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/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Fri Dec 23 13:53:28 2011 No.2274701 [Reply] [Original]

I hate that fantasy is treated like garbage unless it's either GRIM and EDGY or somekind of ironic fairy tale like the kind Neil Gaiman usually writes.

Modern American literary fiction is nothing but self-absorbed upper middle-class white people looking too far into themselves for imaginary problems.

Zizek is a comedian with a dictionary.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 13:58:27 2011 No.2274711

>I hate that fantasy is treated like garbage unless it's either GRIM and EDGY or somekind of ironic fairy tale like the kind Neil Gaiman usually writes.

I know. It's clearly garbage anyway.

>Modern American literary fiction is nothing but self-absorbed upper middle-class white people looking too far into themselves for imaginary problems.

That's not true. Only for DFW and Franzen.

>Zizek is a comedian with a dictionary.

Comedy is pedagogically useful.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 13:58:27 2011 No.2274709 I don't have any myself but I just want to thank you OP for specifying "American" when talking about your literary fiction hate.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 14:04:27 2011 No.2274722 I wish /lit/ would read more Asian, African, and Eastern European authors. I feel so lonely.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 14:04:27 2011 No.2274721 >Zizek is a comedian with a dictionary. Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, plebeian.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 14:07:19 2011 No.2274726 Lewis was right, Joyce is a tryhard. A Confederacy of Dunces, while funny, isn't as uproariously gut-busting as it's often made out to be.

>>	ElSalvadorfag Fri Dec 23 14:16:19 2011 No.2274733 Cortázar is to Spanish letters what Bukowski is to English letters: a reservoir of quotes for fucking hipsters.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:21:31 2011 No.2274970 I finally read one of the Dresdon Files books, it was shit.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:25:21 2011 No.2274978 If you don't read for enjoyment, you're doing it wrong. Any author who feels the need to insert a deeper meaning into their text is a pretentious twit.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:25:22 2011 No.2274975 Anti-heroes are more boring and julienne kind of characters, and usually written for no other reason than wish fulfillment.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:27:34 2011 No.2274983 Reading James Joyce feels like work. I read for enjoyment.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:29:30 2011 No.2274989 I think the reason there are no Catholic authors on the level of Chesterton or Flannary O'Connor anymore is because Vatican II ruined Catholicism.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:33:31 2011 No.2274994 Morally ambiguous characters inherit the worst traits from both heroes and villains, making them the most despicable of all.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:36:31 2011 No.2274999

>>2274989
I'm an atheist who was raised Catholic and, if nothing else, comparing myself to my old-parents mom and dad definitely gives me the vibe that Vatican II robbed our tradition of the level of peculiarity and general crazymaking we needed to stay competitive with, say, The Jews.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:38:30 2011 No.2275004 >>2274978 >implying i could get any enjoyment out of shoddily written fantasy garbage

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:39:30 2011 No.2275006 99% of people who criticise Zizek are just stupid. Sorry but it's true.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:40:30 2011 No.2275008 >>2274983 >feels like work Your mind isn't up to it. You're the 99%.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:40:30 2011 No.2275009 I started reading Pride and Prejudice and found it to be the most awful thing.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:43:31 2011 No.2275015

Everybody I've met who dislikes the entire fantasy genre is a massive douche trying to flaunt their intelligence.

Actually, anybody who just reads some "deep and meaningful" book is wasting their time. Read for enjoyment, not to try and prove you have deep philosophy about the world.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:43:31 2011 No.2275016 >>2275004 then you shouldn't read it. anyone who can, should. see how easy that was?

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:45:25 2011 No.2275018

>>2274999
But the thing is, most popular Jewish writers are secular/post-modern types. The only difference is that they have this tradition that can appropriate to claim some sort of "otherness" which they think makes them special or unique.

If you read Chesterton or Belloc or Evelyn Waugh, they weren't just another flavour of modernity, they opposed it my holding on to a parallel (but older) tradition in western thought.

Vatican II fudged that, and now Catholics are supposed to fit their philosophy into a system of thought that really began with the protestant reformation and is fundamentally opposed to this ancient Catholic tradition.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:46:44 2011 No.2275022 >>2275015 If you mean people who show off then fine. But I enjoy the knowledge or insight that I acquire through a text often more than I enjoy the text itself.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:47:44 2011 No.2275023 >>2275015 I've found that most "deep and meaningful" books are really just shallow introspection. Fantasy books, even "generic" high fantasy can deal with deep themes.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:47:44 2011 No.2275025 David Foster Wallace was a charlatan.

>>	Deep&Edgy !UfFKGtFx2M!!/0aWHODYBc0 Fri Dec 23 17:49:41 2011 No.2275032 Read for enjoyment. Don't assume of course, that enjoyment is just passively soaking in the story of the book. But hey, if that's what you're into you might as well sit in front of the television.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:49:41 2011 No.2275033

Oh. Another that always gets me:

No fantasy author seems to put their story in Mesoamerica, or SE Asia, or Africa, or India.
Fuck that. I want elephants with howdahs full of warriors on their backs. I want a place where the wheel hasn't been invented yet. I want places full of mystery, wonder. I want a fantasy novel that brings back the "Oh, wow!" aspect that fantasy was supposed to invoke in the first place.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:50:41 2011 No.2275034

reading as a pastime is kind of in jeopardy of going the way of, like, fuckin croquet or zoetropes or whatever, and its horribly wrongheaded to try to make other readers feel bad about their choice of book

there's books i dont like, there's books you dont like, but we should all be supporting each other because at the end of the day we're all engaging in a cool practice that isn't as common as it should be

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:52:31 2011 No.2275036 >>2275033 But the thing is, Medieval settings have this romance to them that most really don't associate with other settings. It just inspires their imaginations more.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:53:24 2011 No.2275038 As desperately as pretentious wankers would like to believe otherwise, reading made-up stuff about made-up people is a fucking hobby and nothing else.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:56:22 2011 No.2275041 >>2275032 D&E HAS RECLAIMED HIS NAME. NO LONGER IS HE D'AVERC.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:57:23 2011 No.2275042 >>2275041 Please go away.

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 17:58:23 2011 No.2275045

>>2275036
Medieval is just a time period, nothing more. I'm not saying GRIM AND DARK EDGY FANTASY ALL THE WAY. That would be the height of stupidity.

I suppose what I want is for fantasy writers to spend a bit more time researching other places/peoples before they decide on yet another pseudo-European setting.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:04:22 2011 No.2275052 >>2275045 All I'm saying is that Medieval Europe has a certain resonance and "otherness" associated with it that most people just don't see in other cultures, which can usually be reduced to "a bunch of brown people".

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:10:31 2011 No.2275063 >>2275052 >Feudal Japan >Motherfucking Samurai >Ancient Greece >A load of awesome shit

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:22:31 2011 No.2275083 Siddhartha was boring and shallow; it occupies a place in literary canon slightly above The Alchemist. DEAL WITH IT

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:25:32 2011 No.2275088 >>2275063 The Samurai and Ancient Greece themes are already overdone in the media.

>>	The Master !oKVZQzhloE Fri Dec 23 18:48:32 2011 No.2275128 >Talking badly about Julio Cortazar. lolno Pero si tienes razon sobre el pendejo de Bukowski. Pero ni lo compares con Cortazar. El que culpa tiene que los hipsters se caguen el palo con sus grandes obras?

>>	hakas !u/t2Vf0FFs Fri Dec 23 18:50:33 2011 No.2275132 >>2275033 borges set stories in some of those places, theyre not fantasy though. inb4 magic realism is glorified fantasy.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:51:33 2011 No.2275134 People need to stop liking 'Othello' because the main character is black. Marlowe wrote a more radical play with 'Tamburlaine' anyway.

The Master !oKVZQzhloE Fri Dec 23 18:51:33 2011 No.2275133
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>>2274733

>Talking badly about Julio Cortazar.

lolno

Pero si tienes razon sobre el pendejo de Bukowski. Pero ni lo compares con Cortazar. El que culpa tiene que los hipsters se caguen el palo con sus grandes obras?

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 18:54:32 2011 No.2275141

>>2275133
Bukowski is better than average. People hate him for no reason, just like hipsters like him.

But holy fuck, I agree that even so you can't compare Cortazar with Bukowski. Cortazar is much different and in a sense much better. I really don't see how anyone could compare the two

(not the guy you are talking to. I can read spanish but can't write/speak it.)

Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:00:32 2011 No.2275151
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Fantasy is for manchildren.

I always remember this comic strip.
>they are not midgets dad, they are dwarves, they use their axes to avenge their race against the tiranny of the evil one, in a deep story set in a rich fantastical world
>DESTROY HURR DURR AND THE DUNGEOUN AND THE ARMOR AND DERP DERP MY AXE IN UR FACE AND WHEN THE WIND FROM THE WEST BLOWS THE ELVES WILL COME BURP DERP

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:01:31 2011 No.2275155 >>2274701 I didn't like "A farewell to arms" and i'm reluctant to read more of Hemmingway

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:03:32 2011 No.2275156 >>2274733 Holy shit are you a fucking idiot? Julio Cortázar has actual depth and is aesthetically pleasing; Bukowski was a durnken imbecile. 1/10 made me reply.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:11:32 2011 No.2275171 >>2275155 For what it's worth, I've read the majority of Hemingway's work and A Farewell to Arms is my least favorite. Try his other novels (specifically For Whom the Bells Tolls or The Old Man and the Sea) or a short story collection.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:15:32 2011 No.2275174 McSweeny's is for manchildren.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:22:32 2011 No.2275190 /lit/ needs to broaden it's horizons.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:23:32 2011 No.2275193 >>2274975 >julienne >julienne >julienne >implying the characters are cut really thin for a pasta

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:24:31 2011 No.2275194 >>2275190 >>2275190 its... You should broaden your fucking spelling, pleb

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:39:31 2011 No.2275218 >>2275190 I agree. I'm pretty sick of the same couple dozen authors getting discussed again and again. I always make attempts to talk about the lesser known works I'm reading in hopes of helping that.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 19:41:32 2011 No.2275219 >>2275194 That's not an issue of spelling, it's an issue of punctuation. Stop throwing around the word plebeian if you don't have a basic understanding of language.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 23 22:00:27 2011 No.2275560 Mark Twain was a shit author and is given far too much respect in American Literature. You want to read a great American author? You want to read the greatest fucking example of the American Novel? You read Frank Norris' "The Octopus".

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