u/SummerTiny5062

I keep getting doorknockers trying to sell me timeshares when i want to write my magnus opus, what to do?

Just want to hear the stories.

yeah, yeah, yet another poetry post, but honestly i've tried poets like celan and ponge, (translated) rilke, gluck etc, and i know these guys rock in the poetry world but i still don't really feel anything?

honestly the closest i've come is reading lyrics to songs i like i.e. worthless animal by deafheaven & love exchange failure by white ward
but i think that's largely due to the association to the music rather than the words themselves.
i've tried reading them (poems) out loud and trying to figure out how they feel in the mouth and whatnot (i used google search to find some answers), but it still doesn't do much unfortunately...

if it means anything i'm under 25 so part of it is probably me being an unrefined derp, with all the garden variety mental illnesses common of my demographic or whatever

I am not being contrarian or ironic here. All I mean is that certain books contaminate prose rhythm and the quality (qualitative) of my thoughts. Short, Marvel-esque dialogic thoughts, self-importance (seeing the world through a neoliberal lens, even if I don't agree with the politics). I've already eliminated movies and most English lyric music (the only language I understand fluently), so it's not coming from there. I plan on deleting reddit soon enough but I still feel directionless in terms of what literature to read and how to self-direct my education.

What's more, I find a great deal of advice like 'read broadly' works against me, and there is no organising principle to the information I see online, so all I have are platitudes I smack into each other hoping to find some structure to my approach. But all that happens is the advice just dissolves itself through contradiction. Obviously there is some degree of contamination I can't avoid, and there are great contemporary (post 1950s) novels, but it's a really mixed lot (even in so called classics). Most places have a 'democratic' canon of recommended books (which is more interested spread across countries and time over quality), for example even /lit/ (the internet's most conservative and performative community of 'readers') had The Name Of The Rose and Confederacy Of Dunces but no Urn Burial, Robert Burton, Henry Green, Gerald Murnane or Patrick White).

I would like to blame the literary culture Gen Z has, but someone with a hot rod up their arse would likely claim it's a me-problem. So here I'll pre-empt and say that if I were new to literature and went to reddit or TikTok now, I'd likely be reading The Count Of Monte Crisco, Frankenstein, TBK and Dracula (mostly good books, but you can see the limitations and narrow scope in the recommendations). That's the optimistic outcome. What's more, if you ask for something outside these (speaking from experience) you either get recommended a flood of sentimental garbage, or if you specify your tastes you get called pretentious and recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl out of spite. Yes, I am talking from experience...

What do I hope to achieve by posting this? Well this sub has intelligent readers, so I was hoping that someone that's been in a similar position to mine has some guiding principle they can share. If, for example, there is some sort of curricula or considered guide I could use that is not simple Big Classics in some arbitrary order without filtering.

*I know I am being unnecessarily defensive, validation seeking and perhaps exaggerating, etc, but I don't know how to express my concerns in more precise language without sounding more snobbier that I currently do. Apologies in advance.

I'm unsure why this degree lacks focus on analysis of literary canon (and great genre work). Writing short stories and books is great and all that, but I'm pretty sure any idiot can do that if they wanted to, poorly. Go on Wattpad if you need an idea. What is harder, is having to teach the fine mechanics of how a novel works, rather than telling you what Romantasy is; 'read ACOTAR its good' and then telling you to run with it. There are many things to learn: what is para/hypotaxis, different ways of representing interiority, how is time and space constructed in a scene, detail and ontological hierarchy, history of literature's evolution. But there is none of this. What exactly are we using as models of good writing? Marking criteria? "This person can write events in sequence." That'll teach me a whole lot. Even if you're disinterested in literature and want to write speculative fiction (which is respectable), it's useful to know the mechanics of prose. And even if these things are taught in one or two units, it's really not enough since this is essentially the only way to teach better writing: analysis of existing successes, written, not loosely discussed in a workshop. Besides, in the workshops students are often encouraged to discuss themes, which I suppose are useful... but again, that's the job of an Ethics major or something. I just want to learn how to write properly. I think educators should be given permission to say someone's writing is trash, that's the only way you can students, it sucks that they're limited in what they can say (not their fault).

In comparison, a physics degree will tell you the formulae, derivations, their applications, and it is important to learn how things are proved or derived, since exam questions are typically not basic application of concepts. Furthermore, there is a conceptual hierarchy, whereas I feel the level of content in the CW degree's units is mostly flat. A first year could do a second year unit without much difficulty.

Now I am not blaming any staff for this, there are structural/institutional reasons the education is like this, but it's a serious letdown for the cost. I'm not touching on the subject of employability here, it's an important discussion but irrelevant in this instance, even if the degree was employable, it's still utterly flat.

Here I often see the desire for the Great Internet Era Novel to be written. I desire it too. In a sense our fatigue towards the topic of contemporary literature must be because we already know what's being presented to us, not because the authors are idiots or analysing it using the wrong tools, naively, but because the reality we live in already narrates and annotates itself extensively. The realist writer, in the broad sense of one that shows 'how things are' needs to produce gap between the narrator and narrated in order to comment on it. But everything has its own narration built into it, it's own irony and meta-irony. It exhaustively creates thesis, antithesis and Lord knows what about itself constantly. So what can the poor author say? Similarly, our interiority, which absorbs this mode of reality, structures itself around self-commentary half the time and on the world the other, which in most cases is identical.

We have more narratives and commentary than reality to comment on, and it's true that this has been said, but what does it mean about our fiction? It's true that pure aestheticism has its own place, and so does the unique exploration of a mind (Fosse comes to mind) with its relationship to eternal themes. But the modern condition? You know, the technological society and all that? We've got Houellebecq but he requires essays to make his point, and it really isn't too different from the seven dozen theorists making the same points with more nuance. Besides, the detached, depressed and ironic narrator is starting to wear on me a little, I'm sure I'm not alone on this. On the other hand a quixotic character struggling against the world... would only show us what we've already absorbed through Substack essays and RS sentiments. We don't feel it necessary to read 400 pages exploring a topic deBoer or whoever's hot posted last week.

And really, I don't have a solution to this, it's true we can continue exploring our ever diversifying interiorities, at least until they splinter beyond the point of mutual recognition, but even so, at least I know I'd like to read a modern day Vanity Fair. And yet it seems the book already exists before it's even written, degraded and ugly as its delivery is, and completely uninteresting thanks to its overexposure.

The Nabokovian position clues us in; writing and reading with the spine's tingle as a guide. Where the morale or commentary comes first the novel fails. Messages are fine and often essential, but putting a thesis statement on the page and constructing a hypothetical that enacts it? You are doing calculus with ideas, necessarily ignoring texture. Calculus has no quality of mind behind it, anyone can pick it up and run with it. That is the issue--a novel necessarily resists the reader's assimilation. Ideas do not. So it is not about content or formalism but rather: does the writing reflect the author's pre-cognitive quality of mind. Walter Benjamin's concept of an artwork's aura is a relevant point of comparison, for those familiar (its explanation would run too long for a post). If you have ever experience entering another mental space while reading literature you understand what I am talking about.

This is quite unlike being affected by sentiments, it is relatively easy to produce a sob story. Many emotions are programmable in the way thoughts are. However, awareness is necessarily untouched by technique. Fortunately, awareness has texture--this much is evident by the mystics (Julian of Norwich, Shankara, Wahdat al-Wujud etc etc) of different religions (or Thomas Metzinger for the rationalists) and how they describe awareness as inhabited as opposed to merely there. You can't inhabit something without characteristics. Given that awareness is necessarily distinct from cognitive processes it'd be fruitless to try and characterise my specific definition here.

Now take this into consideration along with the classic understanding of a Muse, a source of inspiration that seems to come from outside the artist's mind. This is essential--the process is precognitive. If you would like a contemporary example, there is both Cartarescu and Cormac McCarthy, who write without outline and from intuition. Historically, Samuel Coleridge. Even a meticulous redrafter like Nabokov,; stated he saw the novel in his mind before beginning, as a sort of gestalt or complete image that appears. Doubtless, there are a multitude of good authors that operate the same way as the ones above.

Issue: we are now intentionally blocking ourselves from this mode of reading and writing. Not only do many readers attempt to find meaning to symbols 'planted' in the book like an easter egg hunt; it is necessary to formulate a thesis on what it's all about. In many cases, the messages of a good book cannot be extracted from the work without significant distortion. So in order for literature to be useful to the modern reader, it must be bad, so that ideas can be cleanly presented. Those ideas can be damn neat, and awarded. Because it is awarded, authors pander to this crude style of writing, abandoning intuitive composition for crystal-clear ideas. However, a crystal clear idea clearly doesn't belong in the real world, as in practice ideas tend to... dissolve. Dostoevsky wrote idealogues, yes, but you will notice his characters are not perfect gophers of ideology, they often struggle against these ideas and act with varying degrees of confidence in them.

The point on irony poisoning is straightforward but useful to state in this context. What is irony? Intellectual detachment, but with xyz qualifiers. Exact definition is irrelevant, our usage of the word in modern discourse doesn't align with the dictionary definition anyway. I don't believe I need to elaborate this point, the moment cognitive detachment becomes the primary mode for a reader or writer... the ability to enter the novel, the container of awareness fails. The Muse crosses too many lines for it to catch in any one framework or structure of knowing, so it fails to become relevant. And that's that...

Note: I rewrote this to articulate a post I made about 'the new unnormal' but with more clarification on what the actual point of that post was, which was poorly expressed. I may revise this post again in future, once I know what parts are unnecessary and which are central and require further development.

Our 'latest and greatest' authors are using, in assortment: Encyclopaedic density, parataxis, hypotaxis, punctuation minimalism, clinical detachment. Self-interrupting stream of consciousness and back around again. Incredibly original, even 60 years on. I am sick of it, and I believe you are sick of it as well. Is it possible that we are so lost on trying to find a worthwhile subject to write about, that we have simply opted for formalism? To whom is it a joy to read in a difficult yet wholly unoriginal style about the contents of a consciousness fixated on their own appearance and digital habits? About oppression, delivered Houellebecq-style, directly on the page by the idealogue: but without anything new to say? Will someone try to write naturalism for the modern era? Naturalism where the mind is the landscape? No, it is unmarketable--but we have online publishing. And yet... very little, enough that I've seen none.

Ballard said that the writer's new role is to invent reality in a world of fictions--but think! Were his novels about the inner space? Yes, they were, but they were not the contents of a single person's consciousness, but instead a diagnosis of this space represented by things happening in a world. A construction of reality that represented the inner space. But how often does this happen? How often does the author dare to venture beyond the very specific? We are afraid of being vindicated for making statements that go beyond the well established talking points. So we remain inside the head. Even the Nabakovian author, interested with his/her tingling of the spine can only hope to write inside the head vis-à-vis Bleak House with its aesthetic composition applied to grand scale social narrative. The question of whether the outside world can be known--who cares? Celine painted the entire world with his muddy black and it still gave us something to chew on. We are not talking about a single problematic mode of writing posing as complexity, but a whole band of them that are rapidly reaching their point of exhaustion. And that's my main point, if you really need a TLDR.

Yes, I know there are exceptions (Gerland Murnane for example, or Krasznahorkai who has content beyond his form), thankfully I'm not that regarded. I am talking about a general state, and the fact people keep lauding the same 'innovations' over and over again.