/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20590102]

>he unironically thought he was going to write the Great American Novel

[Anonymous No.20590113]

>get halfway through writing the greatest american novel of all time
>have to throw it away because i was german all along

[Anonymous No.20590121]

>>20590102
I am though, so

[Anonymous No.20590148]

IM WORKIN ON IT

[Anonymous No.20590267]

I just wanted to write the great 4chan novel

[Anonymous No.20590298]

Basic bitch delusion
I wanted to write the great American screenplay that is considered so literarily meritorious and fun to read that it gets published as a paperback and sells better than any traditional novel ever has

[Voluntary Fool No.20591025]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gT68xeDMM

[Anonymous No.20591088]

The Great American Novel will be written when the American nation no longer exists. Only then, could one reflect on the entirety of America and write a novel to appropriately express that.

[Anonymous No.20591097]

>>20591088
nah the best time to write it is in the twilight of a dying empire. Take Cervantes for example

[Anonymous No.20591102]

Can the Great American Novel be written by a non-American?

[Anonymous No.20591104]

>>20591097
/lit/ better get writing, then.

[Anonymous No.20591115]

>>20591102
no because.... you wouldn't get it

[Anonymous No.20591120]

>>20591102
Possibly. Even if a non-American isn't allowed to write the Great American Novel, it's really not that hard to become an American, depending on what one considers to be an American. There are many immigrant authors in our history.

[Anonymous No.20591129]

I'm writing the great Brazilian novel - the negronomicon!

[Anonymous No.20591188]

The concept of the Great American Novel is fascinating - a country frantically searching for a work of art that encompasses its identity. What it means to be "American" has many interpretations, and this search shows a desperation to find an established definition for this peculiar nation. If any book were to be chosen without a doubt as the Great American Novel, it would perhaps be the greatest literary accomplishment ever awarded to a work. But I think we would lose more than what we would find if this search for the GAN was ever completed, as the concept of a Great American Novel alone is much more defining to what America is than any work of literature thus far. Although, I do wonder, if America is not looking for a book that explains what it means to be American, but instead a book that creates what it means to be American. Maybe all this search for something that showcases what it means to be American is just a symptom of "American" actually having no meaning instead of an intangible meaning.

[Anonymous No.20591205]

>>20590267
I noticed Woolston and Nesmer both liked your stuff, what is quintessential Alitspa?

[Anonymous No.20591210]

>>20591188
Possibly also the reason there is no search for the Great British novel or the Great French novel etc.

Even Ulysses isn't considered the Great Irish novel.

[Anonymous No.20591211]

>>20590102
Correct

[Anonymous No.20591222]

>>20590113
Should have changed the names and locations and made it the Great German Novel

[Anonymous No.20591230]

>>20591102
Maybe so, the outside perspective can be very enlightening, they don't see the forest for the trees. The Rolling Stones made the Great American Roots Rock Album after all

[Anonymous No.20591238]

>>20591210
Yes. There is no question of what it means to be Irish or French or British. But there is no definition of American in the traditional sense of nationality, and there is no other way to define American without alienating many people who may consider themselves American, as America was a country founded on ideals and populated by immigrants. There is some broad, intangible idea of what it means to be American, but nothing concrete without going to some reductionist literal sense like "Americans are people who live in America".

[Anonymous No.20591243]

>>20591230
>they don't miss the forest for the trees.
is what I meant.

[Anonymous No.20591263]

>>20590298
The thing about screenplays is you have to be active around Hollywood or Broadway to even get them noticed.

[Anonymous No.20591266]

>>20591210
Because Europe has actually masterful literature so there's no insecure drive to find America's masterpiece.
Plenty of good american lit but practically no Great literature.

[Anonymous No.20591268]

>>20591188
I think it’s a huge cope for a people that really wanted desperately to form a coherent identity 200 years too late.

[Anonymous No.20591271]

>>20591238
americans need to get over themselves

[Anonymous No.20591277]

>>20591188
The Great American Novel has already been written and it’s either Moby Dick or the Great Gatsby.

[Anonymous No.20591290]

>>20591277
its blood meridian

[Anonymous No.20591299]

stop making fun of my autism and schizophrenia

[Anonymous No.20591303]

>>20591188
America is a former colony of the British empire that won its political independence. It is really not that complicated. All this stuff about crafting American identity is subversive liberalism.

[Anonymous No.20591311]

>>20591238
America is a former colony of Britain that is now politically, but not religiously, culturally, or linguistically independent. It is a Western country, most closely related to Britain. It is really that simple. For some reason this is so hard a pill for Americans to swallow that they behave as if the country has literally no history at all and they can just make one up. No. You have one. You may not like it but it’s there.

[Anonymous No.20591313]

>>20591277
moby dick is frankly not that pleasant alot of the time.

[Anonymous No.20591316]

>>20591290
Blood Meridian is honestly underwhelming and somewhat tacky. Go read The Great Gatsby right now and you’ll be blown away at how good it is.

[Anonymous No.20591318]

>>20591316
yeah i went through high school buddy

[Anonymous No.20591319]

>>20590102
Nah I'm sticking to short stories and novellas. People largely don't have the attention span to parse 200k words anymore and the ability of writers to remain consistent and engaging over the same spans is likewise waning. Say your piece and get out before it gets boring or the audience gets bored.

[Anonymous No.20591324]

>>20591318
Then you should re-read it because it’s better than you remember.

[Anonymous No.20591338]

>>20591210
>>20591238
Also interesting to consider it in the light of "novel" specifically, since America was born roughly around the same time as the novel's establishment as a serious artform. The serious novel could be seen as the triumph of a freer space for ideas unconstrained by the "tradition" of poetic form/aesthetics, thus mirroring America as a nation defined by ideas rather than by a particular language/culture/religion.

The concept of a "national epic" definitely existed in European countries so it's not as if they're above defining themselves through literature, but those tend to be more about pseudo-historical origin stories rather than about some intangible essence that defines the nation's identity. If America was following that model our epic would be a heroic dramatization of the Revolutionary War, but the fact that such a thing is never really seriously considered is an illustration of the fact that the Revolution itself held the seeds of a worldview which does not accept such forms.

[Anonymous No.20591356]

Oh, I'm a good old rebel
Now that's just what I am
For this fair land of freedom
I do not care a damn
I'm glad I fought against it
I only wish we'd won
And I don't want no pardon
For anything I've done

I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too
I hates the glorious Union
'Tis dripping with our blood
And I hates their striped banner
I fought it all I could

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Stiffen in Southern dust
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot
And I wish it was three million
Instead of what we got

I won't be reconstructed
I'm better now than then
And for that carpetbagger
I do not give a damn
So I'm off for the frontier
Soon as I can go
I'll prepare a weapon
And start for Mexico

[Anonymous No.20591371]

Yeah…what about it?

[Anonymous No.20591377]

>>20591303
It's far more complicated than that because America became the undisputed Military, Economic and Cultural power of the entire World. This is how it especially differs to Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.

It has also expanded vastly in two areas: Geography and Demography.

Its territory has expanded far further than the thirteen British colonies it was originally comprised of and demographically it went from being a primarily Anglo country at its inception, to a European country after mass European migration, and then after the civil rights movement a sizeable African population was made equal under the law.

So it is a new Super power, with massive geography and a short History with an ever changing population. Quite a strange and unprecedented situation for a nation to be in.

What can the story of America be for all those different people with all those different histories?

[Anonymous No.20591384]

>>20591377
Also forgot to mention the post-60's mass migration of the entire World with all its different identities and the death of Christianity must surely factor also.

[Anonymous No.20591390]

>>20591311
I don't think that's really true though, I think America's Enlightenment ideals define it far more than any remaining connection to British culture.

[Anonymous No.20591391]

>>20591303
>grug no like think. think bad.

[Anonymous No.20591433]

>>20591205
The Savage Green was an attempt to write something which would appeal directly to 4chan. It's a dense, meandering, surreal story about a renegade scientist who has gone missing in the Florida panhandle, but really its a prolonged exercise in nostalgia for mid-2000's Florida teenage culture and a lot of critique aimed at modern society. I've had one reader say that the prose is just as good as Mike Ma's Harassment Architecture, but upon re-reading I see that there was at least one sentence I forgot to finish, and probably more errors than that. I'm planning to fix those for the next paperback edition sometime soon.

But most of the sales and reviews I've gotten have come from Modem Waves, which also aims to critique modern society but which is more of a straight-forward action story. Kind of an attempt to write a YA dystopian novel, but for aimless 20-something dudes. This is the description I have on Amazon:

Vashon Rainier is a simple man living in a complicated world. Ten years after a mysterious event known as The Dump triggered a wave of riots, insurrections, and secessions across the American continent, he now works as a truck driver under the authority of the Citizen's Liberty Cooperative, a breakaway socialist state in the Pacific Northwest. He might be a social pariah due to his status as a veteran of the Olympic Scouts, he might be constantly looking over his shoulder for agents of the Citizen's Safety Bureau, just waiting for an excuse to bundle him off to state labor, and he might have some lingering resentment about the deaths of his closest friends at the hands of Co-op fanatics during the last big offensive of the war, but on the whole, he's doing alright. Fine. Totally, totally fine.

That is, until the fateful day when Sara Quinn steps onto the highway with a pistol in hand, determined to lead a revolt to restore the halcyon days of 2020's America. After an altercation with law enforcement, Vashon is left with no choice but to take shelter with Sara and her band of outlaw capitalists, and as he is forced closer and closer to a desperate confrontation with Co-op authorities, his memories of the campaign to retake Olympia drift to the surface of his mind, and he attempts to reckon with his own role in the failure of America and the death of Cameron Quinn, Sara's older brother.

[Anonymous No.20591502]

>>20591377
None of that makes any difference whatsoever.
>>20591390
You don’t think it’s true that America was a colony of the British Empire?

[Anonymous No.20591510]

>>20591391
I don’t like mental gymnastics

[Anonymous No.20591518]

Americans really don’t know what they are because of media that parades around Basketball-Americans and immigration, huh?

Guess all that state and corporate sponsored nihilism worked like a charm.

[Anonymous No.20591610]

>>20591502
I don't think it's true that America is not culturally or religiously independent of Britain.

[Anonymous No.20591664]

>>20591610
Are you British or American?

[Anonymous No.20591675]

>>20591610
Well, you’re wrong so.

[Anonymous No.20591690]

>>20591610
you are entirely wrong

[Anonymous No.20591815]

>>20591664
American, but I really truly could not give a shit about any aspect of my "American identity", my interest in the discussion is purely academic.

>>20591675
>>20591690
I'm not saying it's entirely independent, that would be absurd, just that it owes more to the Enlightenment than to British culture specifically. Of course the Enlightenment came in part from ideas associated with Britain but it was certainly not somehow the sole progenitor of those ideas, to say so would merely be an absurdity on the other side. Could you please elaborate on your views or why you think that it's so wrong to say America has particular circumstances that render it different from Britain? I have a feeling you are not exactly in good faith but I am trying to give the benefit of the doubt here since I do agree that the discussion in general of the Enlightenment and America could benefit from more attention being given to either continuities and/or actual reasons for change as opposed to mystifying and mythologizing.

[Anonymous No.20593056]

>>20591102
Already was.
Granted, she immigrated.

[Anonymous No.20593071]

>>20590102
>Great
>American
>Novel
pick one

[Anonymous No.20593096]

>>20591377
>What's the story of America
The fact that we have the freedom and opportunity to become whoever we want to be, not bound to the limitations of how we were born.
And before you start seething...equality of opportunity does not imply equality of result.
Also, the countries that our immigrants escape from are MUCH worse.
After all, if America is so bad, how come people are literally pouring across our borders, doing anything to get in?
That's what makes America different from every other nation in the world...despite all our problems.
At worst, America is the worst nation that has ever existed, except for all the other ones.

[Anonymous No.20593372]

>>20593096
LOL most of the books considered for the great American novel is about how much the American dream sucks (gatsby

[Anonymous No.20593410]

>>20590113
Ezra Pound wasn't Bongistani, he still did it bro

[Anonymous No.20593450]

>>20593372
Exactly. America isn't perfect; it's the crucible in which mankind's problems will get worked out and ultimately solved.
In most countries, writing such a book will get you killed by the authorities.

[Anonymous No.20593972]

>>20591102
only way itll ever happen

[Anonymous No.20594072]

I am writing it right now while I take breaks to masturbate to JAV
It's a YA novel about reptilians

[Anonymous No.20594502]

>>20590102
Stupid frogposter.