>>25358680
Japanese visual novels are the only things I've read for the past two years. In short the ideas presented are honest and reflect the entire being of their author. Modern western writers are too ashamed to be wholly honest since we live in a culture of deceit.

What a dumb weeb thread

>>25358680
What's your definition of "western"?

The West has fallen. We cannot produce anything anymore.

the inner workings of the world are western, the little set pieces just shift around

One of the biggest problems with contemporary lit for me is that other literature is its only other resource of influence. My favorite novelists tend to be influenced by history, religion, philosophy, etc. (e.g. Joyce, Tolstoy, recent Nobel laureates like Fosse and Kang). I want writers that can synthesize old ideas for the modern era. I want writers that are consciously aware of the grand artistic and intellectual lineages that have developed over the centuries and millennia. Most contemporary lit writers only look back a generation or two. I think this is largely true in the West and in the East, though western writers are probably more susceptible culprits. We need fiction writers that read more non-fiction. We need novelists that are historically, sociologically, philosophically and anthropologically literate. Otherwise we will just keep on getting more textual popcorn flicks and dramatized diary entries.

"Thing Japan" thread

>>25358680
No, publishers refuse to put out anything interesting aside from independent presses that don't have the reach to get popular

>>25358813
I thought it was a "Thing Korea" thing at first, surely OP knows the woman he posted isn't Japanese.

>>25358687
>Japanese VNs
Any favorites?

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>>25358680
>Japan
>Posts Korean author
Kek'd.
>It seems Japan continues to produce novelists who are transgressive or innovative in an intelligent way
Absolutely not. They are all stuck with being Banana Yoshimoto's copycats.
The only transgressive nip I know of is a literal prostitute and she goes head to head with the highest of highbrow stuff that is quite honestly, international at this point.
>I'm not sure if the same can be said for Western novelists
The Russians are absolutely insane, but no one is translating them in English. Very far below them are the Irish/Scots.
You can find some by the Americans, but, generally speaking, the Americans are, like the French, pushing the same cozy and hopium riddled literary fiction that plagues the nips. The ones that are transgressive get review bombed, but as of late I am seeing them getting lumped into what is becoming a genre on its own: ragebait literature.
>who attract a wide readership due to their ability either to challenge the status quo in an authentic way, or write about subjects in a novel and innovative way while respecting the tradition of that genre
R.F. Kuang.
Here in Italy we have Niccolò Ammaniti.
Ireland has Sally Rooney.
>but maybe that's due to a lack of knowledge on my part.
This. You wanna start with learning the concepts of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_weird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_fiction
The Second Death of Locke (romantasy), Alchemised (grimdark fantasy) are the ones I know that are in English and they are all pushing the boundaries of their own respective genres.
Probably even There is antimemetics division, although I haven't read, so I can't vouch for it.
>I know that even in South America there are very popular writers in the horror genre for example who are celebrated as heirs to the masters of that genre
Everyone will be compared to someone before him, just to sell more books. Make your own mind, don't believe the marketing teams.

>>25358832
Have been reading some Korean novels these last few months, suprisingly good stuff.

>>25358680
Japan is slop central. Idk who keeps buying those 'QUIRKY JAPANESE PEOPLE IN JAPANESE CAFÉ' books with minimalist book covers and forced comfy vibe. Idk, what's transgressive about those anyway, and they make like 90% of japanese books published abroad.
>>25358881
Don't say that without giving recommendations. Besides Han Kang I like Kim Young-ha (Your Republic Is Calling You is fun read, similar to Murakami's Afterdark or the other Murakami's Rain, the story happens over 1 day) and Lee Seung-u (The Reverse Side of Life is fun, autobiography of fictional author constructed from pieces of his novels)

>>25358680
Japan can't produce shit. They're trapped in the tiny bubble of their dying culture. Nothing they make is relevant

>>25358919
Palpable envy and projection. Thirdies are all the same.

>>25358680
>reddit spacing

>>25358680
Carver is a mystery or detective writer? Lol Since when?

>>25358866
Are you high? Irish and Scottish authors have always been the best in the business. Fucking new /lit/ man, what happened to this board.

>>25358866
you have shit taste and are part of the problem.

>>25358843
nta but the answer is higurashi as long as you read it in japanese
its not a question of the english translations being bad
its that the entire story deserves to be read unadulterated in its native tongue and is very sensitive to translation even more so than other stories
its so uniquely japanese in so many subtle ways that trying to translate such a work is nigh impossible and arguably damages the thesis of the narrative

now if you ask around the answer most people give you is fate stay night
anyone who says this is a seal clapping moron with no appreciation for subtext and even worse has no respect for culture

>>25358911
Truth be told, I'm just starting exploring it. Besides a couple novels by Han Kang (Greek Lessons and Human Acts, which I suprisingly liked less than Greek Lessons) and her Light and Thread (which is quite a cashgrab, ifisaysomyself), I read Simple Heart by Cho Haejin, which I recommend, it very distantly reminds me of Human Acts (the search in a post-war environment of what happened during the war), and Hunger by Choi Jin-young, which had an absolutely awful prose, but it tackled some interesting themes (still wouldn't recommend, but it's short).
>Idk who keeps buying those 'QUIRKY JAPANESE PEOPLE IN JAPANESE CAFÉ' books with minimalist book covers and forced comfy vibe
It's the japanese traditional publishing industry to mangas. Those novels are literally sold near mangas in the kombinis. No one was buying those 400+ pages novels by Kenzaburo Oe and Kobo Abe anymore, so the publishers rebranded themselves into "don't want to embarass yourself with a manga on the metro? Get this shit instead!!".
>>25359085
>have always been the best in the business.
>always
We are talking about now, me specifically I'm talking 5 years or so, not what used to happen 100 years ago.
Do you have any Irish and Scottish authors you'd recommend who published in the last 5 years that challenge the boundaries of their respective genre?
Be my guest.
>>25359118
>/lit/ranny talking about anyone having shit taste
>/lit/ranny talking about anyone being the problem
Thanks for the compliments.

>>25359153
It's great. Ryukishi desperately needed an editor, though.

>>25358911
Forgot to say, I'll check those those books.

>>25359167
not any of the original ops but did Han Kangs books have any ethics in them? I read two novellas of The Vegetarian and I have to do the work to get any sort of ethical framework. I feel if I was retarded I wouldn't get anything out of it. I guess it's to gatekeep but I still can't tell if its good writing or not since the double meaning is more correct than the original meaning

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>>25359185
She talks about what her goal in writing fiction is in picrel, specifically, the first essay. It's pretty short, 20 pages very spaced.
Tl;dr
She focuses on resolving the conflict between:
>Why is the world so violent and painful? And yet how can the world be this beautiful?
When it comes to the Vegetarian, the questions she was trying to answer were:
>Can a person ever be completely inno-cent? To what depths can we reject violence? What happens to one who refuses to belong to the species called human?
Her answer to that is:
>To refuse life and the world in order to refuse violence is an impossibility.
She goes a little more in detail, but those are basically the main points.

So I'd say she does, she is really into debating how much pain comes from loving someone (or something), if love itself is pain (or the opposite). Evil is so present in her novels that it's difficult to find the positive aspects of living, and that's exactly what she is trying to address.

>>25359224
It makes sense that she writes the good couched in the evil to such a great literary effect that even if the pain is there the good is behind it. This couching is in fact the way to grow as any bad deeds we do will be corrected by the inherent good inside it. Therefore leading to us to try new things and experiment with life. I don't support sin but this shouldn't make us despair when we commit sin. A laced mixture in our sins so to speak.

>>25359270
I'm glad ching chong made you think so hard about sin in life

shut the fuck up namefaggot

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>>25359270
>This couching is in fact the way to grow as any bad deeds we do will be corrected by the inherent good inside it
Well said. I noticed in her novels this sense of constant waiting, that the evil has actually passed and now it's this pursuit for finding the good that is at the core of life.
>I don't support sin but this shouldn't make us despair when we commit sin.
Speaking of sin, I like how she pictured death in Human Acts, as this eventual complete, eternal immobility, rather than the active, eternal process of punishment/reward that is present Christianity. However, I do think that there is a freeing of oneself from evil (sin) the moment death takes ahold of one's soul, but it did feel less satisfying than what was achieved by the living, more abrupt.

She said that she links, at least thematically, all of her novels, so it kind of evolves her view of it, and in her later novels (i.e. anything after The Vegetarian) that element of love is more apparent. Based on the trajectory, I'd bet her next novel will be something actually joyful.
Too bad she has enough money to waste on her severely autistic hobbies instead of writing. So we'll have to wait 10 years or so for that novel to happen.

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>>25358680
>Japan continues to produce novelists who are transgressive or innovative in an intelligent way
>can't even name literally one (1) example

>>25358680
>Raymond Carver (mystery/detective)
Lol

>>25359224
this is much better take on Vegetarian than the feminist outlook on it dominant in the west. Really makes you despise western women that they turn this book that is about "us" (humanity) into a book that is about ME ME ME (a woman)

>>25358680
Transgression as a goal is autocoprophagic and I can't imagine anything less vital and long-run interesting than an ouroboros made of shit.

>>25358687
I, as a Culture, say unto you: "Culture of deceit? Thou sayest it."

>>25360136
>the feminist outlook on it dominant in the west.
in the marketing teams in the west.*
Because it's always them telling every book is actually about the racism/sexism/classism trifecta.
I saw some really nasty depictions of misogyny being labeled as "an exploration of the failures of second wave feminism", when in reality the guy just hates women and by the end of the book realised that he wants to wet his dick so he goes back to manipulating women.
Hunger by Choi Jin-young, every review that has been paid for by the publisher is all about "this book is a critique of capitalism!!", when in reality the book is about a chud loser constantly running away from his problems (until they catch up on him).
Even more famous stuff like Rooney (who writes parodies of romance, and yet the PR says it's about feminism) and Kuang (haven't read Yellowface, but if you go on YouTube everyone says it's about the issue of authorship, while if you go on what the reviewers on the big publications say it's about muh colonialism).

This is why I tell people to avoid reading the blurbs and go fully blind in everything contemporary. The authors themselves aren't obsessed with those three things, they put out pretty original stuff which just so happens to getting trivialized by incompetent PR teams.

>>25358687
Muv-Luv is peak fiction for me and I definitely see where you're coming from with this. If art is, as the Romantics held, the individual expressing his inner being, then there is no purer expression of individuality than what the Japanese give us, which is ironic considering how collective and communal their culture is. Maybe this is why the artist has such force in their expression, the art is the ONLY outlet they have. Compare this to the highly individualistic west where we've become atomized and express ourselves constantly in every act we undertake and in every interaction, there's nothing left for art.
Maybe.

>>25358680
>continues to produce novelists who are transgressive or innovative in an intelligent way,
wouldn't a modernist just tell you think isn't actually the same thing as breaking new ground?

>>25360527
>wouldn't a modernist just tell you think isn't actually the same thing as breaking new ground?
this not think*