https://archive.ph/cMLNo
>I’m old enough to remember when novelists were big-time. When I was in college in the 1980s, new novels from Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Alice Walker and others were cultural events. There were reviews and counter-reviews and arguments about the reviews.
>It’s not just my nostalgia that’s inventing this. In the mid- to late 20th century, literary fiction attracted huge audiences. If you look at the Publisher’s Weekly list of best-selling novels of 1962, you find works by Katherine Anne Porter, Herman Wouk and J.D. Salinger. The next year you find books by Mary McCarthy and John O’Hara. From a recent Substack essay called “The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction” by Owen Yingling, I learned that E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime” was the best-selling book of 1974, Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” was the best-selling book of 1969, Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” was No. 3 in 1958 and Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” was No. 1.
>Today it’s largely Colleen Hoover and fantasy novels and genre fiction. The National Endowment for the Arts has been surveying people for decades, and the number who even claim to read literature has been declining steadily since 1982. Yingling reports that no work of literary fiction has been on the Publisher’s Weekly yearly Top 10 best-selling list since 2001. I have no problem with genre and popular books, but where is today’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, George Eliot, Jane Austen or David Foster Wallace?
>I’m not saying novels are worse now (I wouldn’t know how to measure such a thing). I am saying that literature plays a much smaller role in our national life, and this has a dehumanizing effect on our culture. There used to be a sense, inherited from the Romantic era, that novelists and artists served as consciences of the nation, as sages and prophets, who could stand apart and tell us who we are. As the sociologist C. Wright Mills once put it, “The independent artist and intellectual are among the few remaining personalities equipped to resist and to fight the stereotyping and consequent death of genuinely lively things.”
>As a result of this assumption, novelists were accorded lavish attention as late as the 1980s, and some became astoundingly famous: Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote. Literary talk was so central that even some critics got famous: Susan Sontag, Alfred Kazin and before them Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson. There were vastly more book review outlets, in newspapers across the country and in influential magazines like The New Republic.
>Why has literature become less central to American life? The most obvious culprit is the internet. It has destroyed everybody’s attention spans. I find this somewhat persuasive but not mostly so. As Yingling points out, the decline in literary fiction began in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet was dominant.

>People still have attention span enough to read the classics. George Orwell’s “1984” (an essential guide for the current moment) has sold over 30 million books and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” has sold over 20 million. Americans still love literary books. When the research firm WordsRated asked Americans to list their favorite books, “Pride and Prejudice,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Jane Eyre” all came in the Top 10.
>People still have the attention span to read a few contemporary writers — Sally Rooney and Zadie Smith, for example — and a sprinkling of reliably left-wing literary novels: Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead.” It’s just that interest in contemporary writers overall has collapsed.
>I would tell a different story about the decline of literary fiction, and it is a story about social pressure and conformity. What qualities mark nearly every great cultural moment? Confidence and audacity. Look at Renaissance art or Russian or Victorian novels. I would say there has been a general loss in confidence and audacity across Western culture over the past 50 years.
>Go back to the 1970s and artists and writers were attempting big, audacious things. In literature there were Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and Saul Bellow’s “Humboldt’s Gift.” In movies there were “The Godfather” — I and II — and “Apocalypse Now.” Rock stars were writing long ambitious anthems: “Stairway to Heaven,” “Free Bird” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Even the most influential journalists were audacious: Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson. Everything feels commercialized, bureaucratized and less freewheeling today.
>The literary world was especially hard hit. Something happened to literature when the center of gravity moved from Greenwich Village to M.F.A. programs on university campuses. When I got out of college I dreamed of being a novelist or playwright. I volunteered to be an extremely junior editor at a literary journal called Chicago Review. But after a few meetings I thought to myself, “Do I really want to spend the rest of my life gossiping about six obscure novelists at the Iowa writing program?” It seemed like a small and judgmental world.
>Furthermore, the literary world is a progressive world, and progressivism — forgive me, left-wing readers — has a conformity problem. Even more than on the right, there are incredible social pressures in left-wing circles to not say anything objectionable. (On the right, by contrast, it seems that you get rewarded the more objectionable things you can say.)
>In 2023, The British Journal of Social Psychology published a fascinating study by Adrian Luders, Dino Carpentras and Michael Quayle. They looked at a sample of the American electorate (mean age 34) and analyzed their opinions on issues like abortion, immigration, gun control and gay marriage.

>They found that left-leaning people tend to have more extreme and more orthodox and tightly clustered views on these issues. If you know what a left-leaning person thinks about immigration, you can predict what he thinks about abortion. Right-leaning people tend to have more diverse and discordant views. A right-leaning person’s view on immigration is less predictive of his views on gun control. There’s more conformity on the left.
>This accords with my experience. When I visit a school in a blue part of the country, students often say they are afraid to speak their minds in class. It also reminds me of a study Amanda Ripley did with the polling and analytics firm PredictWise for The Atlantic in 2019. That study looked at which counties in America were the most open-minded and which counties were most prejudiced against their political opponents. There was plenty of intolerance on the right (especially in Florida), but the most intolerant county in America appeared to be Suffolk County, Mass., which includes the city of Boston, and the Bay Area wasn’t far behind.
>Conformity is fine in some professions, like being a congressional aide. You’re not being paid to have your own opinions. But it is not fine in the writing business. The whole point is to be an independent thinker, in the social theorist Irving Howe’s words, to stand “firm and alone.” Given the standards of their time, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain and James Baldwin had incredible guts, and their work is great because of their nonconformity and courage.
>If the social pressures right around you are powerful, you’re going to write for the coterie of people who consciously or unconsciously enforce them, and of course your writing will be small and just like everyone else’s. If you write in fear of social exile, your villains will suck. You’ll assign them a few one-dimensional malevolences, but you won’t make them compelling and, in their dark way, seductive. You won’t want to be seen as endorsing views or characters that might get you canceled.
>Most important, if you don’t have raw social courage, you’re not going to get out of your little bubble and do the reporting necessary to understand what’s going on in the lives of people unlike yourself — in that vast boiling cauldron that is America.
>In 1989 Tom Wolfe wrote an essay for Harper’s called “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” in which he tried to inject a little audacity into his fellow novelists. He implored his fellow novelists to get out of their intellectual ghettos and write big, audacious novels that could capture an age, the kind of novels Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis were doing in their day. Wolfe did that himself in 1987 with “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” his sprawling novel about all layers of New York society — which holds up very well today.

>We have lived, for at least the past decade, in a time of immense public controversy. Our interior lives are being battered by the shock waves of public events. There has been a comprehensive loss of faith. I would love to read big novels capturing these psychological and spiritual storms. And yet sometimes when I peek into the literary world, it feels like a subculture off to the side.
>Which brings me to the good news. If the problem with literary fiction is social pressure and a failure of nerve, then that can be solved. I am told, by someone who teaches young writers, that right now there are bold young novelists doing important work. It makes sense to me that they will want to break out of the constraints that others have lived by. Maybe there are stars coming up just on the horizon.
>Literature and drama have a unique ability to communicate what makes other people tick. Even a great TV series doesn’t give you access to the interior life of another human being the way literature does. Novels can capture the ineffable but all-powerful zeitgeist of an era with a richness that screens and visual media can’t match. It strikes me as highly improbable that after nearly 600 years the power of printed words on a page is going to go away. I would put my money on literature’s comeback, and that will be a great blow to the forces of dehumanization all around us.

Boomer nostalgia. Get over it.

lol i was about to read this then i noticed it was written by david brooks probably the dumbest mf to have a column in the nyt

>>24546325
are you mistaking him for david french?

ok i read it. he talks about how it's all genre slop on the best seller lists instead of literary fiction but does anyone have absolute sales numbers? like maybe ppl are buying more slop now and the same number of literary shit is being sold? probably not, but let's check that first.

why is there suddenly so much concern about novels in the nyt? what's the angle here? the nyt never publishes anything that doesn't support neoliberalism in some way.

Here's a summary:

> This text argues that literary fiction has lost its central role in American culture, a decline the author attributes not to the internet, but to a loss of audacity and a rise in social conformity within the literary world. The author suggests that the move of the literary center to university MFA programs and the pressure to conform to progressive orthodoxies have stifled the boldness that characterized great novelists of the past. Despite this, the author remains optimistic that a new generation of writers will emerge with the courage to write ambitious novels that capture the complexities of contemporary life. Ultimately, the piece is a call for a revival of audacious, nonconformist literature to counteract the "dehumanizing effect" of its decline.

>>24546368
let's be real, it's because white males have been frozen out of literary fiction. no one can say it but everyone knows it.

>>24546368
>The pressure to conform to progressive orthodoxies (has) stifled the boldness that characterized great novelists of the past.
We seem to have very predictably entered the historical phase of "maybe we have gone too far with enforcing a monoculture of political correctness in the arts". Being published in the NYT, I expect little self-reflection regarding its own causal role in the decline.

When Opinion Pieces Were Linked

you know, Quasimodo predicted all this

>>24546368
You unironically post a chatgpt summary of an article about why literature became irrelevant? Jesus fucking Christ anon.

>>24546464
you'll never believe what happens next!

>>24546430
there's an archive.ph right at the top my guy

>>24546473
Sir, it's Gemini 2.5 Pro.

>>24546292 (OP)
>I have no problem with genre and popular books, but where is today's F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, George Eliot, Jane Austen or David Foster Wallace?
There calling each other faggots on this very website

>>24546501
To be fair, I don't think 4chan will be producing many people like that. There are authors who browse here, some popular (I know of at least two) and I'm sure the younger generation of authors will spend a lot of time here in their teens but then graduate from this place and learn to navigate the IRL publishing world, which places a lot of emphasis on the ability to be sociable or at least not a weirdo.

>>24546404
They let it happen though
Honestly postwar lit sucks so it deserved to die
The idea of caring about Gore Vidal etc. makes me nauseous
Obviously true poetry can never die, so the article is correct
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Stella_(Hugo)

>>24546482
Yes??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

>>24546507
> then graduate from this place and learn to navigate the IRL publishing world, which places a lot of emphasis on the ability to be sociable or at least not a weirdo.
What you are describing are careerists and while they may have success they are not likely to survive. Not that I care about the authors listed.

i'm just kind of over reading huge doorstoppers that try to play tricks on the reader, like ya gr was great, but after i read stoner i was like wow a book can be be great without being a gigantic chore.

>>24546514
anon.. easy one the enter key

>>24546292 (OP)
I'm beginning to notice a pattern.

literature died when charlie rose got cancelled. if i don't hear:
>*tss* *tss* TOOT TOOT budungdung dee dung
>"yale a. wasp is here, critics are saying his latest novel the doorstoppers is a force to be reckoned with"
>*slaps book down on table*
>"wecome!"
then it ain't high literature

et pour la prose il y a des journaux

>>24546518
What's wrong with being a careerist?

I've read a lot of author bios, and the examples of those who wrote in obscurity and didn't make some conscious effort to integrate with some kind of "scene" are quite limited. Look at authors who are considered hermetic, e.g., Kafka, Pessoa. They usually had some kind of standing in their local (usually urban) literary scene, and very often were only published as a result of more sociably fluent people in said scene encouraging them to write and share their work. Without that environment, literary types are likely to just rot in daydreams or lose interest in achieving what seems like an insurmountable goal.

The major obstacle these days is the lack of IRL community, for better or worse. Buenos Aires, Prague, Paris, London, Los Angeles, New York, and your standard national capital for smaller nations, usually had some kind of literary clique which bonded over the magazines and publishing houses that existed there. There was an energy that circulated in real life, but now a lot of that energy has been dissipated due to online. I look at Knausgaard and other scandi authors as an example of a healthy attitude towards arts and culture: granted they are wealthy nations, but even with a small population these cultures tend to foster a kind of in-group identity which means your typical reclusive aspie author doesn't look at the publishing world and see some kind of insular class hierarchy, or some globohomo HR regime, but instead fellow countrymen willing to give your shit a read and looking out for people who seem interested in writing. This was, afaik, and probably to a lesser extent, the state of publishing in the US pre maybe 1970, maybe later or earlier. You'd read about people like Faulkner living on easy mode working 10 hours a week and writing the rest of the time with the sort of tacit understanding that he would at least be treated seriously. You still have McCarthy decades later writing in obscurity and then sending his work to a major publisher and being treated with a degree of respect, the publisher in his case (and others) understanding he's probably not ready to publish his masterpiece but seeing enough potential to at least treat him seriously. Today it seems more about having the final product ready on your first go, and even then being willing to accept that you will be ghosted or auto-rejected 90% of the time, and only receiving human feedback which is dishonest about why they are rejecting you. It's an automated system designed to weed out people who are already weeded out in many respects, as writers tend to be. Fifty years ago we had Jean Rhys, today we have someone from a comfortable background and a productive mentality doing their best Jean Rhys impression.

>>24546540
For me it's Bookworm.

i was born in 91, so i was just lucky enough to be a kid when harry potter mania happened, then followed twilight, and 50 shades of gray.
People still read when i was young, but it was mostly genre fiction.
Now they dont read at all.

>>24546555
no one is reading this chatgpt stuff dude if ur gonna pretend to be an author write a post not a prompt

>>24546569
It's not Chat GPT you mong. Fuck sake, is effortposting now automatically rejected? Ironic really.

>>24546577
learn to get more concise holmes no finna read some long ass shit by you

>Reclusive authors like Kafka and Pessoa often relied on local literary scenes for encouragement and publication. Urban centers historically provided IRL energy for writers, now lost online. Scandinavian cultures support even introverted writers, unlike the U.S., where publishing has become insular and automated, rejecting most without honest feedback and favoring privileged imitators over authentic voices.

>>24546364
It's a proxy topic in the broader cultural, gender, and political polarization. The NYT knows that ragebait like this gets people riled up on all sides of the discussion. Liberals and conservatives, SJWs and trads, straight white men and booktok goonettes. The beauty of articles like this is that it's a subtle way to activate those groups of people like they're some kind of sleeper agents, it sets them off and gets them fighting, generates clicks. It was never books books in the first place. So yeah, you're right, it's neoliberalism.

>>24546594
Concision is for plebs

>>24546621
*it was never about books in the first place
Hate mobile

>>24546621
well david brooks, as one of two designated conservative nyt columnists, is tasked with triggering the libs, so yeah, but for like the last two weeks the nyt has run a bunch of articles "concerned" about the state of the novel or whatever so clearly someone decided this should be a thing

>>24546577
You think ingratiating yourself to “publishing” is worthwhile? There’s no scene in most places that isnt just mentally ill pseuds
I actually don’t think writing in general is worthwhile because it’s almost always just shallow egoism. You’re going to die.

>>24546555
if there was a "scene" you wouldn't be in it. you didn't go to the right schools and your parents aren't rich enough to pay your rent in the right neighborhoods.

>>24546569
>Every non-inarticulate post is chatgpt
Lol, how dumb.

>>24546637
Not ingratiating no, and like I said it depends on context. Reaching out to the publishing world isn't always and hasn't always been a humiliation ritual.

>>24546643
Like I said, money etc hasn't always been that important. It's why in some places you have fairly organic communities forming, taking on more responsibility within their given culture, becoming the boomer gateholders, and then encouraging the next generation of young pseuds.

>>24546650
There’s something naive, in a bad way, about the effort post. Like you don’t realize what year it is or what’s going on in thenworld

>>24546661
> isn't always and hasn't always been a humiliation ritual
But it is now so what’s your point?

>>24546661
>money etc hasn't always been that important
the beats all met as students at columbia and burroughts got published because he was the grandson of the founder of burroughs corporation
even writers who are supposed to be free spirited hippes are connected, sorry dude

>>24546674
You ‘ve listed a bunch of 5th rate artists to makr what point? Was Shakespeare’s uncle the president of Boeing?

>>24546678
>has to go back 500 years to find a guy who wasn't part of an elite network
that's what's commonly referred to as a cope

>>24546678
He was literally Lord of the Mint.

what i dont understand is why publishers play it so safe. some of the writers mentioned in the op and many others who were successful in the 20th c. were controversial, which drove sales. who cares if some people get offended, the main pub houses are too big to boycott anyway

>>24546696
it's because nothing is shocking anymore except racism basically so if u write some mary mccarthy shit about fucking a random guy on a commuter train no one is going to care

I have read the article and the thread. What did I think?

>>24546696
tony tulathimutte's "the feminist" got about as close to being naughty as will be allowed and it was pretty good tho he still hedged his bets i'm hoping he saves literature by dropping a doorstopper

>>24546711
There really should be an infographic of 21st c short stories, novellas or maybe lit in general which will appeal to the average /lit/ poster

Reading Nic Pizzolatto's short story collection right now and it's pretty good

>>24546716
Really not a bad idea.

>>24546711
That story is from ten years ago...

>>24546745
>Publication date Fall 2019
5 years ago, and ppl still be talking about it today
>January 27, 2025
>https://www.compactmag.com/article/tony-tulathimutte-and-the-literary-vibe-shift/

>>24546711
Yeah while I was reading that I was constantly asking myself "how did this get published?" But then I reached the end and I saw that the only reason they allowed it was because that cop-out of an ending completely invalidates everything that came before. If Tulathimutte wasn't a coward he would've shown what actually happens to guys like "The feminist", they die alone and nobody gives a shit. But of course, we can't have the straight lonely virgin male be a victim, no way, so of course we turn him into a misogynist killer, ultimately making the story about how women are perpetual victims and always right and you're a misogynist if you suggest maybe just maybe most lonely young men aren't Patrick Batemans in disguise but instead just autists who failed to realize that modern-day feminism's idea of equality is just a shit-test to weed out passive men.

>>24546757
i kinda liked the ending cuz maybe he pulled out a nintendo switch and played pokemon, you just think he pulled out a gun because you've been conditioned to think lonely guys must be violent when in reality if they were violent they would be assertive enough to get laid, so generally are not.

>>24546757
for me the cop out wasn't the ending but this line in the beginning:
>Still, the school ingrained in him, if not feminist values per se, the value of feminist values.
there are tons of "soi cuck" types you really believe those "values" it's not a trick they're doing to sneak into some pussy, they actually internalized the shit naively. so the whole thing whiffed it, unfortunately. still good tho.

>>24546757
Iain Reid's I'm Thinking Of Ending Things covered this, a really good novel

>>24546767
Exactly. Tulathimutte constantly tiptoes around any sort of criticism of what mainstream ideology has done to men, almost like a pre-emptive defense against being "cancelled." It's this weird combination of a No True Scotsman and Just World fallacy. The fact that you lack companionship is because you're secretly a misogynist, and actually not a real feminist, and women can somehow read your mind and sense this which is why you deserve to die alone. They fail to consider how plenty of misogynists and abusers have people who care about them, and plenty of feminists (actual male feminists exist, even though women like to pretend they don't) die alone. They assign a moral red flag to men being alone, and if you disagree then they hit you with the "fake Nice Guy" accusation. They say the bar is in hell, but then you look around you and see violent abusive assholes constantly with women, and you ask yourself "Am I really worse than that guy, in the eyes of women?" You ask for advice, they tell you to take a shower and get a haircut and just be funny bro. You do all that, you get hobbies, you learn to dress, treat people normally, and ask them again what you're doing wrong, then they call you entitled. Women don't owe you shit, incel. I never said they did. They don't owe Jeremy Meeks anything either. But hey, I'm clearly worse than him right, since I'm alone and he isn't?

Normalfags CANNOT READ BOOKS. Everyone has their dopamine system absolutely blasted by their smart phone apps like tik tok and shit. People do not have the attention span for reading, it is not stimulating enough.

Eventually people will come to understand that these apps are no different from physical drugs and they will be controlled and regulated. The term "brainrot" is fully understood by almost all zoomers. Boomers in power of course cannot understand it but its only a matter of time before mobile apps get heavily regulated in regards to dopaminurgic activity. You could even build an AI that understand and measures dopamine manipulation on screens and gives shit a score and use that for regulations but I digress.

Even if no regulations come, people will naturally start to think of using dopamine manipulating apps like smoking or whatever. It will start to become something only losers do. Just takes a long ass time for the retarded masses to change. They are only just now realizing that giving babies ipads is a bad idea.

>>24546823
i like how these guys always bitching about brainrot act like 4chan is not the worst

>>24546833
its definitely not. 4chan is extra "sticky" though because you don't have an account to delete and there is never any barrier to entry. I personally have spent a 5 year stretch of not using 4chan and then one random day I wonder what anons are talking about and then boom I am back.

>>24546822
all true. but if i'm being totally honest the reason i don't get laid is because i don't try. the few times i actually put effort in do end up getting laid. in college i was like i'm not going 4 years without a crumb of pussy, so one semester i tried and eventually got laid. and another time my housing accommodations didn't allow me to freely masturbate, so i ended up hooking up with a chick to let some nut off. really, i just don't try. could be lack of confidence, but i think it's more i just hate the cringe of it. also i would probably have to buy a car which i resent since i live in a walkable city and don't want to take on a money sink and parking nightmare just for ass.

>>24546840
no my point is if u spend a couple hours posting on here your ability to concentrate will be smoked for the day. you get the some heavy feeling in your forehead that you would get from playing some video game all day. it's the brainrot.

>>24546364
>>24546633
hype merchants building a pre-buzz, some time between now and and hannukah you will see them shilling "the next hillbilly elegy"

>>24546538
eventually, someone must realize. That half of the country, wants to read paperbacks like they used to be. At least those that want to read, would. At some point, the book publishing industry should realize, there's a big market that they created through freezing basically straight white authors out of the process.
I mean, if the market worked like its supposed to.
sales are sales, when is some publishing house going to capitalize on a growing unserved market.

>>24546896
>like they used to be
Which means...?

Kind of off-topic but has anyone here read Shantaram (2003)?

It's really strange for me to come across these bestselling novels having never heard about them before. I only heard about this novel because a soldier from Ukraine's AZOV battalion published a POV video of his unit capturing some Russian soldiers and one of the Russian guys said his call name was Shantaram and the two guys started talking about the novel and how much they enjoyed it. It was really surreal to come across this.

>>24546823
I'm pretty sure what saved me from the fate of those around me and how they've become? I went through a very poor phase. No cable, for years. And after a certain number of years with no cable TV? I was reading, and studying things I wanted to learn about. I was probably the last person on the internet, that had to be shown free porn, LMAO. I was actually enjoying the research aspect of it.
Fast forward a couple decades.
I got so used to no cable TV? I stayed like that, even when I can afford it.
My "TV time" is replaced by YT documentaries. I can find about every last single documentary, I wish I ever saw.
Which brings me to my point.
from 1980-1995?
you still had college students. Most of which, are poor. You go without cable TV back then.
Just four years of tuning out? Stimulates everything else. Writing, among those things.
Where we, today, blame cell phones?
We once blamed TV, then cable TV.
Then, the internet. Now finally, its cell phones with internet.
I firmly believe, my "streak" of what I am? Is because of a couple decades of no cable TV.
>
I'm reminded of an old frind I havent seen i decades. Ryan. He had a little K-car in college, it had a bumper sticker that said "kill your television". I used to think it was weird back then, but over the decades I've come to see it as the best advice possible.
I go over someone's house these days? Its a novelty to watch any show. To me? Its all mystery meat and faggots. Very few new shows I even like. My buddy's kids noticed. He's like some old grampa, complaining.
And? I am.
I feel its good though. Like I'm in touch with something we all once had and lost.

>>24546776
Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out

>>24546961
NW, movie is great too on the subject of sympathetic depictions of incels, really compliments the novel

>NYT
I wonder if the comments are just a bunch of people calling him a bigot for suggesting that writers not adhere to orthodox progressive dogma. Alas I do not have a subscription and cannot tell.

>>24546990
I'm curious as well

>>24546902
>>>24546896 (You)
>>like they used to be
>Which means...?
I'm pushing 60. I read a *lot* when young. Like, think alcoholism but reading instead? Pretty much like that. And books are books, paperbacks are paperbacks. You turn to junk sales, flea markets, stop and go through piles of books out for the garbage. Not only am I the age I am? I also, read "back" enough, that I got to experience it all like I'm twice my age.
The facts are this.
PC shit started creeping into paperbacks? And kept going on.
I honestly, like many, thought it was a fad that would die out. But no, it grew into today.
cast of "woke" characters.
every side character? some kind of woke character.
When the MC goes off like an autistic sperg, preaching about woke thing X?
It stops the movie in my head. Its annoying.
I learned over time, that if the author doesn;t do it, to "get into" the secret clubhouse?
the publishing house editor... will do it for them. Woke up the characters, woke up all the side characters. Drop in preaching sermons.
I woudn't care, but... it ruined reading. It stops the movie in my head I get when I read.
Now. any lefty, will say...
ah! lonely chud! He can't deal with today and reality!
and that's not it.
I honestly dont *care* about the PC nonsense.
it just ruins the movie in my head, which ruins the reading.
So, when I write? I don't do that.
Basically, I want the escapism of reading a paperback, without being preached to, like I'm in church getting a sermon.
and, THAT, is what I'm referring to.

>be the internet
>exist
>old media
>gee whizz how come a few tastemakers who all went to school together can’t influence the general public like they did back in the 80’s

>>24546292 (OP)
literature and publishing has been heavily hit by women and basically killed by them. Nowadays (and for last idk 20 years) in literature and publishing women are predominately in position of power and decision-making, women are also predominately the employees of publishers and finally women are predominately the audience of new books. Women both select which books will be published, how they will be published AND what books will sell. But women becoming the majority audience of literature is huge failure as now contemporary fiction basically completely alienated men - this was done intentionally. The women in the industry do nothing about it, except wait for someone to fix it. When women act like they are doing something to fix a problem they just create uselless job positions for other women (look at all the bureaus in EU of which there is already insane amount and it's growing, they do nothing but shuffle some papers and hire women), those do not fix anything and do not generate any income, they just waste time and money - give a job to uselless white bitch.
You see in any industry the driver of profit is innovation. To innovate you must risk. Guess who is the more risk averse sex? Women. If you are trading stocks, just look how many women are in decision making positions, if it's lot expect the company to die.
Not only have they killed literature as art (no need to explain this), they have also killed it as an industry.

>>24546555
trips and thanks for the effortpost

>>24546292 (OP)
>I’m old enough to remember when novelists were big-time. When I was in college in the 1980s, new novels from Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Alice Walker and others were cultural events.
Rowling unironically turbomogs all of these in terms of cultural impact.
>30+ video games
>At least one theme park
>A play
>12 movies
Just say you miss your postmodern shite and fuck off

>>24547002
They'd word it some way like
>In a time like ours where fascism is literally on the rise, we can't use art irresponsibly. We have to remain conscious of the real-world political ramifications that art has on black bodies and blah blah

>>24547065
Such is the way

One thing I'd like to do is compile a list of maybe 50 authors who are respected on /lit/ and produce a kind of progression narrative explaining how they went from being a nobody to getting published etc. This would include socio-economic background, education, work/career responsibilities, and then how they first became published and what aided their career advancement after that if relevant (e.g., Yaddo, grants, contacts). I think it would both be interesting to know these things without transgressing their personal lives too much, and also allow aspiring writers on this board to gain a more reasoned, evidence-based understanding of the kind of trajectory they can reasonably anticipate, especially if they are young and potentially naive. There is a lot of myth-making in the arts about artists' backgrounds, and some of it is actually quite dangerous for impressionable people and might lead to bad decisions etc.

>>24547072
Yah, I think you nailed it

>>24546990
>>24547002
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/opinion/literature-books-novelists.html#commentsContainer
You don't need an account to read the comments

>>24547112
Honestly better than I thought it would be. But I can't leave without posting at least one negative screenshot, can I?

>>24547125
>uhm no actually rightoids all think alike
>reifies leftist dogmas
lol

>>24547125
>We all unanimously agree that we have more diverse opinions than the right

cant make this shit up. leftoids are beyond parody

>>24546464
the poet or the hunchback?

I swear, writing became boring when people began writing on computers. I have no idea why. But, writing done by pen-and-paper is somehow more interesting.

>>24547242
I agree. I think it begins with the fundamental reason for writing, which for many people is to foster bonds between individuals, to articulate shared experiences and observations, to explore ideas and experiences, to navigate morality, etc.

When this experience came about as a result of a physical object, in the real world, it felt as though it was contributing to what it hoped to achieve in a sense, or at least was situated in the arena which was of primary importance to the book, i.e., the real world.

When literature moved online with so much else, it feels shared reality became a kind of afterthought or supply depot for continued online existence. This sentiment has spread to so much of the modern world, everything from architecture (the gradual disappearing of ornamentation, even decoration), romance (mediated by online algorithms), group recreation (online gaming etc) and much more besides. The ambition to write a book and find it on a bookshelf someplace now feels like the ambition of someone who has missed the boat and is stranded in the ruins of the real world. I never read on kindle and barely read online, because it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything except getting fat on information.

>>24547242
My surface level take is when you type on a computer you don't really have to think that hard about word usage beyond being understandable. When you use a typewriter or pen/paper you have to think first write second. So you get more thoughtful prose.

>>24547242
IMO it's the ability to go back and easily edit earlier sections. Being forced to write and edit as separate activities is necessary for productive writing.

>>24547125
>reddit spacing

Even aside from how contraselective contemporary publishing and criticism is, I feel like there is an irreconcilable contradiction between literature as a societal sphere, like the sociological community involved in the production, popularization, and consumption of "literature", and literature as a form of art. Anything that will be truly worth reading will be something that will offend many and go against aesthetic and political orthodoxies in many respects, but literature as a societal field is fundamentally conservative, not in the political sense, but in the sense that it resists change because it is always dominated by the upper and upper-middle class elites of the society in question. Like literature as a form of art just wants to fly free but its unavoidable embeddedness in society hangs around its neck like an albatross.

>>24547125
He's only right insofar that it is not an inherent characteristic of the right, it's just a product of the unique situation of our times. When the orthodoxy is lefty-liberal, it is only natural that the right would be where the unorthodox gather, those who exist on the periphery of the lefty orthodoxy for one reason or another.

>>24547242
I have been developing a similar theory as well. Its like writing on a computer becomes mathematical, because computers operate mathematically. Writing with a pen and paper is simultaneously writing and drawing, so its a broader creative act.

>>24547242
>>24547269
>>24547280
>>24547281

You guys just convinced me to write with a pen and paper. I did have this thought in the back of my head regarding the harry potter books. The first one is just so charming and has much more of an economy of words to it than the rest and I found out she wrote the first one by hand and typed the rest. I can feel the difference.

>>24546292 (OP)
>John Updike
What's Up dyke?

>>24547314
That is interesting. I also noticed a difference in the books, from the first and the others. I always put it down to creativity etc.

But man, I might try some pen-and-paper writing as well.

>>24546514
>>24547317
You know, honestly? I kind of agree with this. The American novelists from the latter half of the 20th Century, are they really so great? The popular ones, anyway.

Does John Updike really have anything grand and powerful to say? Does Gore Vidal? Does Norman Mailer? Does Philip Roth? Does Don DeLillo?

A lot of the novelists that Brooks is celebrating here could probably be called minor writers from the perspective of the whole history of literature. As far as MAJOR writers go, what has America produced in the postwar era? McCarthy is the only one that immediately comes to mind. McCarthy IS probably a Great Writer, but I think it's not a coincidence that he never gets included with the "set" of "popular" writers guys like Brooks talk about from the 60s/70s/80s/90s. "Popular" writers in the United States have not always been GREAT writers. Indeed, it seems they rarely are.

Hell, I might also say Gene Wolfe counts as a GREAT writer from the postwar era, but he's an outsider to the popular set, too.

So, it's always good when more people read, but how much of the popular novelists of the last 80 years will be read a thousand years from now? I'm not sure there will be any of them.

>>24547446
You're putting way too much pressure on yourself and others by insisting grand statements are a pre-requisite in the creation of literature.

>>24547446
>anything grand and powerful to say
gayest possible benchmark. go back

>>24547446
Is McCarthy that great either? Prose doesn’t really last. The general reader can barely parse 19th century prose, let alone 18th or earlier.
The Greeks and romans prose writers only made it due to very specific circumstances in early medieval Europe where the language was dead but a priestly caste still spoke it - that’s not going to happen again

>>24547496
>The general reader can barely parse 19th century prose, let alone 18th or earlier.
that doesn't mean anything

>>24547473
>>24547475
Well, it's either that or you go super-small and get into the innermost depths of the human heart. Like Austen did, like Joyce did, like I guess Dostoevsky did. But did any of the popular American writers do that, either?

>>24547446
For male writers at least, it seems to be that their public persona matters as much as their writing.

>>24547533
Would Hemingway have been as successful without the "man of action" personal life that he used to market himself?

>>24547446
>As far as MAJOR writers go, what has America produced in the postwar era?
Pynchon
Gaddis
DFW

>>24547625
Paul Auster?

>>24547625
Tom Clancy
Clive Cussler

>>24546364
Not every person who writes for the NYT is NECESSARILY just some brainwashed ideologue. Well, the more explicitly political the articles they’re writing, or editorials or op-eds, yes, it’s more likely, but there’s at least some who care about the arts, culture, and literature.

>>24547649

If we are going that path Michael Crichton mogs those two. And then you would have to add Stephen king too who also mogs them.

>>24546292 (OP)
To become a successful writer, it is typically necessary (but by no means sufficient) to please a gaggle of upper-middle class left-wing women at a major publisher. How can we expect anything interesting to pass this filter?

>>24546292 (OP)
>I have no problem with genre and popular books, but where is today’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, George Eliot, Jane Austen or David Foster Wallace?
He's at his desk, opening his 100th "we regret to inform you... but good luck with your literary endeavors!" letter.

>>24546292 (OP)
>>24547945
>where are all the [straight white male] writers???

heh, he knows hes saying this as a dig. no one can make a comment like that unironically

>>24547598
I’m pretty sure Sun also Rises made him famous which really wasn’t “man of action” at all
>>24547664
But there’s always some distortion because they ignore the real problem, feminism (which is based on resentment) and monopoly/centralization of cultural production, not “lack of ambition”; a great number of great writers from years past struggled to get published, how would they do today?
>>24547446
My favorite of those mentioned is Delillo. Imo a great writer must be a great man (but not that sure on this, since I wonder if Joyce was a great man and I think he was, though a bad influence, a great writer). Read Rimbaud’s letters—this is a strange, unfathomable soul. As with others. None of those mentioned were great in this regard in my opinion. A few, like Roth or Wallace, were downright pathetic

>"where is all the literature?" xir asked, whilst publishing LGBTQ feminist "re-imagining" of a classic where the bad guy is good and the good guys are actually bad #6,893,631,997

>>24547625
I think Tom Wolfe's novels are underrated. He captures American life in multicultural shithole cities where everyone is simultaneously ethnically tribal, obsessed with money, and constantly clamoring for social status. That's postwar America in a nutshell.

>>24546292 (OP)
Oldfag nostalgia. Also just because this is /lit/ doesn't mean you aren't on 4chan anymore nobody is fully reading this shit.

>>24548100

Just scroll down for the ai summary of copy paste it into copilot to get a 1 paragraph version, nobody is going to read something that long.

>>24547927
Ah, I knew I was forgetting someone. I got stuck on the two and then my brain froze.

>>24547446
The last great American writers were Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and John Dos Passos but people in this thread are clearly not ready to hear that

>>24546292 (OP)
>David brooks
Can kill himself and I’ll read his suicide note. Otherwise he can go suck the dick of the gay black dude he does a weekly segment with on PBS. Loser.

>>24546750
>still be talking about it today
First time ever hearing of it, for me

>>24547125
The left “bans” just as many books these days. Usually universally beloved classics like Twain and Dahl

>>24548457
They do worse than banning. They rewrite.

>>24547446
Book Of The New Sun deserves to be regarded as as major work of American literature. But you'll never hear the snobs on or off /lit/ acknowledge it. It's basically a great beast of a journey across time and space and into the depths of the heart. I'd almost say that BOTNS, Moby-Dick, and Blood Meridian all belong in the same genre. They all "feel" like the same kind of book.

>>24546908
I did. A girl gifted it to me since she always saw me reading big books. It's shit

>>24547509
It sort of does. If you believe McCarthy will still be read in hundreds of years time, it rather raises the question: by whom?
I can’t see him lasting in the way Austen has, people throwing parties and dressing up as Suttree and the boys

>>24546540
It blows my mind watching old tv shows on youtube. Dick Cavett is another goldmine. It’s just conducted on a level you’d never see today. When people wax lyrical about podcasts vs tv that shit used to /be/ on tv. Same thing with political messaging if you look back, it’s not that they weren’t lying and manipulative back then, it’s that they’re talking to voters like the voter has two braincells. Compare with the focus tested soundbite or the gibberish of Trump or Bush and it’s night and day.

>>24548621
Do you think Faulkner will still be read? Idk, nigga shouldve written less books and gotten them clearer

>>24548830
Faulkner will because of his influence on subsequent 20th century fiction, and because of the detailed view he gives of the Jim Crow era south.
Assuming future academia resembles current academia, you have to think about the purpose of teaching this or that particular author. Is it a teachable moment about the development of the form? Does it give us insight into a particular time and place?
A seminar group discussing Faulkner will have a lot of easy ins to go on.

>>24548849
Current academia has non-zero odds of simply being lined against a wall and shot. It's foolish to plan for current academia to continue existing.

The far better option is to think of more classic examples of education. Tutors and such. Educated men teaching classes or tutoring the sons and daughters of aristocrats. Such a circumstance will probably lead to Faulkner surviving and might preserve McCarthy, too, if he's valued as he is by our modern well-read people.

>>24548857
Okay…semper fi…day of the rope and so on
But assuming we don’t have a violent revolution in which all current intellectuals are murdered, it might be helpful to try to imagine what a hypothetical Blasian lady English Lit professor in 2150 might be be interested in when she is preparing her English Lit 1945-2001 course

>>24548621
Sure, that makes sense logically. But then you've got stuff with zero literary merit like The Count of Monte Cristo, The Phantom of the Opera, The Lord of the Rings, Sherlock Holmes, Conan the Barbarian still going strong today.

>>24548875
Father Time doesn’t give a shit about our historically contingent notions of literary merit

>>24547010
You type,
like a retard?

>>24548100
>>24548113
>nobody is going to read something that long.
I lolled, the literature board has less attention span for topics concerning its very purpose than some lukewarm NYT readers browsing recent news.
>>24546473
A reminder to never take any literary advice from these larpers seriously.

>>24546822
>The fact that you lack companionship is because you're secretly a misogynist, and actually not a real feminist, and women can somehow read your mind and sense this which is why you deserve to die alone.
this is just objectively true though so I'm not sure what your issue with it is

>>24547314
how did the pen-and-paper writing go?

>>24546292 (OP)
all whites got blacklisted after the 1980s

>>24546555
>Today it seems more about having the final product ready on your first go, and even then being willing to accept that you will be ghosted or auto-rejected 90% of the time
now they want you to bring not just the product, but also the audience from your tiktok or youtube channel

>>24546569
>>24546696
>controversial, which drove sales. who cares if some people get offended
because sales have been irrelevant for decades, what was important was "investment" (that is, access to the money printer), maybe soon sales will be important again

>>24546566
Young people read comic books and girls read romantasy

>>24546566
When I was young, everyone's parents used to read. Not a lot, just the classic 30 min before bed. The thing is, a person reading that schedule gets through quite a few books. I'm trying to remember what they read. Probably just genre slop. The point is, it would take a big change in habits to really boost reading consumption. People got convinced that they needed 10,000 steps a day and became obsessed by it. If people could be convinced that reading 30 minutes before bed was the key to youth, energy, and happiness, they would do it.

>>24546292 (OP)
Greentext is for quotes and stories tourist, not your inane slop worshiping juvenoic ramblings

>>24549540
Articles have been posted like this for years and years.

>>24546292 (OP)
>the novel is a cultural artifact of the early mass media era
dont you say

>>24546292 (OP)
Sarah J. Maas can shove a dick in her ass

>>24549540
>Greentext is for quotes
>quoting an article

>>24548481
>a great beast of a journey across time and space and into the depths of the heart
generic, LLM-esque praise