Literature
Esther Eze and
Literature
It’s hard to talk about “masterpieces” because the concept trades on a theory of aesthetics that is controversial when spelled out (aesthetic value realism; maybe even a kind of Platonism about beauty) and difficult to defend, but which we all nevertheless subscribe to intuitively.
The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
One evening, in the horizontal light, soft and colourful, with an acute sense of my depravity, having just published a piece with the phrase ‘satyric schlong’ alongside observations from a nudist bathhouse in Sweden, I sought refuge in the pages of Kafka’s diaries, that ‘twenty-first century Dante.’
Alexander • Kafka on the Nudist Beach
The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts, as the academy has sought to “decolonise” and expand the curriculum over the past decade. And /lit/’s reaction is hardly unreasonable: there’s a difference between great books (well-written, perhaps undiscovered) and Great Books, which stay in the accepted canon because... See more
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
“The writing of the pose is the literary product of the MFA system and of Instagram in equal measure—it brings writing into the ordinary grueling business of the curation of the self which dominates advanced capitalist culture today.”
GD Dess • On the Cult of Craftism
For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
The deracination of literature
unherd.com
books are thick letters to friends