/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3536773]

Where can literature go after alt-lit?

It can't get any more reductive, hyper-conscious or numb than it is right now. Are you alt-lit?

[Anonymous No.3536782]

>>3536773
alt-lit is still post-modernism and post-modernism is really post-rigor.

[Anonymous No.3536798]

>>3536782

Rigor was pre-thought.

[Anonymous No.3536802]

"Alt-Lit Is for Boring, Infantile Narcissists.

When you start writing, you’re told to "write what you know". This is solid, sensible advice, because writing about something totally new is difficult and reads like nonsense to anyone who does have a knowledge of what you're writing about. That's why reading creative writing by university students might make you think the future of fiction lies in stories about failed fresher’s week relationships, holidays in Ireland and women who cut their hair off so their boyfriends can’t ejaculate in it any more.

However, sometimes what you know doesn't translate into very good fiction. But in the world of alt-lit, that's totally fine. Is what you "know" sitting alone in your room, reading Twitter for hours and feeling sad that the American girl who likes trap didn't DM you back? Well, try your hand at alt-lit, friend, because – inexplicably – there seems to be an insatiable, undying hunger for self-reflective prose about nothingness of that exact ilk.

That isn’t to say that fiction as self- or societal-reportage is a bad thing (it isn’t). Or that incorporating contemporary trends into stories should be avoided (it shouldn’t be). Or that every story should be a blockbuster thriller with 100 interwoven plots and 30-page bank heists, but every daily mundane experience really isn't worth fictionalising."

[Anonymous No.3536806]

>>3536802

> very good fiction

How do you define what would qualify as this?

[Anonymous No.3536810]

>>3536802
"One of the main alt-lit textual trends is wrapping up pretty much anything that might have some kind of emotional resonance in quotation marks. I imagine they're there as a stylistic device to imbue the writing with a sense of abstraction and a confliction of emotions and blah, blah, blah, but they always just end up reading as a writer who's too afraid to commit to the task at hand. Mind you, sincerity totally sucks anyway, right?

There’s also this weird obsession with the tilde character (‘~’), which again seems to be there to inject completely normal, quantifiable things with a mystery, i.e: "Today Ethan drank ~500mls of Irn Bru and ate ~22 Smarties." What's that supposed to achieve besides making the text read like an awkward attempt at Lydia Davis-style ultra-scrutiny? I don't want to spend more than approximately a quarter of a second – sorry, "~a quarter of a second" – being forced to work out if it matters how much Irn Bru somebody drank, because it clearly doesn't matter to anyone anywhere whatsoever.

As much as it’s a tool of self-desertion, the internet can also make us take ourselves far too seriously, because it helps us forget that no one cares. Which is kind of an obvious thing to say, but it's never a bad idea to remind ourselves that thriving on the validation that a wall post or an RT can bring is a terrible way to measure a life. Even at its most powerful and insidious, social networking is still no more than the pre-pool footbath you’ve got to gingerly tread through before hitting the slides of reality. So the pride the alt-lit community take in abdicating from an IRL existence as some kind of "comment" on what it means to be young in the age of web 2.0 results in nothing more than a literature of absolute nothingness."

[Anonymous No.3536812]

I've not read any Tao Lin but I'm extremely interested in him as a person.

[Anonymous No.3536818]

>>3536812
Why though, he's boring as fuck?

[Anonymous No.3536823]

>>3536812
>I've not read any Tao Lin but I'm extremely interested in him as a person.
"This, of course, is nothing new. We’ve always wanted our authors to be more than just people who spend their days sitting in their study typing, deleting and retyping commas all day. We want them to be debauched hedonists and stoic men’s-men. We want them to live a life that’d be worth reading about. Alt-lit lives aren't even worth writing about, because they are the exact lives that you – the reader – live every day, only apparently lacking any kind of self-awareness at how banal they sound.

Here are some people on Twitter doing just that:

Mira Gonzalez states that: ‘I would eat a deep fried human hand right now, can anyone deliver me amphetamines or a small dog, everything is my fault, who wants to fuck’ (via @miragonz)

John Brnlv Rogers was, ‘Going to write a poem tonight about how shower gel makes me think about death, could be great or terrible’ (via @brainlove)

All of this – the narcissism, the solipsism, the glorification of online communication, the brattiness, the backslapping, the fucking image macros – could be overlooked if the writing was any good. If it elevated the subject matter, if it being alt-lit wasn’t the only reason anyone read it, if things happened in the stories, if the dialogue went further than trying to replicate the stuttering and haltering of inchoate early-twenties relationships, if it didn’t contribute sentences like, "I’m interested in the effects of a combination of amphetamine salts and oxycodone upon my productivity at work," if it wasn’t so content with thinking about drugs and itself and itself on drugs.

If it wasn’t fucking alt-lit, basically."

[Anonymous No.3536845]

>>3536773
Well, since this is a copy pasta fest, I'm just going to post an old post of myself as well:

I've noticed a 'everything has to be sort of distanced and jaded and only austere minimalism can be sincere and only in ironic ways' kind of trend a la Tao Lin when regarding modern young people lit that might lead to a sort of stagnation when not supplemented with something else though. Someone, me if necessary, will hopefully write and publish about life in the 21st century differently and if everything goes according to plan it will become a beacon of hope in uncertain times that will show people that a good life can still be lived. The problem is that we don't really dare to be romantics any more, which is part of the reason that romantically inclined people think the past was better and retreat into old art and nostalgia for times they haven't experienced first hand. It's not that the times were better, it's just that the people often wrote both more tenderly and vigorously about it, making the recollection of those times better. They allowed themselves to feel something.

We need people sincerely swept up in the glory of it all and telling about it, not just safe jaded mumbling because we're afraid some scoffing cunts will dismiss anything that dares to live unencumbered by hyper self-awareness as naive. This tendency towards apathetic nothingness among arty and intellectual types is the same sort of self-defence mechanism that causes the really bad-ass guys to stand in the corner of nightclubs arms crossed because they're too cool to be seen dancing, therefore missing out at any opportunity for the sake of appearance. We need to be willing to look like fools again, and not just fake fools behind all kind of irony proxies, but sincere holy fools who don't afraid of anything, not even kindness and triteness and sappy romanticism.

[Anonymous No.3536859]

>>3536773
That's the thing, though. Tao Lin is post-post-modernism, or New Sincerity. He's not joking or making fun of himself.

This is more grim than we could ever have imagined. Also what's with all the pasta?

[Anonymous No.3536862]

New sincerity?

[Anonymous No.3536871]

Does anyone remember K-mart realism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart_realism

No, I didn't think so. Alt-lit is K-mart realism for the facebook generation, with one minor difference – the working-class struggle, the only thing it had going for it, has been replaced by narcissistic self-reflection on the problems of being middle-class, alienated, and trying to express yourself in twitter posts. Alt-lit is 'tumblr-realism', with even less to say than any literary movement that preceded it.

[Anonymous No.3536888]

>>3536859
>Tao Lin is post-post-modernism

No. Tao Lin is very post-modern.

[Anonymous No.3537703]

>>3536859
Hey hey! I want to ask a question I've been dying to ask for ages.

Is there another english word for post-post-modernism? In danish, we say late-modernism, but I don't think that translates well.

Please respond

[Anonymous No.3537750]

>>3537703
late-modernism is post-moderism

[Anonymous No.3537772]

>>3536888
He is post-post-post-irony actually

[Anonymous No.3537776]

>>3536871
Does anyone remember kitchen sink realism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism

No, I didn't think so. K-mart realism is Kitchen sink realism for the chain store generation, with one minor difference – the working-class struggle, the only thing it had going for it, has been replaced by narcissistic self-reflection on the problems of being middle-class, alienated, and trying to exist as in individual in a mass market demographic.

[Anonymous No.3537780]

>>3537703
>post-post-modernism?
There isn't any such thing... yet.

That guy trying to describe Tao Lin as 'post-post-modernism' is wrong. Tao Lin is completely post-modern, but has caricatured himself into a corner and decided to call it alt-lit.

[Anonymous No.3537794]

>>3537780
Thanks, I see.

[Anonymous No.3537803]

>>3536773
Maybe they'll try actually writing good stuff again? With no gimmicks, just well developed characters and a compelling plot, maybe some decent prose. Fat chance.

[Anonymous No.3537806]

>>3537803
>With no gimmicks
>proceeds to list a series of gimmicks
Well done.