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/lit/ - Literature

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3607575 No.3607575 [Reply] [Original]

in australia this fag (matthew reilly) is an enormously successful author. he releases one book a year to great success and while he thinks he is a michael crichton type techno thriller writer he is just a fucking hack. his prose will literally read like the script of a michael bay film; so and so burst through the window. SMASH. he fired the gun and their heads exploded. etc. (it actually reads like this)

doesnt help that he is an arrogant son of a bitch in interviews. he honestly thinks he is norman mailer or something.

does anyone out of australia read this cunts work? it would make me feel better if us and uk readers had never heard of him.

>> No.3607617

UKfag
Never heard of him.

Though we have our own trash to contend with.

>> No.3607676

Was he one of the people in friends – that 90's American sitcom?

>> No.3607698

>>3607676
lol thats what I thought

>> No.3607715
File: 49 KB, 499x479, 1348509674035.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3607715

>>3607676
same

>> No.3607730
File: 17 KB, 293x360, Chandler.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3607730

>>3607676

>> No.3607759
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3607759

Australian here, never heard of the gronk. Sounds like a festering ball of shit.

>> No.3607862

Dude, that guy is really big here in the states. He rivals Stephanie Meyer in popularity right now. I think they're gonna make a movie out of one of his books. This guy's probably making so much bank.

>> No.3607893

Yeah, I read three of his books when I was a kid. Two of them were absolutely unreadable even then, 'Seven Ancient Wonders' and 'Ice Station' if memory serves.

However, I really enjoyed his book 'Contest' (when I was 12, obviously). It was about some kind of intergalactic gladiatorial games wherein a representative warrior of each alien race, including one human, fights to the death in The New York Library.

Fun pulp.

>> No.3607902

>>3607893
>It was about some kind of intergalactic gladiatorial games wherein a representative warrior of each alien race, including one human, fights to the death in The New York Library.
Are you sure this was not a Mortal Kombat novel ?

>> No.3607909

Two points here.

First, "Michael Crichton type techno thriller writer" is not that redemptive, or that much above what Matthew Reilly writes, or mutually exclusive with someone being hacky.

Second, Matthew Reilly is very popular as a writer of popular entertainment. Neither he nor his readers have any pretension to be anything more than that. He's not Dan Brown who thinks he's revealing the secrets of history. He's writing action stories that entertain people. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with people reading that, and to say otherwise is pure snobbery. And by the standards by which entertainment should be judged, he's quite good at what he does. Now, if he thinks he's a writer of deathless prose or something, he's an idiot. But as far as I know, he doesn't think that.

>> No.3607918

>>3607909
By which strange standards do you conduct your judgements if bad taste is not a sin?

>> No.3607946

Popcorn is popcorn. Sometimes a greasy page turner is better than a flavor packed 5 course meal when Im not in the mood for something heavy.

>> No.3607952

>>3607918
I'm not defending bad taste or denying the importance of making judgments.

I'm saying there's a significant and categorical difference between things that are art / literature / whatever you want to call it on the one hand and entertainment on the other*; that the standards for judging them are totally different because they are different in character, and it is an error to confuse those standards; and that being opposed to entertainment, or disliking it as such, or denying it, is more or less pure snobbery, because all of us can be entertained.

*Actually I think it's possible for some things to function as both art and entertainment, but they're still always two different ways of looking at and experiencing something, and it's a mistake to criticize something under the impression that it's one when it's the other. If you do that, you're wrong, not because making a judgment is wrong, but because you're making a wrong judgment using faulty analysis.

As anon said, popcorn is popcorn.

>> No.3607965

>>3607952
There's nothing wrong with a bit of elitism though. I see nothing negative in shaming people for reading bad things, even if it's merely for entertainment value. Shame is a powerful tool, it might inspire them to greater heights.

>> No.3607982

>>3607965
I think there's something wrong with it because it's based on an untrue foundation. It's a wrong idea about the world. And I'd like to think that we can get people to read good things without lying.

Probably naive of me, come to think of it. But that's kind of the way I feel - I don't think the lie is necessary and I do think it's an incorrect critical stance.

>> No.3607986

>>3607982
Are you implying there are true foundations for value judgements that I'm not aware of? Saying that someone has bad taste isn't a lie, it's an opinion.

>> No.3607988

never heard of him US midwest

>> No.3608013

>>3607986
Even if you set aside the question of values, the facts still have to be respected, and to my mind the division between art and entertainment is a fact that has to be taken into account.

>> No.3608179

>>3607575
Chilefag
(T of ESL)
Don't know who he is, don't care who he is

>> No.3608218

it's what most people have always wanted, why get mad?

i think james patterson is pretty fascinating
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhtcCST0dU0
same for other people who shit out 200+ novels over the course of their careers. sounds like patterson could have been successful on a literary basis though.

>> No.3608242

>>3607575
never heard of him OP