Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 263. page
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So I've been studying engineering physics for a couple years, which is what Thomas Pynchon studied at Cornell before he switched to writing. There were many references in the book that only an engineer would understand, especially around the middle at Mittewerke. Stuff about calculus, electromagnetism, manometers and fluid mechanics etc.
I really enjoyed the book because I saw many references to things that I would never have expected to see in something non-scientific. Did anyone else experience the same thing? If not, did you learn it or just skip/ignore it?
Pynchon wrote it so anyone would get it, not just le engineers.
>couple of years
>thinks he knows anything
l- e - l
>>8174854
Try not to fit in too hard, redditor
I experienced the same thing but instead of the engineering stuff it's with the sex and boner and pooping stuff.
Who is your favourite science fiction author and why is it Phillip K. Dick?
Discuss your favourite PKD novels and short stories.
I'll go first.
I read Man in the High Castle when I was leaving High School and it opened my mind up to his later works. I'd have to say my all time favourite would be Ubik, but I recently bought The Dick Reader and I will be crushing short Dick stories all summer long. It is literally going to be the summer of Dick.
You get inspired by the thread I asked about used books?
My favorite and also the first book of his I ever read is Flow My Tears The Policeman Said. I still need to read UBIK.
Time out of Joint is better than Man in the High Castle IMO.
VALIS
has anyone read the exegesis
J. R. R. Tolkien is my favorite author
I have developed a mental list of things to keep track of when I write. I have come to consider these traits of bad writing. Anything to add or dispute?
BAD WRITING
Style:
-Overuse of adjectives
-Doesn't withhold information smartly
-Too many similes, metaphors
-Too much pumped up "voice" or showboating that draws attention to the writer himself
Substance:
-insular, solipsistic; doesn't engage with the larger world or big questions
-Has no moral core
-Nothing changes in some way, nothing is learned
>>8174731
This isn't a bad list of things to avoid when writing. I don't think there's much to dispute.
i disagree with separating style from substance, the imposition of interacting with 'big questions', like that's a real thing, and the 'nothing is learned' thing, that's preference.
>-Being female
Late night writing feels.The man stared up at the moon, the dirty sidewalk falling away from him. Years fell away. He was young again, fourteen and screaming at the same pale light. Running down an alley with the three closest companions man could ask for. Screaming at the moon, daring it to remember his courage and recklessness. He was seventeen. The moon guided his path home, his car shooting down the parkway, away from the waves, back into the city. It was the last day of classes. He was eighteen. A drunken classmate sang 'Beyond the Sea' atop a half-cleared prom table. A blue feeling had crept into the young man as he watched his classmate give inebriated honor to the late Frank Sinatra. Later that night, they had kissed and drank and made love, the merrymaking enveloping them, immortalizing them. The moon kept careful loving watch, doting upon her young. Later that month the man had spoken long into the night with a deadman under the moon's gaze. The conversation spilled breast-to-breast until she had to retire, allowing the sun to bear the watchful burden. He was twenty. Walls melted, primordial crimson creatures marched to the beat of their own drums, far too difficult to handle. Twenty-two, entering hallowed halls. Solitary footsteps echoing at night, serving the city. Twenty-four, they had strode into her room, late on Christmas night. The lights were dim, burned low. A cigarette was hastily ashed, a smile breaking across her face. Was he a man now? Or just pretending? Do we ever cross a threshold into adulthood? Are we all children? And then she began to cry and hold him and beg him not to leave. She asked why his mother hated her so, what had she done wrong. She clutched him as if the world would stop turning otherwise, her tears burned into his coat. They had closed the door behind them, walking back to the car in silence. The moon watched above but was no longer the tender gaze of protector. She was now the silent watch of chronicler. Of timekeeper. Of observer. Cold. Impartial. The moon receded. The man was alone on the sidewalk, averting his gaze now. The cold ache burned his chest and he could feel nothing else.
How do I get rid of this feeling /lit/?
my diary desu
>holy fuck I can't concentrate everything I write is gibberish I should go to bed but's kimda too late
>>8174732
Maybe. Was trying to capture my drunken melancholy walk that happened half an hour ago. Wasn't really meant for anyone else other than me.
I'm just...scared of this feeling. It starts in your chest and spreads like ice. Pulling you back. And you drown in it. It isolates you and makes you feel alone.
I thought no man was supposed to be an island? Why do I feel like one?
What's the last interesting thing you learned from a book?
about The Suspended Step of the Stork
>>8174686
that you're probably a 100-120 IQ turbo-pleb
>>8174686
People keep oysters in barrels.
Im about to start reading Murakami, wich books of him will worth my time?
>>8174607
>inb4 Murakami is pleb
I mean, he is, but he's still good.
Just read the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, it's his best novel. Or if you really need something shorter go with Norwegian Wood, it's the only Murakami novel with out any magic alternate worlds or talking cats or anything.
>>8174607
Kafka on the Shore or Wind-up Bird is a good start. If you don't like those try Norwegian Wood, it's different from those.
I like his short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Wind Up Bird Chronicle is the only one I'd say is a good novel, but it is rather good.
When I read a poem, should I still try to read the lines as if they were sentences? Or should I take each line as its own statement?
>>8174592
The first one
Just read it normally, and only pause if punctuation tells you to. Line divisions are usually there just to highlight the rhythm that the poem has when read naturally.
Of course, there are exceptions to this.
depends on the poem, modernist poetry breaks convention and tries to escape the constriction of line breaks, whereas more classical and romantic poetry comfortably exists in the conventions of stanzas, couplets, rhyme schemes, etc.
I keep seeing him in my Nightmares, /lit/.
>>8174559
Who the fuck?
>>8174559
out of everybody in that gang, he'd be the least likely to kill you.
also I imagined him fatter.
no you don't. You read that Bloom said that and you think it's cool to dream about a literary figure.
Fuck off
Was Deleuze right, when he endorsed Artaud's madness?
Only way to live tbqh
>>8174551
what way?
>>8174562
The Max Power way.
Just finished reading this. Was it good?
Ghastly rigmarole.
>>8174471
Did you really read through 700 pages without forming your own opinion?
Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.
The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.
How do you stop being so verbose in your writing? I kind of thought I trained myself out of this shit back in college but I guess not. Is it a matter of finding something that's actually worth writing about or what?
>tfw your writing is always *not* what you want to say and how you want to say it
write as simply as you can, only use words when they are the best, most concise word that can be used that still communicates what you want to express. Don't be afraid of writing long sentences, but avoid stringing polysyllabic words together if you can. Btw where is the bear painting from
>>8174613
Photographer is Marianna Rothen. It's a shot of a stuffed bear at the Smithsonian IIRC. I guess I just need to not edit on the fly as much. My inner monologue is always kind of tripping over itself though, like, I dunno, qualifying things constantly I guess?
>>8174460
Go ahead and write your usual verbose style how it naturally comes out, then trim it down while editing. It's easier to edit what's already there than to put it down the way you want it the first draft.
That's what I do anyways.
How does one "invoke" the creative nothing? How can I make the muses talk?
>>8174380
spread you ass cheeks
>>8174391
Oh, for one moment I forgot Stirner is a meme on /lit/ and that anything related to him can and will be used against me
Make bad life decisions and fall into a deep depression
Started reading this the other day, /lit/. Please tell me the rest of it is as good as the prologue.
better
delillo is top tier
>>8174359
parts are excellent
main protagonist's story left me underwhelmed though
and the 70's artist scene did nothing for me
but the grafitti artist, the Lenny Bruce chapters and the nuns working in the projects of the South Bronx during the AIDS crisis were all excellent
Yet another meme doorstopper circlejerked by /lit/ poseurs who desperately want to feel smarter than the pretty girls who read John Green and reject them. Sad!
I just want to find the book or philosophical advice that will motivate me to work hard instead of wasting all of my time. Is that too much to ask? I want an epiphany.
>>8174348
no idea what to tell you but thanks for the rare frog
war of art lad
meditations by aurelius lad
just be urself and find ur own meaning - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post books you didn't understand
![41vxAMcHOzL._SX307_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dqg8zjc.jpg "41vxAMcHOzL._SX307_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg")
>>8174334
glad you are honest at least
i didnt get the castle. i know its unfinished, but fuck
>haven't read much poetry aside from Shakespeare and the Odyssey
>pick up complete works of Emily Dickinson
>no idea what the fuck she's saying half the time
How do I get good at poetry?
