture from regular culture.

There's a reason people only read memoirs, and turn to T.V for longform narrative.

Look at how incestously literary this stuff is. Theoretical language, heavy with references to art and literature. Disgusting.

>Wasting millions of dollars every year on writers/artists when they could have gone to scientists and engineers

And you wonder why western civilization is in decline

>>7175976
It wouldnt' be so distant if average people were more educated

>>7175985
Yeah, I mean, scientists and engineers are okay, but they only really shine when someone with an arts degree tells them what to do. Without those guys at the top, the scientist just sits around trying to deduce his next experiment from thin air, and the engineer plays with Lego. But yeah, they need money too, I guess.

>>7175985
Like half the people that foundation gives grants to are scientists and engineers. I'm sorry you hate art.

>>7176230
By educated you mean indoctrinated.

>>7176230

Instead of writing about yourself, Ben, why don't you write about normal people and their own goals and dreams. Most Americans have no idea where the fucking Prado is nor have they ever been there

In other words, tone down the insufferably elitist tone.

>>7176243
That's a fair point, but an ideal education would involve learning a variety of perspectives.

>>7175976
Yes, I also hate it when poetry includes literary and artistic references, it was much better when poets didn't do it.

>>7176249
I doubt the guy who just won a $600,000 award needs to advertise his books on one of 4chan's slower boards, but whatever

>>7176252
And none of them should include "this rich hipster manbaby wanted to fuck this overprivileged MPDG whore who wrote this so he references it because he's a massive cuck".

There is literally nothing and no one worth referencing in literature since World War 2, and if you do it, you're a shitfucker and you should not have access to writing implements.

>>7176249

writers should ONLY write about themselves, or at least, their experience projected onto characters.

>>7176230

People eat up television that is extremely smart and well crafted. There are also some authors, like Donna Tart, Franzen, etc, who get great sales. The problem is with the novelists.

>>7176271
OTOH you use the word "cuck"

>>7176242
You don't fucking need 600,000 to make art.

Science experiments and inventions require that much funding

If making art is what you enjoy then all you can do that for free on your own time

>>7176275
Yes, if you were more educated, you'd have realized that it was a clever reference to you.

>>7176284
see
>>7176270

>>7175985
Enjoy living in a world where the only 'culture' is superhero movies and epic fantasy novels.

>>7176291

>I want my culture to come from the central planning bureau

>>7176291
But they're extremely smart and well-crafted, u see

>>7176292
As someone from a post-commie country, I can tell you that we only had culture during communism. As soon as the iron curtain fell, the floodgates opened for all kinds of retarded NGO bullshit that financed what basically amounted to straight up destruction of culture and making everything postmodern i.e. irrelevant.

>successful, critically acclaimed white male writer gets $600,000 grant
>talented queer female writers of color don't

Why is this allowed?

>>7176291
those superhero movies cost 150k+

Fucking gross, another transplant Brooklyn kike.
His publishers so badly want him to be the american Bolano but he's just another nebbish heeb.

>>7176304
We're about to have a Brooklyn kike as president for eight years so you better get used to it

>>7176300

>all kinds of retarded NGO bullshit that financed

We're on 4chan m80, just spit it out

>>7176302
Tennessee Jones got one also. he is a race baiter

>>7176312

But anon, Hillary Clinton is from Chicago and not Jewish

>Ta-Nehisi Coates

Why didn't moot get a grant?

he is literally the inventor of modern internet culture and 4chan is the impetus of the transition to web 2.0

>>7176312

Bernie is a sackless cuck but at least he was born and raised in Brooklyn.
And he isn't going to be President since the only thing he can run is his wife's interracial gangbangs.

>>7176327
All he did was make the website.

>>7176316
I'm not sure what you're getting at, the gist of the story is that all these NGOs cropped up during the late 80s and early 90s during and after the war, and recruited older dissidents and younger college leftists, I think it's the same in any transition country or in other words any country that USA decided to fuck up. So now you have all kinds of organizations that function the exact same way the censors and money giving ministries functioned in communism except it's not "official" even though they basically run the state systems since nothing is ever done without their blessing. So it's effectively a way to control/ruin culture in a supposedly sovereign country (only on paper).

>>7176327

>giving a grant to the creator of an imageboard that turned pedophilia into a running joke

>>7176327

we need to get our personal army on the case. moot genuinely deserves this

>>7174809
you must be joking

>>7176337
>>7176343
he's the king of the underbelly of the internet tho

>hackers who made him time's most influential person of the year
>hackers who stole celeb nudes
>has several biopics (social network and Mr. Robot) as well as copycats (snowden)
>consultant for obama administration when they tried to crack al qaeda's network

>>7176357
>consultant for obama administration

Citation needed on this one

And while I'm thinking of it, didn't Assange lurk /b/ around the time he create WikiLeaks or did I misread that?

>>7176362
Assange asked moot for advice on what to do.

moot told him he just has to believe in himself

a month after that Assange leaked the docs

>>7173859
A white man gets a macarthur award??? come on, it's 2015

>>7176369

> These 24 delightfully diverse MacArthur Fellows are shedding light and making progress on critical issues
>delightfully diverse

>>7176319
literally Black Journalism Man

>>7173859
He posts here. I've actually had a conversation with him on this very board. Maybe he'll stop by.

he looks like sylar

>>7174809

Ignorance is bliss

Wow cool, secret society publishing clubs, wow so talent, such read.

Very scholarslip.

>>7176430
>I've actually had a conversation with him on this very board.
archive link pls

>>7174813
>>7174823

Holy shit. I'm not even going to try being edgy here. I'm really, really digging these.
Except the last one that starts with
>In those days
That one's way too far up its own ass.

>>7176485

he posts about himself all the time


it's kind of pathetic

>>7176491
see
>>7176270

>>7176270
You do realize there are several /lit/itzens on the board that nominates people for the fellowship right?

4chan has infiltrated every tier of society.

More reason why moot deserves the prize

>>7176430
mfw Lerner is every post in this thread, Even this one.

>>7174196
>>7174841

> Using cuck as an insult. Still.

God fucking dammit i hate new 4chan. This is even worse than calling everyone and their dog autistic.

Id say fuck off and die newfags, but this has infected even relatively old fags.

>>7176497

I'm not saying he's personally marketing his works, but he's certainly invested in their online reputation

>>7176510
It's especially bad since the meme didn't even originate on 4chan

>>7176523
I'm sure he cares what a bunch of nerds on the origami newsgroup thinks of his book

>>7176497

But despite being a "slower board" there are people on here who actually do know their shit, work in academia or have been published

>>7176537

this is actually one of the best places to popularize a work, it's likely the only highly active literary social network ever to have existed

>>7176547
No, Twitter and Tumblr are much, much better for that purpose, and a lot of authors actually use them

Justa putta 'sage' ina tha Options boxa! itsa me Mario!

>>7176557
Those boards do all the thinking for you.

4chan gives individuals an equal platform for each side of the argument.

>>7176557

well, I never go on either of those sites so you've got me

>>7176891
Yeah, that's why it's easier to market books on those sites.

>>7177014
>thinking the stupefyingly antiintellectual troglodytes of tumblr read books

Tumblr's interest in books is as sincere as a commodity they use to enhance how they want to be perceived, adopting specific culture tastes to fit into their carefully crafted identity composed of their special snowflake taste in a grotesque manner of exhibtionism

>>7177037
There are also normal people who use the website. It's pretty popular.

>>7176487
literally slam poet tier by every account. TS eliot already did everything he's trying to do

I like the excerpt from his novel though and will try and pick up a copy somewhere if I can't get a downloadable audiobook... any massive audiobook repositories that haven't been shut down by the oligarchic jews yet?

>>7174168
punderated oats

>>7177037
that's literally /lit/. muh recent purchases. muh bookshelves. muh tell me what to read in what order so i can fit in pls gais.

>>7177318
Idiot. Nobody is posturing identity here because we are faceless. What you're describing is affected humor and sincerity which you cannot possibly ascribe to identity because there is none

>>7177318

that's a good 3% of the conversation

>>7175976
I completely agree with this. It's one thing to allude to other works or namedrop one or two things but after a certain point it's just obnoxious and unimaginative.

Based on those excerpts he seems like the kind of writer academia churns out by the thousands and vigorously masturbates to. This is the kind of shit people think of when they hear "literary fiction" and that's not a good thing.

>>7177332
TBH fam: would you like the prose if he removed the fluffy cerebral postgraduate erudite art references? Is this not why DFW is popular?

>>7177339

DFW had 10x the talent and his self-awareness worked for rather than played against his abilities, despite likewise being a generally poor author

>>7173863
>should of

I don't.

>>7177339
No because it's nothing special.

DFW was popular because despite how self-indulgent and meandering his stuff was, he had plenty of moments where he was genuinely funny and capable of evoking emotions.

This guy has none of that.

>>7177339
If you remove that, what's left?

Garbage. Garbage structurally, garbage topically, garbage imaginatively. There's nothing there that you can't find in any two-bit contemporary novelist.

>>7177348
>DFW had 10x the talent
But he had no discernible of it.

>>7176292
Actually it would be better if we got it from aristocrats, but we don't have those at the do moment do we?

>>7177354
>he was genuinely funny and capable of evoking emotions.
You mean he's wacky and sentimental? I agree. This is also why he's popular.

>>7177371

Harold Bloom wouldn't be able to discern talent if The Demiurge himself shat it into his fat corpus [1]

1. Harold Bloom, literary critic, casual author of fiction, an elderly overweight Gnostic with insincere jowls

>>7177380
Protip: There is absolutely nothing wrong with being wacky or sentimental.

>>7177339

It's not so much the references as the subject matter. There's a focus on the lives of writers, students, and professors, written in the specialized language of writers, students, and professors. The problem with writers, students, and professors being written about is that the things they study are often not much larger than either the theoretical foundations of theory and literature, or the lives of writers, students, and professors being concerned with theories. The fiction that's being written is either abstruse to the point of absurdity, or inadvertently empty of everything but the ephemera of learned life, impressions about paintings and literature, that sort of thing. There's no warm blood in the novels anymore. We might as well be reading philosophy directly.

>>7177398
There is if those are the only things he has going for him!

>>7177393
I'll bet Harold Bloom at least can appreciate Lerner.

>>7177427

People with poor taste like this kind of thing, yeah

>>7177409
I mean there is no audience outside of these writers, students, and professors. Novels with warm blood seems archaic

>>7177448
We are all students of Life.

>>7177409
Yeah. That's what I was referring to when I said he's the kind of writer academia mass produces and autofellates itself for producing.

It's a debut novel about a potsmoking grad student on a scholarship in Spain by a guy who was a potsmoking grad student in Spain. That's literally all there is to it.

Taking the expression "write what you know" that literally is borderline retarded.

>>7177453
So you think people should avoid autobiographical elements in their fiction altogether?

>>7177461
No, but they shouldn't just slightly fictionalize their autobiography and call it a novel. That's masturbatory and lazy.

>>7177360
>garbage topically
I don't like spanish people/words on my page either but you can't actually judge this unless you've read beyond one excerpt of the book
>Garbage structurally
just your opinion, unless you can state otherwise, I liked it

>>7177409
so it's too academic? be honest, the only people who read are academics. I'm reading Song of Solomon right now by Toni Morrison, black lesbian recent nobel prize winner. Her colloquial language and slice of life dostoevskian flavor of psychology seems supremely relatable to poor black males, but they're never going to read. Nobody is going to except for people who read for fun, probably just middle-upper class whites. Connect all this for me pls

>>7177471
The French actually have a specific genre for this called autofiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction

>>7177475
>>7177461

Except people do actually read serious literary fiction when it comes with the expectation it's not going to vanish up its own asshole while narrating how it's vanishing up its own asshole? Franzen is doing very well for himself. You know what else sells very well? Memoir.

>>7177485
Being acknowledged as a thing doesn't make it any less terrible.

>>7177409
>>7177448
>>7177452
>>7177453
etc

>tfw /lit/ has fruitful, intelligent discussions about contemporary subjects you won't read elsewhere
>tfw sometimes I wonder why I'm still here, from the very first day this placed opened, stoked to finally get "our damn book board" instated, and right now I have 5 great threads open

i luff you guys

>>7177475

stop thinking in tropes

>>7177487
True, Franzen is absolutely the first person who comes to mind when I think of writers who aren't up their own assholes.

>>7177504
thinking in tropes? let's find out:

>http://www.nald.ca/library/research/mcl/factsht/poverty/page1.htm
>Low literacy, poverty and exclusion are all part of the same problem. People from poor families as well as the long-term unemployed, seniors, native people, prisoners, people with disabilities, and racial and cultural minorities all have higher rates of both illiteracy and poverty. They have fewer choices in jobs, education, housing and other things we need to have full lives. Poverty and low literacy are a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.

>>7177504
All thought is tropological, when you get down to it.

>>7177487
>Franzen
>Not slowly narrating how he vanished up his own asshole on a regular basis
Is there a different Franzen you're talking about or something?

>>7177487
Franzen writes a kind of crude journalism, I would hope 'serious literary fiction' sets its sights higher than that.

>How terribly easy it had turned out to be to transform naturally occurring uranium into hollow spheres of plutonium, pack the spheres with tritium and surround them with explosives and deuterium, and do it all in such miniature that the capacity to incinerate a million people could fit on the bed of Cody Flayner’s pickup. So easy. Incomparably easier than winning the war on drugs or eliminating poverty or curing cancer or solving Palestine.

Lerner's novels are certainly more interesting than the warmed-over Social Novels that bear the 'literary fiction' label today.

>>7177518
>>7177537
>>7177518

Franzen is an annoying person and not a great writer but he undeniably writes about the world in a way that is accessible to people generally and he owes his large audience to it.

>>7177540
The fact that you use the word "interesting" to describe the crowning merit of Lerner's novels tells me everything I need to know about your taste.

It's fine to like academic novels, but it's not fine that academic novels are held up as the ideal of literary fiction and not viewed as specialized.

>>7177549

if he described his own work as more than 'interesting', he'd give up the charade

Leaving the Atocha Station was a bit smug, albeit very clever, but 10:04 is genuinely superb despite not evidencing a writer at the height of his powers

i'm really excited to see what he does next tbh fam

>>7177562

>tbh fam

I'm sure you are

>>7177562
can't churner the lerner

>>7174848

>Then I'd find my bag, which contained a bilingual edition of Lorca's Collected Poems, my two notebooks, a pocket dictionary, John Ashbery's Selected Poems, drugs, and leave for the Prado.

This is satire, right?

>>7177549
Lerner's two novels aren't difficult at all, and they feature pretty broad themes. Not sure how they're specialized other than being about writers and sometimes talking about theory of art and poetry. One of the more effective metaphors in 10:04 is actually a scene from a popular movie, Back to the Future.

>>7177541
>he undeniably writes about the world in a way that is accessible to people generally

ie. he writes journalism

>>7177565
we are family fam :3

embrace it

>>7177569

I dearly hope so

>check out the names I can drop while I make a passing reference to drugs! this is how the big boys write, right?

I'm waiting for John Green's Nobel

>>7177569
it's self-effacing sincerity. are you from 2006 or something?

>>7177569
New perspective: he reads like someone from alt lit/sperg wave sincerity wrote a novel about their art studies abroad, blurring the lines of audience thought on whether he's hyper-self aware and is indifferent to our perception as a preening, posturing twat or is unaware entirely, maybe it's both

>>7177585

regardless it doesn't come off as anything but something I don't want to read

>>7177583
he doesn't hint that he's aware of this, at all. If this was true he would at least give it a nod, or tip of his fedora

>>7177585
Another new perspective, something I missed and the bottom half of this whole thread missed: I said this earlier, but if you haven't read the novel, you can't make judgement calls about any of this
>>7177583
>>7177590
>>7177589
>>7177573
>>7177569
it could very well be a novel about self discovery, perhaps he sinks into a spiral of hating himself and knowing he's been a cunt this whole time and contemplates suicide. then I'd be on his side, now we've got a story

>>7177583

What makes you think that?

>>7177595
Then why don't you post an excerpt that would indicate that, you fucking prick?

typing this one-handed because jerking off is far more valuable to me than this thread

>>7177590
>>7177595
>>7177598
because i've actually read the book. he is very self aware. the people judging him from these excerpts look like fools

>>7177623
prove it, post a passage that's not shit

>>7177623

you look like a fool given that you're defending something without giving any validation to your defense

>>7177625
>>7177627
holy shit, fuck off you dumb fucking plebs. i check shit out from a library and i don't have a photographic memory, so that's not going to be possible. why are you so fucking hellbent on hating on him when you haven't even read him? the book shits on academics and is the opposite of what most of this thread thinks it is. believe it or not, i guess

>>7177636

you can't even bother to google a decent quote or even try to make a tearless argument

you're arguing against yourself at this point

>>7177640
you're right. i'll just google the text, which is probably available right on wikipedia or facebook because everything is just right there, and then i'll read through it until i can satisfy your autism. no thanks. it's a good book. your criticisms of it are shit.

>>7177644

>it's a good book. your criticisms of it are shit.

He gone into about as much detail hating it as you have defending it. A whole lot of fucking nothing.

How are you cunts this fucking stupid?

>>7177625
>>7177627
The part at the end where he drops his spaghetti by forgetting the name of some famous Spanish poets in front of a bunch of people at a talk is pretty good

>>7177644

Google:
ben lerner quotes

its a shit book. your defense is obnoxious and absent any content

>>7177650
i don't need to 'defend' it against someone who hasn't read it. just fuck out of my argument, idiot.

>>7177653
“What Spanish poets have had the greatest influence on your writing and your thinking about the relationship between poetry and political events?” was more or less what I thought he said.
To avoid a long period of silence resulting in another “I don’t know,” I threw him a quotation barely related to his question, if at all: “I’m hesitant to speak,” I said, “about Spanish literature as if I were an expert; to do so would be to fulfill the stereotypes regarding American presumptuousness.” Why it was presumptuous to list Spanish poets I admired was anybody’s guess.
“But who are the poets who have influenced you personally?” the man repeated. This question, perhaps offered out of sympathy for how few queries had been addressed to me, could not have been easier to answer. Just list a few names. “Lorca,” I lied. “Miguel Hernández.” But then, to my horror and amazement, I could not think of another poet; my head was emptied of every Spanish proper name; I couldn’t even think of common names to offer as though they were little known authors. Forget annotating the list, explaining how one poet’s sense of line or of the social influenced my own poetic practice, or relating these poets to my previous comments: just list a few fucking names. Finally I thought of two famous poets I’d barely read: Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio Machado, but the names collided and recombined in my head, and I heard myself say: “Ramón Machado Jiménez,” which was as absurd as saying “Whitman Dickinson Walt,” and a few people tittered. I corrected myself, but it came out wrong again: “Antonio Ramon Jimenez,” and now those who were baffled understood my unforgivable error, so extreme they might have at first suspected it was an ironic gesture; several people laughed. The celebrated American fellow cannot get four names deep into the list of the most famous Spanish poets of the twentieth century. “Jiménez and Machado,” I finally said, at least separating the poets out, but it was too late; I had embarrassed myself, the foundation, and I had ruined everything with Teresa. María José said we would take only one more question because of time, but surely she meant because of shame, because of the great shame the foundation felt at sponsoring an American phony, although she was no doubt personally delighted with the scene.

>>7177655
defense against what?

someone post this thread to Ben Lerner's Twitter, maybe he can sort us out

https://twitter.com/LernerBen

>>7177659

a defense of something is not necessarily a defense against something else

>>7177656

>i don't need to 'defend' it against someone who hasn't read it.

Hah. You couldn't defend it convincingly even if you wanted to.

You hired it from the library, read it, and now this thread has shown you that you've held onto so little from the reading that you can't even speak on it in some shitty /lit/ thread.

>>7177198
>literally slam poet tier
literally ǩêǩ

>>7177987
I'm sure he's influenced by hip-hop and possibly slam poetry to some extent, and there's nothing wrong with that. One of his poems even has a reference to Jay Z (though he references lots of pop culture)

>>7177658
I love how there are institutions who fund this with the amounts of money enough to put 10 Spanish families through actual education. How is no one up in arms about this? Do you really think that if you want to have a brain, you have to suck up to these people?

>>7178220

pretty much all of us are up in arms except for Ben Lerner

>>7177569
It's self-parody, but that doesn't automatically make it any less terrible because "lel look at how douchey I am" salted and peppered with references and allusions to art and dreadful grad school digressions isn't enough to hold up a novel.

Why would anyone read a "he he he look at me my dick is in a dead pig I burn $50 notes in front of homeless people he he I am so wacky but also so empty woe is me" book? What the fuck is wrong with you people? Are you from the same social class or dream about being in it? Because if it's the latter, well, good fucking luck if you only started working on it after birth.

>>7178531
>he he he look at me my dick is in a dead pig I burn $50 notes in front of homeless people he he I am so wacky but also so empty woe is me
Is this a thing? How easy is it to cash in on?

>>7178554
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate

>>7178531
Moralfag objections aside, what makes it shit is that it's literally just a memoir except he made himself a bit more of a cheeky cunt and namedropped a bunch of things/people.

It doesn't deserve any real acclaim as a novel because it barely qualifies as one. It's like if someone took the "my diary tbh" meme seriously and just very lightly fictionalized their actual diary. It would be laughed at as masturbatory drivel if it was posted by someone here, and it shouldn't be taken any more seriously just because he got a bunch of grants and scholarships for his "achievements".

>>7178554
American Psycho is prob. the best example of that kind of book. Though even Brett actually tried by being an edgy faggot with the murder and sex scenes.

>>7178584
autobiography is all young writers have, especially this generation where 30 the new 20. I agree this lad's book sounds awful but I don't understand the hate over a debut being memoir esque

>>7178606
niggas just jelly they don't get millions to fuck strange in europe tbh

>>7178606
It's too memoiresque, which is lazy. Even if you can't break out with anything other than a "my diary tbh"-ish book there's no reason to not at least attempt to create some sort of distinct world or aesthetic experience. This is Tao Lin level shit with slightly better (but still unremarkable) prose.

>>7178632
Your just too old to understand it brah it's the voice of our generation

>>7178658
I'm 24.

>>7178632
I get the downside and limitation of "my diary tbh: the novel", just not why it is a cause for uproar

>>7178664
Beat it, gramps. This is a book for the kids of America.

>>7178667
It wouldn't be if he hadn't been furiously jerked off and had his balls gargled by various critics for it.

>>7178611
This is a literature forum, not your Twitter account. It is not okay to role play as a black man who doesn't understand grammar here.

>>7178667

it is when someone hands you 600k for it and it gets posted on /lit/, home to an actually large number of aspiring writers who want to make good, original work

>>7178679
True. Guess I was just baffled by the /lit/ change of tune. railing against an intellectual bookish white male writer for winning a grant. The rare thread that sounds more philistine than pretentious. The monocles have come off. Think there was even a post about how this grant money could have fed "Spanish families" lel

>>7178720

the grammar in that sentence is fine

>>7178751

>philistine

you're the most pretentious kind of person

>>7178760
Holy insignificance! Forgiveness, I beg! My biggest pardonce you recieve from me, that I did not detect such a cleaver little disguised response masked in it's twisted semiplagiaristic queerness, a witty remark wrapped in it's own bubble to buyountly support it's laconic butterflyweight. Me give you stars, three-and-half, highmost deservingly, for such excellence in the constipated art of 4chanic shitposting. Highest mark of today!

>>7178760
What other word would you use to describe someone who thinks art grants
should go to poor families?

>>7178782

compassionate

>>7178771

shaking in my boots

>>7178782
I'm not that guy and I don't think art grants are bad, but when they're going to people like him there needs to be a serious reassessment of the institutions that decide who gets them.

>>7178791
What writers would you rather see get it? (not a challenge, just curious)

>>7178804
Me, tbh.

But seriously, I can't think of any (relatively) young writers who'd deserve it. I'm sure there's at least one out there but I haven't heard of them yet. I'm definitely sure that he doesn't though.

>>7178819
Y even bother posting...
Off yourself

>>7178782
Normal? Not a piece of shit? Decent? Christian?

>>7174809
>civilized society
>social security (aka legalized slavery)

>>7178804
Tao Lin

>>7178883
No thanks. You should definitely do it though if you post things like "y" as why.

>>7179051
ayy fuccboi tryna front

This Ben Lerner meme has potential. He has the most punchable face, his prose is absolutely unremarkable so it's easy to project onto, and he's critically acclaimed for writing about privileged white males. It's really a hat trick of what makes /lit/ mad. Nice work, OP.

>>7176283
MacArthur isn't "funding" anything. Even the money given to scientists isn't for the express purpose of continuing research.

It is literally a personal award. It gives the artist/writer/scientist/researcher in question some financial stability so they can spend MORE TIME on their main pursuit instead of having to invest valuable energy in a day job.

>>7179083
Why? Obviously if their work is good, it will sell, and no one is starving in America, so... what's the point? You don't need a day job, just live on benefits.

>>7179092
>just live on benefits.
p hard tbh

>>7179092
>Obviously if their work is good, it will sell

Not enough to where you can drop your teaching gig, which is what all writers ultimately want. To be able to stop wasting time that could be spent writing, teaching.

>>7179121
Why not? Why can't you drop it? Will you die if you do? Or are you just an overprivileged faggot who wants a free ride?

>>7179131
>Obviously if their work is good, it will sell

This is where you went wrong. Everything else is quibbling over red herrings.

>>7179058
Suck a dick, faggot.

i have no interest in reading anything by a living author except pynchon does this make a bad person? balzac is so much better than anything

>>7179065
This post is literally everything that is wrong with this board

I gues the Nobel Prize in Literature has to be done away with because there's no way writers deserve THAT much money just for writing fucking books

There is someone in this thread who's extremely butthurt about Lerner winning a literary award, and he's butthurt about it solely because Lerner wrote a semi-autobiographic novel about going to Spain

>>7179761

I'm pretty sure it's several people

>>7179210
No, but it does make you a fucking pleb who can't be arsed to read anything that isn't wacky zany pomo shit handed to you on a meme platter

>>7179771
It's just one guy bringing up that point, though.

I didn't know when I made the first reply as a joke that it would turn out to be the subtext of this whole terrible thread.

>>7179065
You forgot to mention that he's a Jew, LOL. Clearly the MacArthur Fellowship is run by ZOG

>>7179775

this poster has never read a Thomas Pynchon book

Wonder how mad the board's gonna get when Tao Lin wins an award like this

>>7179807

He is a brilliant, unique novelist. I don't get the hate, is it because he won an award and life isn't fair for you?

Winning a MacArthur Genius Grant would be nice, but it might also be a hassle, because nowadays they don't just give you the money, you have to star in an embarrassing video where they film you "going about your day," and you have to walk around your neighborhood or like pretend to read a book or write at your desk. They used to just give you the money, now you have to agree to a video about you too. So it's a mixed blessing.

>>7179891

they could film me for a year for that degree of skrilll

>>7179783
>>7179885
I like him, but I don't agree with this reasoning. I think people are just genuinely upset that an author they think is probably unremarkable won this award.

>>7179908
>they think is probably unremarkable

Well put. They're just guessing. They haven't read him.

>>7179891
Don't know, you'd be able to say in any given situation 'I'm a genius, so I must be right.'

>>7179908
>>7179910
They also haven't read any other contenders.

>>7179891
They can film me for the rest of my life for 600k.

>>7179891
What's so bad about that? Just don't be an autist. Or have fun with it and act like the biggest autist ever just to fuck with them.

>>7174813
>>7174823
>>7174828

Came here to make fun but this is fantastic. What work should I check out?

>>7176319
What's bad about him? He seems somewhat likeable

>>7176273
>People eat up television that is extremely smart and well crafted

...but do they even notice the "extremely smart" aspects of those shows? Doesn't seem like it from the convos I have IRL. Seems more like a whole lot of "durr I love the alpha character and imagine myself either fucking him or living as him!" x 30000000

>>7180733
The first two posts have poems from The Lichtenberg Figures, while the third is from Mean Free Path. You'll probably want to read Angle of Yaw as well. Those are all of his poetry collections. You might also enjoy his two novels

>>7180857

Thanks anon. What are his novels like? I'd assume they'd be like Lin's novels.

>>7181161
He's not particularly similar to Tao Lin. They capture the same basic milieu in their treatment of relationships between urban hipsters, but they're completely different in style: Lerner's novels feature a lot of introspection from his self-conscious protagonists; asides on topics such as theory and interpretations of art and poetry; and substantial use of diverse, figurative language. Doesn't really compare to Tao Lin's writing which largely consists of plain, unaffected descriptions of scenes.

>>7181326
cool. Would you say he's comparable to Knausgaard then? KON is introspective and discusses arts and literature(Proust, kek) often

>>7181407
I haven't read Knausgaard, but Lerner wrote a review of the first few volumes of Min Kamp, which you might find interesting: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/ben-lerner/each-cornflake

>>7176337
He deserves props for being the anti-Zuckerberg, as regards the philosophy of the internet.