/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23198278]

>DFW was 24 when Broom of the System was published
>Goethe was 25 when The Sorrows of Young Werther was published
>Musil was 25 when The Confusions of Young Torless was published
>Hemingway was 25 when In Our Time was published
>Ryu Murakami was 24 when Almost Transparent Blue was published
>Garcia Marquez was 20 when Eyes of a Blue Dog was published
>Nietzsche was 27 when The Birth of Tragedy was published
>Saramago was 25 years old when Land of Sun was published
>Dickens was 25 when The Pickwick Papers was published
>Huxley was 25 when Limbo was published
>James Joyce was 25 when Chamber Music was published
>Proust was 25 when Pleasures and Days was published
>Mishima was 23 when Confessions of a Mask was published
>Bret Easton Ellis was 21 when Less Than Zero was published
>Kenzaburō Ōe was 23 when Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was published
>Emile Zola was 24 when Contes à Ninon was published
>Balzac was 20 when Cromwell was published
>Baudelaire was 24 when Salon of 1845 was published
>Stig Dagerman was 23 when Ormen was published
>Strindberg was 22 when The Outlaw was published
>Ibsen was 22 when Catiline was published
>Milan Kundera was 24 when Man: A Wide Garden was published
>Norman Mailer was 25 when The Naked and the Dead was published
>Robert Walser was 23 when Schneewittchen was published
>Marek Hlasko was 23 when Eighth Day of the Week was published
>F.S. Fitzgerald was 23 when This Side of Paradise was published
>Carson McCullers was 23 when The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was published
>Italo Calvino was 23 when The Path to the Nest of the Spiders was published
>Kerouac was 20 when The Sea is My Brother was published
>Jorge Luis Borges was 24 when Fervor de Buenos Aires was published
>Tolstoy was 24 when Childhood was published
>Evelyn Waugh was 25 when Decline and Fall was published

What's your excuse? Where are our artistic masterpieces? Where are the great intellectuals of our generation? Is important art even possible anymore?

[Anonymous No.23198286]

>>23198278
The novel is dead

[Anonymous No.23198291]

>>23198278
And it shows

[Anonymous No.23198294]

>>23198278
i wasn't brought up to be bibliophile

[Anonymous No.23198301]

>>23198278
Anon, I hate to break it to you: We are in the dark ages.

[Anonymous No.23198312]

the only masterpeice there is Ibsen's Catiline

[Anonymous No.23198886]

>Though this is Pynchon's first big performance—and a youthful one: he was only 26 when V. was published—his world and, more importantly, his tone are already fully established in it
just give up nigga

[Anonymous No.23198989]

>>23198278
>Confucius was dead when the Analects was finished.
>Marcus Aurelius was dead when Meditations was published.
>Dag Hammarskjöld was dead when Markings was published.

Our masterpieces are our personal thoughts and conversations that gets written down and survive long after we are dead.
Because society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Don't wait to be Old, Make Memories, Plant Trees.

[Anonymous No.23199257]

>>23198278
That’s me fr fr, but female not male. Fml.

[Anonymous No.23199272]

My first novel got published at 23 but it flopped and I'm not doxing myself.

[Anonymous No.23199393]

>>23198278
Good. Now list every person who didn't have a masterpiece published in their 20s.

[Anonymous No.23199432]

>>23198278
>Where are the great intellectuals of our generation?
For an intellectual to be a GREAT intellectual he has to come up with his own novel ideas that strongly influence the world. Modern intellectuals haven't come up with anything original, nothing of their own, all they do is repeat the old ideas and beliefs.

[Anonymous No.23199466]

Ive got some good /lit/ posts in the archive

[Anonymous No.23199493]

i can play WoW and read any work of literature ever written by a human for free while i live in an air conditioned house and eat really good tasting fruit that those people likely never saw in their lives and cook really nice meals for myself

[Anonymous No.23199494]

>>23199432
We reached a limit of subjects we can talk or write about. Anyone after the greeks were hacks really

[Anonymous No.23199502]

I'm not a woman, black or gay

[Anonymous No.23199511]

>>23199502
thats just incel cope

[Anonymous No.23199531]

>>23199511
I live in canada it's not cope

[Anonymous No.23199642]

>>23199502
>>23199531
>I live in canada it's not cope
>I'm not a woman, black or gay
What are you then, mtf indian (jeet or native) ?

[Anonymous No.23199892]

>>23199502
basically yea

[Anonymous No.23200348]

>>23199502
Neither was I, you just didn't cut it.

[Anonymous No.23200392]

>>23198278
I got my first short story published when I was about 28, so I guess I'm about on track.

[Anonymous No.23201407]

>>23198286
and we killed him

[Anonymous No.23201456]

Kalle Päätalo was 35 when Ihmisiä telineillä was published. I still have four more years.

[Anonymous No.23201464]

>>23198278
>how 90% of young guys live
Ummm no, it is the fringe minority of young men who live like that. Have 4chan /pol/chuds really convinced themselves that their situation is 'normal'? What tragic irony!!!

[Anonymous No.23201958]

>>23201464
If niggers, wiggers and spics don't count then maybe it's inaccurate I guess.

[Anonymous No.23202317]

>>23198278
People have been increasingly infantilised by an increasingly pervasive system. That same system has also led to publishers taking far fewer chances on new works.

Following on from this, far fewer people read and even those that write read far less than they used to. I guarantee you that even the most literate of anons on this board are not as well read as Joyce and Hemmingway were by the time they reached their early twenties.

There simply isn't the same impetus to write because almost all twenty somethings will also now divide their time between video games, movies, the internet, and the daily grind.

People also have to seriously sweat, often working more than eight hours a day, just to afford a single bedroom apartment these days. Between that, other competing forms of entertainment, and the crippling alienation modernity engenders via loneliness and the aforementioned pervasive nature of the state, there just isn't the same capacity.

People will write, but, when they do, it'll probably be in their thirties, through independent publishers, and will mostly consist of sword and sorcery and/or sci-fi and fantasy. Since no-one can really afford to have real experiences anymore, even at 35, fantasising will play more of a central role in the great novels of the future. They will also mostly be written by weird shut-ins, prisoners, the mentally ill, and the very rich, since these are the only sorts of people who will have the time to write and to train themselves to write well.

[Anonymous No.23202680]

>>23198278
This world has been consumed by vapid time sinks. The internet was a mistake. Capital has won the war against humanity and now every cultural artifact is a Marvel movie.

[Anonymous No.23202884]

>>23202317
>People will write, but, when they do, it'll probably be in their thirties, through independent publishers, and will mostly consist of sword and sorcery and/or sci-fi and fantasy. Since no-one can really afford to have real experiences anymore, even at 35, fantasising will play more of a central role in the great novels of the future. They will also mostly be written by weird shut-ins, prisoners, the mentally ill, and the very rich, since these are the only sorts of people who will have the time to write and to train themselves to write well.
This is grim, but you're probably right.

[Anonymous No.23202891]

>>23202884
We will finally get a series of brilliant fantasy novels, so there's that.

[Anonymous No.23202898]

Even if you go looking for it the world just dkee not offer those experiences anymore. Basically everyone has no choice but to exhibit a degree of shut in like nerd behavior and engage in escapism. There's just no life outside for someone in their teens and 20s. There's a pretty strict pipeline that you're too young to even have the idea of leaving. Even when I was in university like half of my year just stayed in their dorms 24/7.
All the youth experiences I read in books and saw in movies just didn't exist to be honest. People go outside to buy food or to fuck which is exclusively arranged by inhuman apps and ensure nothing spontaneous could ever happen.

Its just boring out there. There's only so much time you can spend aimlessly wandering around alienating shopping centers where nobody talks or does anything. And people who do talk just want to discuss their escapist media

[Anonymous No.23202921]

>>23202898
it's hard for me to fathom that it was ever any other way.

[Anonymous No.23202930]

>>23198278
>What's your excuse?
There are actually things to do in modern times. Back then you either wrote down your thoughts, or you watched paint dry.

[Anonymous No.23202944]

>>23201464
you type like a colossal fag, which would explain why you don't know how normal men live.

[Anonymous No.23202945]

>>23202898
>All the youth experiences I read in books and saw in movies just didn't exist to be honest.
This is kind of a mindblowing realization. My whole life I've watched movies with teenagers/young adults hanging out and doing fun things with their social lives, and I hoped I would one day be like that. Like just going around town or having adventures at other places and spontaneously meeting people. But maybe this kind of thing was never real.

[Anonymous No.23203017]

>>23201407
how shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all narratives?

[Anonymous No.23203386]

>Where are our artistic masterpieces?

Sitting in my folder and they'll stay there until i die. I already feel proud and fulfilled and i'm going to live the rest of my life knowing i'm a man who wrote a couple of masterpieces

[Anonymous No.23204611]

>>23202680
So why are on the internet then?

[Anonymous No.23204651]

>>23198278
>Where are the great intellectuals of our generation? Is important art even possible anymore?

they are bathing their brains in cheap baths of dopamine. its the cruel irony of everything being at your fingertips. Perhaps, the wise anguished will prevail, but it's not trending that way.

[Anonymous No.23204708]

i have no inclination to share my masterpieces with the world. why would i give you jerks anything at all? coax, prod, jibe, and wheedle all you like, there will be at least one great work which doth not see itself dissected by you ungrateful lot

[Anonymous No.23204718]

>>23198278
Most impressively, Schopenhauer was 26 when we wrote The World as Will and Idea

[Anonymous No.23206134]

Don DeLillo was like 35 when he published his first novel and his first novel worth a shot didn’t come until he was pushing 50 and his “magnum opus” came another 10 years after that. Don’t believe the accelerationist brainrot of the social media era anon

[Anonymous No.23206138]

Murakami 30. Literally didn't write at all before that either

[Anonymous No.23206188]

>>23198278
All these people, with the exception of DFW and Bret Easton Ellis, lived more in the first 25 years of their lives than most people will live in an entire lifetime today. The modern man cannot comprehend the visceral reality of the world in the past. An 8 year old child was more independent than a 30 year old man is these days.

[Anonymous No.23206199]

None of these people would get published today so I don't care.

[Anonymous No.23206200]

>>23204718
and was revising it for the rest of his life

[Anonymous No.23206202]

>>23204651
We will have our artistic treasures, just like any other generation. The thing about greatness is that it takes time to ferment. It's funny that op brought up Dickens, because in his own day, he was pretty widely disliked (and still is, depending on who you ask). This is so with many of the alleged "greats". Lord Byron is my personal literary whipping boy.

Murakami is writing in the same tradition you are! He is your contemporary! There are plenty of things written today that are good-- very good, even. But greatness, actual, mythic greatness, takes time. It takes time just to filter it out on a practical level. A lot of the people on the list haven't even achieved greatness, either because they aren't actually so great, or because time has yet to make them great. Your greatness isn't in your youth. Even in your own small life, your own potential for greatness needs to ferment.

Dante published the Divine Comedy (perhaps the greatest epic poem ever written?) in his fifties. Milton (perhaps the greatest English poet) finished Paradice Lost in his mid-sixties.

Despair is the enemy of every art. You'll notice when you convince yourself how ~behind~ you are, you write less, you write worse, and everyone can tell. The best artists, whatever their day and age, were grandiose lovers of themselves and of life. Don't turn yourself into Fran Lebowitz.

[Anonymous No.23206312]

>>23206188
DFW was also basically trained to write and do nothing else. Wasn't his first novel also his PhD thesis?

[Anonymous No.23206326]

>>23206202
nice post

[Anonymous No.23206552]

>>23202317
Capitalism killed high-culture. Now, all art is facile, vapid, and manufactured.

[Anonymous No.23206554]

I'm mediocre, but not in a cool 'outsider' way. In a boring, directionless, talentless way.

[Anonymous No.23206590]

>>23206200
The core of it was still produced at 26, and most of his essays and revisions are not as difficult as the original work

[Anonymous No.23206591]

>>23198278
It’s probably some viral tweet. That’s highbrow. A viral TikTok would be the lowbrow equivalent

[Anonymous No.23206646]

Different time. They didn’t have boomers selling them into college loan debt slavery and clinging to their jobs until their 80th birthday.

It’s probably true that if you’ve not written much or published anything at all by your 30th birthday that writing isn’t going to be your thing, but it’s not necessarily the case and it’s certainly not there case that it’s not for you because you’ve written and published a bit but not had any real success by 30.

[Anonymous No.23206654]

>>23198886
Pynchon is an unremarkable author in the end. He won’t enter the canon and few will remember let alone value his books, sadly.

[Anonymous No.23206657]

>>23198989
Yeah but how many of them were mature adults when they started their project? I know of almost nobody who was a nobody into their 30s and 40s but later published and it became valued at any point. Even Kant was a professional intellectual since his 20s.

[Anonymous No.23206664]

>>23200392
Ideal age to publish imo. I’m 30 but I regret not trying to get some short stuff published a few years back. 28 and 29 are perfect honestly. You’re mature enough to publish something halfway decent but naive enough to chalk it up as youthful garbage. Once your age starts with 30 it changes.

[Anonymous No.23206672]

>>23199466
this is hilarious. post MOAR.

[Anonymous No.23206689]

>>23202317
The truth is that the novel was always merely entertainment. Sure, some talented writers used it basically as a medium for publishing philosophy, but they always had to be also entertaining and the true purpose of the novel was to be entertaining. It wasn’t until Joyce that the novel was considered worthy of being studied seriously in English literature programs in the first place. And even through the time of Joyce, it was widely understood that the real core of literature was poetry, that study of poetry should be the basis of an education in English literature, and that poetry was worth reading and writing over all. The number of great authors who aspired first to be poets is great. Most novelists are failed poets. But here’s the kicker. Even modern poetry is pretty much bad. That in the 21st century people don’t really aspire to write a thing which was never really the basis of literature let alone culture at all or to write mediocre poetry is frankly fine. If you ask me, this whole development offers an opportunity. That opportunity is to bring poetry back to the center of literature and actually try to make it good. So if out of 100 writers, all of them first publish in their 30s, but even 1 among them published some decent poetry at the ripe age or 36, that is a good thing. That is a step in the right direction.

But the bit about not having the time to write is interesting. It’s not about time. I have a remote job. I do basically nothing, all day, everyday. It’s been like this for years. I still write only infrequently. Why? The feeling just isn’t there. There’s not that pull to opening up the laptop and typing something out. Sure, force myself sometimes and if I wanted to make a serious go of it I would force myself more, but forcing myself is always writing in a way that’s strained, difficult, uncomfortable and frustrating. None of this has anything to do with money or time. It’s just not having the sort of life that just sets you to pen and paper.

[Anonymous No.23206691]

>>23206199
Honestly, this. Nowadays art doesn't have the social relevance it had previously. CEO's aren't aristocrats, so it doesn't make sense to pretend you're living in the 19th century or so. The irony at play here is that any great piece of art made in our era has to face and accept this reality somehow.

[Anonymous No.23206694]

>>23202898
It’s true. For most people, life is driving to work, working in some soulless environment on a PC, then going home, and entertaining themselves to death with a television, computer or phone. An eventful day includes a walk.

Nothing ever happens. Nobody lives with any vitality, or freedom. There’s no dynamism in the world, not human anyway. Giant trucks fly down the highway and that’s pretty dynamic but it’s non-human. Human life barely happens at all. It’s just kind of the same monotony and loneliness everyday while people live their real lives increasingly online. You can’t even have an honest conversation with a person IRL now, let alone an interesting one.

[Anonymous No.23206726]

>>23198278
they have all been refuted by 14 year olds with 100000 words of fanfic

[Anonymous No.23206731]

>>23202921
It was though. People lived real lives in the real world, and it just online. It was filled with interactions, the possibility for chance encounters. I mean, just think about the possibilities for life contained within the reality of having to rely on file cabinets for paperwork. Today, you just click a mouse and *bam* there’s your file. Can’t find the file? You click more. What if you couldn’t find a file in 1970? Why, you went and asked Cindy. Cindy says she hasn’t seen it, but she wants to know how things went on that date with your wife (Cindy always asks about your wife because she’s developed a bit of a crush on you from all those times you came around asking for a lost file). So you tell her and she blushes out of embarrassment for catching herself swooning again. Paul sees it and says “hey, get a room you two”. That damn Paul. Pauls an alright guy. You meet to play Squash after work every Thursday, because you know you’d rather do that than stay home since there’s no Netflix. Truthfully you can’t stand Paul but he’s your friend’s friend so you’re nice to him. So you blush as well and you shuffle away from Cindy muttering thanks. Now you’re on your way to the next hall to check about the file with the other office girls when suddenly your boss stops you. “Grab your coat. We have to meet with the Johansson client”. It turns out they’re mulling over pulling out of the deal. They’ve really gotta be pitched in order to bring this one back in, so the two big swinging dicks have to go over there and instill confidence. You really do have to go, you know, because there’s no Zoom. So you zip on down to the lobby where you have a conversation with the white security guard who speaks English. Then you have an interesting chat with your boss in the car on the way to the client.

I’d keep going with this story but you get where I’m going with this. Consider how much more eventful this little odyssey for the manila folder was than the modern equivalent, where you just kind of click around with a finger and maybe type a message to someone else who just copies and pasted a file path in reply.

It takes noticing all of these little things to realize just how inert and dead the world has become. Imagine what it’s done to the big things.

[Anonymous No.23206733]

Back then, "becoming an author" was actually possible. Now every person with literary talent is being wasted on some pointless IT job. Unless you're making sci-fi, fantasy, or shit for women, your chances of success are virtually zero and even in those genres your chances are astronomically low. Can you even compare the two eras?

Just read about the shit houellebecq went through to become famous
https://fragilekeys.com/2019/11/23/staying-alive-michel-houellebecq/
There is no pipeline to success now, only a truly masochistic/insane man like him would do it, and that was the 90s. But yeah. ...Look at these people man >>23206199
Have you encountered "literature people" in 20XX? They're so fucking boring. You think they could spot a Kafka in the wild?

Look. There's room for great writers -- look how popular Blood Meridian still is. But it won't be through the "old way". You have to understand the social apparatus that made these old guys successful is dead. Even McCarthy had infinitely more resources than we do. To become a successful writer in 2024, you need a following. You need social media. It's the only way. Write your stuff, shill it, cross-promote it. Fuck the publishing industry. Who needs them? You need direct support from your audience. There are countless people who'd enjoy your work online; you just have to find them. Use algorithms, use your brain, be smart. Talent's not enough anymore, you need savvy. Savvy?

>>23202945
>But maybe this kind of thing was never real.
My parents went to college in the 80s and had plenty of stories about camping or driving cross country with their friends to beaches and partying with random strangers, staying up drunk the whole night, they found a stray dog on the road and kept him, etc.

[Anonymous No.23206734]

>>23202945
It was before the internet age. Even late millenials remember this from high school.

The internet really ruined everything. You’re probably too young to remember.

[Anonymous No.23206735]

>>23202944
most normal men are married and pounding pussy, lol! You are just depressed irl shut-in who is stuck in his house all day and to cope you have convinced yourself that your situation is normal! lol!!!!

[Anonymous No.23206740]

>>23206138
I believe he did publish some short pieces in college or his 20s, as is the case for most of these people who allegedly didn’t publish until their 30s like McCarthy. Sincerely, the only writer I’m aware of who published nothing at all until about 30 was Virgil.

[Anonymous No.23206745]

>>23206202
It’s true Dante published the Divine Comedy in his 50s but he also published La Vita Nuova in his 20s and was no doubt receiving a top tier literary education since he was about 10.

[Anonymous No.23206758]

>>23206733
At least currently, the best way to bill yourself as a mediocre at best writer is to shill yourself online. It’s even worse than shilling yourself to these literary agents. Maybe it’s unfair, but it is the perception. Personally I don’t think it’s not for good reason. Literary talents are just not on Twitter.

[Anonymous No.23206778]

I sympathize with you guys looking for late-bloomers.

The real question is why you're not even writing (even though you apparently want to) while your heroes spent their 20s hard at work. IMO, this is because the novel has reached a crossroads. No one knows what a novel should be like in 2024. All your greats like Joyce worked within specific movements like Modernism -- but what movement would you be in? None. These guys worked so hard as young men because what their novels should be like was obvious in that time and place. And with Schopenhauer >>23204718 his philosophy borrows *heavily* from the world around him in that specific time, it only seems radically original because you don't know 1800s Prussian philosophy that well.

Even 2010, you could argue the late-late-post-modernism of DFW and Franzen was still creeping along. Now it's dead as a doornail & nothing has replaced it. A writer in 2024 is essentially post-literature; he's not apart of anything. Whatever you do will (probably) be a rehash of some more talented work from the past. No, the novel itself needs to change. I don't really know how yet, but we need a new template for books.

[Anonymous No.23206823]

>>23206778
You already alluded to it. I personally don’t see any special place for the novel in 2024 and I’ve more or less lost interest in writing one at this time. I no longer think of the novel as this incredible artistic medium and so writing would be a mostly professional or egoistic endeavor, but what good is such a thing in a society which basically doesn’t care about any novels, let alone contemporary novels, and in which every contemporary novel is assumed to be garbage? It’s difficult to see where the novel fits in today, why you’d write one, what you’d try to do with it. It’s not even primarily a source for television adaptation. Young people spend more time with video games and digital media than television.

So if you’re going to go rooting around in the past to try to find some reason to write, why stop at the novel at all? Why not write a poem? At least that’s art in some sense, even if nobody really cares. But the novel just feels like something of a pointless relic. As much as I do enjoy reading them, I recognize I am a niche audience and we mainly read old books, not new ones.

I think digital tech and media has just kind of made literature culturally superfluous, which is a tragedy but it is what it is.

[Anonymous No.23206836]

>>23206733
>Back then, "becoming an author" was actually possible
it is though. wanna know how? become an e-celeb first.

[Anonymous No.23206843]

>>23206778
>No one knows what a novel should be like in 2024
High-brow young adult fiction. This is the wisest path for literature honestly. Make profound shit but wrap it up in the most normie way possible.

[Anonymous No.23206851]

how do you even write something as long as a novel even when i bust my ass and i think im writing some epic its just barely short story length

[Anonymous No.23206882]

>>23202898
I went to college in 2020 and it was literally pulling teeth to arrange any events. I think the vast majority of the school were just A to B drones. You ONLY see them in class or eating in the cafeteria. They are in their rooms the rest of the time. I was part of the tiny minority of people who wanted to do young people shit, discuss books, party, play music, arrange shows. It was hopeless. We were the only people on campus doing shit like this and the turn out was still abysmal every time. After I graduated I have been stuck inside all day. I live in a city but its not NYC or anything, nobody does jack fucking shit outside. Even when I make the effort and go to bars, the most I can find are bored jaded millennials. I have nothing against older people but it would be nice to find people my age to be friends with and to date. But honestly the social situation just seems like an unsalvageable tragedy. I think we're already Asia tier. Like Japan or India levels of
>okay youre born, do well in school and focus on that, then go to college, focus on doing well, then graduate and get a job. You will only see other people in school and after you get a job you will be alone forever.
But in a way its worse. We don't have arranged marriage or any of that, and we dont have any culture of hanging out with coworkers (even if its obligation which is its own issue) and I know its a meme but our cities are just not easy to navigate whatsoever and with cars becoming unaffordable and just plain unattractive to the new generation thats a pretty big problem. How do you encourage a generation of kids who all display some degree of shut in behavior to go out when they cant get anywhere on foot, public transit sucks, and cars are a luxury? America planned everything in the most short sighted way possible thinking we'd always live in a boom era and young people would always be out partying. For most people theres just no incentive. I see teenagers out and they're just wandering, they have no place to hang out at all or anything to do anywhere. And I feel bad for them because that is going to be the most socialization they get in their lives.

[Anonymous No.23206905]

>>23206882
What about the students who lived on campus, were they more active? Did they have frequent parties and events?

[Anonymous No.23206907]

>>23206905
We all lived on campus. These are all campus things I'm discussing.

[Anonymous No.23206909]

>>23206882
>I think the vast majority of the school were just A to B drones. You ONLY see them in class or eating in the cafeteria. They are in their rooms the rest of the time.
Sorry anon...that was me.

[Anonymous No.23206918]

>>23206907
That is quite sad to hear. Even the campus life has gotten sterilized. That was the one domain of society where normies could feel like they escaped mediocrity

[Anonymous No.23206924]

>>23206823
You're correct that the audience for the novel is very small.

Put it this way: For 95% of people, film made the novel obsolete. If you can see The Great Gatsby in theaters there's no point to reading the book. Even books with fanbases like Blood Meridian would =explode= in popularity if they got a good adaptation, just look at Dune. The question is not "Why aren't people reading anymore?", it's "Why does anyone even read in 2024?" And I have a few answers. People read because...

>1) They're boring
Look at the New Yorker. Look at /r/literature. Look at English majors. These people read because it's a soothing, meditative activity. Most self-described readers are this sort of person. Skews female.

>2) They have an autistic fixation over meaning
This is probably you. You read because you find the world and life interesting, and books help you understand it. Literature is your tool to make sense of life, to process your emotions, to figure out what matters. These guys are diametrically opposed to group (1) and they don't realize it. Skews male.

>3) They have an autistic fixation over language
Nabokov. Joyce. The rarest type, but these guys are liked by both (1) and (2) since they're inoffensive and truly love literature in a way the other groups don't. Usually prefer poetry.

These 3 groups are the only people who'd read the Great Gatsby rather than watch the film adaptation when they have equal access to both.

[Anonymous No.23206933]

>>23206882
my school was exactly like this and aside from my friend getting a false rape accusation and being forced to transfer nothing happened in my university
there is just no way to meet people
none of my roommates even talked to each other

where is my exciting eventful youth?
i don't even feel bad about being a virgin anymore
what other option did i have? im too old fashioned for dating apps which ive only seen people get sex and short term relationships from
just pointless

[Anonymous No.23206942]

>>23206882
I use to be a gamer but video games got boring so I've now spent an ungodly amount of time walking around and loitering in central locations. I quickly realized that normal people had way worse addictions and were way more misanthropic than I ever was. And despite reaching out to people and being friendly I have no events or stories to tell after spending thousands of hours outside in highly populated urban areas

[Anonymous No.23206949]

The grandpas yelling at clouds were right. The smartphone actually did kill society.

[Anonymous No.23206973]

>>23206949
Challenge: Write a passionate novel about a dispassionate world where everyone's a materialist who has no values or ideals, who doesn't do anything, who lives in apathetic comfort, who doesn't hang out, who barely drinks, who doesn't party, who makes an empty cow-like expression toward their phone for hours a day, who lives life either consuming a media product or blankly waiting for a new one, who doesn't really have friends, who...

[Anonymous No.23206981]

I don't give a fuck. I'm writing. I don't give a fuck about the novels place in current year. I'm writing. haha.

[Anonymous No.23206984]

>>23206949
the social unit has shrunk even further from nuclear family
it is now just You.
technology has created an autistic solipistic country.
the average person now sees interacting with others as a nuisance and will pay extra for the luxury of not doing so.
the extremist american patriot dream is to aquire assets that allow them to live independently from the country they "love" away from all society and culture on a metaphorical of not literal Island

[Anonymous No.23206991]

>>23206731
We now live in a world where we are nostalgic and envious for the shallow and vapid white collar interactions that our parents loathed and made fun of.

[Anonymous No.23207022]

I may not have had anything published in my 20's, but I have gotten hundreds of (You)'s and have even seen screen-caps of some of my shitposts. That is the 21st century equivalent of being published in a literary magazine.
I may not have been exiled to Siberia for my radical thought and writing, but I have been banned off of every forum I've posted on (this one include).
I'm just going to keep writing my story.

[Anonymous No.23207044]

>>23207022
But anon...I'm tired of living in the Internet..I want to live in real life too

[Anonymous No.23207078]

>>23202317
>They will also mostly be written by weird shut-ins, prisoners, the mentally ill, and the very rich, since these are the only sorts of people who will have the time to write and to train themselves to write well.
This is different from ye olden times, how?

[Anonymous No.23207115]

>Anthony Burgess was 39 when his first novel, A Clockwork Orange, was published
>William S. Burroughs was 39 when his first novel, Junky, was published
>Raymond Chandler was 51 when his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published
>Charles Bukowski was 51 when his first novel, Post Office, was published
>Anna Sewell was 57 when her first novel, Black Beauty, was published
>The Marquis De Sade was 42 when he wrote his first book, Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man, in prison
>John Scalzi was 35 when his first novel, Old Man's War, was published
>Murakami was 30 when his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, was published
>Cormac McCarthy was 32 when his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published
>Raymond Chandler
>Andrzej Sapkowski
>Tolkien
>Richard Adams
>Bran Stoker
>Louis L'Amour
>JK Rowling
>Mark Twain
>Marcel Proust
>Henry Miller
>Annie Proulx
>Frank McCourt
>Margaret Atwood
Suck my dick you demoralizing worm

[Anonymous No.23207121]

>>23207115
The difference is that we are literally running out of time for the survival of art. It's going to perish in our lifetime. It's now or never to produce a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.23207126]

>>23207121
I'm working on it. Just have a little faith. I will tell them about /lit/ in my interviews.

[Anonymous No.23207129]

>>23207115
How many of these people were uniquely intelligent from a young age and had already written and done creative work recreationally from a young age?

[Anonymous No.23207137]

>>23207129
shut up crab faggot. go crawl in a hole and die. I'm writing my novel and I could beat you to death.

[Anonymous No.23207142]

>>23207129
bugman desperate for a formula on Quora or Reddit on 'how to be a writer' shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.23207146]

>>23207115
I think George Saunders may belong on that list. He even has a degree in some mind of stem. Ended up getting a blurb from Pynchon.

[Anonymous No.23207152]

>>23207137
>>23207142
Im literally just curious

[Anonymous No.23207153]

Houellebecq didn't publish his first poetry until 29, and his first novel until 38.

[Anonymous No.23207156]

>>23207152
Quiet! Your curious what dick tastes like.

[Anonymous No.23207158]

>>23207156
Why are you acting like Im against you. Im not going to give up here. I want to be encouraged.

[Anonymous No.23207170]

Karl Ove Knausgård didn't publish until 30

[Anonymous No.23207173]

>>23207158
b/c you are asking irreverent questions looking for an excuse to disregard the list of authors I just provided who didn't publish before 30. you have been encouraged. go write or ill fucking cut your faggot throat open.

[Anonymous No.23207182]

>>23207173
I dont understand how those are bad questions. Can you chill out

[Anonymous No.23207191]

>>23207146
Geoengineering or something like that.
Anyway, this should be the guy late bloomers look up to. Went from never writing, to struggling to find time at his work (he said he was lucky if he could write one line a day), getting published by the new yorker, publishing his first collection at ~37 (and getting that blurb from pynchon you mentioned), and today he’s practically america’s most celebrated short story writer, and his one novel won the booker prize.

[Anonymous No.23207202]

>>23207182
b/c your crying like a bitch. You know exactly what answer you were looking for and the implications, you fucking disingenuous faggot.
>b-but all those writers were already writing and creative from a young age, unlike poor little faggot me! Oh, my God! Why should I even try? It's hopeless. I'll just go lament with my dildo and bucket of lube instead of attempting to write something, because the truth is, I'm afraid. Afraid of facing my mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.23207218]

>>23198278
I'm way more cultured than the average normalfag.
I've heard the names of only about 1/4 of these authors, and I've heard ZERO of these titles, even here on /lit/.
even /lit/ spergs don't talk about them. therefore they don't matter.
checkmate OP.

[Anonymous No.23207221]

>>23198278
...ALSO, I can't believe you didn't mention the most obvious example.
Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley at 14.
everyone knows that.

[Anonymous No.23207234]

>>23207202
I just asked a question bud

[Anonymous No.23207252]

One thing that helps is coffee naps
When you get home from work drink some coffee, then have a 20 minute nap
I find by the time my usual bed time comes I'm sleepy but I've managed to have a productive evening
I used to sleep a lot during the day and not only is it a complete waste of time but I think it harms you mentally

[Anonymous No.23207493]

>>23206731
What you need is a hobby. I still have those interactions at my local library (admittedly none of the women are attractive or attracted to me) trying to get access to rare research documents. The librarian always kind of sighs and says "hi anon" and then I go through a list of rare archival microfilms and government archive documents I need and then they tell me I need to pay the $300 in outstanding fines before I can check any more stuff out, and then I go on the computers and watch pornography for an hour or so.

If you have a reason to get out and interact with people, then interactions become less of an unfulfilled need and more of a chore. Like such and such person owes you money, so you go hang around their kid's soccer game just to let them know you're keeping them in mind. Or you can steal clothing from consignment stores and then resell those clothes to other consignment stores the next town over, soon enough you're on a first name basis with all of the shop keepers.

And don't even get me started on the many, many institutions that already exist just for making friends and fostering communities. Did you know that many churches host regular soup kitchens? Did you even think about getting involved in those? Not only is it a great way to meet girls, but you get a hot meal for free.

[Anonymous No.23207518]

>>23207493
Fucking bullshit

[Anonymous No.23207525]

>>23206312
>Wasn't his first novel also his PhD thesis?
Undergrad thesis, I think. Also he studied philosophy and taught for a while, too. I don't think he wanted to be a writer until partway through his undergrad degree so it's not like he was destined from birth to write.

[Anonymous No.23207533]

>>23206733
>>23207129
>>23207115
>>23206949
>>23206924
>>23206733
>>23206646
>>23206199
>>23204651
>>23199432
>>23198301
>>23198286
These are all such pathetic miserable copes. But worst of all they are born of a kind of loser male instinct to attempt and fail at self denial. Rather than say "I know I don't have what it takes to be an author" or "I don't care if other people published younger I know I can write something good" you have to pretend it's everyone else's fault, because doing so would have some real impact on your worldview. It would take you out of your infantile comfort zone. Make you deal with the consequences of your life choices or failure to make said choices at all. There are still people talented people getting published, people get published at all ages, le west has not fallen. You are just a mediocrity, of course you are, you're here aren't you. The very thing you complain about. In a roundabout way you are just telling us "I am a failure" in a manner that only you can't understand it when you say it.

[Anonymous No.23207640]

>>23206657
When they started their project is irrelevant. What matters is that they just did. Why are you making excuses for your own laziness?

[Anonymous No.23207822]

>>23207533
>There are still people talented people getting published, people get published at all ages
Yeah? Name them. What are your five favorite books of the past 10 years?

[Anonymous No.23207896]

>>23207078
Hemmingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Mishinma, Ibsen, Tolstoy etc. were neither mentally ill, nor were they prisoners; nor were they shut-ins or very rich. Writing will once more become the preserve only of those who have the luxury of time to write, only, whereas before this luxury was afforded to the very rich alone, it is now also afforded to the very sick.

[Anonymous No.23207914]

uhh tech bros,whats our response?they say the internet killed society

[Anonymous No.23207915]

>>23207896
>Hemmingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Mishinma, Ibsen, Tolstoy etc. were neither mentally ill
hahaha...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous No.23207924]

>>23207129
The average /lit/ poster is pretty bright relative to the average person

[Anonymous No.23207926]

>>23207493
>Did you know that many churches host regular soup kitchens?
This isn't the nineties anymore. Most of the churches in my area stopped doing this because the priests don't like dealing with homeless people. All the problems you find in society will only be magnified within the Church. Women in the Church still suffer from that peculiar, inflated sense of self that almost all women suffer from in this day and age, only within an institution like the Church, they have added reasons to believe themselves to be a band apart. People don't really change. Even within an ideology, you find they'll simply focus on those aspects of the ideology that reinforce prior beliefs they had about themselves whilst ignoring others that might pressure them to be something other. You also have to realise that the number of young people going to Church is extremely low, regardless of what anons here might like you to think about Orthodoxy, or the TLM, or "the young, restless and reformed." There will be a handful of young women, most will be ugly, most will be taken, and the few somewhat pretty women who aren't taken will regarded themselves as such a rarity within that space that'd you'd have an easier time getting a date on Tinder. It's awful. It's appalling. It is the number one contributing factor to societal decline overall, along with plummeting average inteligence, but it is what it is.

All of this is very much contrived, by the way. Those at the top are aware that gender relations are at an all time low, and they are at least partially aware of what has caused it and is continuing to cause it. They simply don't care. Countries are fast being turned into economic zones that exist to serve the finanical interests of the already ultra wealthy. Land was probably onto something when he conceived of capital as being this sort of all-destroying enitity unto itself.

[Anonymous No.23207933]

>>23207218
If you haven't heard the names of at least half of those entry-level authors you probably shouldn't be posting on this board. I don't doubt that you're much more cultured than the average normie, but how much does that mean really?

[Anonymous No.23207941]

>>23207896
Mishima and Hemingway were both extremely mentally ill, but I understand and agree with your point. You'd have to be a genuine nutjob to dedicate yourself to writing in this day and age.

[Anonymous No.23208003]

>>23207915
Mental illness in the sense of debilitating mental illness. Hemmingway lived a full life, filled with adventure. He wasn't housebound or stuck in a hospital, for the most part.

[Anonymous No.23208028]

>>23208003
Interesting definition of mental illness.

[Anonymous No.23208035]

>>23208028
Is it? We live in a day and age where everyone and their dog suffers from some form of depression or anxiety, and they probably really do. But it does make the term "mental illness" somewhat redundant if everyone is now sick in this way. The term has to be repurposed to only refer to those that I describe it if is to retain any meaning.

[Anonymous No.23208039]

I haven't published anything because I'm too stupid. There are probably writers in tbeir 20s publishing but they won't be recognised as greats for another few decades.

[Anonymous No.23208048]

>>23208035
Someone who's too mentally ill to function can't make a great piece of art. We have plenty of paintings from actual schizophrenics straight out of asylums and they're ass. The greatest writers will always be weirdos like Kafka who are borderline nuts but can hold themselves together well enough to do normal things

[Anonymous No.23208123]

>>23208048
Celine describes having paranoid delusions in Journey to the End of the Night. Elfriede Jelinek is agoraphobic. Proust was thought to have OCD.

[Anonymous No.23208132]

>>23208048
>We have plenty of paintings from actual schizophrenics straight out of asylums and they're ass.
Edvard Munch possibly had schizophrenia or at the very least pronounced BPD. van Gogh was sick enough to mutilate himself.

[Anonymous No.23208146]

>>23208048
>too mentally ill to function
>the function is the making of art
>complete work of art
>so one's functioning
>so they're not mentally ill

[Anonymous No.23208157]

>>23198278
It turns out I wasn't special after all.
I didn't try but there was no reason to try.
You can't fight destiny, the will of the universe.

[Anonymous No.23208166]

>>23208157
Here's a reason to try:
As you may well know, your DNA is unique to you and unique to you only. You are alone in the universe because there is nobody who is you except you. Only you can voice you, be heard, and expect a voice back from someone who can only be her. For that, you need to express your voice. Try it.

[Anonymous No.23208202]

>>23208166
>your DNA is unique to you and unique to you only. You are alone in the universe because there is nobody who is you except you.

All the more reason to believe that DNA is nothing special. Any random thing can be unique. Every snowflake is unique but they're not special. They all hit the ground and melt all the same. Uniqueness is the norm. Better to not be unique. Better to be just another link in the chain. A pure and facile clone of all the other greatness that touched this world. Maybe if I had Shakespeare's DNA things would be different.

[Anonymous No.23208207]

>>23206657
thomas harris was 35 when he first published

[Anonymous No.23208233]

>>23207493
Hobbies are nice, but they can’t replace the organic pains, strains, and moments of bliss that simple everyday life once contained. What makes a hobby a hobby in the first place is that it’s basically inessential and thus without real importance or great value. Anyone who believes mere hobbies can make life worth living is simply living in a fantasy.

[Anonymous No.23208238]

>>23207640
I don’t think that’s irrelevant at all.

[Anonymous No.23208240]

>>23207533
The West literally has declined.

Opinion discarded.

[Anonymous No.23208245]

>>23207914
There is no response. The technophiles know tech has made everything worse and they simply don’t care, either because it made them, because they were dysgenic losers before and are now not, or because letting go of their extremely naive optimism would be simply too much for someone who’s staked their life on it.

[Anonymous No.23208253]

>>23207153
He started a lit mag in college and published in it

>>23207146
>>23207191
He published in university in his later 20s for an MFA program

[Anonymous No.23208263]

>>23206924
Whether any of this is true means nothing for the viability of the novel market, and it is a market. Given the state of that market, if you’re 2 or 3 or basically anyone that just doesn’t intend to browbeat an audience about race and being a woman, then you have to grapple with the reality that there is basically no market for novels. In the past, the primary reason people wrote novels was to make money. A small minority aspired to do something more with them, but that they could make money doing it was a given. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t have done it. It would’ve meant nobody was reading and if nobody was reading, why try to do anything bigger. Imagine trying to write some profound culturally articulating work, but for a culture that doesn’t read. It doesn’t even make sense. So if novel-writing isn’t a particularly viable way to make a living, that brings all sorts of implications and given those implications there’s fewer reasons to write a novel. Doing so would be more trivial and so you may as well approach as a trivial sort of thing. We don’t even live in the Harry Potter era. Such a phenomenon is almost unimaginable today. So in my mind, writing has been relegated to a mostly personal and niche hobbyist endeavor. Why put all of this pressure on to write a novel then? Whether there is 50 or so language nerds that would want to read doesn’t change anything.

[Anonymous No.23208268]

>>23206882
I go for long walks everyday and I often notice I’m quite literally the only person outside. But I’ve had the same problems connecting with people my age and found the same. Nobody really does anything. They just go to work or school, go home, and scroll or watch, day in and day out. If they ever do anything, it’s just on Saturdays.

[Anonymous No.23208273]

>>23206942
Why does it feel like life ended and we’re just living through some symbolic going through the motions of something that looks like life but isn’t really?

[Anonymous No.23208276]

>>23206973
You can’t because things need to happen in a novel and in the world you described nothing ever happens.

[Anonymous No.23208280]

>>23207115
Almost all of these people published something in their 20s, even if only in a school mag or local mag.

[Anonymous No.23208290]

>>23198278
I'm 20 years old, so I have read a great few classic books and more books to come, yet I feel like I have a new life ahead of me. I should write a book about my life in the fiction genre. Since my life is all about suffering and everybody hates me, I promise to write mine at the age of 24, but I don't think I am ready to write my own and try to post it online. I need practice, or they will judge and say my writing is terrible. I am not ready to write my own; I need to read more. Someday I could publish my own books if I am finally successful.

[Anonymous No.23208301]

Maybe life is only interesting now if you’re attractive, have a high income, are a content creator, and are having sex with many women. These seem to be the only things anyone cares about now.

[Anonymous No.23208377]

I think this idea that writing is somehow the product of some ineffable source of inspiration that just strikes you and you’ve been born with the talent to write well or you haven’t had been devastating to writing. Writing is a craft, same as any other. You have to practice it, hone your skills, build a portfolio, and most importantly, you need to study under a master craftsman. The real reason why there are so few good writers today is because the last two generations of writers took basically no initiative at all to mentor the next generation. Where they were sought out, they refused. So the tradition has been lost, basically. It’s like a master blacksmith or ferrier just failing to pass on his craft and then expecting young people to just find greatness in the craft several generations later. It just doesn’t work like that. I mean, McCarthy is almost the perfect example. The most notable American writer going into the 21st century and today enormously popular. Who did he coach? Nobody. He spent his twilight years hanging out in his boomer paradise talking pseud shit with scientists. So whether you like his books or not, you have to admit that he dropped the ball in regard to leaving an inheritance. So I think what would be good is if the young people who are frustrated at this lack of greatness for their generation would shift their mentality from achieving greatness early to achieving greatness very late, and turning around and imparting that craftsmanship to the next generation. In Ancient Rome, poets would hole up in cheap agricultural communities forming little poet circles where they could teach and coach each other. The 20-something could learn from the 40-something who was still learning from the 60-something. We have to find out 21st century equivalent if this tradition is ever going to be restored and it’s going to start with us exploring and figuring out what’s good and what works. That might not happen until middle age or even senior citizenry if we start now, but it has to happen for the greater good.

[Anonymous No.23208400]

>>23208263
>Imagine trying to write some profound culturally articulating work, but for a culture that doesn’t read.
Did people actually read back in the 90s? Were normal people reading shit like Franzen?

...Because I struggle to believe that. I grew up in the 00's, and people absolutely read more, but it was books like Lord of the Rings and not literary fiction. Most Americans for the last 100 years have been forced to read the Great Gatsby; maybe 10% of them enjoyed it. If you want to leave a cultural impact, start a blog, make a film. Normal people don't give a shit about litfic, they never have.

[Anonymous No.23208444]

>>23198278
Where's yours?

[Anonymous No.23208469]

>>23202898
The realest conversations right now are being had on single-digit, unarchived Twitch streams. Not even Discord calls are as intimate as watching some autist open up to a few people who may or may not even be paying attention to his inner monologue. Some of the finest wordsmiths spend their waking hours having borderline schizophrenic conversations to an invisible audience. I hope they know I'm there taking it all in

[Anonymous No.23208480]

>>23206694
One time I tried to get a turbo normalfag to shed his skin and show me his true self at a party and it was baffling realizing there was nothing underneath. Just endless aphorisms and idealisms parroted back in a performative drunken rasp even he didn't believe in.

[Anonymous No.23208484]

>>23207146
>>23207191
Saunders is definitely my new inspo, especially since I prefer short stories to
novels

[Anonymous No.23208495]

>>23206882
I walk on the same route around my neighborhood, that's all I do outside. I can't even commit to this more than twice a month. I feel terror when I see a neighbor since I don't ever know them and they never know me.

[Anonymous No.23208502]

Kek at these dimwits praising middlebrow saunders as their inspiration

[Anonymous No.23208550]

>>23208273
Simulacra

[Anonymous No.23208561]

>>23208550
I thought baud was a charlatan but I'll concede on this one point. This pretty much feels like a disney version of reality

[Anonymous No.23208588]

>>23208280
Many of them hadn't. Don DeLillo, for example.

[Anonymous No.23208632]

>>23208238
It is. Stop being such a pussy and just write until you die.

[Anonymous No.23208642]

>>23208444
It’s going to be written by December 2025

[Anonymous No.23208671]

>>23206134
Einstein said after 30 your life is already over

[Anonymous No.23208744]

>>23208245
have you tried bombing your nearest data centre perhaps?

[Anonymous No.23208774]

>>23207191
>>23208484
never heard of him before…sounds good from the reviews…will check him out …any recs?

[Anonymous No.23208789]

>>23206694
speak for yourself peasant.my life is a set of interesting turn of events.i wake up at 10 30am .the bait posts i made on a mongolian fishing forum have gotten lots of (You). I make some tea and i can see it that my fun day has already begun.yet another day i amaze these online anonymous strangers with my superior intellect.at day,i get a call from my mom at work,she asks if i had breakfast and searched for a job.i tell her about my adventures early in the morning.i can hear her almost sobbing through the phone but i decide to ignore it as i am chuckling thinking all the (You) i'll get from my high iq replies.i try to ask her for some lunch money but she mistakenly hangs up the phone ,she must be busy at work.now this whole day is for myself to enjoy.i check for all the new episodes of my based anime. i keep on refreshing the threads for a mature discussion but all i see is child erotica which is too much during the day. angrily,i close the forum.

[Anonymous No.23208816]

>>23208400
They did. I was born at the beginning of the 90s so I was still a child but I vividly remember not only public spaces and life being more vital but people reading in them even in my relatively small rust belt town. Adults around me would have books, and you’d see them reading at the park, you’d see that the local book stores were kinda sorta busy, you saw that people talked about books on television like on 60 minutes and interviews and whatnot. I remember I saw once an interviewer back in the 90s asked Trump about a book he recently read and he lied his ass off and I think said Tom Wolfe. Nowadays, nobody would even ask the question and he would just tell the truth that he doesn’t read. Back then though, they thought to ask the question and he felt pressure to answer. People weren’t really reading Franzen, but some were reading guys like McCarthy or Pynchon, more were reading shit like Stephen King. But the point is, people were reading. It wasn’t quite as dead as it is now. You’re young, so you don’t remember that the internet and digital media didn’t really start to saturate life until the late 00s. In 2000 high speed internet was barely even a thing in most households. It wasn’t an option. You had TV, and you had games, and you had books, and much of that TV was inspired by books.

Even something like Harry Potter alludes to people reading in the 90s. The first Harry Potter was released in the late 90s and one of the reasons it was popular is because there was this culture of parents who sometimes read but often encouraged their kids to read and the kids did read. That just carried into the 00s and was what really drove Harry Potter to stardom. But you can’t even imagine a Harry Potter today. Can you? Kids have absolutely no interest at all in reading anything. They did in the 90s.

[Anonymous No.23208876]

>>23208377
I want to add to this that this book helped me to understand the problems facing literature, that publishing a novel became first and foremost an exercise in applying a certain technique to a technical system which has its goal the expansion of power and acquisition of money. That was before it got overtaken by digital media. Things are even worse now because it is relegated to niches, mainly academic niches. That explains the popularity of woke shit among publishers. So what do we do? Well, all of the above. But we also have to eschew totally this idea of literature as it is inherited from this system. What has to be recovered is something like literature as an art form, literature that is aimed at niche readers, that doesn’t exist necessarily to make a profit or even be published. It has to be a total counter-cultural movement, cultural taken in almost Spenglerian sense in this context. It has to eschew modern pursuits entirely.

That’s how Western literature will be fixed and if this doesn’t happen, it’s doomed.

[Anonymous No.23208918]

>>23202317
>this board are not as well read as Joyce and Hemmingway were by the time they reached their early twenties.
Lol. Absolutely not true. You really think that Hemingway, who was essentially a mercenary in foreign wars and Joyce who was studying medicine has the downtime to creep through the classics? Sure they read a lot, both loved Tolstoy, Joyce loved Ibsen and Hemingway Stendhal. But to act like either of them had more access to literature than the average young man today, who with two mouse clicks and a credit card can have any book ever written on his doorstep in two days (or near instantly if he downloads) is ridiculous.

Brings me back to my favourite Emerson quote: “Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare”

>>23206552
Honestly this is closer to the truth. There was a time when you could live on next to nothing as Hemingway and Orwell and Cormac did and still have time to write. Today we dont encourage any career path that isnt guaranteed to garner an income. No one is going to write a great novel working 40 hours a week.

[Anonymous No.23208938]

>>23206188
Lol this is so retarded
>everyone in le olde times had more experience
You literally have a tool to access more information than anyone pre 1980 could see in two lifetimes. You can watch in perfect HD emperor penguins perform mating rituals int the middle of fucking Antarctica. Dont act like some 1800s weirdos who mostly just moped around shitty old cities had more life than anyone today. If anything overexposure is more of an issue than lack thereof

[Anonymous No.23208947]

>>23206138
>>23206740
Murakami states pretty outright that he never wrote anything until he was 29 in his revised intro for the english prints of Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball
Truly an outlier, crazy feat that he was able to bang out 2 pretty good novellas while managing/owning a jazz cafe. He said he just wrote them an hour or two at a time after work at his kitchen table

[Anonymous No.23209003]

>>23202317
>People also have to seriously sweat, often working more than eight hours a day, just to afford a single bedroom apartment these days
as opposed to what? the fair and rewarding 12 hour workdays 6 days a week of 1900? you retarded chuds are a delusional lot. read some history.

[Anonymous No.23209060]

Good thread.
I was reading it, chilling on my bed and listening to my girlfriend who was watching for the nth time The Big Bang Theory.

I’m tired of refusing the truth : some people have no interest in intellect. They see it’s a desired social trait but will make no effort besides the ones producing monetary gains to learn, think and ponder bigger questions.

Nature will correct this or erase us, or maybe WE are to do something about it, us, the old souls, the ones who already have gone through decades (centuries ?) of mindless amusement.

I write to let myself notes, so if I wander in my next iteration, I’d still have my landmark to know someone else was noticing the rot of this world.

It’s a necessity to create art, to please your daimon and if you don’t see it anymore, you’re already lost.

[Anonymous No.23209214]

>>23209060
>you’re already lost.
Oh okay guess ill kill myself then
why include demoralizing stuff like this

[Anonymous No.23209303]

>>23209214
Because this is no trivial matter.
We are needed by Art and its Gods. This place, this thread, this type of reflexion is soul-enriching. The rest of world happily bathes in mediocrity.

And they know it ! They can feel it !
Marvel movies are tanking.
No one like video games anymore.
Why ? Because masses are subconsciously tired of it but don’t have anywhere to go. They can’t create, for fear of it mostly, so someone has to do.
Us.

What you will read as demoralization, another might read it as a call to arms, an adequate challenge. I need this person to step up, not the one who sees my point and still whines about it.

[Anonymous No.23209327]

>>23209003
>it could always get worse so you can't complain
thanks man

[Anonymous No.23209341]

>>23198278
most of those writers made their best work when they were 40-50 years old

[Anonymous No.23209346]

>>23209327
no one said don't complain you retarded, disingenuous virgin. it's your greener pastures mythology and well poisoning that's an issue.

[Anonymous No.23209350]

>>23198278
no one knew about these writers back then, just like no one knows about the burgeoning writers of today. globe's overpopulated, there's a veritable ocean of noise, it's almost impossible to rise above it. the great writers of today are only going to start being recognised decades down the line.

[Anonymous No.23209454]

>>23207822
The blue lard Vladimir sorokin
Was a fairly big fan of 300 million by Blake butler
The buried giant by ishiguro was good
Zero k by don dellilo was good
I think Gary (or garielle now I guess) short story collection was good
There's lots of good outsider fiction now too, especially weird experimental or genre stuff. This isn't really a hard and fast list there are many other better things published but even if there weren't it wouldn't matter, the truth is you are a mediocre person who can't write and you know it. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say about the world, nobody respects you or cares about your tiny life. >>23207924
Hilarious.
>>23208240
>The wealthiest a place has ever been is now slightly less wealthy.
>Guess that means I can't ever write anything.

[Anonymous No.23209770]

>>23209454
>Vladimir Sorokin
>Blake Butler
Hey, Max. Book sales not going well? You sound as if you're all in a tiss.

[Anonymous No.23209926]

>>23198278
Don’t give a fuck because based Wolfe and Lafferty didn’t start writing until well into their 40’s

[Anonymous No.23210014]

I'm lonely
I wish I could be young and do fun stuff
There's nothing to even aspire to for old age.
I don't even want to live anywhere. This country sucks.

[Anonymous No.23210110]

>>23209003
people who worked 12 hour work days back then weren't the ones wrting. How are you this dense?

[Anonymous No.23210141]

>>23209454
>Hilarious
https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
54% of American adults can't even read at a 6th grade level, anon
I'm not saying /lit/ posters are geniuses or anything but if you don't think the mean IQ here is at least a few points above 100 you haven't spent much time among the masses

[Anonymous No.23210156]

>>23198278
>all their worst and least relevant works

[Anonymous No.23210157]

>>23209003
>problems caused by industrialization
Retard

[Anonymous No.23210172]

>>23199272
Tell us some stuff about what happened. do you still write? Do you still publish? What went wrong?

[Anonymous No.23210232]

>>23208816
In the 00's, reading definitely had a bigger presence in the culture than now. Even average kids read Twilight, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Warriors, Artemis Fowl, Series of Unfortunate Events, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Goosebumps, Magic Tree House -- and actually enjoyed it.

I'm not a boomer trying to dunk on Gen Alpha but do they actually have book trends still? I can't imagine e.g. the Percy Jackson trend could happen in 2024. Anyone who reads for fun in school now is probably reading manga.

The impression I get is that late millennials/early zoomers are the last gen where reading is popular during childhood, and so books are going to seriously die off. The ground-level support isn't there anymore

[Anonymous No.23210584]

>>23206199
sheryl kayne tingles my jewdar

[Anonymous No.23210597]

>>23198278
There has yet to be a defining work of art for the 21st century. There has yet to be a story that encompasses the 21st century. This is true for both cinema and literature. I can think of a few films that come close, but they are not DEFINITIVE, they are not universally revered stories that everyone knows. And for literature, there's just nothing.

[Anonymous No.23211011]

>>23210597
Are you joking or are you serious? I really hope you aren't serious.

[Anonymous No.23211017]

>>23210141
I don't think most people who are here can read past a 6th grade level. If you look at book sales it's a lot more than the amount of people who should be able to read them. I think most people buy the books and stare at them or forget what they said after reading them the first time or read it and don't get anything from it and just talk about it as if they did. A lot of those people end up here and say stuff like in this thread.

[Anonymous No.23211018]

>>23211011
Name one. What’s our 21st century equivalent of what The Great Gatsby or 1984 was for the 20th century, what’s our equivalent for what War and Peace and Crime and Punishment were for the 19th century?

[Anonymous No.23211022]

>>23210232
I teach language classes to some highschool kids and the smart ones are still reading. Had one kid who was really into Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze. Another girl who was fascinated by MK Ultra case files and Charles Manson. Both sixteen years old, so young zoomers I guess. The oldest Gen Alpha kids are barely fourteen, so not really fair to say one way or another what their interest in reading is.

[Anonymous No.23211024]

>>23211018
Holy shit you are serious lmao. The year is 2023, we are only 20 percent through the 21st century. The works that define our century have yet to be decided by history and likely to have even been created yet. Do you think people were reading the Great Gatsby (tell me you're still in highschool without just saying it) in the 30s and going "ah yes the book of our century. This is the most book that's ever been". A work can only define a century once there has in fact been a century to define.

[Anonymous No.23211027]

>>23211024
>The year is 2023
I have some bad news for you anon

[Anonymous No.23211030]

>>23211027
>Ah ha typo detected
Well played stranger. The gold is yours. I kneel.

[Anonymous No.23211038]

>>23211027
The year is 2019, has been for a long, long time.

[Anonymous No.23211041]

>>23211030
seems like I made you upset. didn't intent to.

[Anonymous No.23211048]

>>23211041
You know what you are right I probably was a little bit too rude and could've made my point without being belittling. I get frustrated with certain views of literary history. My apologies.

[Anonymous No.23211051]

>>23211048
nah you're good, in my head the year thing was a joke, but it obviously didn't land

[Anonymous No.23211052]

>>23211018
Any book can be the next Great Gatsby, the only requirement is schools forcing multiple generations of teenagers to read it.

[Anonymous No.23211355]

>>23202898
>>23206882
>>23206731
Thanks for writing about this anons, discussion around this topic seems confusingly non-existent. It is as though the majority have just passively accepted forever neetdom to be our new reality with an attitude that nothing significant has changed. Strange times indeed.

[Anonymous No.23211473]

>>23206733
Just a note on Michel Houellebecq: his biography ("Unauthorised Biography" or something) suggests his life wasn't entirely defined by suffering before he became famous. Father bought him an apartment in Paris, dated a wealthy girl, was involved in the literary social scene etc.

[Anonymous No.23211495]

>>23208377
The McCarthy case is quite interesting.

He sent his first manuscript to one of the largest publishers in the country, at a time when the culture of publishing in the United States still retained it's atmosphere of relative civility and good manners, which in practice meant that writers often received actually meaningful rejection letters rather than an automated email for example. He was completely unknown, had no desire to self-publicise, but his editor was this pretty famous publisher who had worked with Faulkner and decided to mentor the young-ish McCarthy. The idea that someone in publishing would take on a pretty reclusive, unknown white guy today is (in my estimation at least) pretty much unheard of.

[Anonymous No.23211497]

>>23207146
>>23207191
>>23208253
>>23208484
George Saunders published his first short story at age 25/26 (A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room) and it already displays early signs of what would become his writing style. By the age of 32 he was well-known having won a major national short story competition.

[Anonymous No.23211502]

>>23208588
Don DeLillo published a short story at the age of 24 (The River Jordan). He is also renowned as a late-bloomber, despite being published by his mid-30s after a couple of years writing full-time (i.e., not working while doing so).

[Anonymous No.23211514]

>>23208469
Twitch and Youtube streams are absolutely depressing to me as a Millennial boomer. The idea that tens if not hundreds of thousands of zoomers are sitting in their room spamming 1-20 character posts in a rapidly moving chat in a desperate attempt to belong or be acknowledged is so disheartening. I mean it's over at that point. That kind of energy should be directed somewhere healthier and more productive. Spamming pepe faces in a chat that is moving at 200mph is just so sad.

[Anonymous No.23211523]

>>23207115
>>23206134
>>23207146
Good list of names

[Anonymous No.23211525]

>>23208588
And he’s one of the better writers today, too

[Anonymous No.23211533]

>>23211502
Nice try. That was in a college magazine. I was asked to publish in two of my college's magazines. It's nothing.

[Anonymous No.23211534]

>>23211473
He's just a melancholic. His life (and life in general) is better than it appears in his novels, but to depressives their life naturally feels like a Houellebecq novel a lot of the time, they're just unhappy

[Anonymous No.23211542]

>>23211502
OK then, what about Henry Miller?

[Anonymous No.23211547]

Lit is dead, make a video game instead

[Anonymous No.23211555]

Really good thread, lots of very plausible reasons for the death of the novel and the challenges for current literary culture in here. But one thing that could be mentioned more often from what I've skimmed is also that being a novelist at a young age is considered incredibly difficult because most people can't do it. Not only do you need to be roughly in the top 1% of intelligence (probably 0.01% for really great novelists), you also need to be highly creative (which very few people are) and simultaneously highly conscientious (which very few creative people are), and then, even if you have all that, for your novel actually to be read by anyone you just need to be lucky too. The names in OP's list are just a tiny fraction of the people who have ever written a novel in their 20's, who are furthermore an even smaller fraction of people who have lived in those centuries, etc. Arguably along with the technological alienation and social autism that modern individualistic late capitalist society is producing, another one of its complaints is that its producing the fantasy or compulsion in so many people that they somehow need to be in the very small, very select number of people who are highly successful and well-known in their respective disciplines, and if they don't achieve this success it's somehow their fault, because they didn't work hard enough. We are not all born to be great novelists, just like we're not all born to be rockstars. What has been increasingly lost since the loss of Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries is the attention towards ordinary lives and their innate sense of dignity and worth outside of wealth, fame and status.

[Anonymous No.23211560]

>>23209454
All trash lmao
>Nobody wants to hear what you have to say
Less than 10% of people have souls so this is par for the course for anything good. All my favourite writers were obscure as shit during their lifetimes.

[Anonymous No.23211672]

I don't watch modern TV, but I saw some clips of Rings of Power recently, and noticed something: Galadriel is weird. Yeah she's a "strong woman" and an elf, but I'm not talking about that. Both her and Princess Leia are strong women, but the difference is that you can find women like Leia IRL, whereas there are no girls like Galadriel. They said, "We need an ultra strong woman character", so they invented one from the ground up. The problem is that our brains are good at spotting bullshit. Every part of a person -- from their face, to their walk, to their speech -- is interconnected. We are not smart enough to invent a new type of person out of thin air, but we can recognize when something's off. So when the Rings of Power writers try to bypass this & invent a type of woman that just doesn't exist IRL, our brain's bullshit detectors go off. Example: She holds her face in this autistic smirk of confidence all the time. It looks ridiculous.

Leave aside the woke stuff here. The lives of these writers are so boring that they have zero experience to draw upon, so they must invent a character from scratch. Imagine if you were a TV writer for Rings of Power, and the only people you've encountered in life are WASP boomers and Yale kids pretending they're not the elite. Could you be blamed for failing to write an epic story about war, about ideological conflict, about pain? Fuck no. You have zero idea what those things are. You understand them intellectually, but not deeply -- not the deep understanding that only comes from experience. This is why Tolkien's work feels so "weighty" and real compared to other fantasy, it's grounded in actual experience.

I know this sucks, but if you want to be a writer, you need experiences. Your writing will feel hollow, shallow, and weightless like modern TV because it's not inspired by reality, but by other media. Just throw yourself out there -- who cares? Embrace the world. Is it fucking shit? Then put that into your work, and show how it's shit. Your art is only as interesting as your life. Great authors need great experiences. Put yourself out there.

[Anonymous No.23211905]

>>23208938
That’s just a feed of images you npc

[Anonymous No.23211908]

>What's your excuse?
I am not a genius. Most people are not geniuses anon, this shouldn’t be surprising to you.

[Anonymous No.23211952]

>>23211024
Things work differently in the current world. It doesn't take as long to assess the value of art. Most famous authors are no longer posthumous as they once were. When a masterpiece of cinema is created we know that it's a masterpiece, when a great novelist is writing we know that he's a great novelist. Blood Meridian was hailed as a classic just as much when it was released by people like Bloom as it is now.

[Anonymous No.23211972]

>>23204611
I am part of the world.

[Anonymous No.23212075]

>>23211952
ok now i know you are trolling

[Anonymous No.23212122]

>>23206882
it feels like planning everything around cars/roads has sort of made us trapped.

[Anonymous No.23212158]

>>23199531
How many places did you sent your book? Getting rejected has always been a thing

[Anonymous No.23212178]

>>23206657
Julius Caesar famously lamented his lack of renown well into his 30s. Not exactly a writer, I know. Kierkegaard only completed his masters at 28. This kind of external validation is useless. Your work isn't being judged on your age but on its own merit.

[Anonymous No.23212766]

>>23211547
Disco Elysium story is exactly this.

[Anonymous No.23212775]

>>23211547
I didn't learn to code :'(

[Anonymous No.23212799]

get over yourself, do what you love, expect absolutely nothing for anybody for anything

[Anonymous No.23212807]

>>23212799
>do what you love
its over

[Anonymous No.23212887]

>>23212775
So you have to learn to code.
Pick Construct if you really, really don't want to code.
Pick Godot if you want to learn a skill that will benefit your life from now on.

[Anonymous No.23212900]

>>23211555
>What has been increasingly lost since the loss of Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries is the attention towards ordinary lives and their innate sense of dignity and worth outside of wealth, fame and status.
Witnessed.
Struggling with it at the moment, but I see the coping more and more in my life that rock stars are not actually happy. Fame does not make one happier. Having freedom and means to enjoy it is the ultimate life.
Working a good-enough paying job, living within your means and having time for artistic projects is ultimately the goal.
As I said, might be cope.

[Anonymous No.23212905]

>>23212887
I can't do that tech stuff

[Anonymous No.23212974]

>>23212905
>I can't do that tech stuff...
...yet.
Believe in yourself.
You couldn't walk, then one day you did.
Same for talking, same for writing, and look where you ended up.
Start small.
Pick Godot, create Flappy birds. Then Checkers. Then Mario level 1.

[Anonymous No.23213021]

>>23198278
When I was young I was repeatedly told that being in your thirties was the new twenties. “Don’t worry young man you’ll have your time”. Now I’m in my forties and I haven’t published my magnum opus yet. Fucking lying kikes. They gambled on white Gen X and Millenial males taking their time writing their novels and it paid off. Great European literature will eventually cease to exist. It’s sad that probably the only great novelist alive today is that fucking cunt JK Rowling. Don’t @me with some unknown faggot that got the Man Booker prize like ten years ago that doesn’t count.

[Anonymous No.23213027]

>>23212974
I will try anon...I will try

[Anonymous No.23213069]

>>23203017
I AM BECOME THE NOVEL.

[Anonymous No.23213071]

>>23212974
What no. I don't want to.

[Anonymous No.23213119]

I made a set of about 5 philosophies from age 19 - 22. It's just that they remained mostly in my head because I'm not fond of writing. Maybe if I had a Plato to follow me around they would be on paper.

[Anonymous No.23213151]

>>23212775
Team up with someone who did

[Anonymous No.23213457]

>>23211672
I remember reading some obscure work of Victorian literary criticism that outlined the “36 storylines/plots in fiction” (I think it was 36? or perhaps 24?) and the contention was that all of human storytelling falls into a countable and not very large number of different storylines, that all of literature draws from. I didn’t read the work but it definitely got me thinking and I think I believe this to a degree. Joseph Campbell’s work also seems related to this. Anyway the point is that as an addendum this feature most certainly extends to characters and archetypes as well. To be a writer of humane literature, that is, a conveyor of meaning, one needs to be familiar with the nuances between these patterns and forms of life. All culture is based in experience and all earthly experience is variation on a theme and the minds of people lacking deep connection with this ground of being are only able to churn out the sterile and insipid.

[Anonymous No.23213469]

>>23211908
>The idea of a ‘genius’ originated in ancient Rome. The Romans believed that all people had a guiding spirit that attended them throughout their lives. Because this spirit was born with the person it was called a ‘genius’ (from the Latin verb gignere meaning ‘to give birth or bring forth’ – which also happens to be the root of our word ‘generate’). A person’s ‘genius’ dictated their unique personality and disposition.
You have a daemon by virtue of your very existence. You just worship death is all.

[Anonymous No.23213479]

>>23213469
Stop. You guys are annoying

[Anonymous No.23213486]

>>23213479
I’m right you know.

[Anonymous No.23213502]

>>23213486
You haven't said anything. You and cum genius should go jerk off in a discord.

[Anonymous No.23213512]

>>23213469
your words lack substance because you haven't actually dictated any idea in one direction or another. your words are just an overly verbose put-down

[Anonymous No.23213578]

>>23213512
>>23213502
Firstly, if you need spoonfeeding, you shouldn’t be here. Secondly, if you think my post is verbose, you shouldn’t be here.

[th3g3ntl1m1n No.23213750]

>>23208157
there is still time anon.
get off the weaving forum and start weaving

[Anonymous No.23214185]

>>23198278
Somewhat related to this is that there's not even really an intellectual culture among people today, as in nobody is coming up with any new ideas or taking a bold approach to things. Both sides of the political spectrum are brought up on Internet memes and popular morals, not literature or philosophy. The most I can think of today are Right-Nietzscheans of the BAP variety but even they are hardly novel because they're just white supremacists who want you to vote for anti-immigrant parties in the West more than anything. Nothing is new anymore.

[Anonymous No.23214445]

>>23199257
publish your boobies

[Anonymous No.23214456]

>>23213750
No

[Anonymous No.23214470]

>>23213457
Archetypes are only a tool to help us understand people. Your goal should be to move beyond the archetype.

Example: a boring, college-aged woman. She's upper-middle class, she gets Starbucks every morning, she uses a Macbook. If you or I wrote this character, odds are it would be dreadfully boring, we don't have experience with chicks like this because we avoided them in college. But say for example you really got to know them? You found some sorority chick, learned her past, her thoughts, why she acts the way she does, her family relations... you could 100% write a compelling character from this.

Archetypes are real, but they're only a guidepost, a starting point. Writers have to be interested in the world, even obsessed with it. The point is even that dumb bitch is interesting in some way and you have to extract that, you have to show how. And you won't know until you're really familiar with people IRL, beyond archetypes. This is why most writers now suck, they only associate with people like themselves because the world makes it too easy to do this now.

[Anonymous No.23214571]

>>23198278
The thing is there’s no call to adventure anymore.

You wanted to know anything about the world pre internet? You had to go out and actually talk to people, crack a book, go somewhere, investigate. Adventure was around every corner, it was in the fabric of everything. The internet ruined that. You want to know every known detail about every lord and duke in 14th century England? You can just know all about it on Wikipedia. You don’t need to go anywhere, you don’t need to talk to anyone. Take a book like ‘on the road’ by Kerouac. That book was about a spiritual quest, a quest only someone who had no answers had to embark on. Nowadays, you can hop on 4chan and talk to armchair intellectuals from the comfort of your moms basement, and convince yourself you’re mentally ill or retarded, when in reality you have no catalyst to propel you to the adventure of your lifetime. Rich people can do this, money is their catalyst. They can pay to go ‘on the road’ and why not? If times get though, daddy will pay for a cushy stay at the airport Hilton and a direct flight home. One now a days needs to get offline. Completely.

[Anonymous No.23214616]

>>23214571
Your post is filled with a bunch of random shit, but
>Adventure was around every corner, it was in the fabric of everything.
This does remind me of something. Would a picaresque novel work in 2024?

[Anonymous No.23214624]

>>23203386
Based if true

[Anonymous No.23214833]

Even if a great work of literature were to be written, it would still remain in relative obscurity. There isn't the same cultural infrastructure that promotes new and interesting things to broad swathes of people, that gives up-and-comers a shot, that maintains living intellectual networks. Every industry adjacent to art is monopolising behind the scenes and if you don't have the benefit of being a nepobabby you're fighting for scraps. Even if you succeed against all the above, the big players are only making safe plays that keep engagement up and monthly subscription fees coming in. Whether or not great art is still possible is a moot point if the dissemination of great art is impossible.

[Anonymous No.23214843]

>>23214571
Rich people arguably can't do it because their experience will be too curated, too safe.

[Anonymous No.23214978]

>>23206199
>Connard Hogan
Pas gentil ça.

[Anonymous No.23215027]

The hard truth:

some people weren't meant to succeed. They lack the aptitude. We have virtually unlimited information from all of human history at our fingertips, unlimited resources for learning any skill or craft we so desire. If you're given all this and can't make anything of it then the only conclusion is that you weren't meant to "make it" ever

[Anonymous No.23215032]

>>23203386
>I'm scared shitless to share my work for fear it is rejected and I have to come to terms with how bad it is.

[Anonymous No.23215034]

>>23206202
You mentioned Murakami in the same breath as Lord Byron and Dante. How can I take this seriously?

[Anonymous No.23215117]

>>23215027
This is such a stupid, masochistic sentiment. No. You do not have "all the information at your fingertips." You have what google and YouTube will allow you. The rest is either banned or behind paid journals. Most people aren't going to know what to look for or how to look for it. And even if you did have all the information, everyone knows that writers require lived experience. Something which is painfully short supply at the moment given the strictures of the social system we are forced to inhabit. I mean, just consider the fact that Paris, Lisbon, London and New York don't really exist anymore. Fitzgerald was inspired by the jazz age. What are we supposed to find inspirational?

[Anonymous No.23215120]

>>23215117
*which is in

[Anonymous No.23215131]

>>23215117
if you're on /lit/ you know where to get free books, journal articles, and every other form of media
also if you feel like you need to "live" so you have some sort of currency to harvest for writing thne you aren't going to be a good writer

[Anonymous No.23215133]

>>23215117
also all the "ages" you were talking about are defined in retrospect you're just too lazy to see what's going on around you and think critically about life

[Anonymous No.23215148]

>>23215131
The point isn't that you can't access these things, the point is that they're useless if you're working a forty hour week and have never experienced much of anything.
>writers don't need to experience things they just need a high IQ and a bright screen
This sentiment is verging on idiocy. The fact that we're all beginning to resemble lab rats, regardless of how intelligent we are, is very much stifling to the creation of real art.
>>23215133
Did you miss the point about historic cities and varying cultures now basically being non-existent? There are no ages because there's nothing from which an age could now spring.

[Anonymous No.23215155]

>>23215148
Then write about that

[Anonymous No.23215168]

>>23215155
I'd rather write fantasy/sci-fi. Do we really need another "fringe" "acerbic" novel about the horrors of modernity?

[Anonymous No.23215175]

>>23215168
I don't know. It seems pretty important to you. Do we really need another fantasy/sci-fi novel? What do you think we need? This is the age we live in. Here's your material to think and write about. You aren't going to be spoonfed some kind of literary subculture or exciting new age that will figure everything out for you and make writing easy.

[Anonymous No.23215421]

Another thought

Part of what makes Moby-Dick or Dante's Inferno so powerful are that they have the Christian corpus to build upon and give them weight. A big problem I have with 20th century novels is that they feel weightless, not grounded in anything. Gatsby or A Farewell To Arms are emotionally powerful books, but they're incapable of feeling fully epic or grandiose because these are just random events that happen, they can't build to anything greater. There's essentially a ceiling on how impactful art can be, and the only way to pass through this ceiling is to delve into philosophy or religion. This is why Brothers Karamazov is an immortal work. It's also why, despite the brilliance of Shakespeare's works, you're more just in constant awe of his creative genius and psychological insights, instead of being deeply emotionally moved by what he's showing us and feeling like it's important.

All the Christians here know what I'm talking about. Nothing comes close to the earth-shattering experience that is reading the best parts of the Bible when you believe in it; Moby-Dick's reliance on the Bible is half of what makes it great. The secular world has never produced a work that can move us like a religious work, and I'm not sure if it can. Imagine a secular version of Brothers Karamazov with the same portrayal of humanity, except there is no Grand Inquisitor, no debates about how humanity needs God. It wouldn't work nearly so well. We have existentialist novels like Hesse's stuff, but hardly anyone is moved by them. The next true literary masterpiece will give us something to believe in. Maybe it's Christianity, maybe some other religion. But it will be spiritual. It will offer us a complete, meaningful picture of life. Once we read it, it'll transform our world view and live rent free in our head for years. It will be simple, eloquent, and impossible to ignore. People are tired of post-modernism, we're tired of deconstruction, we are 100% ready for the new era like the humans in Childhood's End. The beauty here is that people don't know they need it. When it happens, it will be a lightning strike to the Western conscious. Beautifully it will fly in the face of these past 100 years and everything they stand for. It will go violently in the opposite direction. The people don't realize it, but they are ready, and when this book happens it will be big.

[Anonymous No.23215449]

>>23215027
Part of the problem is you have access to virtually unlimited information and almost all of it is useless bullshit. You'll spend half your life just trying to sort through what's worth reading in the first place.

[Anonymous No.23215481]

>>23215421
Yeah I'm with you on this. The best philosophy the secular world can give is "you have to make your own meaning" which still ultimately implies that everything is meaningless bullshit. It's almost impossible to write a timeless novel when your bedrock philosophy is that sort of nihilism. I hate post-modernists and deconstructionists like you wouldn't believe. Bunch of people who made a quick buck off destroying beliefs that helped drive humans for generations. People are too scared to call them out because they don't want to seem uncool or unhip or old fashioned.
You are more optimistic than I am though. I am not so sure that change is coming.

[Anonymous No.23215486]

>>23215449
yeah this is really true. its easy to get trapped into looking for some magical scientific internet fact to chane your life. some guys have been just doing that for years. i heard

[Anonymous No.23215578]

>>23215421
The hard part will be that it needs to be written by someone who believe in it, but don't want to push it down peoples throats.

[Anonymous No.23215595]

>>23215117
excuses mate , you know where to torrent courses from udemy or coursera , you know where to find any textbook or novel you wish and you have a plethora of lectures on youtube. The only thing you're fighting is the algorithm and yourself.

[Anonymous No.23215607]

>>23206654
so? the "literary canon" is fucking gay

[Anonymous No.23215623]

>>23208918>>23206552

>Honestly this is closer to the truth. There was a time when you could live on next to nothing as Hemingway and Orwell and Cormac did and still have time to write. Today we dont encourage any career path that isnt guaranteed to garner an income. No one is going to write a great novel working 40 hours a week.
A republic is a society based on commerce, and bourgeois who created the republics were never interested in art. Art in democracy doesn't exist. What has been existing is the art turned into a market, ever since the first day of their revolutions.

[Anonymous No.23215810]

>>23215481
>The best philosophy the secular world can give is "you have to make your own meaning" which still ultimately implies that everything is meaningless bullshit.
I agree. This is why Nietzsche is not the answer. For anything to replace religion, it has to (1) promise a better world, and (2) be realistically believable.

Humans aren't fully rational creatures. We still believe in ideologies and "-isms" all the time -- except now they must be framed in Materialist, Kantian terms where you can verify their truth from observable events. The modern equivalent to apocryphal tales about miracles is some study where you fudge the stats to make it say whatever you want. People aren't suddenly wise and prudent now when it comes to belief; we just have different biases. This is why Marxism was so wildly successful at spreading; it was a utopian dream for the modern materialist, framed in exactly the way through which we've come to anticipate truth: numbers and observable facts. Before the nightmarish 20th century, it was a compelling set of ideas.

That said, I don't believe the whole Marxism or Fascism thing will happen again (except in the event of societal collapse). It's a shame because they were the closest thing we had to religion 2.0 -- and yet I still think religion 2.0 is possible. How? No clue. Thing is, demand for religion 2.0 is so overwhelming that if anything comes along which sorta works, it will rapidly conquer the world. You don't need a logically perfect system, it just has to be believable. Just find that one chink in the armor of our secular materialist world view. It has to exist. It's gotta be in there somewhere. Find it and you will change everything.

[Anonymous No.23215859]

>>23215117
>What are we supposed to find inspirational?
The answer is that we have to find inspiration in that which doesn't inspire. Everyone fails to understand this. If our current world is one of pointless mediocrity, self-destruction and decadence, then that's what we write about. It doesn't matter if people today "lack experience." Their lack of experience IS their experience. If you're unable to find the poetry and profundity in the mundane then you aren't fit for artistic expression at all. Do you realize the untapped potential there is for art in the 21st century, where most creative figures are too scared to even be artistic or explore contemporary society? Look at how many of the top filmmakers refuse to tell stories set in the current day (Scorsese, Spielberg, PTA.) Most artists today either produce entertainment or they dictate under the guise of being artistic. They tell you what you believe because they already think our society is all-knowing and resolved despite the issues they whine about. The door is wide open for actual artists to explore our current age.

Everyone in this thread complains about the paucity of ambition which facilitates great art. But then why do none of you aspire towards greatness? Why don't you actively will a great work of art into existence, even a small short story? There's no excuse other than cowardice. You look at the emptiness of the modern world and see nothing about it to comment on. That's not a problem with the world, that's your problem. War and Peace is famous not because of how epic its battle scenes are, but because of how lively the tiniest details of human life in it are.

[Anonymous No.23215870]

>>23198278
age dooming

[Anonymous No.23215883]

>>23215810
The secular materialist worldview is the modern religion. Now that most people have a taste of it, they won't look for anything else. Keep in mind that Marxism and Fascism spread among peoples that weren't as developed as the liberal West. When they finally did develop, they dropped those ideologies and just became integrated into the liberal order. Even China while still Marxist calmed down and cooperates peacefully with their former liberal opponents. There is no reason to believe a world war or groundbreaking new ideology is in our future.

[Anonymous No.23216007]

>>23215883
>Keep in mind that Marxism and Fascism spread among peoples that weren't as developed as the liberal West.
0/10 bait.

[Anonymous No.23216076]

>>23216007
Literally how could you even deny that

[Anonymous No.23216174]

>>23215481
>Bunch of people who made a quick buck off destroying beliefs that helped drive humans for generations. People are too scared to call them out because they don't want to seem uncool or unhip or old fashioned.
if those beliefs were so powerful and essential they wouldn't have been brought down so easily.

[Anonymous No.23216358]

>>23206973
>Challenge: Write a passionate novel set in a Calvinist theocracy

[Anonymous No.23216651]

>>23198278
Being published is outside a writer's control. The only thing a writer can do is write. Master their craft. Improve.

It's simply not my fault that my peers don't read and that the publishing industry is a cabal of sexless fifty-year-old women, who only want to publish BIPOC autofiction.

However, the world not me is the victim of this circumstance. All I care about is my craft and work. Yes, I feel bad that people will miss out on my genius but that is their problem. Maybe one day the industry gets its shit together and my work will be distributed. But again, that's out of my hands.

Regardless, I will continue writing and approaching mastery of the craft. (Which every single author in your list did after getting published btw. Most of the works listed suck).

>>23206733
My problem with this is that social media savvy and writing are two different skills that tend to foster in completely different personalities. All viral writers are shit because the algorithm rewards shit. Maybe influencers could replace traditional publishers in presenting good writers to their audience. But this would require influencers to have good taste, which is improbable.

[Anonymous No.23216674]

>>23208671
Jung said your life begins at 40.

[Anonymous No.23216689]

>>23199466
lel

[Anonymous No.23216694]

>>23207533
The West has in fact fallen, but you aren't wrong about people coping hard as an alternative to actually putting in work.

[Anonymous No.23216712]

>>23198278
I was 23 when feminists and SJWs completely eradicated white men from literature in favor of "marginalized voices."

[Anonymous No.23216937]

>>23216674
I feel like Jung was coping hard

[Anonymous No.23216942]

I wrote a ya romantasy but I'm afraid of trying to get it published. I have no credentials, contacts, or accolades/publications. My life is such a mess of disappointments, disasters, and failure that I'm a generally demoralized person.

[Anonymous No.23217025]

>>23215883
I think there's still time for something crazy to come out of Africa or India. Like Qaddafi's dream of a Pan African socialist arab fundamentalist state run as a direct democracy with a gold backed currency.

[Anonymous No.23217102]

>>23216651
post some of your writing

[Anonymous No.23217244]

>>23216651
Based Jason Bryan, truly the Kafka of our generation

[Anonymous No.23217281]

The fact that you guys never experienced "Adventure" makes me sad somehow. I remember being in highschool and waking up everyday with this stupid childlike optimism, skipping classes and playing in the fields with my friends, exploring abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere and vandalizing them, falling in love with girls and getting all excited when they looked my way, all of that kid shit, you guys say you never experienced all that? That golden age of youth? Even now as an adult I experience things like that, though they are a lot more smaller and insignificant than those of my youth, some friends came over and we walked some 4 Kilometers down the beach, we arrived at some forest and we started a pinecone war, I don't understand what "Adventure" would be if not that, you guys say you never had these things? In what kind of dystopian world are you living in?

[Anonymous No.23217309]

>>23217281
ive never had those things. i feel empty. ill never be able to have a real life or make up for the fact that my entire life so far might as well have not happened

[Anonymous No.23217343]

>>23217281
I'm a 25 year old virgin. I never really had the chance to hang out with people.

[Anonymous No.23217395]

>>23217309
>Literally pic rel
>>23217343
I'm a 23 year old virgin, You don't have a single old friend that you could reach out to? If you don't or you don't want to, start journaling and go places, the beach, some park, try new things I don't know man...In my post I make it sound as if I'm having fun all the time, but the truth is, I'm a lonely retard, most of my existence consists of staring at a computer, I don't even have a job and I'm not attractive enough to get a gf.

[Anonymous No.23217403]

>>23217395
I'm outside constantly. There's just nothing really out there. I don't understand what people mean. I've tried journaling. I eat right. I'm physically healthy. I go out to events. I go to the park and the beach. I'm outside for most of the day
There's just..
Nothing.
I feel like such a loser at this point.

[Anonymous No.23217407]

>>23217395
>literally pic rel
yeah well i guess when you're a 28 year old virgin who has never had friends no matter what you do and you're being made fun of by a 23 year old virgin its time to call it quits everything decent in this world was denied to me. i dont get it

[Anonymous No.23217412]

>>23215859
This is the mindset we need in our era, this is what I was talking about when I wrote those posts.
>>23209060
>>23209303

He sees an opportunity where everyone around here is doomtalking. If he puts his thoughts into action, that's a leader in the making.

[Anonymous No.23217425]

>>23217412
Just stop man. You're just kicking people while they're down. I'm sorry I can't be worth anything

[Anonymous No.23217428]

>>23217403
I think you should look inwards and search for your raison d'etre. Some years ago I felt as if my life was completely meaningless, then some memory came to me of when I was in grade school, the teacher told us to make a drawing and write a story about it, I remember the teacher and all my classmates telling the that I would be a writer when I grew up, when I went home and told my grandmother she told me "do you know how little writers are paid? Almost nothing, you should become something else" Then I forgot about this dream I had for years, until some years ago, right now, I don't even have 20 pages written, I've been wanting to write something for 5 years now, that is the only thing that keeps me going. You should find a dream of your own too, even if it's stupid.
>>23217407
I'm not making fun of you, chances are I'll be in the exact same spot you are 5 years from now.

[Anonymous No.23217433]

>>23217403
perform ENERGY GENERATING BEHAVIORS
if you are doing something that is an APATHY GENERATING BEHAVIOR, immediately stop that behavior and perform an ENERGY GENERATING BEHAVIOR

[Anonymous No.23217440]

>>23217433
No
>>23217428
Don't have one. Never did.

[Anonymous No.23217446]

>>23217440
Live for someone else then.

[Anonymous No.23217476]

>>23202898
>.There's a pretty strict pipeline that you're too young to even have the idea of leaving. Even when I was in university like half of my year just stayed in their dorms 24/7.
I feel this pretty heavily. It felt like so much of my youth in high school was so strictly arranged, my parents ensured I was placed on a good track, was in all the A.P classes, and set on a course to get into a good college
Which I appreciate, but at the same time I look back and it never really felt like I had any freedom to choose my own life
I think a lot of the hatred to boomers masks jealousy at how they were free to screw around
I remember listening with some jealousy to a boomer coworker describe his youth.
When I was in college I went to a few parties that coworkers arranged, but after college there has just been nothing
The media obsession has really filled the hole. I see it even with my family. There is nothing to talk about with family or anyone other than Netflix shows, videogames, and memes.
And it's always feels like you just go through the same loop: so what shows have you been watching recently? Seen the latest X sport event? Did you see the latest controversy about X popular figure?
Idk I am tired of it. I have all but completely disconnected

[Anonymous No.23217505]

>>23217425
You should be ashamed of the type of language you define yourself with. Even in joke, one should never talk down of oneself.
If anywhere online, it should be common knowledge at least here : words have immense power.

[Anonymous No.23217548]

>>23198278
Zoom out

[Anonymous No.23217563]

>>23217281
Man you don't have to rub it in

[Anonymous No.23217568]

>>23217446
Don't have anyone
>>23217505
I'm worthless. You said it yourself. I already know I'm dogshit.

[Anonymous No.23217577]

>>23206134
based
>>23202680
>vapid time sinks
yeah man. I've been wasting all my time since I was 20.

turning 35 this year. mentally ill NEET manchild. college dropout. no published work.

still gonna make it though, what can I say. last time I stopped believing in myself was a passing suicidal crisis 6 years ago.

I will soon be a god. I'll marry a babe half my age and have a lot of White kids. I'll get a doctorate and write great works, maybe academic, maybe not. I'll lift heavy natty at 100.

oh I'm gonna bankroll all this by cagefighting btw

losers can suck it

[Anonymous No.23217591]

>>23198278
Education sucks these days. All it teaches is how to write bland, clinical, "academic" essays. Not to mention there is a strong anti-male, anti-white, anti-meritocratic sentiment which has infected all of education. This is all a recipe for the death of real, valuable literature.

[Anonymous No.23217596]

>>23198278
Publishing house are only interested in publishing authors with particular traits. Talent isn't one of them.

[Anonymous No.23217598]

>>23206552
Unironically this

[Anonymous No.23217599]

>>23217591
It doesn't teach how to write, bro. It would be an insult to shit to wipe your ass with the typical English professor's output.

[Anonymous No.23217648]

>>23206882
God, I love being introverted. I genuinely enjoy being alone or spending time with just one person at a time. Parties and social gatherings are always lame, which, ironically, I got roped into a lot when I was younger. The absolute best thing about getting older is being able to confidently turn down any social invitation unless it's from a close friend for some one on one hanging out. The only group activity I will accept is team sports, which is something I notice is missing from a lot of anons in this thread whining about no group activities. Interesting!

[Anonymous No.23217719]

>>23217281
Every generation of nerds experiences social rejection very early, but 20+ years ago these nerds would still integrate into society -- just on the lower rung of the social ladder. Gen Z nerds didn't integrate during childhood, they just isolated themselves with video games and internet. Most of us are socially stunted.

[Anonymous No.23217737]

>>23210172
After the publication of my book I got two other short stories published, but I mostly do journalism now. The prestige of "being published" fades away pretty quickly.

I have ideas for other books but the whole thing is just not worth the amount of time invested unless I know I have a contract and preferably a decent upfront lined up. I know that sounds kinda cynical but writing is very time intensive and there is a very specific matrix of "what you are most interested in writing," "what will be the most circulated in readership," and "what makes the most money." It's about balancing these, and frankly there is basically no way to make it work unless you have a day job or other forms of income.

[Anonymous No.23217826]

I stopped going outside because rejection is painful. When people treat you like shit in real life, the instinct is, "I don't need you, I'll just hide away." Of course, a world where everyone hides away sucks. To truly live, you have to be open to extremely negative experiences, to accept they'll probably happen.

Moderners view all experience of pain as regrettable, like an unoptimal move in chess. Any experience that may result in pain is considered a bad idea. We optimize our whole lives around "safe pleasure", which is media consumption.

[Anonymous No.23217888]

>>23217826
You should write a book about this

[Anonymous No.23218349]

>>23217596
Oh, you think it's about talent ? :)

>>23217737
Thanks.
I'm keeping my day job then ;)

[Anonymous No.23218373]

>>23208876
>literature that is aimed at niche readers, that doesn’t exist necessarily to make a profit or even be published
lmao best of luck convincing struggling artists to expend their finite energies for audiences that barely exist & nonexistent profits, who needs food & rent anyway? loooool
>>23206552
>Capitalism killed high-culture
high culture is literally a product of capitalism. without capitalism, statistically you'd be sweeping chimneys or gutting fish for 80 hours per week & starving in your darkass filthy hovel when you werent

[Anonymous No.23218379]

>>23217888
>You should write a book about this
lois lowry wrote it in 1993