>read books because of great writing and ideas
>told that good books can only be about the "human condition"
>if your book isn't about serious people thinking serious thoughts and having serious emotions then it isn't worthwhile
When will the human condition fags fuck off? Ironically, caring about people requires the least strenuous use of empathy.
Being a robot frogposter is part of the human condition, write about that.
People say something you disagree with so you dwell on it to the point that you can no longer enjoy the things they disagree with you on?
It sounds like you were beat the fuck out.
>worthwhile
Values, values everywhere
Read what you want, OP.
Saramago wrote a short-story collection just about inanimate, or supposed inanimate objects. Literally twenty pages about a chair breaking apart, then another about a rogue car that won't let a passenger out.
Name of that collection?
Lolita is a masterpiece and isn't like that
Retard.
>inb4 spooks
>then another about a rogue car that won't let a passenger out.
Sounds kind of like Christine.
if you wanna do story-telling then thats fine but your books would have no literary merit
Human condition is a fucking meme
>no literary merit
Who gives a fuck outside the hermetically sealed echo-chamber of self-aggrandizing academia.
I guess Homer is a fucking hack
>implying the plot-fun is the only thing you get from Homer
It isnt, so I laugh at these pseuds who try to make so many meaningless distinctions like focusing solely on plot or "prose", I dug into that ridiculous phrase in another thread.
In the end, consider the work as a whole or dont even bother.
The book can be about stupid people thinking stupid thoughts with infantile emotions and it can be good because it's human. Why would you think the "human condition" is about serious people thinking serious thoughts?
>Implying everything humans think and create are not part of the human condition
>implying this post is not part of the human condition
>implying I am human
It is, though. Lolita isn't just beautiful prose, it has a lot to say about the human condition.
I think a better way of stating the position would be that for something to qualify as great fiction it must, generally speaking, express human truths in a way that is unique and beautiful. The human condition doesn't have to be the central theme of the work but truths or values are revealed through the work. The truths cannot be extraneous to the aesthetic body that constitutes the whole of the work (which is why existentialist fiction, Ayn Rand and the like is bad fiction and also why Lolita is such a great work of fiction).
He is.
Holy shit I hope this is bait
>consider the work as a whole or dont even bother
fyi this is the true meaning of the meme of '>reading for plot'
Well I'd say it focuses more on the psychology of both characters rather than exploring the human condition of everybody, after all they're both unique and completely different to other people of their age group
considering that all the major conflicts to write about its always
man vs
or on a grander scale
society vs
my question is does the author purposefully put the human condition into his work or does the reader place mean on his words and come up with something that is in some way they can relate to them?
>George R R Martin ended the career of a thousand young fantasy writers after claiming that the only thing people should write about is the human heart in conflict with itself
yes
I'd say that truths are revealed through the story and characters in Lolita that can be seen in most people, and this is what is achieved in all great fiction: of course the situations and the characters are specific, but it draws light to some truths or values that apply, more broadly, to people in general. I guess "human condition" is the wrong term for what I mean, considering the connotations the phrase has with philosophical fiction, which, of course, Lolita isn't, nor is most great fiction.
The Lives of Things, but honestly just use google you lazy fuck