[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature


View post   

File: 35 KB, 400x583, 1468330840010.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8377496 No.8377496 [Reply] [Original]

Who are some great authors that never took themselves too seriously? I am really getting tired of reading heavy-handed shit and an author's somber serious persona leaking through the pages. I want to read an author who is really good artistically but has the intelligence to make fun of themselves, or can break the tension once in a while.

>> No.8377511

>>8377496
Mark Twain?

>> No.8377514

Stephen King

>> No.8377535

>>8377496
cioran is extremely edgy but you can almost see him secretly smiling while he's at it

>> No.8377577

Papa Pinecone for sure.

>> No.8377614

Dav Crabes

>> No.8377625

>>8377511
weirdly enough this is exactly the reason I couldn't stand mark twain - his writing seems to have the "i'm not serious like those other writers" feeling of complacency without any interesting or relevant ideas

>> No.8377666

>>8377496
I'm pretty sure Joyce never wrote a serious word his entire life desu

>> No.8377705

Pynchon
Hunter Thompson
Burroughs
Any author writing cyberpunk
Giorgio Manganelli

>>8377535
Kind of agreeing, but not in his first book - A Short History of Decay, maybe, but he starts off as extremely self-serious

>> No.8377718

>>8377496
Robert Walser. He's not necessarily funny or light-hearted but there is no grandeur, no heavy edifice he is building. His eyes are those of a being from another world. One gets the feeling he found himself trapped in this body and candidly went along with it to amuse himself for a while--and aren't we all thus trapped? Except he seems to have seen more clearly that it was just for a little while.

>> No.8377730

>>8377705
Yeah, I mean the later work. He was a bretty intense young man.

>> No.8377741

>>8377535
I'm reading his first work and it's brimming with teenage edginess--I don't detect much irony either. I'm hoping he got to see himself in the mirror later on and smiled--and put that inner, hidden smile in his later works.

>> No.8377770

>>8377741
He did. Also pretty sure he practically disowned his early works, insofar as he could be bothered to.

>> No.8377777

>>8377666
Satan trips of bullshit

>> No.8377801

>>8377777
the quints that defeated the trips

>> No.8377813

Montaigne is probably the pinnacle of insightful/deep while completely light and sincerely amicable

>> No.8377822
File: 58 KB, 333x326, FIBER.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8377822

>>8377496
P I N E C O N E
I
N
E
C
O
N
E

>> No.8377832

>>8377777
checked

>> No.8378076

>>8377777
Gf satan fgt c u in lum lol

>> No.8378081

>>8377496
>falling for the self-deprication meme

>> No.8378085

>>8377625
Well yeah, but the guy was just having a good time writing, much like Bierce

>> No.8378174

>>8377777
>quint of gods defeat trips of satan

>> No.8378182 [SPOILER] 
File: 118 KB, 640x457, 1470754052928.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8378182

>>8377777

>> No.8378207

Dimitri Verhulst, not sure if his books are translated though

>> No.8378245

>>8377813
I love Montaigne, been reading Essays for the past couple months. He really captured how strange the movements of thoughts, feelings, and mood are. He's kind of helped me sort myself out.

I went on a bad trip a few months ago and reading him has been comforting w/r/t being a human

>> No.8378258

Catch 22 and Confederacy of Dunces are two great novels that do not take themselves too seriously.

>> No.8378288

>>8377496
Gaddis

Otto (The Recognitions), Gibbs Eigen and J R (J R), McCandless (Carpenter's Gothic), Oscar (A Frolic of His Own), and the man in the bed (Agapē Agape) are all caricatures of various aspects of his own life that all have unsavory, goofy, and sometimes downright ridiculous mannerisms, ideas, and tendencies.

>> No.8378325

>>8378245
Lsd?

>> No.8378349

>>8378325
Yep

>> No.8378387

>>8377535
once a japanese woman went to Cioran and asked him if should she kill herself or not, and he said yes. She took him seriously and commited sudoku

>> No.8378407

>>8378387
Mishima was a madman though