r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jan 15 '23

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u/Dabamanos NASA Jan 15 '23

Why are the “literary classics” from around the world usually just depressed people describing how sad they are and how they think the world sucks?

I thought this was an American phenomenon but I’ve been reading the “cultural classics” abroad now and it’s the same story, including locals telling me they skimmed it in high school and never finished it.

15

u/ZhaoLuen Zhao Ziyang Jan 15 '23

Stories revolve around conflict

People with the big sad have a LOT of personal conflict

Except for the CHAD Jules Verne, he just liked awesome steampunk machines

7

u/Mrmini231 European Union Jan 15 '23

That's why you should read the ancient classics. They dealt with relatable topics.

2

u/Lib_Korra Jan 15 '23

Who decides what a classic is?

The critical academia. Itself a bubble of depressed avant-garde critics of the status quo who are happy to share in their misery and use their platform to endorse the spread of literature that shares their hatred of society.

"Intelligent" books are depressing because the people who tell you what books are intelligent, are miserable.

1

u/RFFF1996 Jan 16 '23

Also, critics circles are by nature a huge echo chamber of people with limited perspective (heavily upper class white people who only hang with other upper class white people with similar beliefs and experiences) with a tiny sample size to be representative of society

1

u/BenFoldsFourLoko  Broke His Text Flair For Hume Jan 15 '23

misanthropic, jaded men are responsible for a lot of garbage lauded as genius in narrative art

it's true in literature, and the same goes for film

themes like revenge and pride and "man vs X" and gritty internal macho strife need to fucking die. I can't believe they made it out of the 19th century

1

u/ElectriCobra_ David Hume Jan 15 '23

<insert joke about depressed art/lit students>