That pretentious guy in my English class is going on about Kurt Vonnegut again

Nah, it's not YA.

Hello there, Reddit!

wow so quirky XD
(edit: thanks for the Reddit gold kind stranger!)

is being pretentious 1) not being as smart as you think you are or 2) showing off your smarts (in whatever capacity you have them) in an inappropriate context?

i am honestly so afraid of being perceived as pretentious or snobbish for my interest in literature and philosophy that i dumb myself down to a probably condescending degree toward most people. my coworkers probably think i am illiterate. i am a born clown, i cant help clowning.

After reading Nabokov, Melville, and Pynchon, Vonnegut reads like he has down syndrome

both

the ol' prose gatekeeping.

t. Reddit

if 2, how can i know when showing off smarts is appropriate? if 1, is being sufficiently smart able to override the wrong situation?

>prose gatekeeping
Now that's a keeper, thanks user

idk man

Caring about pretentiousness is the most pretentious thing of all. Doesn't matter if you come off as a snob, both you and the people who resent you will be slapped down by life soon enough.

Caring about people caring about pretentiousness is the most pretentious thing of all. Both you and the people that you care about resenting other people being pretentious will be slapped down by life soon enough.

Caring about my dick is the gayest thing of all. Both you and the people resenting the people who care about my dick will come to know it intimately soon enough.

i love how people act like vonnegut is literature. his garbage reads like comic book fanfiction in prose format.
prose aside, the greater issue is the complete lack of any merit to his work. the characters are forgettable, archetypal trash little better than a cardboard cutout. his concepts are le quirky xDD scifi trash without any of the science. his stories are trash. unenjoyable, vulgar, not beautiful, containing no great truths, touching no hearts, boring, trying to be interesting while only managing a schizophrenic grasping to fake an interesting facade. he isn't even good enough to write shitty genrefiction. vonnegut is not literature, he's overmarketed trash that reeks of having a daddy's connection to someone in the industry. god knows he didn't get in on merit, as he has not a hint of any at all.

he's the pollock of writing. instead of vomit on a canvas, it's vomit on a manuscript. pushed by the powers that be to sell chaff to pretentious retards.

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It is.

Most Vonnegut is YA
The Bell Jar is YA
All Salinger is YA

Not sure about all that. SH5's structure is particularly good. But I haven't read his other books so I can't say for sure that he knows how to structure.

>All Salinger is YA
Salinger's work is anti-YA. His characters don't ever change.

based

>All Salinger is YA
Stop telling on yourself

Vonnegut is Intro to Camus for people who are afraid of anal sex. You can get away with a quick thumb in the butt during doggystyle when she's getting into it, and Vonnegut knows it, and he also knows that if he spanks you exactly one too many times, he can get away with switching to a longer digit because you'll appreciate something that could be misconstrued as familiar, as long as you can tolerate the thumb. At least that way you'll know, deep down, whether or not you'll ever be willing to confront the absurdity of life, and whether or not a twelve year old rape victim who dies shortly after childbirth should give a flying fuck about enjoyable truthy beautiful characters, and whether or not you actually secretly love anal.

But you know what? The problem isn't whether you like or dislike anal. You just don't like doggy, you literary pillow princess.

>select all the squares with buses
because I'm taking your ass to school

Kekked hard

*

it's a mix of those two and shitting on what you perceive as inferior. nobody will think you're pretentious if you accept that you like philosophy and they like Harry Potter, and that's fine since they enjoy Harry potter there's nothing wrong with reading for enjoyment.

Man I fucning WISH at least one of my former classmates knew about Vonnegut. I'm not kidding when I say the only books my classmates read were YA like Harry potter, pop science and the short stories we were forced to read. Glad I dropped out.

nice metaphor

Thats an analogy

if your knowledge pertains to the discussion, it's appropriate. also avoid name dropping and just talk about the content.

>also avoid name dropping and just talk about the content.
but if other people in the group recognize the ideas and see you saying them as if they are your own they will think you are pretentious and intellectually dishonest as well

>first day of my last year at uni
>greek and roman epic classics course
>prof asks if anyone is familiar with the Iliad and if so how
>guy says he loves the Percy Jackson series
Every. Single. Time.

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>first year community college
>English Literature 1890 to Present
>first day of class professor asks for our opinions on post-modern and contemporary English lit
>guy sitting smack in front sez he writes Spenserian sonnets
>guy sitting next to me in the back unironically and straight-faced sez he believes the only literature of any value is in graphic novels
>girls sitting next to us start to giggle
I thought it would be better in a university. It wasn’t.

kek gonna do this next year to piss off pseuds

You’re in a community college that’s why, step up your grades

I went to a(n American) university and it was worse: no one read and only pretended to read and understand what we were reading. Writing term papers was exercise in bullshitting until you got the grade. I went in having read Nabokov’s lectures thinking I knew it all, only to find out nobody really did. My heart goes out to the professors I had who really were erudite and capable of expressing their minds and opinions but who obviously hid their power level to grade our exams.

I genuinely hope you’re life is going ok user

>doing english

huh?

I have a friend who's an English major and it appalled me that he hadn't read any part of the Iliad. He even got it confused with the Odyssey. Even worse, he admitted to not reading many of his assigned texts and instead used Sparknotes.

i love kurt, but he's not exactly high Yea Forums

Nigga nobody cares bout dat shet. It be a normal discussion not a formal paper. Cite your sources only if they ask lmao.

>anti war books
>good
cringe

based

t. has never been in a war

Why would they be reading foreign stuff in ENGLISH LIT my man. The SparkNotes thing is gay tho

>not being a chad and straight up yelling for the guy to shut the fuck up

I would

same, and the time I did the entire class backed me up when the guy wanted to confront me.
life must suck as an insecure virginboy op

You weren’t the pretentious guy in your class, were you Yea Forums?

Be honest.

You say gatekeeping like it’s a bad thing

Reddit as fuck

>reddit humour
why do you guys all have the same personality

No. I kept quiet as much as possible. I only spoke if someone asked me for help.

Harold Bloom included it in his Western canon list which just goes to show that Bloom is a hack