I've been living in southern California for the last four years and it's just now dawning on me that almost no one here is authentic, especially when it comes to 'literary circles'. I've just about had it and I'm ready to move. Where's the best place for an aspiring young writer to move? I was thinking Atlanta.
/lit/ cities thread
>>7870725
Tell us OP, are you authentic?
>>7870725
If you think authenticity exists anywhere, including yourself, no place will have what you're looking for. Consider yourself in their inauthentic, delusional shoes. You are the same as them; don't fall the le intellectual plight meme.
On the other other hand, move to Bamako or Ashgabat and see what that's like for you. But we all know you're not going to do that.
Don't live in a city. The country is better for writing.
did it really take you 4 years to figure that out
all Americans are inauthentic
>>7870725
Alaska
>>7870760
Are Americans even allowed in Turkmenistan? And I'll check out Bamako. Anything like golden-era Tangiers? Probably too much to hope for
>>7870800
You could probably find a way in even if they aren't. And I have no clue about the places. I just picked some at random. I wouldn't expect much of a literary culture, at least not in English. You'll probably have better luck finding "authenticity" though.
That's all besides the point though. Perhaps consider in what ways your view of artistic life and authenticity is itself inauthentic.
Austin
>>7870814
Oh God, not Austin. I love Austin very much but it's fucking fake, especially with all the fucking Californians moving in.
If you want an authentic city in Texas, move to Houston or Ft. Worth. Even Dallas is less fake than Austin.
This is just my opinion as a born-and-raised Texan.
Whats your powerlevel OP
maybe we can start a group, 323 area btw
>>7870765
The country is more romanticized than even the city, at least in modern America. My parents moved to a remote town in north Georgia last year. The place is miserable. Any semblance of culture has long since been destroyed and replaced by Walmart. Just walking through the town center and looking around I have to repress vomit at the unimaginable levels of obesity and poor hygiene. I live in Atlanta, I see bums every day, and most are more pleasant and healthier than the average person in their town. They tie their identities to the pop country of "trucks n muddin" and mock literally any other lifestyle. It's disgusting.
I would literally kill myself if I had to live in a place like that.
get your head out of your own ass mate
Come join me in toronto! You can unite all the other hipster faggots who live here and never make anything of themselves because they dont know how to write postmodernism
>California is so fake, man! Everybody there just gets plastic surgery all the time and wants to be on a reality show! Fuck that, man! They're all just playing pretend!
fuck off we don't want you
you probably call it "Cali" anyway
>>7870871
Texan here, stop sending the dregs of your state to mine.
>>7870760
>If you think authenticity exists anywhere, including yourself, no place will have what you're looking for. Consider yourself in their inauthentic, delusional shoes. You are the same as them; don't fall the le intellectual plight meme.
I completely agree with this. Authenticity is a meme. Embrace your fraudulence.
562 reporting in
>>7870844
>American countryside
>>7870997
better than the european countryside where shitskins cut your head off for not being one of them
or the latin american countryside where guys in baggy jeans cut your head off for not being one of them
>>7871008
>better than the european countryside where shitskins cut your head off for not being one of them
that's the cities
>>7871008
>European countryside
>shitskins
wew lad
>>7870844
Sounds like venice
Why not just write about inauthenticity? What do you think you're going to find anywhere else? What the fuck is more interesting than the bullshit condition we're all in?
I for one am moving to Sweden, I don't think ppl in the rest of the US realize what level of fake self centered people live in SoCal. You need to live here a couple months to find out your soul is slowly going numb. And we're totally aware of it, it's really becoming part of our state culture.
That being said, there are some serious literature professors, readers, and thinkers. Just the majority of them would never want to get mixed up in as vapid and pretentious as a 'literary circle'.
>>7871057
>I for one am moving to Sweden
why
>>7871061
Nice and boring and not nearly as polluted as the city.
>>7871067
They have cities too, you know.
>>7871067
so why not move to rural Italy or something
>>7871008
I have lived in the European countryside and nobody's cutting your head off, son. Just treat you like a creature from outer space that might resemble a human but is not really house-broken and accustomed to human ways. Even more so if you happen to be black, gay or otherwise "diverse".
>>7871075
Because he never read The Blood Oranges. God, what a hilarious life that'd be, just gawking at peasants whose language you don't even care about all day inbetween screwing your friend's wife and having silly "idylls" involving flowers and wine.
>>7871100
Would you recommend that as my next Hawkes, after The Lime Twig?
>>7870971
Oh? I'm studying in NY right now but I'm also 562.
>>7871114
Yes. Also, after Blood Oranges, read "Death Sleep and the Traveler" and "Travesty" right away. Those three together are his "sex trilogy" and they have the most impact when read back to back.
>>7871137
Thanks!
What about The Cannibal and The Beetle Leg? Any particular order I should fit those in? I enjoyed The Lime Twig very much although I read it slowly, being a beginner reader and having English as a second language, also what with that dense, visceral writing and limey horsey jargon.
>>7870844
#Same #Relatable
There is no authenticity @OP
>>7871205
You could read those two in either order. Though The Beetle Leg is probably his most confusing book overall just in terms of how the events don't really flow into one another in any logical way. The prose itself isn't that hard but the story structure is just bizarre in that one.
>Wanting authenticity from animals
Just accept humans as flawed and self-serving creatures with occasional flashes of benevolent affection. DFW probably offed himself because he couldn't reconcile ideal with reality.
>>7870725
People aren't authentic with you because you aren't authentic with them.
>>7870760
Muh relativism meme.
Kill yourself.
This thread proves /lit/ is full of limp wristed idiots who are unable to be authentic and work for an ideal.
No wonder many of you are suffering from depression.
>>7872234
The thing about ideals is that they're unreachable by definition. You're lying to yourself just by "working for" them since your inability to reach them is set in stone, and you're being a limp-wristed cuck by still working for them after realizing that you'll never attain them.
>>7870769
Wew lad, that's a real edgy blanket statement you just made there.
>>7872275
spooked to the core
>>7872234
you should rename the file butthurt.jpg
>>7872372
It is not about reaching the ideal you totalitarian scum, it is about the energy to strive towards the good.
>>7871057
With tbe gentrification happening I'm LA it might turn into a pretty based literary town
>>7870844
that's not the country. that's a bunch of hicks who've set up an establishment. country=farm or ranch
there is a 'U' in authenticity op
>>7870892
texas can be the first confederate state to join the new calidemocratic republic
>>7872407
Yes, these are the types of people who live on farms and ranches now. They are hicks.
>>7872440
doesn't matter, it's still the barrier for being considered "country." you said your parents moved into a town.
I've found that no matter how purely you try to express yourself, someone will always think you are putting on airs.
Read for yourself, if you're looking towards book clubs in LA then they're just slightly more civilized than your average bar hopper but a lot more pretentious. They're just social gatherings.
Live in a small village along Spain's mediterranean coast with the ghost of bolano
>>7872452
this
misanthropes assume the worst types of motivations in people, whether they follow logically or not
>>7872444
Stop being such a fucking idiot. The people I'm referring to, including my parents, don't live within the town. They live in the mountains around it. The town is the cultural center where they go to the store and eat. There is one touristy street where suburban white families on vacation go buy antiques and signs that say "live, laugh, love" and one street with Walmart, Wendy's, KFC, a Mexican restaurant, Starbucks, and a CVS.
My point is that the idea of noble simple country folk is a meme, long since replaced by diabetes and Brad Paisley.
>>7872452
this is the saddest realization. no matter how hard anyone will ever try, the world is full of people so entrenched in their subjective reality that they can't fathom another person being authentic. solipsism is killing this world.
>>7870725
>authentic
>implying anyone is authentic
Fuck, this makes me want to stop living. It's only going to get so much worse, isn't it?
>>7872545
>World
Only on /lit/, or subjects discussed on /lit/, solipsism doesn't affect 99% of anything where you receive tangible results.
You don't hear people scream at people in the advanced stages of liver disease they don't know shit about alcoholism.
>>7872551
Nobody is authentic in late capitalism. Effective marketing establishes our base wants, which reduces everybody to memes.
>>7871008
IS this a joke? The European countryside is still super white you fag.
>>7872571
This doesn't make sense, the exact same problems of authenticity has existed for thousands of years.
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
>>7872599
How can you say that?
>>7872626
Because they wrote about it? What kind of question is that.
What is authenticity? How can one human being be more "authentic" than another? I don't get it.
But Mira is from Southern California
Just get in touch with her
East coast is where the next big moves in lit will take place
>>7872741
Where? Not New York I hope.
>>7870725
I live in Atlanta and I can tell you it's been a great city to me. Not as big as la or new york but still big enough to be interesting. Everywhere you go will have it's inauthentic pretentious dilettantes but I've met a lot of sincere aspiring writers and artists and theatre people here, so I'd reccomend it
>>7870830
Really? I love Austin and San Antonio. If I were to move to Texas those would be my top choices. Haven't spent much time in Dallas/Ft Worth, but Houston just seems miserable to me. Hot and crowded and so much traffic.
>>7872753
Where do you meet these people in Atlanta? Going to Tech they're nonexistent, except for a handful of drama kids that act like high schoolers
everyone concerned with authenticity reminds me of holden caulfield
>>7872804
fuck that nigga
he was a bitch
>>7872633
Who did you bumbling faggot. Destroy me.
>>7870795
That guy was an idiot and no one shoud look up to him
Become a monk.
>>7870769
>Southern California
>American
It's like you've never been there.
>>7870760
>>7872645
>>7872804
>mfw I used to fall for the "authenticity doesn't real, muh DFW" meme
Of course it's real, and it's important. Would you rather spend time with someone who's obsessed with social status and posturing, or someone who just wants to get drunk and shoot the shit? That's the practical definition of authenticity, and most people are deeply inauthentic, to the point where it infuriates me to even be around them. Not saying I believe in absolute truth, that's obviously bullshit, but the "authenticity" OP is referring to is really just about how people try to present themselves.
>>7872661
Take your Mira and her psalmbook of selected tweets into the crack of doom and end yourself wretch.
>>7872349
If anything, he's (you're?) the spooked one for reducing himself to the property of something he'll never have.
>>7870725
Born and raised in southern California. Pretty much everyone here is some type of miserable, but that's most of California these days.
>>7872781
That's how you can tell it's authentic. All really authentic places have a certain degree of inconvenience that comes with living there.
>>7870725
Gainesville or St. Petersberg Florida.
>cheap land
>lots of colleges
>lots of music
>hot and scary enough to keep away the casuals
Florida gets a bad rap but it's perfect for aspiring artists.
>>7870725
What made you pick Atlanta? I'm fond of it, because I have to drive there whenever I want to go to a concert, but it is hardly the first place I would have picked to move to.
>>7872794
I just hang out at certain coffee shops, local theatres, and I work with a lot of people in tv who are into all sorts of other projects as well. Check out Javalords in little five points by 7 stages theatre. You might run into me there.
>>7870844
Then stay away from the country if you hate it so much. We don't want you anyway.
>>7870725
If your chasing after authenticity then you aren't authentic yourself.
I've been living in San Diego for most of my life (though originally from the mid-west). It's not a good place to get your start. You can definitely establish yourself, but if you wish to become a remarkable literary figure, I'm told by my well-regarded international friends, you need to have your credentials and brave it in NYC. That's where you'll become anything, if you're worth anything (and most of the game today is just knowing who you know). Otherwise, you're a fucking hack or you simply don't play the game.
>>7874311
>>hot and scary enough to keep away the casuals
what about australia though
>I agree OP
California is probably the most judgemental state in the USA. I used to live there. But they're judgemental because it's kinda true they are the coolest state. So with the rep as the coolest state, you have to appear to them as cool...or a Mexican. But for the average person you have to come off as cool, and even then you will be judged for how cool you are anyways. You should know the difference between inauthentic and judgemental. You have got to be on point. But on the flip side, to me, I learned to not care what they thought. Then I got to be free from constriction, a bit lonely but that's probably my fault, and I got to enjoy living in the coolest state. It's just so many local people are on some sort of high horse. It's locals, tourists, Mexicans, and you.
>>7870844
One lives in the country for the land. You're doing it wrong if you're living there for the people. You're supposed to have fun in your acres of private woods and have lots of space for you and your family to enjoy themselves.
>>7874679
>But they're judgemental because it's kinda true they are the coolest state
No they fucking aren't. They're the most tryhard state.
>>7874365
Authenticity transforms human interaction from a shitty, stressful, deceitful game into a way to actually feel something. How is that a "juvenile" thing to want?
I'm not gonna cry over someone being inauthentic, but it'll certainly make me have zero interest in spending any time with them or reading anything they write.
>>7874687
Maybe you're right. The coolest state is actually Oklahoma.
>>7870795
You know how American TV portrays Canada as some remote wasteland, where everything costs twice as much, and it's winter 10 months out of the year, and half the year is darkness? Well, Alaska is that reality. It sucks, don't go there unless you have no other options (i.e. you are about to become homeless if you don't get some cash, and working on a fishing boat is more appealing to you than joining the military).
>>7870800
Everywhere except North America and certain parts of europe suck unless you're rich as hell. Stay west for now.
>>7870814
Good choice; austin is the least retarded of all Texas cities. Some of the rural counties near austin are OK too if you can get good land.
>>7870844
>georgia
that is your problem. unless you have duck commander level money where you can basically buy a small town's worth of land, it's not worth living there. the people are friendly enough, but too christian for any secular intellectual.
>>7870862
toronto's nice, really depends what neighborhood you live in. the winters are shit, everyone forgets how to drive and the ground is covered in disgusting brown salt slush.
>>7871057
good riddance ya filthy animal
>>7872602
good choice, especially if you don't mind small town vibes. cute place, in general. expensive real estate though.
>>7874311
gainesville is ok, I guess. Still kind of swampy. If you want to bang chicks go to south florida.
>>7874666
check'd and kek'd. living in new york doesnt mean the same thing it did in the 60s. if your work is good enough to get you in touch with a publisher, they will tell you to move to nyc if they think its necessary. until then just find a good place to chill.
Go to university. It doesn't matter where as long as it has a good lit program. There are no /lit/ cities, only /lit/ people; and, they're not sharing their ideas with you anyway. so just go get schooled and then you can figure out where to move.
>pfft everybody here is a phony
>nobody knows about REAL literature discussion like me
>none of them are as serious about writing as *I* am
100% certain you talk all the time about how you're going to write a great work someday, but not today, because you're still waiting for the right inspiration
Southern California is not "inauthentic", whatever that means. It's a different place than wherever it is you're used to living. The people here lie to you constantly, if that's what you're referring to. That's not "inauthentic", that's dishonest, and it's simply a trait of the land. Southern Californians are (mostly) in Southern California because we're comfortable here.
If you're uncomfortable somewhere, great, say as much and move. Don't make up lies about both the people and their literary capabilities and accomplishments of a place as a means of artificially, preemptively separating yourself from them. If you want to write, you will have to be a 'part' of some place in this world without directionless judgment.
>>7872994
>Not saying I believe in absolute truth, that's obviously bullshit
>>7870769
you're too scared to have one kid, much less three. these ppl are more authentic than you and me. just cause you own a macbook doesn't mean you're somehow inauthentic... put the resentment and anger towards bad people, not actually happy functional families
come to arkansas, i'm lonely
>>7872411
i see what you did there
>>7874744
are you mad though?
>>7874746
>absolute truth isn't real
>o ya? prove it with facts
lol
>>7874762
Next time I will bow my head in solicitude to such clearly enlightened opinions, O wise Protagoras.
>>7870769
this photo honestly disgusts me
>>7874746
Just trying to differentiate the made-up metaphysical concept of "truth" from the simple practical concept of "not lying". If you've seen an absolute truth, take a picture, I'll file it with the bigfoot sightings.
>>7874772
how can you live in the world without belief that the statement "the world is there" is true?
>>7874774
It's not something I worry about, I enjoy my existence of jerking off and watching TV the same way whether it's real or not. I just acknowledge that no one has an objective point of view.
>>7874779
Are you sure that nobody has an objective point of view? I mean, if nobody knows for certain, then there's a possibility you're wrong, right?
>>7874780
Wrong about what? No human knowing things objectively?
>>7874666
>>7874704
>if you wish to become a remarkable literary figure, I'm told by my well-regarded international friends, you need to have your credentials and brave it in NYC
>if your work is good enough to get you in touch with a publisher, they will tell you to move to nyc if they think its necessary.
i lived in nyc for six years and had friends and acquaintances in the publishing industry. you absolutely do not need to live in nyc to become literary.
however, if you want to get out of your boring hometown, live in one of the capitals of the world, and meet cool and shitty people from all over, nyc is a fucking great place to live
(until you run out of money.)
>>7874782
Yeah.
>>7874790
Well you are obviously smart, I know this sounds very self-aggrandizing but this is a low-turnout webforum that we all know is frequented often by published authors and people in the ivy league/oxbridge. don't sell yourself short, and don't forget how dumb the brute mass of humanity are (sorry humanity). I think like 60% of the US still doesn't know how to use a computer (not sure about that). And that's the US. Remember most of the world is named Mohammed and is Ok with beheading his wife on minor infractions. Shit that we cannot even imagine.
So just by being here and able to complete a captcha and the ability to use a late 90s japanese forum system to communicate is already proof positive that you are the tip of an iceberg whose greater mass is plunged into the darknesses of ignorance and unconsciousness.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is fucking bigtime here. If you go to /r/books or /r/writingprompts you will, after enough time, find no end of self-pleasing praise about how smart they all are. but if you read their stuff, you will find it to be trash, bigtime. Now I'm not saying that we here are smart, but we're obviously smarter than them (2 minutes browsing r/books will provide evidence of that)
the only reason I believe in absolute truth is that t.b.h. I am a rural type and literally never understood why nobody else believes in them, not by spite but because I never learned why (homeschooled through middle school, very poor student until college). So I would like to know. I don't mean to be contentious, either. Sorry this post was long, I just had a coffee for the first time in a while and I can't sleep
>>7874803
you sound like an old lady who listens to old wives' tales and then repeats them and then forgets and imagines she has lived these stories.
you're not on the tip of the iceberg for using a computer. They've literally been dumbed down to bits since they were invented.. be glad, you'd probably be frustrated otherwise.
Don't look down on what you don't know, the most insightful part of your post is the part where you said "Shit we can't even imagine." Remember that exact phrase, it's far more true than you give it credit.
>>7874835
You said that someone could access and understand absolute truth, but that you couldn't. Why is that? What's the difference between them and you?
>Authentic Cities?
Oh god, kill yourself.
>no city is authentic unless it has
>SOUL FOOD
>bohéme (é or è?) beggars who swallow fire and do trampoline tricks
>struggling young writers
>lots of unemployed artists with starbucks cups
>street vendors selling self painted trash
>riots against police officers, muh freedom of expression
>a crazy guy living in a cabin in the woods who sometimes sells self grown vegetables to the city folks if you know where to ask *wink wink*
What is this fucking hipster obession with "authentic" cities?
WHAT IS IT?
Every time I hear a radio interview with some artist, they always get to the question "So, how did you 3 years in Paris/London/New York change the way you do and perceive your art form?" and of course, it was always the GREATEST THING EVER TO HAPPEN TO ME OHMAGERD.
Why?
"Oh, you know, you cant really explain it, everything is just so AUTHENTIC and all, you know?"
No, I do not know.
The heroin addicts in London have about the same degree of authenticity than they have in Bumfuck Alabama or Vladivostok, the unemployed artists are as authentic in London as they are in Singapore.
Jesus Christ, the pure artsy hipster spasticism in that question always makes my blood boiling.
And of course he has to start this thread with some faggot wearing a retard cap and graffiti tshirt, sitting in front of his shitty house to show how connected he is to his home streets.
Why doesn't it show him giving a blowjob to a hobo, wouldnt that be so very street and real of him...
>>7874870
>some faggot
heres where you lost me. How can you deny defew like this?
otherwise, excellent post. said what I was thinking, but even better
>still identifying so strongly with your environment that you are affected by its inauthenticity
How do you even live like that? I live in the dregs of suburban SoCal and am still constantly surrounded by feelings of authenticity and the sublime. Go to a park. Lay in the grass and study the way sunlight changes the shade of leaves. Get up and talk to a stranger that doesn't look like they're busy. Have a friendly conversation about how pretty the leaves are. Depart knowing you won't ever talk to that person again. Be content in the limited nature of these experiences. If you're not able to feel a sense of authenticity from average experiences, even in a place that is particularly devoid of authentic experiences, then you're going to be miserable no matter where you go.
>>7874666
I live in San Diego too. It feels like I'm in the Matrix.
>>7874933
I don't like to use this word often, but this post made me genuinely cringe.
>>7874870
>And of course he has to start this thread with some faggot wearing a retard cap and graffiti tshirt, sitting in front of his shitty house to show how connected he is to his home streets.
dude uh. are you ... joking???
>>7874979
really why? seems pretty banal to me
>>7874979
Thank you for proving my point then. Or are you still sucking the mummified cock of postmodern insincerity and are too cool to openly engage in authentic experiences?
>>7875025
Do you really reject the idea of anything but brooding personal isolation so vehemently that you missed the entire point of my post? I was specifically speaking against the veneration of authenticity. To use your own vocabulary, I was pointing out how you can easily be satisfied in your desire for authenticity in inauthentic banality. There is nothing special or even necessarily authentic about what I described. It's an arbitrary example of how forcing yourself to engage in and accept the inauthenticity of your environment can be just as satisfying. What I imagine you're trying to argue is coming from the exact same place that my argument is coming from, except that I offer an actual solution.
Also I only wear bandanas
>>7872234
funny that i see the left image and never see the right one, more so, i only ever see it on this site
![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XWeNAPZ.jpg "maxresdefault[1].jpg")
What is this ''Authenticity'' ? This is the trash can called ideology. Obsessing over, and looking for a solid state of authenticity - the act itself proves that you are aware that the trash can is not there.
And that the authenticity you have been looking for among the trash, within the can, is also not there. So you are like a crazy homeless person in the street, having hallucinations, which in fact you know are not even happening, while the people walking by try to ignore you. Plastic penesh and vazhinas, and so on.
you are a child, if you want friends go to the playground
>>7875052
i laughed, but this could've been better. 6.5/10
>>7875120
I'm serious though. The Zizekian shitposting elements are just there to serve the narrative.
