"Prententious" literature- do you read it?
- Thread starter Shadowfaze
- Start date
So in other words unless it is very badly written with one dimensional characters then read what you like. =]Cheveyo said:Read what you enjoy reading. Screw what anyone else thinks.
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Unless it's twilight. Then you can die in a fire.
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What bothers me is not that your father finds Lovecraft and Nietzsche to be pretentious and exclusive for "educated people", but that he somehow finds such features horrid.
It's like Godwin's Law, but for gay vampires instead of infamous Fuhrers.Shadowfaze said:Gah, writing the T-word destroys yet another thread...wc alligator said:It also... gets you a... pet chinchilla?rockyoumonkeys said:Why would I want that? That's just impractical!wc alligator said:I've heard falling asleep with a lit cigarette and booze around you makes your wiener bigger.rockyoumonkeys said:I liked Twilight. You heard me.Cheveyo said:[sub]
Unless it's twilight. Then you can die in a fire.
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OT: Fuck what he thinks, you're reading a damn book, not painting his house. The be-all end-all of it is that it's not affecting him, so his say matters shit.
It is essential that you keep reading. It's not pretentious, it's informative (especially nietzche)
Being an English grad student might make me "pretentious" about literature to begin with, but I have always felt that "literature" (as in canonical texts) was about being worth reading. Just because school children today moan about having to read Dickens doesn't mean that Dickens was always considered to be boring by the general populace, far from it. Indeed, like most entertainment mediums, literature requires its audience to, at some point, voluntarily spend their hard earned money and time ENJOYING it; otherwise, it would have died out mere seconds after the prehistoric ape/man scratched a picture of a butt on a rock.
Wow. Your father sounds like one of those "Herp-a-derp dang smart-alec city slicker folk an' them educated rich upbringin' ya'll!" sorts of rednecks who still live in 1950. Or earlier.
Don't listen to him. Everyone has the right to "be educated" and everyone has the right to read whatever the damn well please. At the end of the day, who cares what is and isn't considered 'pretentious'? I myself have studied Shakespeare, read poems from Brontë and Byron, and own and have read the Necronomicon. I don't consider having read or having the desire to read any of those classics to be 'pretentious' in any sense of the word. If somebody was to think they were better than you for (not only reading by the way) reading such material, then that would be what makes them pretentious, such as if i claimed in a conversation with my friends that i was somehow more intelligent and cultured than them for having read all of that and be able to pluck one or two quotes out of the air, knowing they wouldn't understand them. It's not as if you've tried to prove you're somehow better than your father for reading those books, so it seems to me the only one with the problem is himself. Just try not to let what he says get to you.
Don't listen to him. Everyone has the right to "be educated" and everyone has the right to read whatever the damn well please. At the end of the day, who cares what is and isn't considered 'pretentious'? I myself have studied Shakespeare, read poems from Brontë and Byron, and own and have read the Necronomicon. I don't consider having read or having the desire to read any of those classics to be 'pretentious' in any sense of the word. If somebody was to think they were better than you for (not only reading by the way) reading such material, then that would be what makes them pretentious, such as if i claimed in a conversation with my friends that i was somehow more intelligent and cultured than them for having read all of that and be able to pluck one or two quotes out of the air, knowing they wouldn't understand them. It's not as if you've tried to prove you're somehow better than your father for reading those books, so it seems to me the only one with the problem is himself. Just try not to let what he says get to you.
To be honest, I find it hard to call any book Prententious in itself, but maybe I haven't read anything that's perntentious.
I just go be an old saying:
'To kill man is to kill the imagine of God, to kill a book is to kill reason itself'(shorten version)
Basically read what you want and don't let anyone tell you to do otherwise, because something might be 'perntentious' doesn't mean it's not worth looking at.
I just go be an old saying:
'To kill man is to kill the imagine of God, to kill a book is to kill reason itself'(shorten version)
Basically read what you want and don't let anyone tell you to do otherwise, because something might be 'perntentious' doesn't mean it's not worth looking at.
I am studying german and english literature, so did my father. you can guess what our opinion on this is. 
Given the number of sci-fi and fantasy geeks who read him, I wouldn't call Lovecraft pretentious. Rather, he sticks with his pulp origins. Although I have several collections of Lovecraft, I haven't gotten very far with them, mostly because he bores me to tears. I much prefer Edgar Allan Poe.
I try to read the classics once in a while, and enjoyed some like Pride and Prejudice, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Robinson Crusoe, but I usually prefer non-fiction or sci-fi.
I try to read the classics once in a while, and enjoyed some like Pride and Prejudice, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Robinson Crusoe, but I usually prefer non-fiction or sci-fi.
Yeah I read "pretentious" literature as well. But I might understand some of your dad's reasoning. To get the full content of a "pretentious" book one needs a certain level of maturity and education(it's not that you won't get the book, but you might not get all of it's hidden messages and ideologies).Shadowfaze said:
The funny thing is that one can be able to read "pretentious" books, only after he has read some "pretentious" books, imo. I had books like this. I read them at an early age and didn't get all the content out of them, just the story and some scattered ideas here and there. Only after rereading them did I understand all their layers.
XD. Only in the fevered minds of Rand and her followers. To everyone else, it's Danielle Steel going "intellectual".superbatranger said:
People who enjoy attempting to better themselves should not suffer fools, even if their sperm somehow did hit the bullseye while no doubt swimming in circles. Pish-tosh and all that. *adjusts monocle and whiskers*PurpleSky said:
I mostly don't. Just because I can't really connect with what people are saying in the books. I mean I read plenty of philosophy books just not the original texts because half the time they're ludicrously drawn out. And besides, I much prefer just reading LOTR, the hitchhikers guide books and the latest shitty Tom Clancy style best seller.
I did once subject myself to Twilight on the grounds that "it can't be THAT bad" but in fact it really is rather bad in both a literary sense and a "oh shit, this is going to be imprinted onto the minds of future generations" sense.
I did once subject myself to Twilight on the grounds that "it can't be THAT bad" but in fact it really is rather bad in both a literary sense and a "oh shit, this is going to be imprinted onto the minds of future generations" sense.
Bleh, I find post-modernist literature to be barely a tentative step above the smug people who brag about liking bands before they were popular and the squiggly lines some people like to consider as modern 'art'.FargoDog said:
OP: Your dad is a fucking moron. YOUS AIN'TS EJICATED ENOUGHS FOS DEM READINS, YOUNGIN, NOW GIT OUT THAR AN HELP ME MILK DEM COWS.
Whatever. We live in the modern era, and real education is gleaned through reading, not school. Just because you aren't schooled as well as some people certainly doesn't mean you're not more educated than them. Take it from a college drop-out.
Hahaha, I have to agree with this. Tried reading Dubliners this past summer after failing to make much headway into Ulysses and it is nigh-impenetrable.Outright Villainy said:
I am one of the very few in the school of thought that considers inaccessible writing in the vein of War and Peace and Ulysses to be inferior to more accessible, simpler, and yet still profound writing such as Chekhov, Gogol, and Conrad. People think the complexity and length of, say, War and Peace automatically make it more profound and meaningful, but it really doesn't. To me it just seems complex for complexity's sake. After reading both, I found much more emotional meaning and enjoyment from Gogol's "The Overcoat" than "War and Peace," perhaps because I didn't need a character guide I made myself in order to understand who the fuck is doing what in each scene.
I didn't think there was such a thing as pretentious.
...until I read Modernist poetry.
I do not like T. S. Elliot.
...until I read Modernist poetry.
I do not like T. S. Elliot.