/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19616241]

Does good literature require a certain time and place to be produced? Otherwise why did literature our age get banal and unsophisticated after continuous positive development until the 20th century?

[Anonymous No.19616256]

>>19616241
We dropped in spirituality levels so our ethics and universal relatability fell.

[Anonymous No.19617506]

For example; Christian Scotland gave us Sir Walter Scott, whereas post Christian Scotland gave us Irving Welsh. Progress works in mysterious ways, don't ya think?

[Anonymous No.19618069]

Try reading Houellebecq. Not all contemporary literature is banal

[Anonymous No.19618077]

>>19618069
mopey depressing is stuff is sentimental adjacent which is to say cheap and insignificant

[Anonymous No.19618103]

>>19618077
captures the malaise of our times perfectly though

[Anonymous No.19618120]

Certain ways of thinking. Great writing requires a massive level of integration, a tremendous depth and breadth of vision that makes connections between many widely disparate things and all to a very few profound, universal truths. This cannot be done by people who think that everything is subjective and nothing means anything. Analysis, interrogation, self-referentiality, sarcasm, deconstruction, are modes of thought inimical to the creation of serious art.

[Anonymous No.19618382]

>>19618120
> Analysis, interrogation, self-referentiality, sarcasm, deconstruction, are modes of thought inimical to the creation of serious art.
Well written post but your opinion is trash

[Anonymous No.19618414]

>>19618382

[Anonymous No.19618475]

>>19616241
Modern publishing standards are inimical to the creation of art. Publishers have hit upon specific sets (sets, because the standard varies by things like genre) of qualities that make a book appealing to an audience. These standards tend towards accessibility and the straightforwardly entertaining. Prose needs to be as easy to read as possible, and characters need to be easy to understand and like. It crowds out any authentic expression that risks alienating an audience

[Anonymous No.19618506]

>>19618120
laughably shallow and naive take

[Anonymous No.19618529]

>>19618506
Very profound.

[Anonymous No.19618612]

>>19618529
Cherry picking what fits your narrative of muh-destruction-of-western-society surely makes for a compelling argument

[Anonymous No.19618689]

>>19618612
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that these are exceptions that go against the general trend? Was there something happening in art other than analyzing art down into constituent parts of endlessly decreasing size, or taking pieces of older, more meaningful works and remixing them? I'm struggling to think of any counter examples.

[Anonymous No.19618711]

>>19616241
>Does good literature require a certain time and place to be produced?
No
>Otherwise why did literature our age get banal and unsophisticated after continuous positive development until the 20th century?
You're looking for the wrong thing. Literature is not reliant on the time or place it is produced, but by the author who produces it. Good literature requires the intellect of a white male, and the inundation of non-white and female "authors" has stultified literary development.

[Anonymous No.19618720]

>>19616241
Good literature is always the exception and requires exceptional people to rise above their time and place in order to write it.

[Anonymous No.19618766]

>>19618120
>everything is subjective
>nothing means anything
Those are not equivalent positions at all but since you've confused them you're part of the problem

[Anonymous No.19618901]

>>19618766
I understand there's a distinction, but unless you're Goethe or Napoleon or the like, there is in practice no difference. And probably not for them, either. If there have been any ubermenschen out there creating radical new aesthetic schools and principles, I have missed out. Maybe you can point me in their direction.

[Anonymous No.19619002]

>>19616241
No, it requires a certain type of person able to find meaning in the things around them.

[Anonymous No.19619304]

>>19618689
The kind of post-modern art you're criticizing was a rather brief and fairly localized movement that was either met with counter movments or ignored altogether. Even if we agree to label that kind of art as the quintessential manifestation of post-modernity, it's been a thing of the past for quite a while now and has been replaced by the effort to return to concreteness and traditonal means of creating art. I'm no expert in contemporary art so I'm afraid I can't you give you a comprehensive list of names or works, but, for example, in classical music there are prominent movements of new niceness and reduction of outward complexity together with a resurgence/new development of minimalism, in literature you won't find much (if any) critically acclaimed books of the sarcastic, self-referencing meta-narrative books in recent years, and from my recent visits to art galleries and conversations with artists I can say that concept art is deemed boring nowadays.
Maybe I can find the time to look up some concrete names/works later.

[Anonymous No.19619323]

>>19619304
If anybody else has examples of the sort of things he's talking about, I would appreciate it. These jeremiads are exhausting.

[Anonymous No.19620154]

>>19618711
>Good literature requires the intellect of a white male
Ousted yourself as an incel

[Anonymous No.19620161]

>>19618720
So why is this generation an exception

[Anonymous No.19620175]

>>19618103
still a poor writer, airport novels with a wee bit edge