literary allusions are anti-art
before the internet, reference books, and other modern facilities, it was much harder to do
you can see how such methods could be used in previous centuries to exhibit how well read and sophisticated you were
but now? it's simply easy. information is so easily found. I dont need to flesh out complicated emotions, I can just add in a few allusions to romeo and juliet and wuthering heights, or some obscure greek myth I found on wikipedia
it's the copy and paste of literature
the great conversation is nothing but an echo chamber
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Is this bait or stupidity? I can't tell. To have the allusion serve the story and not just be an allusion is just as difficult as ever and no one was ever celebrated for empty allusion.
well, it does happen, especially nowadays since critical response is so insular, fake, and gay
this book is feted for its allusions, even though they're thoroughly hamfisted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai_(novel)
I agree with you in spirit, though, that among people who are serious, honest, and largely unaffected by social desirability biases, empty allusion is not given much praise, nor should it be
Hamfisted in what way? and 'critical response' is just a vague and ultimately meaningless term which lumps any sort of publicly voiced opinions together including single line book cover blurbs. Searching jstor there are only 16 results for The Last Samurai, many being written by one person, not exactly a good response for a 20 year old novel that only sold 10,000 copies before going out of print. You are getting hung up on marketing.
>only sold 10,000 copies
off by a factor of 10 there bro, it sold over 100,000 copies
>Hamfisted in what way?
They're repetitive, without nuance, and don't typically fit harmoniously into the text
Amusingly, I can let one of the reviews that likes the book make the case for me:
>Fortunately for us, The Last Samurai is better than that. It’s a rare work of knowledge porn that actually conveys knowledge. Flip through the book and the first thing you’ll notice is Greek writing, or Japanese writing, or impossibly long strings of numbers. As Ludo studies, DeWitt folds his material into the text, and a patient reader will learn that, in Japanese, JIN is an exogenous Chinese lexeme, while hito is an indigenous Japanese lexeme; that in E.V. Rieu’s translation of The Odyssey (yes, it’s a real thing), Odysseus calls his companions “lads;” and that in the sum of any sequence n + (n+1) + (n+2) + (n+3) etc. is simply half of the sum of the sequence added to itself backwards. DeWitt doesn’t just tell us her characters are smart; she builds the truth of that assertion into the book, and she makes us smarter for reading it.
>As a stylist, too, DeWitt stands above most peddlers of knowledge porn. Both Sibylla and Ludo, as narrators, pour forth in a primly accurate voice that often gives way to sardonic or slapstick humor. Sibylla marvels at the cheesiness of a western movie that rips off Seven Samurai: “Not ONE but SEVEN tall men in tights — it’s simply MAGNIFICENT.” Unsure of what to say in the note she leaves for Liberace after sleeping with him, she writes several pages analyzing the The Iliad in the original Greek, and then realizes, “I still did not have something on the page that could be concluded with an airy Ciao.” At one point Ludo mentions that Sibylla dressed him up like a hunchback so they could sneak into an age-restricted screening of The Crying Game.
>off by a factor of 10 there bro, it sold over 100,000 copies
I misread but that does not change my point (which you failed to address) and actually strengthens it, 100,000+ sales and only 16 scholarly articles.
>Amusingly, I can let one of the reviews that likes the book make the case for me:
So you didn't read it and are actually seething about a random blogger (or is it a GR reviewer?) or are you incapable of making your own point? Certainly not proof of anything without a source since the credibility (as in being able to verify they posses anything resembling comprehension not academic credentials) of the writer is unknown. I suspect source will show the reviewer to be random person who reads #3,013,732 and probably has ~500 followers for around a decades worth of "reviews."
Christ you're a tedious contrarian
>Can't read a fricking number correctly
>Asks for evidence
>*Is given evidence*
>Noooo not good enough, plus I'm going to accuse you of never having read the book you brought up as an example, because surely it's more likely that you chose an exceedingly reference-dense book at random
have a nice day
Or you could look through the book yourself, dumbshit
Was just reading up on your "source"
https://sloopie72.wordpress.com
Pretty much nailed it, random person with 420 followers and 12 years at it, not someone you could call an authority. Might as well have just linked a random anon from the archives. I did not ask for proof, I asked what was hamfisted about its use of allusion which you have not answered. Still ignored my point and now you are seething.
>I asked what was hamfisted about its use of allusion which you have not answered
>They're repetitive, without nuance, and don't typically fit harmoniously into the text
Are you literally fricking illiterate?
nta but your argument is "just trust me bro" and an interpretation by a nobody that you do not agree with as support for that "just trust me bro." You never answered him and your argument is laughable.
I described my issue with them and the review I quoted shows examples of this. What more do you want, you stupid frick? An exhaustive accounting of every single less-than-clever allusion? Can you honestly read the reference to the film, The Magnificent Seven, in
and not see how painfully unsubtle it is?
>E.V. Rieu’s translation of The Odyssey (yes, it’s a real thing)
Huh??? What is implausible about the idea of a translation of the Odyssey?
>rips off Seven Samurai
Yeah, Kurosawa would NEVER base a film of his on the plot of another work from a foreign culture. Glad we called out those white devils.
>Huh??? What is implausible about the idea of a translation of the Odyssey?
I don't get it either. The Last Samurai came out in 2000 and E. V. Rieu's translation is from 1946
Stop coombaiting you fricking butthole
will being breastfed boost my test?
no, it really just gets worse... for that guy that showed up for one class
PAIN
Any books about sucking on some breasts?
>libraries in programming are anti-programming
You get a new context that allows you to build things that would be close to impossible to build from scratch.
>no links to pic
Absolutely shameful.