Which would you leave out and why?
tripsit's a starter kit, it really doesn't matter, go away
>>7796777
most of them because it's more the "US starter kit" than anything
>American books you should have read in highschool.jpeg
too much dystopia. Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies are mediocre, Do Androids Dream is better but not one of PKD's best.
in addition Siddhartha is kinda trite and American Psycho is probably the only truly bad book on that list, both can go
>>7796817
Ok how the hell is American psycho bad?
>>7796777
i'm redpilled, so i'd remove the "works" written by women, non-whites, and homos. At least 5 on that list
>>7796833
You’re just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it’s a kind of black cynicism about today’s world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. You can defend “Psycho” as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social problems, but it’s no more than that.
>>7796817
Why is Siddhartha trite?
>>7796837
>>>/r9k/
>>7796837
*tips Make America Great Again hat*
>>7796777
Take off ACW, TKAM, OFOTCN and DADOES? because the flicks are better.
>>7796833
really painfully unfunny, leaden satire. DFW's commentary (>>7796846) is actually pretty good. Bateman's obsession with violence is just so arbitrary - it's not a full character, it's a flat, boring character, but uh, "on purpose," which for some reason makes people think it's good. Harron's film adaptation is better.
>>7796846
I read it when I was 25 or 26 and I can't imagine anyone at that age finding it terribly revelatory or amazing. it's a journey of a character learning about how to live life but the things he learns are all pretty obvious. j ust didn't do much for me.
>>7796777
>>7796777
Author tried way too hard to predict or assimilate human behavior. I think people are more complex than the way they've been depicted in this book. Maybe I'm too optimistic.
>>7796777
keep the right row and get rid of everything else
>>7796906
better
>>7796777
I don't see any reason anyone should read Fear and Loathing or Electric Sheep unless you're a member of the subcultures they cater to.
I found American Psycho less mature than both of his two earlier books so I'd leave that out too.
>>7797245
it's literally just him poking fun at british boy's adventure books
>>7797245
Probably, but even so, they are just children.
>>7796837
Beat me to it, them brown people only know "magical fucking realism" and take literary prizes away from the hardworking up-and-coming white man
>>7797680
0/10
