/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19404630]

Why do women write like this? I really wanted to give this one a go, as I rarely read books by women, but it's just so fucking horribly painful.
Here's an excerpt from page 137 where I gave up reading any further.
>She sighed, and a second sigh gave it a funny echo.
>Confused, she shook her face. It must have been a trick of the straps, or the way the device fit around her forehead. It could've been her hair, brushing against the exterior. It might've been her boots, scraping unexpectedly against a jagget paving stone. The sound could've come from anywhere. It was so quiet, anyway. Hardly a sound at all, really.
>Her feet wouldn't move. Neither would her arms, or her hands, locked around the rifle. Even her neck would barely turn, lest she recreate the noise, or fail to. The only thing worse than hearing it again would be hearing it again and knowing it hadn't come from her own careful movements.
>So slowly that even her long coat didn't tap itself against her legs, Briar retreated, feeling with her heels, praying that there was nothing behind her. Her heel found a curb, and stopped there.
>She stepped up onto it.
>The sound came again. There was a whistle to it, and a moan. It was almost a hiss, and it could've been a strangled gasp. Above all, it was quiet, and it seemed to have no source.
>It whispered.
>Briar tried to place the sound, and she decided, now that she'd heard it again and could be certain she hadn't it imagined it, that it came from somewhere to her left, down toward the wall. It was coming from the street stalls where nothing had been bought or sold in almost sixteen years.
>The whisper rose to a hum, and then stopped.
>Briar stopped too--or she would have, if she hadn't already. etc...

Why do they write like this? I love Le Guin. I even enjoyed Franskenstein. But I haven't read a book written less than 40 years ago by a woman that I could get through. What gives?
Suggestions for competent, modern female writers are appreciated.

[Anonymous No.19404653]

>>19404630
The absolute state of roastie lit

[Anonymous No.19404784]

If you're a typically male guy don't read female authors they are never worth it, even the best of the best are just average compared to male writers

[Anonymous No.19404805]

>>19404784
Still. I made through Ready Player One. You'd think I could make it through at least one book written by a woman.

[Anonymous No.19405283]

>>19404805
Read Iris Chang.

[Anonymous No.19405307]

>>19404630
You can tell how bad it's gonna be just by the name and the cover lmao

[Anonymous No.19405370]

it reads exactly like bad fanfiction. I'm not sure who this is, but I'm willing to bet that she got her start on fanfiction.net. Loads of modern writers do.

[Anonymous No.19405413]

>>19404630
>genre
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Hunter's Oath/Hunter's Death/The Sun Sword by Michelle West
The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman
Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

>literary
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

[Anonymous No.19405471]

>>19405413
The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun is also good.

[Anonymous No.19405493]

>>19404630
It's completely inane, now let me tell you a story about the Contessa:

The Contessa was a famous and quite wealthy eccentric. She was also a devotee of fashion and her eccentricities bled quite frequently into the latter. For an upcoming party she devised the idea of wearing a style of dress that it had never occurred to anyone to design before and, what's more, that would and could only be unique to her. This contessa was a woman over forty, buxom and voluptuous, with a prominent and well formed derriere--though her face was full of freckles. Then one day while looking in the mirror, after having just made use of the commode, it hit her: she asked her private tailor to fashion for her a dress imprinted with a granular pattern that exactly mimicked her anus and no other: it'd be like a leopard print dress, if the print was three dimensional and made of taffeta and based off of a three dimensional mold of her rectum (the only variance would be the color, a neutral cross between white and pink with perhaps a hint of khaki).

The day of the soiree she wore the dress (with matching color suede shoes and no underwear underneath to add, secretly, to the irony) to great aplomb. Today is my "inside-out day," she declared, "what's normally concealed is now revealed, and what we normally show shall be set aside for the morrow; come and touch, don't be hesitant, especially you gentlemen. Even though I'm inerrantly, almost monastically, celibate tonight you can touch and caress my dress and thereby have a feel of what not even by old stable of lovers ever had the audacity (or embarrassment) to touch. Mind you though, make sure your hands are clean, I don't want the slightest smudge or stain on my new anus print dress!"

[Anonymous No.19405525]

>>19405493
>Making a story about an anus dress infinitely more interesting than a bestselling steam punk adventure novel

Also, reading on the back, this apparently won "the locus award for best science fiction novel."
What the actual fuck is happening

[Anonymous No.19405604]

>>19404630
I feel like there’s a lot of context missing from this passage. The intention is obviously to build tension— The girl is obviously being followed by something. There’s some decent things about it too, like the occasional short, punchy sentence or the fact that it’s clearly intentionally withholding information. The biggest problem is that it feels some what repetitive— You could trim it down significantly and achieve the same effect. It’s alright, but I couldn’t fully assess it unless I read it in context.

I will say it reeks of someone who got all their writing advice from English teachers though. This is the kind of writing that would get an “A” in a high school English class.

>>19405493
This is pretty great though. Humourous, to the point and easy to digest.

[Anonymous No.19405628]

>>19405604
You can have my copy and read it for yourself.
This passage is representative of the entire book. At least the 138 pages I managed to read. Some parts are potentially worse, like when she has a fight with her son and it just goes on and on and on and on. Not because of the fight itself, just her constant thinking about the fight she's having.
In this novel, subtext apparently equals a characters thoughts

[Anonymous No.19405699]

Women are psychologically designed to view themselves as innately valuable and thus "valid," because the evolutionary purpose of their psychology is to promote reproductive fitness, and they aren't meant to waste time and resources soul-searching, because that would be redundant. They are already ready to make babies at 13, they don't need to make their directorial debut or make it big in coal before earning the right to reproduction.

Fundamentally, from a reproductive standpoint, a woman's purpose in life is to tap her foot impatiently while men who have already made THEMSELVES valuable offer this value to her. A woman who sees herself as "just another person who needs to prove herself," like men do, would be inefficient at selecting one of the men to fuck her sex hole, and inciting the men to compete amongst themselves for this gift.

To a woman's instincts, the only guaranteed important facts of reality are:
>There are men in the world (who all want my hole by default)
>I must select the best one
There could be one cavewoman in the world and fifty cavemen, or one woman and ten billion intergalactic spacemen with superpowers. At base, a woman needs to be able to look at the heap of n men, however big and however its individual members are constituted hierarchically, and say: "Only ONE of you losers deserves THIIIIIS! *points at pussy*"

The necessary consequence is that achievement and ability, in women, are untethered from any necessity. They can achieve whatever they want, or fail to, and it's merely incidental either way. Men would want to fuck the last cavewoman on earth if she were mentally retarded or if she were Emily Dickinson.

But what makes men great is that grim necessity (failure to become valuable = no sex) governs their value. So they construct hierarchies, social systems, and even international rules of war and government as a means of ranking and determining objectively who the best men are. Every male struggle is a real struggle because failure means valuelessness and anonymity. Every male failure has the specter of a million years of "lmao why would I ever let you fuck THIIIIIS *points to pussy* if you didn't even have the biggest pumpkin at the harvest festival?" primeval caveman rejections hovering over it.

When women attempt to enter into male institutions and hierarchies, men don't know what to do with it, because women are the object for which one competes, not fellow competitors. So there is a kind of sad and weird feeling when women compete in male society for male prizes, even if men are now so deeply ensconced and enmeshed in tens of thousands of years of culture that they can't quite express it.

[Anonymous No.19405701]

>>19405699
Men are also afraid of upsetting women, naturally, who are still the pussy sex gatekeepers, so it's still a primordial instinct of men to be "nice" and "supportive" when a woman puts on a pair of trousers and says "Oi, look at me guv, I'm wroitin' a book! Dat makes me an author, it does!" With his mixture of confusion ("why is one of the prizes competing in the contest for prizes?") and natural deference ("I hope she sits on my penis, I had better not contradict her"), the man can only clap and say "Yes! That makes you an author! Yes, what you said!" He even sort of believes it himself if he keeps doing it enough.

Meanwhile, women psychotically, lividly hate each other and express this by "supporting" each other in accumulating more male-attracting fashion accessories (academic degrees, public recognition, success, e.g.), because the worst way a woman can lose to another woman is to be visibly jealous of her.

When trying to achieve things and distinguish themselves, women are thus emptily encouraged by confused and horny men on one side, by "you go girl!" hollow support from other women who secretly despise them on the other side. Completely absent is the actual essence of human achievement: inner drive for recognition, as checked against outer obstacles, in the form of jealous competitors who are also seeking the same scarce resource, recognition.

At best, a talented woman can ignore the hollow recognition of horny men and jealous women and simply channel her talent into something objectively good. But she will always be hobbled and limited by the lack of real feedback from a jealous and incredulous world, against which she can test herself and grow.

As a result, if you take a million innately talented and driven men and follow them over a lifetime, they will produce a natural pyramid of achievement, with a few rare unique geniuses at the peak like Shakespeare and Plato, descending ranks of titanic but sub-Shakespearean genius beneath that shading into merely "great" and then "good" and then the mediocrity of failed and fizzled genius, and beneath that, the ranks of unfortunates who burned themselves out or died or otherwise failed to achieve recognition of any kind.

[Anonymous No.19405708]

>>19405701
But if you take a million innately talented and driven women and follow the courses of their lives, the whole heap together probably has a 0.0001% of producing a Shakespeare level talent (which is why there probably aren't any). You may find find one or two Dickinsons, and a handful of neurotic and mentally ill Brontes (because their genius never flowed into channels and dialectical struggles well suited to it and prepared by prior genius, as happens to most men), and a giant heap of mediocre whores writhing in a big smelly pile at the bottom, who are somehow also the loudest and most full of themselves when it comes to demanding recognition.

This lady is from the whore pile. She probably has as much innate talent as an adolescent male who should receive a slap on the back and intra-familial "You could be a writer some day, Peter!" encouragements. Instead she rode a series of boners and dumbly clapping men and sublimatedly jealous women's blandishments to mediocrity. She has no sense of whether she has really succeeded or failed, because she has only empty pseudo-accolades, like the fact that she got published and a shelf full of Hugo awards (AKA gold stars from the teacher, A's for effort, participation trophies). She will never even make it to the Bronte tier of the woman pyramid because she has no reason to be neurotic or separate herself from the fool's gold of her empty accomplishments.

The only way to destroy the cycle of mediocrity is to raise daughters who AT LEAST start at the Bronte level by default by making them neurotic and teaching them to have a paranoid, borderline schizophrenic fear of hollow support from both men and women. After a thousand years of this we will have our first female Plato, and I hope she will be hot.

[Anonymous No.19405731]

>>19405708
Beautiful, anon
I'm gonna read Wuthering Heights after my current read, just for you

[Anonymous No.19405799]

In the past 40 years you're going to struggle to find good writing across both genders. I think there has been a decline within literature in general and I don't think men have given a good account of themsleves either, but go back another 40 and there are some great female writers like Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Carson McCullers who are absolutely worth reading. And also, I don't know where you found that book, but based on the cover I could have told you it was bad lol.

>>19405699
>>19405701
>>19405708
mental

[Anonymous No.19405966]

>>19405699
>lmao why would I ever let you fuck THIIIIIS *points to pussy* if you didn't even have the biggest pumpkin at the harvest festival?"
based

[Anonymous No.19405980]

>>19405799
>mental
Not an argument, though (not even him btw)

I'm going to sleep now, see you in 7 hours

[Anonymous No.19406002]

>>19405471
>The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun is also good.
Is it an autobiography?

[Anonymous No.19406013]

>>19405699
Amazing

[Anonymous No.19406014]

>>19405708
>>19405701
>>19405699
I don't know what is worse, how bitter this sounds, or that it still might have a point.
Books for internalizing this without turning into an incel schizo?

[Anonymous No.19406027]

>>19406014
They are 100% correct.

>how bitter this sounds
>t. "the specter of a million years of "lmao why would I ever let you fuck THIIIIIS *points to pussy* if you didn't even have the biggest pumpkin at the harvest festival?"

[Anonymous No.19406173]

>>19404630
this kind of writing comes from having a literary diet of nonstop YA content. reading YA actually retards you. it's like guys who overdose on anime and then can't figure out how to approach women IRL because they don't fit into a trope archetype and there isn't a culture festival or onsen episode to help them get an opportunity to trip into their boobs. YA is the same shit for the other gender. they're mostly power fantasies for a bland basic bitch to self-insert into, in modern times.

[Anonymous No.19406182]

>>19405283
>In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians.
>This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many

I don't read fantasy, though.

[Anonymous No.19406186]

>>19405413
>Normal People by Sally Rooney
get off the internet, sally, you jewish whore.

[Anonymous No.19406247]

>>19406186
Have you read the book yourself?

[Anonymous No.19406263]

>>19406247
even if i were to read it, i would pirate it. you won't get sales here. begone, nepotist.

[Anonymous No.19406285]

>>19406263
Go crazy and pirate it then bud, but stop talking shit about an author you can't speak about.

[Anonymous No.19406467]

>>19406285
i'll read it for the purposes of increasing the accuracy of my shitposts then. see you in 3 hours you lousy phony.

[Anonymous No.19407307]

>>19406467
So what did you think about it?

[Anonymous No.19408637]

>>19407307
Bump

[Anonymous No.19408900]

>>19404784
I liked Frankenstein. That was writen by a woman, right?

[Anonymous No.19409170]

>>19405699
>>19405701
>>19405799

High IQ analysis, although not the highest, because it's objective. If you'd swap the descriptions of women into descriptions of femininity and vice versa for men an understanding of personhood would emerge. Writings like these sound the death knell for Darwinism, at least in my mind. Really interesting time to be alive.

>>19405708
Yes, you are missing that quality.

[Anonymous No.19409181]

>>19409170
Got it in the unintended order
>>19405708
>>19405799

[Anonymous No.19409182]

>>19404630
>I love Le Guin. I even enjoyed Franskenstein. But I haven't read a book written less than 40 years ago by a woman that I could get through. What gives?
Maybe you shouldnt buy bottom of the barrel genre fiction and expect it to be good. Youre retarded

[Anonymous No.19409185]

>>19409181
Doesn't make any less sense desu

[Anonymous No.19409192]

>>19409170
>Writings like these sound the death knell for Darwinism, at least in my mind
clearly a very small one.. what the fuck are you talking about

[Anonymous No.19409208]

>>19409192
Cool argument, hot-head. You can't give a Darwinian account of mentation and it reduces behaviour into adaptations.

[Anonymous No.19409213]

>>19409208
You're one of those people who talks a tonne but says nothing. Chatting absolute shit.

[Anonymous No.19409221]

>>19404630
Percy wrote Frankenstein

[Anonymous No.19409226]

>>19409208
youre dumb brody, stop playing smart on lit

[Anonymous No.19409229]

>>19409213
If woman bad, you bad, because you don't see human. La comprension?

[Anonymous No.19409233]

>>19409229
What’s this to do with darwin

[Anonymous No.19409235]

>>19409226
What the hell is a brody?

[Anonymous No.19409254]

>>19409233
The dude is right in terms of Darwinian logic. He is wrong in terms of capturing the meaning of human personality. The image is about confirmation bias. You reduce the world when you pay attention.

[Anonymous No.19409267]

>>19409254
this nothing to do with darwin, yeah? evolution im talking

[Anonymous No.19409277]

>>19409267
I didn't say that. A question isn't an assertion. You should know this.

[Anonymous No.19409296]

>>19409226
>>19409235
A bro, but with feminine qualities? Lmao

[Anonymous No.19409822]

>>19405413
Can someone filter these for me?
I'm having a hard time believing all 13 suggestions are paper worthy

[Anonymous No.19410621]

>>19409822
I've only read Normal People by Sally Rooney on that list and I think its worth a read.

[Anonymous No.19410755]

>>19408900
>That was writen by a woman, right?
Ahahah...yeah, sure, let's go with that lol

[Anonymous No.19410990]

>>19404630
Ok I seem to be the only actual girl on this thread let me give you my thoughts.

Most of what I read falls into male-written lit from the 1850s-present and female written-lit from 1850s-1960s with the rare contemporary female author (here, I'll give you some of the good ones).
>Ali Smith, Katharina Volckmer, Olga Tokarczuk, Hilary Mantel (questionable), and maybe Mary Oliver
The list get much better the farther back you go:
>Brontes, Shelley, Woolf, Elliot, Lessing

One of the reasons I attribute to femlit being bad is because most women have some literary talent (however poor, they can get words on page with a dedication and low quality standard that dwarfs that of any man). And while women are great at writing trash (diaries, romances, YA, etc), women are also great at reading trash and the market for this pulp is insane (especially now). It used to be that you should be ashamed of harlequin romances but now they're being peddled on Knopf's instagram page. I wont get hung up on book-tok cause that's a whole other beast.

But to answer your questions:
>Women write like this because they can and it sells, why would you stop doing something that makes you money and strokes your ego?
There are plenty of competent female authors out there but alas they are buried under much more trivial pulp than male authors.

[Anonymous No.19410994]

>>19410990
post feet

[Anonymous No.19411046]

>>19410994
No

[Anonymous No.19411063]

>>19411046
then i'm taking away women's suffrage

[Anonymous No.19411070]

>>19410990
>My opinion is more valuable because I'm a girl, so let me start with that
Shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.19411071]

>>19410990
>There are plenty of competent female authors out there but alas they are buried under much more trivial pulp than male authors.
Any suggestions?warsa

[Anonymous No.19411099]

>>19411063
Please do I resent the fact that I have to work for a living. Women had it so good (housekeep,cook,read,relax,create a loving home) and we gave it all up.

[Anonymous No.19411110]

>>19411099
Larp detected

[Anonymous No.19411131]

>>19411071
>Any suggestions?warsa
I put some in there. If you want a general rule don't read American or Candian lit by women. That should cull most of the trash but you might miss some good stuff. Some UK stuff is all right but where its really at is eastern europe, latin america, japan.

[Anonymous No.19411147]

>>19404784
yep, you learn by experience, women, jews, and religious people. Avoid at all cost

[Anonymous No.19411237]

>>19411110
Na I'm just fw you

[Anonymous No.19411316]

>>19411237
show elbow

[Anonymous No.19411675]

>>19409822
Piranesi is by the same author as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Piranesi is shorter though, and it was worth my time.

[Anonymous No.19411955]

Read pic-related. One of the greatest novels I have ever read and it's by a woman. The integration of Victorian prose and poetry with modern anxieties is some of the most seamless writing I have ever witnessed.

[Anonymous No.19412018]

>>19410990
>actual girl

[Anonymous No.19412173]

I don't know if the first half of the 20th century counts as modern but Pearl S. Buck is a good female writer, start with "The Good Earth".

[Anonymous No.19412202]

>>19410990
the best part is none of those are selfies and they all got some simp to stand there taking retarded photos of them holding a stack of YA books at age 27 while the only thing on their resume is starbucks.

[Anonymous No.19412324]

>>19405413
>no Ursula
Fag.
these are all literalwhos

[Anonymous No.19412342]

>>19412324
They're only 'literalwhos' to you because you have not read enough. Read more.

[Anonymous No.19412359]

>>19410990
shoo shoo tranny

[Anonymous No.19412366]

>>19412342
>he thinks people on /lit/ read
NGMI

[Anonymous No.19412418]

>>19410990
>Ok I seem to be the only actual girl on this thread let me give you my thoughts
No.

[Anonymous No.19412672]

>>19406182
I’ve been to Nanjing and heard this story, although it wasn’t Americans who offered their embassy up to shelter refugees, nor any of the European ‘Allies’

[Anonymous No.19412716]

>>19412672
chinese have done worse to other chinese than japanese ever did.
koreans did worse to koreans than japanese ever did.
it's just cope that they're an inferior race and lost a war. comfort women was a hoax. nanjing was a hoax.

[Anonymous No.19412994]

>>19405493
Did you just come up with this?

[Anonymous No.19413020]

>>19412324
OP specified the last 40 years. Since Ursula's most famous books are from the 60s I didn't think to include Earthsea even though it goes into the 90s and 2000s.

[Anonymous No.19413101]

>>19404784
>they are never worth it
How dare you? Rooneychads assemble!