Tell us about some of your unusual literary opinions, c/lit/s.
>>7574180
No work of 'fiction' is truly fictional. It may be fictional in our universe, but every 'fiction' corresponds perfectly to events in the history of one universe or another.
>>7574191
go to bed jorge
>>7574180
All of the best writers are women.
>>7574180
taste is much more objective than we/people are willing to admit
I don't care if people are "plebs" or what people read, at the end of the day we all have the same interest.
>>7574180
Meursault was traumatized by the death of his mother and not merely sociopathic or [insert facile /lit/ label here].
>>7574217
I agree with this
I feel like he cared about his mother while she was alive, but felt no need to mourn her after her death because he saw it as a waste of time
Postmodernism was a mistake, and we'd all be better off if we went back to the time before, pretended it never happened, except this time we'd know that it did and we would not do postmodernism.
This goes for all art, actually.
1st person narrators are the most useful of POVs, formally.
Tolkien was one of the creative geniuses of the twentieth century but is completely ignored because he doesn't fit the narrative of realism->modernism>postmodernism that is pushed by the academy
>>7574268
Or possibly he was simply unable to (yet) due to shock or other factors. I know that in the midst of dealing with such a trauma (like when my father died) there are at least moments of surprising clarity and detachment, such as when some particular practical concern has to be dealt with.
"Stream of Consciousness" narrative mode is a bullshit cop-out.
>>7574180
Purple prose is enjoyable when done right.
See Carlos Ruiz Zafon for a good example.
Starting with a description of the main character is turbo-plebbery.
Here's looking at you, Oates.
>>7574334
>He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular.
At least half of history's greatest writer's would not be working in literature today. They were only interested in literature to start with because it was the dominant storytelling art form of the last X amount of years.
Many would be working in film, television, video games, and other storytelling mediums if they were alive and working today.
/lit/ likes to pretend Literature is still the highest art, and that many of their heroes would defend literature to the death. The truth is, many of history's greats would be in other media because they were, in reality, just in it for the money.
>>7574346
Anonymous is creepy. That's why Lord Jim isn't top tier Conrad.
>>7574293
>back to the time before
Which would be...? Modernism?
You'd complain just as much, I can guarantee.
>>7574377
>Lord Jim isn't top tier Conrad
Literature's only value is unto literature itself. It's an incestuous club meant to associate on only the remotest levels possibles.
>>7574389
It's not on the same level as HOD or Nostromo. Better than Secret Agent, though.
>>7574355
>The truth is, many of history's greats would be in other media because they were, in reality, just in it for the money.
What money?
>>7574346
I gotta start reading some Conrad.
>>7574408
*vague statement
>>7574180
i'm becoming gradually convinced that the greatest moral conflict american fiction concerns itself over is that of the diametric opposition between quality and quantity, and that more often than not the side of the good, or at the very least the sympathetic side, of the conflict is the side of quality. i earnestly believe the new star wars movie has captured this zeitgeist very powerfully, but i believe this dualism, like i said, informs most american letters, at least post-war.
>>7574293
this isn't an unusual opinion. it's actually very usual, and held by nincompoops.
>>7574180
Surrealism is one of the most important types of literature and will increasingly be realized as such in the future.
>>7574438
>and will increasingly be realized as such in the future.
I agree if only because of what's going to happen over the next 20 years and the introduction of VR.
>>7574402
Exactly.
>>7574388
Yeah. Probably.
>>7574306
But anon, in the age of gesamtkunstwerke-like film, interiority is literature's trump card.
>>7574217
Agreed. I hate it when people just diagnose him as a psychopath.
Did "trump card" originate with Trump?
>>7574400
But Secret Agent is one of his best!
>>7574180
literature is outmoded bourgeoisie bullshit... literally worthless, even the good books from times past are rendered meaningless by a flood of information.
the true minds of our generation, the real artists express themselves either through memes or terrorist atrocities.
>>7574511
>or terrorist atrocities.
>yfw Stockhausen is still alive and shitposting on /lit/
>>7574496
HE HAD A KNIFE
>>7574203
All there is to taste is the capacity to point out faults in the subject of interest and to know when the goods outweigh the bads
>>7574438
I love surrealism. Is the book in your image a good collection of surrealism?
>>7574511
Well memed, friend. Very well memed.
>>7574460
That will be paralleled by a backlash characterized by disconnecting from technology, immersion in nature and use of psychedelics. Its already started but when VR becomes pervasive it will be way stronger. I don't see the future being way more tech-integrated because there will always be discontents and tons of people will become disillusioned and form cultural and artistic/literary movements trying to get away from it.
I think surrealism really just speaks to the core of the human experience though.
>>7574511
Shut the fuck up you little worm. You have no clue what you are talking about. I've been coming to lit for about 5 years now anon, practically since it started. I've read hundreds of books, some of them pleb escapism true, but I've also read Plato, I've read Aristotle, Heraclitus, the Cynics, the Skeptics, the Stoics, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Descartes, Hume, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein. I've read comparative mythology, psychology/psychoanalysis, I've studied chemistry, drug culture, physics. I've read Goethe, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Jung, Freud, Alan Watts, that group. I've read the Bible, the Quran, studied Gnosticism, Taoism, Buddism. I could go on.
>tl;dr
Get the fuck off this board, I will crush you like a bug.
>>7574505
You-turn. It's not bad, don't get me wrong. It was probably much more "zeitgeisty" a book when it came out than something like Lord Jim. But Conrad has a knack for making characters who are super endearing no matter their flaws. If not endearing, memorable, like Kurtz. I cannot remember a single character from Secret Agent.
>>7574556
Actually its one of the most impressive pieces of writing I've ever read, both for surrealism and writing in general. Its not in print anymore and is pretty rare but there is a used version on amazon for 44$ which I would recommend buying asap if you are into surrealism because usually it costs upwards of 150$ when you can even buy it.
from the wikipedia page on him which is also the text on the back of the book:
>Konrad Bayer was an Austrian writer and poet. A member of the Wiener Gruppe, he combined apparently irreconcilable elements—violence, hermeticism, pessimism, ecstasy, banality—and influences (dadaism, surrealism, pataphysics, Wittgenstein, Stirner, Sade et al.)—into a bizarre linguistic solipsism which has held increasing fascination for German writers of the last few decades.
>>7574584
I'm sold. Is there an epub floating around?
>>7574200
Part of me backs this.
>>7574180
im an anarchocapitalist, cyberpunk catholic, NEET PUA scholar and aspiring polyamorous pansexual
>>7574564
that would be pretty cool, but unfortunately the ways things are going the future is either all out thermonuclear holocaust or a totalitarian pseudo-feudal system run by transgendered elite of sillicon valley cunts. imagine buzzfeed meets 1984.
>>7574599
I found these 2 links but you need to make an account to download or read both of them and
they may cost money to make an account or it might be free idk I didn't try making one, feel free try though
http://www.bestbooklibrary.com/signup?b=1&ad_domain=ads.ad-center.com&ad_path=/smart_ad/display&prod=147&ref=5030419&q=Selected-Works-Paperback&seed=3955207888&sf=books_newdesign&utm_source=wealthybooks.work&utm_medium=referral&placement=wealthybooks.work&adserver=0.17.0-rc5&m=books&sid=293&bt=1452565289204&bh=1831038835
http://www.download-genius.com/download-k:Selected+works+of+Konrad+Bayer+Konrad+Bayer.pdf.html?aff.id=2338&aff.subid=81
>>7574640
top kek, the scary thing is that what you describe probably isn't that far from being true, I just saw this article today that is sort of related
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/01/feminism-a-neo-con-tool/
>>7574640
>a totalitarian pseudo-feudal system run by transgendered elite of sillicon valley cunts. imagine buzzfeed meets 1984.
I want off this ride. I'd literally rather live under a fierce theocracy.
>>7574690
>As soon as the radical left pose the slightest threat to the neo-con establishment, an army of feminists can be relied upon to run a concerted campaign to undermine any progress the left wing might make.
>>7574707
There's this thing going on in Syria. But you gotta go before it's too late or else the trannies will get you
>>7574670
Hm, I don't know about those. The best I could find about Konrad Bayer anyway was a /lit/ post from around three months ago asking why surrealist literature is so secretive lol
>>7574729
I'm Brazilian, trannies don't scare me.
>>7574730
Just buy it on amazon for the 44$ desu. You can literally read it, photocopy it for later reading and then resell it on amazon and make a profit.
There is one other copy for 44 and then the price jumps to 80$ so at the very least you will make all the money back that it costed + shipping and then 20 or 30 dollars on top of that.
>>7574754
Great proposal but I don't have the disposable income to be making those kinds of investments right now.
>>7574763
one day...
>>7574786
Well, I changed my mind, bit the bullet, and bought it. You better not have been memeing me.
>>7574426
How does Star Wars capture this?
>>7574839
I wasn't, it is really good, I hope you like it anon.
>>7574582
i remember the midget bombmaker but I honestly thought that book was terrible.
>>7574180
And my literary opinion is that HOD is literally the best book of all time.
Also, postmodernism is a bad thing and people who think that's a pleb opinion are smug pseudointellectuals. I actually really like the lit, pinecone is fun to read, but the whole 'its all subjective/relative xd' thing, while it may be true, is cancerous and needs to die.
>>7575015
sorry i dont browse lit often, but what is HOD
>>7574191
Are you me
>>7574191
david k lewis pls go
>>7574476
what about interiority necessitates a diarrhea style that doesn't ape interiority as much as it makes interiority way too prominent, more than it is in reality.
it's not like in smash bros or mario cart where each character has strengths and weaknesses which go up and down with time
Literature proper (literary fiction) is a pointless distraction for broken people.
Their wincing would better be ameliorated by real love, good works, true compassion—almost anything else would be better than to immerse yourself in an echo chamber of unhappiness.
Nothing I've ever read since has ever even come close to the heights of emotion and passion that I felt when I first encountered literature, with 100% naivete, a long time ago. I read shit like Redwall and Silverwing, and I felt deep currents of emotion that time has subsequently hardened me & made me totally insensible to. Why bother anymore?
The feeling I got at the end of Mosstree is impossible to put into words. I grieved for a character who died in silverwing, I wrote shitty naruto fanfiction, I was really in the world, elbow deep in it, and I think that it felt good when I found a book that was really amazing.
Now what? Now I read the supreme achievements of world literature with bleary, disconnected eyes (not pity, just so someone else can maybe understand). It's all above me, I'm too stupid to stomach or to understand it or even to pay attention. Nothing connects, nothing builds a bridge of empathy between me and the dead page in front of me. So characters live, so characters die, so fucking what? It's all behind a sheet of glass: worthy things are impossible to take hold of and the world is in an irrevocable cultural decline. This is the time to sell, not the time to buy.
The only things that light up anything are Kafka and Borges, and I only enjoy them because the things they write are very short (no patience anymore, autistic disconnection from long-term involvement with people), and the prose is very enjoyable. The funny thing is that I read them in translation, so the only reason that I read anything at all is because it's short. I have to save time
I only come here to fill up time in my life. I lurk & shitpost, but I never read anything. I hate reading. I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy anything. But I don't want to die. Anyway, like I said, my opinion is that literary fiction is trash. We don't need it. It doesn't light the way, it doesn't rescue us from the dark. It can't even put us in the page, or distract us from certain permanent unhappinesses. It's just dead words.
It's just like Kafka said: "One who doesn't know how to help should be quiet."
>>7574438
>>7574564
>>7574460
This is intriguing, which kind of surrealist experience would be possible in VR? And, do you mean VR with the Oculus Rift or something wlaw yet to come?
>>7576782
I was the guy who wrote >>7574460.
>which kind of surrealist experience would be possible in VR?
That's the thing. Technically, anything and everything the writer/creator can dream up. Oculus Rift and Steam VIVE and all the rest are simply first generation. There's plenty yet to come. I imagine entire rooms in people's houses devoted to VR experiences, but that's still probably a few decades off.
>>7574180
I like Stephen King
>>7574306
I fucking can't stand Virginia Wolf.
>>7575591
I agree with 90% of this. I "enjoy" most of the things I read, but in a disconnected, hazy, way. The last time I felt something after reading a book was when I read Stoner (and Borges usually, as well) about a year ago.
But I still think lit fiction is mostly worthwhile. Just because you/I don't connect emotionally to it doesn't mean there's nothing to be gleaned from it.
>I don't enjoy anything
And that's the crux of this whole thing, it's less to do with any value fiction has than with our inability to actually enjoy and become immersed in what we do.
i think hemingway only wrote one good short story and nothing else of value. whitman wasn't a good poet, latinists are shit tier classicists. aristotle was a hack. nominalists (speaking of mathematics here) are fucking retarded. salinger is easily top ten american canon but he will be forever remembered by the shittiest work he put out. lenin was a fucking idiot. beckett deserves a spot next to joyce. japanese literature is trash. all of it. the island has not produced a single thought.
i immediately dismiss anyone who says the words 'objectively', 'lifestyle', 'cuck' and anyone who is a proponent of reproduction, straight-edge, cocaine, prudishness, medieval studies, tribalism, memes, vanguardism, cars, travelling, meditation and anarchist politics as incurable retards and not sentient enough to be considered 'people'. i hope anyone who comes to 4chan kills themselves, very sincerely.
i feel a lot better now. thanks op
>>7576904
was gonna completely dismiss you as an objective lifestyle cuck until you said
>japanese literature is trash. all of it. the island has not produced a single thought.
now you're kinda okay. oh and you should try cocaine before you kill yourself for coming to 4chan.
>>7576928
i have tried cocaine. nothing special. it's for poor people.
i'm not gonna kill myself because i like my life, but i hope i do because i'm not a good person and my existence makes everyone else's life just a little bit more miserable.
>>7576947
it's certainly made mine more miserable. good luck.
>>7575591
>>7576860
I find that having a "sub-hobby" in literature helps.
For example, I'm really interested in turn of the last century science fiction. Being pre-atomic era, it has a lot of ideas that are so obsolete that they are entirely new concepts to me. You have authors writing about glass shells around the world that hold in the ozone, men shrinking so small that atoms become universes, etc. It's great stuff and a real treat to read.
Find stuff like that to make you happy. Wikipedia categories and Gutenberg l, along with Google books, are real friends here.
If you don't enjoy your hobby, there's no point. Don't fear genre fiction, friends.
>>7574217
I don't think so, he doesn't behave like a trauma-victim very much. And at the end I got the feeling that his nihilistic convictions go much deeper, and that he held them all his life.
The one thing I do think is that he was suffering from heatstroke while killing the Arab.
>>7574301
He definitely was, but he is ignored by the academia because the overarching topic he chose for his works, the great manichean good vs evil, is boring, so they don't care about his qualities as a worldbuilder and author of epic fiction.
>>7576802
>I imagine entire rooms in people's houses devoted to VR experiences, but that's still probably a few decades off.
I love this. Some sort of audience integration to surreal narratives. Do you see them as narratives though? Maybe it would work better with something, shorter, evocative, possibly mind fucky.
Now I remember this prototype Microsoft had where the living room was inundated by particles and other stuff from the games, maybe its a beginning.
I can only hope there is a way to loose the goggles and integrate a localised vaporiser to chemically alter the perception of time.
>>7574180
being gay makes you more articulate
>>7577162
[citation needed]
>>7574607
Since you seemed to have actually meant it: which female authors makes you think that?
>>7577156
That's the problem. You're trying to define it. There will be narratives. There will be mind fucky. There will be simply submersion into an environment. There will be choose your own adventure. There will be all of it. Everything you can think of. Mostly sex.
The Microsoft thing you're thinking of is the Hololens. There are other people who think that concept will extend even further and become contacts. So everything and everywhere will be that. I believe that's the concept behind the company Google just bought called Magic Leap.
There are others who further think that, eventually, your eyeballs will just be replaced. That the only thing we need, technically, to make us human is the brain. That everything else can be replaced. But that's way, way off and along the lines of Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity.
>>7577174
It's science. They do all that cock sucking so, naturally, their highly developed tongue muscles make them more articulate. That's why the lisp developed. Sort of a gay rebellion against the supreme articulation they evolved.
>>7577193
>You're trying to define it.
I don't know, mostly I'm trying to see which is the connection between VR and surrealism you guys made in the other couple of posts (and psychedlics). How is it that surrealist texts will be better appreciated because of the introduction of VR?
I know very little about both so maybe thats why the relation between the two eludes me.
And for the record I would only go as far as the contact lenses, the hardcore transhumanist dreams are 2spooky for me.
>>7577251
>How is it that surrealist texts will be better appreciated because of the introduction of VR?
I think the experience of being immersed in something surreal will be more accessible to someone experiencing it rather than imagining it while reading about it. Done well, it'll almost feel like a conscious dream. Reading something surreal now, is difficult for people to do because they might not have ever experienced anything like the author is describing, so they literally don't know what to do or how to process the information in their mind. I think experiencing it in a VR environment will almost force the average person to be more open to or be able to understand a surreal experience better than if they were reading about something they've never experienced or are unable to imagine.
>the hardcore transhumanist dreams are 2spooky for me.
And I agree with what the other guy said up top. There will be backlash for sure. People will actively reject it, and possibly form Amish-esque communities that reject VR on principle.
>>7574180
I think suspense is a useless cheapening tool. I don't mind not knowing what happens right up front, but twists are better appreciated when they are somewhat expected. The author likely knew what would be happening and therefore wrote the beforehand with the emotions of a person that lived through the twist. I think it adds to be able to dip into that same emotion when reading the leadup to the next big event in a novel.
i stopped reading "catch 22" 1/3 the way through when i realized it was going to be that way for the rest of the novel
>>7578945
literally high school-tier
Poetry is a higher art form than prose, and anyone who pretends to like literature but reads almost exclusively prose is an eternal plebeian.
>>7576904
>japanese literature is trash. all of it.
What about Taruho Inugaki? I was looking forward to reading a novel of his called A Thousand One-Second Stories. Have you read that?
>>7574502
Possibly with Top Trumps, an english children's game. Or maybe that was named for trump cards.
You could just google it if you cared.
>>7574180
The canon is nothing more than a critical best guess, and as books become more and more culturally ubiquitous, the 'test of time' becomes an essentially useless as a measure of quality.
Pre-d&d fantasy is a perfectly valid aesthetic movement, but fantasy released after D&D and the whole 'nerd scene' codified and commercialised the tropes is a product sold to philistines who don't know any better.
