The United States doesn't know what to do with its literary geniuses. It either ignores them completely, or it chews them up and spits them out. This is very frustrating to me.
>>24832181Do you count yourself among that number?
>>24832181Do you mean when they are living or dead?I agree that we don’t know what to do with our dead great writers. >We don’t do enough to introduce them to our students>there should be a separate section in every bookstore with American classics (not lumped together with all classics as they are now)>Hollywood just makes capeslop after capeslop, ignoring Americas vast and rich literary heritage. You know what would be amazing? An anthology film adapting O’Connor or Faulkners short stories>the government should subsidize the printing of American classics to make them extra cheap and available to the masses
>>24832181The United States doesn't even know itself
>>24832181Pinecone was treated very well. Won awards, sold very well, appeared on the Simpsons. But what they did to Melville was a travesty. Not only did they discourage him from writing more novels, they even fucking LOST the Isle of the Cross.
Geniuses are self-sufficient. They don't stop being geniuses simply because they have no fame or wealth. A genius living in a small hut is still a genius.
>>24832181Pound is a good example of this. They kept in a straightjacket for over ten years. They did that shit to one of the finest poets this country's ever produced.
>>24833182Maybe he shouldn't have been a chud then
>>24832181Capitalism doesn't need genius, anon.
>>24833259Impossible: the premise at hand already grants that he was a genius.
I was thinking of this today relative to Vollmann. If he's not America's greateset living writer, he's the greatest one younger than Pynchon. But what's become of him? He's basically penniless and dying of cancer and is almost totally neglected by broader American society, including academia. The United States has failed Vollmann just like it failed Melville, just like it failed Pound and Eliot, just like it fails its great writers and poets over and over and over.
>>24834802>>24834810This guy looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.
>>24834810the only other writer i can think of is mcelroy, but he's on track for immortality
>>24834810>see a great writer>look up his life story>has had unique experiences ranging from reporting in warzones across the world to working jobs in a breakthrough industry with zero experience while working on his first novel to being investigated by the FBI as a suspect in a domestic terrorism caseyeah, just as i thoughtit's not possible to be a good writer unless you have some sort of concrete life experience in the world
>>24834832yeah, wait till you see what he did after that.
