Видео

This is a good way of putting it. Hemingway would be proud of the simplicity.

While true broadly speaking, I wholeheartedly believe there's still an audience seeking this type of literature. There may not be many of us, but we exist lol

I think scripting is a much better idea, tbh. I typically write down bullet points and freestyle while recording, but honestly it does make things too jumpy. Thanks for the comment and the kind words.

I agree with this 100%, and love the "gaslighting a hungry audience about the existence of food which doesn't exist" line. I might have to steal that one. Thanks for the comment!

Thank you so much, and good luck with your story! What's it about (if you don't mind sharing)? And I apologize, I will brush up on my iceberg data and be better next time lol

@@theliterarynomad thank you! 🙏 My story is about a corrupt tyrant who rules by means of a powerful private military. When his mother is taken terminally ill, his estranged sister travels home to reconcile, but she gets caught up in a conspiracy that will require her to choose between family and country. That’s the story at the moment, anyway. It keeps changing as I go! 😬

Thank you so much for the kind words. I truly appreciate it.

No, I'm afraid to say, they won't. By listenting to writing advice of any kind, even from a writer like Hemingway, you are stifling your own creativity and losing your own innate writing style and voice in the process. I may, of course, be utterly wrong. I can't write for toffee. I can't even produce a coherent sentence or make a concise point in my writing without having to learn how to do it.

In a straightforward sense, perhaps not, though I would argue that consciously thinking about this while writing will make your work much stronger on a sentence level.

The point of the video/theory isn't how deep the metaphorical iceberg is... Hemingway doesn't have literal icebergs in his works, but rather minimizes surface-level info and makes the reader look beneath the water (again, there isn't any actual water here) to uncover the real meaning. That being said, those looking for experts on all things icebergs should probably find a different channel. I fear that I will only let you down.

I think most people here are interested in writing, not icebergs! :D Therefore it's quite easy for people to take his videos seriously.

@@webnon I will be following with part 2 of this video, where we focus solely on the more technical aspects of icebergs.

Do you have any recommendations for more academic sources focusing on modernism? I'll actually be teaching a unit on the topic with my students this year, and am always looking for new/better sources. Thanks for the comment!

100%. I've found that online resources and "reading guides" are really helpful when trying to unlock difficult texts. Otherwise, it sometimes feels like we're just stumbling through the dark without a flashlight.

Who is claiming Europeans aren't indigenous to Europe?

@@theliterarynomad ...Pretty much every leftist politician in Europe? In fact, I think you can even go to jail in certain countries for stating that Europeans are native to Europe. There's a big effort to rewrite history and convince people that Europe was never our homeland; that we don't have a homeland. But besides that, whenever I hear the word "indigenous", it's never applied to Europeans for some reason; always Indian Americans, Meso-American peoples, Africans, Australian aboriginals...

we are all colors of wheat.

This is 100% one of the more challenging aspects of reading Hemingway. He's deceptively simplistic and straightforward, so it can be all too easy to read and interface with the text at face value. In doing this, most (if not all) of his characters are very unlikeable. But when you view it through the lens of the iceberg and think about what else is at play, mastery emerges. Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

Thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate it. Out of curiosity, what were the names of the film and TV show? Thanks again.

@@theliterarynomad I don’t want to conflate the iceberg with world building (and I don’t want to suggest that I feel George Lucas is a “good” writer or film maker), but the movie is Star Wars. In the process of developing the script, he ended up with too many ideas, and had to pare back the story significantly, but the script he produced still referred to all the ideas he cut away, and he ended up creating an iceberg. The TV show was The Acolyte. (The newest Star Wars TV show.) It appears that the writer created the visible part of the iceberg without considering the part below the waterline.

@@thejontao That's very interesting about Star Wars. Though I've never seen it (I know, I know), I can definitely see how that would create an iceberg. Those little details and the pointing/alluding to things left out or unsaid are what make the world feel real and lived in, even if it's something as fantastical as Star Wars or Harry Potter.

I heard it in a few other videos I watched in my preparation for reading this section/making the video. It seems like it isn't confirmed to have been a sixth part, but in his desk/belongings they found evidence that strongly suggested a sixth part being in the works. Also, Vulture published an article that mentioned it back in 2009 titled "Found in Roberto Bolaño’s Desk: Two New Novels, Part Six of 2666" that you might find interesting. Just search up that title and it should come up easily.

@@theliterarynomad Awesome, thanks 🙏 I'll check that out for sure-It's definitely one of my favorite novels ever. Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard that. I remember reading that the 5th book was actually finished at the time of his death, and it was another section that was still being worked over. Not sure which exactly. Great fucking book nonetheless. Transcendent. Anyways, sometimes it's in the favor of art to leave a bit to the imagination, deepens the mystery. =] Cheers!

@@skillfulmeans88 Couldn't agree more. Sometimes a mild feeling of incompleteness helps an overall work.

Thank you, I appreciate that a lot. Have you started the next section yet? If so, what are your initial thoughts? I'm about to dive in later tonight and couldn't be more excited.

@@theliterarynomad I like it. It’s compelling to see how his style changes when he is writing from the perspective of one character as opposed to 4. As in pt 1, a lot of the most compelling elements of the story are in sustained detours about side characters especially writing through letters, which is outside of the direct plot of the novel. It would be compelling to hear your thoughts on why he includes so many minor stories through the text and what their role is in the book as a whole

@@Torqued_Ellipse That is interesting. I'll keep that in mind and do my best to address it in my next video once I get through Part 2.

Thank you so much for the kind words! In a weird way, tackling 2,666 has made me much more confident about one day getting through Infinite Jest. Have you read any Bolaño?

@@theliterarynomad I have not but now I'm going to have to check him out! Currently reading 100 years of solitude and it's a doozy because I'm reading it in Spanish. Might read Bolaño in Spanish as well.

@@willynick Ah, that would be the dream, to be able to read Spanish at that level. I'm sure the book is significantly better in its mother tongue.

@@theliterarynomad Oh absolutely. It's so simplified in English but in Spanish, it's so rich without being pretentious. It's beautiful. I wonder if 2666 also has a much more rich text in comparison to its English translation.

@@willynick I'd imagine it is. I feel like almost all translations lose a bit of the magic that they were originally written with. It just goes to show how good these works are that they're still life-changing in another language.

Thank you so much for the kind words! I appreciate it.

Nothing beats a good book store. Amazon just can't compare.

Wow, thank you so much for the kind words. Once you've got your list I'd love to hear it!

It should be available through the link in the description. I'm not an affiliate or anything (I'll get nothing out of it if you buy), but would highly recommend giving it a read. It was a breath of fresh air reading something that tries to push the boundaries of modern fiction instead of a regurgitation of the same old stories and ideas. Let me know your thoughts if you end up reading it. I'd love to hear what you have to say on it.

Exactly. The idea that publishers exist to push literature forward is laughable. They're a business that exists solely to make money, which is why I'm firmly of the belief that creatives who aspire to write literary fiction that pushes the boundaries (whether they succeeded or not with this is irrelevant) should go independent and publish what they want without begging for corporate approval.

This is a largely pointless hypothetical, but I often wonder what the initial reading experience of his works would have been if he formatted them "correctly". Would it be better? Worse? Exactly the same? Impossible to know, obviously, but interesting to think about. I personally love his stylistic formatting, but it very well could be that I just love it because he's an incredible, once-in-a-generation writer. Maybe it's just as simple as anything a writer as talented as he does is, well, good.

@@theliterarynomad yeah I’m inclined to agree. I personally dont take too much stock in his stylistic choices wrt punctuation in itself. The gold comes from the mindset that led to those choices, and how those choices demand clarity of his authorial voice. If nothing else, they’re a fun dated postmodern aesthetic quirk.

Absolutely, I'd love to hear them. Any suggestions ae more than welcome.

Absolutely. It's always important to have an emergency get home and reset fund and an actionable backup plan ready to go.

There's a link on my channel page (it's a linktree). If you click the third option that says "Debut Novel (Just One Yes)" it should pop up. Otherwise, you can just Google "Nicholas Coursel Just One Yes" and it should appear.