/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19731384]

Dante >>>>>>>>>> Shakespeare > Homer > Cervantes > Goethe > Chaucer > Milton > Tolstoy > Montaigne >Whitman > Molière > Ibsen > Wordsworth > Proust > Joyce > Dickinson > Austen > Dickens > Eliot > Woolf > Kafka > Borges > Neruda > Pessoa > Beckett

[Anonymous No.19731393]

>ahem

[Anonymous No.19731397]

Ariosto > Dante

[Anonymous No.19731400]

>>19731384
This thread is useless to me, I would delete it if I could.

[Anonymous No.19731430]

>>19731384
Cormac is top three and you are a tryhards pseud for loving ancients this much. They are boring to read and you know it you flaming faggot.

[Anonymous No.19731433]

>>19731384
Rowling is unironically better

[Anonymous No.19731437]

>>19731433
She is up there, objectively. Same with Martin, Tolkein, Wolfe, Peake etc.

[Anonymous No.19731444]

>>19731393
Yes, chuddy?

[Anonymous No.19731487]

>>19731430
>Blood Meridian
Brilliant. Masterpiece.
>NCFOM
Excellent.
>The Road
No. I tried to love it through the very end but this book alone disqualifies him from being compared to anyone on that list.

[Anonymous No.19731499]

>>19731430
Lol no you absolute pleb.McCarthy is a little more than a mediocre writter. His adoration stems from the fact that muttmericans are coping 24/7 because they can't brag with any writters of actual importance. I would argue that even South America has better writters than America. American writters get shilled so much just because of the sheer number of American posters.

[Anonymous No.19731509]

>>19731499
0/10

[Anonymous No.19731527]

>>19731509
This is not b8, m8. I henuenly believe that Americans can't writte anything that isn't cheap entertainment.

[Anonymous No.19731545]

Hideo Kojima >>>>>>>>>>> all

[Anonymous No.19731556]

>>19731545
He's a strong writer. Probably top 1000. I'm not being ironic.

[Anonymous No.19731655]

>>19731527
>>19731499
You can't write. Period. So you should just STFU.

[Anonymous No.19731705]

>>19731655
By the grace of ESL I don't care if my mastery of a ugly, germanic foreign language I'm forced to speak leaves something to be desired. Seethe.

[Anonymous No.19731915]

>>19731397
Wanna solve this like men?

[Anonymous No.19731922]

old = good

[Anonymous No.19731954]

>>19731556
yeah. def not the goat tho

[Anonymous No.19732148]

>>19731487
>ncfom better than the road
This post disqualifies you from having an opinion

[Anonymous No.19732154]

>>19731384
whitman is trash

>>19731393
also you forgot this beautiful man

[Anonymous No.19732294]

>>19731499
You are not wrong

[Anonymous No.19732310]

>>19731397
>>19731915
Quality reference.

[Anonymous No.19732346]

>>19731397
>>19731915
>>19732310
Based as fuck.

[Anonymous No.19732355]

>>19731397
Don't be silly, have you even read either of them?

[Anonymous No.19732359]

>>19731384
You're correct but it's very awkward that you didn't list neither Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso or Leopardi.

Italian literature is the basis of European culture but this board keeps ignoring it. Amazing how modern brainwashing works.

[Anonymous No.19732365]

POV: you are ITT

[Anonymous No.19732370]

>>19731397
>le epic reference
>>19732310
>le i understood le epic reference
>>19732346
>le i got the reference too im not a newfag
>>19732365
>le let me post le reference le le le le le upboats and people will call me le based xd

[Anonymous No.19732371]

>>19732359
The duel between Tancred and Clorinda is my favorite part of Jerusalem Delivered. It was a very enjoyable read, I didn't think I'd take to it as warmly as I did.

[Anonymous No.19732386]

>>19732370
POV: you like the word le

[Anonymous No.19732389]

>>19731384
Shakespeare > the rabble.

>T H Bloom

[Anonymous No.19732393]

>>19732359
Depression is the key word for 90% of italian Authors.

Also I still don't think the bird tapping the feathered tail onto a newborn baby's mouth meant the author was gay

[Anonymous No.19732412]

>>19732370
>le epic homo

[Anonymous No.19732418]

>>19732393
>Depression is the key word for 90% of italian Authors
Care to explain?

[Anonymous No.19732435]

>>19731384
Solid tastes. I would place Borges higher based on my personal preferences and have more dramatists. Also Dostoevsky above many.

Haven't read Montaigne, Proust, or Cervantes so can't judge them.

>>19731430
Plenty of older literature has issues with pacing. I have a thing for Medieval literature and I can still acknowledge that it can be stilted and repetitive. Le Morte D'Arthur is a good example. The Thousand and One Nights is Another. Dante is most definetly not, nor is Chaucer.

Nothing in OP's list is "ancient." That's actually somewhat of a knock against it because Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes certainly rank for me and are far from dull.

Cormac McCarthy is not anywhere on that level. I really like McCarthy but I can't see it.

[Anonymous No.19732469]

>>19732435
You will see in 10 years when the opinion becomes more mainstream. I don't see him lesser in style or depth of thought than any of the 20th century writers listed in the OP (quite the contrary in many cases); nor from the ancients who I agree are still great by modern sensibilities. He is not top 3 definitely, but because nobody is top 3 and the criteria is stupid in the first place.

[Anonymous No.19732492]

>>19731384
>>19731397
Tasso dabs on them and it's not even close.

[Anonymous No.19732504]

>>19732435
>not anywhere on that level

Read him again. Read more closely. In 20 words he can pack an allusion to a mediaeval scholar, a deep insight from physics or geology, an allusion to an abstruse mathematical principle, jargon from a 19th century trade, and a completely original observation about the natural world. All while telling a totally gripping story with themes that matter, perfect pacing, a golden ear for dialogue, and intensely memorable characters. There is just no one else working at this level. Fucking no one. Not Joyce, Pynchon, Wallace, you name it.

[Anonymous No.19732513]

>>19731922
Literally everything that exists is old. New things are only new for a bit.

[Anonymous No.19732550]

>>19732469
You're not wrong. His star will rise. He has Hollywood name recognition and he published later than the last list of new canon members. Every generation tends to elevate books from the last, as more recent and deserving of elevation, while a good deal of new canon members from the last generation slip away. We can already see this. As Boomers die off there will be a cull of books from 1920-1970 or so considered great. Generations tend to elevate books that came recently before them, or the books of their youth.

McCarthy had a sweet spot in when he published being quite open. He's also fairly alone in the field of white anglophone men, so he gets a boost there as there is both a contingent of people, highly visible on /lit/ but afraid to voice their opinions, that thinks all non-white male authors are affirmative action diversity picks, and then the diversity squad still wants white males on their lists to give the list validation, so that it doesn't seem like merely a diversity list.

Marquez doesn't work because for Americans South America = brown. Pelevin is too recent and probably doesn't get there on quality. McCarthy it'll be.

[Anonymous No.19732571]

>>19732550
>all non-white male authors are affirmative action diversity picks

They kind of are. Talent always clusters very tightly in small subpopulations. West Africans aren't just good at running; there is literally no way to beat them if you're not West African. The gap is qualitative. So too with certain kinds of thinking. But there is enough of a veneer of subjectivity in the arts that various institutions can pay their danegeld to the desperate dusky hordes in the form of cultural reparations, i.e. praising their work.

[Anonymous No.19732574]

>>19732550
That's business of the industry. That's how it is. Though CM has earned what he has got and he is quality so there's that.

Disagree on Marquez. He is a mild favorite of mine, but one writer who started in the 60s and can claim to have a better shot at fame in succeeding generations than CM is GGM. Magical realism also seems to be getting stronger in contemporary literature.

[Anonymous No.19732779]

>>19732574
I don't disagree with you. I prefer Marquez.

>>19732504
I like McCarthy, but this certainly isn't true for some of his books. I didn't find anyone in No Country for Old Men or The Road unforgettable. Granted, these are arguably some of his weakest. Blood Meridian did stick with me in the way great lit does. He's hardly alone in this though. Dante's character comes to life from a few lines of verse he weaves for them each canto.

Packing reference and allusion in is only good if it adds. Plenty of good authors do this to the detriment of their writing though.


>>19732571
I wouldn't call basically all of Europe a small subpopulation. There are greats from England to Italy to South America to Russia.

Given the delayed rise of the popularity of the novel elsewhere, I'd say it's too soon to say. I've read some good books by Indian authors and there are some solid authors out of Japan, who is probably furthest along in popularizing the genre.

Maybe not though, time will tell. Toni Morrison is Western and probably a good deal Euro ancestors like all African Americans, but I'd definitely rank her among the top US writers.