What's your opinion of contemporary literature?

What's your opinion of contemporary literature?

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gender and race baiting should be a bannable offence on blue boards.

Maybe op has a point that literature can't be taught at university because leftists can't tolerate words and ideas

Convince me to be a white male Veeky Forums

I have nothing against the left, or the right, I hate racism, and it comes from both sides.

Anyway, PC culture is dead Post-Trump. In Britain and Ireland it's already gone, most young girls are embarrassed by feminism.

I think it's a shame, because the movement came out of an earnest place that really wanted to improve things. I'm grateful for the progress we've made from the 60s and 70s, but it's just reinforced my bias that large groups of women and academics are inherently hysterical past a point. I think it's sad we will turn to another period of identity politics though, if contemporary literature annoys you now, it will probably be equally more grating when "non-patriotic" books are trashed.

>the right wing doesn't have an extensive history of banning & burning books

>I hate racism,

Haha you fell for that meme?

I don't disagree with the "white male crybaby" thing-- I honestly don't get it. I am a white male crybaby and I was at a bookstore and saw some Ben Lerner with a cool H. Bosch cover and read the back and it was "disillusioned Brooklyner bums around Spain on scholarship smoking weed and lost in life." What about this is appealing? It's as boring and cliché as black novels about race.

Jonathan Franzen sucks too, basically whiny white male Leo Tolstoy, and his books are probably mysognystic in a casual and "awkward white MFA" way, I don't know, I haven't read one of his books in years.

Krasznahorkai, for example, is never mentioned in the body of contemporary literature, as if he's purely a cult interest and a "writer's writer". That's sad, because he has the profundity, creativity, and brilliance of any writer that has stood the test of history. He's 6 years older than Franzen too, so I'd say they're in the same generation of writers.

The real problem with today's literature is not one of race or gender but of class. The higher strata of society capable of appreciating and promoting the fine arts have been lost in the race to the bottom that is the modern societal paradigm. Universal access to education has not meant a higher rate of exceptional individuals but rather a widespread mediocrization and a dumbing down of our cultural milieu.

The world is now being run by plebs (including you and me) and it didn't even take a revolution to achieve it. Literature is the outdated and pointless echo of centuries past.

>I hate white guys

Are you jealous or just a cuck?

>disillusioned Brooklyner bums around Spain on scholarship smoking weed and lost in life

It's actually a great novel(la). When society has reaches its peak then all that's left to write about is the internal experience and rather abstract existential issues regarding the interpersonal relationships of highly intelligent, self-aware individuals.

What libcucks are trying to promote by denouncing Lerner is more of the same YASSS SLAY powerful oppressed minority fiction that hasn't been relevant in years.

People are getting dumber obviously. Mark Twain was serialized in newspapers and nowadays not 1 in 5 college students could even read a chapter thru lack of attention span and poor comprehension.

Trying to educate 85 IQ retards made everyone a retard

People aren't getting dumber, we just don't want to waste time reading some long, boring piece of work that can be summarized in five bullet points. Just give us what we want, when we want it, as quickly as you can. Don't waste our time.

I think the man is saying he hates bad writers and I'd agree.

And all this /pol/eb obsession with cuckoldry is so weird, it makes me think none of you get laid, you're all so sexually insecure.

Underrated post.

90% shit
I enjoy Bolaño and Murakami and some others more obscure authors from latin america
I care more about the literature of the past and have hope for the next gens
But this one is fucking dead

isn't weird how the paradigm has shifted in the past century, at least in the west?

Nothing shifted. Liberals have always called for censorship. Socialists have always called for censorship. Conservatives have always called for censorship. And people have always campaigned against it, too.

Fuck I hate this meme. What is this obsession people have with every single damn problem being unique to their special snowflake generation? And yes, that too is a very old obsession.

Not spectacular. There are still some oldies like Gass, Coover, etc that are writing great stuff, but there aren't many young authors with new ideas like there were at the beginning of modernism and postmodernism. Who knows? Maybe it'll get better...

No he said he hates white male writers and he's against racism, that makes him a racist self hating cuck or a jealous POC. As far as you being triggered by a word you will have to examine why it bothers you and strive to overcome your biases

Doesn't even make sense, a lot of the greats were gay, even if closeted.

Murakami's so enamored with the west he can be counted as a white cis male.
Imkiddingchill

But is true

Based Tao

>makes me think none of you get laid

Well duh, check the URL in your browser.

>We are all virgins
>Duh, yes we are

Stop projecting fellas

>fellas

Do you ever get sick of being such a patriarchal idiot?

Normies begone reeeee, and so on and so on.

Nice one.

May I ask which obscure latin american authors do you enjoy? Not attacking, but genuinely curious, this is not discussed often on Veeky Forums.

youtube.com/watch?v=5vNHiQMn8yE

is the name of this poem self-referential as commentary for the state of contemporary literature?

Someone took their time to make that OP pic, goddamn. It's almost like those goodreads reviews threads, but way worse.

What's the problem? Veeky Forums is a dedicated forum for complaining about social media posts you don't like, this way not as many threads get made at the same time

Adolfo Couve
Google the list of the 100 great latin american novells of the last 20 years (or something like that) and you will find some obscure names (obscure compared to Bolaño, Garcia Márquez, etc), Couve is not on that list tho, iirc

Never heard of him. I'm quite familiar with Sabato, Lihn, Arlt, Carlos Fuentes, Rulfo, Fogwill and so on, I figure they must qualify as somewhat obscure to Veeky Forums and the mostly-english reading world, but they are well read in the latin american lit sphere. I'll google Couve.

I think latin american literature suffers from the latin-american-reivindication that seems to be required from it, keeps it from touching other themes.
Cortázar and Borges veered from it though. Escaped it, even.

Yeah all of those are pretty well known here
I dont know if Couve's work has been translated, I like him but his stuff is really dense and weird, in his last book you can clearly see the guy was mad

Bolaño completly broke that with savage detectives, imo.
Read if you havent.

Yes, him too. Definitely. With his short stories too.

And he was also a painter, if you are into that

What's the point of reading a 500+ page novel in 2016?

Seriously. If there are scientific facts in there then just list them in bulletpoints. If you're arguing something political or sociological then just state the argument and summarize it as much as possible. If it's about emotions and that kind of crap then put a warning at the beginning that it's basically worthless.

Idk, maybe enjoying the stuff thats on those 500+ pages

Rulfo is my nigga

I often get banned for funposting but I bet mods will do nothing about this
Shaking my head

Are you a STEMfag?

Like what.

"The sea was as blue as her eyes"

Omg so poetic dude totally worth my time.

"The protagonist (who totally isn't just me written in fictional form for narcissistic reasons) then drank a cup of coffee. Then he smoked a cigarette. Then he got drunk with a cute girl."

Oh wow man this author is so cool let me spend money and several hours of my time feeding his ego.

Yeah, no. It's boring. Non-fiction is the only worthwhile literature. Everything else is just narcissism and propaganda.

Ok

You mean am I employed? Yes. Yes I am.

They are underrated

Can you buy me some books? I want to read Borges poetry, thanks

>poetry

Oh man, you just don't get it to do you. The only thing you will gain by reading that stuff is "credibility" in artistic circles and the confidence to adopt the image of a mysterious and artistic guy for the sake of attracting women as narcissistic as yourself.

So what?
You do your thing and I do mine (i dont even talk about lit irl)
Will you buy me some poetry or not?
If not, your money is worthless and vapid.

Don't worry guys, I'll fixed Literature

Thank

No I certainly won't young man. I earned my money through hard work and practical application of useful skills. If have time to be reading poetry, you have time to be making money. That's my motto in life.

Do you only read things that will make you look more valuable to the market, so to make more money?
Do you want knowledge to make more money or money to get more knowledge?
I get your motto and I think is good, but I dont get your endgame.

Please stop replying to the shitposter

Sorry I have autism I didnt realize he was a shitposting

I only read things that contribute to my being a socially-useful person. Unlike you I am not a narcissist nor do I need to read lengthy propaganda pieces about the value of love, struggle and whatever else fiction writers persist in writing about. My endgame is the most practical and functional solution to the existential scenario that is being a human being in a universe comprised overwhelmingly with dead matter. I make a lot of money and gain a great degree of power (relatively speaking) and in doing so I attract a beautiful fertile wife. I then work at least 60 hours a week in a way that is beneficial to society, and I impregnate my wife, who has given birth to two children thus far with a third in sight in the future. I volunteer as a coach for my son's baseball team. I also do pro-bono work within my sector, helping those who are just starting out from college. I go on holidays to exotic, exciting places. I am in the process of registering to be in the military reserves. I have no time for music, for fiction (poetry, novels, whatever) and for whatever else some bratty kid feels is necessary to sustain his ego at the expense of my time, wealth and energy.

>he doesn't think the quest for beauty is the most noble of ambitions.

I'm not bothered by cuckoldry as a concept, I've been accused of being a player quite a few times in fact. What I'm bothered by is people using the same unoriginal meme as a form of argument. It's the equivalent of /pol/ebs jutting their head into threads and calling someone a nigger. People aren't afraid of free-speech or some "safe space", they just find your method of discourse directly retarded.

And as for the user, the race thing is as peripheral as any other theme, he's really saying using race as a major point of narrative is cliche, and, if I was to put words into his mouth, they're much more universal things to talk about in the umbrella of human experience than skin color.

All that bragging makes me think you're insecure about something. I wonder what it could be?

>i just do what my kikeoverlords told me is good!
Perma-cucked STEMlords will never learn.

>I don't service my ego. Instead, I boast about things I do to service my ego on the internet for the sole purpose of servicing my ego.
Great job, bud.

>What's the point of reading a 500+ page novel in 2016?

It's a necessary counter to our world of short-lived ephemeral communication.

The same applies for film.

Maximalism is comfy as fuck.

Can we talk about obscure latin american authors again
The thread was comfy before "that user"

is a great example of what's wrong with the American novel right now. I recently read an article about a European author's popularity in Brooklyn and how they clung to him because Brooklyn only had MFA students addicted to adderall from upper-middle class families writing whiny first person accounts. And yet, when you attack this truth, people like think it's an attack on white people, or an attack on their culture, because they don't even know high culture outside of creative writing MFAs pumping out uninspired bullshit. hasn't even heard of Krasznahorkai, he took my post to be racist towards whites. I don't identify with this garbage culture, if I have an iconoclastic opinion about the current state of American writing it's because we went from a high point to a low, and frankly Franzen, Wallace, and Lerner absolutely suck compared to their forbearers .

I didn't do that, I even compared Lerner to garbage minority fiction. Like I said, it's as cliché'd as black literature about civil rights.

"Hates white male writers"? Read my post, you idiot. I attacked American whiny white male writers. If you think that encompasses the whole of white American male writers, you need to actually read good books. Or better yet, get out of community college and actually gain reading comprehension skills.

I think I made it pretty clear I was denouncing a small but dominant part of American literature. Right now it consists of civil rights narratives by blacks and whiny white MFA first person account on disillusionment. If you aren't bored with either of these, you're mentally stunted.

If you wanna go really obscure we can discuss my short stories.

I know this is bait but there really are people this cucked out there.

Mr Gradgrind?

he's not really that obscure but cesar aira is godly