Why isn’t more amazing literature being made in the modern age despite there being more humans alive than ever before?
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Why isnt more amazing literature being made in the modern age despite there being more humans alive than ever before?
I don't see this Nemo dude making anything worth reading. Including this tweet you screengrabbed.
He has a few good maymays I just found his account
Did you ever think really stupid opinions like this one--where you guys think some mediocre moron is somehow worth a shit--is why you haven't sought out the better shit being made now? I mean, if you spend all your time reading utter trash on Twitter from maymayers, can you honestly say you know anything about the literary landscape of today?
That only reinforces his point
Democratization destroys art.
Most people who say this don’t even read contemporary lit
what contemporary literature is being published that isn't
>genre shit for women
>self help schlock
>outright garbage
?
I will show you fear with a handful of dust-jacket themed merch.
If I wore that bucket hat, would it improve my dating strategy?
It would be extremely painful.
>"X is the new normal chuds."
I want to slowly feed whoever wrote this into a woodchipper.
Did you notice she was making a Sally Rooney pun? Normal People ("...normal, people"). It makes it so much worse.
I haven't read this one but Normal People sucked shit so I bet this one is also awful.
It was unbelievably bad.
May we have a summary?
You can have a copy/paste from a post I wrote about it before. I didn't even cover everything in this:
>less effective retread of Conversations With Friends
The 2 MCs in BWWAY are pretty much carbon copies of those in CWF with a couple of traits cut from one and pasted into the other. As characters they're far less effective than they were before and their characterizations come across as shallow. It's also apparent that they're stand-ins for Rooney herself--this was likely so with CWF but at least they had some depth to them and were thereby more interesting.
>preaches to the reader
The book contains emails written from one MC to the other between each chapter; these basically boil down to Rooney pontificating her own opinions about random things to the audience. They do almost nothing by way of adding depth to any themes being explored and don't move the plot forward. They're mastabatory.
>poor depth of theme
The love interest of the mentally-ill writer is a superficial caricature of a working-class man. Rooney betrays the fact she has nothing to say about class and is stuck in the mindset of a myopic libtard. Basically, the writer character is financially established and the love interest is a gruff man (or at least Rooney tries to make him so) unaccustomed to partaking in the privileges the writer does. However, all Rooney has to say about such privileges is the writer taking a passe attitude toward them while having the love interest gawk at them with nothing much to say except for canned resentment (that isn't explored). It's like a cartoon, there is more than one scene where le famous young writer goes to a party being held by the friends of the working-class lover and they look her up on Wikipedia. It's literally just the same scene repeated for some reason and there isn't a change/growth in character being emphasized--it's quite obviously something that happened to Rooney that she felt was so interesting she had to include twice.
>token character traits
The fact the writer suffers from mental illness is a superficial character trait that doesn't play into plot and isn't examined at all (unlike with CWF which handled that aspect of the book with much more subtlety, giving the reader something to connect to and reflect on). Rooney also makes the working-class guy bisexual for some reason but, again, nothing is said about this and it doesn't really inform the plot let alone become something that interplays with the muddled themes Rooney is attempting to touch on.
IQfy shit on Rooney at lot so I picked up CWF to see if she deserved it. It wasn't a great book but there were aspects to it that were enjoyable. I didn't intend to read another of her books but ended up with a copy of BWWAY by chance and everything negative IQfy says about Rooney is justified by this book. It's like she's become the full embodiment of the persona they use to market her that tipped off people who post on this site. BWWAY is just terrible.
The story is basically:
>two female MCs (Alice who is a writer and Eileen who works for a literary magazine)
>Alice had a mental breakdown that is never explored in the novel (it's just window dressing) but is successful and famous--she goes to a ruralish village to live in an old convent by herself
>Alice meets a working class guy on Tinder who lives in the village and that opens the book
>his character traits are that he really loves his dog and is bisexual (but that doesn't figure into the plot at all--window dressing again)
>she's rich (because successful author) and, as mentioned in
>less effective retread of Conversations With Friends
The 2 MCs in BWWAY are pretty much carbon copies of those in CWF with a couple of traits cut from one and pasted into the other. As characters they're far less effective than they were before and their characterizations come across as shallow. It's also apparent that they're stand-ins for Rooney herself--this was likely so with CWF but at least they had some depth to them and were thereby more interesting.
>preaches to the reader
The book contains emails written from one MC to the other between each chapter; these basically boil down to Rooney pontificating her own opinions about random things to the audience. They do almost nothing by way of adding depth to any themes being explored and don't move the plot forward. They're mastabatory.
>poor depth of theme
The love interest of the mentally-ill writer is a superficial caricature of a working-class man. Rooney betrays the fact she has nothing to say about class and is stuck in the mindset of a myopic libtard. Basically, the writer character is financially established and the love interest is a gruff man (or at least Rooney tries to make him so) unaccustomed to partaking in the privileges the writer does. However, all Rooney has to say about such privileges is the writer taking a passe attitude toward them while having the love interest gawk at them with nothing much to say except for canned resentment (that isn't explored). It's like a cartoon, there is more than one scene where le famous young writer goes to a party being held by the friends of the working-class lover and they look her up on Wikipedia. It's literally just the same scene repeated for some reason and there isn't a change/growth in character being emphasized--it's quite obviously something that happened to Rooney that she felt was so interesting she had to include twice.
>token character traits
The fact the writer suffers from mental illness is a superficial character trait that doesn't play into plot and isn't examined at all (unlike with CWF which handled that aspect of the book with much more subtlety, giving the reader something to connect to and reflect on). Rooney also makes the working-class guy bisexual for some reason but, again, nothing is said about this and it doesn't really inform the plot let alone become something that interplays with the muddled themes Rooney is attempting to touch on.
IQfy shit on Rooney at lot so I picked up CWF to see if she deserved it. It wasn't a great book but there were aspects to it that were enjoyable. I didn't intend to read another of her books but ended up with a copy of BWWAY by chance and everything negative IQfy says about Rooney is justified by this book. It's like she's become the full embodiment of the persona they use to market her that tipped off people who post on this site. BWWAY is just terrible., class is only "explored" by him gawking at her wealth/fame (it's pretty cartoonish and doesn't actually cause friction in their relationship or anything)
>Eileen is her friend from college, she wants to be a writer but has a basic job at a literary magazine
>her family treats her like shit and throughout the book she develops a romantic relationship with a childhood friend who is like 5 years or so older than her
>Rooney tries to make him the libtard version of trad fantasy (he was sickly as a kid but grew up into a chad, he works for a refugee agency, and he's religious but, just like Alice's mental breakdown and her love interest's bisexuality, it doesn't inform anything)
>they're hesitant about pursuing a relationship with one another for some reason--the point is basically for the reader to hope they'll end up together but there's not any real conflict keeping them apart so...they end up together at the end
>between chapters there are copies of emails Eileen and Alice are sending to one another; they're basically just Rooney sperging about random shit and pushing her politics--they don't move the plot forward or anything nor do they add dimension to the characters at all; they kind of reflect Alice/Eileen's relationship but most of it is just Rooney sperging
>I forget why but in the last 20 pages or so Eileen and Alice have a fight
>with 10 pages left COVID happens and they're friends again
That's pretty much it. It's basically a rehash of Conversations With Friends as far as characters go (traits shuffled a bit then copy/pasted). However, the plot just meanders around and the characters are so shallow that there's nothing to enjoy. There's nothing by way of thematic depth for the reader to think about, unless you count the email spergs, and the novel is basically just two relationships that aren't very interesting. She throws in COVID at the end for good measure, kek. The book was complete shit.
Wow, that sounds absolutely awful. I'm glad I got rid of my copy of Normal People by borrowing it to my suicidal friend who never gave it back.
Based on the title alone, I know this is just woman crap.
With discretion you can avoid the first two. To make a judgement on something being garbage, you have to read it. Don’t be a pseud who gives opinions on something you’ve never read
The problem is nobody else reads any of it either. This either means that IQfy really is like the rest of the world, i.e doesn't read, or there really is nothing worth recommending. In all actuality it's probably a little bit of both.
About three-quarters of my hundreds of reads are from before 1900. Almost all are from before 1975. I suspect much of IQfy is like this.
Cormac McCarthy released 2 (two) books last year for starters.
and they didn't sell at all.
>100,000 copies by year end 2022
It's not Hoover numbers but, remember, McCarthy's first hit, ATPH, was considered as such with only 190,000 copies sold in 6 months, during a much stronger period for hardcover literature.
>first thing he manages to think of is a dead author
Kek
An 89 year old writer’s last breaths is not a good way to prove the quality of contemporary literature. He may have been able to experience the 21st century and write during that time, but he is a 20th century writer.
name one (1) great work of literature released within the past 10 years
NTAs but I really liked Lincoln in the Bardo.
Schattenfroh
Emilian Galaicu-Păun - Living Tissue, 10x10
the prison planet is now demanding that its captives produce literary masterpieces lol
This.
>nooo you need to advance your heckin' culture
yes, you do. if you have a gift you must exercise it, and honor god, or forsaken, throw the gift away
>you must produce works of art so that after you die winston smith can rewrite your literary masterpiece as a coming-of-age tale about a sassy black woman
Unless you only watch marvel movies and netflix shit, I dont see why you would say that people only make one non-mid movie every 5 years
>Why can't any of the Stooges get though the doorway despite there being three times as many enterers than usual?
Superpopulation is inhibitory to literature
Yep. Too many people, too much distraction, too much noise. Silence is the foundation of creativity.
>monolinguists be like
>it's not a prison planet bro i can leave anytime
>the demiurge loves me, he told me cutting off my dick will make me a woman
obsessed
Education system. Literally the soul killer.
Basically every intelligent person just kills them self nowdays or becomes a hookup crazed drug addicted sociopath with a bunch of crypto and a good jawline
Too many people write and we don't have enough time.
1 ) You can't find good quality work among the mountains of text being written each year.
2) The ideas being published are made to sell copies, but many of the greatest literature are only recognized decades after the author's death.
3) Writers are being trained to sell copies that merely entertain psuedo intellectuals.
It's a lot of things really.
>education being very minimal, poorly taught, poorly funded, and universal
>exposure to visual mediums like cinema, television, video games, etc, which discourages reading in a subconscious manner
>world becoming more globalised and connected, allowing more fierce competition from different parts of the world
>society being geared for decades to not visit the old classics, which writers of old have done for centuries
>publishing standards dropping
>market for literature is tailored and adapted towards the lowest common denominator (romance fictional shit, genrefiction trash, self improvement garbage, etc)
I could drudge on and on, but I've been up for 15 hours, and don't feel like writing paragraphs right now. Maybe when I wake up.
because the leisure class has shrunk
Recognition in this medium takes time
Someone could drop a literary masterpiece today and it would take years before said work would start to be genuinely appreciated and considered a great work
Plus, and I don't how to best frame this though, but we live in a time of cynicism or intellectual masturbation in academia and certain ideologies/beliefs are treated like football clubs
For the former any work with genuine passion is either seem as naive and tastes like bile, for the latter they either ignore it, even if it raises points or actively, or they completely misundertstand and try to destroy it
People like you always say this shit but it’s not true and never has been. Almost every great piece of work was acknowledged in its time as of very good quality, only much later being reconsidered as ‘great’ or a classic. Almost none are pulled out of complete obscurity
Tech companies keeping the youth distracted.
Don't blame the tech companies, blame the moronic youth.
>Don’t blame the propagandists, blame the propagandized
moron
In the 19th century, everything was democratized even more than before. In the 20th, education on literature got even worse—and it was already bad. In the 21st century, women are the primary customer base for basically everything, which is essentially just continued democratization. Most genes for intelligence (and thus probably also for intelligence-adjacent idiosyncrasies, which make interesting people) are on the X-chromosome. Women have 2 X-chromosomes, so recessive genes that would make a man more intelligent just get covered up in them. This is why men’s intelligence is so much more variable.
If a gene is recessive and on the x-chromosome, the chance a woman will express it is the chance for a man to carry it squared: If men have a 10% chance of having (and thus expressing) it, for women it will be 10% x 10%. Additionally, women have no internal or external reason to attempt to not be mediocre.
What we are witnessing is the average.
You're moronic
dumbass
This post was a pleasure to read, you're not moronic, in fact, you are a wise sage.
t. chiropractor
All the good ideas already have amazing content.
Art has been dead for a century now.
>spend all of your limited free time on the lowest common denominator media pushed on you by advertising
>wtf where is the good art???
I've noticed this generation have problem developing their own sense of style, I feel like most major works i see/read, even those who executed well, lack unique aesthetics to them.
It's because they don't read. I used to work for a literary magazine, and going through the slush pile was a slog because every single submission had the exact same style and the same cliche expressions. Every author was interchangeable. At the time I didn't know why, but now I know it's because they lacked actual exposure to literature, so they were just imitating what they thought literature was supposed to be. It was like listening to someone fake an accent without actually knowing what it should sound like.
>exact same style
do you have any examples? like a sample or something? would be interested so i know what to avoid
they are being made, they dont receive that much attention tho due to producers/publishers focus on formulaic shit
Because the concept of "quality" was waning during the last century but millennials were the final nail in the coffin.
They fully entertained and pushed the idea that "quality is subjective" (as long as the creator has the right opinion) as a fact, so now there's no point in refining and mastering technical skills required to make a drawing, make music, write a story, etc. For millennials, a carefully crafted sculpture has the same artistic value as a banana tapped on the wall or a performer shitting on a floor's museum just because the later supports the current thing.
>millennials
Boomers, moron. Millennials are basically the generation without a voice because it's drowned out by their parents. Gen X was just reactionary to whatever the Boomers did and Zoomers don't know what the world was like before the instant gratification of the internet.
>it's le boomers it's never us, le poorly oppressed millennials
holy copium, your generation is already in their 30s and 40s and their greatest achievements are pronouns, pride parades for children, safe spaces and gender neutral bathrooms
The average age of politicians is still young boomer/old gen x, moron.
so what?
since when that has stopped younger generations from affecting politics?
>zoom zoom can't into demographics
Boomers have more ballot power than other generations, moron.
>millennials can't do things like protesting against the current system just like previous generation have
>but what about the things they have done?
>THEY DON'T COUNT IT'S BOOMERS FAULT OK?
...
My boomer parents failed on teaching me how to write. Dunno, I'm not into idolizing people, I don't hate my parents either, but they messed up big time on this one.
>can't come up with a real argument
Cope, zoom zoom.
anon, millennials are the same generation that believes that buying and consuming things for children makes them "good with with their imagination"
no matter how much proof you show them they will always blame boomers, gen x or zoomers
Boomers literally destroyed the world though. It's verifiable with data.
millennials aren't doing anything to save it either
>come up with real argument
>NOOO IT'S LE BOOMERS YOU ARE COPING
it's like talking to a wall who went took a college loan to study a degree in chicanx post-african gender studies
>no you
>still no argument
It's statistically verifiable that boomers have influenced fiscal policy in such a way that transfers and hordes wealth in their age bracket, moron.
I know you're moronic so I'll point out that the purple line being higher than the red line (
) also reflects the fact coffers are being drained and causing inflation (i.e. the distance between the red line and the purple line in each interval is the main thing but if the purple line is higher than other brackets' red line it devalues overall wealth as well).
>greatest generation
>their achievements are ending piracy and using streaming services
no way that articles not sarcastic, right?
Most people are losing 95% of their time and energy at bullshit jobs wage slaving or recovering from wage slavery
Working sucks now, but Labor conditions were much worse in the first 150 years of industrialization and we still got great novels, even significant litrary movements (that french realism from Balzac and Flaubert, eventually ruining modern literature but it came to thrive when the world was at it's peak of men being fed to the machine, and during a decadent period for western society).
People today work less than before. Most people are not averaging 70+ hour work weeks.
Regardless the atomization of society leaves many with endless social media drivel to consume rather than novel bonding experiences. There’s simply not a culture of experience to produce art from
When I had a retail job, I used to read at the register when no one was looking. I'd put a small book in my cargo shorts and whip it out quickly between customers.
Radio, television and the internet destroyed society.
Everything worth writing is already written
When was the last thing worth writing written? American fiction saw a very strong period 20-30 years after WW2. Did this flurry of creativity, already existing in the massive shadow of 400 years of literature, consume the remainder of the good ideas?
It's absurd to think that there are no new experiences to be converted to good literature, no new perspective, ideas. . Post modernism isn't the end point of art. You're just a doomer.
Because 7 billion of those "people" are moronic shitskins and bugmen
Because nothing is happening and many people are more comfortable than ever.
Read picrel. A litgay recommended it, and I read it.
It's genrefiction for men but it's based
Gatto Sexo
It is. I read at least one exquisite masterpiece a week. I don't know how the rest of you frick up discovery so badly
Because it doesn't sell you moron
No person who ever uses mid, even ironically, has anything of worth to say.
Maybe that's part of it. There's so much genetic garbage out there.
Capitalism
Do you read things that are being released? Also , art usually doesn't sell that well, you will have to find your way through a pile of goyslop, until you find something decent.
wouldn't capitalism be the best system to produce works of art in?
- Less ideological meddling (though some, for PR reasons and perhapos because some of the salariat are not directly affected by the companies profit, so they make decisions that go against the pursuit of profit)
- Rewards proportionate to the popularity of your work or based on how niche it is
- enough wealth going around that even the peasants can pursue a leisurely profession such as writing either full time or on the side
- no king or dictator to pander to, and not even the masses, because the few might like your work enough to finance more of it
...
I cannot imagine a more suitable system for creatives.
No. It never has.
The best art comes from creative minds. In ages past, some wealthy people found and sponsored the artist, they put him up in a little house for life, commission him to do drab patron aggrandizing nonsense, and he’ll make his own stuff on the side. Modern age pits everyone in a fierce competition for dollars. Not quality art, just dollars. That’s all there is motivating the modern world. This is the religion, this is the government’s purpose. Was the Mario Brothers movie #1 over the holiday or did Indiana Jones 5 take it? That’s all anybody cares about. Advertising and sequel funding for the successful is what we spend on
>less ideological meddling
If we have less of that we have bland soup, middle of the road ideology. Captain America is so non committal it’s infuriating. Captain Fantastic, a little movie, was great.
>popularity
The lazy audience will want an action flick, but the thoughtful will come back for more. Why do people buy a copy of Transformers when another one is on the way? They’re dumb consumers. Those flicks mean nothing.
>enough wealth
I have no idea what this means. All the wealth is in the hands of the stupidly wealthy. Fools are parted with box office ticket prices.
>no king or dictator to pander to
Need I remind you the high art period of monarchy had dictatorships. And no the Soviet Union was still capitalist, it was just state centralized capitalism. A world without capitalism would mean what for the film industry (to stick with the one medium) time and craftsmanship would be allowed, and no interruptions from producers pulling their support, or choking a production for deadlines.
> I cannot imagine a more suitable system for creatives
Because you are not an artist.
not to be semantical, but the "modern age" has passed. the contemporary problem is that modernism has been bled dry, even so-called "post-modernism" is just a rehashing of modernist ideas and approaches, there has to be a "new" movement in literature in order to revitalize it in the popular consciousness. American Literature has abandoned its roots and is has remained transfixed on modernist themes and structures to a fatal point.
We don't need any more Hemingway wannabes or minimalists, we need a new and more romantic style of writing to emerge. Stylistically the most engaging novels to come out within the past ten years have been verbose but cynical, dark and personally pessimistic, whereas the American oeuvre has always in at least some way celebrated its nation (even while criticizing it). Without any kind of positive spin, and devoid of any morality aside from relativism of self, there isn't much that literature offers at the moment. There should be some unified front, but it's basically impossible to make something like that happen because everyone will second guess each other's motives.
>there has to be a "new" movement in literature in order to revitalize it in the popular consciousness
That requires a founding myth. I've come to believe that in order for a new art to emerge, a new "peopledom" is required.
because most people don't read literature
the lower classes don't have leisure time and the upper classes have "soft" additions to social media and visual entertainment
people who can pick up a book and read it for 15 minutes without interruption are a minority
People don't produce art anymore because it costs money and time that they don't have. Art is exclusive to suits & committees now.
Despite all the fearmongering, I actually think AI going to bring about a creative renaissance. It will put powerful artistic tools back into the hands of the layman. You no longer need specialized training, expensive equipment, or large amounts of time to produce art. People who have dedicated their life to cultivating a craft are scared because imagination & the strongest ideas will take precedence over any amount of money/effort you sink into a project. True artistics rejoice; craftsmen will suffer.
This post sounds like it was written by AI, right down to the trite generalizations of complex human phenomena.
I would love it if AI could shit out masterpieces (Stanislaw Lem has written several short stories on this theme), but you completely misunderstand what makes a literary masterpiece a masterpiece. There is no abstract ideal of pure craft floating in space that can be plucked. A literary masterpiece depends on how much an author can drill into particularities of culture and personality- e.g. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy makes it such that you can sense and smell what it felt like to be situated in the Russia of their time, participating in the great moral debates and events, with the craft only meaningful to the extent that it facilitates their conveyance of the life experience and wisdom they had to acquire through living through serious shit. All classics are such condensations of history, and requires a consciousness or a simulacra of such situated within an embodied history. For AI to be even useful in creating such literature, it needs to either be historically conscious or simulate it in some way, and the point at which that happens is the point when making literature will be the least of our concerns, because we'll be fricked.
And even from the perspective of craft, AIs as they currently stand are absolutely horrible at avoiding cliches, either linguistically or narratively, pretty much the barest minimum standard in creating good or unique art.
So about 20% of the world pop is illiterate, so that's 1.6 billion disqualified. Another half is female, so that's another 3 billion. Half of the 3/4ths of the remainder doesn't read, and then 1/1000th of that has any pretensions to write. A 10th of that actually writes in some organized capacity. And then a millionth of that fraction has any real lasting talent. And then a handful of every age are an actual genius.
The leisure class isn't interested anymore.
Because dumbfricks like you would rather read literally whos' twitter screenshots instead
>false observations with incorrect information
>twitter
>blue checkmark
Lmfao.
Rofl even.
literature is a homosexual feminine past time and hobby
What if I told you I have that 'top tier fiction writing talent'?
Movies are expensive to make and are an investment on behalf of the studios. Unless there's a big exception, it's unlikely that someone will invest in a movie that they don't think will make money, hence there aren't many people taking "risks".
On the other hand, there are so many books being written today that it's difficult to filter good and bad ones. I'd bet 100-200 years ago most books were probably rubbish or mid, which is why we only know of the classics. Today, it's even easier to write a book and self-publish it, so the filtering is even harder.
There are risks in publishing too, but the cost of production is lower. OTOH, the reader base for literary/realistic fiction is mostly affluent women. This is probably true of most literature except SF&F now. Men are just not interested.
I'm not the best equipped to deal with the topic because I don't read that many novels, but here's my 2c.
I think part of it is that the kind of person who becomes a published writer nowadays is different than it was back in the days. While there was always some priority given to a kind of artsy, often formally educated literate, they've now became the standard for "high brow" literature. The reason for that is ironically because the only thing that to be promoted there you don't have to be good, you have to have connections. In the past you've had for instance eccentric people with familial connections who would walk all sorts of walks of life(my fav example is the author of the Saragossa Manuscript who was just wild, but even someone who seems boring like Kafka at least had his experience as a pencil pusher to get frustrated by) and then they'd write a novel or two and those would be largely based on their life experience, as they always are. They would become well known because they knew the right people, but by themselves they were at least somewhat interesting. Nowadays this types of people are more rare, instead this kind of literature is created by urbanite(male or female most likely the latter) with literature degree who knew which guy to suck off, but by themselves they didn't have anything to say, they have good technique mind you, the prose is good, but 104825th novel about an artist's(MBA) life in a big city. What's interesting about Houellebecqs body of work outside of mild political incorrectness? Of course these guys existed before(E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Life And Opinions of Tomcat Murr" are kind of written in that vein although there is enough of a comedic factor in it to save it from being boring), but what happened was that the number of "belle letter" literature published is higher than ever, and that increase is fuelled solely through these types.
Here's the thing.
It's really only the top 0.000001% of artists who can make something truly great.