/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1940273]

Hey /lit/
What do you guys think about pending literary movements? Do you think currently there are any Authors making brave attempts at something new?
Pic Related, it's who I had my fingers crossed for awhile back.
Inb4 it's impossible to make anything new.

[Anonymous No.1940276]

Palahniuk and Ellis IMO are the crowned jewels of the Postmodern movement, not saying that theyre the best but they have certainly brought new life into the genre

[Anonymous No.1940282]

I honestly think contemporary fantasy authors represent the inevitable return to sincerity that will hit literary fiction eventually.

[Anonymous No.1940283]

<generic reference to Tao Linn>

[Anonymous No.1940289]

>>1940282
Sincerity?

[Anonymous No.1940290]

>>1940283

I knew he would get brought up on here.
What is his best book?

[Anonymous No.1940294]

>>1940290

Book?

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1940301]

>>1940289
what he means by 'sincerity' is writing that is sincerely sincere rather just writing that is sincerely insincere or insincerely sincere

[Anonymous No.1940304]

>>1940301
Oh yes, 100% all natural organic writing

[Anonymous No.1940305]

>>1940289
Yeah megahomez. Postmodernism is on the way out, slowly though. We are all sick and tired of sarcasm and irony, bitches want sooooul now. I dunno if I agree with the poster that fantasy authors are the closest thing to representin that movement, I feel like DFW is a better example, cause he had all that anxiety of influence against Pynchon. DFW was all postmodern, but he tried to but some sincerity in it, and some people call that metamodernism, which is postmodernist style and aesthetics but with modernist or pre-modernist spirit and meaning, two things the big postmodernists avoided.

Now, I personally think metamodernism is a dying fit of postmodernism, I dunno what comes next but it will be something more different, not just a tweak of the same old things. Beats me what it will be though.

[♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1940311]

humans are such simple creatures

[Anonymous No.1940315]

New Sincerity

[Anonymous No.1940316]

>>1940305

Despite the silly name, I'd back Metamodernism. No style ever dies out, and however they attempt to seperate themselves every literary style fuses elements of itself onto the literary styles that follow, often initialy in the form of an anthithesis.

Captcha: Synthesis.

[Anonymous No.1940325]

>>1940311

lol what a faggot

[Anonymous No.1940328]

>>1940316 anthithesis

so close...

[Anonymous No.1940336]

Look into scandinavian naivism... Like Erlend Loe or Jan kjaerstad. Its the future.

[Anonymous No.1940347]

>>1940305

Soul is just kitsch, and this need just shows the softening of the current generation of readers.
Scared mothers that want to believe in a softer world that can be kind to their children.
I went to williamsburg and it looked like parkslope. Hipsters from the midwest going to organic stores with their kids worried about their diet.
And they want emotions, and they want to believe that their kids will grow in a beautifl world. They say they want to protect them, but in truth, they just want to protect themselves from their anxiety.

What literature needs is no sould, is not cheap humanity (which can be sold by the pound). What it need is some seriously educated writers. Lovers of form and style, people that can take the lessons of postmodernism to the limit and reintegrate them in the western cannon.

Style and form are the dominion of the sublime. And the sublime is painful, is the death of the human and has no kindness for our deformed children.

I wish the new writers, growing up now, would read more mishima and genet.

[Anonymous No.1940349]

>>1940315
>New Sincerity
(pic related)

[Anonymous No.1940384]

>>1940347
I don't think you really get what I meant by soul. I don't mean Twilight, or rom-com movies, or something like that. I mean Ulysses. I mean Victor Hugo, I mean Shakespeare, I mean Dostoyevsky.

Actually, if you want to hear what I'm talking about, look at the text of William Faulkner's drunken Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This was at the height of the first wave of postmodernists, and Faulkner, the last true powerhouse of the early-20th-century Modernists, was not pleased with the lack of soul, strength, and belief in the new movement of literature. Here's what he says:

[Anonymous No.1940386]

>>1940384
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

[Anonymous No.1940388]

>>1940386
Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.


You can agree or disagree that soul should be in literature, or should come back, or is worth anything, but it is important to know what we're all talking about. Soul-as-Twilight is a common misconception.

[Anonymous No.1940393]

>>1940384
I think that you're spot on. In a weird twist of life imitating art, I feel that we're in a moment of history analogous to Hamlet after his sea change: we are done with games, and we are tired of running; the ludic moment is over. and we are chagrined to admit that we are none the wiser for it.

[Anonymous No.1940404]

>>1940393
That is a super solid point and very much like what David Foster Wallce used to say a lot. Something along the lines of "we did all that postering, all the avoiding truth, all that avoiding meaning, and what did it gain us? How did we advance? What have we become, and how is that different or better than before?"

[Anonymous No.1940406]

>>1940388
No I know what you are talking about.

But faulkner could talk about it just because he was the end of an era in which he participated.

Now take a sentence as this:

>It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

But in enduring when the end is in sight and certain there is no honor, there is only the denial of men's end.

There is this:
>He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

And this only brings, today, to kitsch, to abusing old words which have no meaning for us anymore.
There result of this attitude is the talk of the "infnite depth of human spirit and emotions". The sophisticated literature that claims to be capable of finding beauty in the small things and sets as its task the ability to make men wonder.

And that is utter base literature.
Literature that gives not twilight, but saramago, or allende, or coelho.

[Anonymous No.1940407]

>>1940406
(cont...)

I mean can we still talk of love and friendship and take ourselves seriously?
Come on now.

[Anonymous No.1940412]

>>1940404
But the problem is that the truth is that there is no meaning.

We are pieces of meat and blood.

We did the posturing to keep writing, because there was no more substance in the human, while we wanted to keep writing.

If now you want to go beyond the posturing and say the truth pamphlets invoking genocide are the only authentic form of literature that is left.
That is the truth.

[satago110 No.1940424]

I think the next literary movement will be iconic literism. Yup.

Or movie scripts written by the god Captcha.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1940425]

Fun experiment: Change the subject of this discussion from literary texts to furniture, meals, musical instruments or any other object of critical evaluation that doesn't warrant or isn't assigned any more critical investigation than it actually deserves and see if you don't burst out laughing at this drivel

[Anonymous No.1940434]

>>1940425
furniture has no relationship with truth and meaning.

Take a serious political discussion and apply it to cooking and it will still be funny, no matter how serious and intelligent.

[Anonymous No.1940437]

>>1940412
Not the same person, but we are more than the sum of our parts. Bone and flesh that declares "I exist" qualitatively differs from bone and flesh that exist.

[Anonymous No.1940438]

>>1940412

Different poster here. But even if we all agree that life is meaningless... how long can we artists go on saying that? Eventually people will tire of reading books that all amount to "The world is absurd, it has no compassion, life sucks and then you die." Ok. We get the point, life is meaningless. But life goes on nonetheless, and so too must art. Even if life is meaningless, that doesn't mean it can't be beautiful. Even if >>1940407 all friendships are doomed to end, that doesn't mean that they were good, once, even for just one moment in their existence.

[Anonymous No.1940445]

>>1940434

> implying there isn't a core rightness to a well-made chair

Boy, you know nothing of craft.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1940441]

>>1940434
>furniture has no relationship with truth and meaning.
Sure it does bro, my lava lamp reflects genuine insight into the nature of the world for me. Of course, that's not any sort of relationship relevant to critical evaluation, so I guess it's kind of like a literary text in that regard.

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940439]

>>1940425
<<This is the new Food movement of Utter-Realism, stemming from the deeper investigation of the disgusting aspects of quotidian existence. People will do all they can to overtly express the horrors of mealtimes with trash like this.

[Anonymous No.1940444]

Most movements are named after they happen. The exception being postmodernism.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1940448]

Sure, it's a tasty burger.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN

what eternal truths lie in its meaty folds, what did the fry cook intend when he flipped it with his own loving hand

[Anonymous No.1940451]

>>1940448

> implying culinary intent matters

You fucking philistine. The burger speaks for itself.

[Anonymous No.1940452]

That's pretty comical. It's almost like, people in this thread think that writers write because they care about writing, or readers read because they care about literature.

I would hazard a guess that most writers write because they are interested in life, not in literature, and so too with readers. Critics, on the other hand, are a different story, but really now who cares about them?

laughingwriters.jpg

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940454]

>>1940448
SEE Barthes' Mythologies, specifically "Steak and Chips"

We desire the meaty angus beefness because of its sanguinary nature, leading of to revert back to our more atavistic selves, feeding on the flesh and blood of other creatures. Also, red is just so darn pretty...

[Anonymous No.1940456]

I'm not happy about it, but I think Franzen is actually working within the limits of what may become post-postmodernism.

[Anonymous No.1940457]

>>1940452
You've got a point. Criticism is pointless.

[Anonymous No.1940458]

>>1940438

There is no reason to life to go on. We make it go on.
People that are clueless make it go on.
And you keep writing for the intelligent children of those dumb people that decided it was a good idea to condemn someone to life.

[Anonymous No.1940459]

>>1940452
bad writers and bad readers.

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940462]

>>1940457
>>1940452 is not an argument against criticism in general, more like an argument for New Criticism instead of a focus on Authorial intent.

[Anonymous No.1940465]

>>1940437

Maybe not.
Why?
How is the "I exist" different from a baby's scream?

[Anonymous No.1940466]

>>1940457

Criticism is not pointless. Only through critical discourse can we have something called good art. To deny the value of the critic is to deny the value of art itself.

[Anonymous No.1940469]

>>1940448

"It stands mighty, and yet it wilts. It steams, and yet we know it isn't fresh.

In the beefy embrace of the Big Mac, we are confronted by the paradox of self. It contains no real meat -- we know it; we feel it in our bones -- and yet it harkens back to the essence of the burger, in its most primordial, pre-foodstandian form. It seems to stare us starkly in the face; it CHALLENGES us, saying: "Come, ye willing, three steps before the fist of god -- but no further."

There are those, of course, who would call it a work of decadence, or self-indulgence; but to go down that road is to walk the path of madness; to become a squabbling horde of nubian mongrels, scrabbling in the sands, beneath the shadow of a monolith.

I do not understand The Big Mac. I don't think it's meant to be understood. It stands, irregular and wonton, a coarse testament to the times in which we live -- and the crushing weight of destiny, beneath which we all suffer."

-- Kahuna and Kinge, "Monumenta: The Rise and Fall of the Empire Delicious", 1973

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940472]

>>1940469
"Utter-Realism" at its finest. We could really get the ball rolling on this one, guys.

<<Here's the cover pic for the first book to be written about Food's Utter-Realism

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1940471]

>>1940469

[Anonymous No.1940474]

>>1940273
>>1940273
>>1940273


Fucking Pygmy and Snuff were horrible books. I can't believe people like his shitty writing.

[Anonymous No.1940475]

Sup /lit/.

So I just finished my first bag of Grandma Utz, and now I'm looking to dig deeper into the Kettle-Cooked Potato Chip Classics.

Where should I start?

[Anonymous No.1940476]

>>1940474

Agreed. Rant was probably the closest he's ever come to expressing anything meaningful, and even that falls apart into a sprawl of disconnected ideas and juvenile bullshit by the time you're halfway through.

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940486]

>>1940475
Try Raw Cookie Dough. The very core of its rawness stands alone as a symbol for the necessary maturation of our less-developed cognitive powers, yet, at the same time, the way in which Raw Cookie Dough sometimes tastes better than a Cooked Cookie pays homage to the beauty in an undeveloped mind, an untouched land, an untrodden path, and this is an explication of the very real humanistic desire to understand the immature in ourselves, let alone becoming what one may call "Cooked" or, in a simplistic nature, "Growing Up."

[Anonymous No.1940489]

>>1940486

> ask for a Kettle Cooked recommendation
> doughfag butts in AS ALWAYS

Take that shit back to grad-school. We all know the Toasted Breakfast Pasty movement has usurped the cookie's relevance anyway.

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940502]

>>1940489
I understand what you mean, but one must take into account the "Demiurge-ness" of Toasted Breakfast Pastry before considering it a superior interpretation to the Raw Cookie Dough Theorem. When the TBP is at its most mature state, it still can do nothing in itself, it has placed all the key components of its existence into being, yet as it initiates the beginning of its Goodness, it cannot go any further. Contrarily, RCD is, in essence, delicious and prominent in the world of Food at every stage of its existence. It needs not a "Toaster oven" or "Pre-packaged Frosting" to be great.

[Anonymous No.1940511]

What is the Tao Lin of foodages?

[Anonymous No.1940517]

>>1940502

Or it WAS. Now the first thing you see down any Baking Goods aisle are the prepackaged 'cookie dough bites' and other such pandering nonsense. It's all the unique qualities of RCD -- but THEMSELVES pre-packaged as an end-state: thus, ironically, undermining the very thing that made the movement unique.

[Pointman !!+QAUf+RigRX No.1940523]

>>1940511

> Richard Eats
> Eee Eee Eee I'm Hungry
> Nutritional Behavioral Therapy

[Anonymous No.1940526]

>>1940502
>the "Demiurge-ness" of Toasted Breakfast Pastries

[Tuan Jim !Y6d4OyAkDM No.1940545]

>>1940517
Yes, you make a good point, but it seems to me that RCD has merely reached the finality of what Lacan coined as the "Mirror Stage" in which it came to a full-realization of the self, understanding its existence entirely (within all 3 dividends of Self (je, moi, autre (or Id, Ego, Super-Ego))), thus coming to terms with the idea that its existence, or even existence in general, is the same from one piece of Raw Cookie Dough to the other (or Other (for the pun)). In this state of full self-awareness, RCD disregards packaging completely, lending itself to the humans who take no discernible form (Lacan's and Freud's "Gestalt"). While this proves that possibility of a new, ever-changing breed of psyche within Raw Cookie Dough, we must still rely on past example of Cookie Forms to fully understand this development (SEE: Freud's "Wolfman" case study).

[Anonymous No.1940732]

>>1940434
- craft can be transcendent
- cooking IS political, in the sense that choosing where to buy ingredients will have an impact on the economy at large, which subsequently has a political impact (corn subsidies, anyone? monsanto? etc)

[Anonymous No.1940778]

>>1940545

Go to bed, Derrida.

[Anonymous No.1940790]

>>1940282
>contemporary fantasy authors
>anything but mediocrity