Voice in new literature

[Anonymous No.12450998]

We're reading pic related for my fiction workshop.

I feel like the stories contained within aren't particularly great, namely because I feel they are aping off of other more successful author's voices without understanding why they were written that way.

The Sound and the Fury had a nonlinear stream of conscious first chapter because it was told from the perspective of an autistic man who's memories are triggered by phrases or senses in the present. It's a little difficult to understand at first, but you can find the threads of thought that connect the present with the past. Similarly, Ulysses was written in a way to adapt the unconscious stream to paper.

In these short stories I feel that there isn't a purpose for the voice the author uses. They are written in a style that appears to be influenced by these non-linear, unconscious streams though there doesn't seem to be a rational for why. is this a problem with modern writing, a staple of post-modern art, or am I being a snob for the greats while disregarding new lit because of my bias?

[Anonymous No.12451101]

>>12450998
>creative writing majors stealing from successful authors while trying too hard to be meaningful
originality is a meme, but are you honestly surprised?

[Anonymous No.12451302]

>>12450998
It sounds like these are debut stories from young writers who have barely published, so of course it’s not as good as Faulkner. You should take that as inspiration to try to get on the list yourself. It’s very easy to be critical, but just because you know what a good story is and can recognize one, that in no way means you can write one.

[Anonymous No.12451319]

You're reading a collection of stories by pretentious hack-frauds, selected by pretentious hack-frauds, for pretentious hack-frauds. Of course it's going to be pretentious swill.

[Anonymous No.12451393]

>>12451302
My bad, i don't think I made my main point as clear as I could.

my point isn't that they aren't as good as faulkner, but that they are trying to write in a style similar to some of faulkner's more popular writings but without a reason for doing so.

I.e. the narrative is non-linear and abstract but there isn't a rational for why it is presented this way. The characters in question are a 4 year old girl and an immigrant working on a strawberry plantation, however the voice doesn't feel like it comes from these characters but rather an author trying to sound like Faulkner at his best.

that isn't to say that Faulkner shouldn't be aspired to or imitated, but rather that he shouldn't be mimicked without understanding why his writing was the way it was.


oh and don't get me wrong, if I thought I was better than these authors I wouldn't be in this class. I know I've got a lot to learn

[Anonymous No.12451969]

>>12451393
>he fell for the college degree meme

[Anonymous No.12451988]

>>12451393
>The characters in question are a 4 year old girl and an immigrant working on a strawberry plantation
AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I can only imagine the absolute bullshit that you're being subjected to so you can get some shitty overpriced libarts degree and be a worthless whiney broke faggot for the rest of your life. hahahahahaaaaaaaaaa

[Anonymous No.12451989]

>>12451393
Okay yeah, totally bro. It’s always better to have a justification for using those literary tools, which in Faulkner’s case, his choices in writing in a certain voice almost always make sense within the story.

[Anonymous No.12452506]

>>12450998
At what point did you discard the hypothesis that your own appreciation of short fiction might still be underdeveloped?

[Anonymous No.12452534]

>>12452506
if you read the whole post, you'd know the answer is "never"

[Anonymous No.12452575]

>>12452534
The OP asks whether they might be biased by snobbery for the greats
>implying they even actually appreciate the greats
not whether they might simply not get short fiction yet. A common trap for the semi-well read young person is to think that because they read and liked (and understood, with a little help from the many detailed explications available in courses, in books, online) canonical works that they're prepared to assess new writing separated from Faulkner, for instance, by many decades of change.

Works in a collection like the one in OP are probably not the very best new writing, but they're better than the vast majority of it. If you can't see at least some of their merit, setting the dud story or two aside, it's probably you, not the work.

[Anonymous No.12452604]

>>12452575
an anal assessment, but true nonetheless

[Anonymous No.12452678]

>>12450998
This book was published for an audience inclined to spend money on shit like this rather than on Faulkner or Joyce or any of the other old masters. This audience needs to feel that they are on the cutting edge of the literary world, grappling with the issues of 2019. They've probably never listened to a band formed prior to the year 2000 for the same reasons.
The fact that these stories ape the style of certain dead white males is incidental, the important part is that they're not written in the style the audience associates with dead white males.

[Anonymous No.12452721]

A huge problem with modern writing, in my opinion, is that new writers don’t have a sophisticated understanding of writers that came before them, or dismiss huge swathes of literary history, like the Classics, Victorians or the Romantics, because of the difficulty and because of how the modernists and postmodernists disdained them. Not understanding, of course, that authors like Ezra Pound, especially, were incredibly scholarly. New authors, a lot of whom are so badly educated they don’t even know where to begin, latch onto the modernist meme to excuse their ignorance. Also, 90% of everything is garbage.

[Anonymous No.12453926]

>>12451988
Cceck them dubs and acknowledge his man. Uni is a meme, you are currently being stanfardized and your taste in literature will conform with the opinions of university brainwashers.