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/lit/ - Literature

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23164801 No.23164801 [Reply] [Original]

David Foster Wallace used to talk about the increasing gap between literary and genre fiction. Genre fiction was becoming more broad, more catering to public taste, while literary fiction was becoming more esoteric, more academic, and less widely read.
It's a very popular opinion on /lit/ to say things like "literacy was a mistake," but are you really okay with the slow death of high literature? Do you really want high literature to never be relevant again?
Even the world of film, which has been plagued for the last decade or so by superhero slop, is capable of producing a film like Oppenheimer, which, whether you like the film or not, or think Nolan's a hack or whatever, is a film that simultaneously satisfies the art film crowd as well as made almost a billion dollars. Is it possible for a literary writer to pull off this compromise and become as popular as Dickens or Hemingway were?
Thanks for reading my blog.

>> No.23164819

>asks on board that writes off anything which has success
Did he talk about that? Doesn't really seem like him, he knew the difference and understood the purpose each played.

Dickens was only popular in context of the countless masses who did not read. Hemingway was a celebrity and his popularity was not much different than the popularity of Paris Hilton.

>> No.23165010

>>23164801
>cum in a stripper
> I have become death


Truly the definition of high art in film

>> No.23165019

>>23164801
Literature's issues stem not from its ivory tower-ness but rather its obsolescence in the age of electronic media, sort of like how painting never recovered from the invention of photography. High literature definitely will survive one way or another, but it's never going to achieve the sort of relevance and dynamism it had, say, a century ago. Kind of like opera, I suppose? More than anything, it will be like a museum for the bourgeois to pay their respects to out of a sense of duty, perpetually frozen in time. The cynic in me whispers that perhaps a major reason why /lit/erati are attracted to literature to begin with is that they feel a certain sort of spiritual kinship with it, a shared fate as unfashionable things out of their time, things the present does not care for and the future has no place for.

>> No.23165039

>>23164801
Genre went up its own ass, as a strange turn of events and literary fiction is dead because the market caters to women and the idea of what sells instead of the audience it alienated. That also applies to genre as men don't read fiction written by anyone living.

Shit is out there but it isn't reaching the audience. We haven't adjusted to a new paradigm of publishing and the outlets have no collation or quality control.

>> No.23165055

>>23164801
Just because literacy didn't close the gap in intelligence doesn't mean literature is irrelevant. The only thing that can make literature irrelevant is censorship.

>> No.23165080

Books are kind of for faggots. It doesn't matter.

>> No.23165111

>>23164801
>David Foster Wallace used to talk about the increasing gap between literary and genre fiction.
>Thanks for reading my blog.
Did I miss anything?

>> No.23166323

High literature died because of radio and tv not genre fiction.
Good riddance to it though because it was too far up its own ass and not nearly as insightful as it used to be.

>> No.23166917

>>23166323
But we have traded it for 2 types of media generating slop at 98% effectiveness.

>> No.23167250

>>23164801
>satisfies the art film
Yeah who needs Felini or Kurosawa or Bergman or Tarkovsky
Nolan made an art film of the highest order Im satisfied lol

>> No.23167270

>>23165019
>it will be like a museum for the bourgeois to pay their respects to out of a sense of duty, perpetually frozen in time.
>thinks the bourgeois womt be outbred by poor people (immigrants, hoods etc) everywhere in the developed world
>thinks the financially ascendent families care about the past or art or are being acultured in any way into middle class culture
>thinks wokeness doesnt dominate academia and libraries and publishing houses and that this crowd wont apply bad translations, censorship and control of publishing that will result in decreased quality
Youre too hopeful

>> No.23167286

>>23164801
>art film crowd
Really? People seem to think it was impressive "cinematically" because it was told to them that it was supposed to be impressive cinematically.

>> No.23167813

>HOLY SHIT GUYS THIS BOOK FIXED THE CRISIS OF MEANING EVERYBODY GO READ THIS BOOK BY DAVID FOSTER WAL——AAACCCKKK

>> No.23167843

>>23167270
These trends do definitely seem like they’ll continue for the foreseeable future but there’ll always be a few rare deeply intellectually (perhaps even spiritually?) devoted people to make some true art here and there, even in the face of the misunderstanding and dismissiveness of the world at large. “Exiles” from their own culture like (D.H.) Lawrence, Melville, I guess early Joyce before Ulysses became a big thing, and other authors who worked to create meaningful things despite not having all the encouragement in the world and even facing attacks or dismissal from literary critics and audiences.

>> No.23168457

>>23167843
All yoir examples are from 100 yo at least
After WW2 and after the 60s revolution (and the consumer mindset inoculated in the West) theres lirtle to be done, the soil isnt there
DFW was one of the last canaries of this mine and even he could only lament and whine

>> No.23168503

>>23164801
You're completely insane if you think that Oppenheimer is anything even close to pleasing to an art audience.
If we consider the films nominated to Best Picture at the Oscars, The Zone of Interest would be the closest to this.
But aside from this observation, I'm not educated enough in terms of books, but speaking of films, there's a shit ton of art stuff being made, you just have to know where to look.

>> No.23169723

>>23165019
What do you mean obsolescence? Everything in modern media relies on books, most of film is book adaptations

>> No.23169778

>>23168503
Don't worry bro. I'm educated in terms of böoks and I'm here to say: there are lots of great böoks still being made, you just have to know where to find them heh.

>> No.23169864

>>23166917
Mass slop generation is easily avoided with even the slightest bit of discernment.

>> No.23169883

Clearly the solution is literary genre fiction.

>> No.23170023

>>23164801
It was already beginning to collapse together into a pile of muck when DFW was writing about it. I don't see any reason to care now, it's not changing if I do.