Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 1186. page
Images are sometimes not shown due to bandwidth/network limitations. Refreshing the page usually helps.
What are some good adult fairy tale style books? When the writing is wondrous yet aimed at a mature audience first and foremost.
Eve in Crackland.
Walter Moers. Read Rumo and The City of Dreaming Books. Great tales.
Angela Carter's the bloody chamber
How the fuck am I supposed to read this thing?
I read part 1 and then took a break for a while. I won't lie. I barely understood anything. I try to read it nice and slow but there's still times where I lose the plot and get completely lost. A book has never made me feel this stupid.
Should I try to make sense of it or just keep going the way I've gone. Should I read a section and then look up what it meant online or just keep pushing forward and doing my best?
I don't know if part 2 is easier to understand than part 1 or if I'm...
Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
I thought part 1 was pretty linear & sequential aside from the digressions. I could be remembering wrong. I took pretty extensive notes of the characters though, I remember that being the most confusing part of the entire novel, and especially in pt 1.
Absorb what you can and don't think about it too much. Then come back and read it again. Don't feel bad, nobody understands GR the first time around, especially not a novitiate to Pynchon.
>>7626912
I haven't been taking notes or anything. Should I? Reading this reminds me of when I tried to get into jazz and couldn't follow anything musically. I just read it and if I don't understand something I just keep going forward but I'm worried that I'm cheating myself out of the experience. But I also worry that if I tried to understand every little thing then I'd never finish it. I think I'm enjoying myself though. I can't even tell anymore.
First time on /lit/ and all I see are dead white men. Can we discuss our favourite non-white authors?
I'm a massive fan of Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and James Baldwin. Im about to start reading A brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James anyone here read it?
Also Female Authors.
I've recently learned that Samuel Delany is black, very surprising (and homosexual but that was no surprise). Nova was very meta and pretty OK, I still haven't understood Dhalgren. Is there anything besides Dhalgren one has to have read by Delany?
I didn't know that Octavia Butler was black either.
>>7626499
What I've realised is that Ive mostly only read dead white men, Im just wanting to see if anyone on /lit/ can recommend good literature that was written by others, The works of Achebe/Okri and Baldwin can't really be compared to what Ive read before.
Is philosophy really an useless subject to study in university?
>>7626432
Every study is a useless study on a cosmic level. But if you feel philosophy suits the time spent between this fleeting moment and your death, go for it homie.
Yep
>>7626432
Minor in it. Don't major in it unless you plan to go to law school or become a professor.
ITT: We critique prose.
I'll start: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRQFxpnmqv3dFmhO-wtBa8VqUnt7nULqVm3vwCwa5YU/pub
>>7610045
good style, I like it. its actually really good imo. the content doesn't matter I suppose, on its own this story isnt much, but I guess you wanted a critique of writing.
>>7610045
It reads like you're trying too hard to be smart.
Many of the sentences drag on and need to lose some weight.
Will post something of mine in a sec...
This is so bad but whatever. Hit me with your thoughts.
A peculiar headache reached up through the coils and folds of my brain to nest beside the left temple. Every second moment a piercing throb would remind me of its enthusiastically effectual existence. Had I known that an insufficient mix of coffee and water were to blame (not enough water, more than enough coffee) I could have solved the problem in a moment while digressing from a disease succinct enough to ensure fatality: boredom.
My father and his old high school friend still chatted at their table across the cafe, intent on each other, dad rarely casting a glance toward us, his tedious charges of myself, Amy, and my friend Sarah, where we lounged on a couch apiece. Our wide-spread leg space demanded too much comfort for others to relax.
“Sweat pants were made to be comfortable in,” Sarah said when we had sat down. She spread her legs in the typical male fashion of knees far apart. Victorian-era ladies would have swooned from embarrassment, but I laughed and mimicked in my worn and faded jeans.
Ninety minutes later, Sarah had her legs tucked underneath her and flipped through the same Cosmo for a tenth time. My legs were ladylike crossed, to the enjoyment of royalty and fucking pompous asses everywhere. To be accurate, it contrasted my lazy grunge mode of dress nicely even though I scanned through another Cosmo.
Quotients of Unordinary
The Sequel to Notions of Proximity
Multiple intelligences theory was discovered by Dr. Howard Gardner as a model of intelligence that set apart intelligence into varied modalities, rather than seeing it as subjugated by a single general ability
Each of us have a creativity quotient and we just need to develop it further. It may happen that we might believe that creativity is just because of talent. A strong urge and a methodical way can motivate an individual a lot and take him/her to further heights
Creativity as a measure is about imagining things which you have never done or heard about, something new and fresh. Creativity is the ability or the skill to create new ideas and bring them into reality.
>>7629634
>people think differently
>if you try at something for a while you'll get better at it
Is this not common knowledge? I mean we know IQ tests are generally not an indicator of one's entire mental ability. Are there really people who think we just roll 4d6 and throw away the lowest?
>yfw you see someone casually reading a Gor book in public
I suppose the chance that anyone would call them out on it is pretty low, but it's still weird. Were they ever mainstream? How did they get so relatively famous?
Was it a man or a woman? What did they look like?
As to your question they probably lured people in with the pulpy sword and sorcery stuff and then hooked them with the bdsm erotica.
>>7629424
>Were they ever mainstream?
I think they were popular in the 70s.
They are or were popular among a subculture of total lowlifes and I say that as a degenerate myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sieFQuCnrdI
>Spencer Johnson enjoyed over 5 years and 200 weeks on the Publisher's Weekly's hardcover non-fiction list
>Spencer Johnson wrote only 96 pages that have been bought by 26 million people and translated into 37 languages
>Spencer Johnson technically writes literature since he writes parables, related to business, making him more literary and modern than you
>You live at home with your parents working on a fantasy novel that not a single publisher...
Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
now i guilty pleasure luv listening to some pretty gay self-improvement shit, but that book sucked. sadly self-help market is like any market, the best selling shit is usually wack, gotta dig deep to find the gems
I always felt the lessens in that book are so blatantly obvious that it makes me rage to think somebody actually made money off them. Like somebody righting a stupid little book story on the values of anything basic, like being kind, and it selling millions of copies
may be an obvious one, but pic related is my top pick
that or any rand
What makes you think Salinger is a pseudoscholar? I've only read Catcher, and quite recently, but I thought it was very good.
Rand fits right in though.
dfw, guy is such a try-hard little bitch, luckily bloom saw right through his shit
Catcher should be a mandatory read in high school.
Rand for sure.
What happens when medical or technical immortality is possible, /lit/? Will it invalidate writings on the impermanence of life?
I can only imagine you saying this to a girl you've known for a month and are hoping to sleep with. You're a moron
>>7628931
No: all things will eventually come to an end. In time, even the atoms which compose us will decay into electrons.
>>7628936
How about an actually interesting question then anon
How do you think writing perspectives will change when death is no longer such a short-term obstacle?
What does /lit/ think about Oscar Wilde.
Is it just pretentious?
I like the Importance of Being Ernest. Best movie of his vast filmography.
Pretty good critic as well.
>write satires about social pretenses
>get called pretentious
fantastical about audience intellect maybe
>>7628900
Currently reading Dorian Gray. Pretty good so far.
What is up with /lit/'s absolute hard-on for classical literature at the seeming expense of contemporary lit?
[Accidentally posted this as a reply to another thread instead of an independent one, sorry]
classics = The Greeks
contemporary = john green, rowling, pynchon
>>7628797
And there's nothing to be gained from studying Green, Rowling, Pynchon, King, etc.?
Or to elevate(?) things slightly, Wallace isn't either?
It seems slightly disingenuous to suggest that literature as a medium died somewhere between 50 and 100 years ago is my point.
>>7628789
Classics: tried and true, known to be great. Foundation of modern literature through allusions and references.
Contemporary: have to sort through the shit to find what's worth reading, most will be unknown in 10 years because it sucks
Does the formal/academic study of literature have value? A significant enough value to dedicate oneself to it as a professional scholar?
I'm studying comparative literature, myself, so that kind of shows my hand; but I'm curious to know your thoughts, /lit/.
Depends whether you mean in an ideal sense or for the average academic.
The average academic is a spiritless idealess null who has been poorly trained by inefficient repetition to play make-believe that his papers about Brecht's diarrhea years warrant a constant supply of grant money. But if we're talking about actual intellectuals, then yeah, furthering the human understanding of art (and history and other things) helps individuate the species and make it discover itself and all that.
>>7628774
Is there something that characterizes an "actual intellectual" apart from their ideawork would you say? Some X factor, some je ne sais quoi?
>>7628798
Not him, but I believe there needs to be a certain degree of originality in the true intellectual. Rather than simply absorb literature and philosophy and keep it as a memorized codex of concepts, I think a real intellectual genuinely internalizes what she or he reads and tries to apply it to his or her own life, which involves a certain degree of creativity in fitting the ideas of great men into one's own particular circumstances.
been writing what I plan to publish as an ebook about my experiences as a semi successful camboy. Anyone up for reading a short extract and sharing some feedback with me? Need to know if it's any fucking good so far
Meh
>>7628746
that'll be a no then I presume?
>>7628742
>how newfags think /lit/ works
"Hey guys, if you ask nicely I'll let you critique my work!"
"Okay anon, please post more! Here are my thoughts about your prose and structure: ..."
>how /lit/ actually works
"Hey guys, critique my work! http://google.docs/shit.doc"
"Bump."
"Bump."
"Bump."
"Bump."
What's next for his career?
>>7628527
Decomposition. Decay. Eternity in a casket.
Do some fraud? Convince more of his faggot followers to buy his book? Play video games? I dunno.
>>7628527
Who is this? I am attracted to him.
