>I read books that are harder to read than Harry Potter because they make me feel like an intellectual
>>8166412
If you feel like an intellectual and do things intellectuals do, you have good chances of actually being an intellectual.
>>8166412
take the redpill
>>8166412
Thank god for this thread, I thought /lit/ was a boring place not like my maternal /b/ and homely /r9k/.
>>8166426
I go on walks just to think. Intellectuals take walks. I feel intellectual. Does that make me an intellectual?
>>8166478
Shit, I can't into logic. Let me try again:
Doing things intellectuals do doesn't make you an intellectual, but not doing things intellectuals do means you are not an intellectual.
>I read easy books in a painstakingly deliberate, pathetic attempt to seem unpretentious
>>8166426
That is not what Socrates said.
>I read books that are harder to read than Harry Potter because I enjoy them and I don't find them hard
>I read books instead of reading their synopses on wikipedia
>>8166506
This man's life is even sadder than my own
>>8166412
>feel
Spooked.
>I read novels word by word instead of just skimming them
>high-tier poetical descriptions yield joyful feelings to me
>I have put in the effort necessary to learn a second or third language for the sole purpose of literary enjoyment
>I read what I have an interest in until it no longer interests me
>I fully immerse myself in this one book or set of books
>I derive a better sense of what the book meant to the author, what it means to others, and what it means to me through riveting discussion with other readers
>I read
lol go to bed grandpa
>>8167056
Kek
>>8167102
kek
>I get pissed off about what people read on the internet
>>8166412
>tourists come here to bait but they don't actually know enough about literature to bait well
another pleb successfully gatekeep'd
>I only read the 'classics'
>>8167126
>I didn't read the classics
>There are people in this thread who legitimately think that the 'fedora' quote in OP's pic is pitiable because he's simply boasting about how intelligent he is
It's now such a meme that people don't consider that, in the context of a rigid religious community, someone who has overcome Christianity through their personal criticism of the culture they were immersed in for most of their life may rightly feel that the mental power to rise above this culture offers a more meaningful form of enlightenment compared to a dogma they followed out of habit. Why wouldn't you be rightly joyful because of this?
>>8166588
>Free Electronic Encyclopedia
>>8166412
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>8167693
because they are more than just joyful.
these types of people are braggarts who consider themselves superior to anyone who follows a type of religious dogma. It's narcissism, and a polar opposite of religious bigotry as it again leads to this person rejecting new ideas because of often misunderstood and incorrect ideals
>I use the fedora meme in 2016
>>8167771
>I don't repurpose memes for my own selfish needs
>>8167779
>i don't create my own memes
>>8167821
Why would you create something new if you can just tinker with something old just as effectively?
>>8167847
>I have no discernable talent
>>8167853
>I waste my discernable talent
>>8167856
>posting on this site
>not a waste of talent itself
>I need to understand some old fuck's interpretation of life instead of going outside and learning about it myself
>>8167909
>I don't use the knowledge and wisdom of some old dead fuck to better my own life
>>8166588
This. People are stupid.
>>8167105
Kke
>>8167884
You ned talent ot waste it.
Reading makes me feel like a man
