[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]

2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

File: 304 KB, 1432x1432, pinker.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Middlebrow authors Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:53:51 2015 No.6841184 [Reply] [Original]

Who are some authors that epitomize 'middlebrow?'

Steven Pinker for sure.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:56:20 2015 No.6841193 >>6841184 Who cares, honestly?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:57:13 2015 No.6841196 File: 44 KB, 403x537, bend.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Dostojevsky and most other 19th century moralists.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:57:17 2015 No.6841197 >>6841184 Jonathan Franzen has the middlest brow I've ever seen.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:57:27 2015 No.6841198 File: 29 KB, 460x276, Dwight-Macdonald.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] late Hemingway ofc

Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:57:52 2015 No.6841199

>>6841184

some basic ones:

- Sartre
- Camus
- Updike
- DFW
- Franzen
- Zadie Smith
- Cheever (though he's probably the most talented on this list)
- Carver
- Naipaul
- O'Hara
- most nobel winners these days
- Saramago
- Bellow
- Hemingway
- Faulkner's later stuff
- a bit of DeLillo's stuff, especially White Noise
- Fitzgerald

I mean some of those authors are good (Cheever, Fitzgerald, Saramago) and some bad (Updike, Franzen, DFW) but they are certainly all middlebrow

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:58:16 2015 No.6841201 >>6841196 this is bait

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:59:13 2015 No.6841204 >>6841201 not him, but Dostoevsky really is not much other than the smoke and mirrors surrounding juvenile philosophy

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 15:59:24 2015 No.6841205 >>6841184 Are you asking which are bourgeois cunts? Basically most of them

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:00:34 2015 No.6841210 File: 24 KB, 333x333, fedora man.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6841204 >juvenile philosophy

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:01:46 2015 No.6841215 >>6841205 what's with the high school marxists on this board?

Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:02:24 2015 No.6841223

>>6841210

it's not his christian stance I'm talking about, but rather how he presents his ideas -- basically he just has characters that talk back and forth in oblique soliloquy until they end up spelling out a manifesto of his ideas. There's nothing creative, there's no allegory, it's just a thin veil over basic moral principles.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:06:00 2015 No.6841246 >>6841215 >being this entrenched in capitalist ideology and bourgeois values top kek oh and: >le 'If you aren't an ardent capitalist adherent, then you must be 15!' meme

Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:10:18 2015 No.6841263

Much of what the majority reads, plain and simple.

Holy grail of middlebrow 'thinkers' aka read by those, and only those, that have never been in, or read, academic papers in their lives (feel free to extend the list if you wish): Pinker, obviously, Sam Harris, Neil deGrasee (or whatever it's spelled) Tyson, Sagan, Krauss, Dawkins, Hitchens, Coyne

I feel like I've missed someone.

If you look closer you can spot a pattern: we have formed a list with representatives that correspond to nearly all natural and special sciences, except of course for Hitchens who was merely a journalist and polemicist.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:11:17 2015 No.6841267 >>6841199 >this will trigger plebs But you're absolutely right.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:12:23 2015 No.6841275 >>6841199 Who are the highbrow authors? Pinecone and Joyce?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:13:56 2015 No.6841286 >>6841246 le sophmore year

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:14:56 2015 No.6841293 >>6841275 Chomsky tbh, even if his politics are stupid

Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:15:59 2015 No.6841299

>>6841286
>le 'I desperately have to reduce different views to a strawman to avoid having to confront my own beliefs and rationalizations'

I realize that you have to do this because it helps reinforce your pigeonhole based weltanschauung which provides convenient ad hominem attacks that you can use to silence opposing views with little to no effort.

It's cute.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:16:59 2015 No.6841303 Douglas Coupland

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:17:24 2015 No.6841306 >>6841246 Aren’t you sort of concerned that your ideology is the stuff of 16-year-old boys?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:19:35 2015 No.6841311 >>6841306 see >>6841299

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:21:16 2015 No.6841319 >>6841311 >It's cute. Oh, you're a woman, ok.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:24:13 2015 No.6841330 Marcuse

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:25:08 2015 No.6841334 >>6841319 >'arguments' consist entirely of strawmanning opposing position You must be a woman :^)

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:29:26 2015 No.6841353 >>6841334 I don't think you know what a strawman is. I'm calling you a faggot.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:31:46 2015 No.6841366 >>6841215 >>6841246 >>6841286 >>6841299 >>6841306 >>6841311 >>6841319 >>6841334 >>6841353 for sure brother

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 16:32:24 2015 No.6841371 >>6841353 >I'm calling you a faggot. That's so hurtful

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 17:36:59 2015 No.6841709 >>6841223 Isn't that what Shakespeare did? What is a better example of inserting philosophy into your stories? allegory? that shit is as old as the greeks.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 17:38:44 2015 No.6841718 >>6841184 So Sense of Style isn't worth a read then, I take it?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 18:03:07 2015 No.6841814 File: 90 KB, 500x500, 1434997060569.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6841275 >highbrow >Pinecone

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 18:04:22 2015 No.6841819 >>6841718 no

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 18:05:34 2015 No.6841826 >>6841184 Say what you will about Pinker, but the man is a damn good linguist

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 18:06:45 2015 No.6841834 >>6841275 I know Pynchon is a fantastic meme but maybe read up on him more.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 17 20:22:42 2015 No.6842421 Joyce, Pynchon, Faulkner, McCarthy, DeLilo, DFW

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 00:26:02 2015 No.6843418 >>6841306 >Aren’t you sort of concerned that your ideology is the stuff of 16-year-old boys? That's objectivism, not Marxism. Marxism is for 19-21 year olds.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 00:30:02 2015 No.6843427 >>6841223 Damn wait till you read The Republic. It is so painfully obvious it hurts.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 04:14:51 2015 No.6843962 File: 17 KB, 230x307, 230px-Steven_Pinker_2011.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] ass

>>	ZUGZWANG Sat Jul 18 04:29:45 2015 No.6844011 >>6841184 that's subjective

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 04:31:50 2015 No.6844016 >>6843962 this tbh

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 04:36:07 2015 No.6844025 >>6841263 >aka read by those, and only those, that have never been in, or read, academic papers in their lives >omg i've read a paper with an anova in it now im smart gaiz

SmooveB Sat Jul 18 04:40:42 2015 No.6844034

>>6841184
No way. Pinker is top tier intellectual material. Only higher are people like Perry Anderson or the late Christopher Hitchens.

You want middlebrow, read Adam Kirsch. Or maybe Paul Kennedy.

For lowbrow - or netherbrow - Malcolm Gladwell. David Brooks. Complete Shit.

But not Pinker. Pinker writes and operates at the highest level, engaging with science, philosophy, and other domains with the utmost seriousness. His writings are among the best in contemporary Anglophone literature. This doesn't mean that he's right. What it means is that he engages with the utmost seriousness, plays for the highest possible stakes, and acquits himself well.

He's a top dog in modern thought.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 04:46:35 2015 No.6844041 >>6843962 Steven Pinker

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 04:52:18 2015 No.6844052 Kafka

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 05:02:44 2015 No.6844071 Is there anything wrong with middlebrow? I mean you are likely to get a well-written, accessible and reasonably thoughtful book and you're likely to learn at least something from it, even if you cannot agree with everything

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 05:04:22 2015 No.6844075 >>6841293 >even if his politics are stupid They're his best aspect.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 05:31:10 2015 No.6844107 >>6844034 Are you serious? The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is one of the worst books I've ever read.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 05:37:04 2015 No.6844110 Came in here to say Malcolm Gladwell. Ctrl+f'd and found >>6844034 I was trolled until >Only higher are people like Perry Anderson or the late Christopher Hitchens

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 18 06:09:54 2015 No.6844161 >>6841199 Grow up child

>>	no caps guy !!6P/WhzicJTl Sat Jul 18 06:18:13 2015 No.6844177 >>6841215 marxists aren't the only ones who hate the bourgeois. everyone hates the bourgeois. even the bourgeois hate the bourgeois.

Advanced search
Text to find
Subject [?]Search by post subject. Leave empty for any.
Username [?]Search for user name. Leave empty for any user name.
Tripcode [?]Search for tripcode. Leave empty for any.
Email [?]Search by email. Leave empty for any.
Filename [?]Search by image filename. Leave empty for any.
From Date [?]Enter what date to start searching from. Format is YYYY-MM-DD
To Date [?]Enter what date to start searching until. Format is YYYY-MM-DD
Image hash
Search in	All Posts OPs Only
Deleted posts	Show all posts Show only deleted posts Only show non-deleted posts
Internal posts	Show all posts Show only internal posts Show only archived posts
Order	New posts first Old posts first
Capcode	All Posts Only by Users Only by Mods Only by Admins Only by Developers
Results	Posts Threads
Action	[ Simple ]