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Rime posted:OP, why are you such a hipster that you believe some "literature" has more merit than others just by virtue of being a couple hundred years old? I was too busy smoking clove cigarettes on my fixie and scheduling my tattoo appointment to care about it. IRONY
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Jul 17, 2014 05:22
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woop here we go again
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Jul 17, 2014 05:22
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Rime posted:OP, why are you such a hipster that you believe some "literature" has more merit than others just by virtue of being a couple hundred years old? One thing that does help is those several hundred year old books are still being talked about, today.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:24
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Widestancer posted:If I had to compare top grossing novels written today with popular novels written a couple hundred years ago I'm pretty sure I'd get less brain damage reading the classics. Heck most popular novels from ages ago don't stand the test of time either. Even looking at bestseller lists from 60-70 years ago will have a few familiar things but the majority of them will be complete unknowns today (and usually for good reason).
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Jul 17, 2014 05:25
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Short answer: old books have more merit because they've withstood the test of time. People don't remember old bad books. Literature was probably just as trashy in its own ways in the days of yore but the trash is filtered to the bottom of the barrel to be forgotten about, whereas the cream rises to the top.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:26
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Srice posted:One thing that does help is those several hundred year old books are still being talked about, today. Lady Chatterlies Lover and A Night in a Moorish Harem sure do capture the minds of our youth, I'll give you that. I imagine we'll still be talking about Mein Kampf come 2245, though, so age of the work is a poor benchmark for quality. mango gay touchies posted:Short answer: old books have more merit because they've withstood the test of time. People don't remember old bad books. Perhaps The Illiad was widely considered to be the equivalent of Dragonlance in Ancient Greece, but so many copies were produced that it alone survived while the high brow quality literature dissolved into the dust of history. Since we don't know, mere age is a poor metric of quality. Rime fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 05:31
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It's true that you shouldn't judge a book by (the publishing date on) its cover but arguing against a correlation is just childish
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Jul 17, 2014 05:33
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Also, where did I say that old works are intrinsically better than new works? I've trumpeted Citrus County by John Brandon in this thread and that was written under 3 years ago.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:33
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Smoking Crow posted:Also, where did I say that old works are intrinsically better than new works? I've trumpeted Citrus County by John Brandon in this thread and that was written under 3 years ago. quote:There shouldn’t be a Citrus County. Teenage romance should be difficult, but not this difficult. Boys like Toby should cause trouble but not this much. The moon should glow gently over children safe in their beds. Uncles in their rockers should be kind. Teachers should guide and inspire. Manatees should laze and palm trees sway and snakes keep to their shady spots under the azalea thickets. The air shouldn’t smell like a swamp. The stars should twinkle. Shelby should be her own hero, the first hero of Citrus County. She should rescue her sister from underground, rescue Toby from his life. Her destiny should be a hero’s destiny. The sort of people who would read this tripe are to blame for the decline of our society.  Protip: This is a genre novel. The genre is pretentious poo poo about lovely reality. It's largely a modern invention, coming to prominence in the 1960's. Rime fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 05:36
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Rime posted:The sort of people who would read this tripe are to blame for the decline of our society. Way to come up with the same generic argument not only used against DH Lawrence but also by DH Lawrence in his view on Ulysses.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:38
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"The Classics" =/= "Old Books" "The Classics" = "An extremely loose category of books that have, very gradually and by broad consensus, come to be deemed worthy of both academic interest and cultural importance" PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 05:42
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Rime posted:Protip: This is a genre novel. The genre is pretentious poo poo about lovely reality. It's largely a modern invention, coming to prominence in the 1960's. 
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Jul 17, 2014 05:43
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Furious Lobster posted:Way to come up with the same generic argument not only used against DH Lawrence but also by DH Lawrence in his view on Ulysses. He may have been a degenerate old pervert, but at least he recognized poo poo when he saw it and wasn't afraid to say so. The only value to Ulysses is that you can warm a house with a copy all night when you throw it in the fire. See also: The Lovely Bones, and other generic trash which serves as an outlet for an authors internal angst or mental issues but has no other redeeming qualities.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:48
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So what books would you recommend then, and for what reasons.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:51
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Rime posted:He may have been a degenerate old pervert, but at least he recognized poo poo when he saw it and wasn't afraid to say so. The only value to Ulysses is that you can warm a house with a copy all night when you throw it in the fire. Nop, the most obvious use is to troll English grad students into combing through obscure early 20th century Irish political references and to not use punctuation. Go read Tropic of Cancer so we can at least update your standards to the 60's version of a degenerate old pervert.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:56
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Srice posted:So what books would you recommend then, and for what reasons. House of Leaves is pretty high on my list, if only because cramming three novels into one simultaneously and having them all impact each other is some 4th-dimensional magic that deserves respect.  Also it's pretty spooky.
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Jul 17, 2014 05:58
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Rime posted:House of Leaves is pretty high on my list, if only because cramming three novels into one simultaneously and having them all impact each other is some 4th-dimensional magic that deserves respect. Yeah but one of those was boring. I don't care about Johnny's life
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Jul 17, 2014 06:00
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House of Leaves posted:Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share. So this is better than Joyce?
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Jul 17, 2014 06:14
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lmao, to invoke the Pretentious word, and then play House of Leaves apologetic I have read my share of literature and BLUE TEXT HOUSE of leaves, though I enjoyed it, has got to be one of the most needlessly obfuscating modern novels out there
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Jul 17, 2014 06:17
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The real lesson here is Please Don't Accuse Things of Being Pretentious Unless You Have an Extremely Good Reason for Doing So
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Jul 17, 2014 06:18
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I thought this was the thread where we all wore black turtlenecks and caps whilst telling everyone else that their genre of reading material was lovely, and then pulling out our own lovely choices as an alternative.  Tarranon posted:The real lesson here is Please Don't Accuse Things of Being Pretentious Unless You Have an Extremely Good Reason for Doing So Smoking Crow is objectively pretentious, I challenge you to write an essay of not less than 500 words examining his pretension from the point of view of an aging literary critic; who has just realized he wasted his entire life spouting pretentious bullshit about pretentious bullshit.
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Jul 17, 2014 06:30
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Real talk: Have you actually read this thread past the OP? Because after the first few pages people have been discussing lots and lots of good poo poo in a way that's not pretentious at all! There are some p great discussions going on and as a result, my book backlog is all sorts of bigger now.
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Jul 17, 2014 06:32
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No I basically read the first two pages and decided to go on a drunk posting spree.
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Jul 17, 2014 06:35
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I encourage you to look at the other pages past that! Lot of great insight and fun to be had there, since ultimately this thread has become the same as the thread for non-genre books except more active. (Which is pretty cool imo)
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Jul 17, 2014 06:38
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Jul 17, 2014 06:43
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Rime posted:I thought this was the thread where we all wore black turtlenecks and caps whilst telling everyone else that their genre of reading material was lovely, and then pulling out our own lovely choices as an alternative. Gravity's Rainbow posted:She turns. "Hold up my fur." He obeys. "Be careful. Don't touch my skin." Earlier in this game she was nervous, constipated, wondering if this was anything like male impotence. But thoughtful Pointsman, anticipating this, has been sending laxative pills with her meals. Now her intestines whine softly, and she feels poo poo begin to slide down and out. He kneels with his arms up holding the rich cape. A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks. He spreads his knees, awkwardly, until he can feel the leather of her boots. He leans forward to surround the hot turd with his lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side ... he is thinking, he's sorry, he can't help it, thinking of a Negro's penis, yes he knows it abrogates part of the conditions set, but it will not be denied, the image of a brute African who will make him behave ... The stink of poo poo floods his nose, gathering him, surrounding. It is the smell of Passchendaele, of the Salient. Mixed with the mud, and the putrefaction of corpses, it was the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem. The turd slides into his mouth, down to his gullet. He gags, but bravely clamps his teeth shut. Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters somewhere, unseen, untasted risen now and baked in the bitter intestinal Oven to bread we know, bread that's light as domestic comfort, secret as death in bed ... Spasms in his throat continue. The pain is terrible. With his tongue he mashes poo poo against the roof of his mouth and begins to chew, thickly now, the only sound in the room....
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Jul 17, 2014 06:45
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Rime posted:I thought this was the thread where we all wore black turtlenecks and caps whilst telling everyone else that their genre of reading material was lovely, and then pulling out our own lovely choices as an alternative. I'm not sure why you're so mad about the concept of pretension or why you've felt the need to dig up an argument that'd been settled over a week ago but I'm really glad you completely invalidated your entire argument by using the go-to smilie for dull-rear end white noise shitposters
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Jul 17, 2014 06:58
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If the joke of that emote usage was lost on you then what the gently caress are you doing in the super seriously deep literature thread bro, I mean the post it was referencing is one page back here. See? They got the joke. 
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Jul 17, 2014 07:02
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taco show posted:Also cool if/when you make a good thread about capital L literature, post a link in here! (aka Shakespeare thread) Yeah, good call. Thanks for that.
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Jul 17, 2014 07:06
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You were actually being mocked.
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Jul 17, 2014 07:07
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I can't handle this many levels of irony
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Jul 17, 2014 07:08
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Rime posted:If the joke of that emote usage was lost on you then what the gently caress are you doing in the super seriously deep literature thread bro, I mean the post it was referencing is one page back here. What's happening here
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Jul 17, 2014 07:10
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Rime posted:No I basically read the first two pages and decided to go on a drunk posting spree. This is you drunk? Come back to us when you reach Notes from the Underground level of drunkness.
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Jul 17, 2014 07:10
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You're so far off you're posting on an entirely different website, I'm going to bed
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Jul 17, 2014 07:11
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Rime, you seem to only enjoy things set in space. Have you considered that the earth is flying through space, and therefore all of these books that infuriate you can actually be classified as sci-fi 
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Jul 17, 2014 10:01
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Hello I actually am pretentious and don't enjoy any of the books I say I do I just read and reread The Man Who Was Thurdsday.
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Jul 17, 2014 10:37
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Rime posted:I thought this was the thread where we all wore black turtlenecks and caps whilst telling everyone else that their genre of reading material was lovely, and then pulling out our own lovely choices as an alternative. Agreed.
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Jul 17, 2014 10:40
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Well this is a good a place to ask as any. I've heard of some Russian "literature" written during the Soviet Union where the writer wrote some book criticizing the bureaucracy and saying they were all vampires. He later wrote another book about how the bureaucracy was so bad even vampires thought it was poo poo. I think his name started with a G. All my google searches have brought up Draco Malfoy vampire fan fiction and the vampire diaries. WHAT ARE THESE BOOKS I MUST READ THEM.
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Jul 17, 2014 10:45
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Xun posted:Well this is a good a place to ask as any. I've heard of some Russian "literature" written during the Soviet Union where the writer wrote some book criticizing the bureaucracy and saying they were all vampires. He later wrote another book about how the bureaucracy was so bad even vampires thought it was poo poo. I think his name started with a G. All my google searches have brought up Draco Malfoy vampire fan fiction and the vampire diaries. WHAT ARE THESE BOOKS I MUST READ THEM. Google Gogol
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Jul 17, 2014 11:48
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I don't think Gogol satirized the USSR as he died the better part of a century before its inception.
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Jul 17, 2014 12:04
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