What's wrong with reading non-literary or 'middle brow' writers /lit/?
>>7843793
Pollutes the mind just like pornography or mind-altering substances.
>>7843834
>he doesn't consider literature a mind-altering substance
back to /r9k/, kid
>>7843834
i have something to tell you about some of your favourite writers anon
are you seated?
>>7843845
Most authors outside of Kant are degenerate, I recognize this. As long as I'm not reading biographical works, and therefore cannot recognize them as similar to myself, I'll be fine.
Literary fiction sucks.
>>7843861
Do you really think anyone could write Critique of Pure Reason without amphetamines and coke?
>>7843861
Are you redpilled and against race mixing and having women choose their own sexual partners like me?
>>7843882
I'm against race mixing because I'm against all sexual contact. I am in my mid 30s, virginal, celibate, and I do not masturbate or expose myself to erotic material.
>>7843907
Spooky
>>7843867
Being a contrarion doesn't make you smart.
>>7843984
He read A Confederacy of Dunces and found Ignatius inspiring rather than merely a comic figure
Nothing, Murakami is great.
>>7843879
Believe it or not some people have talent.
>>7843793
It's hard to find anything wrong with most things if you're not autistic. So you came to the right place to ask that question.
>>7843907
Name some of your favourite authors, fiction and non-fiction.
>>7843793
waste of time, you could be reading better authors and improving yourself. But it's totally acceptable if that isn't your goal, or if you're reading casually in your downtime. Just as long as you don't get too dedicated to the point of obsession, it's a fine hobby
>>7843793
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>7845794
Thank you
THANK YOU
>>7845794
This is my favorite /lit/ pasta.
>bought a couple of King books ages ago
>seeing that giant-ass KING on my bookshelf pisses me off a bit
God damn.
>>7845794
i love the way HAROLD BLOOM still has to BUY a copy of harry potter
murika
>>7845794
The word "stretched" is used 7 times total in Philosopher's Stone; almost always in the context of "stretched out" or "out stretched". "Stretched his legs" is in there zero times.
In the rest of the series:
Chamber of Secrets: "stretched" is used 10 times.
Prisoner of Azkaban : 18 times
Goblet of Fire: 25 times roughly I wasn't paying attention. The Sphinx "stretched out her legs" once in this which is the closest match to the original string.
Order of the Phoenix: Just 2 instances of "stretched".
>>7845826
it doesn't negate the fact that harry potter is not literature
>>7845826
Rowling had me as a kid, but the second she started having Harry scream at people WITH THE CAPS LOCK KEY FOREVER TOGGLED she lost me.
>>7845828
>doesn't negate
Whee-ooo-whee-ooo! Double negative alert! You mean it does gate the fact that Harry Potter is not literature.
So my not having read anything by King is a good thing?
Whew, what a bullet dodged that was.
>>7845839
If you care what people on an internet forum think, yeah. Most of his stuff is pretty shit but I think 'IT' is worth reading, and perhaps 'Salem's Lot' if you want a standard vampire story.
>>7845836
what the fuck
>>7845794
Bloom posting is the new THICK
>>7843793
>Stephen King
>middlebrow
Middlebrow = Pulitzer winners. King is solidly lowbrow
>>7846278
Who are the best middlebrow authors? Does Ishiguro fall under that? Because I like him and would like more to read like it.
>>7843907
Same, only I'm 20. I'm an apprentice, you see, I'm not a wizard yet, but I have potential.
>>7844319
I second this. There is nothing wrong, but then you might get stuck on the same reading level all your life and not want to get out of it.
>>7846665
>tfw enjoy Fantasy / SciFi series genre shit as well as Ulysses and other literary books
Maximum pleasure desu
"middle brow" lit is made completely redundant by "good" lit.
Superficial. Unnecessary. Wasteful. etc.
>>7845823
Sell it.
>>7846674
Eh not really, entertainment+literary values combined > impenetrable literary book. Both have their places
When people say non-literary are those books without a message and are just for entertainment? So a book like 1984 would be literary?
>>7845710
Favorite by far is Kant.
Otherwise, I'm fan of Tolstoy and Proust. I like Melville's style in Moby Dick but I haven't read any of his other works.
>>7845836
nah m8 you can't parse
>>7846628
Junot Diaz, Anthony Doerr, Franzen and shit. Ishiguro wins real awards and might get a Nobel one day.
>>7843793
This my philosophy, if the author is talented and has good form I don't really give what the fuck it is, as long as it's good.
There is plenty of fiction that seems middle brow until you read it and you realize how well written it is, also books are fun people seem to forget that. FUN. F.U.N.
>>7843834
You're a faggot
>>7843867
You're a fag too, nice.
>>7845794
I know this is a pasta but people are always going to be dumb no matter what generation, that doesn't mean there is great literary fiction out there that gets passed by both idiots and people who think they are too smart for it.
>>7843793
>'middle brow'
>posts king
>>7843837
Ofc it does, but it pollutes with good things
So Serious Fiction is the only fiction worth reading?
