Why is contemporary literature so fucking bad?

That's only half of it. DFW was right when he noticed the trend that popular books were becoming more and more shallow while literary fiction was becoming more and more experimental and alienating.

So you get this situation where the only option for people who want more challenging stories is batshit crazy pretentiousness and the only option for people who want to have fun is vapid garbage.

I do too, but Dreiser clearly suffers by comparison to his contemporaries.

In any case, the point remains. How many Dreiser threads do you see here? Or classes on Thomas Wolfe? If anyone read Sinclair Lewis, they'd find most of Jonathan Franzen stupidly redundant.

>DFW was right when he noticed the trend that popular books were becoming more and more shallow
He was clearly talking about his own work.

Because the autists haven't had enough time to sift through it all.

I'm sorry that I went out on a limb to name some writers (and yes, one did pass away a few years ago at a tragically young age) I personally found engaging and yet you failed to do the same.

Aside from Lerner, I like David Sedaris a lot. Yes, I know he's popular. I think Franzen has worth as a sociologist. Houellebecq is a writer I greatly respect because he says outrageous shit and some of it is true - he may not be Celine, but he's OUR Celine. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch has some amazing prose and fuck you if you didn't like it. Bret Easton Ellis is still going strong, he's probably more interested in Twitter and Podcasts but still.

A lot of strides have been made in the graphic novel department, like Spiegelman and Sacco and Satrapi and Ware. Fuck, stop being a grouch and try to find stuff worth while and praise it forever so future generations can take note of it

Try Quignard's Hatred of Music instead

This. There were over 300,000 books published last year in the United States alone. How many of them have you read?

So what contemporary books do you recommend?

>A lot of strides have been made in the graphic novel department

Interesting post, thanks. But what other departments? I am very picky about what I read and am continually frustrated by what I find, both new and old, but new usually takes the cake. You seem knowledgeable, though, so I'd like to ask where the trends are headed. I'm always looking for the best writers/prose stylists lbs for lbs, but consistently feel let down by a lot of what I find. Not always, however, again I like complex sentences and flowery prose and dislike the Hemingway camp style and first person. Can you give me some recommendations based on that? Or maybe a blog or something.

>Why is contemporary literature so fucking bad?
Because the nature of scholarship has changed completely. Many of the best writers enjoyed classical educations, their upbringings and literary conditioning is/was VASTLY different and superior to those of people today. Who do you think will have better discipline form and understanding, someone whose entire life was saturated in intellectual pursuit or someone who went to public school? At best we're all dilettantes by comparison to those who came before, when it really meant something to both write and read.

>Why is contemporary literature so fucking bad?
Because those who produce it were raised on modern garbage, mediocrity begets mediocrity.

Pratchett was contemporary until recently.

Simple, because its secular.

Anything by Javier Marias

So you realize that a graphic novel is an illustrated story, sort of like a comic book with higher aspirations (so this might belong more in /co/ but w/e, it's storytelling let's just run with it).

I named four names that have done some good work of late. Alan Moore's Watchmen is basically known to everyone as is Clowes' Ghost World. Spiegelman's Maus and Sacco's Palestine are good (if you want to get political). Jaime Hernandez and his brother have been doing Love and Rockets for literal decades now. Chris Ware's stuff is very detail oriented.

Again, it's not "literature" technically speaking, but I think they've been making strides esp. for a generation that has no attention span whatsoever

Ah, no, I actually did not at the time realize you were referring to graphic novels qua graphic novels since you had mentioned Easton Ellis around that point and, not being very familiar with graphic novels, my mind assumed a more traditional interpretation. I realized what you meant when you mentioned Alan Moore, though, as I read some of his real book, Jerusalem, I think it is. I agree with your last statement about graphic novels being good in their own right but I didn't realize that was what you were referring to, for the most part at least.

feminism

>Bret Easton Ellis is still going strong
>I like Ben Lerner's books.

Consider suicide.

I have a hard time believing that whore is white with a nose like that.

EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rude

A lot of Finn women look like that so, yeah, not white.

A song of ice and fire series

what is "bad" the classics have been done and a new identity and frontier has to be built and experimental literature is a part of it.

famous abstract artists are trained classically yet they do not paint landscapes because their predecessors have already perfected it.

Why is contemporary english literature so fucking bad*?

Primarily it's because of the gatekeepers. The people who decide what gets published and what doesn't are basing that decision of off nothing apart from their worship of profit. They are also piggish and stupid and unqualified to judge literature so even if they were somehow motivated to publish good literature they wouldn't have enough of a discerning eye to do so

As far as I can see the only option for a g e n u i n e l y challenging and radical modern writer is to establish his reputation in the public sphere some other way (as a minor intellectual or journalist), get an online following, and then found his own infrastructure of distribution (and in this way also help his fellow writers by distributing a small number of their works too). Enough talented writers following this model would get enough good work out into the world that the stasis of modern literature would be ended and things would begin to move again. But it's easier said than done obviously and requires an undignified level of whoring one's self out to the public.

As a young writer you can learn a lot from the approach of these right wing internet guys like Peterson and Milo, who have essentially built up cults of followers. If either one of them was to come out with an unflinchingly post post modern brick of a novel tomorrow then their followers would lap it up whether they understood it or appreciated it or not.

this is the correct question

This

Writers these days are all women, non whites and Jews writing barely disguised faggy memoirs. I don't give a fuck

Because the critics are bad. There's something good out there, we just haven't been made aware of it yet.

Tasteless New Yorkers don't like anything they can't sell.

All good ones moved to screenwriting
>inb4 movies are shit

Books are an outdated medium. People with the drive to pierce the public consciousness with art aren't writing books. Writing as a way to get famous or make money is an upper-middle-class appeal to intellectualism and a lifestyle aesthetic for people LARPing as bon vivants from the 1800s. I say this as someone who is constantly writing, btw.

It's not particularly better or worse than the past. The difference is all the bad shit from the past is now lost or irrelevant.

this, reminder that many books now considered classics were largely ignored when they originally came out (ex: Moby Dick)

>Because everything is about money and easily digestible garbage makes money

It's true for the classical times too though

this is how it has been for centuries

the best-selling books of every century are mostly trash

Veeky Forums doesn't actively seek out good contemporary authors so they just see what's popular and because the popular stuff is trash they assume EVERYTHING new is trash

it's like those "le wrong generation" music kids who won't listen to anything made after the 90s and think Queen and Pink Floyd are the pinnacle of music

I see it as twofold. Yes, you're right about books not providing the immediate sensory experiences that attract people. But this charlaranic strand of (pseudo)intellectualism that has permeated the literary world is a fucking poison.

>Books are an outdated medium

Only in the sense that they have lost their popularity among the average people.

Books still have the power to truly move and inspire the readers who will put in the effort to actually read them.

*meant to add to this, there are certain forms of experience that only literature is still able to provide. Sure video games and comics and stuff can be more immediately gratifying and visually stunning, but as of now they come nowhere close to matching the level of immersive and beautiful detail that truly good prose can do.

Part of this is because other mediums are constrained by their own format. They are generally required to be of a certain length, and made in certain ways to suit business models or whatever, whereas a book can be any length, and does not have any strict structure to adhere to.

Writing is a more "free" art form, if that makes sense. It gives the writer more freedom to go into great poetic or factual detail, and it also gives the reader more ways to enjoy it.

Video games being as popular as they are is really a reflection of the abysmal attention span of the current generation. It's a shame.

One more thing, you will never be able to get as full of an experience as you do from a book out of any other medium. It's just not possible. You can do more with written language than is possible with a 20-hour video game or a 13-episode TV series or whatever. If you want to truly learn something, books are still the best way to do it.

That it takes time for the wheat to be separated from the chaff isnt always true. Everyone who was in the know knew Hemingway and Faulkner were hot shit in the time of Hemingway and Faulkner. I dont think its a totally unfair judgment to say contemporary lit is in a rut when there is clearly no artistic center right now

This is probably accurate. The best way to think about it is that the above average successful screenwriter -- a guy who'd maybe be a writer on a TV show or get low/story credits on a movie here and there -- has a much more stable and decent paycheck than the above average "successful" writer.

Becoming a successful lit writer was always highly unlikely, but now there's at least one semi-equivalent job that's not only more likely to be attained but pays more, too.

Because your only exposure to older literature is the classics which have passed the test of time.

>Stop liking things
>Never gives any alternative suggestions to reflect taste
>Only posts some memed-to-death BLACKED porn star

You first

We just have to keep raising our standards then.

I'll fix it, don't worry

The gatekeepers for contemporary literature are primarily female, democrat-supporting, New Yorkers of a certain ethnic and religious group.

...

No idea.

Too soon

Source?

Art as a whole has lost its purpose. Right wingers will blame postmodernism but it's really just a reaction to the disgusting cultureless rut of a world run by American conglomerates.

Starbucks and video games are the literature of today

Jews usually have good taste in literature though, look at Kafka

If anyone's to blame it's dumpy white lowbrow American christians

Source for what faggot?

>Jews usually have good taste in literature though
They're "usually" perverted, insular, iconoclasts who substitute beauty for neuroticism and call it a day.

>it's da Jews xDD

fuck off, also provide a source if you're even gonna post shit like that

You want it to be, either that or fixation on realism.

you can't provide a source for that many people, but i'm going to assume he's telling the truth. I looked 3 random names from that list, and 2/3 were jewish.
Adam Thirlwell is listed under 'British Jews'
Ben Lerner + Jew brings up a jewish newspaper talking about how he's their favorite jewish writer

sarah manguso i couldn't find anything on

ill look up 3 more right now
gary shteyngart, says he's jewish on his wikipedia page

adam foulds+jew yields an article where he talks about being jewish

greg jackson(highly gentilic name) +the query 'jew writer' yields an article where he admits he is jewish.

it's not hard to believe, they have a high verbal IQ.

you mean Veeky Forums or Tao?

you're right wither way