Is anyone else sad the way that art and literature seems to be progressing...

Is anyone else sad the way that art and literature seems to be progressing? I'm not going to be the guy who says that "art is dying" or whatever. But, there seems to be a sort of purity, sanctity to previous works of art, like the works of Shakespeare or Chaucer, or even the KJV that is impossible to recapture in the modern age. Literature has become so self-conscious and ironic over time, and it seems impossible to navigate the literary waters of the time and to still come out with a work of art of the same kind as the ones I just mentioned. I'm not saying that art is worse, though some might argue it might be. I'm just saying that there's this tone of almost divine sincerity that seems to be missing nowadays, and I really find it to be a shame. Because, of course, to try to write like Shakespeare right now would also be to make a work of art that is antiquated and out of date. It's almost like I wish I could travel back in time to when literature was first starting in order to avoid the restrictions/requirements/standards of the modern literary environment.
Anyone else have this feeling occasionally?

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youtube.com/watch?v=B_obeR1OIm8
youtube.com/watch?v=nBt9oJYyFn8
thewalrus.ca/the-rising-tide-of-educated-aliteracy/
sup.org/books/title/?id=683
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

New Sincerity

Every literature tended to be revolutionnary. Against the order.

John Gardneer gets into that ith his book On Moral Fiction, I think you'll like it

And I definitely agree. I really don't care for all the bitter, ironic, and decadent wankery

Blame the screen (both cinematic and internet social media) for dumbing everyone down. It's now universal that everyone has low critical reading skills and even lower attention spans.

We're in a new technocratic age where reading for pleasure and appreciating its aesthetic values will number just as how many people were studying and appreciating Latin a few decades ago. Now stories and entertainment is transmitted through the screen, as opposed to the text. Welcome to a brave new world.

We're not going to get a Shakespeare, Chaucer let alone a Nabokov or even a Burgess for quite some time.

Screen was invented in 2010

New Sincerity is a meme and so is your writing, John Green.

All things are nothing to me. My novel is a physical adventure, men fighting and travelling in a realistic yet imaginative setting. Or at least that's what I want to write. Manly men doing manly things, and then making a spiritual judgement of their actions. That's what I want to write, I don't give a shit if it feels out of date, desu.

sounds gay

that's the point you fucking pleb

Sounds good senpai. Keep up the good work.

I misread the first sentence as "Is anyone else sad that art and literature seems to be progressing?" and thought "Huh, now that's an original opinion." Disappointment followed

>muh greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeks!

Yes OP postmodernism happened. You can either be a fag crying in a gallery over a Duchamp toilet, or mentally unfuck yourself and accept that all the genuineness you desire in your artwork is preserved and still perfectly accessible even as the ancestors of the ancestors of postmodernism continue to spiral into obscurity and regression (AKA everything becomes TLoTiaT)

Besides, New Sincerity or something very similar to it is beginning to appear, as a series of false starts if nothing else. It's hard to conceptualize a return to Modernistic principles predicated on the aesthetic possibility of postmodernist expression in the 2D arts, if only because photography has superseded Realism and rendered it obsolete.

It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.
Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.
Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink.

Best of luck. I hope that against all odds you do have the character and experience it takes to write this in a genuine manner.

Does this character profile suit you?
youtube.com/watch?v=B_obeR1OIm8

I am more annoyed at people that dismiss things, honestly.

Reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago about adult colouring books. The person I was talking to said that colouring books are for children and that only "snowflakes" needed that kind of stuff. I don't use them because I never liked colouring but I can see their use as a sort of meditation thing or an anxiety reducer. It's no different from playing video games or watching television (which he does both).

the only people who hate the time they live in are people who don't get it or in the case of art, capture it.
the only people who cry about "MUH POSTMODERNISM" are people too stupid to get it.

That's some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Creative energy is directly derived from conflict, which looking at history is over and over again derived from conflict with the time they artist lives in. Whether the artist is expressing so called progressive or regressive thoughts, complacency creates nothing but a warm feeling in your belly.

Yes to be in conflict with it you'd have to get it first you stupid fuck.

>what's a strong misreading

Oh and everyone who doesn't agree with you on postmodernism objectively doesn't "get it" and therefore is in no place to criticise what they subjectively perceive?

>Posts dumbfuck response
>Claims other person misreads
cool

>doesn't understand a post
>replies to it anyway
>embarrasses himself even further
cool

weak misreading

If you got it you wouldn't be attacking it wholesale. Of course there's shitty postmodern art which runs on the spirit of postmodernism and nothing more but to criticize the entire thing is just the sign of an idiot.
>subjectively perceive
That's what I always find funny. People who shit on postmodernists claiming their subjective perspective matters as an attack on postmodernism.
>doesn't understand a reply
>angrily responds to it
>makes himself look like a dumbfuck
>claims other person is misreading
okay

Against the day.

>being THIS triggered

Lel, I hate those board tourists. This is not /b/, kid. Arguments are mandatory around here.

I back you

Have you read Pierre Ménard, author of the Quixote? It's a Borges short story, right about what you're saying.

you need to look up the word technocratic desu

Kids now can't get through 20 minutes of tv without spazzing out, never mind a long, difficult work of art. Literature is on its way to the status of classical music. It still exists and will be preserved in the academy, but its so far outside of the culture its eesntially dead.

No, I don't

That's a very reductive statement. You can 'get' postmodernism while still realising that it's a desperately sad consequence of the failure of humanity to elevate ourselves beyond barbarity

Yes, I did. What is about that story that is related with the original post?

People who use "lel" are 16 and/or friendless.
You obviously don't get it also your statement on it is retarded garbage but is probably enough to convince morons who don't get post modernism.

>ad hominem instead of arguments

You should get the fuck out of here pal.

OP, stop using the word that. You don't need it as much as you think you do. Go back and reread your post without them.

Where was your argument? Didn't see anything but some pseud version of saying "i totally definitely get postmodernism and it's shit lol"

that

I agree with that desu.

im starting to suspect that the malaise affecting literature in the last several decades ("wahhhh where are all the great writers") is only partly based on genre trends and 'standards' or 'restrictions' as you put it

the real problem is twofold, and has to do with how people are spending their youth.

A) the most obvious problem: with modern tech, even the most bookish kids spend a lot of their free time playing vidya, shitposting, internet surfing etc instead of reading. The same people if born in 1850 would have read another 2 or 300 books by the time they turned 18, if only because there was nothing better to do - huge difference at a crucial formative age. developing the erudition to become a good artist is a matter of brute time investment and very few people have the wherewithal to do it in their formative years

B) corollary problem: our abandonment of classical education.

not because "starting with the Greeks" is necessarily so important in of itself, but because training your mind to memorize long poems in foreign languages from an early age will train the mind's verbal facility and ability to appreciate the nuances of language. your average 20 year old educated upper class person (re: education and living standards, we are all upper class by 19th century standards) could speak spontaneously in fluent paragraphs - now people stumble for words, say "like" and "um" all the time because we never practiced rhetoric or poetry memorization. Nowadays we are impressed when some 25 year old gets a wad of cash to publish their debut novel (which is usually ho-hum), but it was normal for twentysomethings to publish unsurpassable masterpieces before the mid 20th century - before the rise in distraction devices and the decline of classical education.

a last problem i'd point out that's unrelated to the previous two, is that by the mere passage of time the canon has become way too large for any artist to absorb and transcend. a few early 20th century guys like Borges and Joyce came impressively close to doing this but realistically the last person to do it (and the last time it was possible) was Goethe in the early 19th c. great hero-artists who completely transform the culture simply aren't possible anymore, too much has already been said and done

>corollary problem: our abandonment of classical education.

And here comes the shit...

you didn't read anything after that, did you?

the point is not that we 'lost touch with the classics' or something liek that, its that we stopped training the minds of young people in the way that they were trained by classical education. the ways in which the brain is exercised from childhood to late adolescence define who you are and what you're capable of for the rest of your life. it's common sense and basic developmental neuropsychology

I blame internet desu.

Hey OP, why did you repost this post that I made from like a year ago? It wasn't funny or copy pasta worthy, so are you just trying to get (You)s?

You changed your vision?

what

Your glasses m8

what the fuck r u saying to me right now

I beg your pardon...

what the fuck r u saying to me right now

what the fuck r U saying to me right now

In my opinion, a great book expects a lot from its audience. Specifically, it requires them to have read the relevant canon.

Between antiquity and the 19th century, the world's population grew from 100 million to 1 billion.
It hit 5 billion in the 1980s. Now it's 7.5 billion, and most of us can read at least one language into which everything gets translated.

Never have more people with more diverse experiences competed for space in a more unified market. The great works of the past still have momentum in literary fields because they are taught to every student of literature, and as a group they preserve intertextuality. Contemporary great works are harder to come by, because there can be no expectation about what the average reader has read.

truly powerful art came along just as often hundreds of years ago as it does now

and of course since the introduction of the internet there's more shite to sift through

I've said that once before, ppl just replied muh why even

just because you're a plebeian doesn't mean there isn't great art

What a low bait.

Name several books published after 2000 that will be considered the masterpieces of our era in 100 years.

No ironic answers please.

how would we know? i fully expect society in 2037 to be unrecognizable to todays man. so many social paradigms are changing

Name several books published after 1980 that will be considered the masterpieces of our era in 100 years.

No ironic answers please.

Name one (just one) book published after 2000 that will be considered the masterpieces of our era in 100 years.

No ironic answers please.

It's way easier with 1980:

>Perfume
>The Name of the Rose
>The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2666?

You're only referring to masterpieces. Literature has always been self-conscious, at least since the Greeks.

>Perfume
>masterpiece

2666

i love bolano but people are already forgetting about him. his heyday is a few years gone.

i would be surprised if any book without an accompanying movie or tv show will survive this early half of the twenty first century

Both answers are from XX century authors who were already distinguished at the time. Eco was almost 50, Kundera was way past 50, etc.

Name one novel from one new author. Can you do it?

>i would be surprised if any book without an accompanying movie or tv show will survive this early half of the twenty first century

This.

The books that will survive are those who can't be adapted on screen. Think about it.

>inb4 INFINITE JEST

>The books that will survive are those who can't be adapted on screen. Think about it.

Examples.

>The Man Without Qualities
>In Search of Lost Time
>Ulysses
>Journey to the End of the Night
>The Master and Margarita

A reason why these are literary masterpieces is that no other medium than literature can properly convey what they convey, so they've never even been adapted for cinema (or not successfully). That's why someone like Kundera writes his novels in such a way they can't be filmed: because the point is not in the plot or in the characters alone.

Proust has a movie adaptation. Bulgákov & Kundera, idem.

Adapting these is possible (although it may imply serious butchering of the plot), but it's meaningless. Literature brings the superior experience in all these cases.

I think a lot of this has to do with distance. Old works come from some alien literary world because you're not familiar with the conventions of day in day out of that time, so even what may have seemed bland to someone in that age is completely fresh to you.

there are likely correlations with amount/quality of art and population numbers. a larger world population produces a larger amount of art, there is a larger consumer base to support artists of lesser quality.

on top of this, we live in a world driven by corporations and capitalism, and the greatest artisans often become arms of these machines these days. today's mc escher might be drawing storyboards in hollywood making more money than escher ever did and you'll maybe see his name in credits somewhere but never pay any mind to him.

art isn't weakening. there is simply large amounts of supported mediocrity that obfuscates who the masters are.

leo brouwer is one of the greatest classical guitar composers to ever exist and he lives today.

youtube.com/watch?v=nBt9oJYyFn8

>there seems to be a sort of purity, sanctity to previous works of art, like the works of Shakespeare or Chaucer, or even the KJV that is impossible to recapture in the modern age. Literature has become so self-conscious and ironic over time

read Hegel's lectures on aesthetics.

infinite jest is pre-2000 but it will obviously be remembered for a long time.

No, adopting them would just require the removal of industry standards regarding time frame, marketability, etc.
Except for those works where etymology contributes to the structure of the work (so, Joyce), a proper auteur visionary given enough resources could adapt any literary work to film.

In 100 years people will be functionally illiterate. It will be like in medieval times when people were amazed that monks could actually read without speaking aloud.

>puritity, santity
>Shakespeare

Choose one.

>but it's meaningless

Fuck, I though you had a good point. Now I'm a bit disappointed tbqh.

>Chaucer
>Shakespeare
>unironic
>unselfconscious

Nope nope nope.

How do you post this with a Kafka pic and not have your question answered?

>implying sincere works aren't written anymore

Just avoid works praised by ivory tower academics and bourgeoise book clubbers.

most people 200 years ago didn't read literature either

complex literature is a niche genre and will remain so as long as we desire art. it will not fade away, just evolve

objective third party is on this guy's side here

Godspeed.

>100 years
try 50
thewalrus.ca/the-rising-tide-of-educated-aliteracy/

>reading without speaking aloud

Yeah I know I just didn't want to sound too alarmist but it's already in the process of taking place right now. I took a community college class in history recently and out of 30 people myself and 2 others were the only ones who did the reading. The other people in the class complained how they physically struggled to read for any extended length of time, it was just too demanding on their attention span. I believe that monks used to have to physically train themselves to be able to read in the old days, to have their eyes be able to follow the lines from left to right. This physical/neurological component behind reading is underrated and it's an ability people are beginning to lose.

>when people were amazed that monks could actually read without speaking aloud.

source of this

I'm not really educated on the matter but you can try this book: sup.org/books/title/?id=683

Augustine's Confessions, of course.

I'm phoneposting, so I'm somewhat forced to give the short version for my opinion. I'll try to be longer here.

Why do I think it's meaningless to adapt many masterpieces of literature? Because cinema can only capture "external" things from a fiction like plot, speech, descriptions... And these masterpieces don't always have the best plot, nor the most suitable elements for a successful graphic recreation. Their merit is elsewhere: in their style, their psychology, the illusion of reality they can create, the point of view of the narrator, the pure verbal firepower, the intertextual references, even in a masterful use of italics or punctuation... all the things that can't be shown with pretty images. That is the way for literature to compete against cinema: by using the weapons cinema cannot use to make an impact.

Inversely, have you noticed how often the best movies were adaptations from mediocre or unremarkable novels? (The Godfather, Shining, etc.) That is because these novels are like movies without pictures--they're novels begging to become movies, novels shaped by non-literary aesthetics. It is more interesting for a filmmaker to use these novels as their screenplay material, rather than wasting their efforts by trying to fit Joyce or Proust into two hours of animated pictures. It's almost like trying to convert Mozart's operas into architecture. Hence my "meaningless" comment.

Art, by definition, can never die. Unless there are no more humans.

People aren't dumb enough to be sincere anymore.

Self-awareness is a good thing.

I'd consider giving that a read - if you're Canadian, I would read it in a heartbeat.

user was clearly pointing out that you were making a false distinction.

You claimed that the only people that cry about PoMo is people that don't get it. The point is that one can both get it and cry about it.

He made good points though.