Why is modern writing so simplistic and dry?
And yet, if we read anything flowery, purple, or even intentionally poetic, we cringe and hate on it.
Have you read fiction of the previous decade? (I know, it's a travesty.) It's plot focused and hardly has any style and aesthetic value. What I mean is, where have all the Nabokovs and Joyces gone in this modern era?
Are we forever stuck with dry, modern, and uninspired prose from here on out?
Other urls found in this thread:
versobooks.com
twitter.com
posture pseud
i agree with your thesis
People who say "purple prose" almost usually have no idea what they're talking about.
Seems any sentence longer than 100 words triggers their little heads.
welcome to the intellectual and artistic crisis of the 21st century. If anybody on this board had an actual solution they wouldn't be here
This is your brain on modern media. Concise sentences, no child left behind, arguments in 140 characters or less. Minds are contracted. Synonyms and symbolism are pretentious. Forget theme, we need an edgy twist to keep the reader gripped. Scan the QR code to find out what happens next
Dumbed down and written for mass appeal. Majority of writers have no talent and often seem to be selected to fit a diversity quota. Those that do succeed do so because of the book's ability to replicate and be adapted into a movie.
Name one novel you've read from the last 10 years. I'll be surprised if you can name one novel you've read, period.
The fault in our stars
>Where have all the Nabokovs and Joyces gone
Every generation's literature is mostly crap. Joyce and Nabokov were singular talents and visions, their age wasn't full of writers like them by any stretch of the imagination.
learn a little history
versobooks.com
Something something commodification of art something something capitalism something
this but unironically.
>In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books
Kek
Hungor Games
There were tons of great writers in Joyce's time..
oh wow you really are a fucking stupid pseud, read what i said in the spoiler
However many there were- not lots but a handful- they were greatly outnumbered by the bad writers. You're from a later time and history cherry picks the good ones to remember. It will be that way for this generation someday. Retard.
Long term thinking is hard tho. I want to complain now.
A Norwegian in the Family
This but as a lazy traditionalist borrowing marxist critique because why not.
Society has clearly degenerated. You are blind if you don't see this. Retard.
you're not helping
Rude.
truth hurts
The Spook's Apprenctice, that shit was my childhood.
What about dry poetic writing like Kafka
>Why is modern writing so simplistic and dry?
that's a good thing
Kill yourself my man
Got any excerpts of "dry poetic" kafka?
I always saw him as a rather straightforward prosist but had good stories and metaphors.
>I always saw him as a rather straightforward prosist
that's probably just the translation tbqh
Ay that and rangers apprentice were goat
prose stylists have gone out of fashion precisely because the Nabokov's and the Joyce's of the last century completely BTFO anyone's dream of ever writing something that changed the way that we viewed the English language
Similar phenomena in Japan. Why do you think nobody's been called a prose stylist since Mishima?
Wheres that gif from?
FLCL
Thanks, user.
Japanese, as a language, doesn't seem suited to ornate prose in my opinion (though I haven't read Mishima in the original, and I don't know Japanese at the level where I could read a Japanese equivalent of Joyce or something anyway, were that figure to exist) but from what little Oe Kenzaburo I've read he's definitely got an atypical style for Japanese lit.
Little Heaven by Nick Cutter.
abosoluty not, I hate this tired argument. Disposable children dime novels were better written than the shit being passed as literature today. Letters written by a 20 year old kids sitting in trenches of mud and death were far more eloquent than the average ivy league debut novel peddled in new book stores
Simplistic doesn't have to be dry. I prefer it, to me, anything else is intellectual dishonesty. The only purpose of the 'flowery' is to illuminate something in a light that provides insight, a different way of thinking about it. Otherwise it's quite literally just annoying obfuscation that skews thought, to no end.
We live in a society now where everybody engages in written speech all the time. We're texting, we're posting shit on the internet, we're telling stories. Written discourse is highly available to the most lumpen proles among us.
As a result contemporary prose exists in a more realist context that doesn't contain this flowery, literary tone of the past. It feels off now. Our prose mirrors the way everyday people think and speak.
Stupid, written communication existed and was utilized to greater extent pre-internet. Visual media is the uptrend, writting down. Just cause people text doesn't mean that causes splistic style.
It's just the cultural state at the moment. Like the 80s used a lot of neon colors, and in the 90s/00s were black and gray and now we're swinging around to brighter, wilder colors again.
Our needs as people changes, and with that, our expression and what we collectively seek to consume changes. It's normal, and it'll change again.
...
Compare letters written in the 18th century and letter written now
There is good writing out there.
It's the overly vernacular way of writing that makes my head spin. (And the behind the times vernacular, when they try to be cool)
Literature isn't cool, stop trying to make it look cool.
Fuck, now that I check it, most are off by 5-10 years.
>10 years ago was 2008
d-delet
man I was born in le wrong generation like if you're one of the 1% who still reads REAL literature
Yeah, its a factor, I didn't express myself well. I meant to say we moved from a literary society to a visual one. Cell phones are a factor.
Bleeding Edge