Can we have an unpopular opinions thread, with a little bit of substance? Give a reason for your distaste.
I only ever read F. Scott Fitzgerald once, and that was about three quarters of The Beautiful and the Damned. It's as if Fitzgerald is utterly oblivious to the vacuum that was his between-wars generation and he actually thinks we're interested in their dull lives and love-affairs. He's an anti-Hemingway. Whenever someone defends him it is usually the he has a "style", but I just find it obnoxious and bloated, and if he's all style over substance that feeds my opinion. They say I should give The Great Gatsby a shot, but I doubt I ever will.
Added to that, it being a love-story leaves med reserved from the start, and I could see perfectly well where it was going the whole time and hoped it'd turn, but it never did. Now I use it as a coaster for my desk.
that's a shame that you don't like Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night is fantastic
try this side of paradise, its a helluva lot of fun. beautiful and damned is generally considered to be a bit of a dud these days
also.. you're missing the point if you think fitz isn't looking on these people. i agree his content becomes boring but not because he's only interested in the petty affairs of the bourgeois but because he is so boring in bis unwavering hatred of them
tender is the night is fucking ACE
>>8113196
>>8113210
no fitz go away
>he is so boring in bis unwavering hatred of them
It's as if you hate Tchad so you write a flat travel guide about it.
Free verse and T.S. Eliot killed poetry.
>>8113177
My unpopular opinion is that I fucking hated Catch-22. I read the entire book in one sitting on a a bunch of adderall and I felt like I was watching a comedian bomb his set for 500 pages - and it only got worse as time went along. The only redeeming quality of that book was precocious Milo.
>>8113177
I'm not someone who visits /lit/ often but...
Gatsby has that same, incredibly dense and descriptive style. I couldn't stand it the first time, and still can't to an extent.
But I do love the message and themes behind it all. It's easy to see the surface level boring, over the top glitz and glamour, but the best parts are the ones without it.
Mayve most peopke just read too into it and Fitzgerald was just trying to be stylish, but there's alot to take away.
Those eggs look nice. Pity about the granulated pepper
>>8113270
please refrain from commenting on things you have no interest in or understanding of in the future
>four eggs ev'ry morn
Maybe the problem is that /lit/ bitch about their views in all threads.
>>8113177
>reads for plot
Try another one of his books. I've read all his novels and found The Beautiful and Damned to be the weakest of them. Fitzgerald power ranking:
1) Tender is the Night
2) This Side of Paradise
3) The Great Gatsby
4) The Beautiful and Damned
>>8113177
>expressen
>>8113177
Fitzgerald is my favorite author and I still can't finish more than a quarter of The Beautiful And The Damned, it's his most self-fellating book.
4chan posters are really intelligent and interesting, they think for themselves.
>>8113177
I'm not sure Fitzgerald is a "bad" writer; he's more one of those "good" writers who just wasn't willing to step into the realm of "Experimental" literature like Hemingway kind of did and Faulkner really did. His works are pretty pedestrian if you're looking for innovation, but I do feel they are, stylistically, they harbor same sort of whimsical American-ness that Melville and Hawthorne had. Much more than Faulkner or Hemingway. He writes just enough to give his narrators life, and doesn't focus on "big ideas" like Faulkner (not to say he doesn't have pretty obvious symbolism and themes in his works) nor with narrating characters in a vastly different, new way (that is, Hemingway -- Faulkner's methods of narration weren't that radical in the wake of Joyce and Woolf). He just wanted to write an accessible, well polished good story. He's a good writer and should be studied by all those "experimental" writers who want to write something with emotionally impact and that's entertaining to more than a niche psuedoscholarly audience.
I think his work has staying power.
>>8113210
>this side of paradise
It's far from a perfect book but it comes across delightfully organic and has some really great moments (the scene with the photos of Thoreau and others)
>>8113224
Poetry is in the same state it was in when Milton wrote -- for highly educated, scholarly crowds. Wordsworth moved it much closer into public consciousness, along with Cowper and Coleridge. It remained in the public consciousness for about a century, and then left again. So if you're arguing about poetry being obscure as a killing blow, sorry, it's not. Would be nice to have it popular, but then everyone would write like Maya Angelou and Ogden Nash.
TS Eliot was a great poet and Whitman can be blamed if you hate free verse so badly.
>>8113226
It's a fun book that isn't so good once you've read more. I'd suggest it to high school kids. Still better than Vonnegut
>>8113261
I definitely understand that autism stuff. I'm more focused and open socially, but I feel like a literal robot with no emotions.
>>8114798
>in order to save Fitzgerald calls Hemingway experimental
The whimsical American-ness would rather be the innovation in comparison to the restraint and straight-forward story-telling of Hemingway. Melville is a perfect example of another poor writer with a bloated and ugly style that is hailed out of ignorance.
>>8114874
>The whimsical American-ness would rather be the innovation in comparison to the restraint and straight-forward story-telling of Hemingway
????
Interesting. It's almost like you don't know jack shit about American literature and its history pre-WWI, but are pretending like you do.
>>8113224
>T.S. Eliot killed poetry.
In the sense that he said everything poetry has ever tried to say, and there's no longer room for improvement in the field, yes, you're right.
>>8114874
>>in order to save Fitzgerald calls Hemingway experimental
How isn't he? Name a writer like him -- not even American -- who wrote like he did before him. He was an innovator.
> Melville is a perfect example of another poor writer with a bloated and ugly style that is hailed out of ignorance.
There's a reason I go on this board maybe once every half year now
>>8114967
>CALL ME ANGRY OR PERHAPS INDIGNANT MAYBE ONE WOULD SAY ANNOYED BUT...
literally Melville
>>8115030
I'm >>8114906. I wasn't making any points about Fitzgerald. I meant merely to say that the notion that Hemingway's writing style was not innovative and unique in its time betrays a clear gap in comprehension of the American literary tradition to that point, and outs you as someone who only thinks (incorrectly) that he knows what he's talking about.
>>8115145
Sherwood Anderson
>>8115158
I'll grant the similarity in syntactical simplicity, but surely you're being insincere if you say you can't distinguish a clear stylistic difference between the two.
I don't know if it's unpopular, and it's a bit meta...but. I miss when this board wasn't populated by /pol/, they're anathema to any kind of discussion about politics, and they work to undermine any kind of discussion with purposeful malice. And any time this is brought up, it's just "muh /pol/ bogeyman" without considering anything of it for a moment or allowing discussion on posting quality. It is how many boards thrive then die. And I'm afraid it's happening here. This place is losing it's bite that made me initially fall in love with it.
>>8115175
I think you're just ascribing "/pol/" to any and all idiots flooding this board. I'm curious what you mean by "bite."
>>8115173
I was going to suggest Sherwood Anderson, as well. Of course they are not identical, but you asked for an author who wrote with a "sparse, journalistic style" before Hemingway. Anderson surely fits that description.
>>8115666
To further my point here, even Hemingway himself talked about thr influence of Anderson and specifically Winesburg, Ohio on his writing.
For example:
"Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker wrote that in 1925, when Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Christian Gauss discussed their respective influences, 'Hemingway named Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio as his first pattern.'"
http://www.staythirstymedia.com/201410-086/html/201410-wolf-stein-hemingway-anderson-part2.html#sthash.uF4mz5ov.dpuf
>>8115175
>>8115209
I agree to an extent. However, you may need to consider the simple fact that more and more people are "turning /pol/" in real life. The populists in Europe and America are winning over a lot of people because these places are in dire need of reform and suffer from a lot of problems that have been left untouched. I am afraid that the "rise of /pol/" will only increase the more younger people arrive on the board. /pol/ is just an extreme and silly manifestation, the very fringe, and other 4chan boards tend to accuse any nationalist or immigration-critical or Islam-critical post as /pol/. I find it only natural, and see its dismissal simply as other posters having other, often mainstream opinions, but I dislike how it seeps into every board and every discussion, just as much as I do in real life when every single damn conversation I inevitably turns to complaining about immigration. 4chan reflects real life, however distorted and disturbed. Don't forget that.
>>8113177
>i don't cut my eggs with the edge of my fork
what a fucking pleb.
>>8113680
Only 280 calories.
How fucking retarded are you? lmao goddamn brainlets
>>8119192
are you sure he refenced his weight?
Hegel was the worst thing to ever happen to philosophy.
I think when people compare 1984 to Brave New World, and come to the conclusion that Brave New World was more predictive, they aren't quite right.
People say that 1984 is about "control through pain" while BNW is control through pleasure. But it gives me the impression these people didn't read 1984 throughouly enough. Orwell makes very clear that the proles lives are controlled by pleasure; he even explain how there's a group called Pornosec that makes pornography for the poles, not to mention the lottery. Orwell was very aware of how pleasure could be used as a form of control.
>>8114806
I find I get the good from amphetamines (focus, dilligence, willfulness, motivation etc.) from microdosing psychedelics, but without the autism, general side effects and bodyload. It's pretty great, you should look into it if you're not averse to drug use for whatever reasons.
>>8119291
People don't read Orwell, my friend, and if they do, they already no what it says so they skim most of it. Is that really an unpopular opinion, though? Unknown might be more accurate.
>>8119739
>they already no
time for bed
>>8114806
>>8113261
>>8119346
I am not more or less sociable on amphetamine, but I find my sense of humor and general mood is a lot better. Before I started I was one of those very-hard-to-impress tryhards that didn't laugh at anything. Amphetamines have given me a sense of levity I never had before.
Are you guys diagnosed ADHD or Autistic? Because it tends to help those people the most.
