/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3454537]

Dear /lit/,

I would like you to show me what you consider good and bad writing. I don't mean the title of a book or an abstract definition; I mean an actual piece of excellent writing and one of terrible writing. This should be the length of an average paragraph, and if you can greentext (afterwards) the exact part which is the good/bad bit, all the better.

I'm very curious as to what will come up.

[Anonymous No.3454542]

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”

― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

[Anonymous No.3454546]

When it comes to writing, Hemingway is almost always right the fuck on, in my opinion:

1/2

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge.

[Anonymous No.3454549]

>>3454546

2/2

But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.”

[Anonymous No.3454560]

>>3454549

>A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay.

[Anonymous No.3454567]

I'm surprised by the lack of interest in this thread. Could it be that /lit/ doesn't know - or can't show - good and bad writing?

Nice Hemingway quotes, OP.

[Anonymous No.3454577]

“This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an efffect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.”

― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

[Anonymous No.3454579]

>>3454577
>Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.

See

>>3454560

[Anonymous No.3454602]

Good:
That night they rode through a region electric and wild where strange shapes of soft blue fire ran over the metal of the horses’ trappings and the wagonwheels rolled in hoops of fire and little shapes of pale blue light came to perch in the ears of the horses and in the beards of the men. All night sheetlighning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunder-heads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear. The thunder moved up from the southwest and lightning lit the desert all about them, blue and barren, great clanging reaches ordered out of the absolute night like some demon kingdom summoned up or changeling land that come the day would leave them neither trace nor smoke nor ruin more than any troubling dream.

Bad:
People of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they're immortal: college students and alcoholics/addicts are the worst: they deep-down believe they're exempt from the laws of physics and statistics that ironly govern everybody else. They'll piss and moan your ear off if somebody else fucks with the rules, but they don't deep down see themselves subject to them, the same rules. And they're constitutionally unable to learn from anybody else's experience: if some jaywalking B.U. student does get his car towed, your other student's or addict's response to this will be to ponder just what imponderable difference makes it possible for that other guy to get splattered or towed and not him, the ponderer. They never doubt the difference — they just ponder it. It's like a kind of idolatry of uniqueness.

[Anonymous No.3454612]

>>3454602

First part reads like fiction, the second part reads like nonfiction. First part sounds like a try-hard, second part sounds it's trying to make a point, with considerably more success.

Sources? It'd help to have some context on these.

[Anonymous No.3454613]

>>3454602
This is a bad post and you should feel bad.

[Anonymous No.3454616]

>>3454602

The fuck is a "region electric"?

>That night they rode through a region electric and wild where strange shapes of

>and whild

There's something very wrong with this author's style. Either he's trying some 17th century syntax for a dubious effect, or he doesn't know how to speak English.

[Anonymous No.3454620]

>>3454602


AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Let me explain. I read both, and I preferred the second part to the first, not knowing Wallace wrote it. I've been shitting on him for months.

The first part is from Blood Meridian, which Harold Bloom likes.

Now, was anon trolling or what? In any case, I may give Wallace a chance now; it's not the convoluted piece of shit I thought Infinite Jest was.

[Anonymous No.3454626]

>>3454612
One is from Blood Meridian and the other is from Infinite Jest.

As for the point DFW is making, who the fuck cares? And to make such an obvious statement in such shitty prose. It's like a high schooler trying to emulate Palahniuk.

[Anonymous No.3454632]

An astounding example of why Blood Meridian sucks.

[Anonymous No.3454634]

>>3454616
Your reading comprehension level is fucking atrocious.

Electric and wild are adjectives being used to describe the region they rode through, you twit.

[Anonymous No.3454640]

>>3454632
Your edge is showing

Just keep reading your 1,000 page tome of Palahniuk-esque nonsense.

"But it has footnotes it's so deep maaaaaan"

[Anonymous No.3454642]

>>3454626

That weird moment when you find yourself wanting to defend Wallance after months of hating him...

Can you pinpoint where you see shitty prose? The first passage seems far shittier to me, in the sense that the style reeks of "LOOK AT ME, THE AUTHOR, WHO CAN WRITE THAT WAY!"

I always consider bad writing the sort of writing that takes you away from the story and forces you to look at the author. It's like a movie filming its own camera to show off about it.

[Anonymous No.3454643]

Elaborate:
In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,—in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller, than that which, as I endeavoured to describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre.

[Anonymous No.3454645]

>>3454643
Good:
I had had a sort of vague idea, don't you know, that if I stuck close to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him along to supper with me. It was the last time. I'm a quiet, peaceful sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I mean to say is this, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when you want to sit still and digest.

[Anonymous No.3454647]

>>3454634

I figured that, but sir, when's the last time you've read adjectives placed after the noun, in English?

>Paradise Lost

Pray tell what extra awesomeness it adds to the prose to do this antiquated shit?

Emulating Shakespeare doesn't make you Shakespeare; if Shakespeare wrote today, he wouldn't postpose his adjectives either.

[Anonymous No.3454648]

>>3454645
I like:
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied, if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings. All the distinguished writers of that period possess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more modern--for it is allowed to slander our own time--and when we read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough were laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring.

[Anonymous No.3454649]

>>3454640

Anon, you're confusing Wallace with Palahniuk, and their styles are very, very different. Palahniuk is far closer to Hemingway than Joyce, Pynchon, or Wallace, and I mean FUCKING FAR. Chuck was into minimalism for at least 5 or 6 of his first books, and none of them were more than 300 pages.

>the more you know

[Anonymous No.3454654]

>>3454632
A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

>implying you could ever aspire to write such a sentence

Stay mad, pleb.

[Anonymous No.3454658]

>>3454648
Well liked:

A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people! Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, “there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government,” it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his opinion, “that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

[Anonymous No.3454659]

>>3454649
>their styles are very, very different

And yet their fan bases are identical. Pic related.

[Anonymous No.3454662]

>>3454658
The Master:

It is further urged, with great vehemence, that these troops of Russia and Hesse are not hired in defence of Britain; that we are engaged, in a naval war, for territories on a distant continent; and that these troops, though mercenaries, can never be auxiliaries; that they increase the burden of the war, without hastening its conclusion, or promoting its success; since they can neither be sent into America, the only part of the world where England can, on the present occasion, have any employment for land-forces, nor be put into our ships, by which, and by which only, we are now to oppose and subdue our enemies.

Nature has stationed us in an island, inaccessible but by sea; and we are now at war with an enemy, whose naval power is inferiour to our own, and from whom, therefore, we are in no danger of invasion: to what purpose, then, are troops hired in such uncommon numbers? To what end do we procure strength, which we cannot exert, and exhaust the nation with subsidies, at a time when nothing is disputed, which the princes, who receive our subsidies, can defend? If we had purchased ships, and hired seamen, we had apparently increased our power, and made ourselves formidable to our enemies, and, if any increase of security be possible, had secured ourselves still better from invasions: but what can the regiments of Russia, or of Hesse, contribute to the defence of the coasts of England; or, by what assistance can they repay us the sums, which we have stipulated to pay for their costly friendship?

[Anonymous No.3454661]

>>3454659

Readers of Wallace are readers of Palahniuk? That's news to me. I've read a bunch of Chuck's novels, but I never heard any kind words from Wallace readers about Chuck.

I also think you overestimate teenage girls, whom you've obviously never met, apart from your dreams and fantasies of them.

[Anonymous No.3454665]

>>3454661
>I also think you overestimate teenage girls, whom you've obviously never met, apart from your dreams and fantasies of them.

In my business we call that projecting, son.

[Anonymous No.3454667]

Since we're all posting shit:

The Sun was worshipped at Emesa, under the name of Elagabalus, and under the form of a black conical stone, which, as it was universally believed, had fallen from heaven on that sacred place. To this protecting deity, Antoninus, not without some reason, ascribed his elevation to the throne. The display of superstitious gratitude was the only serious business of his reign. The triumph of the god of Emesa over all the religions of the earth, was the great object of his zeal and vanity; and the appellation of Elagabalus (for he presumed as pontiff and favorite to adopt that sacred name) was dearer to him than all the titles of Imperial greatness. In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the way was strewed with gold dust; the black stone, set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot drawn by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. The pious emperor held the reins, and, supported by his ministers, moved slowly backwards, that he might perpetually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence. In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the god Elagabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar, a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army, clothed in long Phnician tunics, officiated in the meanest functions, with affected zeal and secret indignation.

[Anonymous No.3454674]

>>3454661
DFW is Palahniuk for undergrads.

[Anonymous No.3454682]

>>3454665

Yep, and you're projecting your own auto-projection, daughter.

[Anonymous No.3454688]

Hemingway: Clear complete thoughts. Each sentence has a meaning. Polished. He would have made a great radio broadcaster.

Cormac: Clunky, simple words put together like Legos. Requires an imagination.

DFW: Flows like natural thoughts in head.

>>3454643
Rushkin: Beautiful, ornate, lengthy, while still a natural understanding when read. Only if he wrote fantasy. Only if....

>>3454645
Wodehouse: Contemporary, concise. Malcolm in the Middle like.

>>3454648
Thoreau: Poetic, incorporates senses, parts of nature. Peaceful in how naturalist motifs it incorporates.

>>3454654
Still clunky.

>>3454658
Swift: Supposed to be the master. Creative, accurate use of words, that somehow he makes seem natural. Refined.

>>3454662
Sam Johnson: Best structure. I wish columnists would adopt his order.

[Anonymous No.3454693]

>>3454674
Lol using Stur in a Deal with it pic

[Anonymous No.3454696]

>>3454688
More Ruskin:

But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside ornaments,—for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture,—a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word "good." I don't mean by "good," clever—or learned—or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered," or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense—it is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality—it is the taste of the angels And all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which we call "loveliness"—(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.

[Anonymous No.3454699]

>>3454688

Hemingway requires an imagination precisely because he only gives you the bare essentials; the rest is up to you.

Few people seem to understand Hemingway, how his style corresponds to what he does with his stories. I find that sad. Depth with simplicity was his deal; it's easier to do complex and shallow, but don't be fooled.

[Anonymous No.3454735]

>tfw when i was the only guy who posted blocks of text and no one else responds except that one guy obsessed with hemingway. THANKS FOR HELPING PROCRASTINATE ON MY PHYSICAL CHEM EXAM ON WEDNESDAY GUYS

and fuck sci-fi. every 4-6 words there's going to be some name with a completely arbitrary etymology, or some location i don't recognize, and of supposedly mythic character i don't know about. contemporary writing puts such a spotlight, a focus on objects that lead towards the greater scene, it makes it choppy. hell i don't think the eyes can sharply pinpoint each physical object described in detail before the eyes shift towards the main centerpiece. there needs to be direction, each minor object described must contribute to the main scene, or have the narrator/voice quickly guide through them to, so the use of each evokes a familiar emotion.

[Anonymous No.3454755]

>>3454735

Objects described help give a sense of realism to a scene: sometimes a knife is in the room just because it's there, without a particular reason, plotwise or otherwise.

Without that, your story sounds like a fairy tale, where everything comes in use, always.

[Anonymous No.3454764]

>>3454735
**each minor object described must contribute to the main scene

but cannot steal the spotlight

**have the narrator/voice quickly guide through them to, so the [inclusion of each object] evokes a familiar [strong] emotion.

i'm off to bed. hell yurops

[Anonymous No.3454873]

>>3454602

Woah, that "good" section is the shittest prose I have ever read. Did you write it, anon?

[Anonymous No.3457887]

bump

[Anonymous No.3457905]

>>3454612
>>3454616
>>3454620
>>3454632
>>3454642
>>3454647

DisgustedNewsMan.jpeg

[Anonymous No.3458017]

sup /lit/,

i need to know what you consider strong writing. provide us with a sample of prose you think demonstrates gifted composition. for comparison, also include a piece you believe exemplifies inferior work. please limit your choice to 200 words. in the odd instance that you select a bit of writing which contains both masterful and mediocre sections, be sure to clarify your preferences within the post.