What are the classics of the 21st century thus far?

the first half tho

I wish the first half of Wall-E was the whole movie.

Not even the first half -- it's only like the first 20-30 minutes that are the best.

I haven't read any books that have come out in the past 12 years that have really made an impact on me

most of the "name" american novelists putting stuff out now are pretty bad.

I haven't read any books that have come out in the past 12 years that have really made an impact on me

I don't know if people who were the equivalent of ILXors in 1922 felt something momentous about The Great Gatsby or if they were all "fuck this overhyped Fitzgerald asshat." And/or, what was the equivalent of Franzen then that has been largely forgotten?

sub-question goes to the cultier works that only get accepted with time - stuff like Red Harvest or Raymond Chandler or The Killer Inside Me.

TV-wise, I feel like a lot of stuff we talk about and love (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc.) are going to be viewed like we view The Rockford Files - really good, memorable, but not special in a way that will make our grandchildren care. The Sopranos and The Wire seem like a head above the other good cable series on this - I love Rome and Deadwood, but maybe they're both just awesome, awesome tv shows for their time?

are the top non-fiction writers (right now) more important than fiction? Jon Krakauer/David Grann/etc..

Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead are important to me, so I doubt I'll recoil in embarrassment should I think about rereading them.

BIRDEMIC SHOCK AND TERROR

and when he ran over those drugs dealers and then proceeded to shoot one of them cold. Yeah I guess there is chemistry in those bullets.

― xyzzzz__, 25. januar 2013 18:12 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That was in season three. And that it's the last surprising moment is pretty much my point.

THIS book is one recent book that i would put in a time capsule and one of the few recent books i can think of that made me really jealous and wish i cud rite that gud.

http://electricliterature.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pulphead_John_Jeremiah_Sullivan_cover.jpg

i was even nicely blurbed on the back of a book in 2012 by greil marcus and i was jealous of pulphead's better greil marcus blurb. that's how jealous i am of this book.

Bolano and Sebald to thread.

once upon a time in anatolia.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

Keep meaning to read Pulphead.

"classics"

as much as i see all the gladwell books lauded, ppl might think those are classics in ~80 yrs

guys:

ilx

*weeps*

if ever there was a thread to fill with tumblr porn gifs

am0n i enjoy yr posting but what do you actually unironically *like*

so happy to have been part of 21st century masterwork ilx

take that, jonathan franzen!

Pulphead really is great. I've given out 3 or 4 copies as gifts now - every time it's been a hit.

http://genrelasagna.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cover.jpg?w=200&h=300

am0n i enjoy yr posting but what do you actually unironically *like*

― mookieproof, Friday, January 25, 2013 6:02 PM

impression i got was that the thread is not about personal likes but canonization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pje34fUgLQ

i still gotts buy that! they even have a copy at a store in town. i'll get it i promise. i think its that one. does he have more than one?

x-post

sadly, it's the only one

tv is cool tho, scott otm

"Forget You" / "Fuck You"
Hostel and Hostel: Part II
James Tate's The Ghost Soldiers
"Piece of Me"
Act 2 of August: Osage County
Human Smoke
Doctor Atomic
James Perse hoodies

Act 2 of August: Osage County

huh i weirdly was just reading abt this 2day. movie adaptation coming out this yr f/ meryl streep & julia roberts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August:_Osage_County_(film)

impression i got was that the thread is not about personal likes but canonization

nah that's cool, i just honestly wondered

Also, while Avatar is not a great work of the decade, it will be im the canon as a reaction to drones.

By the way, just to dilute my challops earlier in the thread, let me add to the chorus of those saying that "Mulholland Drive" is the obvious movie choice from the current era.

I wish the first half of Wall-E was the whole movie.

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, January 25, 2013 8:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

if this had been the case I'm not sure I'd've survived last year (when I first saw it). Emotional wreck.

yeah I don't get this whole half of Wall-E thing either. I think it was Morbz who said he liked 25 mins of it.

Frederik you really like to be surprised huh?

Is your least favourite song No Surprises?

Predictable! That was the word I was looking for! It's just boring how predictable these last few seasons have been.

My least favourite song is John Wayne Gacy Jr. In the future Illinois will be seen as the insencere cloying dreck that it is, while Michigan will rise and take it's place in the indie-pantheon.

Finised season 4 of Breaking Bad last night (in fact I need to give it back to the library to avoid paying a fine...this is what saturdays are for after all) and you know it was predictable as in you couldn't see Walter dying but something can be uetterly predictable and nevertheless enjoyable and well worked out in its execution which this was, and then some.

NOT dying i mean

lol sorry right the first time

well now breaking bad is spoiled i don't need to see it :)

nobody gonna second 'against the day'? currently 917 pages in, last 300 stay this good and we're in masterpiece county

I love AtD but I've got all sorts of daft stuff going on in my head when playing the masterpiece game, in order to try and make it a little more meaningful and AtD doesn't feel like "masterpiece" material (it's still great - I like it plenty more than a lot of masterpieces). It's a bit of a wodge - and feels more like people will say "TP was a great writer of the late 20th/early 20th C" and within that won't necessarily point to AtD as TP's masterpiece.

I'd like to say something like Remainder, say, which feels like it augurs stuff, packs the attention grabbing punch of a single idea well executed, and is memorable, has enough of a mid to late 20thC European theoretical sensibility to feel it might in someway be representative of the modern.

Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect.

I feel also the likely shift in economic power is going to mean masterpieces are likely to be found from material not in the Western cultural production market. That's maybe not in the scope of this particular question, but idk, maybe Sha Dingding (thanks _Rudipherous_) will produce something, or there'll be something Korean (I rate the Infernal Affairs trilogy very high, if not quite at masterpiece level).

there aren't enough things like remainder

true.

the trouble with judging the state of literature is that the stuff that gets hyped (Franzen) is already looking as stale as 20th century event novels like "Bonfire of the Vanities"

bonfire of the vanities is seen as 'stale'?

I feel like remainder could go either way, either a) canonically remembered as the most interesting novel of otherwise dim early C21 British literary world or b) drifting into semi-obscurity, enthused over by ageing bookish sorts (ie us) & occasionally rediscovered by young turks. Maybe I'm saying it's a 'minor classic'. Sort of depends where McCarthy goes, I guess. But it's certainly the first book that came into my head when thinking about this in relation to British novels.

Fizzles otm as per. Agree about Against The Day.

And general agreement with the TV line in this thread - it seems to me the medium most obviously going through a golden age (US TV, that is).

the new yes minister

oh god what's it like? I'd forgotten about that.

it is exactly

Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect.

Even if I like what I've seen I find that kind of talk insufferable really.

Don't know why it has to be compared to film at all. Apples and Oranges.