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/lit/ - Literature

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2438184 No.2438184 [Reply] [Original]

The 20th century has produced a series of generations with very outspoken characters. Generations that have seen things.

The World Wars.

The cultural watershed of the '60s.

The social upheaval of the '80s.

These generations all contained artists that could draw from their unique life experiences.

This generation, my generation, hasn't experienced anything apart from a massive numbing of the senses.

What do you want me to create then that is unique and meaningful? All my experiences are second-hand.

>> No.2438201

We are the first generation to have the internet. Things are different now.

>> No.2438205

>>2438184
The Singularity is coming. Do not be afraid.

>> No.2438209

>>2438201

The Internet has created a mass-generalization of culture.

Things aren't different, they're more same then they've ever been.

>> No.2438211
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2438211

Age of tech. We walk around with computers in our pockets that would've been the size of a living room and the price of a skyscraper 30 years ago. We are constantly online and communicating. Human organs are grown in labs. We're getting closer to fully understanding the human brain. Artificial intelligence is getting more and more complex. Technology in general is developing at an exponential rate. If this continues, our generation might be the first to live well over the age of a 150 or perhaps 200 years old. We might experience mind uploading, space colonies, androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans. We are the Transhumanist generation. We will see things no one before could have ever imagined. We live in the most interesting times yet.

>> No.2438213

>>2438209
That's my point. We've seen everything. We're being overstimulated.

>> No.2438218

Oh, we are going to get an EXTREME shock, very very soon. Welcome to the transitory generation, my friend- It's only downhill from here on out. Enjoy writing about a dead world and how people like >>2438211 were so ignorant of the political situation and got dazzled by baubles!

>> No.2438227

>>2438218
Baubles?

...Like on the Christmas tree?

>> No.2438233

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee

>> No.2438234

>>2438218
Tell us about how the apocalypse will happen.

>> No.2438242

>>2438213
>That's my point. We've seen everything. We're being overstimulated.
You think being on the internet allows you to see everything?

>> No.2438251

>>2438233
Yeah, been meaning to read "Decline of the West". Thanks for reminding me.

Spengler did argue, though, that Europe was already burned out when he wrote his book. That was sort of disproven, I think.

>> No.2438253

>>2438251
On the contrary, the process he describes has accelerated in basically the exact way he predicted.

>> No.2438893

>>2438227
Shiny things, like the computer you're using.
>>2438234
Economic collapse and race war.

>> No.2438920

The social upheaval of ... the '80s?

You've lost me there.

>> No.2438931
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2438931

>>2438184
>blaming the world for you uncreative failures
HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

>> No.2438935

It's because all of the writers that can get published are JEWS like Franzen, Chabon, and Foer, who completely skew the perception of modern culture and are all to superficially highbrow.

>> No.2438949

>>2438935
I hate Foer. Best writer of the generations is Dave Eggers.

>> No.2438953

>>2438935
>>2438935
Grrr... bloody Jews

>> No.2438965

>>2438949
C'mon rage at this or something I'm bored

>> No.2438979

And as such, we therefore have a more difficult time than every other generation finding substance and meaning. We are surrounded by everything we could possibly want (seemingly) and therefore meaning is harder to come by. The great work of literature that comes from this time will explore what is really meaningful and worthwhile in this day and age, I'm sure

>> No.2438985

>>2438935
Franzen is an overrated, boring, terminally middle-class writer but guess what: he's a St. Louis gentile. Chabon is obv as Jewy as they come but he's the best writer of his generation when he's not terrible. Foer is privileged, well-connected, overrated, and sometimes awful so I guess feel free to use him for all your fantasies about facefucking a guy who made out like a bandit at his bar mitzvah.

>> No.2438988

Arab Spring, Occupy Protests, massive economic failures not seen for generations.

There's plenty of stuff going on.

>> No.2438993

>>2438988
Compare the Occupy movement to youth cultures throughout the 20th century. Now find a corner and cry.

>> No.2438996

>>2438993
Occupy is exactly as hollow as youth movements of the past...stop romanticizing shit...

>> No.2438999

>>2438996
1. Occupy is a tiny fraction of the young population
2. Youth cultures in the past at least produced, regardless of whether you value their creations

>> No.2439019

>>2438949
I ain't even mad at you. Eggers is a funny writer with a kind heart. What he's doing in NYC in regards to encouraging children's literacy, and in publishing McSweeney's, and in publishing Vollman's Rising Up and Rising Down. How can I be mad? The man is a sweetheart.

>> No.2439023

The end of Generation Frivolity is coming.

We are already seeing symptoms of a great systemic economic collapse. The great tragedy is in the wings.

If you want to write something meaningful and unique, write about your complacency, your boredom, and your lack of meaning.

And then compare it to the person you become after all of this is taken away from us. You'll want to remember these feelings you have to comfort you in times of great strife.

>> No.2439025

>>2439019
I... I didn't expect /lit/ to have a heart. I'm gonna have to lie down for a bit now.

>> No.2439033
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2439033

>>2439025

>> No.2439036

>>2439019
haha man I had nearly this same exchange with a friend a couple weeks ago. I don't nec. like his writing but he seems like a good kid

>> No.2439052

And as such, we therefore have a more difficult time than every other generation finding substance and meaning. We are surrounded by everything we could possibly want (seemingly) and therefore meaning is harder to come by. The great work of literature that comes from this time will explore what is really meaningful and worthwhile in this day and age, I'm sure

>> No.2439058

>>2438184
so go have some experiences?

>> No.2439060

>bemoaning the uppermost and therefore least valuable and most superficial stratum of culture and society

>> No.2439062

>>2439052
That would be some pretty deep shit.

>> No.2439073

>>2439060
Sharpen up the blade, boys! We've got heads to roll.

>> No.2439329

This is the aspie pseudointellectual equivalent of bitching about the White Stripes being worse than Led Zep

>> No.2439338

>What do you want me to create then that is unique and meaningful? All my experiences are second-hand.

oh, shut the fuck up with this tired horse-shit

>> No.2439349

>>2439329
to be fair, i unironically shared all these opinions when i was 16/17.

>> No.2439347

>>2439329
>>2439338
>>Reviving a thread to moan about how everything is hipster

Do you realize you're helping to prove my point?

>> No.2439353

Oh god please shut up OP.

You've got access to information at all times with an internet connection. You can see every single thing going on in the world and it's all massively fucked. There's more to write about now than ever.

>> No.2439354

>>2439347
hey, i posted in the thread after it was revived, that's not my fault

>> No.2439355

>>2439349
Yeah, being ironic is a very good way to escape having to be original.

>> No.2439374

All we saw were some brown people get a bit rowdy and some hipsters rape each other in a park.

The problem is that literature is being written to win awards and shit. I don't think I've picked up a book written in the past 10 years that wasn't this shitcrock of intellectual snobbery and pop-culture/literary references. Now less and less people want to read good books because they're becoming more exclusive. Fairy shit. You know what we need? The kind of literature that grabs you by the haunches. Makes you feel like you'll be violated any second. The kind of literature that makes you think a little bit and isn't some pissing contest between a bunch of people to see who can pick out the most literary references. The kind of literature that, when you're finished with it, should feel like your mind took a good dicking. A good dicking because it makes you have all of these new thoughts and forces you to step out of your comfort zone. Not some sort of box where where you just sort of masturbate.

>> No.2439381

>>2439353
Notice the point about second-hand experience.

Honestly you people are only reinforcing my view of our generation.

Other than that, I'm not complaining, I'm observing. I'm perfectly fine with my life as it is, but I do believe that overexposition to media and entertainment and relative stability in the western world cause a certain cultural laxness.

>> No.2439386

>>2439374
I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you very much for contributing.

>> No.2439407

>>2438184
We've experienced 9/11, George W. Bush's fascist America, the Internet, and an economic panic. Not too bad.

>> No.2439413

>>2439407
I haven't experienced 9/11. I was 9 years old and across the Atlantic. Were you there?

>> No.2439424

>>2439386
Are you being sarcastic?

That's how I genuinely feel. I had to write it in a very immature way. You know, to avoid intellectualism and whatnot.

>> No.2439433

>>2439424
No, I'm being genuine.

>> No.2439437

>>2439433
Thank you.

But writers need to take a break with the looking smart thing.

>> No.2439456

>>2439437
Because they are so genre savvy, they expose the derivativeness of their work and try and laugh at it in a clever and ironic way while tears of shame well in the corners of their eyes

>> No.2439496

>>2439456
It's funny. I always pictured that similarly.

>> No.2439509

50yearoldfag here.
We've overturned everything that's worth overturning.
There is no "épater la bourgeoisie" anymore because no one is shocked by anything in the arts anymore.
The very idea of innovation as the driver for what is "good" in art has to be discarded.
Perhaps the rise of genre fiction in the last 100 years is a consequence of this.

>> No.2439528

>>2439437
sounds like a new genre of literature waiting to be written... some kind of parody of classic lit?

>> No.2439534

uh the fucking internet? everyone thinks the past was better than the present - it's all the fucking same

>> No.2439541

>>2439528
I always wanted to write a book that would incite a reversion to something that looked a bit modernist but had a classical blend. Something that kind of went back to the roots of American literature, but not too far back.

>> No.2439549

self pity stymies creativity imo.

we live in an incredibly complex world with incredibly complex potentials. nothing has been exhausted as everything is always changing. the only thing stopping you from creating something great is your belief that you can't. confidence is and always has been key.

>> No.2439554

>>2439509
>Perhaps the rise of genre fiction in the last 100 years is a consequence of this.
I think this is a consequence of simple minded people having statistical control. In otherwords more people (and this whole discussion is pretty much dedicated to middle class first world perspective) being able to read, and having the leisure time to do so. And, from pussy principles of everyone's opinions being equally valid, genre fiction, purely by force of numbers, insisting upon its literary merits.

>> No.2439561
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2439561

Decay of the United States (civil rights in particular), most American voters from Nintendo generation or younger (impact of internet on social consciousness), constant war, legislation restricting unprecedented freedom of information, global recession, wtf? You are lazy.

>> No.2439570

>>2439407
>George W. Bush's fascist America,

you dont' have a fucking clue what fascism is.

>> No.2439574

>>2439561
Nothing new about removal's of civil rights, started in the 30's, and got a big jump during the coon rights where most white freedoms were taken away.

>> No.2439611

Ours is the first non-ideological generation.

That, frankly, excites me. Those who can separate themselves from their surroundings will be excoriated as mountain-men, conspiracy theorists, Luddites who refuse to accept what others will claim to be inevitable progress.

>> No.2439619

Someone hasn't seen 'Midnight in Paris'.

Seriously though, read some fucking George Orwell essays. He talks about the common perception that WW2 wasn't as 'exciting' as WW1, and notes that people during WW1 thought that it wasn't so exciting either.

History is much more exciting than the present. You have it in bullet points with very little consideration of the mundane.

>> No.2439634
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2439634

>>2439574
are you fat?

>> No.2439652

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

>> No.2439684

>>2439652
I don't usually like poetry, and even less often enjoy OC, but this is really fucking good imo. do you have more you would be willing to post? I want to get back into writing poetry but it's been a while.

>> No.2439687

>>2439684
actually i just realized it's probably not OC. is it?? if not, who? if so, WHO?

>> No.2439786

>>2439684
>>2439687
Philip Larkin.

He's boss. If you like it, check out more of his stuff. They all have this same lingering theme.

>> No.2439797

>>2439687
larkin is rad. rad enough, anyway.

http://plagiarist.com/poetry/389/
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/4860/
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/4864/

>> No.2439813

>>2438211
Reading this doesn't make inspire me. It makes me want to kill myself.