death of classics

[Anonymous No.22036042]

Most of classical literature is useless to read these days, prove me wrong. While some themes of human struggle, pain and passions are universal, most of literature speaks of human behaviour, love and courtship, social relations and regulations, etc. All of the things that are proggresively becoming exctinct as they were known throughout history.

A typical young adult male simply cannot relate to Raskolnikov or other characters. There's no shared experience or social context. How can a person who mostly sits in frontof the computer or on the phone understand a young man that wanted to get married and had a child before they were even 22?

And don't bullshit me about muh literary value, most of books are interesting because they provide insight or universal lessons for life, and those are becoming less valuable by the minute in today's world. Huxley was right, art doesn't matter if its consumers don't have lived experience necessary to relate to it.

[Anonymous No.22036050]

>>22036042
>Huxley was right, art doesn't matter if its consumers don't have lived experience necessary to relate to it.
K then get off your phone and read the classics

[Anonymous No.22036054]

>>22036042
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.22036070]

>>22036042
You proved yourself wrong, most of the population falls into a category other than "typical young adult male." and you imply those who are not typical young adult males (or at least some of them) can relate so it is not useless.

[Anonymous No.22036079]

>>22036042
> Most of classical literature is useless to read these days, prove me wrong
Retard. Stopped reading right there.

[Anonymous No.22036089]

Can I hope to understand the lived experiences of beautiful curvy black women with giant asses?

[Anonymous No.22036306]

>>22036042
The value of classics of a classic is the following:
- use of language
- perspective
- narrative tools
There are more but what remains as a classic is often that which for one reason or another has been deemed as a good enough encapsulation of the era by the literary community to recommend to the next. Something that they deem is a staple to the literary world.

Just as etymology gives insight to what a word means, past classics shine light on current and thought. Though our lives vastly differ from the Greeks, their past, thought and perspective greatly influenced our own.

[Anonymous No.22036328]

>>22036306
>the value of classics hinges entirely on just fun word games
this is really fucking grim

[Anonymous No.22036331]

>>22036042
So what exactly is a classic? If a writer is still being published, are they automatically a classic?

[Anonymous No.22036332]

I just like reading books because they make me feel good, does that mean that they aren't useless? I don't know, I see reading literature as being useless and that's why I love it
It's leisure time, not min-maxing my time

[Anonymous No.22036349]

bro you just use your imagination to relate to characters unlike yourself. stupid pseud

[Anonymous No.22036385]

>>22036042
I read Crime and Punishment when I was 20 and could relate very strongly with Raskolnikov. I shared in his egotism and belief in abstract principles but also in that he was never able to fully embody them. I think that book is an excellent antidote for young people who find the works of Nietzsche or Ayn Rand and fail to realize that a conscience is more in-built than is typically realized.

[Anonymous No.22036407]

>>22036042
Everything is useless to you fucks that only value money and status. How did this board get overrun by you cunts obsessed with utility? What happened to aesthetic value and the enrichment of human experience?

[Anonymous No.22036422]

>>22036042
>useless
Art doesn't need to be useful.

[Anonymous No.22037319]

>>22036306
>The value of classics of a classic is the following:
>- use of language
>- perspective
>- narrative tools
Really? 'It's nice to read' is all you can give me? The anon under your post is right, it's really fucking grim if they don't provide anything but high-level word-play.

>>22036331
Any book that is considered valauble beyond its time. You know 99% of books ever have been forgotten, only few were worth of attention. Now even those are becoming dated.

>>22036385
I don't disagree, Crime and Punishment also punched me in the face with its portrayal of arrogant, egotistic young man. But overall, that experience won't be the same for the next generations.

>>22036407
I'm not talking about material conditions you fucking retard. It's spirituality and wisdom that become dated, uncapable of 'enriching human experience'.

>>22036422
Classics aren't read because they are pretty wordplay. Any who disagrees or thinks it's not a problem for a book to be great solely based on its language is delusional.

[Anonymous No.22038336]

>>22037319
"It's nice to read" is all there fucking is. It's a book for Christsake, their primary function is be read.

You're asking what's the point of books that are deemed classics by the literary world. Well, the literary world values reading. What did you expect?

You want some spiritual wisdom, life lessons, ideology? Religion, self-help and philosophy. It honestly just sounds like you don't like reading and focusing on the literary world is not for you. Literary classics have their purpose, they're just not the answers to all your problems.

[Anonymous No.22038361]

>>22036042
Could you provide the Huxley quote (or or it's source) on lived experience?

[Anonymous No.22038388]

>>22037319
>Any book that is considered valauble beyond its time. You know 99% of books ever have been forgotten, only few were worth of attention. Now even those are becoming dated.

I’m not really a fan of “old book” being considered a classic

[Anonymous No.22038441]

>>22036042
Borges:
>Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

Nabokov:
>Another question: Can we expect to glean information about places and times from a novel? Can anybody be so naive as to think he or she can learnanything about the past from those buxom best-sellers that are hawkedaround by book clubs under the heading of historical novels? But whatabout the masterpieces? Can we rely on Jane Austen's picture of landowning England with baronets and landscaped grounds when all sheknew was a clergyman’s parlor? And Bleak House, that fantastic romancewithin a fantastic London, can we call it a study of London a hundred yearsago? Certainly not. And the same holds for other such novels in this series.The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales—and the novels in thisseries are supreme fairy tales.

Samuel Johnson:
>Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day

[Anonymous No.22038448]

>>22037319
>Classics aren't read because they are pretty wordplay. Any who disagrees or thinks it's not a problem for a book to be great solely based on its language is delusional.

A number of notable writers have disagreed.
>>22038441

[Anonymous No.22038921]

>>22037319
>It's spirituality and wisdom that become dated
or rather, modernity too much of an abnormal thing.
everything cointained in that has been the same since the beginning of the world and up until this exact point in time.

guess where it also started to go wrong.

[Anonymous No.22038951]

>>22036042
>A typical young adult male simply cannot relate to Raskolnikov or other characters.
Bullshit. I've related to practically every Dostoevsky character I've met, from Underground Man to Fyodor Pavlovich. Who the fuck can't relate to Ivan Karamazov?
Here's a very simple, easy to understand definition of a literary classic: a book that continues to make new fans and shows no signs of stopping. People keep reading the Iliad and loving it, 3000 years after it was written down. People keep reading Don Quixote, or Shakespeare, or Melville, or the Russians. It's that simple.

[Anonymous No.22038962]

>>22037319
>It's spirituality and wisdom that become dated
Spoken like a true retard. Wisdom is timeless.

[Anonymous No.22038973]

>>22038962
Only wisdom there is, is money! Truly! Nothing controls everything like money.

[Anonymous No.22039118]

>>22036042
I always laugh at you "le current year" fags. You never really get it, do you? You just want shiny new toys and are obsessed with the false notion of progress and technological advancement and similar nonsense. Go ahead, don't read the classics, I'll keep reading them and keep listening to classical music, thus enriching my soul.

[Anonymous No.22039128]

>>22039118
I just realized this reads like copypasta. I like it.

[Anonymous No.22039232]

The rate of educated men in the literary sense was higher in the past than today, but the occupation of a writer is ultimately a fringe affair. There are those who have made their notoriety and popularity through social schemes (knowing the right people in good society for their attention and patronage), and those who have administered masterpieces onto the world with a taciturn air. It is obvious that the former is more beneficial to the striving artist, but each path is constructed out of sheer effort. An aura of indifference governs the life of the prominent writer, just as it did with his literary forefathers. Only by his effort can he prevail over the stultified ruins of his time.

[Anonymous No.22039239]

>>22036306
fuck off AI man

[Anonymous No.22039244]

>>22036042
he looks like Godel

[Anonymous No.22039293]

>>22036042
Human behaviour, love, and social relations are progressively becoming extinct? What? That's absolute nonsense. It might be disappearing in dystopian hellholes like in major cities, but otherwise it's not really true, is it? But even if it were true, it presumes that I, the reader, participate in society. I don't and I live in my own world, therefore any old and "irrelevant" themes are of interest to me.

[Anonymous No.22039317]

>>22036054
This reads like an angsty 2014 tumblr post

[Anonymous No.22039413]

>>22036422
It debatable whether novels are art. The modern novel in general is often a social commentary or mere entertainment.

[Anonymous No.22039421]

I think it can still provide escape. Tolkien wrote an essay on the value of escaping with fairy stories. I can’t be assed to find it at the moment, but I will just say that I think it applies to fiction in general.

[Anonymous No.22039425]

>>22036042
what a chud post

[Anonymous No.22039719]

>>22036042
Just because you waste your life in front of a computer doesn’t mean that that is the normal way of being for the population. Just because social conventions have changed doesn’t mean that they have been eliminated. There’s value in seeing the way characters react to situations different from the ones we see and relate to. Seeing common ground between yourself and someone who lived 150 years ago who had entirely different hopes and dreams and pressures on them is interesting and I think in a way more valuable than reading about people who love lives extremely similar to your own.

[Anonymous No.22039818]

>>22039413
We are talking about classics here.

[Anonymous No.22040918]

>>22036042
>Raskolnikov
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

[Anonymous No.22041068]

>>22036054
We live in a modern industrial society... uncle ted was right

[Anonymous No.22041082]

>>22036042
This again... these descriptions of human behavior transcend times and fashion. I know you get that at least partly, but for a silly example the struggles of a young man wanting a child at 21, is the same struggle of no capping and not getting bussing baddies. Also, your literary value argument doesn't hold up to the want for certain styles or appreciation for old ways of living/thought. Literature still gives the greatest insight to the past, more than broad history work. Read what you want, if you can find contemporary works that are great, you are seriously ahead of the curve.

[Anonymous No.22041235]

>>22036054
>Quote about disturbing, sickening society.
Pic related to yours. LXXXVIII.

[Anonymous No.22041595]

>>22036042
Huxley would be working at a head shop and cleansing his friend’s studio apartments with sage and crystals if he were alive today.

[Anonymous No.22041639]

>>22040918
Nabokov is peak pseud

[Anonymous No.22043066]

>>22036042
Ok, so let's say that books are "useless", then what else would you like to spend your priceless time on?

[Anonymous No.22043301]

>>22036042
You are low iq. Young men understands exactly all those want. They dont sit on the computer all day because its their ideal but because the world has banished them.

[Anonymous No.22043336]

Any educated person uses analogy to read. I don't need to kill an old lady with an axe to understand the feelings of superiority and guilt as they happened in my life.

[Anonymous No.22043363]

>>22036042
>How can a person who mostly sits in frontof the computer or on the phone understand a young man that wanted to get married and had a child before they were even 22
Because that is innate to humanity, not a socially conditioned phenomena.
For example, myself. Despite being the aforementioned terminally online young man, I am working towards marrying my girlfriend and starting a family at a young age.
The reason, dear anon, the Classics are useful is that the human behaviour that is becoming "progressively extinct as they were known" is not true.
Despite our "progress" humans remain human, and we will always repeat old patterns.

[Anonymous No.22043386]

>>22036042
>there's no point on preserving the former steps of this ladder, I'll never fall down from it
You deserve everything happening to you