do you agree with this?

[Anonymous No.22819526]

are DFW and Cormac overrated?

[Anonymous No.22819537]

/lit/ hates Cornpop anyways

[Anonymous No.22819539]

>>22819537
who are stronger non-overrated prose stylists?

[Anonymous No.22819558]

>>22819526
Post the link to the interview

[Anonymous No.22819560]

>>22819558
https://www.booksofsomesubstance.com/blog/13-questions-with-seth-from-waste-mailing-list

[Anonymous No.22819581]

>translations
opinion discarded

[Anonymous No.22819810]

>>22819526
haven't read em and yes. Cormac McCarthy is the kind of writer you would be fascinated by if you found one of his books in an old library and had never heard of him, but he doesn't deserve the reputation he has. Blood Meridien reads like really good Fallout fanfiction.

[Anonymous No.22819820]

>>22819560
>first paragraph
>muh adhddddd
why do I bother with anything written post-2000

[Anonymous No.22819825]

>>22819526
>says there are better alternatives
>doesn't name them
Based Chad bullshit artist

[Anonymous No.22819831]

>>22819526
Learn the language or fuck off

[Anonymous No.22819974]

>>22819526
He is right about both. McCarthy is aging very badly. Some of his early stuff like Outer Dark and the Orchard Keeper is written very nicely, but after his two masterpieces (Suttree and Blood Meridian, which are good) he gets increasingly worse. He has not grown in his observation of the world and has maintained romantic cliche about violence, women and especially religion through his whole career: all his reflections about the bleakness of life you get until Stella Maris fall flat in the face of true evil, and his fetish for apocalypse is only there because if the world actually ended he could prove that god (and the devil) somehow exist and that life makes sense. He's not really willing to observe life outside of these self-imposed frames and this is why he's aging badly.
DFW on the other hand was on a quest to get read of academicism and an exaggerated intellectualism that availed him nothing - he was smart in a bookish way but rarely went above the level of philosophical and/or sociological observations in his books which is why stuff like IJ feels increasingly dated and stuff like the Pale King reads like an overexplained surrender to the status quo of capitalist society. He is indeed very funny to read but mostly because he fills his books with TV cliches that then he deconstructs. However, he was on the verge of becoming a generational Joyce in Oblivion, which is his best book and can be put together with the highest american literature. The rest is good but nowhere close to the masterpiece level people attribute to him.

The thing about translation is mostly bullshit, unless you read it as saying that non-american writers have kept experimenting and getting deeper. Houellebecq, Krasznahorkai, Cartarescu, Moresco and several others I possibly don't know (and consider I know almost nothing about the state of Asian lit at the moment) have all been doing incredible groundbreaking work, yet some of them stay untranslated in English (most of Moresco, most of Cartarescu). With good translations there really is the possibility for something like "world literature" to exist at this point in time (Seiobo there below from Krasznahorkai seems like a good example of this).

[Anonymous No.22820055]

>>22819974
Based... I think.

[Anonymous No.22820095]

Both are overrated by a certain type of online bookish young man who finds people and relationships difficult but enjoys complex systems.
The litmus test of any male novelist is 'can he write women' and both fail.

[Anonymous No.22820113]

>>22820095
What the fuck are you talking about
Name one female author who has convincingly written a man

Better yet just shut up you fucking gynoworshipping cuck
I'll successfully write a woman right now ready
"I thought about men all day. I thought about my own inadequacy compared to them, which I then reflexively denied, telling myself I'm better than them. All day long, I waver between hatred and total worship of men. When I think about myself, I do it in relation to the status of men. When I am upset I curse men with all the power of the spite in my heart. But inevitably, as sure as the tides can be seen to recede daily; inevitably I lust after one, and fuck one. And as I lay in bed next to some detachable penis, in those moments of clarity I realize I all I ever wanted was love, to be loved by a man. To be his wife. But my pride will never allow to me admit it, or to submit, so I join the sea of lying freaks, put on some garish eyeliner, my best GRRLLL Power attitude, and make my routine descent back into Hell."

Fuck you

[Anonymous No.22820127]

>>22819537
No we don't, but more people here do side with bloom

[Anonymous No.22820197]

>>22820113
Holy based

[Anonymous No.22820211]

>>22820113
melty

[Anonymous No.22820216]

>>22819526
Who calls Wallace "this generation's Joyce"? What the hell

[Anonymous No.22820219]

>>22819810
>Blood Meridian
>Fallout
How? You can't just pick random words and stick them in your sentence like that, it's septagenerian

[Anonymous No.22820245]

I can read Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese and if you were to push me for good modern prosists I'd only be able to name a bunch of boomers on their way out.
Quality prose relies on an empathic and poetic distilling of the outside world through the inner , twice. It's painting if painting had even more traps for the self-centered to step into. And it's going the way of painting too.

[Anonymous No.22820832]

>>22820055
checked

[Anonymous No.22820942]

>>22819526
wallace being the millennial joyce seems accurate to me. how does that mean he is overrated?

[Anonymous No.22821014]

>>22820095
Leave me out of this!

[Anonymous No.22821024]

>>22819526
Cormac is not overrated. That's my opinion.

[Anonymous No.22821049]

>>22820942
DFW was, and still is, overrated. I think if he had more time to workshop his fiction he would have emerged as a great writer, but his inclusion in the literary world through essays and short story collections removed such possibilities. They man fought tooth and nail when some several hundred pages of infinite jest were cut by the editor.

In my opinion, the cut pages were probably necessary for a greater understanding of his book, but even the edited and final length was far too long for the story he was trying to tell, one that a better writer could tell with more emotion without wasting the reader's time.

Gravity's Rainbow justified and earned its length. IJ did not.

[Anonymous No.22821053]

Asinine incarnate.

[Anonymous No.22821077]

>>22819974
>he gets increasingly worse

Orchard Keeper started strong, and everything between it and Blood Meridian is a pale reflection of it. The late work reigns in the purple profligacy.

>>22820245
>“A novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet.” -- Faulkner

Sustaining the economy of words and images at novel length is a bridge too far for most; Corncob made a few good stabs to that end at least.

[Anonymous No.22821104]

>>22819974
As much as I might enjoy the phrase ‘Overexplained surrender’ regarding The Pale King, to me the novel is anything but. The phrase might better suit tomes like Gravity’s Rainbow or The Recognitions, both incredibly erudite, bitter resignations as to the way things are and will always be, as The Pale King is genuinely concerned with living a better life and not just pointing its finger at things. Hard to say where it would have ended given the state it’s in, but I felt it was building to a very careful and considered call to arms. Actually something to believe in, and it’s a brave thing for an author to attempt.

[Anonymous No.22821118]

>>22821104
You're wrong on Gravity's Rainbow. It's a magic spell to reverse cause and effect, forcing culture + technology + sexuality from the jaws of war. Reread the disgusting English candy drill scene, it's all there. GR is optimistic and anybody claiming otherwise got filtered and chooses the labyrinth.

[Anonymous No.22821130]

>>22819526
>Cormac
>overrated

He's overrated on this site but not by general public, no.

[Anonymous No.22821310]

>>22819526
>do you agree with this
No, absolutely not. English is the scientific and cultural lingua franca, all self respecting authors learn English, anyone claiming otherwise is a pretentious pseud.

[Anonymous No.22821322]

>>22821310
>all self respecting authors learn English
Maybe but not all write in English which is why translation is important.

[Anonymous No.22821340]

>>22821322
No, claiming that the next big breakthrough in the theory of PDEs is going to come from a kindergartener deserves to be laughed at. The people you speak of are just advancing their own language, they will never skip past English.

[Anonymous No.22821349]

>>22821340
Lots of good writers don't write in English, thus, translation is necessary like it's always been. Stop the schizo shit.

[Anonymous No.22821379]

>>22821349
Good is not the same as pushing the field forward. Stop playing dumb.

[Anonymous No.22821382]

>>22821379
Europe is pushing the field forward, not angloids.

[Anonymous No.22821385]

>>22821382
Ok that's a good one. I thought you were being serious, you got me.

[Anonymous No.22821392]

>>22821385
wait you actually think angloids are pushing field forward somehow? the best books published in English for at least the last decade are translations

[Anonymous No.22821395]

>>22821392
Let me guess. Uhh I shall seal the heavens? lol

[Anonymous No.22821399]

>>22821395
I said European.

[Anonymous No.22821400]

>>22821399
Ok ok uuhhh. I can't even think of one. soz.

[Anonymous No.22821403]

>>22821400
It's OK, not everyone is well-read.

[Anonymous No.22821409]

>joyce
It's shit wtf. Is everything I've been told a lie, what the hell.
https://archive.org/stream/MollyBloomMonologEnd/MollyBloomMonologhyEnd_djvu.txt

[Anonymous No.22821584]

>>22821104
Don't get me wrong, I loved what the Pale King says about the value of narrating stories, anon. But the speech about life not being like a blockbuster, while containing many truths, falls flat to me. While the general idea of transcending "boredom" by learning how to pay attention is somewhat true (and well articulated), the fact that it ends up justifying having trite, alienating office jobs is problematic to me. But the book is incomplete, maybe there would have been more to it... I wonder what he would have said about silent quitting, great resignation and all that. Sometimes I miss his voice just for this kind of stuff. I love DFW, but I genuinely think Oblivion is where he started making a big jump into another kind of literature.

[Anonymous No.22821592]

>>22819526
>The future of English literature
>The most prolific language on the planet
>Is in translation

[Anonymous No.22821777]

>The future of English literature is in the publishing house sponsoring these comments, buy their new run of postmodernist translated Sardinian poetry anthologies

[Anonymous No.22822003]

>>22819974
>Houellebecq

And there goes your credibility.

[Anonymous No.22822009]

>>22821592
Yes

[Anonymous No.22822027]

>>22819974
>and stuff like the Pale King reads like an overexplained surrender to the status quo of capitalist society
lol bro he literally calls out female jew lawyers in a footnote this is a level beyond filtered

[Anonymous No.22822545]

>>22819974
I mostly agree with your take on McCarthy. I think I have more reverence for the two masterpieces (Suttree and Blood Meridian) than you do. I truly do think they're some of the best books of the century. But the rest of his work definitely pales in comparison.

[Anonymous No.22822553]

>>22822545
>But the rest of his work definitely pales in comparison.
to what?

[Anonymous No.22822737]

>>22819974
The Road is one of his best books and it’s the third to last one.

[Anonymous No.22823010]

>>22822009
Why bother?

[Anonymous No.22823023]

>>22823010
Fun

[Anonymous No.22823858]

>>22822003
>Houellebecq
>And there goes your credibility.
Now there's someone who is vastly overrated. Maybe he's better in the original French, maybe maybe.

[Anonymous No.22824977]

>>22819560
>Pynchon addict who pretends to have ADHD to seem interesting
Why am I supposed to take anything this guy says seriously.

[Anonymous No.22825022]

>>22821382
Serious: What novels would you say are currently pushing the envelope?

[Anonymous No.22826614]

>>22819560
>books of some substance
I listened to their podcast once, absolutely worthless.
Seth seems alright though, I'll give this a read

[Anonymous No.22827087]

>>22819526
>undercooked
>overcooked
is this from a gordon ramsay interview or what

[Anonymous No.22827105]

>>22821049
>In my opinion, the cut pages were probably necessary for a greater understanding of his book, but even the edited and final length was far too long for the story he was trying to tell, one that a better writer could tell with more emotion without wasting the reader's time.
Come on man, a book is not a machine with the purpose of injecting a story and an emotion into the reader as efficiently as possible. Noone is wasting a reader's time, you are wasting your own time if you read something you don't enjoy but at least let those of us who do enjoy it read long shit in peace.

[Anonymous No.22827443]

>>22821077
Faulkner said a lot of things

[Anonymous No.22827689]

>>22819526
This sounds like a self hating Westerner

[Anonymous No.22827699]

>>22820113
Let him cook.

[Anonymous No.22828548]

>>22820245
Painting is quietly making a comeback desu

[Anonymous No.22828554]

>>22820245
Painting is quietly making a comeback desu

[Anonymous No.22828575]

>>22828554
>>22820245

[Anonymous No.22828577]

>>22828575
>>22820245
I can post nipples on a blue board if that board is /lit/ and it’s a tasteful painting, right? We’re all high class snobs here, right?

[Anonymous No.22828609]

>>22828577
>>22820245
Just a couple more. /ic/ dgaf about serious traditional painting and /pol/‘s heart is in the right place about it but they’re too stupid and binary about it (to them it’s either aryan or degenerate).

Anyway, there’s seriously good work being made that will be appreciated in 20-50 years. You just have to ignore “the art world” and the crap universities and museums insist is important. But it is alive and picking up steam.

[Anonymous No.22828615]

>>22828609
‘La Lupa’

Like, rome, get it?