/lit/ - Literature

I think cheese on toast

I think sneed on boats

Harry Potter is the best Young Adult series ever written (Keep in mind LOTR and Narnia are not "young adult", so don't compare them)
and it deserves its success. And no, it wasn't successful because of witchcraft or childhood wish fulfillment, it's because readers recognized the hero's journey and Mythological framework on a subconscious level. Rowlings actually created an entire secret world within our own rather than the cliche "empty fields/city after city lol" that pervades so much classical fantasy.
Anyone who argues with me must also argue with these tits.

Foucault is 100% right

1) Shakespeare was great, not the greatest. He wrote a lot of garbage but we ignore those plays or pretend they are great because it's Shakespeare, so why would you argue? I don't care how many uni professors/brainwashed students scream about it. And yes, I'm a Wagner fag
2) Philip K Dick is better than Kafka
3) Hemmingway and Steinbeck sucked my fat balls
4) Cormac McCarthy seems unintelligent. He is all style and knows how to use an interesting $10 word on occasion. That's it.
5) David Eddings > Tolkien
6) People on here only like Dying Inside because they relate to the MC (and title)
7) Peter F Hamilton deserves a lot more recognition because he is the GOAT of Space Opera

Philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Stimer, and Sarte were only miserable because they were either ugly or couldn't get laid. They are not worth taking seriously. Same goes for authors like Houellebecq and Ligotti.

>>19526804
the idea of the sublime is a shitty way to judge to explain aesthetics

Death of the author is true

>>19526804
>I think Dune goes down hill as soon as Paul experiences prescience
That's not unpopular at all. Focusing on a generic "chosen one" plot (though intentionally subverted) is boring in a universe as interesting as DUNE's. I mean, the biggest and coolest thing in that sci-fi setting is how people still fight with swords and shit because of shields and lasguns, and YET the VAST majority of the novel has no shield fighting because they're on Arrakis, the ONE planet where giant worms will kill you if a use a shield. It's a huge meme.

>>19527014
I agree.
>That's not unpopular at all
But I'm referring to the series. Dunefags love their prescient "I can't see now because it's inconvenient for the plot" powers. I'd prefer the powers from Cronenberg's Scanners to what Herbert came up with.

Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's best play. Troilus and Cressida filters plebs. Othello is overrated shit with plot holes.

>>19526804
I sort of agree with you anon but I’d like to be proven wrong.
>>19526878
1)No he’s the greatest
2)Can’t say
3)Steinbeck no, Hemingway maybe
4)Wrong
5)Wrong
6)I never read it, wouldn’t recognize it if it was being discussed
7)No that’s Gene Wolfe
I appreciate you posting legit unpopular opinions anon.

>>19526840
Yeah, YA/kidlit is 99% shit. I tried reading Fablehaven but it was so uninspired and poorly paced.
>>19527114
>Responding to unpopular opinions with with basic bitch opinions in a thread for unpopular opinions.
>>19526941
Add Freud and Hume

Twilight has decent writing and is the best vampire shit since Dracula. Fuck Anne Rice.

>>19526878
I've read more Shakespeare than like 90% of /lit/, and the more stuff I read, the more I'm convinced that the essence of Shakespeare can be boiled down to just Hamlet and maybe like 2 dozen sonnets. The rest is completely skippable.

>>19527235
I've read and watched every play (BBC adaptions from the 80s/90s) except Two Noble Kinsman, and I've come to the conclusion that most of it is shit: Two Gentleman of Verona, Merry Wives of Windsor, The Henry VI trilogy, Timons, Merchant of Venice, etc. Even well loved shit like Much Ado About Nothing feels like Hallmark bullshit.
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth are the three plays I'd recommend, which also happen to be considered his best.

OK. Time to rustle some jimmies.

>Poetry is superior to prose in nearly every conceivable way. Crafting a well-written sonnet takes more work than a 300 page novel.
>Paradise Lost is better than all of Shakespeare combined.
>Proust is the only prose writer that is an honorary poet and I consider In Search of Lost Time to be an epic poem in blank verse.
>There has not been a single legit honest to god 10/10 work of literature in nearly 100 years.
>There is not a single work of "literature" written by a woman or a non-white that is above a 7/10

>>19527258
Macbeth never really did it for me. It's really short and the action seems really rushed. Also there's no really huge showstopper soliloquys like there are in Hamlet and Lear.

>>19527264
>There has not been a single legit honest to god 10/10 work of literature in nearly 100 years.

Curious as to what you think was the last 10/10 piece of literature anon

>>19527291
Proust. Maybe The Magic Mountain.

>>19527264
So when do you start listing the unpopular opinions?

>>19527308
For the plebs on /lit/ these are unpopular opinions, but based that you agree.

Genre fiction is better than literary. The purpose of reading fiction is for the characters and plot, which moves at a snails pace in lit fic.

>>19527141
>Implying people don’t want their unpopular opinions responded to

The Rainbow is a slog and doesn’t deserve the praise it gets. It’s interesting for around 60 pages, but then it devolves into derivative romantic naval gazing. Not sure why anyone would subject themselves to it when the monotony of the English countryside has been done better and more interestingly by other authors. Lawrence should’ve stuck to poetry

>>19527363
>Implying someone wants a response with the NPC checklist of lit opinions

>>19526804

I think most philosophers are just kidding

>>19526941

Nah. It's more that if you have dependents like a wife and children you are obligated to avoid controversy. A sign of poor character is the inability to enjoy solitude and a feeling of pain or longing when one stops to reflect or think carefully. And to be easily influenced by pleasure and pain.

>>19527646
Marx too

I think Dune loses steam when Paul, blind, wanders off into the desert. Dune without Paul just didn't feel like Dune. I tried reading Children of Dune but I just couldn't give a shit about his kids. Also the planet was being terraformed, so it quite literally no longer felt like Arrakis, hence no longer Dune.

>>19528021
Hebert had to milk that cash cow

>>19528021
it all leads to God Emperor. Your loss.

Dune is utter shit.

>>19526804
Blood meridian is terrible. I could have dealt with all the edginess and the joker tier monologues by the judge if it had gone for something ambiguous with the ending but the deal was sealed before the man even entered the town, so all I was left with was a meandering edgefest with lukewarm takes on human nature and whatnot. No wonder it's so popular here

>>19526941
You've probably never read Houellebecq, and only know him for his one book with a proto-incel protagonist. He talks about modernity and is an empathic soul, he's not lost into it. He has a wife and have had a ton of pussy. It's true that he can be considered ugly, especially now that he's an old man after decades of vices.

>>19528172
I am 70 pages in and waiting to be impressed.

>>19526941
If anything that makes them more critical reading about the harsh nature of social capital. On the contrary, beautiful people who produce works should also be discounted in this extreme because people would be too busy sucking their genitals to pay attention to the merits of the work.

Not sure if this is popular or not, but Bloom was a philistine jew who was wrong every 2 out of 3 times he said anything. He was a shit writer with no originality (tried to copy Voyage to Arcturus) and failed like so many critics before and after.

>>19528307
Whatever
>The protagonist, known only as "Our Hero" during the entirety of the story, lives a solitary life, and has not had sex for over two years. Within most of the book and film versions of Whatever, Our Hero draws on recollections of Schopenhauer and Kant to lambast the commodification of human contact, punctuating his inner monologue with bouts of nausea and masturbation.
Atomised
>the narrative focuses almost exclusively on the bleak and unrewarding day-to-day lives of the protagonists, two half-brothers who barely know each other. They seem devoid of love, and in their loveless or soon-to-be loveless journeys, Bruno becomes a saddened loner, wrecked by his upbringing and failure to individuate, while Michel's pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. Humans are proved, in the end, to be just particles and just as bodies decay (a theme in the book) they can also be created from particles.
Possibility of an island
>Daniel is a successful comedian who can't seem to enjoy life despite his wealth. He gets bored with his hedonist lifestyle, but can't escape from it either. In the meanwhile he is disgruntled with the state of current society, and philosophizes about the nature of sex and love.
Yeah, Houellebecq sounds like a box of fucking sunshine.

>>19527344
based

>>19526878
>He wrote a lot of garbage but we ignore those plays or
Dude. You forgot about the sonnets

>>19526941
Beautiful people can't be miserable on the same level as ugly people can. And it is in that truest, filthiest and most hopeless sense of miserable that true art and Beauty arises.

point = disproven

>>19526969
Not true. You've literally never read good poetry if you say that. When the sublime is good it's so good you don't even know it's there. It's like a psychedelic experience, constantly teetering on the edge of real-unreal. That's where the beauty, where the magic lies.

>>19527014
>>19527071
You guys are totally missing out on the philosophical/psychological/Terrence Malick-y implications of prescience. the concept of destiny is beautifully fleshed out in the book, how it all makes sense and binds into this kind of reverse feedback loop.. it's not all just about shiny trinkets

>>19526878
It's nice to see that you truly adhered to the thread topic and had the guts to stand for what you believe — even when you are almost entirely wrong.

>>19527014
I mean, enjoy your swords, worms, and shields, and I'll take the story section for me.

>>19527098
The Tempest is a good time.

>>19526804
If Algernon Blackwood wrote anything other than genre fiction he would be considered one tier below Twain, Conrad and Henry James.
His writing style is excellent but no academic or critic will give him too much praise because he wrote about wendigos, ghosts and extra-dimensional spooks that haunt the Danube

>>19527264
>There has not been a single legit honest to god 10/10 work of literature in nearly 100 years.
Can you name the last dozen 10/10 works written? Not challenging you, I just want to read what a guy with such high standards considers 10/10

>>19528584
Shakespeare has a handful of genius plays, a bunch of middling plays, and a handful of shit. Tempest is fine.

>>19528174
Too much going on and none of it is explained well.

>>19528021
You'll forget about Paul by the time you start God Emperor of Dune. He is so minor in comparison.

>>19526941
Hollebqued has a beautiful wife

>>19526804
Haruki Murakami is a good writer

>>19528681
Houllebecq is pretty good-looking for a French dude

>>19526804
Good writing and prose is easily accomplished by the application of metaphor. Nearly all modern writers don't understand metaphor and this is why most writing sucks dick, including yours.

>>19526941
Bro, Stiner married twice. His first wife died in childbirth and his second left after he stole all her assets, nothing there says "lack of pussy" to me.

>>19526941
>Schopenhauer
Wasn’t he good looking as a young dude

>>19526941
Incel ideology + (You) farming. Never fails.

>>19528681
Post your receding chin

>>19527141
>Freud
He was literally married and made a power move by deciding not to fuck his wife anymore once he passed 40 so that he could redirect his libido to his work. Retard.
Hume was popular in high society with thots all over him trying to get intellectual clout. Retard.

>>19526941
>all this incel seethe
Good job

This was posted as a joke but I believe it to be true. Mishima/DFW both ride the line between being popular/meme on here so maybe siding hard on one side of that is just controversial...shitting on DFW on one of his threads seems to stoke mostly derision though.

>>19530253
Serotonin was good. I think he just filters libtards.

A book above 500 pages isn’t worth reading.

>>19531882
im a little mad

>>19528278
You're just retarded and didn't get it anon

Here's mine:
1) Watchmen is literature
2) The Count Of Montecristo is too long. Read the "abridged version"
3) reading translated poetry is a waste of time.
4) Ulysses is not that hard. Only proteus, oxen of the sun and penelope are "incomprehensible"
5) if you listen to an audiobook, YES! You can say you read the book.

>>19527258
>Romeo and Juliet
>considered his best
Most people would put, in addition to Hamlet and Macbeth, put Othello and Lear above R&J, and there are others like The Tempest and Julius Caesar that are on the same level of acclaim as R&J. R&J is only so well known compared to his other plays because it's very commonly read in high school English classes.

>>19530617
>>19530676
>t. doomer seething faggots

>>19532379
I agree with one, and also add Akira and Berserk. I also agree with five.
>>19526804
>Pre-2005 Sci-fi is not worth reading because of how shit the writers were at predicting technology.
(Snow Crash is an exception) If you read Sci-fi for the prose, you're a moron. Also, Sci-fi films are better than Sci-fi lit
>Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling have some of the best prose in literature. They are leagues above F Scott Fitzgerald.
>If something is obscure/not in the public discussion, it probably isn't worth reading.
>Rowling and Madeleine L'Engle are better writers than Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula K Le Guin.

There are approximately 300 series better than Dune, Hyperion Cantos, Book of the New Sun, and Foundation.

Mine: Paradise Lost is the greatest work of literature ever written and it's not close. Nothing you can argue as a contender comes close. It is so bafflingly far ahead of everything else that has ever been written that I don't think it will ever be beaten. I know liking it isn't unpopular, but I think it's underrated.

>>19526804
Dune goes downhill as soon as you open it.

>>19526840
You arrived at the correct answer but with faulty logic. Harry Potter isn't the only thing to do a hidden world hero's journey, but it's one of the only things to make a billion dollars doing it, so you need to look for another reason.

>>19526878
>Cormac McCarthy seems unintelligent. He is all style and knows how to use an interesting $10 word on occasion. That's it.
Jesus christ
Good pick for a bad opinion though.

>>19527114
>Wolfe
>space opera
That's not even an unpopular opinion, that's just wrong.

>>19527264
>Crafting a well-written sonnet takes more work than a 300 page novel.
Different type of work, not comparable.

>>19532379
>reading translated poetry is a waste of time
Seems to be a very popular opinion on here. Why do you think so many people post about language?

>>19533714
>series
Curious to know what that includes. What's a favorite series of yours?

>>19532383
>Most people would put, in addition to Hamlet and Macbeth, put Othello and Lear above R&J,
I don't. Othello relies on everyone other than Iago to be naive or retarded, especially Iago's dumb cunt wife. Lear is a bore without Edmund. Caesar is mostly famous for et tu brute and Antony's speech, but the entire play is skippable. The Tempest is fine, but some of the comedic moments are the most retarded I've read/seen in a Shakespeare play.
Romeo and Juliet is considered one of the best romance stories ever written. Even Taylor Swift made a song about it, and I don't think that brainlet knows what King Lear is or The Tempest is. It is taught in school because of how relevant it is.

>>19528568
I had to force myself to finish that horrendous sonnet. Are you baiting us? Most of you pretentious ”poetry so good i cry all day reading shakespeare” haven’t experienced life and therefore has nothing to compare with, to and against.

There is no magic in words, only those spoken by a woman lusting for you.

There is also nothing quite so real as real life, proving my point you have never done anything of value

>>19533759
>Curious to know what that includes. What's a favorite series of yours?
3 or more installments. Dragonriders of Pern, Culture series, The Expanse, Xeelee Sequence, etc.
Btw you expressed a very popular opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IskEx0tgoo4

>>19533782
My opinion is that the idea that there's a "debate" is ridiculous because. Also, lots of people like to shit on Shakespeare everywhere. I'm saying that there's nothing that comes close, from any author, forever. Also, I know this is an unpopular opinion thread, but
>Pern
lol

>>19533819
*because it's so not close
don't know where the text went

>>19533819
But the fact that its debated means it is considered high quality. If you had said (random example) Neuromancer is the greatest work of literature, THAT would be unpopular.

>>19526875
Based and true
Same goes for Baudrillard

>>19527264
>>There is not a single work of "literature" written by a man or a white person that is above a 7/10
FTFY

>>19530247
That's a popular opinion. Isn't he the most well known author in Japan?

>>19526804
I think Heidegger spoke nonsense and his philosophical treatise is trash. Heidegger depicted himself as a relevant nazi functionary, but the harsh truth is that even other nazi officials considered him inferior and deep down Heidegger knew it. But I really feel compassion for him

>>19527002
Death of the Author is false and also kind of evil.

>>19526804
I never read dune because the only fictional book worth reading is LOTR. I did however go watch it in cinemas and I left as soon as Paul’s dad got killed by the Jaba the hut dude. Like wtf? Paul’s dad is hot af?

>>19526804
Popular opinion: Dune isn't good

>>19526941
I wouldn't mind if they wrote purely out of frustration and misery, but the biggest issue with these writers is that they were not intelligent enough to write philosophy. Schopenhauer was obviously the brightest out of the ones listed but still not cutting it.

There's not a single good opinion in this thread.

>>19526875
I've unironically been thinking a lot about his concept of biopower in regards to pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates. Forcing people to jab something into their arm in order to be allowed to live a normal life is about the purest example of biopower you could come up with. Have there been any thinkers in the post-structuralist left who have commented on this, or are they all just finding excuses to go along with the mainstream because people who criticize the lockdown are "chuds"?

>>19533759
Paradise Regained > Paradise Lost

There is no worthwhile black or New World Spanish language literature. All the former can speak about his race, of which nothing new has been said since the conclusion of slavery.

>>19528370

Shakespeare's comedies are better than his tragedies. They are constructed better, have more fleshed out characters, and the poetry serves the play rather than the other way around
Blood Meridian is badly written, even Cormac knows this, which is why he stopped writing in that style
Jane Austen is the best English language novelist and it isn't particularly close

I think revelation already happened.

>>19535409

DIMZ MAH CALVINS AHHHHH

>>19526804
Well, I think your fuckin mom goes down on me cause my balls are full of pee science.

>>19526941
Schopenhauer bucked

>>19526804
Blood Meridian is overrated and doesn't deserve the praise

>>19534990
I don’t keep up to date on modern thinkers but I think Foucault would have criticized those in power, regardless of the political affiliations. I wonder what he would say about present day American culture and politics?

>>19535409
I agree. I dare any black or latin/Mestizo to write something like Alice in Wonderland without mentioning skin color once. They can't do it.

If you listened to an audiobook you have not read the book

>>19526804
Cormac McCarthy is the greatest writer since Shakespeare.

>>19536376
He stopped writing in that style because none of his later books demand it.

>>19534731
based and truth
>>19534491
>the only fictional book worth reading is LOTR.
If you mean genre fiction, the I agree, but there is a lot of literature worth reading.
>>19526804
Asian epics such as Mahabarata and Journey to the West mog epic poems/lit from the rest of the world. Asian lit generally mogs the rest of the world. Hell, even something like The Three Body Problem manages to be some of the greatest genre fiction of the last thirty years.
As far as the western world goes, Greg Egan is the greatest living Sci-fi writer and China Miéville's fantasy BTFO Gaiman and all those other hacks.

>>19526804
Metaphysics is just conceited ignorance and Wittgenstein was right about the fact that language means nothing outside the minds of the people that use it, and that as a result philosophy is a dead subject. I don't care that he was an autistic perv, the argument doesn't suffer because of the person that made it.

Nabokov's style is awful. It comes off as entirely artificial