what do Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway teach you about on writing?
nothing at all?
''Show, don't tell''
Hemingway nothing. Faulkner so much. I haven't read Melville.
>>7948145
everything
>>7949914
what's everything?
>Melville
If your book's too short, pad it out with encyclopedia entries.
>Faulkner
To look arty, ramble a lot without worrying about grammar and say it's just stream of conscience.
>Hemmingway
If you write short sentences and don't describe anything, people will think you're profound.
>>7949954
i remember reading a post like this but less hostile
>>7948145
Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway. One of these things is not like the others...
>>7949954
Hasn't read any Melville except Moby Dick. A better criticism of Melville would be of his excessive use of clauses and his one-sentence paragraphs. But the best criticism of Melville is none at all. Melville is beyond reproach.
True enough about Faulkner. He often reads like a parody of himself. Too extensive a bibliography.
>>7948145
That's a pretty good question. What they taught me is the different methods to be descriptive.
Melville vividly and explicitly describes
Faulkner describes things as they appear to him
Hemingway barely describes things, and leaves the reader to interpret
They all create pretty profound scenes. Personally I prefer Melville
>melville
make your novel centered around a specialist topic to give academics free-reign in projecting onto it. they'll discuss it ad naseum and make everything a metaphor for something else. the more they talk about it the more cred you get. this is the same thing the obscurantist do but on overdrive.
>faulkner
if you're american be from the south. it gives you a semblance of actually being patrician and people will automatically assume you're higher class if you're a southerner who is actually literate
>hemingway
literacize your personality so that people will listen to anything you have to say. this actually requires leaving the house so not popular option in this day and age. bonus points if you were a soldier at some point
>>7948145
Melville teaches me to have no filter.
Faulkner teaches me to have a crap sentences filter.
Hemingway teaches me to have way to high of a filter.
What gives.
The truth is that you shouldn't be writing like Faulkner or Hemingway anymore, it could never slide and wouldn't look like an homage but just as a rip-off. Melville is adaptable, but still improbable to use because baroque language is difficult without sounding like an asshole these days.
>>7950724
>what gives
well you're retarded
Do we really need to learn ANYTHING from these out of touch men? We have ALL information at the tips of our fingers.
>ITT: people who don't get the corncob master
I think Faulkner and Hemingway are a sort of dialectic in terms of what they teach you about writing: Faulkner is the raw, unpruned, ecstatic writing, almost primal in its fury. On the other hand, Hemingway is the careful, precise, and powerful in a controlled way.
They teach you the importance of both methods of writing.
>>7950833
but what about melville
>>7950836
Imagine a giant cock flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. An you're like "Oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant cock. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself "Well, at least I got that out of the way", but the the giant cock rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, this giant cock is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant cock slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant cock finally lodges itself in you anus, where it rests uncomfortably for 4, maybe 5 hours. That's what reading Melville is like.
Hemingway teaches you to just write facts, avoid purple prose and the like. Though this is a message best taught with Fitzgerald as the counterpoint.
Fuck if I know what Faulkner's on about. Aside from having a somewhat interesting self-contained universe the man writes like a fucking freight train. Granted, I've only read The Unvanquished, and I know most people jack off over The Sound and the Fury.
Melville I can't really say. I've only read Bartleby and I was much too young to understand the point, and can certainly not comment on his method.
>>7950867
well...i dont know which way you lean but did all that mean you like his writing or hate it?
>>7950754
If you can write like Faulkner, please don't waste your talent. Seriously.
>>7950939
You shouldn't base your style off of Faullkner is all I'm saying. When I started writing people I was friends with made the mistake of comparing my style to Faulnker's and I'm still trying to come back from it because that impressionable mindset ruined my writing and is forcing me to go back and change it (it's narcissistic sounding I know, but people like what I write, classmates tell me they're actually excited for my essays every time we do peer critique stuff, which doesn't happen often in college).
Here's the truth: Faulkner and DFW ruined my writing early on, I was impressionable, didn't' think much about it until a few months ago. I still love Faulkner and about half of DFW's stuff but I got put into such a mental state I'm still working to get out of, similar to Ulysses, I jumped right into writing an encyclopedic poetic prose novel about surf culture, without knowing any technique of dialogue or anything else, all because I learned from these guys early on (Pro-tip, take no lessons from DFW other than the line "Mario loves Hal so much it makes his heart beat hard" and a few others like that, none of his proto Hobbesian rants). When really they should've been my focus later on.
Recently I've found myself really taking to learning from Gaddis, Hawkes and Bolano. With them I can finally understand narrative and adapt it to my own, Gaddis more than any of them. Bolano taught me about voicing, the ticks in dialogue and the ways to establish that voice immediately. Hawkes taught me to blend realism into experimental story-telling that is only coherent when kind of pieced together.
I hope later on down the road I can scrap everything and replace it with the raw talent of Faulkner, but its hard to break that mindset, imitation early on allows for very little room for improvement later on.
>>7950974
Fair enough. Good luck.
If Hemingway can get published, read, and revered, then anyone can.
>>7949892
I just realized the irony of this advice
>>7950994
The fact that we have computers pretty handily destroys your poor attempt at a witty retort.
Also Hemingway couldn't get shit published until Gertrude Stein told him to rip out all his prose.
>>7950994
He does a good job at writing the way he does, it is very achievable to reach a level of writing that he accomplished, but these days you won't have any success if you emulate him, he wasn't the first of his kind by any means, just the most successful
>>7948145
Model your prose on writers who wrote cleanly - Thackeray, Waugh, Updike.
After that, you can add in your own unique stylings, and see how it works for you.
Faulker's corncobby prose is an utter shitshow and not something you want to emulate.
>>7950974
you wrote shit because you are shit. maybe it helps your little life narrative to say "oh i was brainwashed by (x) influence so i was bad but now i'm on the path to glory" but youre just othering your failure, which is noumenal and has nothing to do with whatever order you read dfw in. and who are you to shill out advice? that's a shit line you posted. long shot but if you happen to go to school in the southeast id just like you to know you're a complete cunt
They taught me: "Don't write, unless you want to end up being like me." By like me, I mean a useless, pretentous maggot.
>>7950572
The only person who reads like a parody of Faulkner is Corncobs 'Tortillas' YeCarthy.
>>7951025
Hemmingway wasn't pretentious though
>>7951042
Anon don't you know that if you ever cite information from the world's largest single conglomerate of user-generated and user-moderated information, it makes your argument immediately invalid?
>>7951064
>citing wikipedia instead of the source listed for that paragraph
>>7951064
>citing information from wikipedia
even highschoolers know this is stupid
>>7950867
Haven't read Moby Dick but you just convinced me to. I want a book to do this to me.
>>7951012
I'm not even whom you replied to but you're kind of a dick. Calm down. Stop being threatened by the intelligence of others.
>>7951154
*Incorrect usage of whom. Fuckit.
>>7949954
nail on the head,m8
>>7951154
are you a woman?
>>7951012
Relax. I don't think I was brainwashed by any means or whatever you're saying, I think I was a 17-18 year old kid who had relative talent in writing, you might actually enjoy it too. The issue was I focused too much on what seemed like experimentation early on.
I don't think I was giving advice that isn't agreed upon, and also no one has to listen to it. I said that there's things you can learn from writing but when it comes to Faulkner or Hemingway, they're both styles that are difficult to incorporate into writing at this point, not to say one shouldn't, talented people who can write like them can and should, but only after they establish certain mechanics as well. As any painter has to learn the way brush strokes form textures, writers have to learn those too.
I do go to school in the SE. I didn't say anything about the order of reading DFW, just that he resonates with young writers or people entering college, that's also well agreed upon. I don't think I'm on a path to glory, I think that I've been working really hard under a lot of great mentors in writing and will see my work out until I'm content with it. I hope you don't treat anyone who ever recognizes their faults in their interests/work/careers like this, it's okay to be proud/dissatisfied with work and try to relate to people with probable common interests and issues.
>>7951012
Yikes...
tfw thread is ded
>>7948145
h i g h q u a l i t y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgPKfbKIR7A
>>7949910
>hasn't read Melville
Better get on that buddy boy
>>7949954
Gold
>>7951154
>not that poster but you're just mad he's smarter than you
He reads as pretentious, and there's a good point that guy said, that you can't blame others for your own failures. Literally every author we claim are influences on us are influenced in turn by others, and that didn't ruin their writing style.
>>7949954
"stream of conscience" was a nice touch
