"Realistic Literature"

[Anonymous No.6096666]

Does anyone else here think that realism is FAR more dangerous in the context of escapism than fantasy?

The notion that there is a coherent plot to life, that there are manic pixie dream girls who will save your life, and that doing the right
thing will be rewarded cosmically are far more twisted tropes than hobbits or warp drives.

[Anonymous No.6096678]

>>6096666
>The notion that there is a coherent plot to life
>doing the right thing will be rewarded cosmically
>far more twisted tropes

bro we get it your a nihilist not all of us are though

[Anonymous No.6096682]

>manic pixie dream girls who will save your life, and that doing the right
thing will be rewarded cosmically

not quite what I got from Flaubert, but then we may have in mind different realisms, Satan

[Anonymous No.6096690]

>>6096666

Nice get.

Also read stoner.

[Anonymous No.6096691]

OP no one cares if you're too much of a whiney ADD sperg to read literary fiction. If you had any clue what you were talking about at all you would know an absolutely huge portion of the books discussed here are a mash of deterministic pessimism often ending on a sad note or without neatly wrapping up the plot lines. Try logging off 4chan for once in your dorito infested life and actually reading something beyond the same bullshit themes you liked when you were twelve.

[Anonymous No.6096703]

>>6096666
I would say they are equally destructive. The notion of a self insertion character that goes off to save the world is destructive because it creates overly unrealistic expectations about life for those that buy into them. I would surmise that romantic comedies are the primary reason why love seems so unfulfilling for so many after that initial honeymoon phase in the same way that Star Wars and The Social Network may cause existential crisis in an individual when they realize they aren't a hero or at least narratively important.

[Anonymous No.6096713]

>>6096666
That doesn't sound like realism at all,

[Anonymous No.6096719]

>>6096713
I think he means fantasy set in modern society. Like a narrative that paint the self insertion protagonist as a hero. Honestly I can only really think of romantic comedies that kind of do this.

[Anonymous No.6096730]

>>6096666
>The notion that there is a coherent plot to life, that there are manic pixie dream girls who will save your life, and that doing the right
>thing will be rewarded cosmically are far more twisted tropes than hobbits or warp drives.

That's not 'realistic' though, is it? Div.

[Anonymous No.6096817]

>>6096666
Nothing is dangerous about reading books you fucking dickplanet.

[Anonymous No.6096864]

>>6096817
In so far as they shape individual expectations about life and the understanding of our world, I would suggest the implied moral certainty of most of those stories are in some way destructive.

[Anonymous No.6096907]

I think by realistic you mean your average YA fiction.

I guess if I was forced to choose YA or escapist fantasy I would be forced to stick with the latter, but I don't like either.

Also, nice quads OP.

[Anonymous No.6096932]

>>6096666
I side with Borges:

"The Shadow Line. In that foreword he said that some people have thought that the story was a fantastic story because of the captain's ghost stopping the ship. He wrote—and that struck me because I write fantastic stories myself—that to deliberately write a fantastic story was not to feel that the whole universe is fantastic and mysterious; nor that it meant a lack of sensibility for a person to sit down and write something deliberately fantastic. Conrad thought that when one wrote, even in a realistic way, about the world, one was writing a fantastic story because the world itself is fantastic and unfathomable and mysterious.” — Borges

[Anonymous No.6096948]

>>6096666
what's inherently wrong with escapism now

Also i think you don't really know what realism is, anon.

[Anonymous No.6096952]

realism disgusts me

[Anonymous No.6096961]

>>6096691
ur a badass bro

>>6096666
NICE NUMBERS. I think you mean young adult fiction, OP. I have seen none of what you mentioned in Émile Zola's novels.

To answer your question: yes, dragons are probably safer for our children than John Green, relatively speaking.

[Anonymous No.6096970]

>>6096666

Escapism is a reader's approach to a book, not a quality of it. You can read the most truthful fiction in an escapist way if you are using those truths to confront others you should be confronting.

What you're talking about is subtly unrealistic literature, specifically the kind that distorts relationships, and literature that presents cosmic justice and order as real. Your contention is that they lend themselves to escapist readers because they represent things that are unreal that people take as factual - stupid argument. What mechanisms lead to the adoption of unreality as fact? That's how you distinguish hobbits and manic pixies.

[Anonymous No.6097000]

>>6096666
>coherent plot to life
>manic pixie dream girls who will save your life
>doing the rightthing will be rewarded cosmically

That's not realism, thats young adult literature

[Anonymous No.6097023]

>>6096932
You mean you side with Conrad

[Anonymous No.6097581]

see Gabriel Josipovici's 'What Ever Happened to Modernism?'

>Don Quixote's madness dramatises for us the hidden madness in every realist novel, the fact that the hero of every such novel is given a name merely in order to persuade us of his reality, and that he has giants created for him to do battle with and Dulcineas for him to fall in love with simply to satisfy the demands of the narrative. And it dramatises the way we as readers collude in this game because we want, for the duration of our reading, to be part of a realised world, a world full of meaning and adventure, an enchanted world. It is no coincidence that the novel emerges at the very moment when the world is growing disenchanted. We need enchantment and are prepared to pay good money to get at least a dose of it. The profound irony of Don Quixote is this: that as we read about the hero's obvious delusions we believe that we are more realistic about the world than he is, less enchanted, whereas we are of course ourselves in that very moment caught in Cervantes' web and enchanted by his tale.

>The notion that the new reality inhering in novels depends on their attention to detail fails to distinguish between ‘reality’ and what theoreticians call ‘the reality-effect’. In fact Thirlwell uses the two terms indiscriminately. But putting a faint scar on a face or alerting us to the fact that the carpet is turned up in the corner, like describing the smell of sweat and semen during the act of sex, no more anchors the novel to ‘reality’ than writing about stars in the eyes of the beloved. The novel is still made up of words, is still the product of a solitary individual, inventing scars, carpets, smells or stars. Of course we warm to a novelist who surprises us with his attention to detail, though as much or more depends on the way it is done, the style, rather than the detail itself, as when Dickens has Sam Weller say: ‘Look at these here boots — eleven pairs o'boots; and one shoe as b'longs to number six, with the wooden leg’, or Proust writes of Swann's arrival at a grand party and the footman's taking his hat and gloves: ‘As he approached Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his person and the most tender regard for his hat.’ Too often though, especially in Flaubert and the Goncourts, detail seems to be there as a way of convincing us (and the authors themselves?) that what we are dealing with is the stuff of life.

[Anonymous No.6097614]

>>6096666
wtf op i don't think you know what realism is

or maybe i don't, i thought realism was shit like Madame Bovary

[Anonymous No.6099260]

>>6096666
nice dub dubs

[Anonymous No.6099270]

>>6097581
tl;dr: Books are still like, not real life, man

Thanks for that devastatingly insightful quote, Anon!

[Anonymous No.6099284]

>>6099260
theyre quads you dolt

[Anonymous No.6099289]

>>6096691
youre projecting a bit here

[Anonymous No.6099290]

>>6099284
it's a meme, you dip

[Anonymous No.6099298]

>>6099290
no its not a meme you fuckwit
now leave

[Anonymous No.6099301]

>>6096678
Not believing those things doesn't make you a nihilist.

It makes you not retarded.

[Anonymous No.6099317]

>>6096666
i.e. its far more dangerous to have misaki as your waifu than rei

[Anonymous No.6099323]

>>6099298
no, you leave, fuckwit

[Anonymous No.6099325]

>>6096864
In people who already suffer from a disconnection to reality, perhaps. The purpose of fantasy is largely entertainment, for both the reader and the person creating the world. Escapism in a normal sense isn't really a bad thing, in taking your mind off of a rough day, or just unwinding after work. That's what most films and other mediums of entertainment provide.

It's where aspies and autists start becoming obsessed with the fictional world in question that it goes too far, and in such cases it doesn't really matter what they're escaping into, they'll escape into something. Outcasts and weirdos will always find something to attach to, whether it's Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or My Little Pony. It doesn't mean those works are dangerous at their core. A normal person can enjoy them (maybe not the last one) and still be a functional human being on the other side.

[Anonymous No.6099936]

>>6096666

I don't really understand what you mean man. Hemingway-realism? Literary realism, right? If anything it encourages keen observation and lets you be a part of life more

[Anonymous No.6100101]

>>6099325
>The purpose of fantasy is largely entertainment, for both the reader and the person creating the world.
All fiction is fantasy, you mental retard.

[Anonymous No.6100143]

>>6096817
well considering that some people are killed over them ,I would disagree.

[Anonymous No.6101995]

>>6100143

what? some people are also killed by ducks but that doesn't make ducks dangerous

[Anonymous No.6102005]

>>6096666
I've found realism to be far more nihilistic than inspiring. And this is art, who cares about whether it's "dangerous"? Do you work for the Chinese government or something?

[Anonymous No.6102017]

>>6096666
QQQQQQQUUUUUUUAAAAAAAADDDDDDSSSSSSS

>danger
>reading

[Anonymous No.6102557]

>>6096932
based borges

[Anonymous No.6102578]

>>6096682
This. Realism is a specific movement, not just no elves allowed.

[Anonymous No.6102600]

>>6102017

>that gif

[Anonymous No.6102611]

>>6096666
what is danger? that question is probably to big to answer here. perhaps to get there we might ask what is being endangered by realistic fiction?

[Émile Liénard 1993 !vRiBH2uekA No.6103047]

>>6099317
Is that Steppenwolf of anime?

[Anonymous No.6105312]

>>6100101
nice binaries, but

that's the most ridiculous claim. just because 'fiction' isn't strictly 'non-fiction' doesn't mean that it's fantasy. it means its fiction.

there are very clear differences.

[Anonymous No.6106334]

>>6103047
No, Steppenwolf is Nietzschean, Welcome to the NHK is about a NEET in self-pity.