The fact that nobody on this board talks about their interpretations of literature is proof of /lit/'s failure to become anything more than a mouthpiece for angsty teenagers pretending towards an understanding of classics.
Enough with recommendations and dick-waving. Post your off the wall interpretations ITT. Actually talk about concepts for a change.
>>8258580
I think Dubliners is a response to Metamorphoses
>interpretations
Oooh yeah you're a creative reader, you are, a creative *pat* reader
>>8258590
Nothing wrong with thinking about what you're reading
>>8258580
Slothrop is the rocket.
Joyce read and had regard for Hegel or at the very least case of great minds thinking alike.
Moby Dick is an argument against thinking.
Shakespeare too is making an argument against rationality (Lear quoting "nothing will come of nothing;" Hamlet's philosophical equivocating, etc. Haven't thought much about this one in a while though).
the moon landing was faked
>>8258580
>he fell for the "/lit/ is for the discussion of literature" meme
/lit/ is for the discussion of literature memes.
NOTHING else.
Now get the FUCK off my board.
>>8258605
All of them or just the first one?
>>8258611
all fake
>>8258620
And that wall-e robot they put on Mars, is that one fake as well?
>>8258580
If I actually have something worth saying, I'm going to send it on to be published so I can add it to my CV, not post it on an anonymous imageboard.
>>8258627
Scarcity mentality.
You don't have anything worth saying.
>>8258638
If you say so, anon. I've put a lot into this board in the past (namely, charts and other recommendations), but I've realized I should be putting that effort into creating publishable things.
I've got one thing coming out in a zine next Friday, and two conferences to present at this year. At least a few people think I've got something worth saying.
>>8258600
>Slothrop is the rocket
Nah, Slothrop is a bad dream that Pirate's having
>>8258580
at the end of Penelope, Joyce writes himself into the book. this has been argued before; my contribution is that he writes himself in to have sex with Molly
>>8258600
>Joyce read and had regard for Hegel or at the very least case of great minds thinking alike.
he refers to him in his letters somewhere. I read an article about this. the Hegelian motifs and structure of Ulysses are hard to ignore
Not really a novel interpretation, but A Turn of the Screw is about sexual abuse. Quint was a fuckin' perv.
>>8258580
I think TCoL 49 is about the failure of art (especially literature) to achieve real autonomy and provide real transcendence, and the failure of language.
>>8258810
Well, I know I'm a really early academic, and I don't have that much under me yet. Which is why I want to put in the effort I do have towards something that might make me better known, rather than anonymously anymore.
For all the time I've spend in mock-syllabus threads on here in the past, I could have been drafting actual syllabi to add to my teaching portfolio, for example. At least warosu lets me dig through what I've done before.
>>8258921
Sorry anon, I'm in a monogamous marriage.
I imagine the reason I keep earnest is because no matter what I do at this point, I've still done more than anyone in my family. Even if I'm ever only mediocre, I'm still impressive by the poor standards I know most.
Anyway, I'll contribute to the thread now. Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine is about the fickleness of creative inspiration.
>"Enough with recommendations and dick-waving. Post your off the wall interpretations ITT. Actually talk about concepts for a change." (>>8258580)
>someone talks about a concept
>"probably because to the plebs on this board "interpretation" is a fancy term for "Where's Waldo" for symbolism, you included." (>>8258598)
please don't ever teach English, retard
>>8258845
I disagree. it's not about art's failure—it's about how art is actually way too good at what it does
Well that's not entirely true. I've spoken a few times about my ideas about literature, for example that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a Kierkegaardian quest for faith after the Death of God or how the Naked Lunch is a great expression of writing as a catalogue of our "immanences" (or sensations, idk the term in English) but those threads die after 15 replies every time, unless someone starts shitposting.
The Republic is about the impossibility of the polis' becoming philosophic, and is a demonstration of the damage philosophy does to political life.
>>8258600
why do you say that about Moby Dick?
Don Quixote isn't a picaresque.
Confederacy of Dunces was a modern iteration of the superfluous man.
Tolstoy was a subversive francophile.
I remember this one time in school, a couple of years back, we were studying Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost.
A friend of mine and I worked out a suicidal interpretation of the poem, completely supported by Robert Frost's family history, illnesses, biblical allusions etc.
I even wrote a three page essay to support the interpretation.
Kafka didn't like biscuits
>>8258580
Personally I find interpretation quite dull. I read for aesthetic and emotional sensations, not to decode some convoluted joke.
>>8258580
But people do talk about their interpretations of literature its just in a shitpost manner. We get a thread a day of 10 dudes arguing about the meaning of The Catcher In The Rye.
Is this the bitch who was complaining we didn't discuss Austen? Great discussion OP, you're really showing us how it's done. Perhaps you should just start a discussion of a particular text instead of bitching nobody else does. Or join that little girls thread where they're writing counter reviews to feminist interpretations, or any of the other threads actually discussing shit instead of bitching.
>>8259402
There was no critique, barely ever much response in them. The most you get out of people aside from the insults is "I'd take that class."
Anyway, I do use a lot of what I've done in the past on /lit/ now (anything that wouldn't trace me back to here), but having posted it on /lit/ first has never given me any sort of benefit. Possibly other people manage to get more out of being here. I'm just hoping to convince myself to better spend my time.
>>8258580
>implying your demand for interpretations isn't just higher stakes dick-waving
>>8258600
>Slothrop is the rocket.
lolwut
This is actually plausible but would completely change my entire perception of the story. Could you explain? Is this why he got theImipolex G in his dick as a baby? Does it actually react to something in rockets, or wasn't the joke that he fucks so many random women he creates a Poisson distribution which statistically is quite similar to how many rockets land and where?
Nietzsche and Kafka were both extremely influenced by Dostoyevsky
>>8259543
Nietzsche said so somewhere, I seem to remember reading.
Also, this is an essay I wrote about two writers who came to my uni, had to do it because of some bullshit honor school I'm not a part of anymore. Got me the highest result. Warning, ESL (but competent).
http://pastebin.com/C6hFimii
>>8259427
yeah I'm new here and I was really excited because I saw all sorts of new opinions but it wasn't long before I realized that for the most part they are just repeated with no justification.
>start with the memes
>>8259533
what do you think that imipolex g could kindof "connect" back to itself, so like because it was on his dick and he fucks the girls that the imipolex in the rockets follows itself?
The Bell Jar is about depression.
I'd write more but I'm at work on a cellphone. Plus interpretation probably ought to be left vague. Fill it in yourself and all.
>>8259287
>>8259402
Thinking is either futile - what does Ishmael get for all his huffing and puffing and phrenology? Certainly no closer to the whale he sets out to know (suicidal thoughts drove him to the sea, but curiosity drove him to the whaling ship) and probably all the more weighed down with Kant on his starboard and Plato on his port - or dangerous - old Ahab piling upon indifferent ("it is not the whale that chases you, but you who chases the whale!") nature's back all the sins of his race from Adam on down. Ishmael and Ahab are two sides of the same gold doubloon (another good chapter on this point), both setting their minds to the whale and both finding only a mirror. Ishmael survives the wreck because he's the only one who learned anything - i.e. that you can't learn anything.
>>8259533
Ya'll are focusing too much on the map. That's just a stupid joke. Pointsman and the cause-and-effect rocket mystics thinking they figured it out, but turns out there are wheels within wheels (IG Farben followed Slothrop all along? You can tickle his creatures...) So they set out to study it, launch it, but it hits Brenshluss at the hotel and gets away from them (Katje said the rocket leads a whole life up there), flies with insane speed (Marvy in the caves), hits peak - as narrates by Pökler, the controller, who thinks he gets peak only to be frustrated, then begins descent (Pökler's wife running from the rocket men, ending up a sex-slave and on the Anubis), picks up speed again (old Marvy gives chase again), then finally explodes into a million pieces (counterforce). The whole structure of the book is parabolic with Slothrop as the rocket around which it all centers.
Here's another for you: the Republic and most of Plato's dialogues are ironic. How many speakers stand between reader and Diotima, anyway? Chinese whispers
Don Quixote is a figment f Sancho's imagination
>>8260621
Interesting, thanks. Definitely need to read Gravity's Rainbow again.
>>8258836
That's just summary, anon.
>>8259329
Doesn't everyone think that poem is suicidal? What else could "miles to go before I sleep" mean?
>>8258610
underrated post
Shakespeare was a cuck and all his plays are about that.
>>8261651
Joyce apparently never went on record against this interpretation.
The Sun Also Rises is a novel about how our generation is made up of mostly soulless, empty people that are dissatisfied with their lives, and the only course of action left is to either find a higher power to take refuge in or continue being lost in life
>>8258580
1984 was intended to be read as a comedy. It works much better that way. Terry Gilliam was very on the nose about it with Brazil but it's still easily the best adaption of it.
