/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7954686]

>most of /lit/ wants to be a writer
>ask for advice on /lit/
>START WITH THE GREEKS
>Everyone too focused on the classics to write or read contemporary authors
>meanwhile John Green tops the best seller list

How do we fix this

[Anonymous No.7954689]

Contemporary authors are garbage, I see no problem here. If you keep on running after what's modern you'll never be able to create something new, you'll never create the modern.

[Anonymous No.7954701]

There's a huge divide between commercial and literary fiction.

Commercial fiction is relatively easy if you're into that sort of thing. It's the michael bay mentality; honestly, you're better off watching a ton of popular movies and reading comic books (and, really, video games, if Ready Player One is the trendsetter it's set out to be) if you want to make it big as a commercial writer. If anything, John Green (and YA fiction as a whole) is their whole shtick is that they write badly on purpose to imitate the childish and immature emotional states most millenials embody.

Literary fiction is a lot more complicated and starting with the greeks is good advice. Philosophy is pretty essential in literary fiction and Plato and Aristotle are *the* backbones of western philosophical tradition. Eventually somewhere in the enlightenment eastern philosophies are incorporated, especially with Kant and Schopie, so reading eastern philosophers is a good idea but not essential.

Most contemporary authors are shit. Franzen's a hack, Tao Lin's a meme, Mira Gonzalez is a joke; the only writers off the top of my head worth paying attention to are the postmodern geezers (Pynchon, McCarthy and DeLillo), Mark Leyner, Vollman and maybe ben lerner.

[Anonymous No.7954704]

>>7954701
They both sound terrible. No wonder no one reads.

[Anonymous No.7954706]

You could never possibly be a great contemporary writer, nor read a great contemporary writer unless you have at least a novice grasp on Classics. It's like people trying to discuss film criticism who have never read Euripides. Reading and writing based on classical writers is the only way to be universal, or more generally, interesting.

Anne Carson, in particular, is an example of the necessity of "starting with the Greeks" in order to produce something of extraordinary quality.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.7954709]

>>7954686
>How do we fix this
Start with a good foundation in literature, and history I would dare say. Eventually we could get some talented writers who have something interesting to say.

But capitalism will always go after what sells, until it all comes crashing down down of course. So how do you fix that, OP?

[Anonymous No.7954717]

>>7954686
just write a book and kill yourself already

[Anonymous No.7954724]

>>7954709
You know the answer to THAT question, Butterfly. Unfortunately you don't like it, that answer.

[Anonymous No.7954727]

oh shit

im watching some of these crash course youtube videos, but this is the guy who wrote fault in our stars? i never made that connection til now

i guess thats why this guy seems like such a limpwristed pansy

[Anonymous No.7954728]

>>7954686
Go to goodreads and ask faggot

[Anonymous No.7954739]

desu /lit/ is at one extreme of a pole and john green is on another.

saying that all contemporary literature is shit is just as silly as that time john green cited twilight as being a justifiable work.

[Anonymous No.7955008]

>>7954724
We cause a government collapse?

[Anonymous No.7955009]

>>7954689
If you don't have any idea what is going on currently you could be writing something that's already been done by somebody who you've ignored because they're contemporary and not a senior citizen.
Also, what about prose styling? Nobody is going to publish a book written like it was straight out of the early to mid 20th century. You need to at least be aware of what decent modern writing looks like.
I'm not saying read strictly contemporary, but it shouldn't be cut out. A balance needs to be struck.

[Anonymous No.7955011]

And yet John Green is bringing in the cheese and providing support to his family.

[Anonymous No.7955012]

>most of /lit/ wants to be a writer

[citation needed]

all the wananbe authors are faggots anyway and their opnion should be discarded

go read the greeks faggot

[Anonymous No.7955019]

>>7954739
>saying that all contemporary literature is shit
Yes, that's why /lit/ praises Pynchon, Wallace, and DeLillo
Lurk more

[Anonymous No.7955043]

>>7955009
this 2bh

[Anonymous No.7955053]

I've started making an attempt with poetry. I bought a book by Robert Fernandez the other day. Anyone know if I fucked up of if he is any good?

I'll admit I'm more hesitant to branch out into contemporary literature. I'm just not a big fan of most contemporary movements, going back to the 80s or so.

[Anonymous No.7955055]

>>7955009
>Also, what about prose styling? Nobody is going to publish a book written like it was straight out of the early to mid 20th century. You need to at least be aware of what decent modern writing looks like
Decent modern writing looks like Joyce, Hawkes, Gaddis, Gass, Pynchon, Coover, Barth, Barthelme, Vollman, &c.
There's no reason to read any recent bestsellers or anything because they're all guaranteed shit, almost. We have to wait a couple decades to be able to see what stands the test of time

[Anonymous No.7955067]

>>7954686
The most contemporary things I've read are from 2006. Reading is a time consuming hobby. Its not like music or films where you can catch up on an era in a relatively short amount of time, nor does it take a night to sample the newest offerings.

With such a wealth of material still loved decades later, why spend time with things that pale in comparison?

[Anonymous No.7955075]

>>7955055
I never said anything about reading recent bestsellers, those are shit.
But it cracks me how you refuse to read anything else contemporary, but claim to know the only writers worth reading these days. Quite the contradiction.
Also
>five of them are memes

[Anonymous No.7955077]

>>7955019
calling them contemporary is like calling robert plant, BEE, and George McGovern as relevant to any of their given fields

take less pride in being associated with a toonami fanfic site jackass and learn to accept criticism

[Anonymous No.7955084]

OP you might be caring too much about what other people are reading

[Anonymous No.7955091]

>>7955075
I didn't say anything about knowing "the only writers worth reading these days". I just listed a handful of authors from the past half century whom I believe to be good, in going with my own personal tastes. There aren't too many newer authors who take influence from those few I listed. I simply don't want to read authors who write "safe" books because literature has existed for a couple millennia and should never stagnate

[Anonymous No.7955164]

>>7954686
In music, there is a shitty pop version and a fine art. The fine art side requires you to build your taste through listening to and engaging with the Bachs and Mozarts before looking at newer styles or ultimately pushing music forward with your own work.

Lit is exactly the same. Start with the Greeks if you want to write something other than YA or retreads of much better authors.

[Anonymous No.7955180]

Writing makes me wish I was dead, but I can't stop doing it.

[Anonymous No.7955251]

>>7955164
I would say there's three versions: shitty pop music, fine art, and an in-between style of artsy pop, in the sense that King Crimson and Coil Godspeed You! Black Emperor and those sorts of things are far more artistic than, say, Katy Perry, but are still not to the standards of proper art music

The analog for lit would be that John Green and Dean Koontz and shit are the Top 40, Dante and Chaucer are "Classical" music, and the Meme Trilogy would be /mu/core

[Anonymous No.7955378]

>>7954686
genocide the dumb and burn the greek books

[Anonymous No.7955395]

>>7955251
Eh not really, they're more proficient but they're still using the same tired pop dynamics (okay this song is gonna be REALLY soft and then REALLY loud, not like those plebby pop songsin pop song structures or at most venturing out briefly, copying or recreating ideas from electronic modern classical music or Bach, essentially.

Fripp and Zappa would be fine without pop music song structures, and they behave(d) more or less like classical musicians at the cutting edge of music.

[Anonymous No.7955400]

>>7955395
Captcha fucked me up.

Basically heavy metal space rock is the same as pop music, but the performers play more quickly and the dynamics are more extreme. If you listen to a set of Bach's violin concertos and Chopin you'll see that they completed rock music before it even started.

Zappa and Fripp are legit.

[Anonymous No.7955603]

>>7955055
>Decent modern writing is postmodern memestars

Lol cmon dude you basically got them all from the same wikipedia page

And I actually like Hawkes

[Anonymous No.7955681]

>>7955164
>>7955251
>>7955395
This is the kind of thing that everyone is pissed off at you for, dear book lover.

How is it possible that you literature-worshipping spergs are so lightning fast to completely discredit anyone as being a pseud whenever they try to talk for longer than one simple sentence about literature and accidentally misuse a technical term, or fail to refer to some well-established literary theory author who dealt with the topic -- yet in that same way give yourselves the utmost liberty to participate, or even start conversations about music history and music theory from a position of an unquestionable authority, assumingly because of your self-proclaimed extensive knowledge about literature, which you believe is somehow directly translateable to knowledge about music?

Do you not understand that this carries an inhumanely pretentious implication that literature is a superior arts to music? Please die.

[Anonymous No.7955684]

>>7955164
>>7955251
>>7955395
This is the kind of thing that everyone is pissed off at you for, dear book lover.

How is it possible that you literature-worshipping spergs are so lightning fast to completely discredit anyone as being a pseud whenever they try to talk for longer than one simple sentence about literature and accidentally misuse a technical term, or fail to refer to some well-established literary theory author who dealt with the topic -- yet in that same way give yourselves the utmost liberty to participate, or even start conversations about music history and music theory from a position of an unquestionable authority, assumingly because of your self-proclaimed extensive knowledge about literature, which you believe is somehow directly translateable to knowledge about music?

Do you not understand that this carries an inhumanely pretentious implication that literature is a superior arts to music?