Share your most contrarian literary opinions

tolstoy is the only notable writer russia contributed to literature

if your book requires post-grad studies to understand or is longer than 700 page, and is not a professional or scientific treatise, it sucks

if your book doesn't illustrate at least one new idea it better provide a sensual aesthetic or emotional evocations to the reader otherwise it sucks

if your book is political and it was written after the invention of radio it sucks

if you were born and raised in New York or any other major metropolitan area into any family with any economic status other than the working class and you write about your personal experiences your book probably sucks

if your book is a text-on-paper only medium and you're writing about the singularity or any other related contemporary relevant science fiction topics such as surveillance or AI and you've never worked in these fields yourself or your name isn't Thomas Pynchon your book sucks

if your book's main technique is irony it sucks

if your book is about Islam or Catholicism and evokes nothing but social commentary it sucks

if your book makes heavy use of family lineage and isn't written in Russian or set in a setting spanning millennia of genetic drift like Dune, it sucks

if your book is written in Portuguese it sucks, if it is written in Spanish it probably sucks

if your book is about identity or a specific community and was written after the 1980s it probably sucks

I'm with you. I couldn't make it 30 pages myself.

I agree with this desu

>tfw working in these fields and writing about the supersession of information over the social

feels well supported

those who enjoy Ulysses are mostly pseuds forcing themselves to read the tome (not because of a personal interest but because it's a tome) so they can say they did it

thank you for telling me who I am, sir.

no problemo pseud

you're welcome pseud

Good post.

All books can be said to require post-grad to be understood. It depends on what you mean by "understanding", really.

>is longer than 700 page, and is not a professional or scientific treatise
>Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Ulysses etc suck

>if your book is political and it was written after the invention of radio
Nice double standards. You won't criticize a classic with political overtones (probably because you don't dare to go against the flow) but a recent book you don't agree with can be bad for the same "reason".

and
>implying Dune doesn't suck

You wanted this sort of reply, didn't you? Finally someone is giving attention to you and your shitty opinions. Well, enjoy.

Words are pictures that represent ideas via symbolism instead of iconography.

OP is a cuck

*contrarian* opinions, user

>Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Ulysses

weren't those all serialized first

>implying Dune doesn't suck

whether or not Dune sucks it made an interesting use of family lineage, the notion of family trees in a multi-millenial epic where genetic purity is a plot point is interesting; it was an example

>if your book is political and it was written after the invention of radio
>Nice double standards.

you could name an example

Nabokov's writing is soulless
T.S. Elliot sucks
Herman Melville is Jack London tier

Fuck you

That paragraph about nose-picking is the best thing Sylvia Plath ever wrote

ulysses is the most lively, fun and engaging book i've ever read. the fact that it occasionally sent me on wikipedia/google deep dives to figure out what the hell the reference was arguably made it better when it paid off every time. maybe it's because i skimmed over entire paragraphs of proteus or maybe it's that i read a lot of the book when i had nothing else to do but sit around and read outside but i seriously hope you give it another shot and enjoy it

that doesn't make any fucking sense, moron, it's like saying "the sun is a heater that warms your skin with its radiation instead of gas"

Ayn Rand's Anthem is a far more informative, enlightening dystopian piece than either 1984 or Brave New World.

>Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.

No one's trying to oneup you faggot. Read the book. It's dizzying.

reading is for NERDS

You fucking faggots. Did I say I didn't read it? No :^) :P :)))
I like Ulysses, but I still believe 90% of people who read it are just pseuds forcing themselves through it with the prospect of posting of Veeky Forums asap

I doubt 90% of the people who read it post on Veeky Forums, Anonymous.

Uuuh, you're a persnickety fagit, eh?

I like Ulysses, but I still believe 90% of people who read it are just pseuds forcing themselves through it with the prospect of saying they've read it

That's fucking hilarious

>occupying yourself with the inconsequence
>living in any manner

read it again you

thanks for the (You), appreciated

>if you were born and raised in New York or any other major metropolitan area into any family with any economic status other than the working class and you write about your personal experiences your book probably sucks

+1

i hope it echoes hard as fuck in your skull

I hate that these threads are just a bunch of people jerking off over not liking stuff, but,

Henry James is a bad artist. He has good technical writing chops but he doesn't have anything to say and his realism aspirations and euraboo tendencies botch any and all material he has. Good writing with no substance backing it isn't good literature.

This is a confession not a contrarian opinion
I've only gotten through like 2 books in my life but I convince myself and everyone around me that I'm a literary patrician.
I have a few book stacks that I occasionally move around in my dorm just to impress people.
I even move the bookmarks roughly chronologically accurately to convince people.
I think I actually enjoy reading sometimes but I don't have the drive or patience.
I tried to read Infinite Jest for almost a year and even skipped passages I didn't like and only made it to about pg 270
I buy consistently more difficult and patrician books (recently The Tunnel and A Smuggler's Bible) to show off how patrician I am
When I get home from class I browse my laptop until I go to bed everyday (8 hours or so)
I scoff and make fun of people who read dumb books including my mother

Sorry

Maybe I should've gone into more detail for babies like you.
Iconography refers to things signifying the signified via physical resemblance. These are the pictures of traditional "picture books". Symbolism refers to things signifying the signified on social understanding alone. A great deal of art actually falls into this category, as non-objective art signify concepts that can not be expressed via resemblance alone, but they are still "pictures".
Letters and words are pictures that represent ideas non-objectively, or symbolically, rather than resembling than physically. But they are still "pictures" that require visual recognition before being decoded by the brain into language.
If you decide to continue your education beyond middle school you'll probably learn about this at some point.

faggot detected

>if you were born and raised in New York or any other major metropolitan area into any family with any economic status other than the working class and you write about your personal experiences your book probably sucks

Salinger begs to disagree.

>if your book is about Islam or Catholicism and evokes nothing but social commentary it sucks

pic related

What's wrong, did I fuck your girl or something, user?

I'm pretty sure that user understood your point and was just saying that it's retarded because it's like... well, . You're just willfully misinterpreting what is meant by "picture" and think this is some profound statement.

Nice blog, faggot.
Agreed with

Stop browsing Veeky Forums. I mean besides the fact you're a faggot. You'll do a lot better to evaluate yourself when you remove yourself from the environment that encourages this behavior. If you've been off Veeky Forums 3 months and haven't developed a steady reading habit, just donate all the books and pick up an actual interest besides lying to people about shit they don't actually care about.

>if you were born and raised in New York or any other major metropolitan area into any family with any economic status other than the working class and you write about your personal experiences your book probably sucks

>be born in wealthy family
>divorce
>2008 happens
>witness real-estate collapse firsthand
>family looses everything
>move into ghetto
>7 years of stagnation
>living on a few dollars a day
>finally moved out of ghetto
>life is only just now coming back together

Literally The Jeffersons but reversed

The Naked Lunch makes perfect sense.

Lovecraft is good.

SUBTEXT IS FOR LOOSERS!
A ROSE IS A ROSE!
NOT THE BLOODY QUEEN OF ENGLAND!
METAPHORS ARE GAY!

Why yes, In Search of Lost Time and Don Quijote do indeed suck. How insightful!

>if your book doesn't illustrate at least one new idea it better provide a sensual aesthetic or emotional evocations to the reader otherwise it sucks

>not 'if your book illustrates at least one new idea it sucks'

Now that there's always a book at hand thanks to the internet, it's much more important NOT to read.

what the fuck do i do instead

"Get off my lawn" the book. It's the only book that has ever made me laugh out loud. Celines Pessimism is pure comedy.

I once heard Ulysses referred to as "Run on tedium"

If someone says their favorite book is Ulysses I assume they don't read and only googled "greatest books of all time". It's like saying your favorite basketball player is Jordan. we get it, tell us something we don't know.

Depends on the author. I didn't take subtext seriously until I read Alexander Theroux.

Raymond Carver writes Vague and simple stories about the tedium of life. All subtext and metaphor is imagined.

Theres no Humor in Kafka

Pretty much agree, except for this , and add Buddenbrooks to that list.

Murakami's writing makes me want to kill myself.
It's better to read nothing at all than reading romance shit.
Philosophy is in the hands of the germans.
Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra is the worst thing I have read this year.
Japanese prose is often horrible in translation (in english translation),their only saving grace is that they try to choose unique themes as substitute.
If you read things to reaffirm your views I classify you as a dumb cunt.

Can't think of any more now.

>or your name isn't Thomas Pynchon
the way you worded that actually means every writer except pynchon sucks, full stop, no exceptions besides him

LTT is good BECAUSE it is bad user

I didn't I don't appreciate it.
I have a "love-hate" relationship with a lot of media.
I hate it but I would feel bad without knowing it.

>Nabokov's writing is soulless
didn't he even basically admit that

Lel why do you do this. If you don't find anything worthwhile in it just give it up

Ulysses is a attempt to prove that people will read and like even the biggest pile of shit as long as it makes them look 'smart'. It's supposed to give the impression that it is some super deep shit but in reality it really is just a giant turd.

Philosophy is Greek. German philosophy is derivative of the Greeks!

You're just bad at reading Kafka

Fap to random porn.

I didn't care for lolita. I felt it was rambling and meandering.

The thread said contrarian opinions.

fucking how?

Literatura en Español > anglo Veeky Forums
to be quiet honest with you sir

what about bolano desu

this

jajajajaaja

>Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra is the worst thing I have read this year
>this year
ever*

The Divine Comedy is not an enjoyable read except for a few cantos

Have you heard of Finnegans Wake

Genre fiction can be p. decent.

Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra is actually a fun read even if it's mostly just shallow shitposting in print. There are some clever bits in there.

That's just a touch of financial Stockholm Syndrome, i.e. subconsciously justifying your monetary expense

9.7 - The Niggardly Jew, a parable
John was very fond of big words. When not at work he studied his archaic words dictionary in search of words which had practical meanings but were so obscure that no one would recognise them. This study would give him the greatest joy. He would memorise these words to use when talking to his colleagues at work and then, when asked to, John would, in utter jubilance, explain to them the meaning of the word he had just used.
One day John was at his davenport at work, shuffling about papers to create the illusion that he was working when in reality he was planning how to use the words he had spent all of his spare time studying. After three or four hours of shuffling and thinking John had had it! He knew how he would use his latest word – the word niggardly.
John jumped up from his desk and made his way to the lunchroom, skipping the whole way there. He entered and saw that some of his colleagues were already in there, none of whom looked up when he had entered. John coughed to gain their attention and then spoke, “Hey,” he said. One of his colleagues, Bob, looked up, “Umm,” he said, pausing for a moment in confusion, “hey?”
“So Bob,” said John as he sat down at the lunch table, “how much money have you got in your wallet?”
Bob was troubled by the question. “I don’t really want to answer that.”
“Oh come on Bob, buddy, just tell me!”
Bob sighed, rolled his eyes, pulled out his wallet and opened it to look inside, “There!” he said, “I’ve got about sixty dollars.”
“Can I have some of that money?” John said, deviously. Bob twisted his brow and squinted his eyes at what John was saying. “No,” he said.
John began to squeal, he had – quite skilfully – made the word niggardly relevant. He began to shake in his chair. “Bob,” he said, quivering with excitement, “I suppose you’re a bit niggardly then!” He exploded with laughter, almost falling to the floor.
“Why you calling me a nigger?”
“No, no-no-no-no-no, no,” John said, “I said niggardly, not nigger!”
“What the fuck is niggardly?”
“Niggardly means someone who is stingy with money – like a Jew!” John was now catatonic with laughter. Bob stared at John in disgust and then, after a moment, without saying a word, got up out of his chair and left the lunchroom. The other colleagues, who had overheard the entire conversation, also got up and left.
John was euphoric! He had used the word niggardly and successfully dumbfounded someone with it. It was for moments like these that John lived and breathed.

It's so bad it's great, maybe I just have a faggot sense of humor I don't know

kek

Ah but where's the misogyny amid all of that

I find post-modernism boring and vapid, and have no interest in goofy meta-narratives, irony or "dude everything is so convoluted and rife with references to random shit lmao". Veeky Forumss obsession with it feels juvenile, pretentious and hero-worshippy

I speak both Russian and English and the English translations of Russian literature are almost always way better

Cormac McCarthy sucks.

Blood Meridian is highly overrated.

He has terrible prose.

Americans can't even compete with the Russians or the French.

The people who praise American novels are gaslighting you.

Really made my brain go beep beep boop boop.

couldn't agree more. it just reeks of desperation to impress others, y'know? the kind of people who fawn over the genre are the same ones who are incapable of finishing a sentence without namedropping and trying to signal their intellectual "prowess" every five fucking seconds, it's like they jumped out of a diablo cody wet dream. fuck that.

Aquinas is the smartest man ever to live, and BTFOs all challengers.

Glad to hear this, and somehow thought that might be true.

middle class =/= econmocic status

Thank you for reminding us that we had Cheez-Its™, because we forgot about them. We're going to go eat some Cheez-Its™ now. They're the "extra toasty™" kind of Cheez-Its™, by the way. Wouldn't you like some of these Cheez-Its™, although you can't since you're living somewhere else?