Illiterate literature

>Take Vincenzo Rabito’s autobiography, which came by way of 1,027 densely typed pages, including 718,900 semicolons; a Sicilian road worker, he wrote from 1968 to 1975. The autobiography covers decades and touches on the epochal moments of Italian 20th-century history using a lively narrative tone that belied Mr. Rabito’s third-grade education.

>“It’s a wall of words, apparently impenetrable,” Ms. Veri said, but so captivating in tone and in content that it won the prize in 2000 and was later republished, becoming a best seller.

[from an article on The New York Times]

Do you know any other examples of this (great literature from illiterate people)? I'm interested in this topic.

I don't know, it's quite unique. The first thing that came in my mind is Henry Darger's Vivian Girls

Jesus, that's totally beautiful, now I want to read that. Sometimes I think this kind of art is actually the only real art we can still experience, due to its absolute sincerity and spontaneity. I love such gems.

Yeah i see your point. A lot of artist tried a "return to the origins" failing most of the time. Outsiders like Rabito are totally detached from the market mentality, in their work there is just the primal need to express themselves

>Vivian Girls
is it even possible to buy this book?

>the only real art
You should spend some time reading fanfiction and self-published novels on Amazon. Romanticizing outsider art is pretty sad, you should read more.

seconding this

this post made me sick, stay-at-home mom tier, sorry

>Do you know any other examples of this (great literature from illiterate people)? I'm interested in this topic.

On the contary, find me an example of a writer who spent more than 3-4 years studying and wrote masterpieces. Example: Gass is a professor and his work is shit. Many such cases.

Yeah, the return to the origins is a big tradition of the 20th century. Just think of Picasso, his constant effort to "draw like a child". Works like Terra Matta and Vivian Girls are probably closer to poetry than prose, even they're autobiographies. That's what I really like about them

That's true, but I'm precisely talking about stuff written by people who could barely compose their own name on a page. People who brung out their inner strength, everything they had just to express themselves or tell their story

>brung

Not who you're replying to, but I think you're both a little bit right, I just don't know if this necessarily constitutes as "outsider art" yet, and also if it contains the quality of good art. You wouldn't call Joan Miro or Francis Bacon outsider art; one has very childlike qualities (Miro), the other comes from an untrained (or even "uneducated" in the sense of painting) painter (Bacon). But both very closely understood the language of the medium and art as a whole, and both worked with paint every day to understand it. If Vincenzo Rabito falls into this category, I think it is equally pure and not necessarily "outsider art".

>both very closely understood the language of the medium and art as a whole, and both worked with paint every day to understand it
That's definitely a big achievement. You can be interested in thousands of things (you'd better be), but the greatest act you can do in art is to go deeper and deeper into the medium you chose as your means of expression

Homer

Unironically true, but besides him?

Roberto Arlt

>stuff written by people who could barely compose their own name on a page

so how did Rabito write this book?

>including 718,900 semicolons

>;

...

He just learned the alphabet

That was his way of separating words on the page. Obviously the published version has spaces instead

...and he learned semi;colons

so how illiterate was he? being a peasant != illiterate swine

>being a peasant != illiterate swine
well yeah, I didn't say that

>any other examples of this (great literature from illiterate people

how is he illiterate?

I am illiterate and i write literature

i am interested in literature that disregard all the basic rules of how you write. Anyone got and good recommendations?

gass and dfw are written like shit

no punctuation, paragraphs, capital letters etc

> forward by Negri

into the trash it goes

no

go to bed benito

negri is dumb, objectively

So what do you guys make of Jandek then? He's a Kierkegaard scholar and professor of philosophy who's been self releasing atonal music for almost four decades anonymously.