Does anyone else think that intellectual pretensions in art produce nothing but bullshit? lit is kind of horrific...

Does anyone else think that intellectual pretensions in art produce nothing but bullshit? lit is kind of horrific. Everything related to Literary "Theory" is post hoc trend spotting or unfalsifiable extrapolation.

And lit is so taken with this and the laughable veneer of intellectualism that academia gives, it starts denigrating books that don't write about "worthy" topics (inb4 "but e Pynchon pooo"), or are written in certain ways, or don't have "allusions" or rim the cannon or, in short, facilitate the pretensions of Literary Theory and pseudo intellectualism in general, among authors and readers.

The concepts of fun and enjoyment are denigrated. I guess that's because boring things are associated with intelligence, such as boring things in education, but also because, at the most general, fun maybe relies on novelty, which is probably outside any "theories" asserted by academics and pseudointellectuals, or is maybe just a badly understood process.

So here we are. If you say you don't enjoy gigantic amounts of Pynchon rambling in Gravity's Rainbow, you're allegedly an idiot. If you don't like non sequitur filled post modernist books in general, that are written for English Literature majors to deconstruct, you're allegedly an idiot.

It's funny that these appeals to intellectualism and wide reading never ever extend themselves in to fields that require numeracy or rigour.

Sophistication of craft has been supplanted by sophistication of theory. Just as there are very few masters of craft there are very few masters of theory. I don't really care about the people who don't 'get it'.

Absolutely. I'm not an anti-intellectual either. I support academic philosophy 100% even if it's not all great.
But lit theory is a cancer filled with delusional frauds and authentic crazies.

Sorry I am new to this board, but are fanatasy novels and sci-fi also included in Veeky Forums?

Also what are the reasons some people like Shakespeare or authors like that that are completely outdated and are incredibly hard to understand? I am genuinely curious.

>caring this much about what pseuds think

We'll never be able to keep the Walkers out. The real artists will always be outnumbered and underappreciated by the ones who are good at faking it and bad at understanding it. Why do you think pic related, and his inexpressible inbent fractals of genius, is so wildly popular over at reddit?

But the real gets recognized, too. Just as surely. Don't worry about the ones who don't deserve it.

I actually almost fell into this thought myself.
I took a lit class in college and it completely ruined all of my writing. Instead of trying to write an interesting story, I became obsessed with the right symbols to use to make a good political point, and just lost the ability to tell a story without being autistic about the point the novel (that's literally just notes in my notebook at this point) is trying to make. After a while, I just gave up on writing altogether. It's been a good few months since I gave up, and now I'm just writing a story that I enjoy.

tl;dr: Just write for fun.

let me guess you're that militarism publishing complex faggot

If he were, he'd also bitch about not being able to quit coffee and how seeing cute girls upsets him

Gravity's Rainbow is a fun and funny book. And there's nothing wrong with post hoc trendspotting, especially when those trends will continue to show up in stories written in the future (and they will). Like, some people take it too seriously, but understanding the symbolism in a book can help you enjoy it as well.

I think all this pretentious and intellectual writing is to find new things and to find new horizons while it does look pseudo or meaningless to a lot of people but its kinda experimental and when these so called pseudo intellectual topics do get developed in their way some beautiful thing does come out.
But on a lot of the times i do agree with you, but its also possible that the fun other people who are getting from writing and reading something, its actually genuine and you are just not getting it.

your use of pepe invalids any idiot arguments of yours which i did not read