The very best teachers are those who make a clear and detailed argument assessing something, usually from a negative point of view. This is especially effective with students who disagree. Those students are then forced, in defense of their own ideas, to make a much deeper and fuller investigation of the subject at hand. Nothing is better for expanding one’s mind. What an excellent teacher you are.
Every single person in my life who loves the work of Cormac McCarthy or Ernest Hemingway is also a fan of numerous of the following writers: Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Atwood, EM Forster, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, Julian Barnes, AS Byatt, Andrea Barrett... But I have to say, this video is perfect as a tutorial in how to write Dude Bro Lit. I may have, at last, a NANOWRIMO project in mind for 2020...😉 In all honesty, this was an awesome video, Steve. One with which I largely disagree, but awesome all the same.
Can you write out where or how you disagree? I don’t like it when people just stop at “I disagree.” It’s a good habit to get into to think through your thoughts vs his thoughts and be specific as bout your disagreement. It could be beneficial for you and Steve plus us onlookers as well.
Isaiah Armstrong - is it a good habit to get into? I’ve gone through my reasons and rationale in my own mind and elsewhere online and in private conversation with other Booktubers. I understand that it might be useful for others reading the comments beneath this video, but when one has a lot of things jockeying for his attention, elaborating on one’s position in detail for the express benefit of the comments field isn’t a top priority. Perhaps one of these days I’ll do something like a response video, or at the very least, a video explaining my love of and admiration for the fiction of Cormac McCarthy. But until then, I have reading to do, errands to run, chores to finish, friendships to maintain. I disagree with most, not all, of what Steve asserts here. That’s going to have to be good enough for you.
@@ThatReadingGuy28 I do get your frustration, actually. But people are not obligated to do anything. Happens a lot to me whilst watching Steve. He'd say something where I'd love to know more of his reasoning... but what can you do? Nothing. Though what I can do is not watch, if it bothers me so much.
Your drugification of DudeBro Lit is spot-on, Steve. I am happy to be celebrating roughly 8 years of DBL sobriety today, and I am thankful for your reminder, that the (reading) life I am living today is the right kind of life (for me).
Excellent. I'm still grappling with the idea that dudebro authors depend on the idea of surprise rather than development AND are so predictable. How do those work together? I'm not at all disagreeing that they DO both work, but I don't understand HOW. Thoughts?
Better than a Dudebro lit starter kit, "DO YOU (Lift)READ BRO! By the way, thank for doing the Lonesome Dove readalong earlier this year. it was and still is my favourite read for 2019.
Huzzah!! So glad you made this video. I am thoroughly with you on your choice of book pairs and how those pairs reflect the differences between DudeBro Lit and literature. Here is my score card on your seven sins of Dudebro Lit: Sin One -- agree completely Sin Two -- agree completely Sin Three -- ok ,but with questions Sin Four -- ok, but with questions Sin Five -- Maybe, but . . . Sin Six -- Maybe, but . . . Sin Seven -- doesn't really seem like a sin I did, of course, think about you when I made my last Saturday video. But what directly prompted my question was a tweet from a female booktuber regarding Murakami. I had jotted down some ideas before seeing your video and will make a video covering those and will also respond to your video.
I love Palahniuk. I find his writing above all humorous. He doesn't offend me at all. Of course reading him is different from reading literature. You most likely have a point about the addictive quality, but I don't think being addictive is a bad thing when it comes to books in this age. There are worse things one can be addicted to.
This was great. Yeah, when a female character reads as a clay statue (only to seduce, nag, or die) it would be a time to think about the value of the book. The character is a placeholder for beliefs, not a human. I would think reading better stuff would help in undermining the enjoyment of plots using clay statues and create a critical eye about the beliefs. I personally like humans in my literature. Thanks Steve , you’re an exegetical ninja.
I found this to be very interesting and I will check the validity of these points with my reading in the future. Thanks for that! Regarding Infinite Jest: I am working through that tome atm and it strikes me as pretty much anti-entertainment. It might so some of the sins here, but it doesn't strike me as being written to be addictive at all tbh. And I guess that's also kind of the point? Maybe I'll reconsider this once I am finished with it, but atm I just don't see it
I am a casual fan of Cormack Mccarthy, but I have a male friend that is a hardcore fan and really the part where he is obsessively searching for new releases of him all the is so relatable jajja
While I would agree that what you are describing here is a real phenomenon, and that misogyny is a constituent part of that phenomenon, I cannot agree that this holds true for the other "sins" as you describe them - simply because I don't think they make sense. There is a basic assumption here about single works of literature as ontologically real as single works of literature, possessed of definite, measurable qualities that one may interact with through reading a given work, and thereby, hypodermic needle-like, experiencing it as it definitely, 100%, no two ways about it, is. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - one of my all-time favorite novels - produces, as you describe it, tingling sensations, indicating real intellectual stimulation and movement of the soul; The Road or Infinite Jest - also among my all-time favorite novels - produce vulgar, brute excitement, indicating the dude bro emptiness which such works fail to conceal. You claim that these assumptions will hold true, without fail, and that merely possessing knowledge of them will reveal them to be true. Here's the problem: this has not been my experience. The two kinds of experience that you describe, the first kind of which I've had in essentially the same way with all the novels listed above, I simply call "enjoyment"; the other experience I call "lack of enjoyment". There is nothing in your account here that simply cannot be reduced to either that, or gendered assumptions about what one ought to enjoy. I also find your distinction between outer action and inner action rather arbitrary. I have had equally profound experiences reading Dostoevsky or Flannery O'Connor, as I've had reading Robert E. Howard or M. John Harrison - whose novel A Storm of Wings I would argue is a prime example of why this kind of distinction is problematic - so the idea that one has to be, as it were, led by the hand to an aesthetically meaningful, intellectually stimulating experience of literature through the characters doing a lot of thinking instead of a lot of sword-fighting, I find kind of dubious. There are other points of disagreement, and I would love to discuss them further, but if you don't feel like it, that's cool :)
Santiago, in TheOldMandtheSea, more truly represents the old generation of Cubans who became enamoured with American media and sports culture. Hemingway would have never seriously held Joe Dimaggio up as a hero. I suggest reading it someday soon with the perspective that it's a cold war political satire about Batista loyalists. Hemingway was a socialist. The bit at the end about the dumb American tourists says it all: they think the carcass (Cuba) is something other than it is.
Fascinating. All the Pretty Horses is on my list to read before the end of the year so watching this was very timely. Sounds like it should fit well with all the pulp trash I’ve been reading lately 😂
I’m curious to know your stance on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I keep finding his fixation with girls very upsetting, it brings me out of the story completely.
Murakami has always been accused of dude-bro renderings of women in his novels but I have always liked them. Perhaps it makes me a dude bro for not caring.
"Dudebro lit" is just another genre, so you could level many of these criticisms at most genre fiction: cliched, unimaginative, lowbrow, addictive, etc. A lot of those genre fiction books are also just as page-turningly addictive. Also, there are vast quantities of "chick lit" which is essentially the same thing, except it appeals to women.
So would you consider the Iliad Dudebro Lit? Seems to meet all your criteria: absence of -or sexist treatment of - women; obsessive lists (of armour, weaponry and wounds inflicted); and a bloody and exhilarating video game like push toward a final goal. But since Homer largely defined literature, it wouldn’t then make sense to say Dudebro Lit wasn’t literature. This is a serious question btw, although I take it your video was intended largely for entertainment. Grateful to the TH-cam algo for bringing me your channel; been obsessively bingeing it - like a pile of Cormac McCarthy novels.
This is absolutely spot on. I read Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk earlier this year and it was basically a textbook example of the seven sins you've just explained. The 'itemisation' was the thing that really stood out to me. It was like the book was a strand of DNA and half of the words in it were junk non-coding DNA which is there but doesn't actually do anything. The author had this annoying affectation where he repeated whole phrases over and over (for example: he kept on repeating 'testing testing: one, two, three' - we get it, the narrator is on a flight but what purpose does recycling these junk sentences serve?). Despite the fact that the book annoyed me with examples like this on every page, it was still compulsively readable.
I mean, what exactly is "an actual thing"? It's a word that he uses and defines. So why wouldn't it be a thing? Who decides what is a thing and what is not? Who is the authority on things?
Melville is dude bro lit, he's ours! You can keep McCarthy. But I love that masculine overconscious voice in a story. The kinda narrator who watches an inchworm cross his leg, and finds in it's marching some lesson about traversing life's whirlwind, then assesses his own valor compared to that of the worms. Maybe it's all too much moralizing, but even when Melvilles shipmates have their throats torn by liquor they still have the pretense to wonder about the will of God. I guess it's all a bit overly sentimental But I love more literary works too, and maybe they are enjoyed deeper I think you're right. There are many aspects that are richer in those kinds of books.
Ah. I see that 'forgotten value of inventory' crap from TH-cam comment trolls all the time. Fortunately or unfortunately, I haven't read your DudeBro examples. I may have read some other books of the genre, but I don't recall.
Hemingway is a great writer with actual depth and capability, and even compared to Melville. This is purely based on your own prejudices and dislike of the man and his love of hunting - in which he killed many animals. When I have the time, eventually, I will counter-argue this.
Sounds like you might be projecting. So how do you set up a strong male with testosterone and a understanding of somethings you might not...all the pretty horses paints a very emotional picture if you understand ot
A) this isn't a scripted channel, B) you yourself had no trouble understanding the points I was making, script or no script, C) you didn't cringe, because D) there's nothing cringeworthy in this video. But you're right that I was indeed critiquing writing - so you hey, at least 10% of your comment was on point!
alright. I have had some time to think on this. I'm lost, but I have my Chuck and Cormac, my own male protags. And I try so hard not to capitalize the word MALE----Jesus, you are on point. You got it. My shit wife left me with; a pen, a dark colored piece of construction paper, a 1970s era Swiss army knife, 6 feet of fishing line and a well worn copy of Infinite Jest. God Help me. I keep hitting F5 on the McCarthy page, why does he write so slow? I need it. Maybe you should write the next great novel, MR. oh, what's your name? oh, right. Donoghue. FEED ME.
@@Tolstoy111 agree completely. I don't agree with Steve here really at all, some of his points I do, but I have a general issue with some of the elitism. But it's not fair to criticize him for being a critic. Critics are important and critical analysis of texts uses a completely different part of the brain. A completely different art. It's not fair to dismiss him
@@saintdonoghue Let's invent a barely coherent term which classifies and damns readers of certain works of fiction. And not spare a thought for all those readers who don't fit this mould. For likes of Hemingway really're propped up by those "dudebros" who're incapable of reading anything else. But extraoridnarily, there's no arrogance on condescension implied!
@@aminthereader8946 I'm attacking a kind of writing in this video, not a kind of reader, and the whole thing is entirely coherent. I'm sorry you don't see that. I think you would if you didn't dislike the BookTuber who was saying it, and I'm sorry for that too.
@@saintdonoghue You're definitely attacking the reader and trying to couch it as a critique on the writers. But it's transparent. Still love your videos, but you're off base here.
@@jimmymcnulty4304 So you still love my videos, even though I'm a liar? Right. I'm actually in pretty good control of what I am and am not doing - if I'd meant to attack the reader in this video, that's exactly what I would have done.
Yeah, you're a genius. Clowns like Hemingway and Cormac and David Foster Wallace etc. etc. etc. don't know how to write, right? What paragraph have you written lately, a single paragraph that has the power of that any of our modern greats could pack into one, succinct declarative sentence? Oh, that's right, you gotta be a dudebro to write like that, right?
To chastise "dudebro" lit in the twenty first century, when literature has become the domain of liberal women and small souled bugmen, who are also liberal women in spirit, I repeat, to chastise this "dudebro" lit, which consists of authors dead or about to die soon, comes off as... stunning and brave, I guess?
Thanks to my long association with canines, I believe I actually caught every single one of the sexist, misogynistic, homophobic dog whistles you managed to cram into this one comment.
So broadly speaking this video can be boiled down to: Books I like are literature and I don't like brolit so it mustn't be literature. I would also really like to see where the rule saying that novels can't stimulate the prefrontal cortex and has to stimulate only the parietal lobe. You are also making some incredibly broad assumptions. I feel like you are just trying to lord over people with the idea that what you read is higher than what other people read which I feel is a bigger problem than what you were saying about people who read "dude/bro lit" bring 'addicted' to it.
I know this is late but I feel the same. He makes good points in the beginning but his later sins feel much too subjective that are espoused as objective takes, such as, dude bro lit being addictive and not stimulating imagination. I just don't see that applying for a book like All The Pretty Horses, although I suppose he doesn't mean these sins apply to every "dude bro" book. I think his two comparative examples in this video many people find to be pretty boring and not page-turning at all.
'Dudebro lit'. Okay, American culture is so bizarre. 26 min video, some boomer is explaining his frustration with literary straw-dog. Inventing a tag and then discriminating books by it is what happens when you've given up on any kind of serious engagement with literature. Articulate it better, write it down, you are all over the place.
Funny he uses Harold Bloom to prop his argument yet meanwhile, Harold Bloom so praised Cormac McCarthy, he espoused his opinion that Blood Meridian was an addition to the great literary canon of western civilization. Wrong person to cite in your video trying to discredit & put down Cormac McCarthy's great literary genius. Just say it isn't for you and you prefer girly novels. Nothing wrong with that.
@@jackohara8993 Search "Harold Bloom Cormac McCarthy" on TH-cam there's an interview where he lavished abundant praise upon Cormac McCarthy, specifically Blood Meridian. Cormac is America's greatest living author easily hands down. This reviewer is a boomer incel with a resentment towards greatness & masculinity. Weak, pathetic, perverse & sad. "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."
This is such a great video! I have always despised Fight Club and have never understood the status it has. It is hateful in spirit from the first page and never redeems it. Just awful!
What is wrong with this guy, complaining about books that apparently aren't boring enough for him? Lol talk about pretentious gate keeping...There is so, so much wrong with this video & this dude's perspective. The only critic I've ever found & appreciated was Harold Bloom. Because he advocated for immersion into greatness. Bloom championed greatness. This guy isn't great and he doesn't even seem to value thr greats. He compliments & then insults Hemingway in the same video. Seems confused, probably from consuming too much nonsensical fairyland liberal propaganda. Probably the kind of guy to write off Shakespeare. 🤮🤮🤮 I truly pity liberals who will never find happiness. They're too busy complaining, playing the victim & tearing down the few in history & presently, who were and are exemplary artists & humans, etc...
Dude, Colonel Sanders wants his moniker back. -Moby Dick, "dudebro?" The great American novel thrown in with crass trash like Cormac McCarthy and western serial tripe? This is hackery! Expounding on sins from someone who doesn't believe in the concept of sin and perhaps morality is less than encouraging. Please reread the sermon from Melville's epic. Hemingway's embarrassing Old Man thrown in with Melville's experiential great American novel? You should change the channel's name to the Spouter Inn, spouting such vapid, insights. The dendrites on your pre-frontal cortex can thank me later, bro.
The very best teachers are those who make a clear and detailed argument assessing something, usually from a negative point of view. This is especially effective with students who disagree. Those students are then forced, in defense of their own ideas, to make a much deeper and fuller investigation of the subject at hand. Nothing is better for expanding one’s mind.
What an excellent teacher you are.
I’d love to see your seven deadly sins of philosophy as well. That would be interesting.
Awesome. I was directed here after I was lambasted in a forum for expressing my distaste of Cormac McCarthy.
Every single person in my life who loves the work of Cormac McCarthy or Ernest Hemingway is also a fan of numerous of the following writers: Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Atwood, EM Forster, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, Julian Barnes, AS Byatt, Andrea Barrett...
But I have to say, this video is perfect as a tutorial in how to write Dude Bro Lit. I may have, at last, a NANOWRIMO project in mind for 2020...😉
In all honesty, this was an awesome video, Steve. One with which I largely disagree, but awesome all the same.
LOVE you! Have we ever disagreed on anything? Best not remember.
Can you write out where or how you disagree? I don’t like it when people just stop at “I disagree.” It’s a good habit to get into to think through your thoughts vs his thoughts and be specific as bout your disagreement. It could be beneficial for you and Steve plus us onlookers as well.
Isaiah Armstrong - is it a good habit to get into? I’ve gone through my reasons and rationale in my own mind and elsewhere online and in private conversation with other Booktubers. I understand that it might be useful for others reading the comments beneath this video, but when one has a lot of things jockeying for his attention, elaborating on one’s position in detail for the express benefit of the comments field isn’t a top priority. Perhaps one of these days I’ll do something like a response video, or at the very least, a video explaining my love of and admiration for the fiction of Cormac McCarthy. But until then, I have reading to do, errands to run, chores to finish, friendships to maintain. I disagree with most, not all, of what Steve asserts here. That’s going to have to be good enough for you.
@@ThatReadingGuy28 I do get your frustration, actually. But people are not obligated to do anything. Happens a lot to me whilst watching Steve. He'd say something where I'd love to know more of his reasoning... but what can you do? Nothing. Though what I can do is not watch, if it bothers me so much.
Thank you, I enjoyed this. I'd definitely watch a video on your 20 antidotes.
Ohhhhhh boy, we’ve been waiting for this one
Absolutely fascinating discussion! Thank you.
I feel personally attacked by this highly relatable content.
This is excellent! I really want to read Lonesome Dove now.
Your drugification of DudeBro Lit is spot-on, Steve. I am happy to be celebrating roughly 8 years of DBL sobriety today, and I am thankful for your reminder, that the (reading) life I am living today is the right kind of life (for me).
Excellent. I'm still grappling with the idea that dudebro authors depend on the idea of surprise rather than development AND are so predictable. How do those work together? I'm not at all disagreeing that they DO both work, but I don't understand HOW. Thoughts?
This video puts into words things that I hate about some books so well. I didn't know how to describe some of these things, but here they are.
Moby Dick = masterpiece
The Old Man & the Sea = dudebro
Meg = killer dudefish
Better than a Dudebro lit starter kit, "DO YOU (Lift)READ BRO! By the way, thank for doing the Lonesome Dove readalong earlier this year. it was and still is my favourite read for 2019.
Oh my, we will end up agreeing on books. Scary.
Great! What would you do with David Foster Wallace if he came to your place for tea?
I know what I'd do, scream since he's been dead for a decade! ✌️🤟
The Room Note haha haha 😆
So, are you saying that DudeBro lit is related to dreaming and relating dreams?
Huzzah!!
So glad you made this video. I am thoroughly with you on your choice of book pairs and how those pairs reflect the differences between DudeBro Lit and literature. Here is my score card on your seven sins of Dudebro Lit:
Sin One -- agree completely
Sin Two -- agree completely
Sin Three -- ok ,but with questions
Sin Four -- ok, but with questions
Sin Five -- Maybe, but . . .
Sin Six -- Maybe, but . . .
Sin Seven -- doesn't really seem like a sin
I did, of course, think about you when I made my last Saturday video. But what directly prompted my question was a tweet from a female booktuber regarding Murakami.
I had jotted down some ideas before seeing your video and will make a video covering those and will also respond to your video.
Can’t wait 👍
The only two female characters who appear in Moby Dick are servants. Melville, a dead white guy, was a misogynist.
I love Palahniuk. I find his writing above all humorous. He doesn't offend me at all. Of course reading him is different from reading literature. You most likely have a point about the addictive quality, but I don't think being addictive is a bad thing when it comes to books in this age. There are worse things one can be addicted to.
This was great. Yeah, when a female character reads as a clay statue (only to seduce, nag, or die) it would be a time to think about the value of the book. The character is a placeholder for beliefs, not a human. I would think reading better stuff would help in undermining the enjoyment of plots using clay statues and create a critical eye about the beliefs. I personally like humans in my literature. Thanks Steve , you’re an exegetical ninja.
I found this to be very interesting and I will check the validity of these points with my reading in the future. Thanks for that!
Regarding Infinite Jest: I am working through that tome atm and it strikes me as pretty much anti-entertainment. It might so some of the sins here, but it doesn't strike me as being written to be addictive at all tbh. And I guess that's also kind of the point? Maybe I'll reconsider this once I am finished with it, but atm I just don't see it
Are those Gore Vidal's essays I see behind you?
Yes. Thank you.
I am a casual fan of Cormack Mccarthy, but I have a male friend that is a hardcore fan and really the part where he is obsessively searching for new releases of him all the is so relatable jajja
While I would agree that what you are describing here is a real phenomenon, and that misogyny is a constituent part of that phenomenon, I cannot agree that this holds true for the other "sins" as you describe them - simply because I don't think they make sense. There is a basic assumption here about single works of literature as ontologically real as single works of literature, possessed of definite, measurable qualities that one may interact with through reading a given work, and thereby, hypodermic needle-like, experiencing it as it definitely, 100%, no two ways about it, is. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - one of my all-time favorite novels - produces, as you describe it, tingling sensations, indicating real intellectual stimulation and movement of the soul; The Road or Infinite Jest - also among my all-time favorite novels - produce vulgar, brute excitement, indicating the dude bro emptiness which such works fail to conceal. You claim that these assumptions will hold true, without fail, and that merely possessing knowledge of them will reveal them to be true. Here's the problem: this has not been my experience. The two kinds of experience that you describe, the first kind of which I've had in essentially the same way with all the novels listed above, I simply call "enjoyment"; the other experience I call "lack of enjoyment". There is nothing in your account here that simply cannot be reduced to either that, or gendered assumptions about what one ought to enjoy.
I also find your distinction between outer action and inner action rather arbitrary. I have had equally profound experiences reading Dostoevsky or Flannery O'Connor, as I've had reading Robert E. Howard or M. John Harrison - whose novel A Storm of Wings I would argue is a prime example of why this kind of distinction is problematic - so the idea that one has to be, as it were, led by the hand to an aesthetically meaningful, intellectually stimulating experience of literature through the characters doing a lot of thinking instead of a lot of sword-fighting, I find kind of dubious.
There are other points of disagreement, and I would love to discuss them further, but if you don't feel like it, that's cool :)
Santiago, in TheOldMandtheSea, more truly represents the old generation of Cubans who became enamoured with American media and sports culture. Hemingway would have never seriously held Joe Dimaggio up as a hero. I suggest reading it someday soon with the perspective that it's a cold war political satire about Batista loyalists. Hemingway was a socialist. The bit at the end about the dumb American tourists says it all: they think the carcass (Cuba) is something other than it is.
Fascinating. All the Pretty Horses is on my list to read before the end of the year so watching this was very timely. Sounds like it should fit well with all the pulp trash I’ve been reading lately 😂
Hah! I'd love to know what you make of it!
Ah, addiction. And misogyny. Now I understand my binge on Richard Stark novels. But I do read other things, I swear!
I’m curious to know your stance on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I keep finding his fixation with girls very upsetting, it brings me out of the story completely.
Sounds more like a you-problem.
Oh, my.
Murakami has always been accused of dude-bro renderings of women in his novels but I have always liked them. Perhaps it makes me a dude bro for not caring.
"Dudebro lit" is just another genre, so you could level many of these criticisms at most genre fiction: cliched, unimaginative, lowbrow, addictive, etc. A lot of those genre fiction books are also just as page-turningly addictive. Also, there are vast quantities of "chick lit" which is essentially the same thing, except it appeals to women.
Imagine unironically calling Cormac McCarthy a bad writer.
He's not bad, he's terrible.
I really enjoy his stuff. I just discovered the dudebro lit movement though. I guess Cormac pisses people off. I don’t know
Curing addiction through willpower is doubtful. What is needed is Dudebro Anonymous where the first step is admitting you have a problem.
So would you consider the Iliad Dudebro Lit? Seems to meet all your criteria: absence of -or sexist treatment of - women; obsessive lists (of armour, weaponry and wounds inflicted); and a bloody and exhilarating video game like push toward a final goal. But since Homer largely defined literature, it wouldn’t then make sense to say Dudebro Lit wasn’t literature. This is a serious question btw, although I take it your video was intended largely for entertainment.
Grateful to the TH-cam algo for bringing me your channel; been obsessively bingeing it - like a pile of Cormac McCarthy novels.
This is absolutely spot on. I read Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk earlier this year and it was basically a textbook example of the seven sins you've just explained. The 'itemisation' was the thing that really stood out to me. It was like the book was a strand of DNA and half of the words in it were junk non-coding DNA which is there but doesn't actually do anything. The author had this annoying affectation where he repeated whole phrases over and over (for example: he kept on repeating 'testing testing: one, two, three' - we get it, the narrator is on a flight but what purpose does recycling these junk sentences serve?). Despite the fact that the book annoyed me with examples like this on every page, it was still compulsively readable.
I don't believe dude bro literature is an actual thing.
It's not. It's a self congratulatory catch phrase
It isn't.
It’s not. It’s this guy’s misandrist delusion.
It seems to be a catch-all for anything Steve dislikes.
I mean, what exactly is "an actual thing"? It's a word that he uses and defines. So why wouldn't it be a thing? Who decides what is a thing and what is not? Who is the authority on things?
I loved Clara so much 💜
Melville is dude bro lit, he's ours! You can keep McCarthy. But I love that masculine overconscious voice in a story. The kinda narrator who watches an inchworm cross his leg, and finds in it's marching some lesson about traversing life's whirlwind, then assesses his own valor compared to that of the worms. Maybe it's all too much moralizing, but even when Melvilles shipmates have their throats torn by liquor they still have the pretense to wonder about the will of God. I guess it's all a bit overly sentimental
But I love more literary works too, and maybe they are enjoyed deeper I think you're right. There are many aspects that are richer in those kinds of books.
Ah. I see that 'forgotten value of inventory' crap from TH-cam comment trolls all the time. Fortunately or unfortunately, I haven't read your DudeBro examples. I may have read some other books of the genre, but I don't recall.
#6 The Martian ... and a few other sins
Love me some dude bro lit. Well... except Cormac, he's just a Trainwreck.
Filtered
Hemingway is a great writer with actual depth and capability, and even compared to Melville. This is purely based on your own prejudices and dislike of the man and his love of hunting - in which he killed many animals. When I have the time, eventually, I will counter-argue this.
Sounds like you might be projecting. So how do you set up a strong male with testosterone and a understanding of somethings you might not...all the pretty horses paints a very emotional picture if you understand ot
>Critiques writing
>Can't be bothered to write a script
Ah yes. Weaponized cringe.
A) this isn't a scripted channel, B) you yourself had no trouble understanding the points I was making, script or no script, C) you didn't cringe, because D) there's nothing cringeworthy in this video. But you're right that I was indeed critiquing writing - so you hey, at least 10% of your comment was on point!
alright. I have had some time to think on this. I'm lost, but I have my Chuck and Cormac, my own male protags. And I try so hard not to capitalize the word MALE----Jesus, you are on point. You got it. My shit wife left me with; a pen, a dark colored piece of construction paper, a 1970s era Swiss army knife, 6 feet of fishing line and a well worn copy of Infinite Jest. God Help me. I keep hitting F5 on the McCarthy page, why does he write so slow? I need it. Maybe you should write the next great novel, MR. oh, what's your name? oh, right. Donoghue. FEED ME.
New terminology to me DudeBro Lit. I'd categorize Ian Fleming as DudeBro, but John Le Carré not.
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
It’s a different art.
@@Tolstoy111 agree completely. I don't agree with Steve here really at all, some of his points I do, but I have a general issue with some of the elitism. But it's not fair to criticize him for being a critic. Critics are important and critical analysis of texts uses a completely different part of the brain. A completely different art. It's not fair to dismiss him
I watched this again, the sheer arrogance and condescension expressed in the video is breath-taking.
Spoiler: there's no arrogance or condescension in this video
@@saintdonoghue Let's invent a barely coherent term which classifies and damns readers of certain works of fiction. And not spare a thought for all those readers who don't fit this mould. For likes of Hemingway really're propped up by those "dudebros" who're incapable of reading anything else. But extraoridnarily, there's no arrogance on condescension implied!
@@aminthereader8946 I'm attacking a kind of writing in this video, not a kind of reader, and the whole thing is entirely coherent. I'm sorry you don't see that. I think you would if you didn't dislike the BookTuber who was saying it, and I'm sorry for that too.
@@saintdonoghue You're definitely attacking the reader and trying to couch it as a critique on the writers. But it's transparent. Still love your videos, but you're off base here.
@@jimmymcnulty4304 So you still love my videos, even though I'm a liar? Right. I'm actually in pretty good control of what I am and am not doing - if I'd meant to attack the reader in this video, that's exactly what I would have done.
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."
Yeah, you're a genius. Clowns like Hemingway and Cormac and David Foster Wallace etc. etc. etc. don't know how to write, right? What paragraph have you written lately, a single paragraph that has the power of that any of our modern greats could pack into one, succinct declarative sentence? Oh, that's right, you gotta be a dudebro to write like that, right?
To chastise "dudebro" lit in the twenty first century, when literature has become the domain of liberal women and small souled bugmen, who are also liberal women in spirit, I repeat, to chastise this "dudebro" lit, which consists of authors dead or about to die soon, comes off as... stunning and brave, I guess?
Thanks to my long association with canines, I believe I actually caught every single one of the sexist, misogynistic, homophobic dog whistles you managed to cram into this one comment.
So broadly speaking this video can be boiled down to: Books I like are literature and I don't like brolit so it mustn't be literature. I would also really like to see where the rule saying that novels can't stimulate the prefrontal cortex and has to stimulate only the parietal lobe. You are also making some incredibly broad assumptions. I feel like you are just trying to lord over people with the idea that what you read is higher than what other people read which I feel is a bigger problem than what you were saying about people who read "dude/bro lit" bring 'addicted' to it.
I know this is late but I feel the same. He makes good points in the beginning but his later sins feel much too subjective that are espoused as objective takes, such as, dude bro lit being addictive and not stimulating imagination. I just don't see that applying for a book like All The Pretty Horses, although I suppose he doesn't mean these sins apply to every "dude bro" book. I think his two comparative examples in this video many people find to be pretty boring and not page-turning at all.
'Dudebro lit'. Okay, American culture is so bizarre. 26 min video, some boomer is explaining his frustration with literary straw-dog. Inventing a tag and then discriminating books by it is what happens when you've given up on any kind of serious engagement with literature. Articulate it better, write it down, you are all over the place.
@Steve: Calling you a boomer... LoL. Doesn't H. Bloom know that you're only 28?
He's a millennial
@@brittabohlerthesecondshelf ok boomer
@@TheRoomNote No way. He looks 50.
goon
Funny he uses Harold Bloom to prop his argument yet meanwhile, Harold Bloom so praised Cormac McCarthy, he espoused his opinion that Blood Meridian was an addition to the great literary canon of western civilization. Wrong person to cite in your video trying to discredit & put down Cormac McCarthy's great literary genius. Just say it isn't for you and you prefer girly novels. Nothing wrong with that.
This is quite possibly the stupidest comment I’ve ever read on any media platform.
@@jackohara8993 not really
@@jackohara8993 Search "Harold Bloom Cormac McCarthy" on TH-cam there's an interview where he lavished abundant praise upon Cormac McCarthy, specifically Blood Meridian. Cormac is America's greatest living author easily hands down. This reviewer is a boomer incel with a resentment towards greatness & masculinity. Weak, pathetic, perverse & sad.
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."
This is such a great video! I have always despised Fight Club and have never understood the status it has. It is hateful in spirit from the first page and never redeems it. Just awful!
What is wrong with this guy, complaining about books that apparently aren't boring enough for him? Lol talk about pretentious gate keeping...There is so, so much wrong with this video & this dude's perspective. The only critic I've ever found & appreciated was Harold Bloom. Because he advocated for immersion into greatness. Bloom championed greatness. This guy isn't great and he doesn't even seem to value thr greats. He compliments & then insults Hemingway in the same video. Seems confused, probably from consuming too much nonsensical fairyland liberal propaganda. Probably the kind of guy to write off Shakespeare. 🤮🤮🤮 I truly pity liberals who will never find happiness. They're too busy complaining, playing the victim & tearing down the few in history & presently, who were and are exemplary artists & humans, etc...
No, actually, this is the stupidest comment I’ve ever read.
Amen
You really don’t watch Steve’s content do you? Lol
?
Dude, Colonel Sanders wants his moniker back. -Moby Dick, "dudebro?" The great American novel thrown in with crass trash like Cormac McCarthy and western serial tripe? This is hackery! Expounding on sins from someone who doesn't believe in the concept of sin and perhaps morality is less than encouraging. Please reread the sermon from Melville's epic. Hemingway's embarrassing Old Man thrown in with Melville's experiential great American novel? You should change the channel's name to the Spouter Inn, spouting such vapid, insights. The dendrites on your pre-frontal cortex can thank me later, bro.