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/lit/ - Literature

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6511360 No.6511360 [Reply] [Original]

can you still take seriously grand statements in literature? call it purple prose or whatever, but i just can't help but sneer at anything that seems to take itself too seriously. not that i am looking for humor, but at least self-awareness. i understand it in literature before our time since there used to be an earnestness to that language's usage, but that is not so anymore. am i alone in this? pic unrelated. my rarest pepe. common i know

>> No.6511363

ma come cazzo ti sei ridotto

>> No.6511366

It's because you are a Last Man, hence the animosity towards any sincerity or passion.

>> No.6511379

>>6511366
i see it as insincere though as it does not authentically reflect modern language or vernacular. it feels melodramatic. you see reality is cheap and banal with only moments worth remembering. aggrandizing them seems, to me, to be dishonest i.e. insincere.

>> No.6511384

>>6511360

You can still be serious. You just have to be a good enough writer to be allowed to write seriously, I think we just haven't had any of those in a while.

>> No.6511386

>>6511379
maybe art doesn't have to be about the mundane everyday existence

>> No.6511400

Well, I'm fortunate enough to have not been poisoned by the postmodern pill of irony, detachment, extreme self-awareness, and so on. The postmodern man experiences very little but becomes blase and immune to genuine feeling as a result of his obsession with movies, video games, TV, the internet, etc. When these older authors speak sincerely they're facing things head on. The postmodern man is evasive, much too afraid to take a serious look at anything lest he find something that scares him. You sneer at their sincerity, confusing it for naivety. But in fact it is your detachment and levity that are naive. If you were to experience more of the world directly, not merely through some sort of proxy, you'd take it more seriously as well.

>> No.6511448

>>6511400
isn't that assuming a lot?

>> No.6511454

>>6511360
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.

>> No.6511505

>>6511454
dfw pls tighten the knot

>> No.6511558

>>6511400

You. I like you -- that argument about reality being serious. Thanks man.