Genre hate thread

[Anonymous No.11708490]

Finally succumbed to peer pressure and bought this book, despite my aversion to genre. Friends kept telling me it was brilliant. First third was okay: stiff prose, bad dialogue, but the world was interesting —

Then Severian gets exiled from the guild, and everything went to absolute shit. Campy characters, retarded encounters, asinine plot, carriage chase scene, then fifty fucking pages on a tour through a botanical garden in search of a flower. Stopped when they got to the marsh.

I've never hated an author more than Gene Wolfe. The fact that Ursula le Guin praised this series makes me hate her, too.

>"B-B-B-BUT HE'S AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR!!!"

Shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.11708503]

>>11708490
Out of curiosity, what books do you like, especially any in the same genre as this?

[Anonymous No.11708507]

>>11708490
I love the part where he's trying to pick the flower without touching its petals/thorns/whatever so he doesn't get killed. I couldn't tell whether the mood was deliberately comedic.

>The fact that Ursula le Guin praised this series makes me hate her, too.

Sci-fi/fantasy is a huge clique, everyone praises everyone else for everything. You can't take their blurbs/awards/etc. seriously, and they don't reflect the quality of the praiser or the praised.

[Anonymous No.11708524]

>>11708503
OP already said they dislike the genre, ya dip. I second the first part of the question, though.

>>11708490
>Then Severian gets exiled from the guild, and everything went to absolute shit
That's when it gets good, tho-

>asinine plot
Oh, right. You're one of those.

[Anonymous No.11708527]

>>11708503

Part of my attraction to Wolfe was comparisons that critics have made between him and Herman Melville. I love Melville. If Wolfe is the "Melville of science fiction," then science fiction deserves all the shit that literary types heap on it

[Anonymous No.11708529]

>>11708524
>OP already said they dislike the genre, ya dip.
Then what's the point of making a whole thread for it? If they hated the genre so much, they probably wouldn't have touched the book in question at all - unless they were also masochists or something.

[Anonymous No.11708553]

>>11708527
It's pretty much what this guy >>11708507 said: there is some legitimately good stuff in science fiction and fantasy, but it tends to be hidden beneath the stagnated, inbred, bloated circlejerk of Wolfe, Sanderson, Rothfuss, and others.

[Anonymous No.11708558]

>>11708524
>>Then Severian gets exiled from the guild, and everything went to absolute shit
>That's when it gets good, tho-

Oh yeah? Which part did you like most? The tedious hut in the jungle? The wild and wacky carriage race? The sudden fucky-fucky between Severian and the thrift store owner's brother?

My favorite was those silly darn troubadours, Dr. Talos and Baldanders. Gosh, how fun! They're the future's answer to Laurel and Hardy! What rich dialog, what witty play on the page they engender. Wheeee!

[Anonymous No.11708576]

>>11708490
the sudden shift in tone bw the section in the castle and the section in the city is painful, and the only reason wolfe never gets called out for it (and so many other flaws) is because hes writing for an audience thats deaf to good writing. such is scifi and fantasy, bro. keep to literature

[Anonymous No.11708584]

>>11708558
All of that stuff, yes. It's got a great old-school sequence of adventures feel to it. Wacky, sure, but in a good way.

>They're the future's answer to Laurel and Hardy!
Interesting. I think you'd have been surprised if you'd kept reading.

[Anonymous No.11708675]

>>11708558
>It's got a great old-school sequence of adventures feel to it.

What "old-school"? Can you name the forebears who minted this style?

It's shitty writing. There's no immersion. It's just a haphazard jumble of crashes and bangs that make no sense when in the context of the narrator's character.

>They're the future's answer to Laurel and Hardy!
>Interesting. I think you'd have been surprised if you'd kept reading.

Perfect. Here's the standard Gene Wolfe fanboy plea I was waiting for: JUST KEEP READING! YOU HAVE TO KEEP READING!

Fuck you. Fuck Gene Wolfe. I gave him 50 pages to right his idiotic narrative, and he gave me a tour of a botanical garden. No thanks.

[Anonymous No.11708698]

I read the first book a few months back and had the exact same reaction.

[Anonymous No.11708719]

>>11708675
>Perfect. Here's the standard Gene Wolfe fanboy plea I was waiting for: JUST KEEP READING! YOU HAVE TO KEEP READING!
Generally you finish a book before making prevailing comments on it.

[Anonymous No.11708739]

>>11708719

Nah. I did that when I was younger. Grew up and got wise. Too many better books out there in the world.

[Anonymous No.11708756]

How can I make this more edgy? I know I'll make the setting Post apocalyptic due to a nuclear holocaust so the magic will make sense. That way I can refer Sun Zu and Plato. Instead of leaving it ambiguous I'll just have a Advanced AI tell the protagonist straight up how many years its been. Society would definitively forget all about guns and go back to the good old Dark ages. Its like the author wanted to write a fantasy series but couldn't think of anything so he ripped off Fallout and decided to get rid of all the guns

So stupid.

[Anonymous No.11708770]

>>11708756
forgot pic

[Anonymous No.11708779]

>>11708675
>YOU HAVE TO KEEP READING!
You don't have to. I enjoyed it from the start. If you hated it I obviously wouldn't recommend keeping reading- it's just interesting because those two are much more important than you'd think. Not sure where you got the idea that they were supposed to be funny- I don't recall that even in the first meeting.

>Can you name the forebears who minted this style?
Not really, I just get a feeling that they're out there. The episodic structure reminded me of a couple of children's books- Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Erik the Viking, but those are later books- I'm sure there are precursors, though. The Arabian Nights, maybe.

>fanboy
Eh, I've read this and the Fifth Head of Cerberus. I liked both, but wouldn't describe myself as a fanboy. It's not Melville, as you say. But then again, if you just focused on plot I'm not sure Moby Dick would necessarily look like a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.11708783]

>>11708739
Well, you can't be surprised when you are told to keep reading now can you?

[Anonymous No.11708798]

I read the series as a teenager and loved it. A couple of years ago I went back to TSOTT, excited to reread the novel after so many years, and had the same reaction as OP. These books are written for spergs and smarter-than-average teens. Seriously, nobody over 16 needs to bother.

[Anonymous No.11708821]

>>11708756
>>11708770

Absolutely awful books

[Anonymous No.11708834]

>literally the plot of Jose Saramago's Blindness, but instead of turning blind, nobody can sleep

once you realize that genre is just 5th grade prose that rehashes ideas stolen from better authors, it really loses its punch

[Anonymous No.11708888]

What is it that makes genre fiction so terrible by default, anyway? I can't think of any inherent reason it couldn't make for a legitimate literary masterpiece, it just never does.

[Anonymous No.11708905]

>>11708888
All the fantasy shit is utterly superfluous to literary quality, and if you add in any at all, you'll most likely run with it while neglecting what really matters.

Also, nice quads.

[Anonymous No.11708915]

>>11708490
>general hate thread

That my thread about philosophy/rhetoric just got deleted for no reason other than, probably, it was not about a literal book since I was asking where to go looking for books about the subject. But a general thread stays up. Fuck these new janitors or mods

[Anonymous No.11708923]

>>11708888

I think it has something to do with the editors in charge of selecting and shaping these books for mass market publication. I've noticed that genre novels operate though narrative "beats." It seems purposefully formulaic, like: action - dialog - exposition - action - plot point - exposition - action - etc - etc.

A few times I've been able to see the hand of the editor, watch as cut-up nature of these stories is arranged in a way to conform to expected standards

[Anonymous No.11708932]

>>11708888
Even self-insert fanfiction can be good, as demonstrated by Dante. The problem is that genre fiction writers happen to be bad.

[Anonymous No.11708937]

>>11708888
The distinction between literary and genre fiction is a modern invention

[Anonymous No.11708940]

>>11708490
>stiff prose, bad dialogue, but the world was interesting —
Absolute retard.

[Anonymous No.11708960]

>>11708940

Sweet rebuttal, my dude

[Anonymous No.11708961]

>>11708888
Genre = restrictive conventions. That's literally what it is, so it's not surprising that it holds things back from being great.

On the other hand, it's hardly the only source of restrictions, and restrictive conventions can in fact produce great art (see poetry).

So, in conclusion, I dunno.

[Anonymous No.11708971]

>>11708961
...although I guess the conventions of poetry are generally purely formal, whereas the conventions of genre specify content such as character and plot.

[Anonymous No.11708997]

>>11708490
>>11708940
>people either criticising or praising dialogue and prose without quoting to support their claims
Every damn time

[Anonymous No.11709003]

Kindly reminder that this is what Wolfe's prose looks like.

[Sage No.11709010]

who cares

[Anonymous No.11709015]

>>11709003
I quite enjoyed working out what the hell that meant tbph

[Anonymous No.11709016]

>>11709010
I haven't gotten to use this picture in years.

[Sage No.11709020]

>>11709016
it's just my sn dude

[Anonymous No.11709023]

>>11709003

[Anonymous No.11709028]

>>11709003
>>11709023
Kindly education that Wolfe's prose is not even that bad going by genre standards.

[Anonymous No.11709031]

>>11709003

Waiting for Le Wolfepack to lope in, defending him with the typical, "That's not Gene, guys, that's the narrator's voice! The narrator! Can't you tell the difference between author and narrator? Gene isn't a bad writer, he just writes stories told by narrators who write like shit, I swear! OH AND THEY'RE UNRELIABLE, DID I MENTION UNRELIABLE???"

[Anonymous No.11709043]

>>11708490
>>11709031
UNRELIABLE
Read some Rothfuss. Suddenly, Wolfe's unreliable narrator prose gets a lot more credibility.

[Anonymous No.11709047]

>>11708490 (OP)
>>11709031
>UNRELIABLE
Read some Rothfuss. Suddenly, Wolfe's unreliable narrator prose gets a lot more credibility.

[Anonymous No.11709048]

>>11708888
It encourages soulless autists to write fap fantasies and mindless world building, which is a tell-tale sign of autism is no substitute for actual style, diction, prose, rhythm, human characters etc. It meshes with propensity to create evanescent stage-scenerry episodic plot which is just a scaffolding for action and sex and “plot reveals”, the dialogue is always excused for the sake of the action which doesn’t fucking work in novels ever. The people who write it are visually oriented mechanically inclined faggots, they’re absolutely talentless and if they tried their hand at real literature they’d be exposed immediately. Tolkien is exactly the same. Just a brainlet form of writing for artless people who can’t be bothered to look up difficult words, learn real history, delve into actual religious or philosophical contemplation and have a strong aversion to serious questioning of morality or cultural mores. Everything is projected, made a shade of itself, distorted through a lens of cinematic fetishism. Evil i EPIC in genre fiction, you fail to grok the creeping defilement of a character’s soul or the gravity of betrayal because everything is on rails and feels telic, overly telic, to a point of being a ritual for a faggot manchild with a stunted insipid understanding of again morality and aesthetics. these people don’t have subtle eyes, or ears even, they just insist upon world building because they’re designing a D&D map or open world game. Its like a pathetic parody of religious texts, and its not a coincidence genesis the whore of literary inspiration is most abused and made vulgar by these subs. Sorry guys please stop wasting neurons on this trash.

[Anonymous No.11709054]

>>11709028

Imagine liking this style of writing. Imagine being excited to attend a genre book festival to listen to an author talk about work written in this prose. Imagine waiting in line to get a book signed by the author, and clapping like a retard when you finally meet him in person. Imagine PRAISING HIM TO HIS FACE for this shit.

[Anonymous No.11709059]

fantasy, if youre older than 12 it's embarrassing to be in to

[Anonymous No.11709060]

>>11709048
>>11709054
Who hurt you?

[Anonymous No.11709063]

>>11709060

What crippled your sensibilities?

[Anonymous No.11709202]

>>11708997
What's the point of taking a short, out of context, passage and try to convince some people who have not read the work of its merits or lack of merit?

[Anonymous No.11709209]

>>11709020
sn on 4chan? What are faggots coming too these days!

[Anonymous No.11709212]

>>11709202
Would just be handier than shouting 'It has good prose!', 'No it has shit prose!' back and forward.

What's the point of any of this?

[Anonymous No.11709213]

>>11708490
>buy non genre book
>get mad about genre
Regardless of the quality, how is BotNS written to fit any predefined genre?

[Anonymous No.11709224]

>Posters: 14
And they're all frothing as they wait for the Wolfe Defense Force to materialize

[Anonymous No.11709238]

>>11708490
based

[Anonymous No.11709245]

>>11709212
Not really. You can find amazing passages in the most average works, and shitty passages in the most amazing works. And depending on who you are they might even be the same. For example, I found the re-imagining of Odysseus encounter with Polyphemus in BotNS amazing but OP would probably consider it a cheap plot device to make the story more high brow. And prose be damned.

[Anonymous No.11709263]

>>11708888
It's not "genre fiction" since that's just fiction with a theme, it's rather the culture around terms like Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction that promote juvenile plots and characters.

[Anonymous No.11709319]

>>11709245
>prose be damned
Prose is exactly what I'm talking about, though. It should be possible to support claims of good/bad prose with a minimum of effort. Of course good books can have sections of bad prose, but at least good prose can demonstrate that an author can produce work of beauty.

[Anonymous No.11709331]

>>11709224
This whole thread is low quality bait, we're not even going to bother.

[Anonymous No.11709349]

>>11709319
I'd tell you to read the part I mentioned, Dr Talos play. It's in the second volume, The Claw of the Conciliator. I Googled but did not find an excerpt. No one is going to bother to literally copy passages from a physical book to win an argument on /lit/.

[Anonymous No.11709422]

>>11708888
Fantasy in its early days was literary in quality. Read Dunsany and Eddison to get a feel for that. It only became a commercial genre in the mid-late 70's in the post-Tolkien boom and the rise of the paperback. Tolkien himself is something of a turning point, possibly the first "genre" fantasy (though he couldn't have known that at the time).

Sci-fi on the other hand was always associated with the "adventure stories for men/boys" thing. Obviously Wells was way better than what started getting pumped out in the golden age, but even from the start I don't think it was literary in quality. Once you get to Asimov, you're dealing with writers that IMO were just not very well read or skilled, needed to put out a lot of words, and didn't edit. It got a little better in the new wave.

[Anonymous No.11709702]

>>11709213
Not him but BotNS is soft sci-fi, and a very specific sub-genre of it, "dying earth," which employs tropes of surprising the reader with mundane descriptions of hi-tech things the post-apocalyptic characters who have reverted to a more primitive lifestyle don't recognize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth_genre

[Anonymous No.11709722]

I agree op. Wolfe, like most sci fi and fantasy, is full of unbearable sexism and well.

[Anonymous No.11709775]

>>11708490
>carriage chase scene
Hahaha damn. I don't think I've ever read a truly rewarding piece of fantasy fiction. Some good lit is de facto sci-fi like Burroughs's Nova trilogy or Pynchon here and there. Most new short-form sci-fi, especially ecological-fiction stuff, seems cribbed right out of Highlights for Children.

>>11708756
Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx is the highest example of drivel like this. Nobody try to convince me that it wasn't written to be children's fiction.

I'd read the hell out of space opera fiction as long as it is written totally straight. Star Trek is a real cultural node of the last century and I'd like to see what a good writer would do with an episodic format like that. So something like sci-fi that critiques or inquires into the conditions that allowed for the surge of production and popularity of sci-fi lit. If you're gonna give me a fantasy, go whole hog -- none of these attempts to more materially-situate genre cliches. "It's swords-and-sandals but in a post-nuclear Montana." No thanks. It ain't good sci-fi unless it actually critiques what people tend to like about sci-fi, its predictive function. Best sci-fi works like an antidote to predictive sci-fi while still talking about history. The corniest most historically-implausible stuff is the real shit. If sci-fi writers want to be prophets, they should be full-on parascientific mystics like Burroughs.

[Anonymous No.11709847]

I read Latro in the Mist, it was alright. I'd read more Gene Wolfe based on that.
>>11709028
Have you ever read something and thought to yourself, "I swear to god this author is a virgin"?

[Anonymous No.11709866]

defend these fucking disgusting turns of phrase, you fucking cant

not to manage the prose is lifeless and looks like something i would throw out

>>11709722
epic

[Anonymous No.11709877]

>>11709031
absolutely FUCKING BASED

[Anonymous No.11709880]

>>11709331
>larping as too megabrained to stoop in defense of your authors "greatest" achievement

Predictable

[Anonymous No.11709887]

>>11709866
it's almost like there's a pattern here....

[Anonymous No.11709893]

>>11709887

A pattern of hackwork that carries through Wolfe's ouvre

[Anonymous No.11709908]

>>11709422
Lord Dunsany's a joy to read. Fine stylist and storyteller

[Anonymous No.11709918]

>>11709887
yeah the pattern is he employs too many useless and stylistically revolting thesis sentences to begin his paragraphs with

[Anonymous No.11709925]

>>11709028
Holy hell this is absolutely steaming.

[Anonymous No.11709930]

>>11709028
dont bash our boy juho pohalainen[sic]

[Anonymous No.11709933]

>>11708490
cringe

[Anonymous No.11709938]

>>11709933

Come on, you simpering faggot. Don't think I'm right? Speak up.

[Anonymous No.11710151]

>>11709938
based

[Anonymous No.11710154]

>>11709938
lol

[Anonymous No.11710222]

>>11709866
I think it's quite lovely, really. It's a very sonically pleasing prose style, full of nice iambs and a certain sense of rhythm.

But then, I fucking despise Hemingway and all his imitators, so maybe I'm out of step with the majority.

[Anonymous No.11710239]

(1)

[Anonymous No.11710245]

>>11709866
these turns of phrase are fine, read more

[Anonymous No.11710248]

>>11710239
(2)

[Anonymous No.11710259]

>>11710239
(2).

[Anonymous No.11710262]

>>11710239
>>11710259
Please tell me this is some sort of humorless irony and you don't actually believe the additions to be improvements

[Anonymous No.11710271]

>>11710262
WOLFEPACK, FORM UP!!

[Anonymous No.11710285]

>>11710271
The fuck? wolfe fans aren't going to defend this
>pic related: your work

[Anonymous No.11710292]

>>11710239
embarrassing desu

[Anonymous No.11710299]

>>11710285
still better than wolfe's work

[Anonymous No.11710300]

>>11710239
>>11710259
not bad

i feel that like many fantasy authors wolfe speaks in a register he isn't comfortable with. 'for none are' and so in is an affectation for him. pseudo-archaic english in general doesn't work unless you have a command of the language from other periods, and not just access to media that parodies it. rothfuss is even worse with this.

[Anonymous No.11710305]

>>11709048
“Genesis, the whore of literary inspiration”
Holy kek

[Anonymous No.11710306]

>>11710239
Based 2 b quite honest with you fampai. This guy can edit.

[Anonymous No.11710345]

>>11710300
I can only assume this is your takeaway because you are yourself not familiar with these turns of phrase, but that's only to be expected from SFF readers.

[Anonymous No.11710361]

>>11710345
no, i'm familiar with them, but they aren't wolfe's native dialect, and he doesn't use them comfortably or competently.

[Anonymous No.11710376]

>>11710345
cause writing in the affected and pseudo-archaic way that every beginner SFF writer does, with lots of "for"s and "nor"s, is so foreign

[Anonymous No.11710425]

>>11708888
for me, my main issue is that it is too easy for authors to give into the temptation and jerk off their epic science fiction world/technology at the expense of anything interesting. They read at best like guided tours and at worst a challenged person insisting to show you every addition to his rock collection.
The best science fiction I've read has its world, sure, but that serves as a backdrop for an interesting theme or story. PKD is the primary example of this.
Save for the lackluster ending, I would say Man in the High Castle is as close a science fiction book has gotten to literature for me.

[Anonymous No.11710429]

>>11708490
Agreed. Gene Wolfe is an absolute shit writer.

Not a fan of the genre in general, but have enjoyed Tolkien and Robert E. Howard's fantasy writing.

[Anonymous No.11710453]

Which of the pic related are actually good? I've read Grendel and enjoyed it a lot, but it seems out of place on the list.

[Anonymous No.11710483]

>>11710453
Little, Big is always a solid recommendation.

>>11710361
The fact that you think they're special tools belies your claim. Using "for" to introduce causality isn't a special dialect or flashy archaism, it will simply make its way into your writing after reading too many old translations and familiarity is all the skill you need for it. The original prose in >>11710239 is certainly nothing special, but I didn't need to look twice at any of the sentences that offend your modern sensibilities.

[Anonymous No.11710495]

>>11708490
>guy's an executioner
>what shall i name him
>cut, chop, slice... no...
>Sever! Severian!
it's your fault you fell for the plebe hype.

[Anonymous No.11710511]

>>11710483
>Using "for" to introduce causality isn't a special dialect or flashy archaism

yes it is and it sucks

they dont offend my sensibilities, it's done by every lame no-name sff author

[Anonymous No.11710521]

>>11710483
>The fact that you think they're special tools belies your claim. Using "for" to introduce causality isn't a special dialect or flashy archaism, it will simply make its way into your writing after reading too many old translations and familiarity is all the skill you need for it. The original prose in >>11710239 is certainly nothing special, but I didn't need to look twice at any of the sentences that offend your modern sensibilities.

i'm sorry, but you seem not to understand my point. it's not that the use of 'for' is flashy or special, but that it isn't part of Wolfe's native dialect – he wouldn't use it on the street, rather than 'since.' it is therefore a deliberate anachronism on his part in writing the novel.

my suggestion is that he wields the anachronism inexpertly. it strikes me as deliberate and clunky, part of a dialect he has no command over. this is common with sci-fi and fantasy writers, who have media stereotypes in their heads about how to 'make language sound archaic,' but no proficiency with any form of english but their own.

the result is bad, awkward prose.

[Anonymous No.11710534]

>>11710521
to make it clear, the point is also not they these tools should not be used, or that they 'offend my modern sensibilities.' again, the objection is that wolfe uses them badly, not that he uses them.

for example, you might be familiar, from reading older english works, with the word 'wot' to mean 'know,' and know immediately on reading 'i wot it not' means. this does not mean that you can employ 'wot' effectively as a native speaker, or should try to write that way, and you shouldn't try to until you have a command of it.

[Anonymous No.11710595]

>>11709003
>the doorknob was—
>I remember the writ my mother sent me the day I was kicked from my childhood home, my eyes water slightly—
>a little bit unusual
FUCKING KEK

[Anonymous No.11710793]

>>11710495
Thus has to be bait.
He was named after Saint Severian

[Anonymous No.11710794]

>>11708490
I’ll cut you fagget

[Anonymous No.11710813]

>>11710495
>adopted by a guild of blacksmiths
>named Smith
>this is bad or unrealistic

[Anonymous No.11711109]

You don’t read genre fiction for groundbreaking prose or rhetoric...

Using prose as an argument for disliking a literary work is like saying you dislike a piece of artwork because it was molded in brass as opposed to marble while ignoring the subject, topic, and themes of the artwork.

What gives SFF and genre fiction value are the extrapolations it makes on our own history, legends, and myths.

[Anonymous No.11711116]

>>11709054
Wait till you read the best selling and highly revered Heinlein. The guy was allegedly responsible for raising the standards for prose in science fiction, for making it more "literary."
https://twitter.com/silviamg/status/1010424748281483264?s=19

[Anonymous No.11711127]

>>11711109
Continuing...

I get it if you think The New Sun Trilogy doesn’t offer any interesting insight into mythic cycles, character archetypes, or Catholic savior themes...

but don’t pretend to hold this regal authority to critique someone’s prose and call it “bad” when really it just wasn’t for you.

If you are going to debate the quality of The New Sun series you are going to have to debate on what it offers, which is thematic value (objective) rather than its rhetorical value (subjective).

I for one found Wolfe’s “prose” or rhetoric to be bearable enough to read and experienced/enjoyed a widely broad heroic journey, that I found unique from other Dying-Earth genre novels. I haven’t read many.

[Anonymous No.11711129]

I personally dropped it when he raped his sister jolenta

[Anonymous No.11711180]

>>11711109
>>11711127
>You don’t read genre fiction for groundbreaking prose or rhetoric...
>but don’t pretend to hold this regal authority to critique someone’s prose and call it “bad” when really it just wasn’t for you.

the sky is orange and pigs fly we get it

[Anonymous No.11711352]

Big boy advice: stop whinging about a book that no one is forcing you to read and let people who enjoy Wolfe, just enjoy him. Am I getting too old or is this place full of man children?

[Anonymous No.11711872]

low tier genres are:
>fantasy
>sci-fi
>fanfiction
>horror
>thriller

[Anonymous No.11712248]

>>11711872
>fantasy on the same tier as fanfiction
Satisfying to see

[Anonymous No.11712308]

I don't get it, most of the criticism on this thread is completely unsubstantiated or otherwise prose critiques from the church of Hemingway
just look at this silly faggot >>11709866
or OP complaining about the characterisation of Baldanders and Dr. Talos when he doesn't even know the first thing about either of them because he hasn't even read the books. Book of the New Sun is great in its collation of themes, imagery, myth and classical allusions and if you can't see that you are either incompetent or pretentious about "genre"

[Anonymous No.11712844]

>>11712308
to be desu its quality only becomes apparent as a whole, or locally when you reach the short stories later on
someone only reading the first "book" while missing all the subtleties, which you can't always blame on being unperceptive, and thinking it's bad? that's understandable, if nothing else. remember these people are accustomed to reading fantasy trash, if such a book doesn't follow their expectations that means it's incompetent fantasy trash, and you can imagine how bad that would be

[Anonymous No.11712874]

>>11712308
>its a good encyclopedia of themes and myths and it calls back to other peoples' work

woah...

[Anonymous No.11712901]

>>11712844
>remember these people are accustomed to reading fantasy trash, if such a book doesn't follow their expectations that means it's incompetent fantasy trash

sorry dude but i actually read lit, not genreshit. and wolfe has exactly the same genreshit writing, only murkier and unenjoyable as fuck so brainlets go "what... its boring like moby dick... that means it must be literature!"

meanwhile the literaure they're comparing it to actually has fantastic prose but they're too much of a witling to see

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood :(

[Anonymous No.11712990]

I’m rereading the series for the first time and enjoying it even more than my first read

[Anonymous No.11713012]

>>11709048
>Tolkien
>genre
lmao

[Anonymous No.11713015]

>>11712901
>i actually read lit, not genreshit. and wolfe has exactly the same genreshit writing
hmmmm

[Anonymous No.11713028]

>>11708507
>Sci-fi/fantasy is a huge clique, everyone praises everyone else for everything. You can't take their blurbs/awards/etc. seriously, and they don't reflect the quality of the praiser or the praised.

This. Makes me sad to see the current state of sci-fi. When will the genre see another Joesph Haldeman or Orson Scott Card?

[Anonymous No.11713072]

>>11713012
we have a /v/edditor here

[Anonymous No.11713252]

>>11713072
Tolkien is a literary modernist boyo, fantasy novels = naturalist novels in a fictional universe.

[Anonymous No.11713495]

>>11710259
>literally removing the claim that he remembers everything
Good way to fuck it up, I guess.

[Anonymous No.11713510]

>>11713252
wow a pseud too!

[Anonymous No.11713513]

>>11713015
>it's impossible to have ditched genreshit and taken up lit instead

makes 1 not think does it not?

[Anonymous No.11713536]

>>11713495
OHHHH NOOOO HE FORGET SEVERIAN'S EIDETIC MEMORY!!!!!!!!!!

>*LOCKDOWN MODE ENGAGE. ASSEMBLING... WOLFEPACK.*

DO YOU REMEMBER IT'S UNRELIABLE THE STORY IS UNRELIABLE THAT MEANS YOU CAN *********NOT********** BUT ALSO ********MIGHT********* BE ABLE TO TRUST IT BUT IT ~~~~~DEPENDS~~~~~~~~ ON HOW WE CONTORT IT IN OUR MINDS THAT IS A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S WHY IT'S GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.11713598]

>>11711129
Wait, that happens? Picked the fuck up.
>>11711872
Only if you include romance and supernatural (vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc) as worst tier. Also I think sci-fi is a notch above fantasy.
Trash: romance, supernatural, chick-lit, pop fiction, pop "non"-fiction
Low: Fantasy, fanfiction, horror, thriller, spy, magical realism
Meh: Sci-fi, detective/crime
Okay: literature
Good: good literature

[Anonymous No.11713652]

Where does "Dracula," fall? Is it pleb shit or high brow?

[Anonymous No.11713680]

>>11713536
Memory is very obviously an important theme in the book. Removing references to a key theme to get a faster paced, stripped down narrative (or whatever the hell anon is going for) is clearly the height of plebbitude.

[Anonymous No.11713753]

>>11713536

Stfu. You just don't understand what it's like to be in the Wolfepack, to have your mind filled with his white hot words, to give birth to glorious dreams. I honestly feel bad for you

[Anonymous No.11714440]

>>11708490
Im a huge fantasy nerd but I hate this book too OP. You're just unlucky

[Anonymous No.11714464]

seeing the sort of poster this book angers makes me think it must be doing something right, but I'm still not going to read a dirty old catholic sorry

[Anonymous No.11715683]

>>11714440
It's SF tho

[Anonymous No.11715934]

>>11714464
Catholics are the only ones who are right, in the end. They're always right, or at least the faithful ones are.

[Anonymous No.11715957]

>>11709866
What's wrong with this

[Anonymous No.11715966]

>>11713536
Yo seem really mad lmao

[Anonymous No.11716250]

>>11709866
quite good actually, feeling more tempted to try this divisive book

>>11708888
most sci-fi feels like a tired repetition of tropes, with little attention to style or character depth, however talented authors can play with sci-fi concepts and mantain the quality of their writing (e.g Calvino's "Cosmicomics" or Houellebecq's speculative work)

[Anonymous No.11716299]

>>11714464
begome

[Anonymous No.11717350]

e

[Anonymous No.11717472]

>>11708490

I felt exactly the same way when I tried to read it years ago. I gave up slightly sooner than you.

[Anonymous No.11717883]

>>11709866
pic related I presume?

[Anonymous No.11719250]

>>11708490
>>11708558
Why don't you try finishing the book before you criticize it? You're embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.11719364]

>>11711872
>>11713598