Who are some once-famous writers you're pretty sure not a single zoomer on the face of the planet reads?
>>25150358norman mailer
>>25150358Julian MacLaren-Ross>>25150360Norman Mailer isn't a very good writer, though.
>>25150358I feel like the middlebrow 20th century 'popular intellectual' class of American novelists and playwrights is losing a lot of its gravitas. Mailer and Vidal of course, but I feel like you seldom hear about Truman Capote these days, even though he helped pioneer a genre that's still in demand. Also Marshall McLuhan, unfortunately.
Israel Zangwill
>>25150358I'm a 28 year old zoomer and I read City and the Pillar
>>25150579>The story is about a young man who is coming of age and discovers his own homosexuality.[1]Of course. God forbid you zoomgroids read his Lincoln book or something. Always about the peepee. 'I zoomgroid, I must touch peepee.'
>>25150579it's not a very good book tho. vidal excelled as a political essayist and is forgotten because political essays are transitory by nature.
>>25150358I don't read fags.
>>25150585are you jealous of our lack of shame, old man?
>>25151338You've read Mein Kampf, so yes you have.
P.G. Wodehouse
>>25150358I have Abraham Lincoln on TBR
>>25150585What’s your problem
>>2515133850% of the canon unread
>>25150579>I'm a 28 year old zoomerlook at this unc lmao
>>25150358>not a single zoomer on the face of the planet reads?cheeverjohn o'hara
>>25150512mailer, vidal, and capote were showman first and authors second. their fate as such was to slip into popular obscurity once they were no longer around to talk about themselves. i feel like nabokov was dangerously close to doing the same thing but was enough of an old-worlder to at least write one notorious book before dedicating himself to bloviation.
>>25151816As a stylist, Nabokov was lightyears beyond any of those time-servers.
Updike and Tom Wolfe.
Mid-century intellectuals and poets like George Plimpton, James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, etc. Though that may be for the best; I can barely imagine a zoomer trying to parse out something like Changing Light at Sandover.
>>25151338Eschewing proofreading is a bad hobbit.
>>25150358Pretty much what >>25150512 said>Tennessee Williams>Theodore Dreiser>Walker Percy>Nelson Algren>Tom Wolfe (the quintessential boomer author desu)>Thomas Wolfe (unrelated)>Willa Cather>Philip Roth (maybe)McLuhan is still a cornerstone of literature, especially with this burgeoing interest in ''media literacy'' and whatnot. But I'd agree that most people only pretend to have read him and hide behind youtube summaries to discuss his theories, as you'd expect.Post-war poets are also very overlooked. I don't know if someone like Theodore Roethke or Robert Lowell would be considered en vogue right now.I should point out that I myself am a zoomer and have read a few of the names above, so I'm probably off the mark here. It's just that I rarely ever see my peers bring up these guys.
>>25151861I'm a euro who can't help but be fascinated by the culture of the classical South. Who else should I read besides Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Allen Tate and Tennessee Williams?
>>25150358Zoomers don't read, they watch video essays about books at 1.5x speed and consider themselves informed.
>>25151875You might want to check out Eudora Welty's short stories.
>>25151861Dreiser and Willa Cather don’t belong in that group. I think they have an air of canonical respectability that Vidal, Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Roth do not have. Dreiser especially because there was simply no one else doing what he was attempting at the time of Sister Carrie in the US. Thomas Wolfe is another interesting case, very under-read but belongs in the same category of American modernists as Don Passos and Faulkner in my opinion. But who knows maybe the 40s, 50s, and 60s authors are just passing through a critical dark age right now and given two decades or so will be seen in the same light as Dreiser or Cather but I have my doubts
I have a very soft spot for classical, that is to say, pre-1960s american authors despite being a euro. I was never that fond of America as a culture but an obscenely large percentage of my favourite authors are American. James and Faulkner and Pound and Eliot and Henry Adams and Melville and Stevens and Jeffers and...
>>25150358Asimov, Heinlein, Moliere, Washington Irving, Upton Sinclair, HG Wells, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Percy Shelley, the list goes on. There may be the odd work that's assigned reading in school, but the vast catalogue remains untouched by zoomer hands.
>>25152024I'm a zoomer and I've read Tolstoy.
>>25151487He's on 4chan. It explains alot unfortunately.
>>25152024>MoliereI remember reading him in school>TolstoyI read AK and DNF W&P. I found him even more boring than George Eliot, Henry James and Thomas Mann combined>Percy ShelleyTried reading his Prometheus Unbound, found it turgid and inferior in every way to Prometheus Bound. He was no Milton
Kill zoomers. Behead zoomers. Roundhouse kick a zoomer into the concrete. Slam dunk a zoomer baby into the trashcan. Crucify filthy zoomers. Defecate in a zoomers food. Launch zoomers into the sun. Stir fry zoomers in a wok. Toss zoomers into active volcanoes. Urinate into a zoomers gas tank. Judo throw zoomers into a wood chipper. Twist zoomers heads off. Report zoomers to the IRS. Karate chop zoomers in half. Curb stomp pregnant zoomers. Trap zoomers in quicksand. Crush zoomers in the trash compactor. Liquefy zoomers in a vat of acid. Eat zoomers. Dissect zoomers. Exterminate zoomers in the gas chamber. Stomp zoomers skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate zoomers in the oven. Lobotomize zoomers. Mandatory abortions for zoomers. Grind zoomers fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown zoomers in fried chicken grease. Vaporize zoomers with a ray gun. Kick old zoomers down the stairs. Feed zoomers to the trash compactor. Slice zoomers with a katana.
>>25152866You sound like a dweeby pseud.
>>25152867>Slam dunk a zoomer baby into the trashcanA baby is definitionally gen alpha
>>25150358He’s way too 1960s for moderns. A tranny fucking some dude in the ass while he’s strapped down isn’t shocking. It’s just Tuesday on pornhub for them
>>25151875truman capote maybe? also take a look at the prince of tides by pat conroy, but it's not high literature (the prologue is pretty good but flowery).
>>25152914Kek grim
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a masterpiece but her other books are really good too. She doesn't seem to be talked about much anymore.
>>2515035820 year old zoomer here and i went thru a heavy phase one summer where i was reading cheever and richard yates. pretty sure they've had reputations that have been diminishing since their deaths and are hardly remembered now. pretty sad
Another zoomer here. Love the following:>>25150512>Truman Capote>>25151655>Cheever>>25151816>Nabokov>>25152015>Melville>>25152024>HG Wells
>>25151588Why would you write and then submit this comment. You are such a bad presence on this board.
>>25150358Thomas HardyAnthony TrollopeHenry FieldingVery famous and acclaimed novelist for a long while. Have never known anyone who's read them however nor seen a discussion about them on /lit/ however.
>>25153588because it takes no effort but still gets (you)s. cope
Can we stop making threads about zoomers? I hate hearing their responses.
>>25153618No one likes millennials enough to keep harping on about them after initial critique, not even themselves, and a gen Xer's main claim to fame is his lack of presence in any discussion about generational proclivities. Boomers have been rightfully trashed for decades, so everything about them to be said has already been expounded upon by decades of literature and research. We can talk about gen alpha kids, but their millennial parents are too busy neutering their literacy and social development for us to even set any basis of conversation about their reading practices. If you're one to place value on any of these strict 20th century designations, though, the Silent Generation is by far the most underrated
>>25154722>No one likes millennials enough to keep harping on about themThen why do zoomcucks keep flooding a Millennial site just to wail about them?
>>25154795It's our site now.
>>25153618me too, they lack sense
>>25151338what draws a person like this to read literature in the first place?>>25151861Nice post, Anon, you covered a number of names so I don't have to. Some other 20th century Americans in that category:>Wallace Stegner>Evan S. Connell>Mary Lee Settle>Ring LardnerI'm much less worried for the memory of ambitious experimenters like William Gass or Djuna Barnes, who by those glittering virtues can easily attract an eager young reader, but the more mature and understated writers of domestic dramas and whatnot all teeter on the edge. Someone like Connell was basically doomed before he began, and somehow the fact that every Barnes and Noble has a "Mrs. Bridge" poster next to the Ulysses and Under The Volcano just makes it sadder.>>25151875Flannery O'Connor is a big one. More dear to Americans than to foreigners, but that sounds like what you're after anyway; have fun, pal.>>25152914A stern warning not to make art where "it's transgressive" is the selling point; in a few decades it will just be boring as anything but historical curiosity.
>>25150486Nobody ever said anything about good writers, and also Hardy, Eliot and Wordsworth are authors that nobody bothers reading anymore.>>25150532His brand of naive liberal optimism hasn't survived mass migration+palestine, unfortunately. But i did recently read Malaparte's book where he talks about experiencing the March on Rome with Zangwill.>>25151861I was talking with a zoomette not three weeks ago who was a big fan of Tennessee Williams.
I think Susan Sontag is finally entering the oblivion she should never have crawled out of save as an example of universal grace refused by sinners. She was still performatively referred to just 10 years ago.
>>25157179>what draws a person like this to read literature in the first place?Literature is not solely the preserve of progressives
>>25150358Gore Vidal, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, William Johnstone
>>25151492t. Harold Bloom
>>25154722>No one likes millennials enough to keep harping on about them after initial critique, not even themselvesAnd yet when the Boomers die Millennials are going to get all their wealth and power.
>>25158002>Hardy, Eliot and WordsworthHardy maybe, although he's still widely read by anyone seriously interested in poetry and the 19th century novel, but Eliot and Wordsworth? They're two of the most popular poets in the English language.
>>25158545>Jonathan FranzenWell shit, I forgot this guy exists. He was a hot writer for a minute there.
>>25150512Not a zoomer but I have read Understanding Media cover to cover
>>25150358Nobody remembers my nigga Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. Simplicissimus is a very underrated book. Like El Quijote, but even better y lo digo siendo español
>>25150358Gore Vidal will be better known to future generations as an actor than a writer.
>>25150358I'd be extremely surprised if zoomers read Booth Tarkington or John Irving.
>>25158540None of the gays who have ever made good art have been "progressive." The social left prefers to pretend people like Yukio Mishima or Gertrude Stein never existed than to have to awkwardly explain that they loved fascism "despite" (lol) not being straight. This sounds more like a you problem, but hey, read what you like.
>>25158970No one knows him as a writer.
>>25151816This. Not a single zoomer (or even a millennial) read anything from Nabokov other than Lolita. He is not "Nabokov, the famous writer" anymore, he is "The dude who wrote Lolita".
>>25150358Definitely Saul Bellow.
>>25160818>The dude who wrote LolitaThat's what he always was.
