/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18104299]

The Holy Trinity of American Literature

[Anonymous No.18104317]

>american
>literature
Choose one

[Anonymous No.18104407]

>>18104299
James doesn't count. But nor does he count as Anglo.

[Anonymous No.18104446]

>>18104407
James counts

[Anonymous No.18104454]

>>18104299
Why do they look extremely Slavic

[Anonymous No.18104456]

>>18104446
doesn't

[Anonymous No.18104467]

>>18104454
Because ‘Slavic’ functions as the Russian word for white people.

[Anonymous No.18104472]

>>18104454
slavs emigrated from the American anglo colonies and found the slavic dynasties and peoples we have today.

[Anonymous No.18104486]

>>18104456
Nonsense

[Anonymous No.18104540]

>>18104299
I’d go with Whitman, Emerson, Melville

[Fuck Henry James No.18104543]

Are we serious? I can probably name 15 authors better than james. What a fucking bore.

[Anonymous No.18104590]

I would put Faulkner on the list.

[Anonymous No.18104596]

>>18104543
Filtered

[Anonymous No.18104608]

>>18104540
>Emerson

[Anonymous No.18104611]

>>18104543
Ok name them

[Anonymous No.18104628]

>>18104608
why tho

[Anonymous No.18104646]

>>18104299
Only in fiction tho

[Anonymous No.18104676]

poe??

[Fuck Henry James No.18104681]

>>18104611
Pseuds will say hes top 15 but won't argue for top 5. I fucking dare you to argue it is.
Melville
Hawthorne
Emerson
Faulkner
Hemingway
Steinbeck
Fitzgerald
Dos passos
Roth
Pynchon
Delillo
Gaddis
Vollmann
Vonnegut
Oconnor
Morrison
And we arent getting into poets.

[Anonymous No.18104697]

>>18104543
You're a bore

[Fuck Henry James No.18104708]

>>18104681
I'm not a fan of wallace/kerouac/twain, or a big fan of burroughs but they're all better.

[Anonymous No.18104802]

/thread

[Anonymous No.18104864]

Faulkner and McCarthy are the two gods of American literature

[Anonymous No.18104867]

>>18104802
Is that Donald J. Trump in the middle in incognito mode?

[Anonymous No.18104915]

>>18104454
Melville doesn’t look Slavic at all, he looks like an Anglo-Germanic

[Anonymous No.18104932]

For me, it's
>Washington Irving
>Mark Twain
>John Steinbeck
All capture different regions and time periods of the US while all feeling distinctly American.

[Anonymous No.18104935]

>>18104590
This Faulkner Faulkner Faulkner Faulkner

[Anonymous No.18104945]

>>18104681
>Melville
>Hawthorne
>Emerson
>Faulkner
>Hemingway
Damn fine top five

[Anonymous No.18104961]

>>18104472
This is correct.

Stay woke.

[Anonymous No.18105004]

>>18104317
Seethe

[Anonymous No.18105014]

Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen King

[Anonymous No.18105028]

>>18104299
anybody else sexually attracted to melville

[Anonymous No.18105061]

>>18104299
>Faulkner
>Hemingway
>Fitzgerald

The 1920’s were lit

[Anonymous No.18105103]

>>18104407
james counts

[Fuck Henry James No.18105118]

>>18104945
Take hawthorne out and add dos passos

[Anonymous No.18105310]

>>18104299
Sorry sweaty but morrison is the most goated author of all time.

[Anonymous No.18105315]

>>18105028
he, uh, has that effect on strapping young seamen

[Anonymous No.18105322]

>>18105315
Bro id squeeze his sperm w the homies

[Anonymous No.18105820]

>>18104456
does

[FHJ/Dos Passos Evangelist No.18105878]

>>18105061
Get john dos passos up in that bitch. He's the best out of steinbeck (#2-commie), hemingway (#5-trans), faulkner (#4-insecure dwarf), and fitzgerald (#3-short story whore).
In actuality tho he is just under faulkner and above hemingway. Dos passos's stream of consciousness and formal experimentation is absolute flames, and his depiction of the usa is amazing in the usa trilogy. Plus he made hemingway seethe: what's not to like?

[Anonymous No.18105909]

>>18105878
I’ve only read the first two parts of his trilogy, and while I still enjoyed it, I prefer Faulkner and Hemingway. I don’t get lit’s obsession with pitting writers against each other. You can like multiple people to varying degrees

[FHJ/Dos Passos Evangelist No.18105953]

>>18105909
I love sports talk and there are a million convos about lists/goats so thats probs where i get it.
Hem is incredibly uneven imo. For whom the bell tolls is the prime example of why every writer should seriously consider avoiding stream of consciousness. His voice does not suit it at all. Come to think of it his best stories rival nearly any other amazing writer because his style is its most radical there, but his novels range from really good to not worth a fraction of a fuck.

[Anonymous No.18105987]

>>18105953
I started For Whom the Bell Tolls and couldn't get into it, stopped reading it. Recently picked up A Farewell to Arms and hope it's better. If it's shit I just give up and Hemingway is a hack. What are your favorite Hemingway books?

[Anonymous No.18106035]

>>18105953
I agree. Hemingway is one of my favorites and it’s because of his short stories mainly. What I like about his novels is that I have many “this is why I read” moments and even those are self contained short stories such as Pablo taking the town and El Sordo’s last stand in FWTBT and the fishing trip in TSAR. The later reminds me of the short story Big Two-Hearted River which is one of my favorites. It’s hard for me to rank authors because I usually try to go into writers with an open mind and adapt as necessary, so I can almost always appreciate whoever I read. I’ve tried making a couple Dos Passos threads over the last year but they never take off. He seems to be one of those forgotten writers from the early 20th century which is a shame

[Anonymous No.18106069]

>>18105987
I hated Hemingway at first but then I tried his short stories. It took a few of those before something clicked and now he’s one of my favorites. It’s always repetitive to say but with Hemingway reading in between the lines is as important as reading the words. His style isn’t for everyone but I’ve taken a liking to it. So my advice is to try his short stories but before reading, try skimming an analysis to find out the themes as they often aren’t apparent at first glance but become obvious once you know.

[Anonymous No.18106264]

>>18104543
This is what being filtered looks like

[Anonymous No.18106548]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18106768]

bump

[Anonymous No.18106836]

>>18104681
Bad list. Here's a good one:
1. Hemingway
2. James
3. Salinger
4. McCarthy
5. Fitzgerald

Great, but just out of the top 5:
Poe
Melville
Ellis
Faulkner

Hell no:
DeLillo
Vonnegut
Pynchon
Morrison

[Anonymous No.18106932]

>>18104299
Going to pass on this one chief.

[Anonymous No.18107116]

>>18104299
based

[Anonymous No.18107122]

>>18104299
>American Literature

For me it's
>Vonnegut
>Vidal
>Mailer

[Anonymous No.18107125]

>>18104299
The Father (William Faulkner)
The Son (Cormac McCarthy)
And the Holy Spirit (Herman Melville)

[Anonymous No.18107202]

>>18104681
That is without a doubt the single worst list I have seen in 4 years on this board. The second half is just vomit inducing.

[Anonymous No.18107279]

>>18104681
>Vollmann
What's the logic behind this?

[Anonymous No.18107297]

>>18104299
For me Meville, Whitman(prefer Dickinson but Whitmans America), Pynchon.

Poes also good

[Anonymous No.18107669]

>>18106069
(Not the person you're replying to)

But yeah, same. I read Old Man and the Sea and FWTBT and they just seemed performatively macho/poshlost. But then I read his short stories and realised he was one of the GOATs and "voraciously" read some of his other work. Farewell to Arms is the first novel that's made me cry in years. Incredible novel.

I read his short stories in the order they were written. And I noticed that the earlier ones tended to be better than the latter ones. (General rule, obviously there were exceptions.) Seems to be a similar pattern to his novels. Farewell to Arms was the first novel he wrote, and it seems his best. I wonder if all the head injuries and alcohol abuse just...ruined him?

[Anonymous No.18108049]

>>18105987
>If it's shit I just give up and Hemingway is a hack
He kinda is. Dont sweat it if you dont like him. A lot of people dont particularly care for him either. Dont force yourself to like him. Melville is much better.

[Anonymous No.18108112]

>>18104456
He wrote multiple novels and short stories set in the US. And most of his stuff deals with Americans in Europe..

[Fuck Henry James No.18108131]

Come on now, lil niggas
>>18106836
It wasnt a numbered list. Its 15 writers better than henry james.
Mccarthy easton ellis and salinger belong on there too, but pynchon wrote 15 good pages for every 1 james wrote and his work aims much higher while maintaining a great sense of humor and ambitious style, poe is schlock trash, and henry james is so fucking vanilla he is completely devoid of any personality. Theres no fucking life to him - reading him is like getting a handjob from a girl with a prosthetic hand.
>>18107279
Vollmann has better writing, loftier themes, probably triple the amount of good sentences (if not more), plus he has so much more personality. James is just an abortion of a writer. The writing sucks, occasionally you'll get a good character but he just denies you any enthusiasm you can have about his book.

[Anonymous No.18108401]

>>18106836
Get a load of this jolt head. Hemingway? Poe? Fucking Salinger? These are some of the blandest writers in history.

[Anonymous No.18108443]

>>18105987
>I started For Whom the Bell Tolls and couldn't get into it, stopped reading it
If you read the segment where Pilar recounts the day where the republicans seized the town and subjected the fascists to pogrom and aren't blown away by that impeccable quality of writing then I'm afraid reading isn't for you.

[Anonymous No.18108470]

>>18104681
This is a bad list because it seems like you're basically just pulling random classic, DWM authors from the 19th century mixed in with a bit of /lit/-approved authors from the 20th century (Gaddis, Delillo, OConnor).

But this is a bad list because something about this tells me that you have poor taste. And probably just kind of follow what everyone else is reading instead of discovering for yourself.

[Anonymous No.18108577]

>>18108470
No way he has read 5 of them over there.

[Anonymous No.18108785]

>>18107669
I know he struggled to write novels in the beginning so maybe he was just a perfectionist and once he found his bread and butter, he didn’t put as much heart into it. I’ve actually been surprised that many a writer’s magnum opus were written fairly on in their career. Maybe the whole starving artist thing combined with someone finding their technique leads to the best work

[Anonymous No.18108885]

John Cowper Powys on Henry James:

"One does not, in reading these great authors, savor the actual style on every page, in every sentence. We have large blank spaces, so to speak, of straightforward colorless narrative. But there are no “blank spaces” in Henry James. Every sentence is penetrated and heavy with the fragrance of his peculiar grace. One might almost say—so strong is this subjective element in the great objective aesthete—that James writes novels like an essayist, like some epicurean Walter Pater, suddenly grown interested in common humanity, and finding in the psychology of ordinary people a provocation and a stimulus as insidious and suggestive as in the lines and colors of mediaeval art. This essayist attitude accounts largely for those superior “inverted commas” which throw such a clear space of ironic detachment round his characters and his scenes.

.....

The world created by Henry James is like some classic Arcadia of psychological beauty—some universal Garden of Versailles unprofaned by the noises of the crowd—where among the terraces and fountains delicate Watteau-like figures move and whisper and make love in a soft artificial fairy moonlight dimmed and tinted with the shadows of passions and misty with the rain of tender regrets; human figures without name or place. For who remembers the names of these sweet phantoms or the titles of their “great places” in this hospitable fairy-land of the harassed sensitive ones of the earth; where courtesy is the only law of existence and good taste the only moral code?"

"No novelist who has ever lived has "taken art" so seriously. But it is art, and not life, he takes seriously; and, therefore, along with his methods of elaborate patience, one is conscious of a most delicate and whimsical playfulness--sparing literally nothing.

.....

The subtlety of Henry James is a subtlety which is caused not by philosophical but by psychological distinctions and it is a subtlety which enlarges our sympathy for the average human nature of middle class people to a degree that must, in the very deepest sense of the word, be called moral. The wisdom to be derived from him is all of a piece with the pleasure--both being the result of a fuller, richer, and more discriminating consciousness of the tragic complexity of quite little and unimportant characters. To a real lover of Henry James the greyest and least promising aspects of ordinary life seem to hold up to us infinite possibilities of delicate excitement. It is indeed out of excitement--partly intellectual and partly aesthetic,--that his great effects are produced. And yet the final effect is always one of resignation and calm--as with all the supreme masters."

[Anonymous No.18108888]

>>18104540
Solid. I would consider replacing Emerson with Twain, but it's a very near thing.

[Anonymous No.18109589]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18109637]

>>18104299
What to read from Hawthorne?
The fact that his books on goodreads are rated so low makes me interested. Every time this happens (like with Conrad or Melville) the books turn out to be great.

[Fuck Henry James No.18109659]

>>18108470
Yawn. Its not even a list though, you can probably find 40 more writers who are better than james. Its not ranking the top 15 american writers, its 15 that are better.
>>18108577
K
>>18108885
Stop it, his work is lifeless million clause ass piss

[Anonymous No.18109669]

>>18109659
>posts list of 15 items
>Its not even a list though

Um. Okay.

[Anonymous No.18109722]

>>18109637
Get his two Library of America volumes. His short stories are his best imo.

[Fuck Henry James No.18109824]

>>18108470
/lit/ approved authors? Nobody cares about dos passos or vollmann - i've tried starting tons of threads about them and nobody cares to engage - people fucking hate gaddis and the beats (the beats are more deserving and the gaddis hate is really mixed), roth is barely /lit/ approved, people here fucking hate morrison and also people really don't read melville's other shit like confidence man and pierre. What the fuck you on about boi?

[Anonymous No.18109863]

Emily Dickinson
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Raymond Chandler

[Anonymous No.18109942]

>>18109824
nah all of them are /lit/ memes

[Anonymous No.18109957]

>>18109942
Fuck fuck henry james but your a dipshit newfag.

[Fuck Henry James No.18110004]

>>18109942
Just fucking ban me, jannies. This board doesnt deserve genius.

[Anonymous No.18110016]

>>18104543
based, I await your arrival every time Henry James is mentioned

[Fuck Henry James No.18110038]

>>18110016
Wait for another 3 days and i'll have more energy for it

[Anonymous No.18110040]

>No Steinbeck
why is he so underrated

[Anonymous No.18110057]

> Oscar Wilde criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty"
>Jorge Luis Borges wrote about him, "Despite the scruples and delicate complexities of James, his work suffers from a major defect: the absence of life"
>The novelist W. Somerset Maugham wrote, "He did not know the English as an Englishman instinctively knows them and so his English characters never to my mind quite ring true," and argued, "The great novelists, even in seclusion, have lived life passionately. Henry James was content to observe it from a window."
>Colm Tóibín observed that James "never really wrote about the English very well. His English characters don't work for me
As an englishman I can agree with some of this. His english characters feel like english people viewed by an American

[Anonymous No.18110107]

>>18109824
Literally every author in that list is on a /lit/-chart regularly posted on here, brother. What the fuck is YOU on about boi?

[Anonymous No.18110189]

>>18105014
hahaha
and Looooeee Lamore

[Anonymous No.18110231]

>>18104867
Dude, It's Tom Clancy. Show some respect.

[Anonymous No.18110582]

bump

[Anonymous No.18112011]

bump

[Anonymous No.18112063]

>>18104456
does does does

[Anonymous No.18112896]

>>18109824
>Nobody cares about dos passos
For good reason

[Anonymous No.18112920]

>>18110057
Fags and browns don't really like slow, subtle, hyper-psychologically-incisive white man books. Shocked

[Anonymous No.18112953]

>>18112920
Anon, Henry James was a fag.

[Anonymous No.18112954]

>>18110057
>As an englishman I can agree with some of this. His english characters feel like english people viewed by an American
"As a" people always do this

That's not what black people are like; I'm black, I know. That's not what gay people are like; I suck dicks and gay people aren't what that straight white guy says

Even if you and the handful of people you know don't look exactly like that and act like that and sound like that (though you probably do look and act and smell exactly like that, smelly) there are lots like you who do. "As a..." Shut up, dummy

[Anonymous No.18112959]

>>18112953
He might have been gay but he wasn't a fag

[Anonymous No.18112984]

Slow down there pardner
Did you just post Henry James?
On /lit/?
Don't you know that fat summa bitch ain't literature?