Share your most contrarian literary opinions
there has been no "great writer" yet. literature is just now approaching its golden age.
>>8227277
Nice pepe, my dude
Tao Lin inspires his readers to live kinder and more deliberate lives.
Wallace Stevens is a better poet than Shakespeare
http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm
Symbolism is usually retarded
>>8227277
Vonnegut is shit.
Lovecraft is shit.
Probably not too crazy of a think to say here. But Reddit would probably hang me
the lost generation were mostly trash writers
english and american literature in the 19th century was trash (yes, waltman, keats, shelley, twain, austen, all trash)
hippolytus was a bitch in hippolytus
the greek comedians aren't worth the effort to read in the original
journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
romances are all trash (as in the kind of shit medievalists study)
no one has even come close to shakespeare, before and after
you're wasting your time with literature if you're mono- or bilingual
the overrepresentation of japanese literature in this board is a symptom of weebs and hipsters fetishizing the japanese, it's more often than not trash
tolkien was a shit writer
the new testament isn't particularly well-written
contemporary literature is fine, you just don't read enough
Edgy is the new boring.
>>8227337
not gonna bite
just gonna sage
Narnia books aren't "based" at all. Most contemporary YA lit is better-written and much more thematically complex.
>>8227357
i was sincere but not exhaustive, there should be asterisks next to almost all lines. what rustled you specifically?
>>8227384
Your stupidity, mostly.
I think that extremely idiosyncratic and complicated novels like Gravity's Rainbow are unreadable bores.
>>8227412
i'm gonne guess it was the weeb line that got you rustled. stay mad, pleb.
>>8227277
The Time Traveler's Wife is a beautiful novel about love conquering all, including time.
>>8227499
>Do you see what you did there?
Wait, fuck, disregard that I misread your post.
>>8227499
>Do you see what you did there?
i read a disgusting amount of romances when learning old french. i wish more were lost.
>>8227312
>uses the numeral "1" instead of the word "one"
fucking
D R O P P E D
R
O
P
P
E
D
There is nothing inherently wrong with "edginess"
>>8227337
rec cont lit lad
the aesthetics of writing are more important than content
>>8227573
same
the stranger a terrible novel/la
Genre fiction can be just as good as literary fiction.
And often is. Everyone hates it so much on this board that I kind of grew to like it and compare it to literary works.
>>8227610
The ones that are good are no longer genre fiction. "All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one." - Walter Benjamin
>>8227466
Different anon here, and I liked your rant, but the part about the mono/bilingual thing upset me, because I feel like you're probably right.
I plan to write and teach literature, but I only know English and have passable Hebrew. Most of the books I'm reading lately are German, French, or Spanish translations.
To use bait-y terms, I'm enamored with narrative, and think I get something from translated works, but I do feel I'll never be able to appreciate everything properly. Though I think translated fiction doesn't pose as much of a difficulty as poetry does.
>>8227861
oy vey
>>8227277
Irony will destroy humanity if we let it.
>>8227337
>the new testament isn't well written
objectively wrong
>>8227337
>the lost generation were mostly trash writers
yes
>english and american literature in the 19th century was trash (yes, waltman, keats,
shelley, twain, austen, all trash)
I'm 50/50 on this
>the greek comedians aren't worth the effort to
read in the original
agreed
>journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
everyone knows this
>romances are all trash (as in the kind of shit medievalists study)
only housewives disagree
>no one has even come close to shakespeare, before and after
I thought these opinions were supposed to be contrarian?
>you're wasting your time with literature if you're mono- or bilingual
Unless you speak English.
>the overrepresentation of japanese literature in this board is a symptom of weebs and hipsters fetishizing the japanese, it's more often than not trash
yes
>tolkien was a shit writer
yes
>the new testament isn't particularly well-written
yes
>contemporary literature is fine, you just don't read enough
wrong
>>8227606
aw geez i thought it was great
I like Bret Easton Ellis' writing.
>>8227878
i read it in koine, the KJV looks better from what i've seen quoted. also, you're objectively wrong.
>>8227890
>Unless you speak English.
enjoy being a pleb
>only housewives disagree
i work with a lot of housewives.
>everyone knows this
yet hemingway, vollman and vegas johnny depp are all praised.
>wrong
aren't you a special little snowflake, born in just the right time to see a massive shift in the quality of published literature. aww.
>>8227890
>only housewives disagree
Are you implying only housewifes are medievalists or did you fail to read past the first four words?
This fucking board needs to kill threads at 7 views because it's too slow and takes 15 hours for 10
>>8227277
jack kerouac is a good writer
>>8227876
is this a contrarian opinion
>>8227985
He is.
>>8227934
welcome newfriend
>>8228247
>he doesn't know other slow boards kill threads at 7
aww honey
>>8227277
J.K. Rowling is an alright writer, and Harry Potter is decent.
>>8227287
Thanks, friendo :^)
DFW was a hack, its a joke that people regularly compare him to Joyce and Pynchon.
American Literature pre-20th century was shit.
British Literature 20th century and onwards is shit.
The writers who are widely celebrated on all levels are shit
The Crying of Lot 49 is better than V.
the new sincerity will mean that in fifty years time we'll be laughing at post-modernism in the same why that we now laugh at the dialogue in 50's movies.
Most writers who enter academia or otherwise fully devote their lives to literature don't produce anything meaningful or beautiful.
>>8228307
Harry Potter *is* decent, if you're not a try-hard wannabe "patrician." Rowling is not a good writer, but she is a pretty good storyteller.
>>8228728
>DFW was a hack, its a joke that people regularly compare him to Joyce and Pynchon.
His writing doesn't have the heart or beauty of Joyce's. He's kind of a lesser Pynchon. Pseudo-STEMfag postmodern meme men. Though Pynchon is much more clever and a better storyteller. I don't think DFW will be read in 100 years or anything but he was a good voice for Gen X and millennials. Latch key kids, etc. raised on TV and the net.
DFW was at least a talented prominent contemporary American writer who wasn't some New York Times special club immigrant story writing meme.
>American Literature pre-20th century was shit.
For the most part I agree. Although honestly pre20th lit is generally kind of dry imho, not just American.
>British Literature 20th century and onwards is shit.
True. Britain always claims to be tops in lit, although they have no modern author on the level of Pynchon, Delillo, Roth, etc.
>The writers who are widely celebrated on all levels are shit
Can you at least give examples of this. This sounds pretty edgy/hipster/contrarian
>The Crying of Lot 49 is better than V.
Holy god, why.
Kerouac and Ginsberg are great.
Slav literature (not including the Russians) is highly underrated
Journey to the End of the Night is one of the best, if not the best French novel.
Vonnegut wrote the most fun material ever, yet /lit/ hates him because reddit is obsessed with him.
>>8228761
Also, /lit/ talks to much about bad writers in general and it's the same story everytime. I've never seen Calvino or Eco discussed, Woolf is great, Shakespeare, although the greatest, is the only one mentioned in the renaissance era.
>>8228747
>His writing doesn't have the heart or beauty of Joyce's. He's kind of a lesser Pynchon. Pseudo-STEMfag postmodern meme men. Though Pynchon is much more clever and a better storyteller. I don't think DFW will be read in 100 years or anything but he was a good voice for Gen X and millennials. Latch key kids, etc. raised on TV and the net.
>DFW was at least a talented prominent contemporary American writer who wasn't some New York Times special club immigrant story writing meme.
Fair points, I agree
Britain needs a decent post-war voice that isn't entrenched in the Oxbridge establishment or who doestn't flagellate before colonialism.
Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, David Mitchell. Ian MacEwan; They're usually pleasant enough to read, but DeLillo is on another level.
Jews are terrible writers who always need to talk about bowel movements, Jewishness, and sex.
>>8228765
>Never seen Calvino or Woolf discussed
Hello newfriend.
>>8228747
So 'low culture' celebrates scandinavian detective novels, pop science and female authors of historical fiction. Hilary Mantell, Malcolm Gladwell etc.
nerd culture likes GURM and Lovecraft, the less said the better.
'geek' culture likes Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, animu. they cream themselves over anything vaguely SJW related, choosing ideology over aesthetics.
hipster culture likes Mira Gonzalez, Tao Lin and
the high culture is fixated on DFW, who isn't bad but is massively overhyped, and anything attempting to resemble his style or bred from the same ilk: Franzen, Murakami, etc
short story magazines are rammed with Creative Writing Masters students with not real life experience writing godawful stories.
Then there's the buzzfeed culture who worship Zadie Smith.
People talk about the next literary movement, the next IJ, the next masterpiece, but I think there's narrow room for it to emerge.
I seem to gripe at everything, so what do I like? Pynchon, Borges, Woolf, Joyce, Nabokov
>>8227277
Shakespeare didn't wrote his books.
>Bulgakov is better than Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
>Woolf is interesting but boring
>Cortázar is better than Bolaño
>Toni Morrison is better than McCarthy
>Salinger is better than Hemingway
>Borges is more important to spanish language literature than Don Quixote
>There is no literary science fiction, as soon as it becomes literary it sheds its sf tag
>Musil was better than Kafka
>>8227610
>And often is.
Examples bitch.
>>8228802
Can you please lose the trip?
>>8228862
>>Cortázar is better than Bolaño
not contrarian in the slightest
>>8228862
>>Bulgakov is better than Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
better than Dosto
>>Woolf is interesting but boring
everyone thinks this
>>Cortázar is better than Bolaño
decent opinion? don't think anyone cares
>>Toni Morrison is better than McCarthy
kill yourself
>>Salinger is better than Hemingway
bit of an unusual comparison, but ok?
>>Borges is more important to spanish language literature than Don Quixote
lol
>>There is no literary science fiction, as soon as it becomes literary it sheds its sf tag
agree
>>Musil was better than Kafka
no
>>8228802
congrats you're a middlebrow poser
>>8228802
>Nerds like Lovecraft, sigh, they are so inferior
>OMG LOLITA, Nabokov is so based, I also like James Joyce, I guess you've never read it
C'mon nigga, really?
>>8228896
>kill yourself
Triggered?
Smartphones are destroying the literary community.
murakami is genuinely good
most books are more enjoyable than most people give them credit for
king lear is shakespeare's objective best
>>8227277
Nietzsche stole every idea he had and lied about everything.
>>8227337
>the lost generation were mostly trash writers
Disagree, but if you made an argument that a lot of their work has been overrated because of the myth surrounding the "writer's lifestyle" (TM) they lived, then I might have agreed with you.
>english and american literature in the 19th century was trash (yes, waltman, keats, shelley, twain, austen, all trash)
Disagree on Whitman and Twain. Twain is still largely misunderstood. He was a comic.
>hippolytus was a bitch in hippolytus
Can't comment.
>the greek comedians aren't worth the effort to read in the original
Can't comment.
>journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
Wow...how contrarian of you to say that...completely out of nowhere...
>romances are all trash (as in the kind of shit medievalists study)
Yes and no. They functioned like "guides" on how to live a better life and be a better person. Chivalry and all that.
>no one has even come close to shakespeare, before and after
Agree.
>you're wasting your time with literature if you're mono- or bilingual
That's just silly.
>the overrepresentation of japanese literature in this board is a symptom of weebs and hipsters fetishizing the japanese, it's more often than not trash
100% agree.
>tolkien was a shit writer
Agree. Also, "world building" is gay.
>the new testament isn't particularly well-written
Fedora tip.
>contemporary literature is fine, you just don't read enough
Probably, but less and less are reading enough and that's the problem. There's no denying it's becoming more difficult for even the most talented to justify writing as an endeavor. That's a problem.
>>8228747
>DFW was at least a talented prominent contemporary American writer who wasn't some New York Times special club immigrant story writing meme.
Fucking thank you.
>>8229099
>>the new testament isn't particularly well-written
>Fedora tip.
the NT is trash compared to the OT.
>>8229020
>Murakami is objectively good
Only good books he wrote were 1Q84 and Kafka On The Shore
Any of the "sensitive humdrum young Japanese man who faces feels" books are TOTAL garbage
>>8227591
Do you like Gass?
>>8227610
>I only read genre fiction
>>8227876
this isn't an opinion, it's a belief.
>>8229170
>the NT is trash compared to the OT.
Well see, that I agree with. You should have said that instead. The NT's not trash, in general, but compared to the OT, then yeah, it's trash.
The "New Sincerity" movement is the best thing to happen to literature in at least 100 years, BUT (and that's a big but, as you can see), the name "New Sincerity" is objectively shit. It needs a new name. Metamodernism is my favorite so far but I'd prefer a complete break from modernism and postmodernism altogether.
>>8229255
New Romanticism
>>8227418
GR is fun as fuck to read. One of the few books to make me laugh out loud. Sure, there were difficult passages, but its worth it for shit like the Nazi-controlled octopus
>>8227282
What could we expect then
>>8229362
cactus memes
>>8227337
>journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
wow, so edgy
>>8227336
I never understood the appeal of Vonnegut either. He's got a penguin of doom vibe that I find off-putting.
>>8227606
This is just objectively wrong
>>8229255
These movements are in your head though they smell like your bowels.
>>8229894
Oof. You are in dire need of an editor.
>>8229099
>Disagree on Whitman and Twain. Twain is still largely misunderstood. He was a comic.
no, both of them were comic. they're a joke.
>Yes and no. They functioned like "guides" on how to live a better life and be a better person.
shame they were written like shit.
>Fedora tip.
i'm not an atheist. the NT is not well-written, especially when you print it next to the OT.
>Probably, but less and less are reading enough and that's the problem
a) not a problem. b) not true
>There's no denying it's becoming more difficult for even the most talented to justify writing as an endeavor.
good, then we won't have instrumentalists shitting on the medium.
>>8228791
This is simply not true...
Kafka
Cervantes
Rand
Salinger
etc...
>>8230194
>Cervantes
>Jew
What you on nigga cause that must be some good kush to say that he wasn't a cristiano viejo
>>8230194
>Cervantes
>Jewish
>Rand
>good
Is this bait, or just idiocy?
>>8228747
>DFW was at least a talented prominent contemporary American writer who wasn't some New York Times special club immigrant story writing meme.
This. Being a standard grade straight white male Christian background American author is semi-scorned these days, and Wallace is a nice reminder that we can empathize with people (I thought his portrayal of the sub-90 IQ Gately was terrific) and therefore write about circumstances with which we have no experience.
>>8230194
>Cervantes
WE
>>8229780
cause it changed your life in college and made you who you are?
>>8230194
>Cervantes Saavedra
>Jew
Fuck off.
>>8230588
>(I thought his portrayal of the sub-90 IQ Gately was terrific)
It really was terrific, wasn't it? I'm probably going to sound obnoxious and pretentious, but I thought it was incredibly impressive that a guy like Wallace can look inside the heart of a sub-literate alcoholic and extract a novel's worth of style, ethics and whatever else.
>>8227277
I genuinely hate Shakespeare
>>8227923
Only pleb here is you
>>8230621
Come on now man, be fair now. There's truth in it; it's just held up by the allegorical translationings is all. One day he'll see the point that translation bickering is something Not to be bickered about.
(2 Heads > 1. Inspired from Schopenhaur's imaginings of 2 Greeks in On Religion, in his *Essays and Aphorisms* work).
>>8227985
This. I will go ahead and extend it to,
>the Beats (at least Keruoac, Ginsberg and Burroughs) were generally talented, well educated, and produced good literature
>"fun" is a fair descriptor for literature tho of course alone it doesnt suffice to justify something as good
I like Angela Carter, Bro
senpai desu baka cuck
The Book of Disquiet is garbage and babby's first pessimism. People only read it because they don't know who Pascal, Schopenhauer, and Tolstoy are.
>>8227337
>journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
>be a kid, read my dad's copies of Time and Newsweek
>think I'm sophisticated and worldly
>years later, read contemporary news
>at best it straightforwardly conveys something that's happening, otherwise it's astoundingly shallow
To be fair we're in a dark age of journalism right now, but I don't know how big a slide it was.
Ayn Rand is shit and her philosopohy is laughable.
Nothing in the bible is true.
>>8227277
Dostoievsky didn't wrote the same characters over and over again
>>8229292
Not that anon, but that's actually a pretty great name.
>hundreds of years in the future at an art gallery
>New Romanticism section is full of Tumblr drawings
>8230212
>8230215
>8230605
>8230609
>literally implying Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, isn't Jewish
What in the hell are you fellas talking about?
>>8230726
Profoundly interesting, anon. Really makes you think.
>>8229362
only you can decide
The plot of a story should be as confusing as possible
>>8228761
Death on the installment plan is way better my dude
>>8229184
Isn't Kafka on the Shore just a story about a sensitive humdrum young Japanese man who faces feels?
>>8227337
>english and american literature in the 19th century was trash (yes, waltman, keats, shelley, twain, austen, all trash)
agree with everything else but quoted, which invalidates the legitimacy of all your other opinions
>>8227337
>journalists, in general, can't write worth shit
This is 100 percent accurate
>>8231546
>he reads low-brow publications
stay pleb, pleb
>>8231557
There are no high-brow publications today, only high-brown publications
I bet you read trash like The Nation or Paris Review
>>8231557
Journalists are the working class trash of literature m8
Stay mad
>>8227277
i've read dozens of shakespeare's poems and half a dozen of his plays and the only one i enjoyed was Macbeth
>>8231586
also his plays have bogged down the theatre for centuries in a mire that they only partially emerged from thanks to people like Ibsen and Konstantin Stanislavsky
>>8231566
>>8231580
I read the Economist and the Wall Street Journal.
>>8231542
i'm sorry that you like trash, someday you'll get over it.
>>8229395
I think it's a case of Seinfeld Is Unfunny. Plus I heard he was originally very popular with the hippy crowed and I think that explains a lot of things. You can just imagine hipsters in the 60s and 70s turning people on to this hot new irreverent writer that totally speaks to a modern crowd like us.
>>8231641
Vonnegut paved the way more than anyone for modern middlebrow lit—the kinda stuff that teens and adults like to read loads of but arent the most critically acclaimed. Vonnegut's sarcastic, sardonic style permeates everything popular or even semi-popular.
He's great because he's the OG of that
>>8231606
There's probably worse choices
>>8227336
>Vonnegut is shit.
Agree. I just finished The Sirens of Titan and it was as if KV wrote an entire book based on his hatred of the saying "somebody up there must like me," and stretched it out into a 320 page diatribe against the rich. The most distressing aspect of Vonnegut is the number of people who look at him as some beacon of atheistic morality.
>>8231653
>He's great because he's the OG of that
Being the "OG" of shit does not make you anything other than shit. Sure, you plopped into the bowl first, but you still need to be flushed.
>>8230793
>""""""contrarian""""""
>>8227337
>romances are trash
Well fuck you too
The feminists are right
Redpill is a shitty meme created by whiny white men who can't understand basic logic
Mysticism is the most important part of all religions
If you don't follow them literally, you can be a part of pretty much any religion while still keeping your beliefs scientifically plausible if you are a pantheist
>>8232129
>>8231641
>tv tropes criticism
>>8227918
Same here man.
Latin lit > Greek lit
