Thursday, March 17, 2011

Bored of Present Literature

Sorry i haven't post int two days, my academic studies have hold me back from my social life this entire week. I wrote a total of 17 pages just this week alone which was very frustrating. A friend of mind is so sick of literature that he has lost faith in literature on it. He realize that everyone writes about the same thing. Stories are written in melancholy fashion for the sake of being so, and do not actually use their melancholy as a vehicle to speak of something greater beyond the confinements of their bad narratives.

I'm going to try to paraphrase everything he said "The New Yorker is publishing garbage. The Paris Review is publishing garbage. The 'Best American Stories of this Shitty Year' are selecting shit, and have had shitty writers write the introductions for their shit (I think one of the recent copies had an introduction by Alice Sebold, who wrote (The Lovely Bones, which was shit). These are supposed to be the crème of the crop when considerate of short literature—but they’re giving me shit. To top it off, I was in Barnes and Noble today, and walking past a small kiosk dedicated to David Mitchell’s fifth novel, I saw only praise for what was undoubtedly David Mitchell’s only shit novel (because dun’g’m’wrong, his previous four books aren’t shit, they’re THE shit – but The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Shit was shit). What do I do? I’m falling into the majority of people who don’t read because “Hyuck, reading is boring.” Yes. Yes, reading IS boring, because everything being published today is shit. And I’m running out of classics. I’ve even turned to reading poetry (John Clare is pretty dope, but still)."

Please excuse language, but he sure makes some good points. Any ideas to address his issue is welcome

9 comments:

  1. I can't remember the last time I read a modern book.....

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  2. I find 'literature' in it's standard form to be quite boring. I generally enjoy short story books by authors like David Sedaris or Haruki Murakami, which are humorous or different than the standard. I also really love Neil Gaiman, whose stories deal with the magical and supernatural in a way that intertwines it with reality. I know how it feels to hate reading because of school, but outside of school, read something different. Get away from classic literature. Hell, indulge in some mindless action book if it'll help. I don't ever do that, but try something different.

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  3. this makes me want to write a book which is the opposite of everything else...

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  4. i love reading, if its about history :P

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  5. haha yeah wow I know what you mean about everything being published these days turns out to be shit. I only read non-fiction or philosophical books; only topics worth my time.

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  6. I agree. A lot of things I've read recently have been rubbish. This is why I prefer Victorian literature and its mid-20th century counterpart.

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  7. I'll have to agree with you on this one

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  8. the glass is always half empty for him...

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