Reading classics, famous and old works to expand my knowledge

>Reading classics, famous and old works to expand my knowledge
>Always trying to make my work engaging but not rushed, giving immersion and detailism without being dull, having a steady flow in storytelling but being natural and not plot-driven
>Most classics have stupidly boring fluff that we only read because they have fame behind it

Are classics just a huge meme? I'm not saying they are bad, they have some solid gems there I would only dream of writing originally myself, but the pacing in a lot of them is so shitty and fluffy And yes, even tho the majority is good there is some condescending bad classics

Why don't you go back to watching your ADHD japanese cartoons you dunderheaded melon

>Lemme shitpost about something I disagree on because I'm ironic xD
I just said I read classics you retard, but if you think classics are above criticism you are a brainless pseud

They make publishers money.
They are the detritus of past professors intellectual wank fests.
Plebs can act like status Psuedos after they've read them.
Some are good, but read what you want.
Extinction, personal and planet-wide is a thing.

>Extinction, personal and planet-wide is a thing
Care to explain this a little bit more?

Classics are too slow, from them you absorb only the prose

>Falling for the classics meme

BRO
dante read HOMER
if I READ HOMER, i'll be equals with DANTE
therefore READ THE CLASSICS

lmao fucking stupids

Why dont you give examples of boring classics so well know wjhat ure talking about?

Read Mark Twain, that's how you're supposed to do it.

YODO

3 conjectures off the dome in response:

1. some (but not all) classics only survive because they encourage academics to pore over them endlessly (not because of love)

2. all classics were written in a different time from our own. They are all timeless, but few of us can say that we are timeless. As such, few of us can meet the classics on the transcendental, higher plane that they have risen to.

3. I think that a classic, even a masterpiece, is allowed to have flaws (i.e: 'boring passages'). The only thing that matters is that it inspires great love. Remember, you aren't reading the bible. If you see something boring, skip it. Maybe you'll come back to it later and realize that the material was useful after all.

>weebshitter cancer

quick, explain why reading classics is worthwhile without quoting a famous author or appealing to academia.

because they're better than contemporary lit, obviously.

can you prove that? how much contemporary lit have you read relative to how many classics you've read?

How about I hurt you, kid.

>I can't form my own opinions so I'm gonna physically threaten you

fuck off Chad

This

OP just realized that many classics were just decent at the time but aged very poorly

Don't force yourself into bad lit just because its old, classics are a meme so pseuds can pretend they know shit.

>The Death of Ivan
>The Makioka Sisters
>The Pit and The Pedullum
And others, I gave up on classics myself

you have to know what precedes you to write well, it is only through homage to the classics in some form or another that a work can succeed

>read robinson crusoe
>DeFoe spends four pages talking about bread
>it's the comfiest novel I've ever read
the fluff is good

I've read a fair amount of both, and from what I can tell the classics are better. It only makes sense. Most of what's published is trash, but it takes time for the good stuff to emerge

what makes them "better"?

>but it takes time for the good stuff to emerge
And instead of making the effort to find something decent, you prefer to eat up stale shit from the past?

bud 4rth wall breaking stream of consciousness with made up "real life stories"/annecdotes interspersed is at least half of all new novels year of year

you're fucking kidding me with this shit right?

Which classics have you read, specifically?

The Makioka Sisters is hot garbage, I got memed hardcore on this one; serves me right for wanting to pose as cult wanting to say I read japanese classics

wtf user? You saying you don't like to read +600 pages of fluffering and mindless talking going nowhere without any character development? fucking pleb

No, the passage of time and of thousands of people reading things means that only the best works survive. We don't have to read the hundreds of shitty Gothic novels because they've been forgotten. Only the best have survived. When you read contemporary fiction, it's basically a crapshoot because you haven't given it enough time to let bad works get forgotten and good ones get remembered and praised.

Tell me how you're going to find this decent stuff? There is so much shit published that you're going to have to be incredibility lucky to find anything decent on your own. Why is reading shilled books from the present worse than reading the shilled books of the past?

>grouping classics together like it means anything

They vary so widely that it would be weird if you liked every single 'classic'

Shilled books from today (more often than not) learned from the mistakes from shilled books from the past and tend to be more applicable to our times.

Finding decent stuff is the same with classics too. Being a classic doesn't guarantee it being an enjoyable read.

We have a better understanding of how to write and write well than classical authors did.

1. much larger audiences
2. scientific studies examining attention, retention, and literacy
3. the fastest, most widespread, and advanced forms of communication that have ever existed in human history

We are able to comment and critique and discuss literature with uncountable numbers of people; this is an environment where ideas spread fast and far. There are concepts today that no author a hundred years ago could have been exposed to, or would have been exposed to simply due to the limited contact he had with the rest of humanity thanks to the lack of communication technology.

It's a wednesday, I'm in my pajamas drinking coffee, and discussing this with you through a personal computer. At no other point in human history was this even possible outside the last 30 years.

Just because classical authors have written a certain way, does not mean that it's the only way, or the right way.

>tfw you write better than all the supposed greats

I always knew i was superior

This is because "show don't tell" is a meme. Classics told shitloads, and they also did it well.

Consider chemical castration

not everyone is into slice of life bro

K-ON is SoL but has subtle character development and is enganging

The makioka sisters is just reading someone brain farts all over the paper, but hey! Its a famous jap guy who wrote and not a random so thats why it holds value!

they've survived across thousands of opportunities to be forgotten

>Tsuruko and Tatsuo keep oppressing Yukiko and Taeko for wanting them to wake the fuck up, they are meanies!
>Its another Yukiko is a stupid autistic leech episode
>Its another Taeko is a manipulative slut episode
>Its another Sachiko is unbelievably coward and passive episode
>This nonironically goes on for 700 hundred pages
>The books ends with Sachiko shitting herself and Yukiko's marriage being ''implied'' it worked because vague endings is top-tier writing skills

Tsuruko best girl, still meme book from meme author

yeah so has a lot of dumb shit, what's your point?

The worst thing for me is how the focus was on Yukiko the most

Sachiko gets some interesting moments; Taeko I hate to admit but the whole transition between the-modern-and-practical little sister into manipulative bitch is superb, she was a bitch from nature but nobody noticed it; and Tsuruko is loyal to her husband, traditional and the most thicc beautiful of the sisters

But fuck Yukiko man, just fuck Yukiko

>Yukiko mumbles something as a response
90% of the time, at the end she is still mad despite everyone helping her out of her NEET life

She is barely any better than Taeko and Taeko is complete shit

Feel the same way

I felt the protagonism being heavily on Sachiko

>The Pit and The Pedullum
I read that when I was 10 and enjoyed it. Wonder why you didn't. It is so short.

Maybe because it was the first work of Poe that I read and I was having unbelievably high expectations for some reason

This desu
>I just read Anna Karenina, therefore now I'm way more cult than before, classics are so flawless and perfect omg

A lot of classics aged worst than milk, if they were written today people would say they are lazy garbage

Honestly, he was REALLY good at what he did. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry were actually fun to read in elementary school, when I had no idea what an injun even was. Yeah, it was a little confusing and the logic didn't always seem to flow for me, but I was young.

Does Romeo and Juliet count? I think it was original, I guess, I mean Shakespeare was an original guy, but if that's his most popular work, I feel bad for him. It's easily one of his worst. I had much, much more fun with Macbeth.

That's not a foolproof philosophy, but I can't think of a better strategy besides just reading what appeals to you.

Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is an amazing book. Superior to Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer

Literature isn't just entertainment. It's a conversation — one that underlies our culture and society. Homer's ideas about war, Milton's ideas about speech, Melville's ideas about struggle, etc. have all found places in the collective consciousness. If you don't understand these ideas and where they come from, you're missing a lot.

But this doesn't translate well into fiction

Sure, I get The Leviathan will always be a must-read for anyone interested in politics, even tho his language can be a bore sometimes

But in fiction old books have a pass to be boring and slow with the excuse ''it gets better'' or a classic writer gets away with a chaotic writing because ''thats his style'' meanwhile if a random tried to do the same he would just be called lazy

>Oh, this book is full of fluff and mindless details
>But its a classic, so lets read and respect how much passion is put into the craft
>I'm on page 70 the plot barely progressed at all, but thats just his slow pace
>Waaahh, this book from this random is so boring, I'm already on page 3 and not interested in this mindless rambling get to the point already

Wasn't Yukiko shitting herself at the end? Anyways agree with you, funny is seeing people reviewing it as some fucking brilliant masterpiece when its just a good book and thats IF you like japanese culture...

>They went mainstream and popular, so this make them objectively good

You dont read enough classics so you have this opinion.

You read way too much classics so you have this important opinion

I actually do keep a healthy balance between classic and contemporary.

But, its very safe to say the classics are classics because they have lasting qualities. You only need to read them and see for yourself. I don't even give a damn about what academics say.

What are those lasting qualities you say that can't be reproduced in modern work?

You keep going on subjective tangents but you never make a point, most classics get away with slow pace, fluffly and chaotic writing that would seem as lazy nowadays.

What your counter-argument? is that wrong? Why? What are even the lasting qualities you are saying? Can you do some comparisons? Examples?

>What are those lasting qualities you say that can't be reproduced in modern work?
I absolutely DID NOT say that. Hell, I'd LOVE for these qualities to appear more often in modern works.

It really just comes down to the art of storytelling as a means of exploring and expounding upon human nature in a skillful way. Your classics have these in droves, and that's why they last.

It's the difference between a very substantial anime like Texhnolyze and some bullshit escapist stuff like Sword Art Online. One speaks to the soul, the other speaks to base and misleading desires.

Yea, I'm not comparing masterpieces to seasonal trash, but I don't understand how you still think classics are above criticism or how you still deny that a lot of classics aged like absolute shit.

Come on man, The Death of Ivan Ilyich only gets engaging when he's dying, the very first pages of the book are so disconnected from everything you even forget them as you go on, theres absurds amount of fluff for the buildup; one can argue that the fluff makes the death even more impactful but thats why the time we wasted reading it, but thats not directly connected to quality.

If someone you didn't know wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich ( Obviously, it wasn't a classic on this timeline ) You would probably not even finish because you would get bored to death, or you would skip a lot of stuff.

Poe stuff is brilliant but he has some hot garbage.The Mystery of Marie Roget is so shitty it feels like Poe basically just transcribed a obituary report, Eleonora is a blantant, shameless self-insert with a mental masturbation self-ending.

The Makioka sisters as I was discussing above, is stupidly slow and full of unnecessary fluff, the characters don't even progress at all, at best we just get to know their personalities but they don't really change, and I'm not coming.

Thats all what I'm saying, a lot of classics get away doing shitty writing with their fame.

You might be confusing me with another user. I just jumped in, and I dont think classics are above criticsm either. For example entire chunks of Count of Monte Cristo can be cut without losing anythijg susbtantial, and much the same can be said for even Don Quixote. But despite that their qualities shine through.

And of course, writers are human, so not every one of their works is going to be a 10/10 masterpiece. Tolstoy has his slip ups as much as anyone.

There's literally no reason to read classics

If your wish is simply to read good literature regardless of time period then it's far easier to find good classic literature than it is to find good contemporary literature.

A book considered a classic is more likely to be enjoyable because the books are classics for a reason, they've been well regarded by enough people over an extended period of time for them to still be remembered today. There will be classics you hate and contemporary novels you hate, but on average you're probably more likely to enjoy a classic novel chosen at random than a contemporary novel chosen at random.

Homer, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Austen, Milton, Melville, Twain, Joyce and many others use fiction to illustrate important ideas. You can't separate literature and philosophy; they're part and parcel.

If you're only interested in fiction insofar as it's fast-paced and entertaining, then of course you won't enjoy the classics. The same is true regardless of medium. Citizen Kane is a groundbreaking film that changed the way we understand cinema, but it's also got some pacing problems and goes on a tad too long. Watchmen is pretty tight, but compared to the average comic book, it takes a while to get going.

The value in great art isn't an adrenaline rush, it's a deeper understanding of the self, or a push towards the future.

The question is: Would the classics still be successful today if they were published with the same slow style?

The classics have and never will be successful in the way you're thinking of.

The classics are classics because people keep recommending them generations later because they are still worth reading for something in them, not because everything in them is perfect. "Even Homer nods."

It takes a small group of people fighting hard for the great novels to keep them alive and then to get them to a point where they're outside of the cultural turnover machine. People fight because of the real value there, the stuff that'll stick with a person and will keep sticking with people.

The light, fast "successful" and totally enjoyable stuff gets churned out over and over again. There's no need to go back to find it because it's always everywhere. There's no reason to suffer any difficulty in style or whatever because somebody will come along and write the same thriller book in contemporary language, to contemporary tastes.