Share your contrarian literary opinions

Chick fil a used to be spelt chic fil a.

SD is much lighter than 2666 (what isn't really) and while it has a more limited scope, it is my favourite Bolaño.

2666 is an amazing book but I think it shows that it was published posthumously. The whole idea of the "river novel" is done in the second part of TSD (the part about the interviews) in a more original and tasteful way IMO. I think that, at least from a formal point of view, theI interviews are the best and most interesting thing that Bolaño ever wrote.

Alli in all, if you liked 2666 you really should read TSD.

you both didnt undertand invisible cities

My colleagues and I in our vast wealth are having trouble dealing with a troublesome tangle of lies. We have full sway to manipulate the way things will go but have to limit ourselves to perpetuate a lie that is our own doing, and also an ironic contrast to the reason why we lied in the first place.

Also, I don't think being called a chicken is an insult. But also I believe to insult someone you have to say it directly to them or you're just being a passive aggressive pussy.

I don't think that "monkey" or "pussy" are insults.

Okay then

Journey to the End of the Night is a much better version of Catch 22.

motivate your answer

made me cum without touching myself multiple times

>On this I think genre fiction is a sign of a mature reader. I do not mean only a genre fiction reader but if you can enjoy the occasional mystery you are doing just fine.
Your writing treads the line between Sudaca who can't speak English and 14-year-old pseud trying to sound sophisticated but misusing phrases, which is a very rare line to tread. Well done.

totally disagree on Hamsun. I think Hunger is a very different work from most of his others, but what he tried to do with Hunger, he did perfectly. He was also ahead of his time with this modernistic work, and is rightfully viewed so today.

The literary canon is too restricted and doesn't have a wide enough variation in writing techniques.

I don't think a woman has ever written anything worthwhile.

I once read a good book, but after finding out it was written by a woman I realized how shit it was.

>The Republic is obviously satire
>The Prince is subversively against tyranny
>Gravity's Rainbow is boring, unfunny, and not that well written
>Dune is the most overrated SF novel of the 20th Century
>Edgar Rice Burroughs was the most influential writer of the 20th Century and deserved it
>Tolkien was a better writer than most admit, but the crap imitations tarnish his profile

House of Mirth is good for being a polemic, but the dumb bitch apologized for how hot fire it was later in life after the dandies got on her case--ruining the whole thing.

I mean I like Hunger myself and I could subscribe everything you said. I still consider it to be among his weakest works, even if it is probably his most influential.

I just love his more lyrical work I guess.

Philosophy is shit.
Anything that isn't entertaining/useful/timeless is worthless.

Charles Dickens is a pompous bore. His stories may sometimes have intriguing themes, but his style of writing is just fucking repellant to me. Compare him to Herman Melville of the same time period, who is similarly flowery but still elegant and precise.

Can only comment on your last 3 points, but i agree...

does that mean I have to change my mind?

I like anything and everything in the western canon and I can't tell whether it's because I'm too afraid to form an opinion, but honestly everything I've read is of merit. I see people on lit ragging on Hemingway, Salinger, the rest of the Americans, the French, the Greeks, the Romans, Joyce, even fucking Shakespeare if they're not trolling, and I like it all.

Oh-- but I haven't read Sartre or Bertrand Russell but I hate them.

Reading must be fun and entertaining and yes, you do read for the plot and also for the prose. Rereading is overated (fiction), constantly finding new works and reading better books is the way to go.
Don't know if contrarian but I strongly believe that passionate readers divide into two groups: fiction and nonfiction readers. I've met people who get extremely bored if they read anything than nonfiction. And I can't finish a history or philosophy book without going sleepy.

Some people are entertained by philosophy, you fucking pleb. Just because it hurts your head and frustrated you doesn't mean that other people don't enjoy the challenge.

>entertained
>philosophy
not even against all philosophy but those who read it for "entertainment" are a special kind of boring idiot.

If you don't have fun being challenged intellectually, you are the definition of a brainlet desu

>entertainment
>intellectual
It's like you got all of the autism but none of the intellect.

Never thought of that

Not everyone has to pretend to read difficult things to look smart. I get much more enjoyment and reward from reading something dense and Philosophical than I do reading something plot-driven. It's not entertainment in the way a movie is, but it is rewarding, which is its own kind of entertaining. I figured others here would feel the same. I'm a little disappointed. Do you not enjoy philosophy? Interesting.

>The Republic is obviously satire
How did you arrive at this conclusion

...

10/10 I absolutely agree, the guy arguing with you confirmed brainlet

chic fil-a should be open on sunday

It makes me legitimately sad, to by honest. The anti-intellectuals are the ones ruining art, and they fucking brag about it. Brainlets unknowingly being proud of being brainlets.

90% of what I read is serious literature, but I have a collection of 1960s and 70s pulp scifi novels. It's a nice break to kick back and read a simple 200 page story. It recalls the feeling of watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid.

Reading books for plot is not a plebeian thing to do because real writers understand the difficulty of creating a plot that is unique or attention grabbing (without holes). Also plot is fun.

The definition and stigma of purple prose has become completely overblown and has reduced our expectations and judgements of literature into minimalist dogshit with no style or love.

Drugs and alcohol don't improve your creative output they in fact halter it from being the best it can be.

Joyce is not the end-all be-all of literature.

>Joyce is not the end-all be-all of literature.
Sacrilege

>The definition and stigma of purple prose has become completely overblown and has reduced our expectations and judgements of literature into minimalist dogshit with no style or love.
I disagree, the issue is not that we've vilified purple prose, but that everyone and their mom believes they are Earnest Hemingway.
I love Hemingway and his style but I'm also not so stupid as to believe I have one tenth the gravitas to write so directly. Highschool age pseuds and the people they grow up to be, on the other hand, find it an easy way out of spending large amounts of time editing and re-editing their work.

That's not a contrarian opinion among smart people.

Henry James is the only American writer superior to Jane Austen

This.

This is not reddit, we are on Veeky Forums, where being redpilled and outing women and sexually active people as inferior is not considered "contrarian".

i would say "poetry has lost its way and isn't relevant anymore" but that's hardly contrarian.

i guess i'll go with "bukowski has strong literary merit".

Its because you don't even begin to climb the bell curve of intelligence until you realize you have a long way to go in actually being intelligent. Then you have to specialize in a field. People like to disregard literature because it isn't science, but its ironic, because these same people couldn't tell me the molecular mass of fucking water without Google.

> Kafka is enormously overrated.
His only enjoyable work is Metamorphosis.

If you haven't yet done it you should check out his short stories. And also A Moveable Feast, it's something totally different from the rest he wrote and really comfy.

Christopher Tolkien is a better writer than his father and it shows in all his stand alone versions of his works.

Genre fiction CAN BE (read: is not necessarily) quality literature

non-fiction is the real life equivalent of excessive worldbuilding in bad sci-fi.

Read his shorter works and aphorisms.
The Penal Colony, The Silence of the Sirens and whatnot are all amazing.

I don't care much for his longer and unfinished stuff but I can see why they are so highly rated merely because of how influential they were

Give some examples of gtfo

Raymond Chandler
Robert Louis Stevenson

Sorry, I meant examples of actual quality literature.

>Steven Erikson
>Frank Herbert
>Lovecraft
>Matthew Stover's non-spinoff stuff
>Tolkien
>Mervyn Peake

chick-fil-a is so good

yummy

Three Musketeers
Count of Monte Crisco

Michael Moorcock

>not rating Chandler
Top pleb desu

The best place to read the highest of literature (Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse and so on) is Denny's at night - preferably after mid-night and in the next town so you are unlikely to be recognized - with a tall and chilled glass of cola to keep you company. Yes, it's okay if other people are there.

You will find the atmosphere of the restaurant most copacetic to the intellectual labor of moving your eyes from the first sentence of your chosen work to the second, and perhaps even to the third. Once you have given up on reading for the night, you can enjoy your cola drink and perhaps a meal item of your choice.

You really can't lose. Denny's.

no joke I'm going to try this
will report back with result if the thread is still here

Wtf I love Denny's® now

Free verse isn't poetry, and Walt Whitman should be tossed from the poetry canon.

btfo

>Not reading at Waffle House.

>The Prince is subversively against tyranny
yes
>Gravity's Rainbow is boring, unfunny, and not that well written
"no"

*blocks your light*
>whatchu readin' fir?

Wat do?

For me, it's the other way around.

I only read for entertainment, and the thing I find most entertainment is cheap, paperback fantasy novels.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is a bad album.

Gravity's Rainbow is a poor mans Catch 22

But that's wrong. Genre fiction isn't even remotely fun. If we mean "literature which people on Veeky Forums meme as genre fiction", like Wolfe or Tolkien, then sure. But if you literally mean airport novels and Eragon then you're really bad at having fun.

>Kerouac is pure, unadulterated shit.
CONTRARIAN

there are so many undergrads in this thread

Camus and Sartre are painfully overrated as writers and only work in a cold war-era world

Romanticism is in most cases dull and boring.

Middlemarch is far less great than university professors would like you to think.

Tolkien is genre fiction. I haven't read Wolfe, but be adult, stop deserving the sight of my fecal matter tumbling onto the faces of your loved ones with their lips sliced off, you fucking born victim, you peasant, you untermenschen, you fucking mongoloid cum dribble.

de
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All of this is shit except the first one.

Why do pseuds feel the need to dampen Machiavelli by rationalising him as some satirist, or worse, subversive rebel?

trying too hard buddy
What the fuck is a Denny's

translate this

Why?

Tolstoi is the worst writer in the Western Canon. This is obvious.

Because he's a self-affected PoMo

come back :(

I secretly love Warhammer 40,000 books. Unironically.

Pulp stories are underrated and Howard and Lovecraft are literature

philosophy is boring

Part one of Don Quixote is boring, overlong, and badly paced and it's ok to read a summary and then skip to the much better second part.

ts eliot is mediocre

Constance Garnett > Pevear & Volokhonsky
Pynchon isn't worth the effort

He certainly has a wonderful sense of humor, which is mentioned about as often as the fact that Engels was a beautiful stylist, and deserves a place on the tier Proust occupies for litetature, and Schopenhauer for philosophy. Someone (Rouseau, maybe? Can't remember) read Machiavelli as an ironist, which is just as plausible. Good eye, user. It's not too late to make him one..

chick fil a is great, wish we had it in the north

How would you rank calvinos work? Out of what you've read