>21st Century Literature thread
The classics are good, but there is also some really good, serious (i.e not YA) post-millennial literature that seems to have been overlooked by /lit/'s resident "patricians". Does /lit/ have any fav 21st Century authors (that aren't John Green)?
For example, pic related is Junot Díaz - look him up.
Junot Diaz's accolades are the result of political correctness run amok. Utterly turgid writing punctuated by references to the lowest forms of popular culture.
Helen DeWitt
Diaz is meh
>21st century short story
>it's written in second person
Miranda July
Donna Tartt
Jennifer Egan
Blake Butler (not a big fan, but he's a critical darling so I included him)
Tao Lin
Ben Marcus
>>8045333
The 21st Century just started. You're not going to find out who the actual greats of it are for at least another 2-5 decades.
Is that Ramon?
>>8045333
Junot Diaz is a cunt. I'm not talking about his mediocrity, but he's a dick IRL, even before he was famous.
LYDIA DAVIS
Y
D
I
A
D
A
V
I
S
>>8045366
This.
>junot diaz
>good
LOL
kys OP
also
>implying /lit/ doesn't know junot diaz
l m a o
>>8045355
Blake Butler gets very tiresome to read, but I still admire what he's doing. His short stories are great -- it's a shame he doesn't write more of them.
Knausgaard, Houellebecq, Ferrante
a brief history of seven killings is great
Joshua Cohen
>>8045355
I was about to make a thoughtful reply, but then I saw you posted Tao Lin. Shit b8 m8.
Pascal Quignard, Javier Marias, Laszlo Krasznahorkai
>>8045333
My 21st Century favorites are
Michael St. Wood (Yurope)
MNMDR (Behead All Satans)
Roberto Pinchas (Tao Lin On A Tricycle)
No one other than them so far has truly captured the 21st Century zeitgeist.
>>8045333
Pic related is probably the best in literary fiction right now. Night Women, Brief History and John Crow's Devil are fantastic
Ella Ferante, Houellebecq and Ishiguro are also obvious current masters. The Buried Giant and The Neapolitan Novels receive universal praise, even here (use the archive).
Donald Ray Pollock is fascinating
Fuck Diaz, him and Yanagihara are writers for the legions of post-structuralist female english majors
Will Self
>>8045398
Josh please go
>>8045416
He's gonna keep getting more and more famous.
>>8045419
>Cohen
Well the deck is really stacked against him
>>8045423
Why? Because he's Jewish?
>>8045423
Tom McCarthy
>>8045333
Is there something wrong with the shape of his head?
>>8045405
QUIT SHILLING TAO LIN ON A TRICYCLE
>>8045483
No there isn't, virgin
>>8045490
It's too thin.
>>8045494
You're just a creepy bitter virgin.
>>8045333
>le brown skinned author
>le genius grant
>le gibsmedat
JD is a hack
>>8045485
How is this shilling? The thread is about 21st Century authors and I named three along with one work of theirs each for easy identification.
>>8045496
The dreaded insult! Good thing Diaz has written extensively to try to establish himself as someone who has sex.
>>8045501
You're a sour grapes virgin who never steps outside and sees the actual world.
>>8045483
His mama had zika before it was cool
>>8045527
Using the autistic meme is just proving my point.
>not YA
>Junot Diaz
>>8045546
Lol good point.
>>8045535
>autistic meme
Ishiguro and Murakami are the best writers of the 21th century desu
>>8045833
mr I AM NOT A JAP and im a weeabo faggot, sux.
>>8045842
あんたのバカ!
>>8045527
What does t. mean? Thanks?
>>8045409
James is a beast. Ironically, his project is very similar to Diaz, who I find engaging, smart, and accessible.
Franzen has probably the two best 21st century books in The Corrections and Freedom
Zadie Smith deserves a mention too
>>8045377
I love the one about cremains
>>8045546
b8
,OP
>>8045866
>Franzen has probably the two best 21st century books in The Corrections and Freedom
This is hilarious
>Depending on your fanboy orientation either the first or second most famous desert planet in nerdom. Again when I saw those landscapes in Star Wars I felt surge of kinship. Shit, on first viewing I also thought my man’s name was Juan Kenobi. But that’s what happens when you’re an immigrant kid of color in a culture that erases your community completely.
junot Diaz is the greatest author of the century so far. His work is engaging, contemporary and relatable. but be warned he is extremely subtle and you have to pay very close attention to understand what he means to say.
>>8045921
Junot please go
>>8045921
>This won a Pulitzer Prize
Is John Green a good writer?
>>8045866
This post makes me not want to read James anymore. I thought he could be interesting, but if he writes for the Franzen/Diaz/Smith crowd he must be irredeemable trash.
>>8045355
Blake Butler is not a critical darling. You fucking wet shit.
>>8046028
His project is excising post-colonial ghosts, which is also Diaz's. I'd say James prose-wise is more similar to Kincaid. But if you're a fan of contemporary lit you're reading all these authors--it's funny that you decide what's middle brow when they are all admitted fans of each other. Wallace and Zadie were pals, and DeLillo is a big Franzen fan
>>8045377
>LYDIA DAVIS
She was married to Auster too. Huh.
>>8045405
>captured the 21st Century zeitgeist
This is really what you read for? Go outside.
>>8045921
Junot jodete. Porfavor salta de un edificio de cinco pisos. no perdon, eso fue muy cruel, mejor salta de uno de siete para que not tengas un velorio abierto.
>>8046057
Decolonize yr mind, ese.
>>8046038
>His project is excising post-colonial ghosts
How breathtakingly novel
>>8045921
What draws people to writing like this? Why don't they see how pandering and lazy it is?
>>8045423
>>8045431
I can't say whether anon was being sarcastic, but my assumption would be that while it might have helped him get a foothold on the scene, he's never going to make it with a name that's not only heavily charged, but already and not yet taken. He'd have to actually be great, whereas his short stories are at best entertaining, and his larger projects all tired and desperately ambitious failures.
>>8045409
I wish Marlon James weren't such a bloat monster, but despite his faults he's probably still the best answer ITT. If you don't believe it, just look at how little there's been in the way of the usual political correctness complaints regarding his winning the Booker prize.
>>8046038
>But if you're a fan of contemporary lit you're reading all these authors
*Contemporary American 'literary fiction' you mean
>>8046264
This, and Diaz belongs firmly outside that description in the ranks of pic related and momcore
Rachel Kushner is ver very good, pham.
>Reading anything after the 19th century
>>8046413
>19th
Dohohoh this pleb
>>8046422
Human civilization lost any real worth in the 20th century; post-WW1/2, to be precise.
Now we are merely men among the ruins.
>>8045366
>I need 50 years' worth of critics to tell me if I like something
>>8046413
>reading books
>not exporting authentic ural-Altaic bard from Siberia and having him recite you epic poems from memory
Has anyone here read Flee by Evan Dara? Iwhat did you think of it?
>>8045343
But if a classical written work does literally the exact same thing, it's okay right?
>>8045333
i hate diaz
>>8046502
Turgid writing is never okay and I challenge you to name a "classical written work" comparable to that fetid piece of shit Oscar Wao
>>8046435
>like
>actually being great
I like watching Capeshit, but that doesn't mean it's good, let alone great. there's a difference.
>>8045333
>there is also some really good, serious (i.e not YA) post-millennial literature that seems to have been overlooked by /lit/'s resident "patricians"
What are you talking about m8?
Pychon published books in this era
DFW published books in this era
Delillo published books in this era
Gass published books in this era
Gene the Meme Wolfe published books in this era
Cormac MacArthur published books in this era
Bolano published books in this era
Denis "The Heroin Menace" Johnson published books in this era
Bill "Whores and Igloos" Vollmann published books in this era
The objective answer to your thread topic post is Helen DeWitt but we all know how much /lit/ likes woman authors.
>>8046583
"Woman" is a noun, Anonymous. The word you're looking for is "female". It should be "female authors".
Knausgaard is talked about a lot on this site. He's already entering meme-status since not a lot of people have read his work.
>>8046583
Most of those guys aren't really writing "post-millenial" literature. Equally the idea that a 20 something would make anything other than dogshit is ridiculous.
>pic related is Junot Díaz - look him up
This is shockingly low-level trolling.
>>8046046
It's what I read contemporary things for. Use your inside voice.
>>8046583
Publishing in the era isn't the same as being an author of the era. Those guys were all pushing 40 or over and had several books out before the year 2000. As much as I like a few of those names, they're irrelevant to this discussion.
>>8046674
>I'm proud of how memed the fuck out I am by the publishing industry's autistic gatekeepers.
W E W
>>8046908
Literature is obsolete. All our generations best minds are occupied with memes.
>>8046743
In his defense, MFA classes and professors are total bullshit.
That being said, his reasons for calling them out are why he's considered a joke.
>>8046923
Memes are obsolete too, grandad. Spontaneous performance art pieces by schizophrenics in public places are where it's at.
>>8046929
How art brut.
>>8046578
Yeah, the difference is there is no such thing as being great, and there is such a thing as liking something.
>>8047292
>there is no such thing as being great
Well spooked, lad.
>>8045499
that guy posted something he wrote in an hour on here enough to make people believe it was readable
>>8046430
>le wrong generation
>tfw junot díaz may die in your lifetime
>>8045866
Franzen is the Jeb Bush of literature
Sad, dejected, has to pretend to take himself seriously to make up for the fact that nobody else does. He's the would-be bastion of new sincerely, which is to say he isn't because his books don't hold up under any kind of sincere scrutiny. I think Oprah putting him on her list really ruined him. It turned him from a mediocre high-brow author to a quality middle-brow author. And that shot him straight out of the canon, so to speak. Now he has to pretend he's as good as the middle-aged housewives who read him say he is. Poor guy.
>>8048313
franzen is better than he gets credit for on /lit/ . There was a reason he rejected the Oprah shit, because communities like /lit/ wont respect you if you Oprah likes you. It doesnt make sense, but it's true.
>>8048332
There are a dozen threads a day fellating that thesaurus-abuser McCarthy. Franzen isn't to be respected because he writes milquetoast garbage for soccer moms. At least John Green owns up to being nothing more than what he is.
>>8048037
That statement doesn't make any sort of coherent sense because the fact that it was written in an hour and as sloppily as possible is in the description as a selling point. There was no chicanery involved because it explicitly says that it was just some dumb shit written in an hour.
If people deemed it worthwhile it was while being fully aware of these things, not because of some ridiculous mesmerization.
>>8048332
Have you read The Corrections? Anyone who praises that trash can't be taken seriously. Oprah or no Oprah.
I read a book published in 2012, it was called 'Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters' by Sam Thompson, I thought it was quite well done.
>>8046435
>I need 150 neckbeards who post on an anime imageboard to tell me if I like something
whatisthedifference.jpg
>>8048368
The worst thing about Franzen is that he thinks he's part of the "high art literary tradition" when he's essentially just John Green for middle aged soccer moms. It doesn't even have anything to do with Oprah, it's just what he writes and how he writes it.
>>8045377
I loved Varieties of Disturbance, anyone know of anything else similar?
I would rather read literally anything else than Juno Diaz. Truly truly painful. It can't be overstated.
>>8048332
I read Corrections and Freedom and he's completely forgettable.
>>8046597
Your mom is a female
>>8046674
>>8046908
There's just nobody really that good writing who's younger than thirty. Even Based Helen wrote the Last Samurai something like fifteen years before she finally got it published in 2000. Wouldn't a true "millennial" author have to be born in gen Y? Or would he or she just have to have the grating personality and intellectual indigence to be culturally millennial? Maybe Junot would fit after all.
>>8046743
It's funny when people like him and Zadie Smith pull this crap. They act as though they are railing against the establishment by being non-white, but then they create some of the most middlebrow shit out there.
>>8048812
A millennial is anyone who "came of age" roughly around the turn of the 21st Century. Saying "lel no one that age is any good" is just flat out asinine because it can take decades after publication for authors who are later considered the greatest of their time or movement to be discovered by critics or even just readers. Even with the internet, these things don't happen overnight.
>>8048817
That inoffensive style of railing against the establishment has itself become a milquetoast, middlebrow sort of thing for irrelevant middle aged z-list celebrities. Actually subversive attitudes and writings will almost never see the light of day.
>>8045333
I'll let you know when I get finished with all these greeks
>>8048982
lmao
>>8048714
>John Green for middle aged soccer moms.
what changes between him and JG then?
>>8045372
>easy easy lemon squeezy
>>8046743
Didn't the dean of the program he went to point out that Junot's class was something like 80% non-white.
>>8045333
Recently read pic related, and really liked it. Plan to read more of her.
Also no mention of George Saunders? He reminds me a lot of DFW, so I'm surprised I haven't heard of him before here.
>>8049589
That's irrelevant. The teachers may still have oppressed them with non-broken english
>>8045333
Gilead by Marylinne Robinson is better than half the 'murican canon works desu
The Neapolitan Novels by that anonymous italian lady
>>8049666
SATAN REVEALS PYNCHON SECRETS
>>8045355
Donna Tartt is the only decent one of your six.
Reading Miranda July, or watching her films, makes me physically ill.
>>8048815
The big difference laddy is that Franzen was chosen when it was literally middle brow and proud, the soupiest of the soup novels. After his complaints Oprah became more patrician and picked Dickens, Tolstoy, Tortilla, Faulkner, Marquez
>>8049607
cool. i picked that up last year on a whim, i know next to nothing about the author or book, good to hear something positive about it. I also read some Saunders, good stuff.
>>8049858
>all white males
UGHHH Oprah is def. a problematic fave
>>8046394
hell yeah brah I'd smoke her Kush if yakno what im sayin ;)
Orhan Pamuk is where it's at.
>>8045409
Marlon James is the real fucking deal. I think A Brief History of Seven Killings will be on some "Literature from 2000-2050 syllabi in the future.
What's most impressive about his writing is that he builds aesthetic prose out of numerous voices and dialects. That's serious talent and not something many authors can do.
>>8045435
I agree. Remainder was fantastic. I haven't read his other stuff yet, though. What do you think of it?
>>8050071
>What's most impressive about his writing is he build aesthetic prose out of bombocloths and naigger chat. That's serious talent and not something batty boy can do.
>>8050218
Does he really write in those sorts of Jamaicanisms? That could be amusing for a chapter or two but I think an entire book of them would get tedious.
>>8050236
Didn't bother me, though after a while it does stop being hilarious on that basis alone. Not all chapters are written in dialect either.
>>8050218
Kek
>>8050253
They're written in someone's dialect. Some of the Jamaicans have a slightly more "proper" dialect and the Americans are from a couple of different subcultures with their own ways of speaking.
Knausgaard
Definitely want to read Han Kang's The Vegetarian, this year's Man Booker. Where do we get books online now?
>>8046743
The only thing that makes this dude non-white is being born north from Rio Grande tbqh, I've backpacked across latin america, look like him and people thought me white during all the trip
>>8050340
>look like him
my condolences
>>8050294
I'll take your word for it. You Americans all sound the same to me...
>>8050340
Yeah, Diaz looks like a slimmer version of a rich Mexican man I know who all Mexicans call white. Down there you need to be like half-indian to not be white and anyone who looks like Diaz is gonna be at least middle class.
>>8050345
skincolor wise, I look nothing like him outside of that
ON THE EDGE by RAFAEL CHIRBES
This is the 21st century masterpiece everyone should read.
http://www.ndbooks.com/book/on-the-edge/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/20/on-the-edge-by-rafael-chirbes-review-financial-crisis-as-seen-from-spain
Reading Helen Dewitt bc of this thread and it's bloody dreadful
>>8045343
Almost cut myself on this one.
Post colonialism has its faults, but there's some substance to his work. Is it overrated? I think so. But it's not utter shit. And the pop cultural references are low, I'll give you that. But that doesn't make the work low. His aim is clearly to weave a cultural tapestry and challenge the traditional western pallete in a self aware, tongue-in-cheek sort of way.
I'd almost say you're taking Diaz's theming more seriously than it treats itself. At the very least, you're not challenging it on accurate terms.
>>8045501
I find his writing to be insecure in this respect. I'm okay with it on the whole, but damn if he doesn't come across as a chauvinistic asshole.
>>8051091
>I'd almost say you're taking Diaz's theming more seriously than it treats itself.
I wouldn't have to do that if it wasn't given a Pulitzer. The man was awarded it not for the quality of his work but because he comfortably caters to accepted liberal dogma. Immigrant narratives were passe 50 years before Diaz was even born and at least those works don't subject you to a constant barrage of what you'd find on the 'liked' page of your average redditor's facebook.
The prose is flaccid and unremarkable. The characters are straight out of a John Green novel but with a veneer of hispanic seasoning.
>>8051091
>challenge the traditional western pallete
Giving him way too much credit for something that was already done better decades ago by authors like Pinecone.
>>8051141
>immigrant narratives passe
speak for yourself, those can be really interesting.
>>8051528
They're a curiosity at best, haven't been interesting for years, and are largely identical to one another. Immigration stories are overplayed at this point.
>>8051091
Doesn't realize the fine line between presenting the dark underside of reality and glorifying it. The Dominicans in his books are obsessed with screwing--that's how this uber-nerd desperately tries to establish his street/ghetto cred. Crowned the prince of Dominican fiction with Drown, he made us wait 11 years for his even worse follow-up, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Replaces plot in stories and novel with pumped-up "voice." Oscar, the science fiction nerd, tries to lose his virginity--that's basically the whole story. His sister Lola thinks of nothing but fucking, his mother just wants to fuck, and when Oscar tries to fuck an older woman back in Santo Domingo, he gets killed--because the agony of the novel has to end somehow. His manic voice describes everything with the same faux energy, the ear-shattering ghetto volume, as though there were no difference between murder and puking. Seems to work with a checklist as he designs his plots--the dictator Trujillo, the projects, drugs, family secrets, grandfather in prison, yep, everything checked off. Has no clue about the rhythm of language, just strings together discrete sentences until he has enough for a book. Might one day move beyond writing about pussy-hunting nerds and write in a language above that of his childish protagonists', but it might be 11 more years--at least.
>>8052911
are you an expert on the subject? which of these narratives have you read that seem so cliche? not trying to argue, I just find it interesting this is your outlook.
>>8045409
The Vietnamese who won the Pulitzer isn't too shabby. C.E. Morgan out of Kentucky seems promising as well.
>>8050236
Yes but his prose is not monolithic throughout the work. Desperately poor jamaicans are barely intelligible and live lives of desperation, rich jamaicans only curse in patois, and british/american/american black characters speak in more normal tones. The class of the character often dictates the tone
>>8050361
Added to my longlist
>>8045355
>Donna Tartt
Fucking hell... Please consider suicide.
>>8054186
das racist mane. why cant black folk talk like normal n shit? watchu trynna say white boi?
>>8046925
As an MFA student, I can vouch for this. Maybe 3 other students and I are the only ones in the program producing anything of real merit. Some of the workshops are just fucking unbearable. Case in point, the use of the term "absurd" to describe anything ridiculous or wacky. Fuck.
Oh well, my own writing is improving at least.
>>8054232
Its much more class based in that book.
Any Michael Pollan fans here?
>>8054265
>Maybe 3 other students and I are the only ones in the program producing anything of real merit.
>and I
How's the air on your high horse
>>8054284
I mean... it's not the best or anything, but I'm getting better. Plus, I'm not going to disparage myself... And really, I can't emphasize enough the level of shit that the bottom half students are putting out.
>>8054153
Only insofar as I'm an immigrant myself and I loathe people who do obsess over their status as immigrants to the point of making it the defining characteristic of their literary persona.
>>8054315
The guy giving you shit is probably one of those bottom of the barrel MFA students T B H. The kind of memester who buys into things like "show don't tell" and the "need" for taking the "ego" out of one's work.
>>8046469
i have not read flee but I have read The Lost Scrapbook and Easy Chain both of which quickly became my few favorite books. I'm sure Flee is extremely good.
>>8055629
you...don't understand either of those cliches apparently
>>8054340
well not all immigrant stories are the same. Asan immigrant as well, we probably have very different paths. And depending on the circumstances an immigrant status or journey can be traumatizing and life changing, I'd say that's something to be obsessed about.
>>8056276
The ones that get published are all the same. And no, it's the most boring sort of "journey" imaginable even if there are "circumstances" or "hardships". Immigrant narratives are never worth discussing that exhaustively outside of historical texts. As "human interest" stories or fiction they're utterly banal and worthless.
