Thread 24835148

What are some of your opinions which are verboten in literary history. Eg: Shakespeare sucks.

My personal is that Robert Graves and Peter Green are better translators of Homer than Fagles, Fitzgerald or Chapman.

If the entirety of philosophy were to suddenly disappear the world would be no worse off.

>>24835148 (OP)
>Shakespeare sucks.
This is the opinion of almost every non white person in the current year
How is that against the grain?

>>24835278
this is just a misinformed twitter tier take

>>24835148 (OP)
The modernists (Eliot, Joyce, Beckett, etc.) are an interesting experiment, and there is merit to their work, but literary culture treating them as brilliant innovators which should be emulated and responded to was a mistake. The weird fiction movement of Lovecraft, Howard, and their predecessors was a better and more genuine response to the Romantic movement, and I would even go so far as to say that Tolkien should be included with them, since they shared the same influences and general project, though Tolkien himself never wrote weird fiction.

>>24835370
"literary culture" doesn't give a shit about Finnegans Wake

>>24835462
>FW is the only thing that Joyce ever wrote

Reading is for the mentally ill.

>>24835148 (OP)
Verboten is probably too strongly put to describe my opinion, but I absolutely fucking detest the heap of shit that is Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.
The fact that this utter garbage won a Booker plus the Booker of Bookers is a bigger miracle than any goddamn magical realist anecdote in the story.
Fatwa completely justified.

Dostoevsky is a good writer because of the substance. His actual writing often sucks.

Plot is at least as important as prose, if not more. But character matters more than both.

>>24835338
>opinion of almost every non white person
I'm not counting modern opinions. They are subversions.

>>24835548
I despise Nabokov (that's my entry for you, op) but he was wright about Dosto being better as a playwright. What that means is that he is good at narrative not language.

>>24835558
Plot and prose are inextricable. How you tell a story is inseparable from the story itself. Otherwise all you would need to “read” is a bugman synopsis on Wikipedia.
The only people who have trouble grasping this are genrefoamers who treat books like video games in which to live vicariously through the characters/plot/setting. If your prose is shit, you just suck at telling a story and no amount of plotfagging is going to change that.

>>24835148 (OP)
1. Melville is a great writer, but he literally forgot about Bulkington in MD. Critics like to write that Bulkington represents this or that. But how about, he just forgot about him as the story changed in his head?

2. It's not that Hemingway or Wolfe, or Fitzgerald were good. It's more about how much they were commercialized. They were chosen by their editors and publishers to be marketed to the reading public and the reading public bought their works. Marketing and commercialization are the most important characteristics in determining perceived quality.

>>24835548
>>24835892
Dosto’s characters are definitely more like soap opera cutouts than actual people at times. All the fainting, exclamations, etc etc….And that’s fine since their purpose is investigating problems that Dosto wanted to bring to bring to their most extreme conclusions. More tools instead of being simulacrums of real people

>>24836016
This is dumb and makes no sense. You can write "good prose" and not even tell a story or hardly tell one which is common with lit darlings like Joyce and Melville and Burton

>>24835338
>almost every person in the current year
ftfy

plays aren't literature

>>24835468
>implying FW isn't Joyce's defining work

>>24836030
Of course it makes no sense to you, you’re a complete retard who tries to refute what I said with the most obvious examples of how prose and plot are inextricable.
Joyce and Melville are not interested in telling one dimensional “this happened because this happened” stories. To say that neither of them are storytellers is probably the most obvious self-tell of being filtered. You should kill yourself to save further embarrassment.

>>24836063
>joyceteens when someone doesn't care for their obscurantism

>>24836063
You're very sad and very dumb

>>24836070
>>24836078
>No rebuttal
Prose is the language you use to tell a story. There is no story without prose, and vice versa.
>obscurantism
The purpose of literary allusion is the exact opposite of obscuring, you’re deliberately calling attention to other works, cultures, and art to invoke their meaning. There is no technique in literature that could be clearer. The title of Ulysses itself is an allusion, literal advertisement of the kind of book it’s going to be. Why is an Irish autofiction writer alluding to the odyssey? Duh.

The book isn’t obscure anymore than a pond is deep, you’re just midgets who can’t even be left around puddles without drowning yourselves. Which you should do.

>>24836171
>Prose is the language you use to tell a story
Lolwut?
Odyssey is written in verse, Burton and Browne wrote in prose, Melville wrote cetology (nonfiction) in prose; a small fraction of prose tells a story. Diaries are prose. It's an odd point to try to claim prose and storytelling are necessary for one another

>>24836265
>It’s an odd point to try to claim prose and storytelling are necessary for one another
The original post in that chain referred to how “prose is as important as plot”. Obviously talking about prose, in the context of writing a novel. You cannot write a novel with a story without using prose.

Why do you faggots have this autistic Redditor compulsion of trying to find exceptions? Did you think that you were coming across as intelligent by saying “oh erm you forgot plays?” So fucking stupid

>>24836282
Well you're a retard who claimed there's no prose without plot which is demonstrably untrue, even in the context of novels. Your commentarysloppers rambling endlessly in flowery language with no attempt to progress a story isn't automatically storytelling just because it's crammed into a novel.

>>24836305
>endless flowery language
That is a type of prose. The same way short clipped sentences are another type of prose. What do you think prose is?

So fucking hilarious how dumb you are, truly.

>>24836324
>changes the subject entirely opting to strawman instead
The final stand of the prosefag

>>24836337
>Bro your strawmanning for pointing out I don’t know what prose is
Your example of how plot can exist without prose was….mentioning that bad novels have flowery prose.

You don’t know what prose is. Go back to /tv/ retard

>>24836352
Prose doesnt automatically make for plot in a novel, this is obvious for anyone not trying to autistically win an internet argument. Cope and seethe pseud

>>24836384
>Prose doesn’t make for plot
No one argued they are the same, are you hallucinating?

Inextricable (I’ll help you here) means inseparable. You cannot tell a story in a novel without using language. Focusing on language over story is retarded when one is necessary for the other.

Repeating yourself like a trained tard isn’t really helping your case, by the way. Turns out you knew nothing at all. Lmfao

>>24835278
Thats incorrect and you know it.

>>24835148 (OP)
This boards uncritical fetish towards French culture and French language is unbecoming.

>>24835148 (OP)
yall are not “reading” shakespeare correctly, you dont just straight up read shakespeare in and of itself, atleast not his plays, you read his plays so you understand the dialogue better and then you go and see the plays so you better appreciate certain scenes.

>>24836403
>You cannot tell a story in a novel without using language.
Profound lmao

>Focusing on language over story is retarded when one is necessary for the other.
How shameless can you be? Earlier you were trying to argue that the quality of story and the quality of prose were directly proportional, which is untrue. Unless you're truly just gonna resort to "hurr durr plots are made of words you thought I was saying something else?"

>>24836458
>Earlier you were trying to argue that the quality of story and the quality of prose were directly proportional
I said “prose is inextricable from plot”. Nothing to do with “quality,” you keep rephrasing my very simple statement because you either don’t understand it, or you know it’s true and opposition to it is untenable.

>you're truly just gonna resort to "hurr durr plots are made of words you thought I was saying something else?"
What do you think prose is? You are genuinely so pozzed with this plot-prose binary that I’ve broken your mind with this.

>>24836482
>If your prose is shit, you just suck at telling a story
Okay then what did you mean be this if now you're claiming the whole time you simply meant books are made of words?

And then why take issue with the original post that clearly was referring to people that prioritize the beauty or appeal of language over storytelling?

>>24836509
That sentence is outlining how prose and plot are connected. If you have shit prose (clunky grammar, out of place style, tedious sentences), then you suck at storytelling. You are objectively failing at using language to lay out the story.

That has nothing to do with “quality of story = quality of prose”, the point is there is no story without the prose. The prose IS the storytelling.

I was not taking issue with that original post, where do you see a disagreement? You are just profoundly illiterate.

>>24835148 (OP)
tolkien is pure reddit

As long as they're not woke stemlords write better books than litfags.

>>24836594
Dishonest

>>24836662
t. Illiterate

I accept your concession. By the way, you ever figure out what prose means?

>>24835148 (OP)
Why the fuck does everyone recommend Emily Willis' translation of Homer? Why is this a thing? Academics I understand, but tiktok whores have the same opinion. How do they seriously enjoy that over the rest?

Literature written after WW2 is almost uniformly cowardly, derivative of better and more original prewar authors (just try to count all the ersatz Célines and Eliots, if you can) and practically the cultural equivalent of chronic erectile dysfunction.

>>24836667
>I accept your concession
this petty hindu shit is tiresome

The last novelist of any talent whatsoever to come out of England is Mary Shelley

>>24835148 (OP)
English poetry is weak sauce. Which sucks because it is a beautiful language, with better translations of other poems than it's own originals.

>>24836878
Kind of true, but I enjoy a little bit of Mccarthy's nihilism, rest throw it in the trash.

>>24836899
Checked

>>24835370
Tolkien is a romantic, the last one, ushering forth the weird fic era.

>>24835148 (OP)
Shelly's Frankenstein was emo garbage.

>>24837226
We don't do that retard shit here.

>>24837251
Yeah well why don't you try and do me then bitch. E

>>24836880
Always write it as hindoos, reminds me of poo.

>Pynchon is schizo nonsense
>Joyce is schizo nonsense
>Bible is schizo nonsense although far more caustic than the above
>McCarthy is a pretentious dweeb
>LOTR is fantasy dreck for stoner dweebs and christkeks
>The Tempest is Shakespeare's worst play by a large margin

>>24837305
is this how fags proposition folks? grodious

>>24837522
>The Tempest is Shakespeare's worst play by a large margin
It's actually his best, being the most personal and authentic

>>24837246
b-but he is literally me...

>>24837591
Give your balls a tug.

>>24837522
>McCarthy is a pretentious dweeb
I feel like his actual books aren't that pretentious in terms of content but his bizarre war on punctuation sure as fuck was.
What in the hell was up with that?

>>24837523
I ain't no faggot but if I was you'd be in my mouth pretty boy.

>>24835338
Almost every person he doesn’t read (or reads smut or genre fiction schlock) thinks Shakespeare sucks.
Their opinions can be safely ignored.

>>24837522
>The Tempest is Shakespeare's worst play by a large margin
Titus Andronicus is way worse.

>>24836446
Seeing a modern rendition of Shakespeare will give anyone an aneurysm

>>24837522
Bible is schizo kino.

>>24836023
They are real people, albeit rare archetypes but you can find them. I'm literally rasolnikov

>>24836640
Proof?

>>24840040
Your mom

Pynchon is a good author but not a great one. He writes "humour" for pretentious readers to chuckle at simply because they "get" the joke he's making and not because it's actually funny. I tried reading some of his works with an open mind, didn't like them at all or find them funny, and any time I try to voice these opinions Pynchon fags come out of the woodworks to interrogate exactly what texts I read and put words into my mouth as to why I didn't "get it" to invalidate these opinions because they can't take criticism of his work

>>24836878

I'll bite here, Beckett aside, the high modernists are ludicrously insecure, posturing fakes - their classical allusions a desperate attempt at gravitas. Read an interview with Faulkner and feel the pseud energy flow. Gunter Grass is the natural evolution of the unhinged style - earthier, funnier, better. From him things spin off the way of GGM, Pynchon, Tournier to everybody's benefit

In the meantime, less modern authors like Camus, Bellow, Mishima, were all putting out good and socially important work in the 50s. The rot doesn't settle in till later

>>24836040
TRVKE

>>24835148 (OP)
Don DeLillo seems to write misery porn from my estimation.

>>24835148 (OP)
Not sure how "verboten" it is since I'm a newfag on this board, but Proust's work is some of the dumbest shit I've ever attempted to read. I went about 150 pages deep before I finally decided to call it quits for all the inane rambling and gooey autofellating prose.
On the other hand, I often hear a similar argument made about Dosto's TBK which I thoroughly enjoyed.

>>24841085
Proust is lost in the sauce, Dosto is actually telling a story to get his point across.

>>24836171
>The purpose of literary allusion is the exact opposite of obscuring, you’re deliberately calling attention to other works, cultures, and art to invoke their meaning
Finnegans Wake is a giant pile of allusions that, in many, many cases, doesn't give the reader any inroads into their contextual meaning or the intent behind them
Coherence isn't intrinsic to the mere invocation of another work

>>24842342
The allusions are pretty much not possible to get even for an erudite man.

>>24835278
This is the most common and regular and within the grain take you could possibly have on phl

>>24835370
properly against the grain, but it's worth noting that their innovations are widely diffused into literary culture (as well as other domains as well). Re-emulating ulysses or whatever else over and over would be a mistake, but something like the concept of doing something very new and individual within the arts is kind of a core modernist concept, or at least highly adopted by the modernists as opposed to following traditional or established styles.

>>24835558
This is the normal grain, but it's also wrong

>>24836040
True, BUT they can be read as literature if they are good

>>24836429
this is just misinformed... huh?

>>24836604
True but not against the grain

>>24836640
they write better books, but not better literature :^)

>>24836842
Whores parrot whores and are dumb, not really against the grain.

>>24836878
Gravity's rainbow is literally about chronic erectile function (and its consequences)

>>24836893
Against the grain, and very wrong

>>24840977
Most humour involves doing the mental work to get the joke, unless it's scatological. Since literature lacks tone, voicing, pacing, delivery, and many other things that make jokes funny, it relies much more on what's left, - getting the joke.

>>24842708
>Whores parrot whores and are dumb, not really against the grain.
Maybe not against /lit/ grain, it is of academia and literary scene in general, where Emily is now the definitive text. The rage—Oh Goddess, the rage of Peleus' son I feel just typing definitive is abound.

>>24842710

I'm having trouble believing emily is the definitive text outside of anyone who isn't an SJW woman

>>24842708
>Most humour involves doing the mental work to get the joke
Are you autistic by chance?

>>24842718
See I move in these circles with one degree of separation. It is the definitive text since its release.

>>24842718
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/27/the-iliad-by-homer-translated-by-emily-wilson-review-a-bravura-feat

>>24840977
Defence force can be a thing, yeah. Used to be stronger.

Anyway, I think he did produce one, arguably two masterworks, and a couple of other interesting things too, so it depends if you rate an author according to peak, or overall average performance. Anyway, aside from his jokes, the main thing he does is talk about historical truth and the possibility of there being turning point moments in the affairs of men.

>>24842722
Funny, but to be clear, i'm not saying there has to be a lot of it or it has to take time. It just has to be a feature. In standup the mental work needs to generally be balanced between an obvious joke (low hanging fruit) and a complicated mess. Go watch any comedian, they obviously don't spell everything out, and rely on the audience to do the final little cognitive leap to make the joke work. People feel smart for getting jokes, and that bit of mental work sparks a minor eureka-type moment that helps facilitate more laughter. In literature, since there's little but "getting" it, that's going to be a mainstay. If you don't believe me, go read a joke book in silence

>>24842737
>>24842727
Looked into it more and I'm genuinely upset. I may just have to go and learn homeric greek

>>24842708
I said what I said

>>24843790
You're just wrong lil bro

>>24844998
and you're a swarthy subhuman

>le contrarian thread
This whole site is contrarian by default

>>24848055
So you found the most contrarian comment you could eh?

Frankly I rather enjoyed the Dan Abnett 40k books. They're face paced and a lot of fun.

>>24847034
You're not even human you're a puma cat

Gass was a hack and The Tunnel in particular is a big ol' stinker

Besides Goethe I really struggle to name a single german author I believe would be worthy of anyone's time, even if I speak german as my third language I always found it profoundly barbaric sounding and ugly. Thomas Mann feels like a pseud, Hesse is a pseud, Holderlin is overall pretty bland. I won't deny german contributions to philosophy or wider sciences but they really don't seem particularly apt at literature
Anglosphere/english literature is also very dull but I can at least name a wider pool of authors I personally enjoy and think are worthy of their titles, some of which like Byron or Melville being amongst my favorites
As a italian I will admit I have a love boner for latin languages so my preferences probably has something to do with that but still, even narrativly speaking both of them feel way less expressive or beautiful as french and italian literature, specially poetry

>>24850044
You're so stupid lol

>>24835338
Tolstoy is the only person in history who hated Shakespeare and actually had some good or well-founded aesthetic reasons for doing so. Everyone who hates him now just hates him because they're illiterate brainlets and think he's too difficult to understand even though his plays were painstakingly crafted for universal mass intelligibility.

Since such "people" can scarcely be considered real human beings rather than semi-sentient creatures, their opinions can safely be discarded. And so, disliking Shakespeare remains a genuine contrarian opinion among people who matter.

>>24835487
Salman Rushdie is Neal Gaimen tier as in utter proper shite, on par with Patti Smith

>>24850044
The germans are much better philosophers and scientists than literaturists:


S Tier: Whoever you personally like out of A tier.

A Tier: Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, Freud, Marx, Wittgenstein,

B Tier: Arendt, Benjamin, spengler, weber, Adorno, Carnap, Fichte, Husserl, Frege