Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 1132. page
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QTTDTOT: Questions that don't their own thread
Post your questions here /lit.
I'll start:
Best English translation for: Book of Disquiet-Fernando Pessoa?
Would also like to know the answer to OP's question, so here is a comment.
I cannot answer op's question but I have my own. I'm writing a fantasy book and I want it to be realistic, or realistic enough, but I have no idea how kingdoms (or empires) are formed. Anyone know a book that goes in-depth on how kingdoms are formed and rise to power? All the mediums I've looked through give me shit from the Three Kingdoms to random religious works.
>>7645200
Richard Zenith's translation and arrangement are bretty good. I'm not sure if they are the standard, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are.
Summarize your novel
>In 1850, a misanthropic but naive Russian teenager leaves Siberia for Alaska. After accidentally killing a renowned bandit, he embarks on a spiritual and physical journey across the American West.
>Satirical comedy most closely influenced by Voltaire, Dostoevsky, and Joyce.
>Incorporates Western philosophy and history throughout.
Sounds boring
>>7644979
sounded like it had potential to be entertaining 'til i got to "satirical"
to clarify, by "Western philosophy and history" do you mean eurocentric, or manifest destiny?
Depressed man living in first-world country lives bohemian lifestyle as he attempts to discover the meaning of life.
I start:
In the beginning, there was only looming vagueness, uncouth and unrefined. It covered the vast, flat and unformed, without forests or oceans, and in the primordial mists hunted the bestial First Children, the first faey. They shared the shape of fei or man nowadays, but their minds were that of the wild predators. Each of these First Children had their own spell that infused them that set them apart from the moment of their spontaneous birth.
And so it happened that, one day, a fei was born that had the spell of order infused in his flesh. It instilled...
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A young man destroys an ancient evil and restores order to the world.
>>7650703
I said play Tolkien, not play Paolini.
>The terminal social signal blotted out by technofuck buzz from the desiring-machines. So much positive feedback fast-forward that speed converges with itself on the event horizon of an artificial time-extinction. Suddenly it’s everywhere: a virtual envelopment by recyclones, voodoo economics, neo-nightmares, death-trips, skin-swaps, teraflops, Wintermute-wasted Turing-cops, sensitive silicon, socket-head subversion, polymorphic hybridizations, descending data-storms, and cyborg catwomen stalking amongst the screens. Zaibatsus flip into sentience as...
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Whoa, I knew this wss nick land before googling
I like him basically,
But he is too into that cyberpunk, etc shit in his old writing. Aged really badly
>>7650650
>buzzword buzzword buzzword
There one of these for Faulkner? if not where do I start? I have only read his short works
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
>>7650593
Metamorphosis is actually a good start although I would read his diary entries and letters before reading his other novels. If you want to understand Kafkas writings you have to understand Kafka as a person.
>>7650633
I did the opposite and read his journals after his novels and I felt it recontextualised my understanding of his work without hampering my ability to arrive at my own understanding.
Hey /lit/, what are some good versions of bad books?
E.g. Foucault's Pendulum vs. The Da Vinci Code
Mrs. Dalloway <> Ulysses
The Little Prince > most of the wannabe love and philosophy stories today.
>>7650459
I can't tell which one's the bad one
![0207-BKS-BISSELL-blog427[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3ep8T14.jpg "0207-BKS-BISSELL-blog427[1].jpg")
Anybody see this in The New York Times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/everything-about-everything-david-foster-wallaces-infinite-jest-at-20.html
It's official now: David Foster Wallace is the most important contemporary writer of our time.
>>7650413
I went to my local library, and guess what. It wasn't on the shelf. A check of the catalog and apparently, no version at the library.
They did have Trump's Crippled America though-which I checked out with the qt3.14 at the desk.
why did d f w like clouds so much
is he is so important why is he dead
![the-end-of-the-tour-affiche-5565d6da97bbc[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/IF2kQZt.jpg "the-end-of-the-tour-affiche-5565d6da97bbc[1].jpg")
Was David Foster Wallace always this horrendously fat and disgusting?
>>7650326
it's a no dude
>>7650326
I am yet to see a picture of David at the weight they portrayed him in TEOTT.
Jason was on a strict diet of hot pockets and cream puffs, and was told not to do any strenuous activity in preparation for the film.
I have a feeling it had something to do with Jason looking a bit too tall and lanky, as appose to david having more of a stocky build. They probably planned on making him gain weight, and then getting him to tone, but ran out of time.
The Wallace estate as well as his editor have disavowed the film, not because it gets anything factually wrong but because it does something that Wallace would never have wanted: it turns him into a character.
It's very hard to take the end of this movie seriously with Eisenberg’s Lipsky crying while reading to a large crowd from his own book about Wallace while the movie flashes back to David dancing a free-form, child-like dance in slow-motion inside a church; it’s an image — an embarrassing idea — that would drive any writer as smart and image-conscious...
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Anyone here read this?
I attempted it and after 40 pages I got ridiculously sick of reading what seemed like an endless fucking line of metaphors for sizes. I know how small 10^-43 is without the author having to go on a needlessly long tirade about what that is equivalent of.
I just wanna know if it stops doing this or if I should just give up on the book, because there's no way I can handle even 200 more pages of this.
If you liked it you liked it. You shouldn't beat yourself up over it
>>7649438
Make your own decisions, manbaby
>>7649505
I'm asking if the book changes style; the only way I could make my own decision would be to read the whole thing. I don't want to do that if it's the same all the way through.
No recommendations, posting from phone edition
>What are you currently reading
>Which sff work do you hate the most
>Which are the five essential sff novels in your opinion
Old thread >>7617349
Science fiction and Fantasy are for kids.
>>7633250
Why were you so desperate to start a new thread that you'd make a shitty one from your phone when the old one hasn't hit the bump limit yet?
>>7633257
Obligatory pointless class where I get administration done and listen to prof preach about how this isn't high school
I've read Demian, and Siddhartha. I really enjoyed both of them, any recommendations for what to read next by Hesse? Or recommendations from other authors that might fit in the same vein?
bro there's another thread like two screens down
>>7650073
>>7650548
Shit, I only search him by name, thanks.
Searched* I am retarded today
Jukes Verne thread? What's your favorite book? I'm currently reading Journey to the Interior of the Earth and it's pretty fun. What did you enjoy by him?
>>7650414
Jukes Verne is a pretty cool guy. I liked 20,000 Feet Below The Ocean personally.
>>7650420
Love that one. Definitely follow it up with The Enigmatic Median.
The Wayback Machine
Why isn't /lit/ reading this series? It's really good, the author deserves more credit imo. The characters are fleshed out well, the pacing is nice, the dialogue is decent.
If I had to give it an honest rating 8/10, which is honestly pretty good for a new author. It has a sequel already and the author has said she's working on number 3.
I can't wait for the newest one, I think /lit/ will agree with me.
>>7650307
>Amber
>>7650307
okay Amber N. P. May's boyfriend
>I can't wait for the newest one, I think /lit/ will agree with me.
I have no reason not to agree that you can't wait for the newest one, so that's a pretty safe assumption.
I'm trying to read The Gutenberg Galaxy and it just seems like fucking nonsense. McLuhan's basic point (a medium such as writing is not simply a communication tool, but fundamentally changes the way we think and perceive independently of the actual written messages -- i.e. "the medium is the message" if you want to be an obscurantist cunt about it) is brilliant and I'm really interested in reading a good analysis of this stuff, but I don't think that The Gutenberg Galaxy actually offers that; mostly he just makes completely unsubstantiated (often...
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Secondary lierature is basically everywhere
Where have you been the last 50 years, you must be new
Of course there's secondary literature everywhere. I wasn't asking if secondary literature existed, I was asking for a certain type and quality of secondary literature (or alternative literature dealing with the subject better than McLuhan does).
>>7650010
I can familiarize with what you're saying on too many philosophers.
Was the ending of 1916 edition of The Mysterious Stranger Twain's own work or that of the posthumous editing?
I don't understand, why build such a long narrative and then blow it away like that? If humanity is flawed to the point where it is so absurd it might just be a dream, a fantasy, why care about it at all and construct the narrative? I don't understand.
Has someone read the original fragments? How different they are if they are different at all?
The ending is the same in the first and in the definite edition.
>>7650264
What do you think about it?
So definite edition is pretty much the same?
