/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21770627]

Why can’t they make good literature?

[Anonymous No.21770629]

>>21770627
Flags are inanimate objects that cannot write.

[Anonymous No.21770631]

>>21770627

[Anonymous No.21770633]

>>21770627
They absolutely can.

[Anonymous No.21770692]

>>21770627
They used to make good literature. Though I think they always struggled with developing a unique identity (before WW1) or not having an identity at all (after WW2)

[Anonymous No.21770739]

>>21770627
I dunno why can’t you make good literature?

[Anonymous No.21770747]

>>21770692
so interwar american literature is where it's at?

[Anonymous No.21770762]

>>21770692
The search for identity has never stopped anyone from writing good literature, in fact, that's arguably a motor for good art. Either way, what you say is false.
>>21770747
Retard.

[Anonymous No.21770768]

You can’t name 1 country with a better 19th and 20th century canon.

[Anonymous No.21770771]

>>21770627
America was born too close to the decline of the west. That said ... Jack London.

[Anonymous No.21770773]

>>21770692
America dominates Western literature after the world wars, and rivals European literature before them. The only era that it isn’t a heavy hitter is prior to the 18th century for obvious reasons.

[Anonymous No.21770775]

>>21770768
>19th century
France, Russia.
> 20th century canon.
You got me there.

[Anonymous No.21770792]

>>21770773
Maybe in the anglosphere. But France, Germany, or most of Eastern Europe does not care about american literature all that much, certainly not to the point of taking an interest in it beyond the obvious classics like Moby Dick.

[Anonymous No.21770797]

Ezra Pound, though he lived in Europe most of his life.

[Anonymous No.21770801]

>>21770797
Ezra Pound is an honorary euro. He has a lot more in common with either the troubadours or medieval England than he has with New York or Los Angeles.

[Anonymous No.21770809]

In no order, just a small segment of American writers that highlight our obvious superiority to your shithole country (Whitman, Melville, and Faulkner alone mog your entire country’s literary output):
Hart Crane
Frank Stanford
Thomas Wolfe
Charles Olson
TS Eliot
Robert Creeley
Pynchon
Henry Miller
H. Thompson
Frank O’Hara
Herman Melville
Henry James
E. A. Poe
Robert Frost
W. Faulkner
Toni Morrison
Carson McCullers
James Baldwin
John Ashbery
William Carlos Williams
Wallace Stevens
Robert Bly
Tennessee Williams
Marianne Hauser
Philip Roth
Don DeLillo
Robert Duncan
Emerson
Alfred Starr Hamilton
William Gass
Hemingway
Fitzgerald
Marianne Moore
Ezra Pound
Robert Lowell
H.D.
Louis Zukofsky
James Schuyler
flannery o'connor
Truman Capote
PKD
David Markson
Gertrude Stein
Emily Dickinson
George Oppen
Langston Hughes
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
Elizabeth Bishop
Adrienne Rich
James Merrill
James Purdy
John Knowles
William Gaddis
Frederick Exley
Donald Barthelme
Richard Brautigan
Steinbeck
Gabrielle Burton
William Lindsay Gresham
Updike
Upton Sinclair
Malamud
Walter Abish
Michael Wigglesworth
Edward Taylor
Longfellow
John Blair Linn
Whitman
Edgar Lee Masters
Archibald MacLeish
Carl Sandburg
Kenneth Koch

[Anonymous No.21770810]

>>21770801
>New York or Los Angeles is all America is
Eurofag moment.

[Anonymous No.21770817]

>>21770810
After the Civil War, yes, they ARE America.

[Anonymous No.21770820]

>>21770809
>James Baldwin
>Langston Hughes
Overrated negroes. Only held in high esteem because they are blackamoors and one is a fag. Lots of overrated women as well. Agree with most of the list.

[Anonymous No.21770832]

>>21770817
No. And literally all you said about Pound applies to every poet. If New York or Los Angeles is what all America is for you then no shit it's easy to resemble European poets.

[Anonymous No.21770834]

>>21770820
Then substitute Leon Forrest for Hughes and Baldwin. Forrest is the negro Pynchon

[Anonymous No.21770842]

i remember some quote saying the most american genres are the mystery and the western

[Anonymous No.21770854]

>>21770627
American literature is as strong as any country’s from the 19th century on. Anons who say American literature sucks just hate America. The USA is so diverse that if you don’t like a single book from there I don’t believe you actually like reading

[Anonymous No.21770853]

>>21770842
Mystery is too vague. More like detective story. Americans have also developed the horror genre like no one else, although it of course exists elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.21770861]

>>21770854
True. American literature is so vast that there's something for everyone.

[Anonymous No.21770866]

>>21770792
lel its not even true for the Anglosphere, its just cope. Most people here in Britain are reading books by British writers.
>>21770692
I'd say all the best works of American literature are mostly from the 19th century.

[Anonymous No.21770871]

>>21770866
Retard

[Anonymous No.21770879]

>>21770866
>Most people here in Britain are reading books by British writers.
That's the same for every country. Most countries read their own. This isn't some enlightened thing about Britain.
>>21770854
>Anons who say American literature sucks just hate America
It's one hateful bong.

[Anonymous No.21770888]

>>21770879
It’s always a dysgenic bong and an esl spic who shits up American lit threads

[Anonymous No.21770908]

>>21770871
>lacks any counter-argument
>>21770809
Basically all you've done is make a list of every writer you can think of, well done. Its not an argument however or proves that somehow American literature is superior. Tons on there that are overrated and several authors of betters works that are missing.

[Anonymous No.21770924]

>>21770908
Retard

[Anonymous No.21770935]

>>21770908
It’s almost as if different people have different tastes in literature. The point still stands that American literature is good

[Anonymous No.21771074]

>>21770692
It was only after ww2 that american intellectuals rediscovered Moby Dick and herald it as the counterpart to Dostoevsky, Cervantes, Hugo, etc.

[Anonymous No.21771104]

>>21770809
BASED

[Anonymous No.21771115]

>>21771074
Not true. It was in the 1920s.

[Anonymous No.21771177]

>>21770809
All New Englanders should be classed as British.
>>21770627
If I were ethnically American, I would side with the British during the Revolutionary War.
The British have an actual culture... Americans not, unless you consider worshiping (((them))) as a culture.

[Anonymous No.21771184]

>>21771177
Nice dubs.
/thread
Also, God Save the Queen.

[Anonymous No.21771196]

>>21771177
The only reason English is spoken worldwide today is thanks to the Americans. English would be relegated to Europe and a few colonies like French is if it weren't for America.

[Anonymous No.21771197]

>>21770627
>Why can’t they make good literature?

[Anonymous No.21771205]

>>21771184
Lizzy is feeding the worms now. There is your God, Nigel.

[Anonymous No.21771209]

>>21770627
No soul

[Anonymous No.21771212]

Here is your philosophy bro

[Anonymous No.21771215]

>>21771196
>The only reason English is spoken worldwide today is thanks to the Americans.
The only reason BASTARDIZED English is spoken worldwide today is thanks to the Americans.*
Sorry for typo, Nigel.

[Anonymous No.21771217]

>>21770809
>all capitalized except flannery o'conner
what did they mean by this?

[Anonymous No.21771220]

I despise Am*rica with every fibre of my being and yet most of my favourite authors are Am*rican.

[Anonymous No.21771225]

>>21771215
No true Scotsman!

[Anonymous No.21771436]

>>21771196
>The only reason English is spoken worldwide today is thanks to the Americans. English would be relegated to Europe and a few colonies like French is if it weren't for America.
True dat. French was the language for international trade, politics, etc. for centuries. Even the English had to learn French to have diplomatic relations with other countries. All this change after the US of course.

[Anonymous No.21771478]

>>21771215
American English is closer to Shakespeare, Retard

[Anonymous No.21771516]

>>21770627
Because the publishing industry got hijacked by the jews. They used to make great literature.

[Anonymous No.21771526]

>>21770629
this is cluster b, right?

[Anonymous No.21771587]

>>21770792
Nobody cares if Eastern Europeans care for American literature. That means nothing.

[Anonymous No.21771592]

>>21770775
Russian literature is overrated and French literature had already been overtaken by English literature by the mid-19th century.

[Anonymous No.21771599]

>>21770817
America is arguably the least urbanized Western country in general. The big cities have less of a stranglehold on it than any other country.

[Anonymous No.21771622]

>>21770801
>Euronigs claiming American artists

Listen to his radio broadcasts from Fascist Italy. He shits all over ZOGrope, especially Britain and France, and tries desperately to convince the average American yeoman individualist to come to the side of reason.

[Anonymous No.21771626]

>>21771592
>Russian literature is overrated
They have the two greatest novelists ever. Plus many great ones. And Pushkin.

[Anonymous No.21771644]

>American English is closer to Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.21771663]

>>21771592
>Russian literature is overrated
All major literatures are to a degree. This is just an empty buzzword at this point.
>French literature had already been overtaken by English literature by the mid-19th century.
Flaubert? Maupassant? Huysmans? Verlaine? Rimbaud? Lautréamont? The French were more avant-garde than the English. The English couldn't get way from realism and that's mostly what they tried the entire century, save a few exceptions. Wells and Stevenson (technically Scottish) are examples of authors who managed to get away from the chains. But overall, I wouldn't say French lit was "overtaken" by English lit, unless you explain what that means.

[Anonymous No.21771746]

>>21770820
>Hi! I'm a reactionary pile of ambulatory shit
>I use words like "negro" and "blackamoor" to show how k-rad edgy and dArK eNlIgHtEnMeNt I sm
I can't wait until we start shooting the heads off of """people""" like you. You retrograde pusbags really have had it coming these last several years.

[Anonymous No.21771767]

>>21771746
Seething much? Go dilate until the anger passes, tranny.

[Anonymous No.21771796]

>>21770627
Blood Meridian.

But in a broader sense the definitive American philosophy is Pragmatism, which tends to view everything, even ideas, as means rather than ends themselves. Understanding something has no innate value, nor does articulating an idea--the only value is utility. This is the backbone of all American behavior, and principally, it essentially deprioritizes sentience.

That may sound like a condemnation, but it is not. What I mean is that the ideal American, not in the since of being the "best" American but rather the most singularly American kind of individual, does not contemplate anything. He fixates upon an objective, assembles the tools to accomplish it and then does so. Art, literature, music, culture, are all at best instruments for achieving an end, and it is only ends which hold meaning. This is why so much American culture is consumerist dreck. The objective is to make money, the art itself is kitsch.

Think about how singularly American it is to deride enjoying things. Not enjoying bad things--the difference in quality is seen as irrelevant. Enjoying things AT ALL is associated with childishness and frivolity, or else extreme wealth--it can only be justified in American parsing if it is "earned" in some way, or if it serves a broader purpose. The French do not do this. The English do not do this. The Italians don't do this, not even the Chinese do this.

This attitude, when it cracks, cracks disastrously in the other direction. A Hedonistic France produces epicureans--a Hedonist America produces tasteless pigs, because while having abandoned the idea that diversion and entertainment is bad, they have no frame of reference by which to judge things, and the chauvinism against "degenerate" cultures that naval-gaze and actually enjoy the taste of coffee or fine chocolates or good literature remains.

The few breakout successes of American literature develop in extreme adversity, which does allow for unique styles and interpretations of theme, but it's rare.

[Anonymous No.21771815]

>>21771746
To call someone a reactionary is to admit that you fear them. Change tactics.

[Anonymous No.21771819]

>>21770627
"derpy derp, it's autmn outside and i'm wearing a sweater, i'm walking around on land i dn't come frum! derpy derpy"
american romance

"derpy derp, i work wit cattle herdin', and i'm gon shoot this man. oh no i don shot this man, now i'm filled with grief! someone better shoot me tew!"
american history

"derpy derpy, i'm walking around in a circle with no where to be! i am filled with questions that can never be knowed!"
american psychological drama

"derpy derpy, i'm just eaing a cheeseburger, hey looky there go a black person, h'aint he COOL for reasons nobody can explain"
american other

[Anonymous No.21771846]

>>21771626
Nobody Russians like Pushkin so stop pretending.

[Anonymous No.21771850]

>>21771846
>muh popularity

[Anonymous No.21771857]

>>21771815
>I am rubber you are glue

>>21771184
It's GOD SAVE THE KING you bastard

>>21770820
I agre with this, and I think this person is misguided >>21771746 Baldwin is genuinely good, but 99% of people who know about him are tweens from a fallen academic climate who only know about him because he's black. This is why racism still exists, for instance.

>>21771626
jesus, how many books about dancing with your knees bent can they possibly write?

[Anonymous No.21771867]

>>21770809
>Ezra Pound
HOW IS HE AMERICAN XD

[Anonymous No.21771871]

>>21771867
Born and raised in 'Murica.

[Anonymous No.21771873]

>>21771867
I dunno retard maybe because he was born in fucking Idaho and grew up in America.

[Anonymous No.21771883]

>>21770809
>Hart Crane
>Frank Stanford
>Thomas Wolfe
>Charles Olson
>TS Eliot
>Robert Creeley
>Pynchon
>Henry Miller
>H. Thompson
>Frank O’Hara
>Herman Melville
>Henry James
>E. A. Poe
>Robert Frost
>W. Faulkner
>Toni Morrison
>Carson McCullers
>James Baldwin
>John Ashbery
>William Carlos Williams
>Wallace Stevens
>Robert Bly
>Tennessee Williams
>Marianne Hauser
>Philip Roth
>Don DeLillo
>Robert Duncan
>Emerson
>Alfred Starr Hamilton
>William Gass
>Hemingway
>Fitzgerald
>Marianne Moore
>Ezra Pound
>Robert Lowell
>H.D.
>Louis Zukofsky
>James Schuyler
>flannery o'connor
>Truman Capote
>PKD
>David Markson
>Gertrude Stein
>Emily Dickinson
>George Oppen
>Langston Hughes
>Anne Sexton
>Sylvia Plath
>Elizabeth Bishop
>Adrienne Rich
>James Merrill
>James Purdy
>John Knowles
>William Gaddis
>Frederick Exley
>Donald Barthelme
>Richard Brautigan
>Steinbeck
>Gabrielle Burton
>William Lindsay Gresham
>Updike
>Upton Sinclair
>Malamud
>Walter Abish
>Michael Wigglesworth
>Edward Taylor
>Longfellow
>John Blair Linn
>Whitman
>Edgar Lee Masters
>Archibald MacLeish
>Carl Sandburg
>Kenneth Koch
pure garbage. You didn't even list the Americans who are actually Good or original in anything they wrote. Many of those are not even American. what do you designate 'american' as? BORN THERE, MOVED THERE?! HA

stand idle on little st. james and you'd find garbage trawlermen passing with more insight.

[Anonymous No.21771886]

>>21771873
lies, he was an Italian. If anything he was an expat who hated America and left ASAP.

[Anonymous No.21771888]

>>21770627
their dysgenic and incestuous race makes them soulless, retarded, and unfit for anything but manual labor

[Anonymous No.21771894]

>>21771883
How are Melville and Faulkner "pure garbage"? Who of these is not American (note: you said many weren't)?

[Anonymous No.21771895]

>>21771886
Almost any writer of note was critical about their country

[Anonymous No.21771901]

>>21771886
He couldn't even speak Italian, Anon. There's an anecdote where some Italians couldn't even understand what the fuck he was saying. He's an American doesn't matter where he lived.

[Anonymous No.21771907]

>>21771886
Expatriate isn’t a nationality. Every source lists him as an American

[Anonymous No.21771913]

>>21771886
I hate America too, that doesn't mean I'm not American. Your ethnicity is not something you choose, nor is it random. There is no accident of birth. All men are genes expressed in an environment. Ezra Pound was an American by virtue of his homeland. If you were to draw his ancestry by blood, he was an Anglo on both sides. There was nobody LESS Italian.

[Anonymous No.21771914]

>>21771894
without going point by point: I see a lot of names that are obviously scots, irish, germans, english, french - these are not Americans.

I also see Plath. The fucking fuck fuck, she's terrible.

>>21771901
bah, it'd be like if i larped as an ancient hebrew and moved to israel and you kept insiting i was schlomo from new york. imean.... hahahaaha it's kind of like that..

but point taken. yea.

[Anonymous No.21771918]

>>21771850
You’ve never even read Pushkin

[Anonymous No.21771929]

>>21770809
Lots of filler. Here's a more curated list:

19th century:
>Herman Melville
>E. A. Poe
>Emerson
>Emily Dickinson
>Edit Wharton
>Longfellow
>Whitman

20th century:
>Thomas Wolfe
>TS Eliot
>Pynchon
>Henry Miller
>Robert Frost
>W. Faulkner
>Wallace Stevens
>Tennessee Williams
>Arthur Miller
>Hemingway
>Fitzgerald
>Ezra Pound
>PKD
>Truman Capote
>William Gaddis
>Steinbeck
>McCarthy
>Jack London

[Anonymous No.21771934]

>>21771914
>without going point by point: I see a lot of names that are obviously scots, irish, germans, english, french - these are not Americans.
Ah, you're that kind of autist. Never mind.
>I also see Plath. The fucking fuck fuck, she's terrible.
I agree with you there. She sucks.

[Anonymous No.21771974]

>>21771074
while true, Moby dick is still in the vein of distinctly american styling of the 1800s along with the likes of Hawthorne, Witman, and Thoreau.

[Anonymous No.21771975]

>>21771929
Embarrassing

[Anonymous No.21771977]

>>21771975
How so?

[Anonymous No.21771978]

>>21771914
You’re genuinely fucking stupid, bud. Stick to /sffg)l/

[Anonymous No.21771981]

>>21771914
Ahh, I see. When you are talking about American literature you are looking for Cherokee, Iroquois, Delaware, etc texts. Makes sense you are disappointed

[Anonymous No.21771992]

>>21770627
Bad guys

[Anonymous No.21772106]

>>21771981
>>21771934
Well, no. 'American' just doesn't exist, sorry about that. An Irishman who moves to America doesn't go through some great change, he's the same person he was in Ireland.

If you can't accept this then you've got no merit to the case against random immigrants being "your equal" in every possible way lol

I don't think you guys know what it is to have a nation, to be honest. It's probably the answer why: >>21770627

[Anonymous No.21772110]

>>21772106
These people are not first-gen immigrants.

[Anonymous No.21772113]

>>21770627

[Anonymous No.21772122]

>>21772106
Again, why is this dysgenic brit so fucking stupid?

[Anonymous No.21772123]

>>21772110
This. If you are born and raised in America you are American. Simple as. If you want to dig deeper you can say that someone is an Irish American, but they are still an American. That anon is retarded

[Anonymous No.21772128]

>>21771978
better question for you, if you moved to China would you describe yourself as Chinese? If not, then why should I entertain your gender-bending delusion that Fitzgerald ever stopped being Irish? Even if he declared it it wouldn't make it true.

[Anonymous No.21772131]

>>21771796
You legit need to kill yourself my man

[Anonymous No.21772133]

Why do Brits hate Americans so much? Is it envy?

[Anonymous No.21772145]

>>21772133
Probably since their country is more cucked than ours. Dysgenic brits are proposing legislation that would make bragging about sexual conquests publicly a criminal offense. At some point, they became buckbroken

[Anonymous No.21772151]

>>21772110
I agree with you there, if you ask me who Americans are then it's really the first generation of the revolution for the only real claim on anything to do with 'America'...

but obviously that's a specific time, and even then the children of, say, Jefferson would still be Yorkshiremen by their blood. I think the lost heritage in Americas biggest problem; it's like you're born for a valley and a forest, and you don't know where it is, never knowing peace. It's sad, truly.

[Anonymous No.21772154]

>>21771977
It’s not, Europeans are just insanely butthurt. My English ex gf told me they read to kill a mockingbird and of mice and men in their English course in primary school. I was a bit shocked desu. Point is, is America is a cultural powerhouse no matter what fag ass Europeans say on 4chan. Also consider that 4Chan encourages trolling and mindless contrarianism and not to mention quite a few on here are openly Neo-Nazis and think America is a vector for uhhhhh Jewish conspiracies. Mix that together and you get the classic incel archetype - hateful, ignorant, racist, stupid, and arrogant.

[Anonymous No.21772159]

>>21772145
>buckbroken
we don't even fetishize black people in England or Britain so that's complete projection of self on your part, you work-shy slave loving yankee scum you.

[sage No.21772160]

>>21770631
spbp

[Anonymous No.21772165]

>>21772151
Britain is not a pure island. They have been raped to death by a million different foreigners across the years. It's bizarre of them to request blood purity to Americans when they are a mixed culture themselves. Being American is not tied to any specific ethnicity. Look at how many Nobels they have, how many Palm d'Or wins they have, how many Olympic medals they have. They must be doing something right.

[Anonymous No.21772172]

>>21772159
Yet your cucked country still kneels for fentanyl floyd, especially during the world cup where we didn’t even kneel

[Anonymous No.21772176]

>>21772154
"in order to commit attrocity, you must believe absurdity" / americans are no.1, i believe it.

tbf, yankee, when i watch american news or youtubers, from an english language perspective, i see mentally retarded people who cannot speak fluently or understand what they read or hear.

You're reduced to the level of black slaves in 1700, intellectually speaking. Can't you tell by turning on the television and listening to your rulers?

[Anonymous No.21772181]

>why yes I am british how could you tell?

[Anonymous No.21772193]

>oi m8 u bettuh knael foi dat Black criminal cuz we don’t want no roicism here in our spaht

[Anonymous No.21772196]

>>21772154
The relationship between Europe and America is like a story of two sisters. The elder sister was at some the prettiest girl on the land, then she got old and ugly but inside she still felt she was the prettiest of them all. The youngest one, in the meantime, grew up, inevitably, and became the new prettiest girl in town, causing the envy of her elder sister but prevailing nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.21772201]

>>21772165
you'd be surprised how the language dialect retains the oldest inhabitants of england and france, in all fairness. But this isn't the same as America... there was no 'unity' or 'common culture' after the thirteen colonies, like the Tudor Golden Age was for England for example.

At best, and bizarrely, they have cowboys, who existed for 20 yrs, and they never shut up about it because they have nothing else and don't want to talk about their actual history during the revolutionary era - for whatever reason. After cowboys you just have television decades to substitute culture.

It's all bogus, is my point, obviously so.

[Anonymous No.21772213]

>>21770692
>America has no unique identity
hahahahahHahaahahhahaha

[Anonymous No.21772223]

>>21772193
>>21772172
yes and I'm still not sure why they did this. We ended slavery by bombing your ships centuries ago.

Only Americans have the stain of racism on them, and it is a uniquely American phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.21772262]

>>21772110
i guess really my point is that, citing the theft of other people from other nations to produce an impression of having 'literature' in their past, a modern american can accept the truth and find out where they came from and discover their real history and have some sense of humanity and belonging, or they can have a small piece of taffy.

[Anonymous No.21772266]

>>21772123
>Simple as
get a load of Tex from Alan Partridge

[Anonymous No.21772276]

>>21772262
Why do Europeans try to claim American achievements now? Is this an /int/ meme?

[Anonymous No.21772282]

>>21772262
>the theft of other people
Wtf? Kek. They chose to come over. You are in hardcore “no true Scotsman” territory now. You are probably the only person who wouldn’t consider Melville, Hawthorne, Faulkner, etc to be American. Your whole schtick comes off as sour grapes. American literature is literature is made by people born and raised in America. That’s all there is to it

[Anonymous No.21772284]

>>21771212
here's your philosophy bro

[Anonymous No.21772307]

>>21772276
the more I interact with euros on the internet the more I realize that they are basically subhumans saturated in an utterly decadent culture, even Germany and Scandinavian culture is greatly inferior to American culture. In America people still believe that they are masters of their fate, Europeans are just cattle.

[Anonymous No.21772309]

>>21770809
He said Toni Morrison, kek

[Anonymous No.21772335]

>>21772307
>In America people still believe that they are masters of their fate
An idiotic notion. America is a land mired in decades of snowballed psychological operations and home of the world's largest surveillance state. If you genuinely believe Americans are "masters of their own fate", you're a deluded moron. And no, I'm not European. Deflecting by attacking my identity won't work. You are just wrong.

[Anonymous No.21772337]

>>21771895
Look at Margarett Atwood, what the fuck can she say about Canada. What the fuck can anyone say about Canada. No one gives a shit about that place.

[Anonymous No.21772343]

>>21772337
You don't care but Canucks care and that's all that matters when it comes to criticizing your own country.

[Anonymous No.21773273]

>>21772335
no, no, you don't understand:
his team good because his team.