/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18088540]

How right was this anon?

[Anonymous No.18088544]

>>18088540
>couldn't think of mass entertainment before the radio

[Anonymous No.18088588]

>>18088540
I agree with anon here, however the amount of pseuds today is probably larger than ever before

[Anonymous No.18088589]

>>18088544
>before there was radio, there were Japanese woodblock prints, before that, there was opera; before that, there was painting and before that, there was now ossified grandeur of oral poetry, ye old ekébolou apollonos, krateron d'epi muthon etelle ktl., before that, there were primitive cave paintings, before that, there was hunting, before that there were provisional attempts at agriculture that might be ahistorically and anachronistically (mis)understood as the result of leisure time, before that, there was sex, before that, there was Australopithacus and Denisovian, before that, there were the dinosaurs. Before that, there were protozoans. Before that, there was the Big Bang. Before that, there was OP, who is a faggot.

[Anonymous No.18088604]

>>18088540
Charles Dickens published his novels in the newspaper and was a celebrity. Reader's Digest was always one of the most popular magazines, and it used to actually talk about books. Faulkner and Hemingway were household names. True, the average person did not have the most refined taste, but books historically were always popular. Increased literacy rates and cheaper paper only made this more true. Things are really bad now.

[Anonymous No.18088621]

>>18088604
>"things are bad in present time, past time was more better"
kys boomer

[Anonymous No.18088624]

>>18088604
Dickens, Faulkner, and Hemingway were titans. In addition to all of them being legitimately great writers, great prose stylists, great storytellers, great character creators, and so on, all three of them were forceful, commanding personalities that dominated any room they were in.

You read similar things about guys like Melville, though of course he was more obscure in his own day. GREAT writers have a magnetism about them, an aura.

So who's like that today? I'm trying to think of any writer younger than 40 who has that kind of power, that natural charisma that shows up in one way or another. And if I can't think of any, if there are no current young authors who have that kind of vibe, then maybe THAT'S why there are no young authors who are famous, and who are being read by young people and people in general. Maybe they're just not around. Or they are around, but we haven't heard of them yet.

[Anonymous No.18088625]

>>18088589
OP IS GOD!!!?!?!?!?!

[Anonymous No.18088658]

There was a period when books were popular but I wouldn't say for the most part of the history. I mean look at the third world countries, most people dont read despite not spending their life with electonics either. I would think there was a period of around 200 years in which books gained massive popularity but with the evolution of technology the new generations are reading more but not books, just useless stuff on social media and the sort.

[Anonymous No.18088735]

>>18088621
Times have always been bad, but some times are worse than others. Now is particularly bad. Just before the industrial revolution would have been a highpoint. While technology is itself neutral, there are always more bad ways to use technology than good ways; the longer a technology exists, the more it will be used well; the closer to the origin of a technology, the more it will be used poorly; the atomic bomb, for example, is probably the most harmful and worst way to use atomic technology, and using it on a civilian population is particularly egregious; the more rapidly, then, we propagate technology, the more we can be sure to see the worst practices, and the less likely we are to see either good or refined practices; this is a simple consequence of the fact that, generally, circumspection and prudence require deliberation and experience, whereas rashness and malice only survive in the short term.

Consider a carnival; carnival are, in a way, a collection of all those amusements which are either trivial, dangerous, or fraudulent; all of those games and entertainments which society recognized as not good to allow permanently and not worth patronizing were collected together, traveling from town to town, making sure to never overstay their welcome. But now, look at the appetite; all this incredible computing power, and the most popular and profitable and common uses are worse than carnival games; they have studied behavioral psychology in order to con the most people out of the most money playing cheap, trivial games that require now skill and offer no rest or relaxation or recuperation to the user; they do not even function properly as recreation. Consider that the rallying cry of so many investors and entrepreneurs these days is "disruption"; this means simply that they plan to build their companies be simply shifting market share in an industry by using angel investors to build a technology infrastructure that existing companies simply don't have the cash flow to develop; now that Uber and Lyft cost as much as a cab, what real advantage do they offer to society over the cab? This is neither innovation, nor progress.

Of course, we can look in the past and see all kinds of evils; but the devil you know is better than the many you don't.

[Anonymous No.18088755]

>>18088735
I'm not reading that shit mf. I do agree that the industrial revolution fucked everything up. I thought you were gonna go back in my day on us

[Nemo !!GgBWHLRiayD No.18088800]

>>18088540
It is a myopic post; what is important is sapience, regardless of one's recreational preferences.

Anyway, keyboard warriors/professional bugmen who spend the majority of their twenties, and beyond, on the computer, and on books, wasting away their youthful potential by hiding from adversity, are not much less contemptible than degenerates —who, or what, are these individuals worth?

[Anonymous No.18088805]

>>18088624

Or there are great and charismatic young writers, but that still doesn't get them far because so few people pay attention.

It's very hard for something that doesn't appeal to the broadest tastes to become mainstream these days, simply because institutions and individuals have very little power in spreading things compared to the masses sharing things. Of course there are still people with way more social influence, but those got there by appealing to the same common taste. Elon Musk tweeting about anything brings a thousand times more attention to that than any literary prize or magazine could bring to a writer.

[Anonymous No.18088810]

>>18088755
twitter faggot, put more effort into posting

[Anonymous No.18088812]

>>18088624
I enjoy Dickens, Faulkner, and Hemingway, but it is easy to say that Dickens is overwrought and wordy, that Faulkner is pretentious and jumbled, and that Hemingway is boring and pretentious.

The writers that get published are the writers that people want to read. The simple fact is that the culture of reading in America at least, if not the entirety of the West, is dying.

No writer is so good that people can't help but read them. Grade school boys 100 years ago found the Odyssey captivating. Now, most high schoolers find it boring.

There is no such thing as artistic magnetism. Eugene Field was a very prominent and widely loved writer in his day; many considered him great; you can still find collections of his works. He greatly disliked Mark Twain, as did many others. It is the critical lens of people like Harold Bloom that makes it seem otherwise. Walt Whitman for example was not popularly received; however, important members of society though he was important to learn, and so he was taught in American public schools for several decades, making him a national poet. I've even seen staunch conservatives hail Leaves of Grass as a defining American poem, despite the irony of that poem's relationship to American politics.

Quality is not subjective; but the winners and losers of history is, to a great degree, a matter of critical tastes.

[Anonymous No.18088820]

>>18088540
Not really informed on the subject but if I were to guess in my country (France), between the advent of mass-literacy (around late-XIXth century) and 1980 I would say the average person read more than today. I do believe zoomers read way less literature, especially those from poor backgrounds. But even today, France has a much bigger literary culture than the US.

[Anonymous No.18088923]

I only disagree on Radio. Ham radio is like using the 90's internet all over again. Plus some talk shows on AM/FM are also alright.

[Anonymous No.18089019]

>>18088923
are you literally fucking retarded, talk radio is the most cancerous thing I know of

[Anonymous No.18089043]

>>18088544
getting plastered and beating your 14 year old wife

[Anonymous No.18089081]

>>18089043
>trace family genealogy
>old world ancestors got married at equal ages
>new world ones were 25-35 for males, 15-20 for females
Which tradition am I supposed to retvrn to??