/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15394932]

Who is the David Lynch of literature?

[Anonymous No.15394948]

Bolaño

[Anonymous No.15394956]

There are lots of hacks in literature, not hard to find

[Anonymous No.15394976]

Me, if we're using only this image to represent Lynch.

[Anonymous No.15394979]

>>15394932
Georges Bataille

[Anonymous No.15395082]

>>15394979
Really? How do you mean?

[Anonymous No.15395091]

Hermann Hesse

[Anonymous No.15395105]

>>15394932
David Lynch

[Anonymous No.15395124]

>>15395082
Idk Blue Velvet had a Bataille sort of feel. Aggressively nihilistic. George Bataille is the sort of guy to write extraneous texts on surfeit and rant on till it deteriorates into whatever and he gives up towards the end and says fuck it, it doesn't matter, it's all shit anyways, show me your fucking cunt hole. That's the sort of story Blue Velvet felt like.

[Anonymous No.15395143]

Lynch is all-style no-substance shallow obscurantist fluff for pseuds who think art is about being wowed by surreal visual effects, so probably either Finnegans Wake or (depending on your opinion, and despite having some actual content to his fluff here and there by accident) Samuel Beckett, who incidentally sucked the dick of the guy who wrote Finnegans Wake.

You could also try Pynchon, if you want middlebrow shit that pseuds force themselves to think they like because they were told it's supposed to be prestigious.

[Anonymous No.15395158]

>>15395143
Shit dude who hurt you like that?

[Anonymous No.15395163]

>>15395143
>mad

[Anonymous No.15395171]

>>15395124
Based

[Anonymous No.15395173]

>>15395124
This isn't a negative by the way, I like Blue Velvet because of the that vibe. Not sure if I phrased it correctly in the post.

[Anonymous No.15395179]

>>15395143
based

[Anonymous No.15395188]

>>15395143
more from this guy please
what's your opinion on Bataille or Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.15395221]

>>15395143
The problem with Lynch is that his use of symbolism is so on the nose, so calculated that you can't help but roll your eyes. He is fascinated by dreams so he tries to create movies that feel like dreams, but he doesn't understand that dreams cannot be consciously assembled, that they are products of the unconscious mind. When you try to make "dream" films everything just comes across like, as you put it, obscurantist fluff. Lobsterboy describes this rather well in this video:
https://youtu.be/PC8FNfMIIhg?t=1135

[Anonymous No.15395241]

>>15394932

Murakami

>both pop surrealists
>both surface-level freudian psychologists
>both influenced by noir
>

[Anonymous No.15395268]

>>15395221
damn that's pretty insightful and well put, thanks anon for your reflections and for peterson's

[Anonymous No.15395277]

>>15395143
>wrecking pynchon, beckett and lynch in one go
noice

[Anonymous No.15395345]

>>15394932

For me, it's Edward Gorey. Lynch's films make me feel much the same way as Gorey's short narrative cartoons do, notwithstanding that they tend to describe different time periods. Eraserhead in particular, but The Elephant Man is also around that Edwardian/Victorian period.

As a kid, I read everything by John Bellairs that I could get my hands on, as the patrician alternative to then-ubiquitous Goosebumps (and also largely because of the Gorey covers). When the MC in Blue Velvet hides in a closet and sees awful things happen then gets drawn further into the mystery-yet turns in important evidence to the police like a good boy-it's easy to imagine him as one of Bellairs' boy protagonists, Lewis Barnavelt or Johnny Dixon.

[Anonymous No.15395356]

I wish fire walk with me was a book first

[Anonymous No.15395591]

>>15395241
based idiot

[Anonymous No.15395671]

>>15395221
>that they are products of the unconscious mind
lol

[Anonymous No.15395758]

>>15395143
The difference betweem Lynch and Joyce is Joyce was at one point talented. See Dubliners and APOFAAAYM (lol). He had a real talent for constucting beautiful prose that wasn't just purple fluff, that was actually structured and concrete. Sure, later he went down the abstract-experimental pseudointellectal pretentious masturbatory rabbithole that only was brought into existance to confuse scholars, but he started off concrete and talented.

Meanwhile, Lynch always existed at a median point between the opposite poles of retard experimentalism and unoriginal yet concrete and talented progression. He was never one than became the other, like Joyce. His movies are more of a mix of the two poles themselves. He tries to be dreamlike, but then drifts back into the norm, into pure mystery, romance, or horror. Or, vice versa.

In short, Lynch is and always was a pseudopseudoartist, but Joyce is a fallen angel who started out soaring but lost balance and fell into the role of pseudoartist.

[Anonymous No.15395820]

>>15394932

[Anonymous No.15395973]

>>15395143
>If i shit on Lynch and Joyce then I can pretend to myself that I'm better than everyone else!

Nice job anon you truly are an inspiring intellectual

[Anonymous No.15395981]

>>15395221
t. i've seen two lynch films and am now an expert

[Anonymous No.15396117]

>>15395143
>Pynchon
Would Pynchon work for cinema though? Has it ever been tried?

[Anonymous No.15396150]

>>15394932

Jacques Derrida

[Anonymous No.15396455]

>>15395143
>Lynch is all style and no substance
I've never heard someone talk about "style vs substance" without coming off as an ignorant philistine. Style and substance are not at odds. Frequently, the substance is in the style, especially in film. Depending on what you mean, style and substance might even be literally the exact same thing.
>pseuds who think art is about being wowed by surreal visual effects
Lynch's "effects" are practically afterthoughts. Are you talking about the surreal imagery? Dialogue and plot are secondary to imagery and ambience in a Lynch movie. Imagery is Lynch's primary means of communication and imagery is no small deal. Read some Jung. Your post isn't worth the electrons it rode in on.

>>15395221
I saw this clip once. I think better of Peterson than most of the spergs on /lit/, but I think this perspective has far too much bad faith in it to be a good one. I'm a filmmaker myself. I've had notable success in the festival circuit with my shorts, and I'm working on the script for my first feature now. When I'm thinking up a film I don't sit down and try to expand on a plot so much as I just let things figure themselves out. I find myself getting caught up in an idea or a set of images, sometimes dreams, and eventually I start feeling the connections between them. Around the time I have a first render and can see it in motion the more foggy meanings seem quite obvious to me. I once accidentally made a film about my father and didn't realize it until I saw his reaction to it. It's a crazy feeling, like if Stephen King didn't realize redrum meant murder until he actually got to the end of the book. I didn't know this until the past year or so, but Lynch claims to have a very similar method, so I'm inclined to defend him. I don't think he usually makes articulated, conscious attempts at simulating dreams. At least not enough to devalue his work.

[Anonymous No.15396467]

>>15395973
>>15396455
That copypasta brings together everyone from the mentally disabled to the tryhard film school graduate in making themselves look like absolute faggots. It's a miracle!

[Anonymous No.15396502]

>>15396467
>I was only pretending to [make an original post]

[Anonymous No.15396548]

>>15396117
Inherent Vice is a fun movie

[Anonymous No.15396562]

>>15396455
>I don't think he usually makes articulated, conscious attempts at simulating dreams
I respect that opinion but I completely disagree. Everything about how his movies are constructed is dreamlike. The lighting, the strange dialogue, the melodramatic characters, the privileging of the symbolic over the physical, it all screams dream structure. Mulholland Drive is literally an elongated dream sequence lol. My problem isn't the surreal nature of his works, its how he uses symbolism within the surreal worlds he creates. Heres an example:

The opening of Blue Velvet is a series of shots of a nice suburban neighborhood (representing the goodie-goodie, romanticized view of American life) which are cross cut with shots of festering insects (of course representing the dark underbelly that exists within the same society as the nice houses). While this opening does set up the theme of the movie, I can't help but think that it's just using cheap, contrived symbolism to represent something that could have had a more direct representation in the film. In fact this idea (the innocent juxtaposed with the abhorrent) does get direct representation in later scenes, many of the Dennis Hopper scenes accomplish this for example. Anything that can be directly represented should be. Symbolic language should be used only when its the only tool at your disposal to explore an idea. That's why dreams are surreal, they are exploring things we do not yet fully understand. But David Lynch does understand the ideas he's exploring, he just obfuscates them. Also, I really like Lynch's films and Twin Peaks is one of my favorite shows. I'm not trying to rip on him or say that he's a hack, I just sometimes roll my eyes at how blunt and self aware his films can be.

[Anonymous No.15396786]

>>15394932
Lafferty

[Anonymous No.15396997]

Stephen King

[Anonymous No.15397013]

He's one of those dudes that just inserts random absurd symbolism without any rationality to it. I get that the audience is the one who tries to find meaning but it feels cheap most of the time. Tarkovsky added those weird dream sequences but you could at least imagine them being dreams people would actually have, Lynch just throws random shit at you and expects you to do crazy mental gymnastics to make up its meaning

[Anonymous No.15397095]

>>15396562
>Symbolic language should be used only when its the only tool at your disposal to explore an idea. That's why dreams are surreal, they are exploring things we do not yet fully understand
Disagree. Symbols and images are ultimately the source and natural form of all thought. The entire point of articulation is that we're all individuals trapped in our own bodies and wordswordswords is the only way we know of for sharing some concepts. As nuts as it sounds, things are most contrived when they are literal, not when they're symbolic. I'd also say that dreams deal with things that you have a symbolic understanding of, just not an articulate one. How else could it speak to you? The structure of Benzene was pinpointed by a chemist who claimed he'd had a dream about the uroboros and immediately woke up understanding that it was a ring. He understood it symbolically, just not articulately.
>David Lynch does understand the ideas he's exploring, he just obfuscates them.
There are certainly deliberate symbols in his work, and I wouldn't really expect there to be none. Sometimes that's just what you get when you're crafting something. I also don't think it's "obfuscating" so much as it's Lynch having a thought/feeling to express and asking himself what kind of image encapsulates that. Again, seeking out the image is not hunting contrivance. The grass is beautiful, but there's bugs underneath and they're crawling. I think plenty of people will see that and catch the message, but I don't think that's automatically bad. And at this point, what is it? Is it obvious or is it obfuscated? I don't see how it can be both. The bugs are less than subtle, but I think something like Twin Peaks is a better demonstration of his style.

[Anonymous No.15397110]

>>15397013

I sincerely don't agree with this take. Lynch's weird shit actually does feel like the dreams I have typically had over the course of my entire life. There's a simple dramatic thrust, then the thing breaks off, and something else possibly related but different occurs elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.15397172]

>>15395221
Quite the accurate critique of Lynch by Jordan Shabbosgoy

[Anonymous No.15397189]

>>15395221
Quite the accurate critique of Lynch by Yudservant Shabbosgoy

[Anonymous No.15397680]

>>15395143
HES MAD BIG SAD

[Anonymous No.15397735]

>>15396455
>I've had notable success in the festival circuit with my shorts

[Anonymous No.15397739]

>>15394932
daviud foster wallace

[Anonymous No.15397800]

>>15397095
I think anyone who has tried writing for an extended amount of time will feel what you're talking about. You have an idea, sometimes vague and alluding, powerfully emotional but still somehow just out of reach. You sit down to write about it or describe it and every single time it feels like you just miss the mark. You rewrite and rewrite but somehow that ethereal imagery of your deepest mind just seems to elude the grasp of words and conventional prose. You try and experiment, go out of your way to abandon form-related convention in favour of catching the right words or combinations as they drift before your inner vision. And in the end, however satisfied you might have become with the way it turned out, you know that there is some tiny percentage of discrepancy between how the idea was in your head and how it reads on paper. There is always a point (to me) where you have to go "close enough", because the dream or the idea is the clear and articulated form (why would a dream present itself to you in anything but its perfect form?) and the writing is just an approximation of this experience.

I always feel that the ideas behind anything I write are the real, crystalline messages from deep inside what makes me human and as soon as I try to write it I shoehorn it into form. The idea gets trapped in form, and there is no way out of it. It's an inescapable condition of creativity, and it can be very claustrophobic. Like anyway you try and writhe and squirm out of these form-shackles they will keep locking you into one mode of expression.

This is rambling. I'm ESL. But what I'm getting at with Lynch is that what we are seeing are his closest approximations to the ethereal and deep dream worlds that he, like you, sees as the clearest expression of reality. When you see the blue key in Mulholland Drive you can make sense of it in any number of ways but really the blue key is a blue key because it's the closest approximation that Lynch could find when trying to transfer his world onto the screen. People who deride Lynch for being contrived in symbols seem to expect this kind of 1:1 relationship between symbol and the symbolized, while in reality it's totally ambiguous, nebulous and evasive. And this is because creative expression is the trapping of the idea in form, the trapping of something untrappable, the defining of something undefinable. To watch Lynch is to get into this world of ambiguity and where symbols and dreams extend themselves to us through imperfect media, rather than the perfect communication between unconscious and conscious.

[Anonymous No.15397956]

>>15396455
>I've had notable success in the festival circuit with my shorts

[Anonymous No.15397967]

>>15396997
This is the truth, lads.

[Anonymous No.15397975]

>>15395591
I've never read Murakami but this description fits Lynch perfectly.

[Anonymous No.15397991]

>>15394932
I been meaning to watch twin peaks the return. Unfortunately it would require to slog through to 45+ hours of the original series and the movie.