/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Mon Dec 29 19:16:38 2014 No.5924970 [Reply] [Original]

>I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

>But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

>It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

>Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

>Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
is bloom right? also why does he dislike king so much?

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 19:20:42 2014 No.5924986

>>5924970
While I sincerely agree with Bloom, is it necessary that we have this thread every other day?

The first time it was posted was sincere discussion; the second time was transitioning into ironic shitposting; the third and beyond is simply redundant pseudo-shitposting or perhaps even metashitposting but not appropriate nonetheless.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 19:21:57 2014 No.5924996 Bloom has reached Maximum Grump and become an avatar of pure Grumpiness That is why he is the herald of /lit/

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 19:24:07 2014 No.5925006 >>5924986 >is it necessary that we have this thread every other day? Bloom is a meme, of course we need to have this thread every other day.

>>	H.Q.S.S.G Mon Dec 29 19:29:10 2014 No.5925026 >>5925006 Good point

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:11:21 2014 No.5925248 Fucking Humpty Dumpty looking niggger. I hope he breaks into little pieces.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:16:10 2014 No.5925277 He is right, it can be exemplified by the recent Anti-Intelectual campaign in America, even though it has been going on since Capitalism started to really establish itself as a world power

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:32:17 2014 No.5925366 Anyone has an ebook of "How to Read and Why"? No luck on the usual sites.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:34:31 2014 No.5925378

Of course he was right just look at this
>http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/63195-ya-tops-nielsen-and-kindle-lists-for-2014-so-far.html#path/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/63195-ya-tops-nielsen-and-kindle-lists-for-2014-so-far.html

>75% of the list is YA/children's books
>a third of that (25% of the total list) are novelizations of the movie Frozen
>10% of the list are video game guides
>the only nonfiction books are religious, and one of them claims to be first hand account of life after death
>the only non religious, non children's, non video game book is a Pulitzer Prize winner from last year
>every book except for the devotional and the Pulitzer has had a movie adaptation

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:37:38 2014 No.5925391 >>5924970 thats a god tier medium format portrait

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:39:24 2014 No.5925398 >>5925391 >fat ugly fuck being a fat fuck >god tier

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:48:02 2014 No.5925434

While I agree with Bloom, I cannot but be a bit skeptic regarding his understanding of what makes a good book overall.

He is indeed well-trained to spot writing mistakes, use of cliches, dead metaphors and style related issues, but the fact that the only novel he wrote is quite bad makes me dismiss some of his critiques.

I'm not very involved about literary critique, and to be honest I don't understand it at all because what Bloom find as flaws in a novel (such as dead metaphors) seems absurd.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:50:55 2014 No.5925446 >>5925277 Pretty sure anti-intellectualism in America didn't start in 100,000 BC.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 20:57:44 2014 No.5925482 >>5925366 I found it in spanish? http://www.unpa.edu.mx/~blopez/algunosLibros/Harold%20Bloom%20-%20Como%20Leer%20Y%20Por%20Que.pdf

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:02:59 2014 No.5925500 >>5924970 Yes he's right, and he dislikes king because king rights with virtually no substance

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:05:27 2014 No.5925508 >>5924970 >I suffered a great deal in the process Top kek.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:30:22 2014 No.5925599 >>5924970 das a rolly polly muthafucka, man

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:32:17 2014 No.5925607

>>5925434
>but the fact that the only novel he wrote is quite bad makes me dismiss some of his critiques.
To be fair to him, an incredibly keen critical eye does not always entail a creative one. They're different talents, often intertwined, but not strictly necessary for one another.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:32:28 2014 No.5925609 >>5925378 Horrible metric.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 21:37:03 2014 No.5925630 >>5924970 i legit feel sorry for him he saw what he loved slowly choke to death

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:25:22 2014 No.5925811 >>5925599 He is a large man

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:28:21 2014 No.5925824 >>5925630 his cardiovascular system?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:30:26 2014 No.5925829 Money did this. Everything is about turning a quick buck.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:38:38 2014 No.5925855 so im pretty sure that harry potter and the sorcerers stone does not have that many usages of "stretched his legs"

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:40:51 2014 No.5925867 >>5924970 This problem is not confined to Literature. We to start considering Eugenics or compulsory birth control for some members of our species.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:44:40 2014 No.5925881 File: 31 KB, 1280x720, For you.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5925811

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 22:54:49 2014 No.5925912 >>5924970 no he is wrong. well he might be right about JK Rowling's writing being bad but you I doubt kids that young to have the capacity to pick up things like that.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:01:17 2014 No.5925929 >literature is getting so much woooooooooorse Penny dreadfuls called, fagets. Literature, and everything, has always been shit.

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:04:51 2014 No.5925937

>If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King
>not concluding a thought

When I was twelve(ish), I read King. After that, Danielewski. After that, Wallace and Pynchon.

What's the big issue, then?

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:06:57 2014 No.5925945 >>5925937 >wallace bloom hates wallace so maybe he's not too happy

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:08:58 2014 No.5925953 >>5925945 my point being that to think one's taste in literature would simply stagnate is baseless

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:10:05 2014 No.5925957 >>5925953 >King to DFW Well, it's true in at least this circumstance.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:10:11 2014 No.5925958 I'm reading the maze runner series right now and I'm pretty sure it's not amazing, but it's also super easy to read... I'm getting kind of bored with it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:12:13 2014 No.5925964 why is Bloom so mean although i will admit he is pretty based when it comes to the school of resentment

Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:14:09 2014 No.5925971

>>5924970
I once hooked up with a girl who had read each of the Harry Potter books an average of 50 times. I think the lowest one was 30 something and the highest 70 or so.
>Does she read Stephen King?
Well...no, but she is a pretty big fan of 50 shades of gray. Which she has also read multiple times. People really do get stuck their comfort zones and never leave them.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:26:43 2014 No.5926012 >>5924970 There is literally nothing wrong with reading Harry Potter.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:33:48 2014 No.5926037 >>5925277 I'd actually say anti-intellectualism started with the birth of communism/socialism. I love Ayn Rand. Come at me.

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:35:54 2014 No.5926045 >>5926037 >>>/republicanparty/

>>	Anonymous Mon Dec 29 23:38:15 2014 No.5926049 >>5926045 No way. The Republican party are horrible. I don't understand how Rand got tied up in the right wing of American politics when she so strongly disagreed with politicians.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:02:50 2014 No.5926128

>>5926037
Been studying Soviet Art for a couple of years now and they were pretty developed. What they did in terms of Cinema in the 20's is basically the main structure of every movie created nowadays. They were miles apart from anyone else in the World.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:09:04 2014 No.5926148 File: 25 KB, 293x320, droopy dog.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5924970

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:11:29 2014 No.5926158 >>5926037 The american right is pretty much defined by greater and greater anti-intellectualism, whereas leftist movements have been dominated by intellectuals since the '60s

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:14:48 2014 No.5926177

>>5926158
American politics is pretty much defined by retardation. The American academic right is no more anti-intellectual than the American academic left, and the general American left is just as anti-intellectual as the general American right i.e. they only like science and academia when it agrees with them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:19:35 2014 No.5926196 >>5924970 Well, I take his claim to be unfalsifiable.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:21:43 2014 No.5926201 >>5925971 i've read neuromancer like 15 times some times you just want to tune out

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:22:52 2014 No.5926206

>>5926177
I'm not talking about being anti-science or supporting bad science, I mean the fact that GOP propaganda always runs along the lines of "libruls are smarty-pants, WE are hard-working and don't need none of yer fancy lattes and post-modern literature"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4-vEwD_7Hk

Or conservatives' hatred of universities. It started out with buckley (who once said he'd rather be governed by the first hundred people in the phone book than the faculty of Yale) and now pretty much any university education is seen as a sign of liberal taint (unless le stem)

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:23:03 2014 No.5926208

>>5926177
>American politics is pretty much defined by retardation. The American academic right is no more anti-intellectual than the American academic left, and the general American left is just as anti-intellectual as the general American right i.e. they only like science and academia when it agrees with them.
You're retarded, fuck off and hang yourself.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:25:31 2014 No.5926212 >>5925937 >wallace Yes, but not everyone will manage to go from Goblet of Thrones to the heights of patricianhood as you have done.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:31:34 2014 No.5926232 >>5926201 you're a failure at reading

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:31:49 2014 No.5926236
File: 656 KB, 1280x720, JPaFn0h.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Bloom is too busy cumming on his fat self and licking the sticky goop off his fingers to be right about anything.

He's a bitter grump because King makes more money than him writing entertaining pleb shclop, while his greatness is the epitome of patrician genius.

Ofcourse our children won't read jungle book or lewis caroll those were the children s books of Christmas past. they will pretty much only be read by interested adults, being the subject of revolutionizing yesteryear's literature.

As if Victorian children only read Lewis Caroll and not J.K rowling lvl schlop as well. Fucking please, dont be such a fat faggot. As if even 5% of children being read Alice in Trippingballsland even understood its nuances.

He's just a /b/tard Lewrong generation faggot, just like everyone else.

It's how it works. His "crew" brought on the greatness of literature. The sideshow nobody writers and the new upcoming greats are just pathetic wanna be's bring on an age of anti-intellectualism. its the same story repeated ad Nasuem to infinity and beyond.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:36:12 2014 No.5926250

>>5926206
That's not anti-intellectualism, that's anti-elitism.

The intellectuals aren't necessarily "persecuted" for being intellectuals, they're persecuted because there is a perception that they look down on the working class man and feel that they are better than him. That's why in the ad they don't say "Howard Dean should take his enormous brain and rational, well thought out ideas back to Vermont where they belong", because the "American right" isn't against rational, well thought out ideas any more than the "American left" is.

The "American right" is against the intellectual "elite" coming and claiming some special right to dictate how they should live because clearly the working class proles are too stupid to do it themselves. Not against intellectualism itself.

>b-b-but there is no such thing as an intellectual elite that wants to dictate how the working class lives under the assumption that the working class is too stupid to be trusted with itself
Yes, there is. Significant parts of the American left are exactly that.

The number of people who hate their opponent for being smart is very small. How arrogant do you have to be to think that you are hated simply because you are just plain more intelligent than "them"? No, they aren't anti-intellectual. They are anti-"intellectual elite".

Sure, it's spilled over to unfairly target intellectuals who aren't part of this dictatorial elite, but isn't that how it always goes? The exact same thing happened with the leftist criticism of "but you're all just a bunch or redneck racists."

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:40:59 2014 No.5926270

>>5926212
Alright, okay, I'm sorry to have stirred shit up by name-dropping DFW. Not trying to be patrician :/
Anyway, just trying to make the point that when you're, like, twelve, you can't just immediately crack open Ulysses and expect to get it. Pop-lit (and high-school stuff) is a good medium, isn't it?
As for adults still reading that stuff, well, I wasn't really addressing that, haha

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:46:36 2014 No.5926290 >>5926208 Any political ideology that promotes Lysenkoism in place of biology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and history is by definition anti-intellectual and blitheringly retarded.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:52:08 2014 No.5926312 >>5926128 Early Soviet art actually was really free in the 20's. The anti-intellectualism didn't come until later, like when Stalin came into power.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:55:16 2014 No.5926324 >>5926232 >uses contractions >calls someone else a failure reddit please leave

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:55:36 2014 No.5926327 >>5926290 but biology isn't really science, it's just applied chemistry which is just applied physics so it doesn't really matter.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:56:15 2014 No.5926332
File: 12 KB, 250x297, harold-bloom-youngRESIZED.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>5924996
I can only hope future generations excavate his tomb and create a death mask.A mask of the greatest creator of butthurt. A mask of pure hatred. A mask of his face forever frozen in literary disdain.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:57:22 2014 No.5926342 >>5926236 You seem upset.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:58:42 2014 No.5926346 bloom is a very silly but overall lovable figure his criticism is a mixed bag

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 00:59:52 2014 No.5926349 >>5926346 What I love him for is his passion. I disagree with almost everything he says, but few critiques are as willing to put themselves in their critique as him.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:00:46 2014 No.5926354 >>5925434 >implying you've read it

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:01:00 2014 No.5926357 >>5926342 Nah, just drunk. I like to be more colorful, it makes it more fun.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:01:23 2014 No.5926360

>>5926158
My sides, neither party is intellectual at all. You're basically saying 0>0

Republican party is muh private gubment, Democrats are muh feels. Of course, on a peasant level. On a larger level, they have certain goals which require understanding.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:03:43 2014 No.5926366 >>5926354 >Using contractions Implying you read at all

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:06:07 2014 No.5926375 Are you fucking clowns actually attacking each other for using CONTRACTIONS?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:07:22 2014 No.5926382 File: 7 KB, 184x184, 1418606184212.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5926366 >He can't into basic punctuation Leave this place.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:10:02 2014 No.5926390 >>5926375 think they're having a bit of fun, anon

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:12:35 2014 No.5926400 >>5926366 Why not >implying you're a reader Philistine.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:28:00 2014 No.5926447

>children on an internet forum even attempting to contradict a man who possesses the entire western canon by memory
Even if Bloom's wrong and some redeeming quality of Harry Potter has escaped his detection, nobody here has the knowledge to contradict him.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:29:17 2014 No.5926451 >>5926447 yeah lol, but we can shitpost yknow

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:32:43 2014 No.5926457 >My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable. That teacher BTFO.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:40:57 2014 No.5926478

>>5926457
>I was surrounded by a pride of displaced social workers, a rabblement of lemmings, all rushing down to the sea carrying their subject down to destruction with them.

You should read his interview with The Paris Review, it's pretty hilarious. Also god-tier Hemmmingway and Faulkner insights. It's kind of incredible how being great readers and writers also gave these people the ability to express themselves so well just speaking off-the-cuff.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:46:03 2014 No.5926487 >>5924970 He's right about the study of humanities dying. It's quite literally impossible to critique a work by anybody without a prominent figure claiming that the work is garbage because of some hidden bias.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:49:56 2014 No.5926495

>>5926478
>“You try and learn English in an all Yiddish household in the East Bronx by sounding out the words of Blake’s Prophecies,” he explains. Often, he will start a conversation with a direct, at times personal question, or a sigh: “Oh, how the Bloomian feet ache today!”

oh man

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:51:25 2014 No.5926499 >>5926495 >“Oh, how the Bloomian feet ache today!” Incredible.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:54:30 2014 No.5926505 >>5926495 >>5926499 He's a character. Someone should write a novel about a melodramatic literary critic who mopes around saying things like reading Harry Potter caused him "a great deal of suffering."

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:58:05 2014 No.5926514

>>5926447

This has nothing to do with his knowledge of Western Lit or even the merits of harry potter.

It has to do with Kids of today and kids of yesterday and whether they are being dumb downed or not. He's arguing a social question not a literary one and he is wrong.

He's basically saying kids of today read harry potter than they're a doomed to a fate of hogwash genre fiction entertainment and nothing more.

Mean While kids of the past were steeped in great ground breaking lit like Alice in wonderland, and went on to read other great intellectual novels as adults.

This is just wrong. Kids born reading Carroll also probably read trash genre fiction of the time for entertainment as well.

Just like kids of today probably read accessible fun stuff and sometimes renown top tier lit. Even if they don't it doesn't mean theyll never grow and desire more.

It's just like your parents saying you listen to nikki minaj while we listened to pink floyd and music is just going down hill and society is all the worse for it. its nothing more than a gross misrepresentation of reality.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:58:38 2014 No.5926516

>>5926447
You don't really need that much more knowledge than what you get from reading Harry Potter to criticize Harry Potter. And by "not that much more", I mean that having read a dozen canonical books from differents places and eras is enough, provided you read them with attention.

So indeed contradicting Bloom on that particular statement is one of the few things within reach of most of /lit.

Also Bloom doesn't possess the entire Western Canon by memory, in all likelihood he cannot read all the books in that list in their original language.
>>5926478
I read that one. Very funny. Bloom comes accross as the lovely old man he is in person.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 01:59:35 2014 No.5926519 >>5926514 Shh. Maybe go do some reading before you opine.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:01:44 2014 No.5926524 >>5926514 There is a decline. We're headed for BNW, mate, and it all started with trash like BNW.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:06:43 2014 No.5926531 >>5926519 Stop censoring him, you tumblrite SJW!

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:07:27 2014 No.5926532 >>5926524 Is that supposed to be pithy? the only thing worse than being Wilde is not being Wilde

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:08:09 2014 No.5926534 bought my 55+ year old mother the complete harry potter book series for xmas this year. felt like i was buying it for a child. kind of pathetic considering my christmas list had some preddy intellectual, mature nonfiction books which they got me.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:09:37 2014 No.5926539

>>5926519
Thanks for the advice, that sure proved me wrong.

>>5926514
>Calling brave new world an accurate prediction of reality while simultaneously calling it trash...

I can't even...

But in all seriousness, I personally don't think there is a decline in Literature. Like all forms of art it fluctuates and changes and grows and shrinks and is in constant movement.

The only difference now and 100 years ago is the ease at which we can put out new lit. Which is obviously going to lead to more subpar lit being printed but is not in anyway lessening the amount or quality of anything real. but thats just my poop on the subject

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:11:25 2014 No.5926543 >>5926532 Every man's tragedy is that every woman's tragedy is that she becomes her mother.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:11:38 2014 No.5926544

>>5926524
>Calling brave new world an accurate prediction of reality while simultaneously calling it trash...

I can't even...

But in all seriousness, I personally don't think there is a decline in Literature. Like all forms of art it fluctuates and changes and grows and shrinks and is in constant movement.

The only difference now and 100 years ago is the ease at which we can put out new lit. Which is obviously going to lead to more subpar lit being printed but is not in anyway lessening the amount or quality of anything real. but thats just my poop on the subject

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:33:41 2014 No.5926604 What is with this guy who keeps getting flustered over people using contractions?

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:34:57 2014 No.5926608

He is right.
Harry Potter is literally the dumbing down of literature.

Know what happened with the dumbing down of movies and video games?
Nothing good. It got kids into it, but it never went back to what it was.
You give kids shit content and they'll want shit content all their life.
Give them good content, help them through it, and they won't be contented by shit anymore.
This is what it means to be hardcore. What do you think Potter kids become? Genius of philosophy?
They all grew up to read Game of Thrones/Hunger Game garbage...

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 02:35:01 2014 No.5926609 >>5926604 whom*

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 03:05:21 2014 No.5926658 >>5925824 underrated post

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 03:07:04 2014 No.5926662 >>5926609 p sure that's wrong

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 03:08:08 2014 No.5926664 >>5926662 Pretty sure that's trolling.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 03:16:23 2014 No.5926668

>>5925971
>This
I know a girl who has done the same. The only thing she reads anymore is Manga and shitty YA fiction.

It's people like this Bloom is talking about, and he's absolutely right. It wouldn't surprise me if only 10 to 15 percent of Harry Potter readers went on to read real literature, and that 10 to 15 percent likely would have wound up here anyway.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 03:17:51 2014 No.5926670 >>5926609 Idiot fuck off

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 04:02:52 2014 No.5926738

>>5924970
Bloom is absolutely wrong. If anything, Potter will get kids to grow and read King, who will then go to read Vonnegut, and then to DFW and Franzen, and then Nabokov, then Joyce, and then whatever else after that. If a good reader is a passionate reader, literary excellence will come regardless of any starting point.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:03:10 2014 No.5927061

Well, Harold Bloom is a twerp. Steve King’s best work — Misery, for example, or The Body, or “The Man in Black” short story about the kid who met the Devil, picking a few just off the top of my head — are as good, sentence by sentence and story by story, as anything out there, by anyone.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:16:45 2014 No.5927090 >>5927061 lol @ "The Man in Black" being sentence by sentence as good as flaubert

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:17:36 2014 No.5927093 >>5927090 Neil Gaiman said that, so it must be true.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:18:08 2014 No.5927095 >>5927090 BIG FISH

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:45:32 2014 No.5927157
File: 561 KB, 644x1100, harused.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>5925006
if bloom is our meme, why don't we have more metajokes and self referencing parodies like the way bait.jpg was a meme
pic related, there was once a glorious thread of draw your favorite theorist and authors in ms paint

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:48:00 2014 No.5927162 >>5926037 Confirmed for pleb, post-war Czech/Polish lit and film is incredibly patrician

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 07:56:01 2014 No.5927181 >>5925881 I got into the joke like 10 min ago 10/10 keks. And yes, literature is dying and we need something akin to a 2nd counterreformation.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:00:32 2014 No.5927195 >>5926357 nigger

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:02:55 2014 No.5927199 >>5926658 "underrated post" is an unironic +1

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:03:12 2014 No.5927200 >>5927162 >dat andrzej wajda

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:17:00 2014 No.5927224 >>5927162 Like what?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:21:04 2014 No.5927232 >>5927224 The Decalogue.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:28:04 2014 No.5927242 >>5927232 What next? Třicet případů majora Zemana (Thirty Cases of Major Zeman)?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:33:19 2014 No.5927251 File: 35 KB, 529x768, 1220886119_big.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5927162 thats post-war then shit like pic related happened

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:41:42 2014 No.5927273 >>5926668 it's less than that. The top selling literary fiction book sell in the few thousands.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:47:19 2014 No.5927282 >>5927251 >hating based Žena za pultem Next you'll tell me you hate Chalupáři.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 08:56:15 2014 No.5927297 >>5924970 >My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable. go back to /pol/

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 09:01:01 2014 No.5927306 >>5927282 i'm indifferent to them anaway people watching zena za pultem have way too much time in their hands >he said, posting on laotian poker tips board yeah, yeah

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 09:13:50 2014 No.5927323

>>5926539
>The only difference now and 100 years ago is the ease at which we can put out new lit. Which is obviously going to lead to more subpar lit being printed but is not in anyway lessening the amount or quality of anything real

Bad money pushes out good money. More readers = lower average reading standard = decline in culture

You can see this working in overdrive in kindle sales.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 09:37:01 2014 No.5927373 >boohoo my fiction is better than your fiction >yeah but he's read the entire Western canon, surely his opinion is an objective fact, right?

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:03:34 2014 No.5927470

>>5926037

Nonsense. It started with the birth of Democracy, and it's been a downward road since (with the exceptions/upswings occuring during during the period of Imperial Rome, the Renaissance, and [to some extent] the Enlightenment). Once the "American Experiment" proved a success and everybody started turning democratic, the game was up. Death to Intellectual Pursuits follows the general anti-elitist mentalities that allow those in democratic societies to gain power.

>>5926158
Both parties in America are defined by greater and greater anti-intellectualism. You are fooling yourself if you believe any differently. The only difference is that at one point the American right did not shy away from elitism quite as much as it does now (it still doesn't truly shy away from elitism, but its elites are now openly understood the mega-rich, regardless how intellectually capable those mega-rich are), and thus wasn't as inherently anti-intellectual as the more progressive American left. The American left believes that ultimately everyone should have equal opportunity for happiness, regardless of their circumstances or their biology. Many pseudo-intellectuals in America associate with the American left because it is generally less paternal than the American right can be, but make no mistake, the American left, if it is unchecked, will eventually establish a Brave-New-World-esque Soma-Induced blase happiness for everyone, and with only two classes of people - the masses of dumbs, and then those same mega-rich that the American right is currently courting, along with, I suppose, a few mega-powerful to ensure that society's 'best interests' are looked after.

Anti-intellectualism is just a fact of life in a democratic society.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:08:38 2014 No.5927488 >>5927470 >Says intellectualism started to die with the birth of democracy >Doesn't realize intellectualism has always been a reaction to democracy Socrates and Plato were both pro-aristocracy

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:10:25 2014 No.5927495 >>5927488 >Doesn't realize that as soon as man is born, he begins his long denouement into the grave.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:12:11 2014 No.5927502 Can someone explain to me what was good about the jungle book? I think it sucked balls.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:12:14 2014 No.5927504 >>5927495 Beckett pls

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 10:13:57 2014 No.5927510

>>5926516
>>Bloom comes accross as the lovely old man he is in person.

>Winnie-the-Pooh is a charming and beautiful book. Indeed, you see the stuffed animals on the couch facing me? This is a little duck-billed platypus whom I've named Oscar, in honor of my hero, Oscar Wilde. And this baby gorilla, whom my wife gave me for my last birthday, we've named Gorilla Gorilla. And I've named this wonderful donkey Eeyore. That, I'm sure, will give you an idea of how I feel about Winnie-the-Pooh.

>From the moment the film [Shakespeare in Love] flickers on, Bloom interacts with the screen like a kid with a new videogame. When the moneyman threatens to cut off the producer's nose, Bloom claps his hand to his own nose, giggling, then covers his eyes and peeks through his fingers.

I read a post here where some Anon played in Bloom's house when he was a kid. Supposedly he scratched up his floor with some toy cars, but Bloom said it was okay.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 11:12:12 2014 No.5927732 Holy shit, that is quite the critique. Stephen King and Rowling BTFO.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:02:22 2014 No.5927880 >>5925599 Too many Bloomin' Onions at Outback.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:38:44 2014 No.5928000 >>5926158 > The working class is associated with intellectualism What the fuck /lit/

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:40:24 2014 No.5928006

>>5925971
>People really do get stuck their comfort zones and never leave them.

This. This is the issue. Harry Potter isn't 'dangerous' by itself, but it is a perfect representation of the shallow, easy to digest fastfood-lit that is constantly being flushed into the world. Everything that is more than a couple months old gets burried underneath whatever is popular at the moment, and some people drown themselves in it for decades without realizing that it's all the same fluff.

When I was young I listened to the same three bands, watched and rewatched the same few mediocre animu and cartoon series over and over again, and only ever looked at new things when they got hyped by the media. I was so content that the prospect of taking the risk of potentially wasting my time with something that I didn't enjoy, especially if it wasn't popular, seemed crazy to me. Funnily enough I'm sure that the reason I managed to escape that intellectual prison is 4chan and nothing else.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:41:23 2014 No.5928008 >>5928000 >in america, leftists are not associated with the working class FIFY

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:48:04 2014 No.5928030 Most Harry Potter fans would have never had an interest in real literature anyway. Reading genre fiction and reading literary fiction are entirely distinct hobbies.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:49:32 2014 No.5928036 File: 562 KB, 500x645, ttttttt.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] I applaud the acceleration of decay. are your bodies ready?

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:53:36 2014 No.5928048

>>5928030

Yeah no one reading Harry Potter, or Stephen King or any other "low-brow" fiction, is contemplating deep philosophical questions based off the text. They read it so they can imagine movies in their head. Bad movies. That's what reading is all about for the plebs.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 12:54:35 2014 No.5928050

>>5928006
>Funnily enough I'm sure that the reason I managed to escape that intellectual prison is 4chan and nothing else.

Kek, me too. If every board on 4chan wasn't filled with elitists who are all too eager to share their opinions I would be maximum pleb.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:02:03 2014 No.5928072 >>5926196 >Ha ha! I'm forcing this meme and none of you can stop me! You'll get tired eventually. This is not the first time someone tries to force some retarded meme in this board and fails.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:07:12 2014 No.5928084

>>5928036
This stupid culture is sinking in a sea of shit and we've been born here just in time to watch it. The only thing that's funnier than all conformist masses cheerfully diving into idiocy is the "intellectual elite" getting all butthurt about it like they're better than anyone else.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:11:46 2014 No.5928103 >tfw you're on your way to becoming a fat, grumpy old man like Bloom I'm fine with this

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:44:37 2014 No.5928244

I generally respect Bloom, but this is a pretty dumb thing to say. Why is Bloom acting like popular fiction is a recent invention? Shit like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys from Bloom's generation is a better parallel to Harry Potter than Carroll and Kipling.

I don't know how Bloom defines a "dumbed down" society, but it sounds pretty limited. Literacy is at an historical all-time high and people have easier access to reading material than ever before. I'm not claiming society is "wising up," but viewpoints like Harry Bloomer's are cluttered if he thinks Rowling and King are the problem.

His academic critique is pretty flimsy too, I'm sure there were many older academics who saw the Freud idolatry of Bloom and his contemporaries as "insufferable." Typical biases of an aging academic who's tired of butting heads with the same old new kids.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:56:58 2014 No.5928295 >>5924970 He's a classicist wandering lost through the infinite Walmart of now. He'd be happier if he didn't have his dick so far up the corpse of Shakespeare's ass.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 13:58:01 2014 No.5928299 >>5928084 Is this 1770?

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:05:16 2014 No.5928321

>>5928244
>Literacy is at an historical all-time high and people have easier access to reading material than ever before.

That doesn't correlate to people being able to understand what they are reading beyond the informational types of literature like news articles or non-fiction. It also doesn't correlate to any quality, either in reader or writer. In fact, the more readers there are the more likely it is that the worst of authors will thrive, which is exactly what is happening.

I feel like your post and a few other similar ones here are essentially "people have been saying the younger generation have been getting worse forever, it means nothing", which means you don't take seriously any observation on culture that shows that things are changing, or have changed, which obviously isn't true, even if society does fall into certain historical patterns.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:25:09 2014 No.5928396

>>5926158
"Anti-intellectualism" in politics is a good thing because it's just a slur used to attack somebody for having humility. Intellectualism, rationalism, and the associated hubris that these things bring, are far more dangerous than their opposite in politics.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:29:11 2014 No.5928411

>>5928321

I think what people are trying to say is just because there is a market for bad entertainment genre fiction doesn't mean that top tier literature is just going to disappear.

Five star restaurants aren't going to go out of existence because of Mcdonalds.

Beethoven didn't disappear because peasants listened to bawdy bards in taverns.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:31:55 2014 No.5928424

>>5927470
>Nonsense. It started with the birth of Democracy

I am the Ayn Rand poster, and I can agree with this. The second you start enabling the horde to decide the fate of the individual, the right to your intellect no longer belongs to you.

However, Capitalism, at its most pure, defies Democracy as best it can, until the horde begins to forcibly remove Capitalism's fangs (taxes, bureaucracy).

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:33:18 2014 No.5928434 >>5925957 underrated post

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:35:24 2014 No.5928442

if there's a problem, it's not that genre fiction and bad novels exist. it's that people increasingly think that genre fiction and bad novels should be treated like actually good novels. the problem is not that low culture exists. the problem is that people mistake the best of low culture for high culture. many people think breaking bad is the peak of art right now, there is nothing higher for them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:36:44 2014 No.5928449 >>5924986 This thread has been posted over and over for years

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:38:16 2014 No.5928466

>>5928411
>doesn't mean that top tier literature is just going to disappear

Well of course not, that's absurd. What will happen is that less people will read them, less people will even be able to understand them, and so the market shrinks and becomes highly specialised and incestuous, which has already happened to a large degree. We're probably a decade or so away from the literary novel going the way of the poem and then we can all sit back and wait joyfully for the novel's equivalent of slam poetry.

>>	kitty !kitty/EnNg Tue Dec 30 14:40:54 2014 No.5928477 >>5928466 >and then we can all sit back and wait joyfully for the novel's equivalent of slam poetry flashfiction

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:41:23 2014 No.5928480

>>5928321
That's a mistaken reduction of my post. I mostly agree with the "dumbed down" viewpoint, but for much different reasons than Bloom's (unless it's one of his "very complex" causes).

I posted because I was surprised how many posters seemed to think Bloom was saying something significant.

>>	H.Q.S.S.G Tue Dec 30 14:42:04 2014 No.5928484 >go to bed >wake up >this thread is still up every time disappointment

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:46:03 2014 No.5928501 >>5928477 lel some flash is pretty good, but then you read the small presses and it's just awful, no one knows how to write a story anymore, they just mash together pretty sounding similes and metaphors.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:50:35 2014 No.5928520

>>5928477

Flash fiction has no relation the novel. It's actually a mutation of the poem and the short story. It has the most popular aspects, narrative and inventiveness of language, stripped of all the structural demands of regular prosody, line breaks, and sustained attention. It's what twitter is to journalism. The novel will end up being obsolete because nobody will pay attention to anything other than television binges.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:57:17 2014 No.5928555 >>5926516 >Also Bloom doesn't possess the entire Western Canon by memory, in all likelihood he cannot read all the books in that list in their original language. He's memorized a lot and Russian is the only major language he's missing I think

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 14:59:54 2014 No.5928573 >>5926608 Video games.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:03:20 2014 No.5928595

It's easy to look at important works from the past, look at a common work today, and say that literature has gone to the dogs. It's much, much harder to track down the tens of thousands of awful novels that have faded into total obscurity. Good literature survives and bad literature dies: the best authors in the past weren't the only ones.

As a limited example: Pulitzer Prize winners versus NYT Best Seller List in the 1960s:

1960:
P: Allen Drury (Advise and Consent)
NYT: Drury and Michener (Hawaii)

1961:
P: Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
NYT: Michener, Andre Schwartz-Bart (The Last of the Just), Irving Stone (The Agony and the Ecstasy), J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

1962:
P: Edwin O'Connor (The Edge of Sadness)
NYT: Salinger, Katherine Anne Porter (Ship of Fools), Allen Drury (A Shade of Difference), Fletcher Knebel (Seven Days in May)

1963:
P: William Faulkner (The Reivers)
NYT: Knebel, Salinger (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters), Daphne du Maurier (The Glass-Blowers), Morris West (Shoes of the Fisherman), Mary McCarthy (The Group)

1964:
P: None
NYT: McCarthy, John le Carre (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), Louis Auchincloss (The Rector of Justin), Saul Bellow (Herzog)

1965:
P: Shirley Ann Grau (Keepers of the House)
NYT: Herzog, Bel Kaufman (Up The Down Staircase), Michener (The Source)

1966:
P: Katherine Ann Porter (Collected Stories)
NYT: Michener, Jacqueline Susann (Valley of the Dolls), Robert Crichton (The Secret of Santa Vittoria)

1967:
P: Bernard Malamud (The Fixer)
NYT: Crichton, Elia Kazan (The Arrangement), Thornton Wilder (The Eight Day), Chaim Potok (The Chosen), Leon Uris (Topaz), Mary Stewart (The Gabriel Hounds), William Styron (The COnfessions of Nat Turner)

1968:
P: Styron
NYT: Styron, Fletcher Knebel (Vanished), Arthur Hailey (Airport), John Updike (Couples), The Salzburg Connection (Helen MacInnes)

1969:
P: N. Scott Momaday (House Made of Dawn)
NYT: MacInnes, Philip Roth (Portnoy's Complaint), Jacqueline Susann (The Love Machine), Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

Only a handful of years does the "best" book (I know the Pulitzer isn't the best indicator of how good a book is) also become an NYT Bestseller. In addition, how many of these books are actually lauded today?

For meme people:
1974 Gravity's Rainbow didn't make NYT
1996 Infinite Jest didn't make NYT (but Danielle Steel and Tom Clancy did!)
Moby Dick snubbed in its time

tl;dr, don't be a prick and talk about how all literature was awesome in "the good old days"

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:08:11 2014 No.5928624 >>5928573 To be honest I'd much perfer my kid plying RPGs and strategy games to reading YA. At least your brain is doing something when you are playing.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:08:21 2014 No.5928627 >>5928595 Out of curiosity, could name a few in the 21st century?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:12:01 2014 No.5928651 >>5928595 There are some good authors in those best seller lists though. Even Salinger is several orders of magnitude above Green, for example.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:12:31 2014 No.5928655 >>5928244 >Shit like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys from Bloom's generation is a better parallel Bloom knows this, but those books weren't taught and studied in university English departments the way Rowling and King are today

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:13:31 2014 No.5928664 >>5928295 >He'd be happier if he didn't have his dick so far up the corpse of Shakespeare's ass. I think he'd disagree with this immensely

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:14:00 2014 No.5928666 >Today's children have to read things from my childhood which are the only good things

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:17:47 2014 No.5928688 >>5928666 Not true. One popular children's author Bloom actually likes is Philip Pullman, believe it or not

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:17:53 2014 No.5928689 >>5928627 A few awful books that are dead and gone? Unfortunately not.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:18:24 2014 No.5928693 >>5928688 link? not disagreeing im just curious

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:19:17 2014 No.5928696 >>5928688 That's not what is cited in the article

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:20:15 2014 No.5928699 >>5928689 Not him, but what about a few good and memorable books which will survive?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:20:22 2014 No.5928700 File: 89 KB, 1185x622, lit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:21:09 2014 No.5928703

>>5928693
https://books.google.com/books?id=UEWTd4xe8NsC&pg=PT204&lpg=PT204&dq=harold+bloom+philip+pullman&source=bl&ots=cXgU1nrIaQ&sig=Wy-j47i8h9p4WdKWx6iPlcTb6uE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DAmjVLD7JcGlNuXcgpgM&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=harold%20bloom%20philip%20pullman&f=false

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:21:59 2014 No.5928711 >>5928651 Some, sure -- Updike and Salinger make the cut. It is, however, also worth noting that writing is much easier/cheaper today because of computers. The flood of bad books is proportional to the ease of writing as well.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:22:59 2014 No.5928712 File: 227 KB, 1317x707, literatureaintdead.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5928703 >>5928693 Pic in case that doesn't work

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:24:12 2014 No.5928719 >>5924970 >When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King. i agree 100% on this

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:24:26 2014 No.5928722 File: 22 KB, 284x302, 1339834597056.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5928700 >Finnegan's Wake >'s Intellectual parasite

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:28:03 2014 No.5928739 >>5928711 And Roth, Styron and Bellow. Even le Carre and Puzo are preferable to the shit in the best seller charts now.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:29:13 2014 No.5928746

I think the better complaint, personally, is that people mistake good plots and stories with good literature. Harry Potter? Popular, well-liked plot that has all the elements that make you want to cheer for a hero.

Should we have a generation of man-children that worship the book, insist that they love to read, and cite Rowling as the best author of her generation? No. No shame in admitting you like to read breezy books for shits and giggles -- much better than bastardizing all of literature by calling Potter a triumph of literature.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:36:59 2014 No.5928780 >>5928739 >>5928711 Pretty sure all those guys are renowned for being majorly middlebrow. I do like them though

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:41:41 2014 No.5928793 >>5928739 >Styron Damn, I never see him mentioned on here. Sophie's Choice and Lie Down in Darkness are great books. Gotta read Confessions of Nat Turner eventually.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:43:46 2014 No.5928798

>>5925378
>novelizations of the movie Frozen

I didn't know that was a thing until I read that page. It wasn't even a good movie.

>>5925971

I've read the series twice over. If I read it again I'd probably die of boredom. What could she get out of reading it that many times? It's not like you can forget the thin plot, and the prose isn't so lovely. What bothers me more than the count is that it's not even between the books. It's a series and should be read in order, not picked through. The movies are comfy, though. I'd probably watch those annually.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:44:06 2014 No.5928800

>>5928712
>>5928703
Here's a blurb from Amazon he wrote that has more info: http://www.amazon.com/Fairy-Tales-Brothers-Grimm-English/dp/product-description/067002497X

>“I’ve admired Philip Pullman since his early fantasy Galatea on through the splendid trilogy His Dark Materials. All of his gifts, including his prose eloquence, and his endless high Romantic imagination, are manifested in this marvelous retelling of Grimm.”

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:44:15 2014 No.5928802 >>5928780 I wouldn't call Roth and Bellow middlebrow. Regardless, they're all still way better than the shit in the best seller chart right now. >Grisham >Flynn >Patterson >King >Connelly

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:46:01 2014 No.5928808 >>5924970 >not erry book is a marvellous masterpiece of victorian fiction where women wear bustles and men harumph Well, grow a pair!

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:48:34 2014 No.5928820 >>5928520 >Flash fiction has no relation the novel. >weeping_richard_brautigan.jpeg

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 15:58:07 2014 No.5928868

>>5926608

Are you shitting me? Old games: frogger, pac man, pong, tetris. New games: final fantasy, elder scrolls, portal, fallout. Tell me the story, art, and execution of frogger is superior to modern games. Movies? You've always had a few good films and a bunch of B-rates or Hollywood commercial productions with explosions and big, fake tits.

I'd rather kids read Harry Potter than sit around watching 16 and Pregnant or Kardashians. Maybe they'll read HP and wonder if there are even better books out there, or at the very least, more good works they'll end up liking. And they'll read this and that and find a few they like, a few that raise their standards. Kids are not intellectuals--they're stupid little brats with no taste. They aren't supposed to like good books because they can't even understand good books yet. You expect an eight year old to read /lit/core?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:25:34 2014 No.5928965 >>5928595 >Salinger >Drury >du Maurier >Mary McCarthy >le Carre >Bellow >Auchincloss >Kazan >Styron >Updike >MacInnes >Roth >Puzo anon, there are more good authors and novels than bad ones on that list

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:35:17 2014 No.5928996

>>5926478
PR interviews could be edited. If you read Philip Roth Interview(my favorite one), the interviewer mentions that he and Roth edit the interview.

Not denying their eloquence though. I took a seminar with a savant English professor called "the meaning of life" and his responses were eloquent as hell. He made the class cry a few times.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:49:59 2014 No.5929046 >>5928700 Holy shit

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:52:38 2014 No.5929057 >someone posts this on /tv/ yesterday >plebs get all upset attacking his credentials and at the idea of criticism

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 16:54:52 2014 No.5929063 File: 430 KB, 900x1001, deleuze3.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>5926327 >Roots >Not Rhizomes

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:00:11 2014 No.5929078 >>5924970 I wonder if Bloomberg's chilled out in recent years since McCarthy's rise in popularity.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:15:10 2014 No.5929143

>>5928595
>>5928965
compare with 2000-2009 (monthly)

2000: Rowling, Grisham, Danielle Steel, Mary Higgins Clark, John Sandford, Tim Lahaye & Jerry B. Jenkins, Janet Evanovich, Tom Clancy, Nicholas Sparks, Christina Swarz, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Jordan

2001: Clancy, Koontz, Terry McMillan, Grisham, James Patterson, King, Jan Karon, Clark, Sandford, Sue Grafton, Evanovich, Steel, John Irving, Evanovich, Clive Cussler, Franzen (Corrections), Cornwell, Nora Roberts, Lahaye and Jenkins

(moving forward, I'll put everyone named as #, except Franzen.)

2002: Mattie Stepanek, Joyce Reardon, Emma Maclaughlin and Nicole Kraus, Jean M. Auel, Alice Sebold, Michael Crichton, 13 #'s

2003: Dan Brown, Mitch Albom, 11 #'s. Brown tops more months than anyone so far

2004: David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, 10 #'s

2005: Michael Connelly, Sue Monk Kidd, Elisabeth Kostova, Sandra Brown, Catherine Coulter, Diana Gabaldon, George RR Martin, Neil Gaiman, 12 #'s

2006: W. E. B. Griffin, Jonathan Kellerman, Terry Goodkind, Anna Quindlen, Brad Meltzer, Diane Setterfield, 12 #'s

2007: Sophie Kinsella, Jodi Picoult, JRR Tolkien ( finished and published by Christopher Tolkien), Khaled Hosseini, Ken Follett, Vince Flynn, 9 #'s

2008: Jhumpa Lahiri, Harlan Coben, Stephanie Meyer, Laurell K Hamilton, Lee Child, Brad Thor, Daniel Silva, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Sean Williams, Kathy Reichs, Christine Feehan, Neal Stephenson, David Wroblewski, Glenn Beck, 16 #'s

2009: J. D. Robb, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Jennifer Weiner, Stieg Larsson, Pat Conroy, 25 #'s

from this list, the ones that I'd at least consider putting among >>5928965 are
>Franzen
>Lahiri
>Gaiman
and that's after going through the top of every month, whereas you went throw every year.

I don't think this points to a decline in taste, but saying best sellers were just as bad back then, at least in the case of your examples, isn't true

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:24:57 2014 No.5929180

>>5927470
>>5928424

>It started with the birth of Democracy
Bullshit. Athens was a hotpot of ideas, art and culture. You have the cynics, the sophists, the stoics as well as aristotle, plato and socrates. Also, many of the city states of the renaissance were democratic. Venice impaticular. Then you have the french revolution, which influenced Hegel and many other philosophers such as Burke and Godwin.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:29:38 2014 No.5929204 >>5929180 Athenian democracy != modern democracy

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:42:06 2014 No.5929240 >>5925500 I half agree with you. King's good books >The Shining >The first half of IT >The Dark Tower Series >Salem's Lot >The Stand >Night Shift Everything else ranges between complete shit and "ok"

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:43:00 2014 No.5929243 >>5928084 i like how baudrillard faced it as an intellectual elite. hyperpessimism, but curiosity and happiness

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:52:14 2014 No.5929278

I think he needs to calm down.
The generation before ours was ruined because books and letters were substituted with television and phones. Those were the principal means of communication and entertainment, and none involved written language. Therefore it was a generation of more-or-less illiterate or dismissive about literature people
Our generation found the internet halfways (and the next one is growing with it), and is confronted non-stop with written language: they communicate by writing and reading again. And entertain themselves with it too! So naturally blooms a need to know how to use language properly, how to express yourself, how to read and understand. So they turn to books again. At least here in my country, we see a rise on book sales again.
But of course, you have to give time to people develop their tastes, and it may take a long time (maybe not this or the next generation), since we are basically starting at ground-zero.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:53:03 2014 No.5929283 >>5929204 >stating something this obvious Democracy is just a catogory to associate ideas. Of course they aren't the same. I'm using a genral notion of democracy to ascibe both direct and representational and even these are vauge catagories.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 17:53:59 2014 No.5929287 >>5929204 Athenian democracy > modern democracy

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 18:39:59 2014 No.5929473 >>5929143 A good post that actually injected some new information into the discussion. Thanks. The original post was interesting and productive as well. After a bumpy start this thread actually has a bit of substance, who would have guessed?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 18:48:56 2014 No.5929500 >>5928466 I think it's inevitable that the novel will meet its end. Plays, on the other hand, will live on if they are written to be filmed.

Anonymous Tue Dec 30 20:13:07 2014 No.5929785

>>5929143
Refer to >>5928711 for a rough idea: writing/publishing are much cheaper these days with the advent of computers. This would affect the rate of bad books published more than it would good books published: a publisher can now take a chance on a "shittier" work because of a decreased opportunity cost. Appropriately, more bad books will flood the market and people will happily latch on to them.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 30 23:59:09 2014 No.5930644 Would it be possible to get Bloom to review films and videogames or is he too close to death now?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:02:55 2014 No.5930661 >>5930644 he doesn't do reviews he does actual longform criticism. maybe you could get him to talk about jazz or old movies

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:07:36 2014 No.5930676 >>5925446 Pretty sure he meant when corporations hijacked the media in the 60's following silent spring and unsafe at any speed so they could do whatever the fuck they please without being called out.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:08:49 2014 No.5930682 >>5926177 That's not even true. Most American democrats admire academics, even if they don't read themselves. A lot of Republicans distrust academia and show disdain for certain academic subjects.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:10:04 2014 No.5930685 >>5926037 It only started to fight off the unions

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:10:17 2014 No.5930687 >>5926236 This. The dude has old man goggles.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:14:40 2014 No.5930700 >>5926049 The politico-media conspiricists pick up sound bites to legitimize and further their agenda. Rand is egotistical, pernicious, unthoughtful shit.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:15:34 2014 No.5930703

>>5928868
I think that anon was referring to 90s games.Fallout for example was at its peak in the 90s(NV is great,but Fallout 4 will be sub-par). TES has always been trash.

For certain genres (CRPGs,TBS,"immersive sims",FPSes,etc) the 90s were the period in which they were at their, respective, peaks.

Regarding films: I don't,really, follow contemporary film but compared to the amount of quality directors that worked in the 40s/50s/60s (in the the American studio system alone) there can be no comparison.

A bunch of great directors, including: Welles,Fuller,Tourneur, etc made B Movies.A fair chunk of highly regarded noir films were also made as B Movies.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:17:47 2014 No.5930718 >>5930703 Tarantino is still doing more interesting things with pacing and color than many other artists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:18:17 2014 No.5930720 >>5928030 This is quite literally the most sensible post in this thread.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:24:20 2014 No.5930741 >>5926158 >whereas leftist movements have been dominated by intellectuals since the '60s no wonder none of their policies have had good effects intellectuals suck

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:25:12 2014 No.5930742 >>5930741 >no wonder none of their policies have had good effects ????????????

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:25:20 2014 No.5930743

>>5930718
Like I said I'm not too familiar with contemporary films, but from the few Tarantino films I've seen they don't seem to be, much, more than the French New Wave made palatable.

I would be interested, though, in hearing what you mean when you say he is doing "more interesting things with pacing and color than many other artists"

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:27:10 2014 No.5930751

>>5927470
>Anti-intellectualism is just a fact of life in a democratic society
Please don't act like anti-intellectualism and democracy (or communism) can't exist on the same plane. Anti-intellectualism has always been a strategy from big money, wherever and whenever it rears its head. Still its amazing how culture and psychological work in tandem to make people so dumb.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:28:32 2014 No.5930755 >>5930742 >minimum wage act = bad >affirmative action = bad >welfare = bad >gun control = bad not one of these programs has had the desired result. and the liberal response is always to just make it bigger, spend more taxpayer money

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:29:39 2014 No.5930762 >>5924970 >le literature defener

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:29:59 2014 No.5930763 >>5925929 Penny dreadfuls once existed. Your point?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:30:03 2014 No.5930764 >>5930755 can't tell if serious. do you think civil rights are bad?

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:31:50 2014 No.5930769

>>5930743
You really have to watch a Tarantino film to get it. They'll have little interludes where things slow to a crawl and he focuses on character dialogue, but it feels completely natural.

The color thing is a minor point, but he's very good at matching the color tone of the film to the tone of the scene.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:33:14 2014 No.5930775 >>5928084 The funnier thing is that its both rising and falling like some multidimensional puppet on some pretty dank acid so fight the good fight my friends.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:33:19 2014 No.5930776 >>5930755 lel

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:33:26 2014 No.5930777

>>5930764

Civil rights are consistent with traditional justice. Government ought to treat everyone equally, despite the fact that they may be radically unequal.

Affirmative action and welfare on the other hand belong to social justice, the idea that government ought to treat unequal people unequally in order to make them equal.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:35:08 2014 No.5930779 >>5930769 Yeah, while Tarantino films are essentially B movies, there's no denying there's something unique about all his films. Mostly because of the authencity of the dialogue.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:35:21 2014 No.5930780 >>5928396 I mean, sure, I guess. There's all sorts of pills we could swallow in pursuit of indoctrination.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:35:31 2014 No.5930781 >>5930777 >welfare you mean like unemployment, social security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, etc., these are failed programs in your opinion

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:37:47 2014 No.5930787 >>5928424 You all are stupid. You're getting there but you haven't seen it all. Whatever, I don't have time for this.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:39:28 2014 No.5930793

>>5930781

Without question. What was their goal? To provide a basic level of sustenance, or to reduce economic inequality? A negative income tax would be superior for both purposes. The net effect of government subsidies is to reduce the difference between working and not working. Psychologically, they create a culture of dependence and a culture of irresponsibility. They also reward individuals for continuing to fail. Where economic inequality has closed, it has been because of quality education and the active pursuit of gainful employment.

Social security is practically a racket and should be dissolved tomorrow.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:41:33 2014 No.5930798 >>5928624 Jesus, dude, should you even be here?>>5928739 >Even le Carre and Puzo are preferable to the shit in the best seller charts now. My Sides! But sadly, oddly, true.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:43:24 2014 No.5930806 >>5930793 >>>/pol/

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:44:46 2014 No.5930808 >>5930806 >/argument/ >?

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:44:47 2014 No.5930809

>>5930793
jesus fuck. so you reject "welfare" but support a negative income tax (i.e. a guaranteed income)

>Psychologically, they create a culture of dependence and a culture of irresponsibility.
unfalsifiable /pol/ piffle

>Where economic inequality has closed, it has been because of quality education and the active pursuit of gainful employment.
utter bullshit

>Social security is practically a racket and should be dissolved tomorrow.
ok pal

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:49:48 2014 No.5930820

>>5930809

Have any of these programs been of benefit to less-discussed minorities? Look at the rise from poverty to affluence of Japanese Americans in the past 70 years.

Meanwhile the minorities that have taken the greatest advantage of government programs remain mired in poverty.

A negative income tax is superior to any form of welfare because it does not abruptly start and stop when a person attempts to enter the market and begin earning a steady wage. Negative income tax scales with income; it only stops when the level of income reaches a set point. It does not make it a question of working versus not working. There is a huge difference between the two approaches.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 00:53:15 2014 No.5930840 >>5930808 >>>/pol/

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:03:32 2014 No.5930868

>>5930820
>Have any of these programs been of benefit to less-discussed minorities? Look at the rise from poverty to affluence of Japanese Americans in the past 70 years.
I can only assume they have. Why even bring up minorities? It's specious to say that blacks are "mired in poverty" b/c of welfare, and I think you know that. Then you launch into this panegyric for the NIT, which I agree is good, and was almost adopted by a liberal Congress under Nixon. Obviously though there's no real distinction between it and less efficient forms of "welfare," which seems to be shorthand for "things I don't like." It's fucking progressive taxation, Keynesian, how can you seriously deny it's a liberal policy? Seems to me this is all just casuistry for your racism, which you make no secret of.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:14:05 2014 No.5930895

>>5930868

Groundless assumptions are not an argument.

Negative income tax was originally conceived by Juliet Rhys-Williams, a British liberal who later became Conservative. It was also championed by Milton Friedman.

There is a strong distinction, and it is important to note that these different programs that distribute resources in some form other than currency assume and propagate a kind of infantilization of the recipient. The assumption with food stamps, for instance, is that simply giving money will result in things other than food being purchased. This is typical of the liberal mindset, which has never been interested in giving people the freedom and responsibility of making their own decisions.

Responsibility on the whole is not innate in humans, but has to be taught and refined. Welfare programs reduce the need for accountability in economic decision-making processes. This ensures a long-term reliance on such programs, which in turn justifies the overblown tax and bureaucratic structure necessary to run these programs.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:27:14 2014 No.5930928

>>5926514
Trash genre fiction is an extremely recent phenomenon. It used to be that only aristocrats were allowed to produce culture, and thus Western culture existed on a much higher level. In fact I would say the novel itself was an extremely degenerate development. Epics, poetry, drama, and religious hymns are all superior art forms.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:31:23 2014 No.5930949

>>5930895
>Groundless assumptions are not an argument.
is that an invitation to ignore all this "we're just enabling the niggers" shit you're mixing in then?

>Negative income tax was originally conceived by Juliet Rhys-Williams, a British liberal who later became Conservative. It was also championed by Milton Friedman.
yes it's lovely that you read the Wikipedia article but it doesn't make it -not- a progressive income tax which is like the fucking central pillar of liberal economic policy, do you not understand that?

>There is a strong distinction
that you assume is self-evident? can you clearly delineate how a guaranteed income promotes bootstrapiness and ruthless economic efficiency while minimum wage is "welfare" which only serves to promote sloth and ignorance among the lesser races?

>The assumption with food stamps, for instance, is that simply giving money will result in things other than food being purchased.
and by pretending this isn't the case you take some kind of rhetorical high ground? fuck off
>This is typical of the liberal mindset, which has never been interested in giving people the freedom and responsibility of making their own decisions.
OK

>Responsibility on the whole is not innate in humans, but has to be taught and refined. Welfare programs reduce the need for accountability in economic decision-making processes. This ensures a long-term reliance on such programs, which in turn justifies the overblown tax and bureaucratic structure necessary to run these programs

these are just garden-variety empty talking points (see: groundless assumptions, and the very same appeal to "feels" that you condemn liberals for) and I can't really argue with hot air. At least /pol/ tries to be edgy, this is just bland

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:43:01 2014 No.5930976
File: 185 KB, 863x553, welfare-trap.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>5930949

From the start you have been spewing nonsense and not attempting to argue any points. You either known nothing about economics, or you're not interested in discussing the subject. Either way this is a waste of time.

I'm not exactly sure where this hostility is coming from, unless it's an oblique attempt to mask the fact that you're really incapable of arguing a simple point.

>“Poverty” once had some concrete meaning — not enough food to eat or not enough clothing or shelter to protect you from the elements, for example. Today it means whatever the government bureaucrats, who set up the statistical criteria, choose to make it mean. And they have every incentive to define poverty in a way that includes enough people to justify welfare state spending. Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have air-conditioning, television, own a motor vehicle and, far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the taxpayers’ money.

>Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit “tax” on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire. If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it? In short, the political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:47:18 2014 No.5930985

>>5930976
Pal I know what a welfare trap is. You're not all that unreasonable but
>liberal economic policies have been failures
>because foregone conclusions that I have about personal responsibility etc.
>not like that mainstay of economic conservatism, the negative income tax
>but, anon, that's a form of welfare, and is pretty obviously in keeping with liberal policies
>lol I don't know why ur so mad ur talkin nonsense
kill yourself

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:50:04 2014 No.5930991

>>5930985

Negative income tax would be superior to current welfare programs, and should be used as a part of a transitional phase out of the latter, not as a long term practice.

Since we have created this dependency, it is not possible or sensible to just 'turn it off' and let people fend for themselves. It would be tantamount to releasing domesticated animals back into the wild. Negative income tax offers a solution to the problem of transitioning out of a welfare state.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:55:57 2014 No.5931004 >>5930991 I realize this is all academic but do you ever get bummed, like, that America is eventually going to go the way of Europe, that is, adopting social democracy (a "welfare state")?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 01:58:53 2014 No.5931011 >>5930755 >minimum wage >welfare good >affirmative action >gun control bad

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:00:17 2014 No.5931017

>>5931004

I think in many ways it will be worse here than in certain European countries. Denmark for instance seems to be a lovely place to live, but fundamentally you a dealing with a very different kind of people with different values and work ethics.

I look at countries like France and England on the other hand with nothing but dread. They seem to be giving us a vision of our own future, since so many of the problems in their societies mirror our own.

Then you have a country like Sweden that is quickly regressing to a third-world standard of living because of ridiculous immigration policy.

This immigration reform Obama has been pushing will just be one more mess to clean up once his term is over.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:01:19 2014 No.5931020 >>5931011 There is nothing good about minimum wage. All it does is price inexperience workers out of the labor market.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:01:32 2014 No.5931022 >>5931011 you can't just say categorically that any of those are good or bad like, do you really not think that background checks for guns are a good idea? concealed carry licences?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:02:35 2014 No.5931030 >>5931017 >Then you have a country like Sweden that is quickly regressing to a third-world standard of living because of ridiculous immigration policy. im done

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:03:35 2014 No.5931031 >>5931020 wrong. if anything the minimum wage should be higher

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:05:23 2014 No.5931035 >>5931020 minimum wages have negligible effects on unemployment.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:06:39 2014 No.5931041 >>5931017 leftist definitely do need to get over their immigrant fetish. mass immigration is definitely a losing proposition for everyone in advanced economies except the very rich.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:07:04 2014 No.5931042

>>5931022

Nothing wrong with a cursory background check to make sure the vendor isn't breaking the law by selling a firearm to a convicted felon or person with a history of mental illness.

On the other hand, it's important to set strict limits to that sort of inquiry.

Yesterday all you needed to submit was a photo ID. Today they want fingerprints. Tomorrow they will want a blood sample. And so on.

CCW promote responsible gun ownership. May-issue states promote the breaking of the law because there is no legal way to carry a gun for protection in these places.

>>5931030

http://ww.rrojasdatabank.info/HDRP_2010_40.pdf

Sweden's HDI is projected to drop sharply over the next 15 years.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:08:53 2014 No.5931048

>>5931035

No, negligible increases to the real value of the minimum wage have negligible effects on unemployment. The difference between having and not having a minimum wage to begin with on the other hand is significant.

>>5931031

Let's suppose you're right. Set the minimum wage at 50 dollars an hour. Does unemployment go up or down?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:13:41 2014 No.5931062 >>5931041 You can't have unrestricted immigration in a welfare state. It's that simple. The mass influx of immigrants to the United States during the 19th century was salutary. Today things are very different.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:14:15 2014 No.5931063 >>5931048 Why is it that economic conditions were so much better after the mid-20th century economic reforms that introduced things like the minimum wage, welfare states and stronger union protection?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:14:50 2014 No.5931064 >>5926250 >anti-elitism that's their euphemism for anti-intellectualism.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:15:27 2014 No.5931065 Harry Potter is the Beatles of /lit/. Bloom is Scaruffi

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:17:44 2014 No.5931070 >>5931065 close infinite jaest is the betales

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:20:14 2014 No.5931078 >>5926250 >that's not anti-inellectualism, that's X >goes on to virtually describe anti-intellectualism and all its justifications the propaganda has worked perfectly well on this one

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:21:00 2014 No.5931082 >>5931070 closer Shakespeare is the betales

>>	le Wed Dec 31 02:21:55 2014 No.5931084 >>5931082 bloom adores shakepsr not analagous

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:22:39 2014 No.5931087 >>5931070 >this is what mop tops actually believe

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:29:09 2014 No.5931094

>>5931063

Well that's a very complicated question involving a variety of factors.

Firstly, we must bear in mind that correlation does not imply causation.

A good place to start would be asking why economic conditions in the first half of the 20th century were so dreadful. It is my opinion (and the opinion of many respected economists) that government intervention in the economy, starting with Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, exacerbated the effects and duration of the Great Depression. Roosevelt's New Deal had a similar effect.

What ultimately brought the Great Depression to an end was WWII. Among other factors, some 16 million young American males were shipped overseas, a significant portion of which remained overseas after the war had ended. This had the effect of strongly stimulating employment back home, because there was suddenly a huge labor shortage.

The effect of trade unions has been strongest in those job sectors that command higher than average salaries, such as airline pilots, carpenters, electricians, etc. The overall effect of unions on less lucrative careers has been greatly exaggerated by the unions themselves.

Since 1945 there have been roughly a dozen recessions, the largest stemming from the 2008-2009 market crisis involving sub-prime mortgages.

Thus it is not so much that conditions have been that much better, as it is that conditions really were that much worse in the first half. The influence of various welfare-state policies has not in my mind contributed to whatever prosperity we've been experiencing for the past 65 years. That is mostly in consequence of the free market continuing to work despite government attempts to derail it.

But I will grant that yours is a highly intricate question and I am not fully equipped to answer it. I am not an economist and I have not spent years studying this period of history.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:34:59 2014 No.5931110 >>5924970 Boom Boom probably sits around reading Fahrenheit 451 and shaking his head in approval of Bradbury's deep themes.

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:38:20 2014 No.5931120

>>5931094

I will however add that the most recent recession (2007-2009) was more or less in direct result of the federal government deregulating the banking sector and compelling banks make loans using less stringent standards of financial health. Thus you had a situation where highly complex financial instruments (complex because they had to get around existing regulatory practices) were being created in order to issue loans to financially literate consumers.

Essentially, the government wanted the banks to relax their lending practices. The banks did so, and a whole bunch of people wound up foreclosing as a result. When this happened, the entire market of MBS (mortgage backed securities) and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) collapsed, with catastrophic results.

It's a very interesting story, if you have the time for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:39:20 2014 No.5931122 >>5931120 financially illiterate consumers*

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:55:38 2014 No.5931151

>>5928555
Case in point then (as for Russian being the only major missing, I'm not sure Bloom reads fluently Ancient Greek, but fair enough). He doesn't possess the entire Canon by memory and "a lot" doesn't really mean anything.

And that's not to mention the bias and lack in the western canon as envisioned by Bloom.

Note also that memorizing in itself doesn't mean much. There are autists (not 4chan autists, literal autists) out there who can memorize dozen of symphonies but couldn't write a popular children song to save their lives. Are you going to say those are music experts that ought not to be contradicted ?

>far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight.

Being overweight is a symptom of bad diet (generally because abundance of shitty cheap food), so your argument doesn't apply here. Not taking issue with your general point, but this particular detail is itching.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 02:58:52 2014 No.5931161 >>5931151 not the guy you're talking to, but I think it's nice we can have two different conversations in the same thread without any bickering. it's like a party where everyone is in the same room but carrying on their own different conversations

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 03:14:19 2014 No.5931191 >>5926357 <I come on japanese forums to brag about being drunk lmao kiddo

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 03:16:37 2014 No.5931195 >>5924970 >also why does he dislike king so much? Because King is a rich, successful storyteller and Bloom is a bloated toad who has managed to carve out a career complaining about how nobody else reads as much as he does.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 03:18:25 2014 No.5931204 >>5931195 <Its popular so its better I bet you enjoy the works of The Beatles

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 03:27:56 2014 No.5931218 >>5925609 >(f)actual data is a horrible metric What the fuck are you on about? Book sales information is the perfect metric in this matter.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 03:30:14 2014 No.5931225 >>5931204 The Beach Boys are much more popular than Bloom and they're far better

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:06:29 2014 No.5931304 >>5931204 The fact that you don't like The Beatles just because of their popularity makes you the biggest poser on /lit/.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:15:21 2014 No.5931322 >>5924970 Literally grandpa complaining about younguns.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:18:31 2014 No.5931331 >>5931063 You are aware that is the time the Chicago school reigned supreme, right? Keynes was shaftet in the early 70s for more capitalism.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:19:08 2014 No.5931333 >>5931304 Yeeeeeee

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:21:54 2014 No.5931342 >>5931331 If I read one more comment with this annoyingly condescending tone, I think I might blow up a hospital.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:40:17 2014 No.5931375 >>5931042 >I don't know how to read this report, but I do know how to read thelocal

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:45:20 2014 No.5931383 >>5930718 lol

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:46:21 2014 No.5931384 >>5930769 >>5930779 fuckin christ

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:47:20 2014 No.5931387 File: 49 KB, 500x129, ICEBURN.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:47:21 2014 No.5931388 >>5930798 seriously

Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:50:52 2014 No.5931393

>>5930928
>Trash genre fiction is an extremely recent phenomenon.
Yeah it only goes as far back as the late 18th century with Gothic fiction

>In fact I would say the novel itself was an extremely degenerate development. Epics, poetry, drama, and religious hymns are all superior art forms.
This is incorrect though, there've been far too many great novels for you to make that claim

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:54:06 2014 No.5931397 >>5931151 >And that's not to mention the bias and lack in the western canon as envisioned by Bloom. like what, it's pretty fucking expansive. Only notable missing are probably medieval troubadours

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 04:55:13 2014 No.5931399 >>5931304 I dislike the Beatles because t hey are rock music, and only musically illiterate idiots like that shit

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 05:25:38 2014 No.5931434 >>5926012 Myself and a few people I know have similar circumstances. Good post.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 05:41:56 2014 No.5931456 >>5931399 >Beatles >Shit If you cant see the genius behind I am a Walrus and Norwegian Wood you should stick to Kanye West

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 18:02:44 2014 No.5933435 >>5931456 >unironically calling rock music "genius" It's inherently primitive and degenerate, just like you apparently.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 18:13:04 2014 No.5933459 >>5933435 Favorite book?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 18:20:09 2014 No.5933478 >>5931399 I think you're a bit confused. It's fully possible to enjoy simple music while recognizing it isn't as sophisticated or powerful as more advanced music. A lot of popular music has a kind of raw expressivity that's meaningful in its own way.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 31 20:11:14 2014 No.5933818 File: 49 KB, 463x325, 1411388044278.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >All these butthurt retards mad because not everyone is interested in 200 year old books

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:28:08 2015 No.5935021 >>5933478 It is , however, inferior in every possible way.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:33:23 2015 No.5935026 >>5933459 The Bible

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:34:39 2015 No.5935031 >>5935021 except popularity. also it's louder

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:37:41 2015 No.5935033 >>5935031 That's quantity not quality

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:40:39 2015 No.5935037 >>5935033 it's still a 'possible way' to measure superiority

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 03:50:08 2015 No.5935050 >>5935037 No it isn't

Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:31:20 2015 No.5935123

I'd just like to make a distinction between people that read Harry Potter and people who become obsessed with it. I went through the series very quickly and enjoyed it, but unless one has completely soured oneself on the idea of it and any YA in general, it's very easy to consume and like. I do know someone who read it and enjoyed it to the point that they ended up reading each book at least ten times, though, which is probably the person Bloom is talking about.

While he is right in that The Jungle Book is much better than Harry Potter, making children read these is not going to get them into serious literature by default. I'm of the mindset that it takes a certain type of person to take up literature as a serious pursuit, and the vast majority of people simply don't care. I can't be the only one here that read and liked Harry Potter at the time.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:32:25 2015 No.5935124 >>5935050 yes it is

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:35:07 2015 No.5935130 >>5935123 >While he is right in that The Jungle Book is much better than Harry Potter, no

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:35:28 2015 No.5935132 >>5935124 It's only possible in an alternative universe where the word "superiority" means something entirely different

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:37:00 2015 No.5935137 >>5935130 You only have to read the first few sentences of each book to see which one is obviously better

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 04:44:16 2015 No.5935149 >>5929143 so many terrible authors in one post

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:02:37 2015 No.5935175 >>5935132 in this universe there are different ways of measuring the qualities of music >it's quantity nope

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:28:33 2015 No.5935237 >>5935175 >in this universe there are different ways of measuring the qualities of music Loudness and popularity not among them. >it's quantity Loudness is quantity of sound pressure. Popularity is quantity of people who like it

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:43:02 2015 No.5935275 >>5935237 >Loudness and popularity not among them. ? >Popularity is quantity of people who like it popularity implies a quality that makes the music popular.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:46:11 2015 No.5935277 >>5935275 That's not "quality" in the sense that we're talking about. Stop equivocating

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:47:23 2015 No.5935279 Finally this thread has reached 300 posts, and can now die, and no doubt be reborn

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:50:38 2015 No.5935287 >>5935277 yes it is

Anonymous Thu Jan 1 05:55:30 2015 No.5935302

>>5935287
Fine, I'll explain this to you in detail. Loudness is a quality of rock music in the sense that redness is a quality of an apple. To say "rock music is popular because it is loud," is to say nothing of the aesthetic quality, the kind of quality that we are talking about, of the rock music. Rock music is not good because it is loud, as apples are not good because they are red. Got it?

Anonymous Thu Jan 1 06:09:17 2015 No.5935334

>>5935302
>To say "rock music is popular because it is loud,"

no this is not what i said

aesthetic quality is measured by objective aspects of music (intervals, keys, etc.). these aspects are found essentially in different configurations between 'superior' music and rock music. both are used to achieve the 'point' of music, according to the logic of the genre/presentation itself. the way this is used in rock music e.g. to be appealing/danceable results in its popularity. if quality is not measured by the ability of music to achieve its goals as music, what is it measured by?

Anonymous Thu Jan 1 08:04:18 2015 No.5935516

>>5924970
Bloom is intentionally ignoring the centuries-old tradition of crap writing being massively popular, and pretending that Rowling and King should be compared to Grahame or Kipling. In the mid-19th century, travelogues outsold novels massively, for instance. Who reads them now? And have you read Margaret Oliphant? James Payn? Rhoda Broughton? They were hugely popular Victorian novelists. If he compared Rowling to Mrs. Molesworth, which would be more appropriate, he'd realize that Rowling had a lot more to offer in some ways. Besides, judging someone by their first novel only and measuring it against enduring classics from another era is almost pointless.

Anonymous Thu Jan 1 11:29:30 2015 No.5935944
File: 73 KB, 1280x720, You came to the wrong seed ship, mother fucker.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>5935334
>>5935302
>>5935275
>>5935237
>>5935175
>>5935132
>>5935124
>>5935050
>>5935037
>>5935033
>>5935031
>>5935021
>>5933478
>>5931399

Please go be autistic somewhere else

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