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FactsAreUseless posted:Does anyone have some examples of genre fiction that does a good job with descriptive language? I've always been frustrated by the inability of a lot of authors to describe these worlds they're trying to create. It's especially bad in fantasy - I see too many authors rely on either suggestion or some Lovecraft-style "the thing was too horrible to describe but hoo boy, believe me when I say it sucked" prose - but I know there have to be some that are decent at it. I remember Bradbury's prose being strong but it's been so long since I read any of his work that I can't say whether or not it actually was. ive heard extremely good things about the vorrh but its still in my big pile of cool looking books
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Mar 16, 2019 12:51
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Thranguy posted:I mean, to this reader the entire point of Pierre Menard is the absurdity of his project, so it probably makes the opposite point. Library is closer, but in a way that depends on the physical reality of the infinite (or at least impossibly large); might as well argue that all texts were present at the creation in the mind of God. look at this idiot arguing against the existence of the akashic records
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Mar 19, 2019 23:47
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if i hear one more person trying to relate pierre menard to the death of the author i'm going to FLIP OUT
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Mar 19, 2019 23:49
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Sampatrick posted:getting mad about pronouns is just dumb. 
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Apr 10, 2019 19:09
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i mean they're not the only ones of course i just figured that starting with the foundations of the entire western philosophical tradition might show how dumb that idea was. Marx and his heirs would also tell you not to read Malazan, as he held that art should serve a ideological function and thus must be utilitarian. we could go further with that by discussing how Malazan is escapist, and thus provides an outlet for your dissatisfaction with your own life that could instead be channeled into revolutionary activity, thereby actively serving bourgeois capitalist interests i mean, nah
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May 6, 2019 12:11
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to elaborate: marx never said anything about what art should be, he only said that it cannot be conceived of outside of class relations. some people would then say you should therefore ensure your art accurately represents class relations and then you end up with social realism but that's absolutely not a 'art must only serve the betterment of the revolution'. i'm also not sure marx would hold the bizarre view that if you read fantasy you become entirely distracted from the material conditions of your existence, but his writings on Malazan Book of the Fallen are woefully limited
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May 6, 2019 12:30
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Mel Mudkiper posted:that stuff is genre glass houses
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May 15, 2019 15:48
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Nerdburger was sarcastically referencing Mel's ideas about the 20th-century rise to prominence of fantasy (response to WWI) and sci-fi (response to nukes). oh what i missed this. what a stupid statement
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May 19, 2019 08:29
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making someone feel an emotion = extracting emotional labour
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May 20, 2019 22:08
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i've been exploiting you all for years
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May 20, 2019 22:08
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its like none of you have even read babyfucker
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Sep 9, 2019 10:23
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:Yeah, this thread is nice and all, but you know what it really needs? Less content. 100% agreed my man
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Nov 20, 2019 20:17
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i have been posting on this forum for many years under the assumption that people who read genre fiction were simply very very stupid, but the level of writing at which you start talking about having to 'puzzle out' aspects of the text makes me genuinely concerned for their brains
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Nov 20, 2019 21:05
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yeah its moree like if agatha christie books had a dot-to-dot on the first page that spelled the murderer's name
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Nov 20, 2019 22:04
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actually thatd be loving cool
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Nov 20, 2019 22:04
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burn down the english departments
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Dec 10, 2019 18:33
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dear lord gas this thread immediately
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Jan 10, 2020 19:27
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Runcible Cat posted:I tried Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea as a teenager and only remember thinking it was about a boring whiny psychotic teenager, which... sounds pretty similar to the Western fascist infestation we've got going on, FWIW. it takes a lot for me to think something in this thread is impressively stupid
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Jan 11, 2020 14:34
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nankeen posted:imagine contemplating the works of one of my favourite speculative fiction authors, ligotti, without letting yourself believe that somewhere behind the book there is a troubled man who is inexplicably, desperately obsessed with puppets ligotti's obsession with puppets is hardly inexplicable it'[s basically what do puppets symbolise 101
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Jan 13, 2020 11:55
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this discussion came about because a sci fi author is a terf and apparently that causes certain themes in their book to be viewed differently. now im never going to read this book and you can;t make me, but if the themes require some kind of external knowledge of the person to show themselves then tehyre not very good themes. you could never know who mishima was or what he did and if you pick up the temple of the golden pavilion and read it you are going to come out knowing that the author was obsessed with beauty and death and death as beauty and beauty as death and you're either already a fascist and you think that's cool, or youre not a fascist and you think thats cool but not really how the world should be run. if we suddenly found out nabokov was 100% an actual child rapist, would that change how we read lolita? we might feel pretty gross about it but i'd argue it wouldn't actually change the text as a whole, because it stands alone from nabokov in that regard, its themes are cohesive enough that revelations about the author cant really shake them. it would still be an extremely good and rewarding thing to read. the more shallow a book is, the more the reading of that book becomes an implicit agreement with its ideology and that of its author, because whyever else would you be reading it?
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Jan 13, 2020 12:17
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The fascism accusation has literally nothing to do with his writing; it's about his failed gay samurai cult. It's the stupidest thing in the world to be afraid of. nah his books are very much obsessed with an aestheticisation of death that comes from much the same place as it does with other fascist authors. mishima's not just a fascist who wrote good things, his works are the product of the kinds of obsessions that dominate fascism. the idea that reading an author is implicit support of the ideas present in their work or that you might get fascism from reading mishima are the stupid things being argued here, that mishima's work fits into a kind of fascist canon is inarguable
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Feb 2, 2020 08:26
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I feel like not associating with the fruits of fascism is a value in itself, but I'm clearly not gonna get an understanding of what that's like until I try. Starting with the Sailor who fell from Grace witht he sea, that looks like one of his more accessible ones (and also I cant find a kindle edition of Confessions of a Mask) once ur done ill add you to the atomwaffen mailing list
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Feb 2, 2020 15:58
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spookiomishima would be a great handle if you ran a japanese gladio cell
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Feb 2, 2020 23:59
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pile of brown posted:It means the same thing as choosing to buy free range eggs at the farmers market instead of mass farmed eggs because you are self aware of your consumption. if you buy eggs at all you are doing more to immiserate the world than poor beautiful yukio mishima ever did
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Feb 3, 2020 12:02
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Mel Mudkiper posted:David Vann was almost a school shooter but decided to not be a school shooter which makes him a good person imho i cant believe he would contemplate something so cold-blooded
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Mar 27, 2020 02:48
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