Planning to begin with Nikolaj Gogol soon. What book should I start with?
Father Sergius or White Nights
With akaki
His short tales
find a compilation somewhere.
Questions for persons pursuing a PhD in English for Creative Writing or literature or any related English field.
1. How hard was getting into your respective program?
2. What are your job prospects like?
3. What tests did you need to take to get into those programs/how did you prepare?
4. Would you recommend anyone else do it?
Don't expect to get a job in English, but you could probably get on a Trainee Manager course with your degree
you cud probably get a job as an adjunct teaching english 101 at a bad college or maybe teach non-credit esl or something
Don't do a Humanities/Social Sciences PhD unless:
- you genuinely want to study it. Statistically you becoming a professor is basically impossible.
- you don't care about being poor. You will likely be an adjunct slave at best for many years, after years of gruelling miserable PhD research.
- you understand your PhD may not reflect your intellectual interests and may actually become an annoying burden that no one ever reads and wastes half a decade of your life.
- you don't care about having to travel a lot (based on which program you get into,...
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Post 'em. Pic related is mine
Inb4 meme trilogy, Greeks etc
>>7593042
Pretty gay taste, never read any adventure novels ?
>>7593053
What do you mean by adventure novels? Star Wars EU?
What the fuck happened to the /lit/ philosophy project?
they all became genre-fags and decided it wasn't worth it. you can find them all floating around in the sci-fi general thread though. good luck, and remember, always start with the greeks.
Fuck it I'm in.
Is this a good way to start with the greeks? Please respond.
guys, what books had you have read to you as a child?
i'm searching for some to read to my son. he's only 5 so i'd have to wait a little bit until he's ready for longer and more elaborated stories,
so far i got "the secret garden" by burnett and "momo" by ende. but they are slightly questionable.
i mean, one is about an insane guy holding his even more insane wife hostage in the atticks. the other has this "our society is doomed, only grey people wherever you look" mentality that i don't particualrarily like....
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http://www.mrbauld.com/bloomjr.html
Mr. Bloom is the god of /lit/
>>7592371
>http://www.mrbauld.com/bloomjr.html
thanks for the link! 'll look into it anon.
but from gazing over it he seems to be all over "the wind in the willow" which is exactly what i'm not looking for. those characters are appaling...
I remember the boxcar children series fondly as well.
Hey /lit/, what's some good stuff to read about stoicism? Primary or secondary sources welcome.
I've ready Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca's letters. Who else?
Also some book on εὐδαιμονία and what it meant to the different Greeks/Romans would be cool.
Epicurus
>>7591295
No, don't do that.
Chapter X of Spengler's Decline...
so i know you guys say theres really not anything to read as a preparation for infinite jest and that is the easiest one in the meme trilogy but seriously, for someone with a very small background in literature is there anything i can do beforehand to understand better these meme?
read D.H. lawrence
Yeah. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, his first book of essays. Listening to the radio interviews Wallace gave to promote the book will help too.
Just don't read it man. Go to college. Read books. Come back to it in five years if you're still curious what it is.
You're just going to waste your time and spoil a great deal of reading for yourself if you try to read Infinite Jest. It isn't complicated, but if you aren't well read it will probably be boring. I mean that honestly.
Go read Calvino, go read Chaucer, go read Cervantes...you should even read earlier DFW if you really must read Infinite Jest. Pick up Brief Interviews and read it next year. Then if you're really into it...
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My friend gave me a loan of the complete Ayn Rand. I didn't really ask for them and not only am I hostile to American culture in general, but I already know from what I've read about her that it's not my cup of tea (I'm a reactionary).
Generally, I would have made more progress, but I'm halfway through the second chapter of The Fountainhead and it's like pulling teeth. The guy who is supposed to be the hero, I guess, seems to have the same internal drive as someone in a Camus or Turganev. It's too early for me to say, but it just seems...
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read the romantic manifesto and then give it to goodwill
>>7588414
>>>/killyourself/
Who else works at a bookstore here? Can't imagine a comfier experience.
Looking for a summer job at local bookstores now .. only problem is I'm a huge sperg with a very bad resume and very little experience - yipes
>>7581780
i wish! *giggles*
I'd love to but a locally owned one, not a Barnes and noble or something similar. Any good stories OP?
Hey /lit i read a short story in middle school about a man stuck on a small island with a rat who's eating all if his food. I remember it being a phenomenal story but i can't remember the name of it.. does this sound familiar to anyone?
Modern Immigration
>>7594976
"Side Bet", by Will F. Jenkins.
>>7595053
Thank you!
Did /lit/ enjoy The Pale King? How did it compare to Infinite Jest? Did its unfinished nature leave an empty feeling in your stomach when you read it?
>>7594851
the thing that got to me was that DFW must have been really frustrated when he realised he couldn't write an autobiography about his time in the IRS and also a piece of fiction and would have to do another yet fractured narrative. i truly believe this was the final straw for him
>>7594960
What do you mean his time with the IRS?
>>7594960
the pale king is fiction and he never worked for the irs. the whole narrative of dfw telling you the book is true is part of a fictional novel
Is there a strict private (or not doesn't really matter) tracker for books that's similar to What.CD?
I'm talking about a tracker that only allows one, definitive copy of a book on their site, and has strict rules and a strict reporting system to make sure everything is good? I find too often that when I download books from random websites, What.CD or Amazon they're riddled with errors. Whether it be reproduction errors (bad spelling, grammar, formatting) or no chapter markers, it's hard to find definitive copies of books in download form.
So,...
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there used to be bibliotik, which is exactly what you have described, but it has closed down over the last few months and I'm getting less and less hopeful it will ever be back
Yes, it's bibliotik, it's down right now. Lurk more.
>>7582051
>>7594552
It was down for a month and a half due to DDoS, went up for a couple days after moving hosts, went down again yesterday, admin says they'll be back up again sooner than before, they just rushed their initial launch and need some more maintenance.
Does /lit/ like Raymond Carver?
He's the only short-story writer I can really relate to and I've been enjoying short stories lately. Joyce's short stories were actually pretty great also. What other short story authors are good?
>>7594409
>does /lit/ like Gordon Lish
Gordon Lish is a pretty cool guy.
Isn't this a guy from an H.P. Lovecraft story?
>>7594409
If you like Carver I'd recommend Breece DJ Pancake and Hemmingway. Alice Munro too, maybe
Any books on the confluence of these two?
>>7594369
Try Anti-Semite and Jew by Sartre.
>>7594369
Is that a Jaden?
>>7594389
pretty sure its Tyler the Creator.. some meme rapper
Thoughts on the Beat Generation? As much as I can appreciate them contextually/historically, and like some of them more than others (like Ginsberg), I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of them in general, especially some of the stuff that came from Burroughs and Kerouac.
I dunno, as much as they broke away from the very traditionalist mold of their time, I think they seem to have given rise to this oxymoronically tired, pretentious, self-absorbed attitude toward literature. It's a similar sort of distasteful voice I observe in other movements like dirty realism...
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>>7594364
>Thoughts on the Beat Generation?
Talentless hacks
Kerouac and Ginsburg are ok. A bit naive and hit or miss.
Burroughs on the other hand is legitimately amazing. Great writer. His experiments with form are well complimented by his beautiful prose and immaculate sense of humor.
It's not hard to see his influence on Pynchon and other respected literary figures.
>>7594417
This tbhf. I kek hard whenever I see people who buy into /lit/ memes too much without understanding the background behind them who fervently praise and defend Ruggles while simultaneously acting like Bill is trash.