Why is the average person’s prose so shit now?

[Anonymous No.19295691]

Compare to pic related, written by a consumptive 19 year old woman over 100 years ago. I would hate to be a historian reading our writing 100 years hence.

[Anonymous No.19295714]

>>19295691
1. she was probably fairly well-educated and well-read
2. she was probably writing in a literary style on purpose, and the popular idea of literary prose has changed a lot
3. a lot of the writing you're thinking of is just shitty messages intended to get a message across as quick as possible. if you read the telegrams from that time they'd seem like shit too

[Anonymous No.19295754]

>>19295714
>she was probably writing in a literary style on purpose
Perhaps but who writes their private diary in a literary way? Other than the autists on this board of course.

[Anonymous No.19295781]

>>19295754
How many people from the 1800s kept a diary? And was the prose that good for the avg person? I'm not sure. There's already a selection problem since we can only read the writing that survives....

[Anonymous No.19295860]

>>19295691
Most people were trash at writing, and many more could not read or write as compared with today. I'm not saying illiteracy was any higher than ten per-cent, but nowadays illiteracy is nearly extinct outside of Somalia, Angola, and other bad places.

Moreover, there are more English speakers today than at any other point in history. But the problem is that the literary art-world consciously selects for garbage tier literature. So much like this guy >>19295781 said that there was a bias in what got preserved back then (towards being good), the kind of stuff that arrives on the shelves at the local Chapters today is also biased (towards being shit).

The bias towards producing shit is a product of the clown-world's basic hatred of anything that challenges their mediocrity and tends to enforce the idea that standards exist.

[Anonymous No.19296135]

>>19295860
>but nowadays illiteracy is nearly extinct outside of Somalia, Angola, and other bad places.
look up illiteracy rates in america lmao

[Anonymous No.19296155]

>>19296135
>And other bad places
I did not post an exhaustive list

[Anonymous No.19296173]

>>19295691
>tfw you'll never seduce a consumptive 19 year old frail princess
Damn you jewish doctors

[Anonymous No.19296180]

Wealthy people used to spend a fuck ton of people just writing letters. Some women especially literally spent all afternoon doing this. Combine this with an education that prioritizes tightly controlled prose and you'll get enough examples to make it feel like everyone was a wordsmith. Writing has a very different purpose in modern life.

[Anonymous No.19296239]

>>19295691
The average person back then had very basic reading and writing skills, your premise is faulty.

[Anonymous No.19296324]

>>19296173
Those consumptive eyes man, the illustration in the OP is a perfect example, they are so fucking enchanting.
>Consumptive's Eyes, also known as sickbed eyes, are a secondary symptom of tuberculosis and some other respiratory illnesses. They became closely associated with the notion of consumption as a good or romantic death in the 19th century. Tuberculosis sufferers, without the benefit of chemical sedation, struggle with restful sleep, often sleeping less than five hours per night due to coughing fits and discomfort. This resulted in telltale dark circles, especially pronounced against the typically pale skin of a TB patient. In many patients, the lower portion of the whites of the eyes would become more visible, another symptom of chronic sleep deprivation. An inability to keep food down gave rise to a gaunt face, heightening the effect and making the eyes seem larger. The final ingredient was toxaemia, or blood poisoning, which, in its effects on the brain and eyes, results in a languid, glossy gaze and expression, in which artists often saw a saintly detachment. The neurological effects of TB often led to a richer dream life, the lowering of inhibitions, and a heightened emotional sensitivity leading to a belief that it was disease ideal for those of artistic temperament. Consumptive's Eyes were immortalized by John Singer Sargent when he painted Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. Chronically ill with what might have been tuberculosis, Sargent paid special attention to her eyes, refusing her husband's request to make her look healthier and instead rendering in detail the quintessential look of a consumptive woman.

[Anonymous No.19296351]

>>19295691
>Why is the average person’s prose so shit now?
Because they are lax in their speech and incapable of speaking and therefore composing musically, much less with thoughtful deliberation incautiously, nearly stream-of-consciousness slippage direct from the gaping maw of their appetites.

[Anonymous No.19297110]

>>19295781
There are heaps of diaries and accounts written by random people in the 19th and 20th century that are good literature in their own right.

[Anonymous No.19297125]

>>19296351
You need to learn that improper register and undisciplined mixing of registers does not make for good prose and is certainly not good prose in and of itself.

[Anonymous No.19297255]

>>19295691
The average person's prose is better now than it was then because the literacy rates in 1890 still weren't up to snuff. Of the literates though, the literature they read was undoubtedly higher quality, since copying was still at least somewhat troublesome. Plus it was a very cheap and entertaining past time, I would imagine.

[Anonymous No.19297292]

>>19295691
The average person's prose is better now because the average person back then was probably illiterate and uneducated. But I think switching from letters to phones damaged people's ability to write. You don't have to think about what you write anymore, you don't have to write long messages and you don't have to force yourself to write something beautiful because messages are instant and common unlike letters.

[Anonymous No.19298251]

>>19297110
Yep. I think a lot of it comes down to people dedicating more time to writing.

[Anonymous No.19298261]

>>19295691
She's reading constantly becasue she's sick in bed, and she's subconsciously mimicking the quality of what she's reading in her writing. Don't tel me you don't do that?

[Anonymous No.19298320]

>>19295691
it do be like that tho.

[Anonymous No.19298341]

>>19295754
>Other than the autists on this board of course.
Be content with this board, anon, this is the closest to men of culture and taste you will ever get.

[Anonymous No.19298364]

>>19296324
TB of course kills extremely slow, and therefore gives patients a long time to think about the kinds of fatal subjects that motivated the existentialists. So long story short, we owe the existence of arthoes to a disease.

[Anonymous No.19298499]

>>19298364
>owe the existence of arthoes to a disease.
Fitting, since they are a disease.

[Anonymous No.19298773]

>>19296324
It's all of it. The swollen, brooding eyes. The fragile white skin. The slim and sickly body. The morose disposition. The feeble sensuality of a woman bound to her bedroom. The ripe smell of death lingering over it all.

There's nothing sexier than a woman on her death bed.

[Anonymous No.19298829]

It’s because we speak like idiots and prose has been infected by realism.

[Anonymous No.19299035]

>>19298773
Holy based.

[Anonymous No.19299171]

>>19295691
>I would hate to be a historian reading our writing 100 years hence.
Yes, prose has clearly declined among all classes, including my own — please ignore the cope in this thread pretending it is normal.
t. Historian

[Anonymous No.19299214]

American cultural dominance with its admiration of ease, casualness and non-committance.

Moreover, people still can and some do write like the girl in the picture. If you saw that excerpt in a Reddit post format about COVID you'd find it pretentious and very embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.19299342]

>>19295691
>average person
you answered your own question

[Anonymous No.19300242]

>>19298773
Stop I can only get so erect.

[Anonymous No.19300393]

>>19295691
>TO THE WINDOOOOOWWWWW
>TO THE WALL

[Anonymous No.19300457]

what’s the original OP drawing?

[Anonymous No.19300571]

>>19300457
Looks like one of Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations

[Anonymous No.19300619]

>>19300457
>>19300571
Found the full illustration, too

[Anonymous No.19300673]

>>19296324
>>19298773
holy fuck is this wrong, but holy hell, is it erotic!

[Anonymous No.19300828]

>>19300619
>>19300571
well spotted anon, though I will note that whoever made the OP picture ("Voices Through Time", I guess) was pretty on the ball. Gibson was a commercial artist and was not above reusing his work via tracing, and the "When Women Are Jurors" sketch was in fact a composite (in part) of his series of "Pretty Nasties" - sketches from life in which he drew women who were in emotional distress (or his actress friends feigning it), in order to prove to his critics that he was capable of drawing more than "porcelain dolls." Needless to say, the individual sketches were never run, as they were meant for circulation among the east coast's critical circle and for his own reference. The girl we see in the OP and in the Jurors composite was sketched in April 1911 and hastily labeled by Gibson as "Consumptive little thing, dressed for travel to the sanitarium. Poor prognosis." The girl was almost certainly a friend of Gibson's niece, as he was visiting her at the time. I un-ironically work at the school to which Gibson's artistic estate was gifted, this shit is catnip to me. Most of the "Pretty Nasties" only survive in his sketchbooks but another one was developed into a final work: "Newly Widowed" (attached)

[Anonymous No.19300897]

>>19300619
>>19300571
This interests me. Funnily enough I had heard of Gibson girls, but I did not know that there was an artist by the name of Gibson responsible for drawing said girls.

As an artist myself I now want to study this style. It seems to fit with what I do already, it's just way better

[Anonymous No.19300976]

>>19300828
Years ago I visited a female friend from college who was sick with a really bad fever, to give her things and assignments she had missed out on in class.
She opened the door in her pajamas and no makeup. She wasn't nearly as attractive as my girlfriend but she was a milky pale type with a dainty face, cerulean eyes and hair of a pale blonde, and this time she was flushed and beaded with sweat which I thought looked absolutely erotic on her. Having probably just gotten out of bed to open the door, she had her loose pajamas top with a few too many buttons undone, untidy enough that one side of the collar was sliding off her neck toward her shoulder. She was a funny country type with a thick accent peppered with colorful swearing, and she had this foxy, clever way of staring at you while talking, that this time however was drooping with the lethargy of the flu and made her look vaguely horny, so I couldn't resist and while she went on about classes and other nonsense, my mind went on a flight of fantasy where she'd start dirty talking me and then work my cock like in the most lurid of pornos. No infidelity happened but fuck me if I wasn't diamonds.

[Anonymous No.19301023]

>>19300828
>I un-ironically work at the school to which Gibson's artistic estate was gifted, this shit is catnip to me. Most of the "Pretty Nasties" only survive in his sketchbooks
You lucky fucker. Are you able to access those sketches and look at them whenever?

I bought a few of his art books on ebay for a pretty good price. So many of his artworks aren't even scanned and uploaded to the internet(at least that I can find) and those that have been are in fucking horrible quality.

[Anonymous No.19301070]

>>19295691
I bet you some NLP bot is being fed these cheap prose threads

[Anonymous No.19301086]

>>19301070
Except there’s no prose in this thread except the image in the op

[Anonymous No.19301109]

>>19301086
what about my horny story from college?

[Anonymous No.19301119]

>>19301109
no cap? frfr tho bussin

[Anonymous No.19301126]

>>19301119
can you translate from ebonics?

[Anonymous No.19301145]

>>19295691
Thread theme, and also a beautiful example of consumptive prose, "Wild Mountain Thyme"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okOtgg0scPs
Composed by a consumptive Scottish weaver who committed suicide by drowning, age 36, in 1810.

[Anonymous No.19301181]

>>19300897
Good for you anon

[Anonymous No.19301225]

>>19295781
probably a lot, i remember reading some academic article that after the protestant reformation people were obsessed with them

[Anonymous No.19301230]

>>19296324
I should sleep less to feel more then?

[Anonymous No.19301240]

>>19300571
>>19300619
low key anime as fuck

[Anonymous No.19301247]

>>19295860
>but nowadays illiteracy is nearly extinct outside of Somalia, Angola, and other bad places.

[Anonymous No.19301419]

>>19301230
With toxaemia and the constant threat of death you aren’t going to get the full effect.

[Anonymous No.19301427]

>>19301419
Without, I mean. You’ll be tired but you won’t be vaguely high like TB sufferers were.

[Anonymous No.19301710]

>>19301247
>Detroit
I said "and other bad places"

[Anonymous No.19301907]

This is just a series of melodramatic cliches strung together. And many elites are probably still writing in this style in diaries or blogposts, probably while also trying to inject quirky humour into it. That you think this is good writing speaks more about you than society.

[Anonymous No.19301916]

>>19301907
It’s not melodrama if the stakes are literally life and death. This is an appropriate level of drama for literally dying from TB. Melodrama would be composing something like to over something like getting romantically rejected, etc.

[Anonymous No.19301962]

>>19301916
You can say the same shit about all those depression or junkie or terminal illness books read that tritely even if "the stakes are life and death". It is all melodramatically expressed and although one can empathize with the situation still makes for bad literature.

[Anonymous No.19302022]

>>19301962
Since you've yet to actually advance an argument other than 'muh cliches' lets examine her prose on its merits. Perhaps one of the best lines we get right at the start, silly is such an odd way to describe what she's experiencing, indeed it's the opposite of melodrama, and it speaks to a sad familiarity with the symptoms she is enduring. She negates her own statement about not sleeping, an artifact of this being a diary, but also a window into the fuzzy, timeless state of mind she is in. She mocks herself and her suicidal thoughts and then hits us with "Oh, no, I haven't the nerve." I really like how she places commas (and exclamation points, which are used largely for irony). We might form that sentence, 'oh no, I haven't the nerve' but 'oh, no, I haven't the nerve' reads differently, again, she dismisses herself, and the extra comma really adds to our sense that she is pouring her thoughts onto the page and it's a wry realization, as if she would say it with a soft sigh. The murderess line does border on melodrama, but it's also highly evocative and dappled is such a lovely word-her writing generally is very musical and euphonic.

For the period it's very good. Yes if you wrote it today it would be seen as affecting an outdated style and word choice, but it was written over a hundred years ago, and its sense of meter and proto-stream of consciousness style hold up well.

[Anonymous No.19302123]

>>19301240
If you like Gibson you should check out Leyendecker

[Anonymous No.19302130]

>>19295860
>nowadays illiteracy is nearly extinct outside of Somalia, Angola, and other bad places.
There is something called functional illiteracy which consists in being able to physically read but not to analytically understand what is being read. And like 30% of Western people are functionally illiterate.

[Anonymous No.19302200]

>>19295691
What's so impressive about this? There are zero complex sentences. Reads incredibly basic.

[Anonymous No.19302214]

>>19295754
>Perhaps but who writes their private diary in a literary way?
Well I—
>Other than the autists on this board of course.
Oh

[Anonymous No.19303741]

>>19298773

[Anonymous No.19303787]

>>19302022
Dealing with dark subjects in a light manner and self-effacing suffering is the most bog-standard of moves (see Dickinson, Plath), nor are the actual images particularly novel.

>She negates her own statement about not sleeping, an artifact of this being a diary, but also a window into the fuzzy, timeless state of mind she is in.

This is actually stream-of-consciousness analysis that means nothing.

>She mocks herself and her suicidal thoughts and then hits us with "Oh, no, I haven't the nerve." I really like how she places commas (and exclamation points, which are used largely for irony). We might form that sentence, 'oh no, I haven't the nerve' but 'oh, no, I haven't the nerve' reads differently, again, she dismisses herself, and the extra comma really adds to our sense that she is pouring her thoughts onto the page and it's a wry realization, as if she would say it with a soft sigh.

Other than the punctuation this is not even an argument for prose, just talking about what is going on in an overblown manner.

>also highly evocative and dappled is such a lovely word-her writing generally is very musical and euphonic.

The image is a gothic cliche. The rest is subjective meaninglessness. There is no argument, only bland emotionality.

[Anonymous No.19303887]

>>19303787
The energy you’re dedicating to denigrating the writing of a dead 19 year old girl is further proof that this board hates all women.

[Anonymous No.19303901]

>>19302200
Plebs think turgidity + antiquated vocab = quality. Not one could tell good prose from this era from bad prose because they get excited about the vernacular and prolix conventions.

[Anonymous No.19303913]

>>19301962
>still makes for bad literature.
Tell me your favorite book right now or you're a coward.

[Anonymous No.19303920]

>>19295691
people read more, and what they read was more challenging than the 5th grade prose of modern popular literature, so of course that would reflect in their own writing.

[Anonymous No.19303922]

literature is not a performance art

[Anonymous No.19303979]

>>19295781

>he doesn't write a literary journal

I thought everyone did it this way