At this stage in our history, there's not really anything left to say or discuss. Almost every idea, regardless of how fresh or new or original it feels or seems at first, has already been thought and written down. It's almost impossible to write something profound and life-changing because it's already been written by somebody who is probably smarter and a better writer.

That's why Twilight is huge. It doesn't try to be anything by manufactured dribble for hormonal brain-dead teens and lonely middle aged women.

>>959604
+9001

>>959604
/every thread

>>959604
brb killing myself

It only seems like that to people who have dosed themselves on the sugar of popular entertainment. Read serious literature. READ GOOD BOOKS.

If you do, you won't need to ask such questions any more - the answers will be there in front of you.

The pop fiction writers have a ceaseless lust for damnation, so they'll probably attack this post, but I will not reply. OP, please read serious literature before it's too late. Good luck and God bless you.

>>959573
>implying "contributing to society" means shit
HAAH
WAAW

Matusow better won that hand, Tilly is a fucking idiot.

>>959633

>good books

A matter of taste. One man's trash is another's treasure, and so on.

>>959635

She seems to think that showing her breasts to the opposition is a legitimate strategy.

>>959639

No, it isn't a matter of taste, it's a matter of fact. Stop trying to destroy other people's souls, please. Is your arrogance so unstinting that you won't let ANYONE be saved without a fight? Begone.

OP,

Dostoyevsky, Ann Quin, Coleman Dowell, Thomas Bernhard.

Read them, absorb them, and good luck!

>>959648

Saying something passionately does not create facts, no matter how much you cry, sweat, and bleed over it.

>>959633
>Implying that people like Dickens, Tolstoy, and Shakesphere weren't pop culture for their time.

>>959650
Only Dostoyevsky is essential reading

>>959653

>My Visage when you took his overwrought floundering seriously.

>>959653
Everything is pop culture

>>959604
FUCK JUST WHEN I GOT INTO BOOKS

>>959604
Well said

>>959653

Begone liar.

>>959651

Relativism is a lie from beginning to end. No-one worth respecting espouses it, no-one with any sense believes it. You'd like the hours you've wasted with juvenile, masturbatory thrills to be transformed into gold, but it won't happen. Stop poisoning your life, and stop peddling drugs to others.

>>959657

No, you fool.

>>959658
That doesn't mean you shouldn't read older books and classical literature. By all accounts you should, because back then, they were saying things that were original. There was still evolution and progression to be had. Nowadays, not so much. But back when Gogol was writing? For sure.

>>959666

This is a lie. People read no contemporary fiction but pop fiction, then assume that means fiction now is bankrupt. No. Pop fiction always has been. Read Bolano's 2666. Fiction lives.

>>959661
You are delusional.

>>959661

Criticizing relativism is old hat.

Get off your soap-box.

>>959675

No, I just believe in the power of humans to enrich and transform each other's lives with culture. Please seek help.

>>959677

The truth remains the truth. Relativism still exists. When the last relativist is dead, I'll stop challenging it.

>>959617
>>959606
>>959604

this is such tripe. Why insist upon creative stagnation? It's ridiculous to believe that everything produceable has already been produced. From where do new ideas come, if that is true? There will always be new ideas, new concepts and philosophies. We aren't in a magic age where all possible avenues have been explored, because there will always be new avenues. You just haven't come up with them and you're giving up on everyone because of it? Completely preposterous.

>>959672
Nobody said "fiction doesn't live" or that it's necessarily bankrupt, it's just that everything has been recycled at some point or another by somebody else. The "original thought" is dead. However, there will always be room to improve upon these ideas by greater minds. The sad fact is that a lot of contemporary writers don't belong in that category.

>>959683
I mean the fact that you don't belive that people like Dickens, Tolstoy, and Shakesphere wasn't pop entertainment for their time. That's delusional.

>>959694
>From where do new ideas come, if that is true?

Old ones. Simply rehashed. I never said you couldn't put your own spin on it, I merely stated that in today's day and age, seemingly almost all conceivable ideas/theories/philosophies have already been created and written about. Today's generation, from a literary standpoint, is a borrowed one.

>>959666

I know but still, Once I read all of the great works of many awesome writers I'll be wanting for a more modern yet amazing new writer to come and being us delightful reads.

>>959697

No, I don't think that idea has the currency it once did.

>>959698

Tolstoy was not. Shakespeare was not, in the sense anyone means it today. Dickens was not, in the sense anyone means it today.

The statement was made, as it always is, to mislead, to imply a parity of esteem and worth between pop culture now and those writers. This is an unearned parity, and the intent behind the statement makes it a corrosive lie.

>>959691

>The truth remains the truth

A nebulous concept, at best. Better men than you have tried to grasp it.

>>959720
Trust me, there's enough literature from astounding authors and brilliant minds of old to keep you busy for a long time. A very long time.

>>959731

No, the truth remains the truth. You cannot succeed because your mind is poisoned.

>>959717

How can you believe this? All it takes is one original plot or philosophy or concept to disprove this completely idiotic line of thinking.

This is the kind of stuff that encourages shit like sonic recolors and fanfiction ad nauseam. People think that "everything has been done", so a great deal of people waste their time rehashing old shit over and over again. It's why there are so many disney sequels. It's why there is so much SHIT in the world today, with people masturbating over the latest comic book film adaptation or 80's media fixture revival. Makes me sick.

>>959739

>The truth remains the truth

Then prove it.

>>959717
And that makes it less important how?

If all the great ideas and philosophies were practiced, we wouldn't have this situation at all, would we?

>>959744

It's proven already.

>>959753

No, no, I would like YOU to do so.

>>959748

Yes, we would. We do!

>>959757

I'm not indulging the devil. Kick the junk and you'll know why Dostoyevsky is better than George R. R. Martin. If you don't kick the junk, no proof will convince you.

>>959758
Then why is everyone lamenting Twilight?

If everything well thought out has already not only been written down, is in widespread practice, shouldn't something widespread be the product of said ideas?

>>959759

>I'm not indulging the devil.

That's a funny way to say that you can't put your money where your mouth is.

I guess you really were all hot air, then. All sizzle, no steak.

>>959763

No, everything that has been thought is in practice at once - each idea gets a handful of adherents each. There are bad ideas as well as good. Someone found they could sell something like Twilight, so they did.

>From whence do oc sprout forth?

experience. and we're all on an image board.

variation != originality. DO NOT FUCKING WONDER

>>959767

No, the truth remains the truth. The superiority of real books to fake is many times proven, and will last. You haven't the right to pretend relativism is valid - it would be like debating someone who believes in fairies if I went along with your deluded belief in this right.

Kick the junk. Entirely, finally, cleanly. Nothing else will do. No other victory will be meaningful.

>>959742
You seem to be missing the point of what I'm actually saying. My point is this; our words have already been spoken once before, but that does not mean you could not put your own spin on them.

It's just that at this time, the concept of an idea or written prose that is truly, absolutely original in it's own premise, conceptually and in written word - it's themes, message, philosophies - is one that rare and has previously existed elsewhere. Someone else in the history of our planet - from the beginning of the written language from the great artistry of the Greeks to Bukowski himself - has, more than likely, already said or thought of it.

But that doesn't mean that you couldn't, theoretically, improve upon these preexisting works or ideas. Even unknowingly the things we write about have probably already been written about, whether it be by a great Russian author from the 18th century, Socrates, or the dude down the street from you who runs his own blog on geocities.

Literature, in short, contributes directly to society by the synthesis of new images and constructs, by manifesting the collective unconscious in new ways *even if the essential story line is archetypical as generally all stories must be by definition* new works of literature create a unique synthetic apprehension of a yet unmanifested aspect of human desire. In short, if art were to stop suddenly, society would not be long after. By the principle of Representation Realism, for instance, without images created in art, there would be no existence at all.

>>959786

>The superiority of real books to fake is many times proven, and will last.

And yet you can't show me decisive proof.

Literature at most can only react to society. And even then it's only a diversion.

>>959790

I can't show you the sky if you insist on staying in your burrow. You're infected. Drain the poison from your life.

>>959787

I just think you are wrong when you say this. That's really it. I don't think creative thought has to stop at "putting your own spin" on something. There will always be room for new ideas that have never been seen or thought of before.

>>959787
To simplify further. You can add your own variation to something but at the base of it, the fundamental idea or character or premise or whatever is preexisting elsewhere, regardless of how obscure or well-known the work itself is.

>>959799

Stop making excuses.

>>959798
Literature creates society, without literature, without the desire-producing machine of art, society would be without motivation, there would be no manifestation of new desires, and so no potential for their acheivement, no concrete aspect to the flow of change, no self-awareness of capability. Without literature, there would be no society to speak of.

Literature can change the minds of man. Thus why the Nobel peace prize is often awarded to authors.

>>959789
>>959789
>>959789
>>959789

>>959809

do not believe

>>959789
Jargon, jargon, bullshit, jargon.

Also, there is no collective unconscious.

I've come to think literature is the tl;dr version of philosophy

>>959807
And you know what, I pray that you are right. But as it is now, there's really no such thing. I greedily await the next great literary work, and I hope to the god that all the great poets denounced, that somebody comes along and writes something that the world has never seen before. Until then, it's all more of the same, with some simply being better written than others.

>>959810

Stop blustering to deceive others. I make no excuses. The truth remains the truth. Put aside pop fiction. Read literature.

You can live a real life or a reactive existence, quivering as a new hit of sugar enters your blood. The choice is yours.

I have nothing further to add. Good luck to OP, and to you. Get clean, enjoy life. Feels good man.

>>959811
Bullshit. Everything you just described is a reaction.

>>959823

only pretentious crap

which is what boards like this are devoted to enjoying

fuuck why am i majoring in English, FUCK

>>959829
All books are literature. Get over it.

>>959811

Me, the truth guy here. What this poster says is the truth. Try to learn from it.

Goodnight and good luck, everyone!

>>959822
You did not refute a single thing, and you cannot defend your noncomprehension of the collective unconscious. Not even important, you can't just call it jargon when your vocabulary is weak. Perhaps you're butthurt because literature is just too hard?

>>959837

No, the truth remains the truth, and nothing any of us says can alter that.

Bye!

>>959811

How can this be true when men have desires independent of literature? I know plenty of people who don't read shit, and they're still within our societal limits.

>>959829
The truth can only be seen as "the truth" if there is proof. And even then that proof requires it's own proof.

I don't see yours.

>>959829

>I make no excuses

That's all you've been doing.

That, and spewing bullshit sandwiched between jargon.

I'm unimpressed by your overwrought soapboxing, sir.

this whole truthiness argument is pointless, no one cares, I haven't even read a single post of it

>>959846

+1

Time makes art great, not content. Books are considered great only because they captured the zeitgeist of a previous era.

Also, this thread is full of fucking wankers trying way too hard to be profound. I swear to God, this is worse that the shit Starbucks prints on their cups.

>>959831
A reaction to what? I described no action to react to. These words, they do not mean what you think that they do. You obviously have no knowledge of human cognition, how it functions, the necessity of images and language to human cognition, and by extension the necessity of language for society. Language, in order to exist, cannot remain static, and for it to stay in flux, literature must exist. Without literature, human society could not function, there would be no new manifestation of human thought.

>>959851

So all literature is an interpretation of the times?

Sorry but I'm calling bs...

>>959604
>>959697
>>959717
>>959787
>>959809
>>959827

You made me sad...

>>959811

nah, desires exist even without expression. imagination can go stealth mode and still survive. it'll die faster without a steady supply of carriers but it came to be just the same.

>>959843
>jargon
just because you don't understand a word, does not mean it is ''jargon'', Weak vocabulary is weak. No wonder you hate books.

>>959861
Desires don't yet exist without expression, they remain pre-cognitive, once they are expressed, they exist. Until then, they have no substance.

>>959855

Go fuck yourself, you pompous cunt.

Cultures survive without a written language.

>>959870
Not true.

Thoughts are physical connection and signals within the brain. Every memory you have is physical, we just don't experience thoughts in a physical manner.

>>959863

>just because you don't understand a word,

I understand them entirely.

What bothers me is the lack of substance behind them. You are basically saying words for the sake of saying them. Pulling the veil over one's eyes, so to speak.

Funny that you spout so much nonsense about the 'truth', while trying to deceive your audience like a common stage magician.

>>959863
I never said I hated books, just that you were full of shit. Especially if you think there's a collective unconscious.

>>959878
If we don't experience them in this way, then what significance could they have without a medium for us to experience them?
>>959875
You weren't talking about ''cultures'', anyway. You said Society, which is quite different. But I will bite, name a culture which is surviving (fully independent of any culture with a written language) without a written language.

>>959870
cognition models are continually expressed in society's puzzle factories yet are devoid of substance, man.

unless by substance, you mean tenure.

>>959880
I wasn't even the "truth" person you were talking to, but I think Jargon is an empty word, and it is used to distract from ones incomprehension. It has about as much meaning as the word ''hipster''.

>>959899
Yes i mean functionally, with tenure or Bergson's ''duration"

>>959900

I'm glad you feel that way.

The rest of us little plebs will continue to use the words 'jargon' and 'hipster'.

Check this out OP:

All societal problems are cultural problems. Novelists can inform and transform (I rhymed like a black!) culture. Therefore all problems are solvable by the novelist. True, Novelists can't cure cancer, but a biochemist won't cure cancer in a cultural vacuum.

>>959604
Hahaha no. I hate people who say this because it shows a complete ignorance of what it means to write or create. Nothing has ever been created ex nihilo. There has never been an original idea by the perspective of you people. Everything is built on previous ideas, and no, it's not just rehash. Just because you're to creatively deficient to think of something original doesn't mean originality is dead.

This is my first time ever coming to /lit/

This was the first thread I clicked on.


The majority of you are enormous faggots. That is all.

I love the smell of pretentous pseudo intellectuals in the morning.

>>960105
Bio-chemists can't cure cancer period. I'd say, all in all, the novelists have contributed more than anyone else.

>>960162
are you implying you are a professional intellectual, or that you are an anti-intellectual?

>>960180

Neither

>>960190
Not intellectual at all, then.

Haven't you heard any Oscar Wilde quotes, OP? That 'all art is quite useless?' You could have saved yourself a lot of time by using that - oh, wait...

Seriously now. Good art makes you feel. The discovery of Penicillin or sending a satellite to Venus doesn't define humanity - it's incredibly interesting, and other such discoveries may save a few billion people, sure, but it doesn't serve any point; nothing really does.

But good literature makes the bluntness of everyday tedium a little sharper, so that it may draw blood. You can have all the cancer cures, bullet trains and rocket ships in the world, but it would be all meaningless if you couldn't feel that appreciation for it. Literature helps that just a little more - if we didn't have it, and all forms of art, then it wouldn't matter: humans wouldn't have feeling.

>>960219
Meaning comes from recognizing the practicality of something with regard to how it benefits you personally. Nothing more.

>>960201

because I claim to be neither a professional intellectual or an anti intellectual?

See, this is why I like the smell of pseudo intellectuals in the morning.

>>960226
Your definition of meaning is completely disaffected, don't project that onto the rest of us.

>>960231
Don't pretend it isn't true.

>>960228
Well, the way I see it, there can only be pseudo-intellectuals in contrast to professional intellectuals (the fact that they are paid and trained would make them ''authentic'') If you aren't a professional intellectual, but jokingly referring to others as pseudo-intellectuals you may be doing so because you are an anti-intellectual. If not this, then I suppose you could feel you don't fit into this at all, as a non-intellectual I suppose and this gives you the objective perspective necessary to qualify the authenticity of others' intellectuality.

>>960226
Not even close. That's the definition of 'usefulness,' not 'meaning.'

>>960231
Who is pretending? You just stated an opinion, and suggested it was fact. I simply pointed out the bloodlessness of your opinion.

>>960237
And meaning is derived from usefulness.

>>960240
No it isn't. If anything usefulness is derived from meaning.

>>960168

It can be those novelists that give a person the belief that something must be done - I fall for more characters in literature than I do in real life, because I'm closer to someone in literature than anywhere else.

>>960244

It can be pointless debating the meaning of abstract nouns. Try debating 'nature' as in 'the nature of humanity'. Seriously, what the fuck does that mean?

>>960233

Keep going, you'll get there in the end.

Writers can write informational guides, encyclopedias, textbooks and technical manuals.

I'd say that's contributing something to society.

Whether novelists do is another question.