Are Millenial Writers Doomed?

[Anonymous No.7184725]

Serious question. I don't read much fiction by young authors so I decided to google "best Millennial authors" and see what came up. I googled the authors on the list and EVERY fucking one had an MFA in creative writing. I flipped open one of the novels mentioned and found pic related. It had FOUR pages of glowing reviews, everyone from NPR to the Village Voice, and then... this is the opening paragraph? Fucking really? Is this our fate? A generation of over-educated, referential writers creating meta-fiction for other writers because normal people don't even care about reading anymore? And this guy certainly isn't the only offender. I would rather read Franzen. These are dark times indeed.

[Anonymous No.7184729]

[Anonymous No.7184734]

>Literary Fiction

[Anonymous No.7184743]

Yes very funny tabs you inadvertently included there, haha, now fuck off.

[Anonymous No.7184746]

There are bad writers since the invention of writing. Bad ones will be forgotten and thats it. We just have to wait for a good one. Or be one. Whatever.

[Anonymous No.7184749]

>>7184725
I dunno. You tell me.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010UT6G9Y

[Anonymous No.7184761]

>>7184749
At least thats ironic.

[Anonymous No.7184765]

Never heard of this person. Doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. Might as well not exist.

[Anonymous No.7184767]

>>7184725
>>7184729
>>7184734
This is a jest right? This can't have gotten good reviews

[Anonymous No.7184770]

Why do Americans always seem to get enraged at anything even remotely intellectual?

[Anonymous No.7184772]

>>7184734
Good evidence that 'literary fiction' is nothing more than a marketing label.

[Anonymous No.7184781]

>MFA in creative writing

I guess it's true that you can polish a piece of shit with enough hard work but I feel like real writing isn't learned in the class room. Especially creative writing.

[Anonymous No.7184789]

That would happen at any point in history if you demanded something great needed to have been written by someone under 30 in the last 5 years.

Talent is rare. Egan and Cole and Smith and Chabon and Mieville and a handful of other 30- to 40-somethings are established and have been producing good fiction for a while now, give it time and the younger generation will too. I like what I've read of Nam Le. That Alexandra Kleeman book sounds creative and funny though I've yet to read it. Give it time and I'm sure we'll start to see plenty of millennials worth reading, and not just ones that can write mediocre stories about their creative writing symposia.

[Anonymous No.7184792]

I'm a millennial and want to write; what are some tips to not suck shit?
So far, I know should try to finish things. I try really care about flow and voice. I try to make points and express myself. I try not to impress people with how I'm so free and progressive and artistic and cool and smart and alternative, becuase it's bullshit, and its awful to read. I try to never just fill in space. And I try to serve my neurosis without bitching and moaning, and my masturbatory fantasies without getting carried away.
What else is there to do? What should I read to get a better sense of what I want my prose to be like?
Also, I feel like I, and everyone around me, write in first person too much, or try to make everything a memoir, and its because of a wide sense of self-importance.

[Anonymous No.7184795]

>>7184789
>Egan and Cole and Smith and Chabon and Mieville
pfffffffffffffffff

[Anonymous No.7184801]

>>7184770
>europeans think this is intellectual
My sides, so this is the power of shit tier education

[Anonymous No.7184803]

>>7184792

Can't answer you whole question but a few things that made me a better writer:

Journalism school, worked under a few veteran non-fiction writers and they kill your creativity first, then teach you how to omit all unnecessary shit out, then teach you how to be creative again with the right tools. Also learned some great research techniques and communication.

Cormac mccarthy: maybe I'm just inspired but ever since finishing the road I feel like I'm a better descriptive writer.

[Anonymous No.7184813]

>>7184792

read this you fucking slave

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Literature-Arthur-Schopenhauer/dp/0486434419

[Anonymous No.7184819]

>>7184803
I've read alot of Mccarthy, and read The Road recently. I really like his stuff alot, the way he reaches points and formats and when he knows to stop to describe. Sunset Limited is my favorite dramatic format piece. I tried reading Blood Meridian, even, and will finish it sometime. I actually gave away my copy of The Road, recently, along with a Joseph Conrad novella pairing, and my senior year copy of Brave New World. And I won't get them back, and she probably won't even read them, and it actually really upsets me.
Also, when did you go to journalism school? It feels like it'd be a progressive crock of shit now, but I'll try it if you vouch. I always wanted to study something liberal-arty with lots of thought and communication.

[Anonymous No.7184824]

>>7184813
I will.

[Anonymous No.7184846]

Any millennial writers whose work shows some awareness of history, or really anything outside the author's mental backyard?

[Anonymous No.7184847]

>>7184819
I'm going to be reading Blood Meridian after I finish The Brothers K, or start the Plague by Camus, haven't decided yet.

I went to j school over the past few years. I would advise against it because the writing aspect of journalism seems to be dying. Maybe take some creative writing classes? Get a job that takes you away for a few months.

[Anonymous No.7184849]

Also here is the list I was browsing, ~2 years old. I might have happened to pick the worst guy of the lot.
http://flavorwire.com/378617/the-10-best-millennial-authors-you-probably-havent-read-yet
Matt Bell, NoViolet Bulawayo, Alex Dimitrov, Amelia Gray, Alissa Nutting, Anthony Marra, Mike Young, Evie Wyld, Melinda Moustakis, Kristopher Jansma

>>7184767
pic related, couldn't make it up if I tried
>F Scott Fitzgerald meets Wes Anderson...

>>7184792
>>7184819
Read everything
Write what you feel you need to write
Read everything
Find people you trust to critique your work
Rewrite rewrite rewrite
It's worked for hundreds of years. Seriously just google writing advice, there is a shit ton of it out there. Good entry level advice from Steven King in this article. I haven't read any of his "serious" work, but the man has been selling books for decades and is the richest writer on the planet. http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-king-on-how-to-write-2014-8
Although I'm skeptical about your intellectual receptiveness if you would write off anything as a "progressive crock of shit."

[Anonymous No.7184852]

>>7184725
Just letting you know I appreciated the two tabs with screencap and boko no pico. Try a shemale tab next time if you feel like it.

[Anonymous No.7184858]

>>7184849
>I'd call this book postmodern but that makes it sounds like it's not pleasurable

truly pleb

Also 'clever literary allusions' and 'bits of Dickens, Fitzgerald, or Hemingway' makes it sound unbearable. And 'breathless' is the biggest red flag in blurbs.

[Anonymous No.7184866]

>>7184849
Flavorwire probably wouldn't be my first choice for literature news tbh

[Anonymous No.7184868]

>>7184849
I've never seen any journalism of import really, but I'm only 18, so journalism hasn't been a big thing in my lifetime. It seems like anything big and important in the real world is found and dispersed, and never put out with any sort of thoughtful personality or danger, that I assume should be present in my limited understanding of 'real journalism'. I've seen Vice and new shows and online news outlets, but none of these really resonate with me as good journalism. I am ignorant on the subject, of course, but it seems like it would be a progressive crock of shit, especially if I might spend a year or two with my time and education in the hands of others who have opinions and motivations, just like I do.

[Anonymous No.7184883]

>>7184868
Michael Lewis is a phenomenal journalist/non-fic writer. He and Matt Taibbi have both written fantastic books on the financial crisis (The Big Short and Griftopia) that are as essential as any fiction written in the 20th century IMO.

[Anonymous No.7184886]

>>7184746
This. I used to get so mad at John Green because he was poisoning the minds of kids around the world and making it seem like the ceiling for beauty and meaningful experience was much lower than it is.

Then I realized that, in society, the vast majority are always going to be ok with mediocre art—not because they themselves are mediocre, but because most people are generally happy and aren't counting on great art to act like a skyhook that lifts them out of an otherwise unendurable misery (like most of us on /lit/, or me at least)

[Anonymous No.7184888]

>>7184868
Read Dispatches by Michael Herr, powerful non-fiction writing is no joke anon

[Anonymous No.7184889]

>>7184846
I'm sure there's something in the critique threads

[Anonymous No.7184914]

>>7184868
>I am ignorant on the subject, of course, but I am going to continue to make baseless assumptions that fall in line with my own biases
If you are secure in your beliefs about politics and society you should have no trouble in academia, but if those beliefs are not grounded in reason, you are doing yourself a disservice, intellectually. Maybe you should stop browsing this website and internalizing meme-think. I'm very liberal by this website's standards, but some issues I feel strongly about, like universal healthcare and environmental conservation, are grounded in reason after evaluating different arguments. There are conservative people on this website who are also like that and I enjoy engaging in discussion with them. But there is also a huge trend where conservatism is the counter-cultural trend running against the mainstream liberalism of our generation largely resulting from white males who feel threatened by cultural changes they don't understand. That's what I pick up from this board and site, there is an agenda behind the conservative hive-mind. Don't have a personal agenda fueled by emotion behind your thought, political and otherwise. This board almost entirely writes of minority literature, which does an incredible injustice to the talent of some of the writers creating under that umbrella term.

As for news, my two favorite mainstream publications are the Economist and the Atlantic. There are smaller publications dedicated to long form journalism, too.

[Anonymous No.7184915]

>>7184883
>>7184888
I'm writing these down, thank you anons.

>>7184886
I agree with this, but it makes me feel shitty sometimes. I feel like there is a certain modern mindset, that thinks smart is sexy and knowledge is power and being an outcast is cool, but secretly just means pretty people can settle with John Green books and wear scarves and thick rimmed glasses and drink coffee and smoke pipes and call themselves gifted thinkers too. Not to say everyone isn't a potentially gifted thinker, I just don't think some people are cut out for Charlie Brown-esque downer mindsets, and these people aren't really intrinisically motivated or actually interested in anything that might burden or challenge their beliefs or epicurean mindsets.
I think this is just consquence of society existing for so long and becoming so generally modernly self-aware, that that idea of self-awareness and valuing thought and individuality is so generally grasped by everyone that the the same dumb-type complacent settlers who would have once been agricultural or factory workers all their life, can now act intellectual enough to fool and reward eachother and make me feel insecure.

[Anonymous No.7184952]

>>7184914
I was just cool to you, and gave you a chance to tell me about some shit, and you did, and I liked that, but first you insulted my beliefs for not being as good as your own.

I like literature made by minorities as well, to avoid saying minority lit, which seems cuckoo to generalize authorship by cultural background. My AP lit teacher in highschool really got me into the novels of Toni Morrison and I've always really liked to poetry of Langston Hughes who was gay and black, and that should impress you.

Also, I am a person of conservative thought; I live in the south and was raised to resent the government and I really like to think I make my own choices and create my own thoughts, and I find that many people want to threaten the way I think, and thats okay, they can do that because I can choose to avoid them, for example, by not going to a journalism school. And emotion and spite lead my thought as much as they do yours or anyone else's, probably entirely, but I wish it was not at all.
I will look into the Economist and Atlantic.

[Anonymous No.7184981]

>>7184952
How can someone threaten the way you think? That's retarded. I am insulting you not based on the validity of your beliefs, but on your methodology. You say you hold these beliefs out of a sense of tradition. That is not an intellectual way to go about it. You need to hold your beliefs up to the spotlight, examine them, compare them to others, and only then can you be firm in those. Have you read the Greeks? This is fundamental philosophy.

[Anonymous No.7184984]

>>7184981
This. People don't have this ideal as present as it should be.

[Anonymous No.7185018]

>>7184852

Lol

[Anonymous No.7185026]

>>7184981
Threaten was a wrong word, it was used too broadly and connotes fear. You seem to think I'm Mr. Save-Christmas and treasured Republican servant of Jesus Christ, fighting for my culture. I think that people are assholes who like to pick fights when I just want to be chill. I mean that people are willing to call people 'retarded' and act like they are Socrates, challenging cherished ideas and dying over it, when it seems to me, you're just picking and choosing and determining from spite. Liberals tend to be the "I'm an intellectual" types, who tend to condescend. I understand you are trying to teach me a lesson in thought, because I'm a young dude in a thread about millenials, but to cherry pick and insult in that cause is a deservice to me hearing you out.

No, I don't hold my beliefs for tradition, I hold them because I hold them. Much like yourself, I believe in them because things have reaffirmed them. The belief I value more than anything and politcs, is that things come from places, and to give background to why I think how I do, would allow you to understand that since there are natural differences in thought and no belief is the completely correct one, then maybe we can just talk and not generalize each other like assholes.

[Anonymous No.7185044]

>>7185026

Liberal here. Keep fighting the good fight, conservativebro.

[Anonymous No.7185047]

>>7184792
read a lot, write a lot, really finish something, go back and read it, have others read it, listen to what they have to say, don't get discouraged, read a lot, edit a lot, caffeine, b urself

if anybody knew "how to write" we would have developed computer algorithms to do it. we haven't. the way is that there is no "way". you fight tooth and nail for everything you can get and you don't get a lot.

also, the culture is dead. our national dance is twerking for christ's sake. dark times for the culture. nobody reads. even intellectuals waste their time on politicized novels "about race". nobody gives two fucks about the craft of writing or poetry anymore.

why do you think so many people kill themselves.

our country is retarded and there's no place for people who intend to organize meaning on the scale of a novel/symphony/etc. without the intent to distribute it for cash or short-term political gains.

[Anonymous No.7185057]

>>7185044

[Anonymous No.7185077]

>>7185026
>You seem to think
No, I don't. You are projecting that on to me. I already said
>grounded in reason after evaluating different arguments. There are conservative people on this website who are also like that and I enjoy engaging in discussion with them

All I've been doing is picking apart the logical fallacies in what you've been writing. All I have is the text on this board. That speaks more to your ability to articulate yourself clearly through text than to my biases. Like it or not, /lit/ is an unforgiving board. I'm not sure if you are new here, but people get called out all the time. It's because this board is well read and interested in philosophy. I am doing you a favor through this. I know for a fact that I am not the smartest person in the world, and I always am open to revising my position on anything, from art to literature to politics. Accepting that has propelled me greatly in my academic journey.

You want to write. If you want to write, you need to develop your ideas and broaden your perspectives. I highly recommend you attend an academic institution with a strong focus in the humanities. You don't need to major in Classics, but humanities are writing intensive. The feedback you get on your writing will help you tremendously. Warning though, the professors can be a lot less forgiving than I am. Two of the best professors I ever had were some of the lowest rated for easiness at one of the schools I attended, but they were incredibly knowledgeable. I gained so much from their courses. Attending an institution with a low faculty to student ratio is crucial so you get good interaction. What I am talking about is a liberal arts education. I'm not sure what your financial situation is, but private liberal arts colleges do give very generous need based aid packages. The South is underrepresented in competitive higher education, so you have an advantage with admissions, too.

When I say liberal arts college, they don't even have to be liberal. Ironically I much prefer a traditionalist curriculum when it comes to liberal arts education, and lots of these schools offer just that. That's one of my bigger pet peeves of some "liberal arts schools" where you can graduate without ever having taken a challenging humanities course. What is the fucking point.
http://www.thebestschools.org/rankings/20-best-conservative-colleges-america/
http://www.yaf.org/topconservativecolleges.ASPX

Anyway I have to go to bed. I have enjoyed this back and forth and I'll be checking the thread in 6-8 hours to see your response.

[Anonymous No.7185078]

>>7184725
Please tell me the book ends with the narrator realizing he's a pretentious douche and becoming a better human being.

[Anonymous No.7185128]

Yes these are dark times. I'll ignore accusations of being a /pol/tard or whatever but the contemporary climate of "niceness" has pretty much precluded any edgy or genuinely challenging book from getting published. Taxi Driver would not be made today, Letters from the Underground would not be put in print, Hubert Selby Junior would be arrested for writing what he did. It's a time for tame, gelded MFA graduates to write about how sad and beautiful life is with predictable quotes and superficial expressions of self-confidence and compassion. It's a dead culture.

[Anonymous No.7185163]

>>7184801
>American thinking Europeans have shit education

[Anonymous No.7185189]

>>7184770
>citing the most well-known aphorism of a widely known philosopher
>name-dropping widely known books
>Americans think this counts as intellectual

[Anonymous No.7185191]

why should people write like old white men from a hundred years ago?

[Anonymous No.7185198]

>>7185128
Lmao you just don't read enough

[Anonymous No.7185208]

>>7185191
Yes write like a young black woman instead

[Anonymous No.7185225]

>>7184725

I hate to say it but that's not even bad. I'd read more tbh. And I disliked shoplifting from american apparel.

I think Bret Easton Ellis and the guest in one of his recent podcasts summed up what I was also getting at in my /lit/ trolling but in a clear way. Novels are an anachronism. You guys (/lit/) go on about our humanity and the human condition etc but then you only talk about big fat novels written by 60+ year old men in archaic language. that deal wiht the most abstract and academic themes. There are people who try to make a novel that seems like it was written in the 21st century. The OP is a dumb pretentious snob btw. Stop wanking over everything vaguely old. I'm not even a full contrarian, I think mira gonzalez and tao lin are talentless hacks as well.

Also fuck off with MFAs and academia wanking. Academia has hijacked literature.

[Anonymous No.7185256]

>>7185208
Because those are the only options of course.

[Anonymous No.7185268]

>reading fiction.

[Anonymous No.7185417]

>>7184952

Do you know why you're a bad writer?

Look at literally all of your posts and realize how many times you use the word "I" and "my." You are literally part of the problem.

[Anonymous No.7185432]

>>7185047

>also, the culture is dead. our national dance is twerking for christ's sake. dark times for the culture. nobody reads. even intellectuals waste their time on politicized novels "about race". nobody gives two fucks about the craft of writing or poetry anymore.

Implying anyone ever cared. Art has never fucking existed on the metaphysical level you think it does.

Pic related. This is what artistry has always been about. Coveting what just sounds "gud"

[Anonymous No.7185434]

I wrote a fantasy novel!

Now how do I get it published?

[Anonymous No.7185457]

>>7185047
>also, the culture is dead. our national dance is twerking for christ's sake. dark times for the culture. nobody reads. even intellectuals waste their time on politicized novels "about race". nobody gives two fucks about the craft of writing or poetry anymore.

>That is what the craving for the peace of fellahdom, for protection against everything that disturbs the daily routine, against destiny in every form, would seem to intimate: a sort of protective mimicry vis-à-vis world history, human insects feigning death in the face of danger, the "happy ending" of an empty existence, the boredom of which has brought in jazz music and Negro dancing to perform the Dead March for a great Culture. ~ Oswald Spengler, 1933

It's not the age, brah. It's you. Buy some antidepressants, talk to a counsellor. Hope you're feeling better next time.

[Anonymous No.7185470]

>>7185457

I didn't even bother to memearrow the Spengler stuff. Aspenglers is a powerful disease.

[Anonymous No.7185639]

>>7184770
>implying you aren't an amerishit yourself

[Anonymous No.7185647]

>>7185044

>mutual intercourse

[Anonymous No.7186381]

>>7185457
Seriously, this kind of bogus critical comment has been going on for 2000+ years.


“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”

― Socrates