/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.578669]

ITT: Writers who were just lucky.

Bukowski has no merit whatsoever, and yet he's somehow popular.

[Anonymous No.578684]

Kurt Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.578691]

>>578684

You are so unbelievably wrong.

[Anonymous No.578692]

>>578691

hipster fag who has read 3 books in his life

[Anonymous No.578696]

Bukowski had stories to tell and he new how to tell 'em good.

[First Corinthians !5m18GD4M5g No.578698]

>>578696

Yeah he really noo his stuff.

[Anonymous No.578700]

>>578696 implying Bukowski had stories to tell or knew how to tell them.

[Anonymous No.578704]

>>578700

I'm implying precisely that, indeed. I thought I had been explicit enough, but thanks for helping me to make my point accross.

[Anonymous No.578705]

>>578692

You are still wrong.

[First Corinthians !5m18GD4M5g No.578710]

>>578704

Butthurt?

[Anonymous No.578713]

>>578710

about what?

[Anonymous No.578730]

[Anonymous No.578732]

People who bag Bukowski are worse than people who praise him as the best.

While you're at it, you may as well cry about twilight, bitch about ayn rand, moan about the great gatsby, and go join the rest of the hipster fags who think they're above popular literature.

In other words, no one gives a fuck about your generic opinion, so go fuck yourself quietly so we can't hear.

[Anonymous No.578739]

>>578732

[Anonymous No.578740]

>>578732 generic opinion
"Anything I don't agree with is generic!"

Get over yourself, faggot.

[Anonymous No.578753]

[Anonymous No.578754]

Stephen King.

I love the guy to pieces, but I can't honestly believe that his stories resonate with so many people.

I don't know what made him so unbelievably popular, but I don't think it was the quality of his writing.

[Anonymous No.578760]

[Anonymous No.578761]

but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

[Anonymous No.578777]

>>578754
Lowest common denominator.

[Anonymous No.580599]

[Anonymous No.580606]

Nabokov--lucky he never met me in the street cuz I would stomp that short-eyes into the muthafuckin pavement.

[Anonymous No.580614]

bukowski is a fun read

bukowski irl is a faggot

[Anonymous No.580622]

>>578668
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[Anonymous No.580626]

Rowling.

[Anonymous No.580629]

[Anonymous No.580639]

>>580599

Man, he had to work his way up from the bottom, which is selling short stories to magazines.

[Anonymous No.580640]

>>580639
So did Bukowski.

[Anonymous No.580648]

>>580640

Then Bukowski wasn't lucky.

[Anonymous No.580682]

>>578684
>>580629

Samefag.

[Anonymous No.580703]

>>580648
Tru dat.

[Anonymous No.580720]

Yallniggerspostininatrollthread.jpg

[Anonymous No.580724]

Y'all niggas herd bout sumthin called interpretation. You can't difinitively say one author was good or bad. Inb4 anything to the contrary

[Anonymous No.580733]

>>578669
Bukowski is popular because he is a working men's hero.

He's not as good a writer as, say, Hemingway, but he serves the same niche.

[Anonymous No.581115]

FACT: People who like Vonnegut or Burroughs more than Bukowski are not worth talking to. Ever.

[Anonymous No.581132]

>>578669

Bullshit. I'm fucking sick of this belief that Bukowski was some talentless hack who skated into success.

He lived and interesting life and, despite what people say, he had talent with which he was able to tell his stories in a humorous, interesting, poignant way.

Fuck all the haters. You are just failed writers that are pissed off a drunk dirty old man was a better writer and more successful than you will ever be.

[Anonymous No.581152]

>>580648
this. "lucky" is a bullshit term. it was years, i think even a decade, before bukowski started to be successful and the beginning was paved with short story submissions. you may think he was a drunkard, but it's well known that he wrote all day and went out at night. the ten something books published since his death is testament to his prolific work ethic. he wrote a shitload. that's not luck, that's hard work.

[Anonymous No.581160]

Bukowski was a bitter old hack.

[Anonymous No.581164]

>>581115
>Insulting Burroughs

What.

[Anonymous No.581171]

>>581132
He was a alcolic who wrote about alcohol. Real fucking profound.

[Anonymous No.581173]

>>581171
>My dad was alcohol and it's destroying my family

[Anonymous No.581175]

Joyce. FUCK JAMES JOYCE

[Anonymous No.581184]

>>581171
>I don't know what I'm fucking talking about

Gotcha.

[Anonymous No.581191]

>>581175
LOL. seconded

[Anonymous No.581193]

>>581191
>>581175

Too deep for you

[Anonymous No.581194]

>>581171

Most great writers have turned the pen to their own lives at one point in their career. Autobiography is not a cop out in any sense of the word.

Besides, there are lots of writers who write about alcohol or women or gambling, but they are nowhere near as funny or interesting and often very contrived. The subject of his works has nothing to do with anything. That's like saying Plath wrote about women, real profound. Or McCarthy wrote about a boy and his dad, real profound. Taking one base aspect of it out of context means nothing.

[Anonymous No.581205]

william fucking gibson

[Anonymous No.581211]

>>581193
i misread and thought he said, fucking James Joyce, as in cool as hell but an alcoholic. i take back my seconding

[Anonymous No.581214]

I see that /lit/ has settled nicely into the 4chan habit of hating everything that is good and popular for seemingly no reason. Just like it is common knowledge that /v/ hates video games, so too it would seem /lit/ hates literature. Well, anyway, good luck with your pathetic lives, you neckbeard pieces of shit. I am sorry your life will be marked by failure and depression.

[Anonymous No.581215]

William Shakespeare.

[Anonymous No.581219]

She's a mid-tier children's author who somehow managed to become enormously rich. There are tons who are just as or even more talented who don't get even a tiny fraction of her recognition.

[Anonymous No.581220]

well, any writer we mention will have a following...

and any writer we mention will have had to have found some success to be mentioned here... probably after his/her death.

i like bukowski and vonnegut though, so half of you want to strangle me.

[Anonymous No.581224]

>>581220
i don't. i like them both.

>brofist.jpg

[Anonymous No.581226]

>>581215
Why do you not like Shakespeare?

[Anonymous No.581230]

>>581220
>>581224

I also like them both. Three way brofist.

[Anonymous No.581231]

i am not partial to most female authors. i don't even find much redeeming about sylvia plath beside the interesting way she offed herself.

virginia woolf is an exception.

[Anonymous No.581234]

>>581226
because not liking him makes me feel better and smarter than the people who like him.

[Anonymous No.581239]

>>581219
I think OP meant to use another word. JK Rowling is the only author in this thread who fits into the "lucky" mold. And Stephanie Meyer. They did not much else beforehand and their works are almost indistinguishable from the competition, yet they are successful. Bukowski, Vonnegut, Burroughs worked their arses off and all three of them were at least influential in some way.

[Anonymous No.581256]

Bukowski has merit in how his works resonate with the working-class stiff. Anyone who has worked a shitty "9-5" can read Bukowski's boredom as anthem-esque

[Anonymous No.581267]

>>581256
It's beyond that, though. There is much more warmth in his writing than just the working stiff/drunktard shit everybody claims he's all about.

You have to look a little harder. There's so much more.

[Anonymous No.581276]

>>581267
I agree with you. I always found a scent of heartbreak to Bukowski, especially his poetry.

[Anonymous No.581284]

>>581267
>>581276

Bukowski had bad acne as a kid, left him with lots of scars. I think early depression gave way to drinking and women, so you'd be right in saying there was some heartbreak behind his writing.

[Anonymous No.581619]

>>578669
He ripped off two previous works which were half-ass'd knock off's that made no sense anyway. You want to talk about luck?

[Anonymous No.581696]

Ernest Hemingway

[Anonymous No.581707]

>>581696
you best be trollin....

[Anonymous No.581708]

>>580733
>>581132

brofist.

the key to Bukowski's success was the context his poetry and stories appeared in. he did what chuck palahniuk is doing today. making bookworms out of bikers and working-class bums.

Bukowski's life was the iconic image of working class america. he evaded the draft, was a notorious drunk, and hated the world.

He was the pre-fight club era underground hero

[Anonymous No.581753]

That eragon kid maybe? i dunno.

[Anonymous No.581782]

>>581708
I don't like Bukowski or Palanhiuk, but that comparison is a disservice to Bukowski. At least he was genuine. Palanhiuk just seems so calculated and fake in his writing and his public image.

[Anonymous No.581786]

>>581219
>denying that harry potter is popular for a reason.

[Anonymous No.581793]

>>581782
i think he used to have something to say, but now he just makes characters with weird traits/things they did in their family or home life, and then tells their life story backwards to make people go "WOAH WAT" at the end. I'm halfway through 'rant' and i want to trash it :|

[Anonymous No.581794]

[Anonymous No.581835]

John Kennedy Toole was lucky his mother was insistent about some , any, publisher reading her dead sons unpublished manuscript. And we're lucky to read it

[Anonymous No.581844]

>>581782
im not trying to say they have similar styles. they just have a similar audience.
for the most part i agree with you, Palahniuk's work will never be as natural as Bukowski. He just tries to hard

[Anonymous No.581876]

>>581794

[Anonymous No.581890]

Oh wow. THIS THREAD AGAIN.

[Anonymous No.581952]

>>578669

Lucky is not really the word. Say what you will about Bukowski's prose, but the man had huge work ethic. Protip: working hard does not equal luck.

[Anonymous No.582003]

>>581794

[Anonymous No.582064]

Any writer who has ever become well known is lucky.

Same as anyone else who was once swimming around in their dad's nuts, they managed to beat out all the other testicle tadpoles and proliferate into their scribbling/typing selves.

Beyond being able to just live to the point of writing down something and not having down syndrome, what they did write was well configured, or at least made a few scholarly types turn their heads and declare it genius.

So here's to you writers who are canonized or not, you don't have down syndrome!

[Anonymous No.582081]

>this thread.

[Anonymous of Dallas !awNDo4Ud3. No.582106]

>>581175

[Anonymous No.582124]

How is this fail thread still alive?!

I was the third poster yesterday, wtf?

[Anonymous No.582396]

Jack Kerouac

'And then I hitched a ride to Bakersfield. It was here I ran into Dean Moriarty for the 986th time this novel. After a brief chat I hitched a ride with an old man to Denver. It was here I ran into Ol' Pete, who taught me a thing or two about the ranch. I hitched a ride with an old man to a nearby town, where I bought a loaf of bread for six cents.' Fucking etc

[Anonymous No.582399]

>>582396
Bukowski described Kerouac like this: "He was a man who couldn't write but who became famous because he looked like a rodeo rider."

[Anonymous No.582408]

>>582399
That's about right.

[Anonymous No.582409]

>>582399
Really? Cool, haha. I haven't actually read any Bukowski, I think I'm gonna have to get on that pretty soon.

I know Truman Capote said something along the lines of 'That's not writing, that's typing.'

[Anonymous No.582416]

>>582124

I was the 4th.

Lol, we two have the same schedule!

[Anonymous No.582500]

>Bukowski accusing someone else of not being able to write.

[Anonymous No.582503]

>>581256
I have a crappy job and I still think he's a worthless drunk. He's not insightful, he's just a phony who figured out how to create an image and sell himself to gullible counter-cultural types.

[Anonymous No.582504]

>>582500
>person who takes pictures from downloaded animes accusing SOmeone of not being able to write

[Anonymous No.582505]

>>582504
>Using irrelevant criteria as a basis for judgement

[Anonymous No.582507]

>>582505
>accusing someone of doing something while obviously having done the same thing just before

[Anonymous No.582508]

>>582507
>falling back on the "you did it too" argument when that is clearly not the case

[Anonymous No.582511]

>>582508
>implying that bad writers are necessarily bad critics

[Anonymous No.582515]

>>582511
>implying there is no irony in a bad writer calling someone else a bad writer

[Anonymous No.582516]

>>582515
>not knowing what irony is

[Anonymous No.582519]

[Anonymous No.582521]

>>582516
>not recognizing irony

[Anonymous No.582523]

In this thread we can see the monkeys in a circle masturbating.

[Anonymous No.582527]

>>582523
i saw a monkey masturbate at a zoo once

[Anonymous No.582528]

[Anonymous No.582531]

>>582528
put another slightly smaller shit at the start and you've got it

[Anonymous No.582538]

>>582396
>>578669

I think you guys need to separate "great" from "influential". Whether Kerouac or Bukowski are great is up for debate, but they did have a great effect on writing. They were influential. I guess then it was up to a bunch of other writers to come in afterward and improve on what they started.

[Anonymous No.582542]

>>582538
but who cares if they only influenced people who suck as much as they do..?????????

[Anonymous No.582546]

>>582538
Who exactly did Bukowski influence besides other phonies?

[Anonymous No.583330]

>>581696
>>581215
>>581175
>>578754
>>578753
I know this thread is troll bait but I AGREE TO DISAGREE.....

[Anonymous No.585565]

>>578696

This.

[Anonymous No.586873]

Bokowski was a good writer of short stories.

His novels are so-so.