Kek. Modern books are so dreadful that 200-year-old pulps are lifechanging works of astonishing beauty by comparison.
That book is awful but at least they’re not just reading that slop published in the 21st century.
Oh to have 105-135 IQ...How free I'd be!AlasThe bliss of the ignorance of your own ignorance, rather than merely the bliss of ignorance (dimwit).
>>25226477It's always fascinated me that the slop of 100 and 200 years ago is so praised. Dickens wrote populist slop. Dumas wrote populist slop. People praise Ben Hur, it's the equivalent of the Da Vinci Code, a dumbed down all time best seller, but now people act like it's got history and Jebus so it must be serious high art. People praise Poe for writing horror sloppa while sneering at someone like King. Or worse, they say Lovecraft is good, the man can't even write. Noir writers are praised as if it's literature when it was exploitative garbage like some steamy thriller of today.Spend some time looking at the lists of best books of all time, but from different eras. Notice the kind of crap they praise as if it will be around forever. Then notice you've never heard of it and everyone collectively forgot it even existed. This happens in the literature scene too. DFW still gets posts on this board, but what happened to Franzen? Even then the DFW praisers are fewer and dying off at this point from when he was an ubiquitous reference point. The Joyce rimmers still enjoy his farts, but what of proud Proust enjoying his cake? Used to be In Search of Lost Time that was the perennial smug fartsniffer series, now it is also lost to time. (You) love slop because it's old. It's that simple.
>>25226524>but will he admit that Homer was classical period slop
>>25226524The true red pill is that everything is slop and it's a scale from Reddit to canon lit (usually old slop). Some things are less sloppier than others but it's still slop
>>25226524Dickens was admired by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.Poe was admired by practically every contemporary French writer of importance.Ben-Hur is indeed slop, and no one reads it now.
>>25226524I counter with peak
>>25226524>slop slop slopdive into a woodchiper you illiterate faggot
>>25226524Dickens is slop? You lost me there bud.
>>25226524>everything is slopThen you must be a pig
>>25226524It’s always fascinated me that people like you care so fucking much. I guess you’ll say Shakespeare was slop too because of how popular he was? And how much of his plays featured magic and action? What DO you like?
>>25226499>t. 136 IQ
>>25226548if a christmas carol was written today it would be a lifetime movie
>>25226570>What DO you like?People like this are always trying to make excuses for whatever liberal garbage the establishment is currently pushing. The simple fact of the matter is that ALL modern western writers are objectively awful and not worth reading.
>>25226589I agree, unless you count Sebald.
>>25226524I mostly agree, except about Joyce and Proust, but what would you say is not slop? Any lesser known works you'd recommend?
>>25226589You didn’t answer my question, I mostly agree with you in fact but like the anon above me, not in Proust and Joyce, Dickens is fine too
>>25226572it's a truly cursed existence to recognize perfection but be unable to recreate/manifest it in the world.
>>25226606Could call it artistic cerebral palsyPast sufferers include Virgil and Kafka
>>25226603what do you see in Dickens? I've only read Oliver Twist, but it was such a slog to get through, I couldn't stand the melodrama and how contrived everything was
>>25226615I never read Oliver Twist but I find Great Expectations to be a really fun Bildungsroman, I suppose it’s similar to Oliver Twist in the sense that it follows a poorfag orphan but we see him get rich. Only issue is Dickens prose though good, isn’t outstanding.
>>25226621>funStop trying to talk about literature. You have nothing of value to say.
>>25226626Yeah, reading is fun, if you don’t think it can be maybe you should stick to another hobby, fucking retard.
>>25226646NTA, but no shit reading is fun, that's not the point. if the only thing you have to say about a book is that it's fun, you have nothing to say about the book
>>25226477I didn't think the book was all that great but there was an anime based on it that was pretty cool so I'd just recommend that instead.
>>25226524Every time I ask this people think I'm just being an asshole but no seriously I'm honestly asking>>25226570Genuinely yes. I don't get it. I don't understand the inconsistency. Thus board largely hates and is skeptical of popular stuff with the masses but if it's old its loved. I don't get it because often the people you hate and say their taste is shit will like the same popular classic you do. There is no reason to conclude Shakespeare's audience is anymore intelligent or discerning. I'm not trying to start a fight here but come on. Its not nearly as cut and dry as you guys make it>>25226589No I'm sincerely asking
>>25226652Sure, but when I say fun, I mean to say that the humour itself, the satire, of which along with the mystery around Pip’s benefactor, and his very human, flawed character too along with Joe’s, makes it a pretty entertaining experience in my opinion. Dickens thematically its not incredibly complex but I enjoy how he handles social classes and that material success isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. It’s all very plotfaggy and I have little to say of his prose because it’s something I’m not really into. But I just couldn’t be bothered to go into it further. I’m not arguing it’s high literature, but it’s enjoyable.
>>25226667Fair enough, I actually agree with you there, I mean, illiterate commoners went to see Shakespeare, adored his plays for the drama, the tension, the action; even if they couldn’t write down what the characters were saying or had no idea what Hamlet was rambling on about in his soliloquies. But the fact that Shakespeare for example has that universal appeal, where someone could enjoy it on the surface, and another could write an entire thesis on Hamlet’s indecision, his dilemma and the conflict between his moral reasoning and his impulsive nature, relating that to modern psychoanalysis. Not just that, his sonnets are some of the most humanly beautiful things I’ve read.Perhaps even still you could make an argument for a modern writer… but I’ll admit ignorance there as I haven’t read anything contemporary.
>>25226581Ah yes his one book
>>25226695He had other books?
>>25226698Niggerless niggleby
>>25226606Skill issue.
>>25226524>if I deride everything as slop I'll look really smart, which is critically important to me on an anonymous Tibetan macrame message board
>>25226615>read only one author's work>considers everything slopYou belong on this board.
>>25226477>pulpsit's more that people scoff at them expecting they were bad because they were serialized in parts clearly for profit, but like one anon said well written pulps are really good because they were released in such specific conditions.
>>25226524Slop from hundreds of years ago is still better than the majority of slop today. There was a higher barrier of entry.
>>25226477What else has he read?
>>25226524
>>25226477Yeah it was fun but capeshit tier
>>25226662Name?
>>25226865Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo
The only things that aren't slop are Homer and Shakespeare.
>>25226950This but replace Homer with Dante, Goethe and Milton
>>25226524King is shit at endings & middle parts.Poe is low literature but very consistent.Rest I can agree with.
>>25226477The Count of Monte Cristo is entertaining, but far from the peak of the medium. If you approach literature in the same way you do a TV show or other contemporary media then you’ll likely be fond of Dickens/Dosto/Tolstoy/etc.Truth is that Joyce will never be surpassed and will forever be hailed as the true king of literature.
>>25226572More like >t. 104 iq
>>25227111Joyce is a master and the greatest man to ever write a novel but I’d hesitate to say he’s the king of literature.
>>25226477>Modern books are so dreadful that 200-year-old pulps are lifechanging works of astonishing beauty by comparisonHe's right, you know.
I have a couple of friends who haven't read in years and this is the first book they have picked up. Why are all the booktokkers shilling it for beginner's? Its over 1000 pages long.It would make much more sense for a noob to start off with a novella from Hemingway or a collection of short stories.Is it really that good - is it worth reading /lit?
>>25226524Oh no, everything ever is le slop, I guess you'll have to stop reading books and never post on /lit/ again. You should go back to video games and anime, I'm sure those are much better suited for discerning tastes such as yours.
>>25226527Unironically it would be, being one of a handful of things that survived. The rest of the Epic Cycle is basically dismissed as being no good for the reason it didn't survive. When the fuck would you normally accept the appeal to popularity, what best seller from the last 100 years do you endorse in this way? Take 300 years if you need to. Nobody accepts this argument, and rightly points out the ridiculous neolib brainfart of associating merit with commercial success. >>25226529>red pill is that everything is slopCertainly much of the canon is, definitionally, slop. But let's give it a bit more definition. The same things we absolutely trash modern authors for is something you shouldn't escape by virtue of years. People are using wildly inconsistent metrics. Can we agree a book being good should be independent of when it was written?>>25226548>Dickens is slop? You lost me there bud.Serialized, directed to a mass audience, and also massively popular with precisely the new mass reading audience. Painfully saccharine and overtly political in a way you'd absolutely hammer and deride any modern author for. Hell, Steinbeck has gained the aura of age and he still gets called out for the subtle as a sack of hammers approach to social issues. >>25226570>people like you care so fucking muchDo I? Why do people care so fucking much to defend "canon" books? Why is it a heresy to suggest a lot of books on it have equivalent negative aspects to books that get no respect in the same conversations? > Shakespeare was slop too because of how popular he wasIt's an entire debate unto itself but take a look at the debate between quartos and the first folio. How much polish was added between a popular playwright and the 'official' versions? Even so, what are we saying, that all his plays are equally good because the man himself is some unassailable icon? Clearly several of them are shit, clearly many are exploitative and play to the masses. Why do the defenders reach so fast for MacBeth and Hamlet in this context, and not Love's Labour's Lost? >What DO you like?"Please give me a line of attack so I can avoid engaging with the argument".>>25226599>except about Joyce and ProustLet's stay with this because I'm afraid people think the problem is mass appeal unto itself. Literary fiction never has mass appeal, but it does have its own popular canon, and fickle tastes. You are to prove your intellectual superiority with the flavour of the day icons, Joyce and Proust are as subject to this as DFW vs Franzen. DeLillo was on the list for a hot minute. It follows the same rules, criticize the icons and you're uneducated riffraff. Notice the same flaws in their work as commonly derided authors and you suck, idiot. >>25226667>largely hates and is skeptical of popular stuff with the masses but if it's old its loved. I don't get it because often the people you hate and say their taste is shit will like the same popular classicSomeone gets it.
>>25226477>asked to open up his relationship with his wife because he's bisexual>fiance agrees but only with men>immediately fucks a non-binary AFAB who just looks like a woman>rules lawyered his fiance into accepting it>disappeared for a few days for a "mental health break" that was just covering up his affair, in the middle of his kickstarter campaign prompting pity donations>the person he was technically not cheating with turned out to be a complete schizo who claimed rape then immediately backtracked on it>some other random woman claimed he was a sex pest on a blog post from before he even started his youtube channelI will never not have this in the back of my mind any time I see Daniel Greene.
Ban booktuber threads.
>>25227550I’m >>25226570 and I do apologise for any hostility in that reply. Let me just say you make some good points in this post actually with regard to Shakespeare, Joyce and Proust. Of course they’re not revered for no reason, and it’d be a little disingenuous to call Ulysses or In Search of Lost Time “slop” because they’re both exceptionally well written in my opinion anyway. But you’re right in the sense they have a circlejerk that often is fickle, something that was highbrow becomes middlebrow and so on. Pynchon is a victim of this too, with him I believe it has to do with the change in attitudes as some people (at least here) are turning against postmodernism.They all have flaws though, even the greatest of them. Shakespeare wrote some trash, and as we all know the situation with authorship and what was changed in the first folio is all a contentious matter. But the works themselves are the important part in this case, his bad stuff was bad, his good stuff was masterful. But he’s a weird one because people who had to read him in school often say he’s the best because it’s a safe answer and they haven’t read anything beyond that, I think that’s partly why those plays like Hamlet and Macbeth, which are taught in schools, are revered over lesser known works like loves labours lost which is actually the best written play in my opinion, in terms of wordplay alone. Hoi polloi loved Shakespeare, scholars do too and I think that speaks for how universal his work is. You can enjoy his plays on the surface and dive deeper as many literary scholars have before with characters like Hamlet or Iago. Influence plays a part too, considering how many people in the literary sphere have been influenced by him even outside of the English speaking community. Also, I’m genuinely curious as to what you do think is truly great, not looking for a means to attack your taste.
>>25226477Sad but true
>>25226477>kek
>>25226581A Christmas Carol is a perfect work of art. It achieves everything art is supposed to. Just because Dickens wasn’t avant-garde or sophisticated like other famous writers at the time didn’t mean he was any less of an artist. Tolstoy correctly figured this out and ended up praising Dickens over the usual intellectual high-brow artists of his time, and posterity has proven him correct. A Christmas Carol will always continue to be a key part of Western culture and art, and the avant-garde artists of his time are mostly forgotten.
Honest to God, my sister is proud, proud to the point of speaking about it for over 15 years now, that when she was in highschool she read The Three Musketeers. This is the highest literature she can imagine, and views it as a badge of honor no lesser than a doctoral degree would be. At family gatherings she will bring up Musketeers and say, her chin held up, that she "got the jokes" in it.This is how we are now, as a society.
>>25228632Tolstoy was a lolcow who praised Uncle Tom's Cabin over Shakespeare
>>25226667>That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.>Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an authour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.>To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.
OP is a fag.
