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/lit/ - Literature

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3774966 No.3774966 [Reply] [Original]

Yes I am asking this because I'm a pleb reader, but what does /lit/ think of John Green?

>> No.3774972

I have a man-crush on him.

>> No.3774980

He's the John Hughes of literature without the good taste in music

>> No.3774984

formulatic, but good at what he does.

>> No.3774981

>>3774966
>>3774966
shit YA etc

>> No.3774999

Hey, he looks sort of like this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw9Au9OoN88

>> No.3775047

I like Crash Course.

>> No.3775061

>>3774980
>John green not having good taste in music
prove it.

>> No.3775077
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3775077

>>3774981

>> No.3775082

I presumed /lit/ would shit on this guy

>> No.3775088

>>3775082

His fans are pretty annoying. My 15 year old sister is obsessed with him and talks about him nonstop when I am home.

>> No.3775091

>>3775061

He mentioned Neutral Milk Hotel in one of his books. By /mu/'s standards, he must be a patrician.

>> No.3775094

>>3775091
wait, which book?

>> No.3775107

>>3775094

Looking For Alaska I believe.

>> No.3775119

He exists. People read him. Not worth discussing.

>> No.3775121

>>3775082
I don't even know who he is.

>> No.3775129

>>3774966
I read The Fault in Our Stars and it was actually good. His fans are really annoying, however.

>> No.3775133

My ex loved him, made me read his books, and here I am trying to follow the greats of /lit/...and I have to read his inane shit. It's all okay, but really....off.

>> No.3775139

I live near where he lives and anytime my sister and I are in Indy, she makes me go "John Green Hunting."

>> No.3775153

>>3775139
Is that kind of like Good Will Hunting

>> No.3775168

>>3775107
No, it was Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

>> No.3775170

>>3775091
He also likes The Mountain Goats. Seems like a man of good taste to me.

>> No.3775182

I dislike it, really. It's nothing more than an 'edgier' Nicholas Sparks, and I feel like the emotions of his books are just really cheap. He writes a passage, not to actually move you, change you as a person, etc, but just to elicit a cry like a shameful fuck

>> No.3775185
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3775185

Pretentious, obliviously unintelligent, poorly cultured, marketed, heavyhanded young adult trash for superficial "psuedo-intellectuals" so dumb that they're incapable of consuming actual lit in vogue, so they have to refer to the diluted, commercialized froth interpretation. Represents the fiction equivalent of pop science/philosophy, and I can't stand his sense of humor.
Valueless, arguably poisonous, dishonest, posturing literature transparent to anyone with a semblance of taste, I don't think I'd trust the taste of someone who sincerely approves his work. Other than that, I don't really care at all, he's wholly irrelevant, but there is a cult of people who are just like him, with the same sense of humor and taste and flip flops and all, and I just can't figure out where they're coming from. I don't believe his influence has spawned them, I think they've been developing for a generation and he's the first media example of one, they must be mormons or boy scouts or the sons of best buy managers or something.

>>3775047
read a book.

>> No.3775186

>>3775168
fuuuck that book
why is everytihng so fantastical with himq

>> No.3775190

>>3775129
Seconded. It comes from his youtube channel(s) (which are actually pretty good for the most part btw, just have a fandom). His books remind me a little of The Catcher in the Rye.

>> No.3775194

>>3775129
disliked that book a lot. Extremely angsty and too...fake. That shit doesn't happen in real life.

>> No.3775197

>>3775185
You sound mad.

>> No.3775200

>>3775091
Neutral Milk Hotel has seeped into the hands of the average female hipster not hipster middle schooler. They're about as obscure as MBV, the only marker of taste it would be is a lack of one, though at the (lowest) level of interest enough to find something not directly marketed or touring.

>> No.3775201

>>3775194
I was really unenthralled with the way his characters were yes, 'different', but all spoke in some poorly formulated Oscar Wildian dialogue

>> No.3775209
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3775209

>>3775197
Not really, I find him really funny as a person.

>> No.3775227

He writes YA fiction and I read literary fiction almost exclusively. I imagine he's probably pretty good at what he does, he just doesn't interest me at all. From what I've heard, though, he could probably write a decent literary novel. Better than the Foer guy, at least.

>> No.3775236

>>3775201
Exactly, this is one of my biggest complaints of the book. They're all teenagers who read YA fiction and are wholly uninspired and yet they speak flowery, know of the most obscure things of humanity...
...I highly suspect John Green put himself in every single character.

>> No.3775257

>>3775153
Made me laugh.

>> No.3775260

Honest answer:

/lit/ is generally focused on well regarded, time tested literature, and to a lesser extent mature fiction like classic sci-fi and fantasy. Green falls outside that range, so he is not generally liked, but that doesn't mean hes bad. In the YA genre, hes fine, and if you're into that go for it, but hes not a paragon of the written word or anything. JG just doesn't belong in this board's reading list

>> No.3775266

>>3775236
>u guise I'm so deep BUT ALSO TRAGIC

>> No.3775276

My opinion is that he writes fine YA stuff, just that people over fourteen who freak out over him are being ridiculous. Also, his books are so similar that reading more than two of them will probably start brainwashing you.

>> No.3775284

He's a great writer of YA fiction, but as a patrician of /lit/, he doesn't meet my standards.

>> No.3775296

don't expect him to be the next fitzgerald or steinbeck, but his novels are enjoyable. not too groundbreaking and revolutionary, but you can empathize with the characters, which are by the way well created.

enjoyed TFiOS a lot, but my reading list has other priorities so I'm not getting into his books a lot in my planned readings for the near future.

>> No.3775302

I enjoy YA, so I enjoy John Green.

>> No.3775303

Faggot.

>> No.3775305

>>3775185

Thank you. I thought the mandarins had taken over this shit hole.

>> No.3775306

>>3775296
"well created"
;:^?

>> No.3775308

>>3775306
well they aren't too flat, have quite complex personalities and undergo considerable changes or transformations.

not that he's the top author for writing the most complex characters but it's quite impressive for the field of YA novels.

>> No.3775329

I couldn't care less about his literary talents, but I will always hate him for his Nerdfighters shit.

Oh, and his crashcourses can be misleading as shit at times.

>> No.3775334

>>3775329

1. Nerdfighter
Share on twitter Share on facebook Share on more
2248 up, 268 down
People who instead of being made up of cells and organs and stuff are actually made out of awesome.
They fight decepticons on behalf of Nerds everywhere!

...sounds great!

>> No.3775335

>>3775329
>I will always hate him for his Nerdfighters shit
his video blog isn't actually that bad, but the community is annoying as fuck.

>> No.3775439

He annoys the hell out of me, authors writing from the I really hate how Catcher in the Rye lead to shitty YA fiction because no one could actually read it. Looking for Alaska could be helpful to someone, though, and I won't say he doesn't put his heart into it.

>> No.3775444

>>3775439
nix authors writing from the, phone is wonky.

>> No.3775446

ITT: trolls trolling people into thinking that they have actually read the book, and trolls claiming it was anything other than shit.

>> No.3775461

I put Looking for Alaska down when it got to the "Subverting the Patriarchal Paradigm" or whatever bit, it just got too fucking inane for what it ought to have been and I got annoyed.

>> No.3775799

he's a pretty white guilting revisionist history pie in the sky political fantasy masturbator, but the guy can put together a pretty string of words like a boss

I've been reading quotes from him for 20 minutes and came to make this very thread to see if I should read the books.

>> No.3775993
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3775993

I've read 3 of his books but the only one I thought had any merit was Paper Towns.

>> No.3776016

>>3775129
>Teenage romance novel
>Good

>> No.3776586
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3776586

He's got potential, and none of his books are shit tier. He knows what he's doing and is effective at achieving it.

But the problem is that he's not very ambitious. There's no risks taken, it hits that YA light intellectual bittersweet tone bildungsroman kind of niche right square smack dab in the middle. and doesn't stray outside of that.

Which is fine for a light read, but it's hard to take him seriously. He doesn't seem pretentious to me, as it seems like he's genuinely worked to acquire and upkeep his fandom. He's not just some prick who broke lucky, he works his platform, the nerdfighter youtube thing, and he does his marketing, and gets along good with his fans. But that's where some of the problem steps in, because his fans can be kind of annoying, upselling him, because of the platform, upselling him because they're young and they haven't really experienced enough scope. It sounds as if I'm being hard on him, but I'm not trying to be, because there's nothing wrong with reading him, or liking him. But even though he's competent at what he's been doing, What he's been doing isn't very deep or meaningful yet. He's got the potential to do more, but he hasn't shown any sign of doing more yet. It's all been sort of Hallmark Greeting Card kind of fiction.