/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13568912]

He's the best contemporary writer and there's no debate.

[Anonymous No.13568919]

[Anonymous No.13568925]

>>13568912
I'm not impressed.

[Anonymous No.13568926]

[Anonymous No.13568943]

>The Unconsoled was described as a "sprawling, almost indecipherable 500-page work"[1] that "left readers and reviewers baffled".[2] It received strong negative reviews with a few positive ones. Literary critic James Wood said that the novel had "invented its own category of badness"

[Anonymous No.13568947]

>>13568943
I liked it. I read it at the same time as The Rings of Saturn, and thought they complimented each other nicely

[Anonymous No.13568978]

>>13568919
This guy genuinely sucks balls. It's just shit for pseuds to fawn over, as if not having a real plot is a substitute for profundity. Talk about emperor's New clothes jeeez

[Anonymous No.13568997]

Pic related, Corncob and Pynchon have him beat.

[Anonymous No.13569056]

>>13568997

John Crowley is great and it's a shame /lit/ doesn't talk about him much because I feel like his works are just as memey as Pynchon, Corncob McCarthy, and other meme favourites.

[Anonymous No.13569085]

He's the best YA writer, that's for sure

[Anonymous No.13569184]

>>13568912
Do you know that food that is tasteless? No salt, no sugar, no spice, nothing? That is Ishiguro.

>>13568919
Do you know that restaurant using the same ingredients to make different dishes? That is Murakami.

[Anonymous No.13569216]

>>13569184
So is Murakami the restaurant food or the restaurant itself? I'm confused?

[Anonymous No.13569287]

>>13569056
It is pretty weird that he goes unmentioned even in the SF&F generals. While I personally find his work much softer then Pinecone and Corncob, he's a master at crafting some of the most profound sentences mixed in with this silky dreamlike prose. You'd think a board that champions Gene and Peake would at least consider the guy. Thinking about it now, apart from Bloom and a very few other publications he's virtually unknown in the fantasy world.

[Anonymous No.13569298]

>>13568912
I like the unconsoled but I really think McCarthy and Pynchon are better, with Pynchon being the most impressive living writer at the moment.

[Anonymous No.13569367]

>>13569287
>Thinking about it now, apart from Bloom and a very few other publications he's virtually unknown in the fantasy world.

He's to "literary" for fantasy plebs, but he's also to fantastic for the literature pseuds.

[Anonymous No.13569970]

[Anonymous No.13570002]

>>13568926
>Stephen King is Cervantes
wow, harold bloom had some very high praise for king. i've been dismissing him for a while, but now i feel i should check his work out.

[Anonymous No.13570751]

>>13569367
I'm inclined to agree but the fact that magical realism is seen as a worthwhile literary field bothers me. I mean I enjoy mr works but to use those elements in your own work in order to make it more "literary" seems very dishonest and unfair to the reader. It gives of the impression that the writer himself wasnt very comfortable with some of the fantastical elements, so he had to tone it down. I understand the bad rep fantasy gets but it hardly feels fair to the genre when you have a watered down version winning all the coveted awards and drowing in the acclaim of psueds. I dunno anon, you raise a good point but it also confuses me because Borges and Calvino who dabbled in this stuff are given their due while other talented writers are waved off for the same reason.

[Anonymous No.13570758]

>>13569184
Well put.

[Anonymous No.13570792]

>>13568912
I had to read that one about the song that doesn't exist for a class, I can't fucking remember the title right now because I'm slightly drunk, but I thought it was alright. The prose didn't really wow me but the ideas conveyed were okay.