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I think the discussion about criticism is interesting but please keep in mind to focus on points not people  I like a bunch of terrible media sometimes because it's so bad it's good and other times because I genuinely enjoy it despite its flaws and trashiness. An ex once told me RPO was her favourite book and we talked about our opinions on and that was it. It's silly to change your opinion solely based on them liking on some things you hate, it'd be like starting to like someone you strongly dislike because they like some obscure High Art™ you like even though they're still a twat. Like a bunch of people I really liked The Sword of Truth books growing up. I was raised in a really strict Catholic household where we weren't allowed watch much TV or play more than an hour of video games each week but we were allowed read as much as we liked and when I was 14 I thought it was great that I could read about swords and slags to my hearts content. My parents assumed all these fantasy books were like Lord of The Rings instead of being much more graphic. At 14 I thought cursing, loving, and killing were very mature and adult subject matters and therefore any book full of them was adult and mature. When I grew up I looked back and realised they were pretty schlocky and dumb but it wasn't until I read a Let's Read thread on SA that I realised how deeply hosed everything was. They were a libertarian fantasy written by a psychotic rape fetishist. Every argument the main character is the equivalent of those imaginary arguments you have with people in the shower that you always effortlessly win. Every woman is pretty constantly on the verge of being raped or a vapid slut who dies of too much riding after being owned with logic. At one point he sets it up so that the main character slaughtering a bunch of pacifists is the right and just thing to do. There's just so much madness that I'm rambling trying to explain how horrible it all is. I'd definitely recommend checking out the Let's Read of it.
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Oct 12, 2017 13:33
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divabot posted:(remember that Lamps' actual objection to Banks [...] that his space fiction doesn't outline a revolutionary programme that gets us from the present day to his Utopia in sufficient clarity. worse yet, someone on the next page concurs that this is a good and valuable objection) According to you, I attacked Banks for not writing a(n instructive) fictional history for his Utopia with enough clarity. In reality, I criticized the noxious ideological statement he ended up making: in an universe where anything is possible, true peace and justice are impossible, and the only choice is between utopian hedonism and some variety of barbarism. Also the books are rather sleazily exploitative with their depictions of violence. BravestOfTheLamps has a new favorite as of 14:21 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 13:35
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I know talking about serious topics in literary criticism is important but I miss laughing at shartball and  ing at alien reproduction.
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Oct 12, 2017 13:52
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Going back to Ready Player One: my boyfriend liked the book, but he also collects Funko figurines so take that as you will. However, my 60 year old mother is a HUGE fan of that book. She's a voracious reader, is totally excited for the movie, and says it's in her Top 10 favorite books of all time. She belongs to a book club, and has submitted that book for next year's reading list. I can not wait to see a bunch of old ladies earnestly analyzing Ernest Cline. So that being said, I think it's time for me to finally bite the bullet and read the drat thing, or at least pretend that I've read it. Are there any good 'sporkings' of that book online?
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Oct 12, 2017 13:54
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Asinine Tails posted:Going back to Ready Player One: my boyfriend liked the book, but he also collects Funko figurines so take that as you will.  Content: I never liked Harry Potter much but the last book was especially bad. The interesting characters are all side-lined in favour of the main trio just bumbling around for 400 pages. There are obvious stretch-marks with the number of retcons like the titular Deathly Hallows, the scavenger-hunt from the previous book advances an inch before being resolved off-screen, and characters are killed of en-masse but there's no weight to their deaths since this is the last book and the aftermath isn't explored. But what I find most abhorrent is the message given by Obi-Gandalf in the Matrix that suicide is a romantic and noble gesture if you achieve your goal posthumously. It's apparently better to be invisible and follow someone's orders to your death instead of finding your own agency and being seen for it. Inspector Gesicht has a new favorite as of 20:45 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 14:17
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Dabir posted:The middle class are poor who think they're rich Other way around.
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Oct 12, 2017 14:45
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Tiggum posted:When you sneer at Twilight or The Da Vinci Code or "genre fiction" you are using literary criticism as a proxy for looking down on lower class people. To be fair, there are a million better reasons to sneer at Twilight or The Da Vinci Code that have nothing to do with a person's social status. EmmyOk posted:I like a bunch of terrible media sometimes because it's so bad it's good and other times because I genuinely enjoy it despite its flaws and trashiness. Pretty much this. I think books and other media are capable of crossing all socioeconomic levels. Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off and read/watch something ridiculously horrible just for the train wreck element; how else would you explain the popularity of things like 50 Shades of Grey and reality television?
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Oct 12, 2017 15:04
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Penpal posted:I can't remember the name for posterity, but one of the first times I could tell I was reading some crazy poo poo was when I was just out of reading goosebumps books and read a short story about the son of a pharma CEO. The corporation had recently discovered an immortality serum, so the shithead son commits patricide and steals the serum, and flees to the under-construction family manor. On the way back, he explains his plan to the family butler, kinda rubbing it in how he'll be rich and immortal so it doesn't matter even if he's caught, etc, and then departs inside to take the serum and prepare a bugout bag. Thinking he's a genius the kid takes the immortality juice and revels in his victory for a minute, before he's pushed through a window and into a cement floor that's filling in. Kid looks up in horror at the butler essentially giving him the finger, and the butler leaves knowing the kid will be entombed in cement for eternity. I read a lot as a child and I especially loved Goosebumps books. There were a number of similar series that I never fully collected but had a few books, and Shivers was one of them. One of those books really bothered me a lot as a kid. I don't remember the name but the premise was that this young brother and sister were visiting a place that had a large apple orchard and apple processing place and *weird stuff happens*. At the end of the book they break into the plant and it's revealed that they had actually died and didn't realize it, and the description of the kids looking at their own mangled bodies in the machinery was super hosed up. I didn't even like touching the book after I read it. So I guess the book did it's job. I preferred Goosebumps because they were more spooky-scary, not traumatic-scary. Did anyone else read the Shivers series? Were they all messed up?
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Oct 12, 2017 15:11
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The most Goosebumpsy thing I can remember from a Goosebumps book was in the one where the kid is turned into a bee and one chapter ends with him narrating, "Suddenly, a dragonfly appeared out of nowhere and bit me in two!" then the next chapter started, "Wow, that was a weird daydream!"
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Oct 12, 2017 15:19
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Pretty much this. I think books and other media are capable of crossing all socioeconomic levels. Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off and read/watch something ridiculously horrible just for the train wreck element; how else would you explain the popularity of things like 50 Shades of Grey and reality television? I have scant use for Lamp's warmed-over Zhdanovism, but the entire point of critical analysis is to examine a work on a deeper level than 'it lets me focus on something other than the creeping existential dread of contemporary life.'
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Oct 12, 2017 15:25
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If you say that a book is philosophically doubtful, you are a Stalinist.
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Oct 12, 2017 15:29
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the old ceremony posted:nerds gush about ready player one because they were all tricked in their developmentally vital early years into developing emotional attachments to media rather than people. most of the media they loved back then is now discontinued, so a book like ready player one is like a novel about their dead best friend and they treat it with the appropriate reverence
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Oct 12, 2017 15:41
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Rangpur posted:They are popular because lots of people think they are good. Fair point. On second read, that phrase about people enjoying the trainwreck aspect of things really didn't fit with the larger point I was trying to make, which is that it is in fact possible for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds to enjoy the same things, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons.
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Oct 12, 2017 15:48
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Wheat Loaf posted:People take hobbies - whether it's books or politics - too seriously. You um, should take politics seriously or just not bother.
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Oct 12, 2017 20:11
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FreudianSlippers posted:Other way around. Middle class goon detected
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Oct 12, 2017 20:44
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:I know talking about serious topics in literary criticism is important but I miss laughing at shartball and Honestly as someone with an actual English degree these last few pages have been so bad they’ve bored me out of my loving skull.
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Oct 12, 2017 20:47
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Dabir posted:Middle class goon detected
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Oct 12, 2017 20:52
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Arivia posted:Honestly as someone with an actual English degree I wouldn't brag about that
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Oct 12, 2017 21:04
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Wheat Loaf posted:The most Goosebumpsy thing I can remember from a Goosebumps book was in the one where the kid is turned into a bee and one chapter ends with him narrating, "Suddenly, a dragonfly appeared out of nowhere and bit me in two!" then the next chapter started, "Wow, that was a weird daydream!" Its kind of weird how the ghostwriters for Goosebumps obviously had a mandated number of cliffhanger chapter breaks they had to do per book but nobody seemed to care how said cliffhangers were concluded. Almost ever single cliffhanger resolved the same way, thing that the PoV character said was happening didn't actually happen that way.
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Oct 12, 2017 21:13
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I overall enjoyed the Goosebumps movie and liked the gag where Jack Black's RL Stein kept describing the structure of a book "The beginning, the middle, and the TWIST!" 
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Oct 12, 2017 21:18
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Hope you guys eventually graduated into real literature like The Nightmare Room by R.L. Stine, like I did.
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Oct 12, 2017 21:20
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:If you say that a book is philosophically doubtful, you are a Stalinist. The writer is the engineer of the human soul. 
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Oct 12, 2017 21:23
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All literature is Marxist, all shitposting is inherently bourgeois affectation.
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Oct 12, 2017 22:03
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Hope you guys eventually graduated into real literature like The Nightmare Room by R.L. Stine, like I did. normies won't get these 
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Oct 12, 2017 22:46
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Pastry of the Year posted:normies won't get these A Good Cartoon. ed: Also, that is totally a Vectrex with a C64 somehow plugged into it for a controller. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 00:25 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 00:19
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Pastry of the Year posted:normies won't get these "R.L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine are really the SAME GUY!!" was my extremely firmly-held conspiracy theory as a child and I'm very glad it turned out to be true
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Oct 13, 2017 00:57
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Dabir posted:Middle class goon detected A lot of them do like to self identity as working class and pretend like they are oppressed though.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:53
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Pastry of the Year posted:normies won't get these When I was a kiddie I loved Jovial Bob's etiquette guide: http://mcnallykids.tumblr.com/post/100666750901/52-fear-street-dont-stand-in-the-soup-nick Also, if anyone's not aware of it, this Goosebumps blog is pretty fun: http://www.bloggerbeware.com
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Oct 13, 2017 04:11
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Trauma Dog 3000 posted:Have you ever read a criticism of The Road where it's bleakness is used as a justification to attack it's readers? its
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Oct 13, 2017 04:32
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FreudianSlippers posted:When I think middle class I think stable white collar jobs with a decent wage, two cars, and a nice house in the suburbs. Not exactly poverty even if they are likely swimming in debt. See, I think of it as terribly nervous to do what they think polite society are doing and better their station in life, while "polite society" is more wealthy then they could possibly imagine and spends most nights doing piles of coke and throwing plates at the help. Poor (compared to the rich), but trying to be what they think the rich are.
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Oct 13, 2017 04:59
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It's totally possible to both poorer than those you envy and richer than those you disdain. (Although, really, I think it's spiteful to ascribe motives like these wholesale to hundreds of millions of people.)
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Oct 13, 2017 09:30
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Yeah, well, I think it's spiteful to insist everyone who wants change is too rich to be serious or too poor to not just be selfish, so what do I know
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Oct 13, 2017 11:32
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Dabir posted:Yeah, well, I think it's spiteful to insist everyone who wants change is too rich to be serious or too poor to not just be selfish, so what do I know Apparently not how to read.
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Oct 13, 2017 12:11
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If you want to discuss literary criticism that's fine if you want to take potshots at each other or just accuse the people of being both too poor and too wealthy and whatever else then do it in PMs.
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Oct 13, 2017 12:47
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Mods please word filter this thread to replace all instances of "class/criticism" with "shartballs" and "bourgeois/Marxists/Marxism" with "shartballers/shartballing". Then probate everybody.
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Oct 13, 2017 12:52
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Ba-dum-dadadada-ba-du~uuu~uuum....
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Oct 13, 2017 13:04
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Mods please word filter this thread to replace all instances of "class/criticism" with "shartballs" and "bourgeois/Marxists/Marxism" with "shartballers/shartballing". The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of shartballs.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:57
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Mods please word filter this thread to replace all instances of "class/criticism" with "shartballs" and "bourgeois/Marxists/Marxism" with "shartballers/shartballing".
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Oct 13, 2017 21:33
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EmmyOk posted:If you want to discuss literary criticism that's fine if you want to take potshots at each other or just accuse the people of being both too poor and too wealthy and whatever else then do it in PMs. What if you’re too poor for PMs?
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Oct 13, 2017 21:46
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Mods please word filter this thread to replace all instances of "class/criticism" with "shartballs" and "bourgeois/Marxists/Marxism" with "shartballers/shartballing". Not empty quoting
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Oct 13, 2017 23:17
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