>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.
Brayden Walker
I don't know, it's quite unique. The first thing that came in my mind is Henry Darger's Vivian Girls
Jeremiah Gomez
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.
Parker Jenkins
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
Zachary Hill
>Vivian Girls is it even possible to buy this book?
William Wilson
>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.
Xavier Harris
seconding this
Liam Ross
this post made me sick, stay-at-home mom tier, sorry
Isaac Howard
>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.
Aiden Young
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
Landon Watson
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
Isaac Cruz
>brung
Jonathan Butler
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".
Luke Richardson
>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
Dominic Price
Homer
Jeremiah Jackson
Unironically true, but besides him?
Henry Diaz
Roberto Arlt
Brayden Lee
>stuff written by people who could barely compose their own name on a page
so how did Rabito write this book?
Asher Davis
>including 718,900 semicolons
Leo Foster
>;
Luis Reed
...
Xavier Brooks
He just learned the alphabet
That was his way of separating words on the page. Obviously the published version has spaces instead
James Turner
...and he learned semi;colons
so how illiterate was he? being a peasant != illiterate swine
Jace Davis
>being a peasant != illiterate swine well yeah, I didn't say that
Camden Sullivan
>any other examples of this (great literature from illiterate people
how is he illiterate?
Connor Gonzalez
I am illiterate and i write literature
Connor Hall
i am interested in literature that disregard all the basic rules of how you write. Anyone got and good recommendations?
Dominic Stewart
gass and dfw are written like shit
Jackson Nelson
no punctuation, paragraphs, capital letters etc
Owen Hernandez
> forward by Negri
into the trash it goes
Jason Clark
no
Aaron Harris
go to bed benito
Samuel Harris
negri is dumb, objectively
Joshua Smith
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.