/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19251628]

Where have all the good writers gone? The writers whose works seemed superhuman and godly? Who can create characters with complete humanity, who can write books to be talked of centuries hence. Why isn't there any Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, or Joyce today? I doubt it's because of the crap publishing industry; a beyond-earthly writer would be able to transcend any publishers.

[Anonymous No.19251640]

Bro, you get all of your media from a select few outlets that feed into everything else and feed back into itself and recreate a timeless loop of the same feedings from which the newborns pickup and continue from. Are you being ironically or intentionally naive? I suggest lead.

[Anonymous No.19251684]

>>19251640
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

[Anonymous No.19251698]

>>19251628
Here's my post from months ago. Someone must have asked about geniuses or whatever. It's tiresome to keep naming names, but at least maybe you'll seek some of them. Here:

" The concept of genius is flawed, because it gives the impression that there is something that makes those artists inherently superior to other humans, which they are not.
Leonardo da Vinci wasn't even the best painter in his city, Mozart's works represent total decadence compared to Bach, much of Shakespeare is mediocre. However, they all produced great art now and then, and that art has been a source of pleasure and consolation for centuries, which is why they have acquired their status.
So the question is: so far, did we have people producing great art in the 21st century?

Yes, I can name names:
- Novel: Krasznahorkai, Lobo Antunes, McCarthy, Sebald, Handke, Pynchon, etc.
- Poetry: Adunis, Simic, Carson, Transtromer, Hill, Ashbery, Bonnefoy, Luzi.
- Theater: Jon Fosse.
- Cinema: Tarr, Kiarostami, Resnais, Herzog, Godard, Polanski, Lynch, Ming-liang, Kaurismaki.
- Music: Arvo Paart, Reich, Glass, Penderecki, Ligeti, Boulez, Kurtag.
- Painting: Kiefer, Richter, Nerdrum, Barceló, Rego.

What changed? Consumer culture. Nowadays, the only people who receive any attention are YouTubers and tik-tokers. Great artists, however, still exist, it's just that they aren't noticed anymore. "

I'll only add that none of them are Dante, Cervantes or Joyce, because those are authors that happen once every few centuries. I won't comment on Shakespeare because I think he's a great writer, but inferior to the others, so my opinion will seem too biased.
There are other names I could mention too. Those are not the only ones, specially if you count people who died at the beginning of the century or the end of the last (Milosz, Herbert, and Schnittke for instance).

Also,
>can create characters with complete humanity

Literally impossible. Words are words. ''Characters'' are made of words etc.

[Anonymous No.19251704]

>>19251628
I haven't started writing yet.

[Anonymous No.19251758]

>>19251628
McCarthy and Pynchon are both still alive. Wallace would be too if he hadn’t killed himself.

[Anonymous No.19251772]

>>19251628
You wouldn't know good writers if they came up to you and slapped you in your face with their masterpiece. Come back in 500 years.

[Anonymous No.19251823]

>>19251772
No, you don't count as a good writer faggot.
>>19251628
Anyway, as I was saying, there are definitely good writers nowadays OP, you just have to put more work into searching them out though, since you don't have the advantage of time filtering out garbage on your side.

[Anonymous No.19252224]

>>19251684
>wahh you can only answer my question with something that agrees with my preconceived notions
Your naivete and outright idiocy suggests you must be something of an underage

[Anonymous No.19252236]

this thread so unseasoned, it asked for the manager

[Anonymous No.19252243]

>>19252236
lmfao somebody check on op

[Anonymous No.19252426]

this is because we only remember the good literature of the 20th century, as time goes on the best of our generation will be remembered. Oh and also no a beyond earthly-writer would not be able to transcend the heel of publishers

[Anonymous No.19252606]

>>19251698
This post stinks excep for the painters you listed

[Anonymous No.19252609]

>>19251698
I feel like this list, which is excellent, also shows OPs problem, because obviously a number of the people on it are dead, and many of the others are inactive. So much easier to grasp an artist one you have their body of work to hand.

My favourite bit of the post is the reference to JS Bach, because for the likes of Mozart, even Beethoven, he was less significant than his (best) son. They both referred to CPE far more glowingly. JS Bach, who today seems the most superhuman of all, had to be levered into that position by the likes of Mendelssohn. The superhuman writer cannot ever surpass or transcend the problem of his works' propagation.

[Anonymous No.19252614]

>>19251698
It frightens me to think such pseudery is possible.

[Anonymous No.19253213]

>>19252606
The painters also stink. Imagine considering Kiefer among the likes of a van Eyck or Böcklin.

[Anonymous No.19253233]

>>19251628
>where are the good writers?
>Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, or Joyce
>4 writers, 700 years, 3 languages.
Given the sort of genius you are referencing, and the fact that Joyce was still alive less than 100 years ago, it's fair to expect that we may be in for a bit of a dry spell.

[Anonymous No.19253633]

>>19251628
Joyce was bad, and his influence is partially responsible for the degradation of the literary arts.

[Anonymous No.19253646]

There are a lot better writers alive today than the great names of the western canon that all lit teachers can't stop cooming over, but they're drowned under untold tons of shit so nobody finds them

[Anonymous No.19253702]

>>19253233
>tfw no literary giant will exist in your lifetime

[Anonymous No.19253726]

>>19251698
>Literally impossible. Words are words. ''Characters'' are made of words etc.
it's striking to me that people clamoring for a return of great art seem to have notions of excellence derived from contemporary entertainment criticism, ie deftly structured "story arcs" about "likeable characters" with no "plot holes" etc etc. "characters with complete humanity" just reads like a fancier rewording of the typical nerd complaint about some superhero not being "deep" or "likeable" enough, and that in turn comes from current pop culture's whole approach to fiction as a repository of fake people to have ersatz relationships with. it's this willful illiteracy where you like the consumption of books but not the medium of writing, and the words on the page don't matter, or matter only to the extent you can imagine they are letting you access a virtual girlfriend (father figure etc). so if a great WRITER (not just a textual pimp) were to emerge, nobody would even notice.

[Anonymous No.19253746]

>>19253726
It's not difficult to see that Hamlet is more human than Rick Sanchez

[Anonymous No.19253770]

>>19253746
it is, however, a waste of time. what's the connection between excellence in art and your desire to run a voight-kampff on a cartoon?

[Anonymous No.19255066]

>>19253213
Böcklin is crap.

[Anonymous No.19255081]

>>19251628
I swear, I am the first to recognize Kevin as a master of letters. It's typical for genius to not be acknowledged by contemporaries, but I find it comical that he's here, browseposting among you lot.

[Anonymous No.19255114]

>>19255081
Kevin who?

[Anonymous No.19255128]

Jewish publishing houses publishing brown people and women instead of white men. It's literally that simple.

[Anonymous No.19255131]

>>19255114
>Kevin who?

Hello, newfag.

[Anonymous No.19255139]

>>19251698
Arvo Pärt is very good and underrated.

[Anonymous No.19255145]

>>19251698
John Barth and Herbert Gold are better than McCarthy and Pynchon.

Why Polanski and Kaurismaki?

[Anonymous No.19255155]

>>19255131
Don't gatekeep plz

[Anonymous No.19255251]

>>19251628
Because
>identity politics have replaced artistic merit in the West, leading to a massive decline in quality
>self-publishing has largely removed the gatekeeping done by magazines and traditional routes, leading to large amounts of noise in the sphere
>multimedia advances have led writers to explore other mediums for storytelling, reducing further the chance of a "good writer" showing up with time

[Anonymous No.19255429]

>>19251698
>The concept of genius is flawed, because it gives the impression that there is something that makes those artists inherently superior to other humans, which they are not.
Cringe

[Anonymous No.19255580]

>>19251628

[Anonymous No.19255590]

You have to understand the world to comment on it. And we're at the point where thinking only inspires people to cry for the mods.
You don't deserve literature.

[Anonymous No.19255643]

>>19252609
Young artists have a much harder time ''making it big''. For writers, it's usually not until you are fifty or so that you become truly famous.
And Bach, well, many of his works hadn't even been performed, as you know. But anyway, critical standards change too. The neoclassical age, late XVIII century, was, in my personal view, a little bit rotten, but whatever.
And I am not very familiar with the younger writers. I know Harold Bloom was a serious critic (whether you like him or not, and I often don't) and he praised Joshua Cohen and William Giraldi (who was one of Geoffrey Hill's students). I also know six or seven good young writers from my own language (Portuguese). Writers from other languages, like Valeria Luiselli and Mathias Enard also seem to be good. I haven't really read them, only a few pages here and there. I read very slowly, so I just tend to read and reread the books of my favorite writers. Maybe you could read the new ones and tell /lit/ what you think.
But of course, you also have to ask: who was Borges when he was 40? Who was Pessoa? Who was Beckett? They were all either unknown or so obscure that only a handful of their friends and countrymen knew them. James Joyce, when he turned 40, had only published a fine bildungsroman, a decent book of short-stories and a little book of verse, there was no suggestion he would write a masterpiece such as Ulysses, and even Pound, a few years earlier, had though that Joyce would become only a fine writer of city-life "sketches" and things like that, he didn't think Joyce would write the best novel of the century.

>So much easier to grasp an artist one you have their body of work to hand.

That's true too. But it's also hard to write a masterpiece when you're young. Usually until you're 30 or so you'll be more or less imitating your influences, which doesn't mean you can't write a very fine book, but it won't be groundbreaking in the way Ulysses or Ficciones were.
Of course, we can also ask: where are the Rimbauds? To which all I can say is that our culture has moved somewhat away from the written word, and it's not until later that people start writing, nowadays. I don't think we'll see any Rimbauds. Remember that when Rimbaud was 14 or so he had already mastered Latin and had a great knowledge of French poetry.

>>19255145
Add them to the list, then.
The list is not exhaustive nor is it some kind of ranking.
I haven't read them, though I own a few books by Barth and they look very interesting.

>Why Polanski and Kaurismaki?

Probably because I like them (for a variety of reasons I will not go into) and they came to my head while I was writing the post. I could have mentioned others. You could mention others too. I think it's undeniable that there are many fine filmmakers who are still alive, including, possibly, a few great ones.

[Anonymous No.19255971]

>>19255643
>it's undeniable that there are many fine filmmakers who are still alive
Peter Greenaway, I suppose. Pedro Costa, Bruno Dumont, Carlos Reygadas, Philip Groning, Lisandro Alonso, Philippe Garrel, Philippe Grandrieux, Albert Serra, Michelangelo Frammartino, Leos Carax, Kelly Reichardt, Aleksandr Sokurov, Wim Wenders, Zhangke Jia, Lars Von Trier, Paul Verhoeven, Brian de Palma, Angela Schanelec, Chang-dong Lee, Bob Rafelson, Hong Sang-soo, Edgar Reitz, Jean-Marie Straub, Peter Watkins, Paul Morrissey, Catherine Breillat, Wang Bing, Eugene Green, Terrence Davies, Michael Snow, Carlos Saura. Maybe Terrence Malick, Apichatpong Weerasethankul, and David Lynch, but I'm not a big fan of any of the 3.

[Anonymous No.19256099]

>>19255081
This. It's obvious he's good, maybe not at the level of Cervantes or Dante but he's doing something innovative. The mass of anglo posters cannot appreciate his creative genius.

[Anonymous No.19256108]

>>19256099
WHO THE FUCK IS KEVIN!!!!????

[Anonymous No.19256674]

>>19256108
!KNDY/Ar.iI
His most recent tripcode

This >>19256099 is from http://mundusmillennialis.com/

[Anonymous No.19256703]

This type of stuff is rare anyways, but some of them write for film and even television - the Sopranos is on par with Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.19256812]

>>19256703
>the Sopranos is on par with Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.19257110]

>>19251698
>HEY GUYS! JARED HERE!


But for real, I miss you Jared.