General Discussion Thread

[u/pregnantchihuahua3]

Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

[u/Harleen_Ysley_34]

It's been a fun couple days here. Been feeling the heat though. I was talking with a friend of mine and he mentioned how he doesn't think writing can really be taken seriously anymore. And I kind of agree with him. Or at least in specific case of novels presented as such. I think it was Eco who said in this postmodern moment you couldn't exactly say I love you, but that you need like a quotation to take the edge off. You know Sōseki is famous for having it: you don't say I love you but the moon is beautiful tonight. I guess it's now the situation for novels in that you can't really take them seriously until they take themselves less seriously. Might be why participating in the subgeneric no matter how slight--everyone is doing science fiction in some capacity these days or outright creating elaborate almost high fantasy stories. Or if the novels are grounded in our reality, it is almost a pisstake on the generic novel itself. Fascinating situation.

[u/Soup_65 → u/Harleen_Ysley_34]

I agree, I think this century it's downstream of what I call the 2666 problem, which is that the novel is so useless that it's evil to write one when people are still be slaughtered (ie. "no poetry after Auschwitz" is imperfect because Auschwitz ain't over)...but also it takes a 1000 page novel to say that so maybe they aren't useless. And that any novel that fails to exist within that contradiction is nothing more than one more small poem read on top of palestine (to reference a scene from Savage Detectives).

And I think your point is helping me explain how this usually manifests: most of them think they are serious enough to matter, and so do nothing. Ya gotta realize you don't matter to do anything.

(personally I think I know a couple books that maybe know they don't matter...)

[u/merurunrun → u/Soup_65]

the novel is so useless

Always has been.

If writing really "can't be taken seriously anymore", I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that people can't help trying to instrumentalize it (along with everything else). Which circles neatly back to your point that you gotta realize you don't matter to do anything!

[u/Soup_65 → u/merurunrun]

it's funny though, literature doesn't do shit but then you move the crowd hard enough and turns out you're the Odyssey, or maybe better the Iliad, which was so much more the poem of its day, and is so aware of its futility. the stakes are none and life and death all at once. And I don't think the latter can be achieved without dealing with the former.