/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9514882]

I have honestly never seen mr Bloom string together one single good, coherent argument to defend his muh canon, muh aesthetics whenever he gets called out on his shit. It's l i t e r a l l y like he's just shitposting at the pinnacle of academic society, both in writing and verbally. Is this why /lit/ likes him so much? He's essentially just a frogposter born too early. Why should I give a shit about him?

At this point I honestly feel that Tao Lin's twitter thread where he lists his recently read books is a better source of book recommendations than anything that was ever even remotely connected to Bloom the hack.

I'm gonna go read The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists (2006) by Colin A. Ross now, while you can stay here and enjoy your "aesthetic" Thucydodinos and the Persian wars.

[Anonymous No.9514924]

>>9514882
Bloom is just a fun writer. If he's not your cup of tea, he's not your cup of tea.

Honestly, what's so important about literary criticism? Nothing. It just exists to titillate you, it doesn't matter how deep or shallow it is. It's just a hobby like any other.

[Anonymous No.9514936]

>>9514882

1. if you believe there is literary merit to works, you should read them

2. you cannot read every book, so you must selectively choose what you read

3. if there is a non-relativist standard in which works of literary merit can be compared, then some have more merit than others

4. if one's goal is to maximize involvement with works that are high literary merit, one must selectively choose what one reads

i dont read works exclusively from the canon but i do see the point. humanity is continuously creating important works, even if the identity of those works is up for debate. the problem of being able to engage with all "important" works is one that gets harder from generation to generation. at what point would you say someone's experience in literature is deficient? would it be through lack of shakespeare, dante, the bible, or any other meme? its arbitrary where you want to draw that line but the point is that canonical works are in conversation with those that had come before them as predecessors. in order to develop this meta-narrative of literature, certain works should definitely be read. bloom has his list and others have theirs.

if youre not on-board with this approach, you have every right to read whatever you want.

[Anonymous No.9514941]

>>9514936
Do people really get that much out of a survey of important literature? No context or anything?

[Anonymous No.9515319]

My main problem with Bloom's perspective on his canon is that he makes two main points:
1) We die fast, so there must be a list of books that matter more than others.
2)We die alone (from his admiration of Shakespeare) so books make you relate to people, and tell you the stories of people you couldn't be able to meet otherwise.

This is a very silly viewpoint to me. We are stepping into the edge of lifespan extension, and I bet my ass if we lived 200 years he would still be rambling about "you can only read THESE" because muh aesthetics, even if such a thing is as subjective as it gets.

[Anonymous No.9515385]

>>9515319
>This is a very silly viewpoint to me. We are stepping into the edge of lifespan extension, and I bet my ass if we lived 200 years he would still be rambling about "you can only read THESE" because muh aesthetics, even if such a thing is as subjective as it gets.

Even with a 200 years lifespan (assuming that your brain won't deteriorate at the 100yo mark) you would still have not enough time to read and study analitically everything that deserves to be read, meaning that YA trash would still be disparaged by Bloom.
Your example is sillier than his.

Pic related: you know he is right.

[Anonymous No.9515422]

>>9515385
I concede that it would take centuries of acute cognition to properly perceive and analyze the important literary works. I will purposely not address your pic related because I fear it would segway into another topic, more focused in the perception of what we consider "good" or "bad".

My point is rather, the notion that Bloom seems to be driven by what he perceives to be aesthetic, true, and beautiful, which is not on itself a bad thing, but then continues on unabashedly tagging everything that doesn't conform to his notion of these things as uninformed, politically guided, or unworthy of being read, as if literature of all things were not extremely dependent on the person reading it. This in a way can be simply fixed by living longer, assuming the person is able to distinguish and absorb the good stuff, but then why not begin with that viewpoint and instead put on an apparent mask of the search of aesthetics as both the goal and the end?

Am I implying there's no way to get an unbiased consensus? of course not. Even if people accuse him of racism or whatever, he clearly considers good works as such, regardless of preference or race.

[Anonymous No.9515424]

>>9515385
That quote seems like common sense, but how do you know what is good or bad before even reading it?

You have to develop your taste, and that includes reading the bad. You can't understand whats good if you've never read the bad.

[Anonymous No.9515613]

>>9514941

i feel like reading works outside of their development within certain canonical narratives is what provides for the lack of context.

have i gotten anything out of reading important works? i really think so.

[Anonymous No.9515645]

>>9515424

youre motivating faulkner's quote. because aesthetic value is something that should be discussed and argued, arriving at an a priori, prima facie notion of aesthetic is silly and should be avoided. again, avoiding brute subjectivist concerns, some works can be determined as worthwhile and others as lacking through the use of discourse within a community.

"not knowing until you try it" concerns assume that there is no place for criticism.