Literature is not dead in the sense that good books are not being written...

>Literature is not dead in the sense that good books are not being written, but it is dead in the sense that serious literature will never have anything other than a small readership and a negligible impact on modern culture.

>negligible impact on modern culture.
wrong, it just takes longer than 3 fucking seconds for it to get absorbed into the culture

So what is being written these days that’s really good?

lots of stuff, everywhere

literature is dead because the works of rich WASPs are no longer considered the golden standard by which all literature is held against

You know it's funny, whenever i'm introduced to a contemporary writer and i figure out it's a white man, i almost turn off subconciously, like i'm looking for excuses not to like the work. Usually it's not hard because most contemporaries are shit. But like, the past few contemporaries I actually like are not straight white guys. I dunno, white guys just seem so unprovoking, so safe in their formal choices, as well as their subject matter.

ebin xD

Literature is dead in the sense that my flesh is dead but I live on.

Whats serious literature? Is serious literature automatically good literature?

>Veeky Forums says Gravity's Rainbow is good
>start reading it
>Veeky Forums says its shit
>Veeky Forums says Ulysses is good
>start reading it
>Veeky Forums says its shit
>Veeky Forums says Brothers Karamazov is good
>start reading it
>Veeky Forums says its shit
>Veeky Forums says the Aenid is good
>start reading it
>Veeky Forums says its shit

You'd think if something was really that good there wouldnt be that much controversy about it.

There is consensus on all of those that they are great works. Only the idiots havin a laff disagree.

...

>You'd think if something was really that good there wouldnt be that much controversy about it
And you'd be wrong for making this observation. An important consideration to take into account is how your presupposition about something modifies your interpretation of it versus having no presupposition at all. If you keep hearing something is apparently so legendary or revolutionizing for its form, your expectation builds it into something that it can never feasibly achieve. If you happen to fall ass-backwards into a pile of gold, however, it doesn't matter if its ten ingots or a thousand: you're still going to be enormously surprised and impressed by this great thing you found when you weren't even looking for it in the first place.

you're just like everybody else

>>Veeky Forums says the Aenid is good
>>start reading it
>>Veeky Forums says its shit
Did this one actually happen?
GR is a convoluted and frankly juvenile cult work. Ulysses is good but not near the peak of literature like some charts would have it seem. BK is incredibly overrated relative to Dostoevsky's corpus and the Russian canon as a whole, it's also incomplete. Aeneid is great, I read the Dryden version which I would put over Pope's Iliad, but I have a soft spot for couplet epic poems. Comparing it to Homer is pretty rough and I think even Virgil would admit it lesser

>presupposition
Use a different word desu that doesn't fit very well with what you're trying to say

Maybe picked the wrong word off the cuff, but however grande you assume X to be based on the sheer volume of praise and word of mouth it provokes. I'm getting very bad at remembering words nowadays... and I'm only 28.

Send help pls

Can OP englithen me about these magical times when literature had large readership and huge impact on culture?

Reading used to be peoples only escape from reality ,reading tales of distant worlds and heroine discoveries. Now people in today's society are indoctrinated with easy fast paced accessible knowledge on the internet. Thus rending the average attention span of humans to be so much lower than previous generations.


Society today is as mind numbing as it is a detriment. Baseline , we don't emphasize things that will benefit us as individuals and as a whole. Such as, reading and understanding of things that we are truly passionate about. Where as, watching twerking videos on vine seems to be held on such a higher pedestal than anything that is beneficial to humanities intellectual longevity.


This dissonance makes me cry

>the straight white man is too soft and safe

Nah. You're just looking on the wrong shelves. Avoid the post modern urbanites or the "soyboys" - any guy who looks like he'd win a sensitivity or "most compassionate" award and start looking elsewhere. Even the gutter. Sure, who you'll find interest in depends on your taste, but the important thing to remember is that any straight white male lit author of the present held on a pedestal has been selected and marketed by publishers, academia, and the elites of the modern cultural hegemony on the basis of his softness and how bland, broadly appealing, generic, and thereby easily palpable he is.

>white guys seem so provoking

As black guys seem so unintelligent and animalistic ?

I am not white, nor a guy; but this mentality is that of a vile simpleton that sees race first? Such narrow minded generalizations are why seeing different races and creeds alternate perspectives are nearly impossible.

I agree that you are entitled to your own opinion ,but man, i think you have more issues with the genre you are looking for - rather divisively looking for racial issues where there are none.

pls post feet

You speak like a south californian
by the way, I don't think that just ignoring the race factor in a writer is the best way to properly judge his merits, acknowledging that race influences a work of art is necessary for a healthy discussion, that doesn't necessarily implicate that "wypipo is bad" or "the blacks are animals.

>Puts down several other major works to talk about how good the Aeneid is
>Didn't even read it in Latin
I'm legitimately not sure if this is bait or you're actually this much of a pseud.

I completely agree with you, i think that understanding or at least acknowledging the authors racial or socioeconomic statues is something that is crucial to understanding the authors intended meaning.

On the same token, as the first person who i replied to seemed to support; one should never simply fail to attempt to read and understand something just because the author is of a particular race. This eliminates all understanding of different racial discrepancies through their literary work. Effectively places the reader in a echo chamber of literary racial similarity, thus not adapting their beliefs.

Also the Asian comment was quite nice,as it was accurate. Expect i live in Massachusetts

You don't want to see some fat ugly tranny's feet.

The other major works are actual pseudcore garbage and the Dryden version is a work in it's own you ignorant fuck it's hardly a translation. I am better than you

It's certainly coming to an end, along with the human race itself. We were an experiment of the Earth's, the results of which are finally coming to fruition. Sci-fi writers have already known this.

Yes, I agree, no one should consciously strive to be in a echo chamber of literary discourse, understanding race and socioeconomic strata should open your mind for new interpretations of points of view, not make some kind of contest of who is better.

I didn't expect you to be asian, i said you speak like a south californian because of your affirmations with question marks, It's an interesting trait I've found only there.

That's okay, maybe some filmmaker can turn it into a movie.

my nigga

This has always been the case regarding the immediate culture and society. It wasn't really until the 19th-20th century when writers became celebrities and their status as elite members of society skyrocketed. Most works of great literature where read by a select group of intelligentsia until literacy gained prominence among the general populace. Even then, writers like Melville, Proust, Kafka, etc. often died in obscurity or with little critical or commercial success, their works only gaining more impact on modern culture and culture as a whole after they have died.

john green, 50 shades of grey, the list goes on

Dimitry Gulhovsky?

>Dimitry Gulhovsky
Dmitry Glukhovsky