/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.8492940]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/as-lionel-shriver-made-light-of-identity-i-had-no-choice-but-to-walk-out-on-her

> As the chuckles of the audience swelled around me, reinforcing and legitimising the words coming from behind the lectern, I breathed in deeply, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. The stench of privilege hung heavy in the air, and I was reminded of my “place” in the world.

>The modern reader

[Anonymous No.8493033]

>(((Lionel Shriver)))

[Anonymous No.8493048]

>>8492940
it's put in a really fruity way but the point is legitimate

> It’s not always OK for a person with the privilege of education and wealth to write the story of a young Indigenous man, filtering the experience of the latter through their own skewed and biased lens, telling a story that likely reinforces an existing narrative which only serves to entrench a disadvantage they need never experience.
that's a fair view

[Anonymous No.8493061]

>>8493048
I have similar problems with The Book Thief, a YA book about the holocaust written by some bourgeois cunt from Sydney

[Anonymous No.8493072]

>>8492940
>Lionel
>her

women are devious
I would walk out on her too for such trickery

[Anonymous No.8493078]

>>8492940
I would check this book out because I am always happy to laugh at the ignorant and less privileged, but unfortunately I'm still boycotting women authors this year. Sorry bitches.

[Anonymous No.8493079]

>>8493048
>that's a fair view

That's a vague view, in this case the person in question is attributing success of a work to the victim status of the subject rather than the quality of the writing itself.

Which speaks volumes about herself.

Also.
>“Look back into the audience,” a friend had texted me moments earlier, “and let them see your face.”
Cunt was on her phone in the middle of a speech and embarrassed her mother.

[Anonymous No.8493080]

>>8493078
Oh no, how will women of the world recover now! What a devastating blow, anon, you showed that gender what you're capable of.

[Anonymous No.8493111]

>>8492940
>don't have any minorities in your book
>WHITEWASHINGHISTORY
>have minorities in your books
>MUHCULTURALAPPROPRIATION

[Anonymous No.8493114]

>>8492940
>“Mama, I can’t sit here,” I said, the corners of my mouth dragging downwards. “I cannot legitimise this …”
>My mother’s eyes bore into me, urging me to remain calm, to follow social convention. I shook my head, as if to shake off my lingering doubts.
politics aside, this is beyond embarassing

[Anonymous No.8493150]

Is Lionel high T?

[Anonymous No.8493159]

>>8492940
>The Guardian

[Anonymous No.8493164]

Why does this matter? I understand it's a bit silly for life long rich guy to write about a poor African whatever the duck person that is the opposite from him, but if he does it, there's a good chance that its going to be bad. Let him fall on his face. Don't stop someone from writing something. This doesn't have to be about systematic racism sexism, ect. It's about an individual writing something he knows nothing about and it's going to show. Taking one example and applying it to a collective of people based on the one example is what racism and sexism and all those other isms are.

[Anonymous No.8493172]

>>8493048
It is. Anyone can write about anything but literature by nature requires sympathy and respect in its core.

[Anonymous No.8493179]

>>8493164
>Don't stop someone from writing something.
Whom is being stopped? She's not preventing anyone from writing anything.

[Anonymous No.8493197]

>>8493164
at no point was stopping anyone mentioned

[Anonymous No.8493199]

>>8493111
Two different groups of retards, even if there is a lot of crossover.

It produces an environment wherein you are damned regardless of what you do though.

[Anonymous No.8493202]

>>8492940
Lionel Shriver's new novel sounds fascinating. I really am interested in checking it out.

[Anonymous No.8493204]

>>8493179
>Whom is being stopped?

[Anonymous No.8493215]

>>8493080
Aw shucks, it's only about a buck when you take into account her share of the royalties. But that's a buck that will be going to a dead white man rather than her. Every little bit helps. I do what i can

[Anonymous No.8493218]

>>8493202
Here's the article I read for it btw, if anyone is interested:

www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lionel-shrivers-american-collapse

>mericans are still reeling from the Stone Age of 2024, when the electric grid crashed, wreaking technological havoc: pileups on unlit roads, airplanes dropping from the skies, pacemakers pumping double-time, looting and riots from sea to shining sea. But those disasters are minor compared with the latest: an economic collapse set in motion by the introduction of the bancor, a new global reserve currency meant to replace the dollar on the international market and backed by a coalition of countries led by Russia’s ruler-for-life, Vladimir Putin. Furious, President Alvarado, America’s first Mexican-born head of state, announces that the U.S. will default on its loans. The Fed goes into overdrive, printing new money to cover its debts. In short order, a greenback is as worthless as a Weimar cigarette rolled with a fifty-billion-mark note. Hard-earned savings go up in smoke. A meager cabbage costs thirty dollars one week, forty the next, and that’s when there’s still cabbage to buy. So long, superpower nation. Hello, hyperinflation.

Never read anything by Shriver, but I definitely will for this.

[Anonymous No.8493219]

>>8493218
Don't, I read 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' and it's high school teacher tier

[Anonymous No.8493223]

>>8493061
Interesting, never heard of someone coming at the book from that angle. would you care to share more of your thoughts on it?

[Anonymous No.8493229]

>>8493219
That book sounds bad from the title alone.

[Anonymous No.8493254]

>>8493150
She looks very athletic, like she lifts weights.

[Anonymous No.8493275]

>>8493218
that sounds like unmitigated trash desu, it should be the plot of a ps4 game

[Anonymous No.8493277]

>>8493223
I've written about this here a few times before, let me try and summarise: I believe it's incredibly tasteless to take an event so traumatising and so recent and use it as a setting for a 'twee' YA book with a personified death walking around.
If it would come from someone of that time I could at least chalk it up to someone trying to get to terms with their past, but this comes from some mid-40s Australian, it's as insincere as can be, jsut someone trying to look for an interesting setting to 'make it big' - as a non-American you don't see me writing a novel about two wizards trying to stop 9/11, or some other recent traumatising event

[Anonymous No.8493287]

>>8493275
If it were a PS4 game there would be something about 9/11 or alien zombies

[Anonymous No.8493295]

>>8493277
That is a great point. Kids who read that book are now part of a generation which might have no interaction with anyone who was alive at that time, I think they (young people) will soon no longer associate the Holocaust with what they deem "current" history. But this does not excuse the author, because there are still many generations of readers for whom those events are not so distant. I thought the book was written by someone who did have some sort of connection to what they were writing about.

As for wizards trying to stop 9/11 I'm not saying that wouldn't piss off a lot of Americans, but if you ever decide to write that be sure and post it- I want to read it.

[Anonymous No.8493302]

>It’s not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the actual Nigerian woman can’t get published or reviewed to begin with.
Her not being able to get published is a totally unrelated issue to him writing. That's not even a coherent statement.

>It’s not always OK if a straight white woman writes the story of a queer Indigenous man, because when was the last time you heard a queer Indigenous man tell his own story?
Same thing again. If you want to hear the woman tell a story, read her book; if you want to hear the man's story, ask him. Don't censor her just because he's not speaking up.

>How is it that said straight white woman will profit from an experience that is not hers, and those with the actual experience never be provided the opportunity?
Given that it's fiction which she made up and nobody has actually experienced it, there's no issue here. Again, she's suggesting censoring the woman just because the other people aren't speaking up.

>It’s not always OK for a person with the privilege of education and wealth to write the story of a young Indigenous man, filtering the experience of the latter through their own skewed and biased lens, telling a story that likely reinforces an existing narrative which only serves to entrench a disadvantage they need never experience.
Why not? The only problem here would be if that person's fiction was presented as non-fiction.


Why does she keep saying "always"? I can't imagine anyone would argue that anything is always OK. The way she phrases it just raises too many tangled issues for anyone to realistically respond to, it's all frayed threads.

The thing she seems to have a problem with is that there aren't enough minority authors, which may be a problem of them either not writing or there being a publishing bias against them, which would be a real thing to make an issue out of if it wasn't for the fact that the market dictates what publishers think is worth publishing and people most often like to read about people they can easily relate to, so the solution would really be to make minorities spend more money on books. Or whatever.
But she's suggesting that those she doesn't think of as minorities be censored as a solution, which is fucking idiotic.

[Anonymous No.8493309]

>>8492940
>The stench of privilege hung heavy in the air, and I was reminded of my “place” in the world.

Sounds like an SJW prick to me. Just ignore the whining bitch and move on /lit/

[Anonymous No.8493471]

>>8493072
see
>>8493150

[Anonymous No.8493509]

>>8493172
>but literature by nature requires sympathy and respect in its core.
nah, there's plenty of misanthropic lit I love

[Anonymous No.8493524]

>>8493218
Really working that zeitgeist, holy fuck

[Anonymous No.8493711]

>>8493524
It could be very important or very unimportant, depending on how well it's written.

[Anonymous No.8493719]

blogshit goes on >>>/r9k/
this is the literature board

[Anonymous No.8493775]

>>8493719
Lionel Shriver is an author of literature.

[Anonymous No.8493792]

>>8493719
We are discussing white literature regarding the less fortunately pigmented

[Anonymous No.8493948]

>>8493277
>you don't see me writing a novel about two wizards trying to stop 9/11, or some other recent traumatising event
Maybe you would if you weren't so spooked.

[Anonymous No.8494103]

>>8492940

I wish we could install a hidden Zkylon-B faucet in every college safe space so we could slowly improve the racial health of our minority populations.

>privilege

Bitch you live in Australia, your friends are sailing across the Pacific in a leaky fishing boat with nothing but a handful of reese's pieces to sustain them for the trip. How much did the guardian pay you for this horseshit? God, I hate parlor pinks worse than the real communists.

[Anonymous No.8494173]

>>8492940
As others have mentioned, I think she raises a lot of legitimate points. Lionel's speech was flippant and ignorant of real socioeconomic/racial problems. Obviously it's possible to write from the perspective of 'the Other' (pace Lacan) but to do so convincingly requires empathy which the orator was so clearly lacking.

That said, the author of the article goes off the rails a few times. When she basically accuses Lionel of "genocide" the essay devolves into histrionics. Imperialism's roots are a lot more complex than a given individual's "attitude" - and to casually suggest such a causal relationship is counterproductive.

I know tone-policing is a whole nother can of worms, but I think that the article would have benefitted from a more sober approach.

[Anonymous No.8494228]

>>8493114
It's insane how fucking egotistical this writer is, the entire first part of the article is just her making a political by walking out of a speech. This reads like a Vice article.

[Anonymous No.8494237]

Hmm.

[Anonymous No.8494251]

>>8494173

>histrionic

That's the whole problem though. This article is all about how bad the speech made HER feel, even though the racism isn't directed at her. She's not an abbo, she's some sort of towelhead. She doesn't have abbo problems. She was texting her friend about how indignant she was and choreographed the whole display. She's like one of those women who used to be hired to mourn at funerals, she's a pro. I can't imagine having to spend an hour with this girl.

You're also worryingly familiar with leftist buzzwords, I suggest you come over to pol.org and let my friends set you straight.

[Anonymous No.8494253]

>>8493219
This. Just watch the film. It has good performances at the least.

[Anonymous No.8494294]

>>8494251
>let my friends set you straight
I highly doubt that you would succeed where all those straight camps my parents sent me to did not.

[Anonymous No.8495035]

>>8492940
This has to be a parody.

[Anonymous No.8495091]

>>8494294
Can't tell if you're trolling or a sincerely deranged gay man who brings up his perceived persecution at every opportunity

[Anonymous No.8495109]

Whenever people who still use this god forsaken website and cling to it criticize people's personality problems I giggle a little. You can tell different periods of /lit/ posting by the degree of self awareness present. To analyze and criticize the material and not go on /r9k/ tier rants about the evils of liberalism and women.

[Anonymous No.8495113]

>>8493159
Sorry he should have linked The Daily Mail

[Anonymous No.8495116]

>>8493048
Extraterrestrials surely exist in the universe, so I don't see why people aren't pointing out the hypocrisy. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND EXTRATERRESTRIALS ARE BEING MARGINALIZED AND APPROPRIATED?

[Anonymous No.8495125]

>>8495116
What

[Anonymous No.8495136]

>>8495125
We're writing about extraterrestrials like we know how they feel or are in reality. It's exactly the same as a white man writing about an African woman. The culture of extraterrestrials belongs to them and not us, so it's offensive to appropriate them.

[Anonymous No.8495141]

>>8495136
>We're writing about extraterrestrials like we know how they feel or are in reality

They cannot speak or materially effect us in any way, so we can get away with it. I very much doubt there is other intelligent life anywhere near us, and I doubt any have found a way to fold space and time.

But you are a great example of what /lit/ currently has to offer in terms of arguments

[Anonymous No.8495146]

>>8495141
>They cannot speak or materially effect us in any way, so we can get away with it.
Ugh. Wow, just wow. I can't believe what I'm reading here. Just because you can get away with it it doesn't mean it's OK, Rand. That's exactly what white men say about their African woman characters.

[Anonymous No.8495153]

>>8495146
>Ugh. Wow, just wow. I can't believe what I'm reading here. Just because you can get away with it it doesn't mean it's OK, Rand. That's exactly what white men say about their African woman characters.

You would have more sense arguing over how people are wrong for criticizing genre fiction's use of alien cultures as more backwards as Earth analogs and stereotypes without a hint of irony or critique to them. I could see someone get irritated by literary criticism of that nature.

But since you've never even confronted the material you dislike you're too busy shilling on this board for political brownie points to other people shilling on this board for political brownie points.

[Don DeLillo No.8495156]

The girl who wrote this article looks like an intelligence agent.

Look at that face. She's affiliated with the CIA. We just got psy-opped.

[Anonymous No.8495183]

>>8495153
How do you not understand? Authors are exploiting an invented culture of the conglomerate "extraterrestrial," which is akin to how literature wrote on "savages." We don't know anything about the likely very diverse extraterrestrial cultures and species that exist in the universe. They're lumped into this massive one culture, one species archetype and those books with the archetype, written by humans mind you, have become bestsellers. Did we get their permission? No, we didn't.

[Anonymous No.8495191]

>>8495183
>How do you not understand?

I understand you've never even confronted the material you dislike you're too busy shilling on this board for political brownie points to other people shilling on this board for political brownie points. You could have made the joke better by pointing it more accurately at another analogy.

I don't get what I'm missing. What am I missing. I'm seeming to be missing the punchline of your joke. It could be a shit joke but I don't want to hurt your feelings.

[Anonymous No.8495220]

>>8495191
How is this a joke? We shouldn't write about extraterrestrials when we haven't asked one if we could write about them. Tell me how that's not cultural appropriation, because extraterrestrials are real beings and they surely have their own unique cultures. Just because you can't contact them doesn't excuse oneself from appropriation. An average white man can't contact a Ugandan POC woman so he shouldn't write about one.

[Anonymous No.8495223]

>>8495220
>How is this a joke?
It would have to be amusing to be a joke, so you're quite right on it not being a joke.

[Anonymous No.8495232]

>>8495223
Did you just assume I was trying to make a joke?

[Anonymous No.8495234]

>>8495232
I was assuming you were trying.

[Anonymous No.8496922]

>>8495156
I also like Don DeLillo.

[Anonymous No.8496990]

>>8493509
A good writer is a good observer/researcher and is able to get the reader to follow along with them. A good misanthropic writer still has sympathy and respect for its subject. That's why people can distinguish between something that dark and possibly controversial but literary (say, Cormac McCarthy) versus something that's "edgy" (say, Palanhiuk).

[Anonymous No.8496996]

>>8493048
>It’s not always OK for people to do what I don't like

Tough shit snowflake.

[Anonymous No.8497468]

>>8494237
>when empathy goes wrong

[Anonymous No.8497680]

These people should choose their own "identity". Seems like everything now boils down to race/nationality and sexual orientation, things you're born with, and that's pretty sad.

[Anonymous No.8497763]

When did everyone turn into pussies

I feel like in the 90s people were still normal, like they were still trying to slowly poison us through the culture but it was only partly working, and then everything went really weird really fast

Did they discover some new method

[Anonymous No.8497805]

I'd rather have this over alt-right racism.