Literature was once serious art, but things just aren’t what they used to be. Part of that is because of the tastes of today’s readers, but the moribund literary establishment is at greater fault. It’s been on a downward trajectory for decades. The Big Six mainstream media mega-conglomerates own the dwindling number of major publishing houses. The New York literary establishment has promoted some turkeys in the past (two of which are described below), but most of yesterday’s acclaimed literature wouldn’t stand a chance of getting on a bookstore shelf now.
Aspiring writers typically grit their teeth when they see horrid literature selling like hotcakes. (I’m guilty as charged too. However, I have fun with it and write parodies.) Any newcomers hoping to break into the scene basically have a snowball’s chance in hell. However, with the right gimmick and incredible luck, even a talent-challenged hack can win the literary lottery.
Twilight
Faaaabulous!
Eastern Europe is famous for innovations in literary horror: vampires, werewolves, Baba Yaga, and so forth. Perhaps that’s because everyone got snowed in during long winters and passed the time telling ghost stories. Be that as it may, a Mormon lady from Connecticut outdid them all. Stephanie Meyer’s twist involves sparkly vampires. Epic!
Anyway, Bella is a seventeen year old high school student. Edward is 104, but doesn’t look like it, so the May-December relationship doesn’t seem so weird. Some people think immortality would be super awesome, but he considers his undead life pretty damn dreary. Either it’s sort of a Byronic shtick, or it’s because he’s too close to Seattle and Portland.
Anyway, what’s he still doing in high school? Four years of that was barely tolerable for me. No wonder he’s such a big mope! Doesn’t taking algebra repeatedly get boring? After enough of that, he might as well get an education degree, start teaching the damn class, and get a salary for it. Maybe that would give his dreary life some purpose.
By all means, buy a copy if you suffer from insomnia.
tl;dr:
Oh Edward!
Oh Bella!
Catcher In the Rye
At least Mark David Chapman didn’t think it was overrated.
It’s quite a bestseller, with tens of millions of copies sold and still going strong. It has great appeal for those considering themselves misunderstood. That includes the guy who whacked John Lennon, the nut-job who shot Ronald Reagan, and several other screwball shooters. I’ve read it, though didn’t get the urge to pop a cap in a celebrity.
This one is the gripping adventure of a teenager going through a midlife crisis. The wangsty punk tells the story from a psych ward, droning on sophomorically like some burnt-out pothead. The poor rich kid’s tale begins with flunking out of prep school for the third time. Then the potty-mouthed protagonist goes to the Big Apple where he blows most of his remaining cash, dreams up half-baked ideas about what to do with his life, and frequently makes an ass of himself. He resents all the popular students, resents his family (except his little sister), and resents pretty much everyone else.
Exciting, isn’t it?
tl;dr:
Everyone’s a big phony! Waaaah!
A People’s History Of The United States
This terrifying dystopian fiction is an alternate history in which Americans are imperialist running dogs, and Socialists (including Communists) are the good guys. This is unsurprising, given Howard Zinn’s radicalinski past. It’s sold over two million copies, many of which were strangely passed off as an actual history textbook to high school and college students.
The rampant bias starts right in the beginning. It opens centuries before the USA’s independence, describing the governorship of Christopher Columbus. Apparently Zinn took the biased account of Francisco de Bobadilla at face value—whose purpose was to take his job as governor and nullify his 10% of colonial revenue. It could be worse; I’ve had a professor actually tell me that Columbus sent salted Mayan children in barrels back to Spain for dog food.
The early USA had very little going on other than slavery, mistreating the Indians, and oppressing the poor, according to Zinn’s Communist “dialectical materialism” approach to historiography. He calls America’s peculiar institution “the most cruel form of slavery in history”. Although it’s wrong in any form, Zinn apparently was oblivious of Middle Eastern slavery, which continued long after abolition in the USA and the rest of the Western world. The reason why the Middle East doesn’t have a race problem is because African men were routinely castrated. Most slaves in Latin America got worked to death. What was this about unprecedented cruelty again?
It does talk about history a lot, but doesn’t provide a coherent narrative. For example, the coverage of the Civil War is pretty sketchy. If you want to read about Bull Run, Gettysburg, Shiloh Hill, etc., then you’ll have to consult a real history book. As for how it started:
Lincoln initiated hostilities by trying to repossess the federal base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
This is one of many whoppers peppering his tall tale. As any kid who stayed awake during history class should know (unless Zinn’s book was assigned reading), the Confederates initiated hostilities by attacking Union troops in Fort Sumter. A real history book would explain this, as well as describe the nervous tension leading up to that, but Zinn didn’t do very basic research.
These errors and omissions are quite frequent. For another example, he suggests that the Rosenbergs and other atomic spies were railroaded on flimsy evidence. Actually, their guilt is candidly acknowledged even by Soviet insiders. All told, Zinn’s fiction raises some valid criticisms, but is far too biased to take seriously.
tl;dr:
America sucks. Power to The People!
Portnoy’s Complaint
This one is billed as a consummate Great American Novel. It begins with the narrator on his psychiatrist’s couch, talking about his childhood full of Freudian TMI moments. Then in his adolescence, Portnoy becomes the Maestro of Manustupration: for example, taking a break from supper to whack off in the bathroom while his mother demands to inspect his bowel movement, screwing a cored-out apple, and even a piece of liver. Maybe this is supposed to be funny, but I needed a gallon of brain bleach after all that.
As an adult, he becomes a well-paid bureaucrat in some social justice agency. He goes through girlfriends like toilet paper. His personal life makes Anthony the Weiner seem like an amateur. Portnoy would even pump and dump a pencil sharpener. Much of his wangsting is about his love/hate relationship with the Jewish community, and his hate/envy relationship with the Gentiles. It’s a grim insight into the psychology of this tragic and destructive dynamic.
The funniest part of the book is when the wanker goes to Israel and finally finds a Jewish girl at last. This could relieve the conflict in his tortured soul. However, he badly bungles a seduction attempt. Then she gives him a very well-deserved ass-kicking after he tries to rape her. The only other funny moment of this hundred page bellyaching was the shrink’s one line at the end:
So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin Yes?
As for the scariest part, that’s the book’s critical acclaim. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a classic because readers could identify with the character and his youthful misadventures. It speaks volumes about the reviewers who read Portnoy’s Complaint and thought, “Hey, I totally can relate to this guy!” The literary establishment is, well, a big circle-jerk.
tl;dr:
Nofap? No way!
Read More: How New York Killed Male Literature
lol Catcher In The Rye is like the right of passage for all teens transitioning into SJWhood.
True
To kill a mockingbird a.k.a the go-to book of the liberal SJW vegan cuck.
Ironically, To Kill a Mockingbird, would be panned by the liberal SJW vegan cuck because it featured a trial in order to determine if Tom Robinson actually raped white trash Mayella Ewell. “How dare they?! A victim is supposed to be believed without question!”
idk about that, the whole moral of the story is how “irrational” it is to think a minority would rape someone, just more Communist style racial division bs planting the seeds of white guilt.
banned just for N word
You forgot that black people are further up on the “Progressive Stack” compared to white women, so most SJWs wouldn’t care and non-SJW Feminists and anyone else that steps out of line and complains would be “Tone Policed” and told to check their privilege. As a matter of fact, all the black and Intersectional Feminists would probably be happy that all the “White Feminists” are getting their come-uppance for years of privilege and oppression and would just say “Shut up with them white tears”.
.
DISGUSTING!!!
Really, don’t be silly.
It’s far far worse than the examples given above. It’s difficult for me to read modern literary crap because it’s no longer dangerous; stories crammed with pathetic characters, most of whom possess some mental illness or sexual deviancy that we’re supposed to identify and manufacture sympathy for, by authors who offer nothing in terms of a literary theme or message unless it’s whatever the current leftist narrative being propogated. Fuck, even Flannery O’Connor wrote manlier stories than the current crop of SJW apologist crap like Chabon, Yanagihara, Roxanne Gay, and others.
Catch 22 was a great book though, as long as you didn’t read the stupid preface which insanely gave the ending away.
I don’t see how Diana Gabaldon can get away with her “Outlander” novels in the current environment. I mean, romanticizing the totally white world of English, Scottish and French people in the mid to late 18th Century?
If you set aside the novels’ degeneracy about the heroine’s hypergamy, bigamy and adultery, at least they show that it wasn’t just okay to be white – it was AWESOME!
What, no mention of Harry Potter?
I visited the campus of Embry-Riddle University in Prescott, AZ, last week, and I saw a flyer advertising a meeting of a student group to discuss Harry Potter novels.
Seriously? These young adults, aged 18, 19, 20 years old, still read this crap, and they want to meet with each other to talk about these ridiculous stories?
Harry Potter books aren’t bad children’s books- and I stress children’s. There is talk of them being considered a classic (or a neo-classic, which is an kxymoron in and of itself) and as being great literature, but… They’re not. Sentence structure isn’t great, and character development is awful. Perhaps it’s popularity is due to Soyboy Daniel Radcliffe and ‘Hans Gruber’ Alan Rickman.
I was always a Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings kid growing up.
Harry Potter just seemed too boring for me, and I especially want nothing to do with it now after finding out how much of a open border SJW the hag who wrote the books are.
Yes they read that, have you ever notice that every group of dorks and geeks once they are above certain number of people in the group they become elitist presumptuous people. And they feel superior with sophisticated taste and are euphoric and enlightened by their intelligence? And that´s why bullies want to punch them in the face, they ask for it. When I was 13 years old I was into nerd anime stuff, until I realize the fans are the worst people in the planet, Fucking weabos, imagine a group of Gamas, betas and rejects competing each other for the Superior Beta of the group. The supreme nerd was the one who memorize entire dialog and was an encyclopedia of anime. and they talk with Japanese words like desu baka desu sama san, I wish they realize that the japan they love so much is for Japanese only if they want to enter a maid cafe there are sign with “no foreigners, for Japanese only” there every guy has a crab mentality, they want you to be at their level so they shame and criticize every good stuff in your life, GOING TO THE GYM IS FOR DOUCHEBAGS, be euphoric with us seeing ching chon chan doki crap or whatever. Put a woman in the mix, is a fucking hell. a girl who barely is a 6 is a 9 in nerd town. The cockblocking and the back staving was unbearable. Have you ever seen the movie “There´s something about Mary”, the same but 10 times worse, they star rumors about you and they compete in the cockblock Olympics, leaving the famdom was the best thing that could happen in my life, in my time lolicon (anime pedophilia in cartoons) was a thing, so yeah they are a bunch of pedos, and one of those dude is a School teacher now, fucking creep, I know why he is there. Today the weabos are obsessed with traps.
I can imagine that the same behavior happen but with harry potter instead of desu chan baka they must say leviosa abadakadraba.
This describes anime fans to a tee. The Japanese despise their own people who act this way even worse than the foreigners who do this. Foreigners who are anime fans have no idea how much the anime subculture is reviled and shunned in mainstream Japanese society. If they had any idea, they’d never go to Japan at all.
Sounds more like an ethnic studies class, a pretext to meet people of the opposite sex. Mostly harmless, I would have thought.
I wonder how many ROK readers have read Maya Angelou’s I know why the Cagebird Sings. Do we think it’s the feminist classic it’s made out to be? Are we evenly divided on the issue? Do some of us prefer Doris Lessing’s the Golden Notebook? (I haven’t read either of them actually)
I couldn’t make sense of the Catcher in the Rye . It did nothing for me. To kill a mocking bird (which isn’t on the list) was kind of brilliant or at least it felt that way when I was young and more liberal.
Portnoy’s Complaint’s reputation preceded my reading it and I found it rather less racy than I thought. Interesting book in many ways, including because of the attention it’s been getting in the light of that article comparing it to the Weinstein scandal. The connection is a controversial one, namely having trangressive masturbatory sex, be it with liver or a pot plant. The liver thing would be scandalous to any observant jews but potentially (also) liberatory to the more progressive types, specifically as a violation – I imagine – of both sexual and dietary laws. Thanks Shabbatai!
We’re adults, and we all know about transgressive sex now. It’s a thing, and even if we don’t get off on it we can talk about it like adults. Increasingly moreover its not transgressive, because when everything is trangressive, it’s starts to be a little bit vanilla. It’s just boring and seedy. In fact I’d say this is an opportunity for more conservative jews to get rid of their Weinsteins and their Phillip Roths. Get some new movie producers and some better literature, jewish or otherwise. Lets have fewer Phillip Roths and more Bashevis Singers or Paul Austers etc
All books should be converted to Twitterspeak so the precious snowflake generation can enjoy them.
Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto would be huge.
A participation trophy redistributed from a comrade would be awarded upon completion.
Books that are too controversial could be written in cursive and reviewed by Rachel Jeantel.
Participation trophies , my Kobo Ereader give awards for reading books, like more than 5 hours reading after 12am you earn the owl badge. Ans crap like that.
Start collecting physical copies of ‘taboo’ books. on Amazon right now they’re editing modern translations of Neitzsche (I spell that right?) and Ragnar Redbeard’s excellent ‘Might is Right’.
‘Modern’ translations of Nietzsche? Hard to imagine any improvements on those from Walter Kaufaman, who also wrote the classic analysis “Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”.
South Park’s take on Catcher In the Rye:
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/267356/i-just-read-a-book-for-nothing
“Although it’s wrong in any form, Zinn apparently was oblivious of Middle Eastern slavery, which continued long after abolition in the USA and the rest of the Western world. ”
Ay-rabs was the real slavers!
“the Confederates initiated hostilities by attacking Union troops in Fort Sumter.”
Muh Great Emancipator!
I bought Zinn’s book in 1997 while living in Taiwan. It was the part of my life where I fluctuated between teaching English in the Far East and backpacking through SE Asia. I was a lefty and as I started to read the book I couldn’t help but think that pearls of great wisdom were being imparted to me. “Why doesn’t everyone know this shit?” I thought. But as the book wore on something started to eat at me. If these socialists, communists and progressives were so smart, if they had the answers to everything, why did they lose at the end of every chapter? It was like a looking-glass Scooby-Doo marathon, only this time the gang of meddling kids solved fuck all. Each and every time the plotting white male got away with it. Was this the side I wanted to identify with? I can say with all honesty that Zinn’s book planted some of the first seeds of the red pilling that was right around the corner for me, one that was completely solidified on the night of 9-11 as I stayed up into the wee hours watching CNN in yet another Taiwanese apartment.
“Catcher in the Rye” failed to grab me as much of anything meaningful.
Why loners and drop-outs and potential fanboy assassins of 40 year old hippies (Chapman) read great meaning into this dull tale is perplexing.
So many overrated books and established writers – this barely scratches our literary landscape.
And Twilight is teenage drama shit, that deserves no words.
Thanks for bringing such matters to light though. Cause the books we read, shape our society and cement our posterity!
Thank fucking god, i thought i was the only one who thought, The Catcher in the Rye, was a B.S book
I have made a solid decision to never read another female authored book again. I gave them every chance, I read To Kill a Mocking Bird and Atlas Shrugged as they were held in high esteem. Both left me cold. Then I found The Goldfinch, a Pilutzer prize winning book. I figured there HAS to be something redeeming about it. There was, the sentences were nicely written, and that’s it.
The problem I have with female authors is their inability to stick to the important points and not wander off into random sub points that do nothing to push the story forwards. For example, with the Goldfinch it starts off with a bang, “I remember the day my mother died,” then goes on to recount that day. 100 pages later and the bitch still isn’t dead, but I did get to read about the immigrant doorman with the polished shoes, the smell of the taxi they rode in, every painting in the museum they visited and a whole bunch of other useless and random tid-bits. It was all well written, but about 90% of it was fluff that didn’t push the story forwards.
On the other hand I read Treasure Island about a week before and in the first 50 pages or so a shit-tonne of stuff had happened. Pirates, treasure map, pillaging, cat-and-mouse trying to get a crew together without anyone knowing about the map, etc.
Flannery O’Connor is great.
I automatically resented any book I was forced to read at school, which included Lord of the Flies, To kill A Mockingbird and most Shakespeare. Thankfully Blood Meridian wasn’t on the required reading list.
To be fair, I think the point of Catcher in the Rye is that you’re meant to see Holden as a pretentious dick, and the whole brass ring thing is him, maybe, growing out of it.
But yeah, I agree with everybody else saying To Kill A Mockingbird should be on this list: the fact that so many SJWs consider that young adult novel to be some great masterpiece says a lot about them.
I always recommend Flannery O’Connor to people by saying that she’s “like Harper Lee, but for grown-ups”.
You got the feeling Holden was going to come of age just as the 60’s drug era rolled around and end up dying of a heroin overdose in the 70’s after a few more stints in jail and mental institutions.
Like Burgess’s Alexander Delarge he was most appealing or even alluring as a teenager but past 19 it was going to be downhill.
Your dead wrong about Lincoln not attacking Sumter. It’s why he seized all the forts and weapons cache in the border states before declaring the Emancipation Proclamation so they wouldn’t have the means to fight and join the South.
Uhh, South Carolina fired on the fort, which was a Federal facility. Not sure what you’re trying to get at. The confederacy initiated the hostilities.
Holden Caulfied reminds me a lot of Elliot Rodger– another “supreme gentleman,” waiting to snap.
There’s a writer of historical adventure sagas named Wilbur Smith that ROK readers should all appreciate. His characters were portraying hypergamy; apha fux/beta bux; and other social anthropology basics before most of us had ever heard of the terms. Well before the Manosphere was a thing.
Pretty good writer, and his fiction is one of the only corners of the entertainment spectrum where you WON’T always find the obligatory femo-revisionist history and Womyn Warrior tropes.
– Hank (dubya dubya dubya dot virtual pulp dot net)
This is a terrible article. And too short too.
Catcher Of The Clap reached and conquered
such levels of lameness as to be legendary
(or maybe that’s what keeps it going).
i remember reading that in H.S. and it left me…
well it left me nothing. i never really got
anything out of it to even remember.
i only remember the part where he stood up
when the waiter came so he can look tall
to order alcohol or something.
I’m glad you included Portnoy’s Complaint.
It is right up there with another work of fiction, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, on a list of the most racist tracts every to be passed off as Literature.
Infinite Jest
Gravity’s Rainbow