So who wants to meet up with me on the east coast and work and find work out on the seas?
I can;t be the only one who is super depressed after reading this as I watch whats left of my youth pass in front of computer screens.
>>7695713
The east coast of where?
>>7695717
any coast will do mate lets just get on the water. I need to spend some years working on a ship
>>7695717
Africa
aka the mother land
A few weeks ago I read 3 short novels (in the miso soup, piercing and audition) by Japanese author ryu murakami and thoroughly enjoyed. Has anyone read these books, and maybe could recommend any similar artists? I'm looking for disturbing themes that make the reader feel uneasy but is also captivating. Any help would be incredible thanks.
Also, sorry if this post doesn't read very well, I'm coming down from a very big weekend and am struggling to string sentences together :)
Try his movies
or Jack Ketchum, or even Palahanananiuk
>>7695627
His best is Coin Locker Babies you haven't read Ryu until you've read that
>>7695631
Great thanks heaps!
What do I have to do to get into UPenn for graduate studies coming from St John's College?
>>7695578
as a current penn student why do you want to come here/what research interests?
>>7695583
I'd like to get into the PhD program because of the facilities and the professors. I'm interested in exploring avant-garde movements in relation with linguistics and literary theory. Bernstein is someone I've always wanted to work with. Not to mention the fact my parents are in bankruptcy so I don't have much money, UPenn will provide tuition largely reduced.
>>7695590
hey i'm actually in Bernstein's class right now, though just an undergrad. really great and unique readings of poetry, poetics, and aesthetics
yeah all of the professors i've worked with/learned from are fantastic
Is the Everyman's Library version of Les Miserable any good? Also, what are some of the best translation available in Everyman's Library?
>>7695493
>translation
They have the GOAT Dante translation.
>>7695657
meh. depends on your perspective/needs
GOAT is definitely stretching it.
What are some good war books lit? I've only read
The Things they Carried - O'Brien
The Face of War - Gellhorn
In Pharaoh's Army-Tobias Wolff
you're welcome
>>7695446
Also Storm of Steel.
>>7695446
Infantry Attacks (WW1, tactics heavy but autobiographical)
Read Storm of Steel and All Quiet on the Western Front together, both memoirs (WW1)
The collected works of Wilfred Owen (poetry, WWI)
Company Commander (WW2, memoir)
Catch-22 (WW2)
Platoon Leader (Vietnam, memoir),
Fields of Fire (Vietnam, fiction)
Trees of Smoke (Vietnam, fiction)
Dien Cai Dau (Vietnam, poetry)
Fiasco (Iraq, contemporary history)
I haven't read any fiction from recent wars. Lots of people recommend The Unforgiving Minute (Afghanistan, memoir) but as a lieutenant who served in Afghanistan, I think the author's a bitch.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk got decent reviews (Iraq, fiction) but I've never read it.
Has anyone on /lit/ actually read this? What's it like? Why does /lit/ shit on this book if nobody has actually read it?
>>7695445
Shitting on Pleb core that is acknowledged by the mainstream as Pleb core is actually more Pleb than reading it.
>>7695445
>YA
>John Green
>Popular on tumblr & Leddit
I picked it up while my sister was on some errands and I was visiting her apartment
Put it down at the part where they paint a mural, smoke, and then complain about "le modern music" as they paint another mural
Am I a pleb for liking Elliot Smith, I know this isn't Mu/ but I won't get a decent opinion of the lyrics there. I feel like this is a fantastic post-modern / nihilistic song.
Throwing candy out to the crowd, dragging down the main
The helpless little thing with the dirty mouth who's always got something to say
You're sitting around at home now waiting for your brother to call
I saw him down in the alley, having had enough of it all
> so there's a parade, they're throwing candy, brothers fucked off to shoot up in the alley with our narrator
Said you can do what you want to whenever you want to
You can do what you want to, there's no one to stop you
> you can do what you want to there's no one to stop you, cool huh
All spit and spite, you're up all night and down every day
A tired man with only hours to go just waiting to be taken away
Getting into the back of a car for candy from some stranger
Watching the parade with pinpoint eyes full of smouldering anger
>here's where it all comes together, our narrator is a junkie (pinpoint eyes) looking out at a parade, a nice image of life as being organised around meaningless subjective cultural practices, very epitomising. Also candy here is meaning and heroin, in rejecting normal life the parade, which he sees as meaningless, he has chosen instead to have his candy/meaning supplied by junk. Getting into the back of the car, taking candy from some stranger again very epitomising of the way we look for meaning.
You can do what you want to whenever you want to
You can do what you want to, there's no one to stop you
Now you can do what you want to whenever you want to
Do what you want to whenever you want to
Do what you want to whenever you want to though it doesn't mean a thing
Big nothing
> even though our narrator has chosen to reject the parade/meaning and is "free" his life of smack addiction and conscious nihilism is not freeing: it is meaningless by definition.
>>7695338
Yes. Patrician is Jandek. I mention him because they both reference Kierkegaard and his lyrics are absolute poetry:
http://tisue.net/jandek/lyrics.html
>>7695357
cheers for the recc will check out
>I'll fake it through the day
;-;
RIP
Please introduce me to some good authors for metaphysics.
No fucking joke, start with the Greeks if you are looking for an introduction.
>>7695333
Yes aristotle's metaphysics is on my list, was wondering what else there is though.
I am really interested in jacques maritain but cannot find a copy of -any- of his works online.
>>7695332
checking wikipedia is always a good starting point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics#Bibliography
/lit/'s thoughts on this? Just picked it up for a great deal today, planning on getting to it soon.
>>7695302
it's just the diary of a rich bitch who was scared of the dick, overrated to be honest famalam
>>7695302
Her poetry is genuinely great, the bell jar is kind of average.
>>7695302
The metaphor of the bell jar was poignant, though the actual plot was very underwhelming. Read Franny and Zooey instead.
Supernatural horror books. Any good ones?
I like Salem's Lot and Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.
The Exorcist
>>7695199
Most of the supernatural horror I read comes from the pulp era. Aside from adventure, and fantasy stories, Robert e Howard wrote some excellent horror tales.
Scientology is a great place to start.
>The only writer who bangs on about the Greeks as much as /lit/ is pic
> she's alright but she's no uber patrician
> are Greekfags condemned to medisocrate in their writing?
> it's Donna Tart BTW
wuts up with her pose? is she supposed to be a battle rapper who just dropped a fly boast? or is she like depressed and needs a hug? or is it just cold in that photographers study and trying to stop shivering?
her flow is tight, her rhymes span decades
>close eyes
>about to fall asleep
>suddenly remember memories of reading poetry in my high school English class and hearing a qt laugh at it
there goes the night
>>7695039
>writing poems
Yea, I wouldn't really expect anybody who frequents 4chan to be sensitive enough for that sort of vocation. Stick to non-fiction or hard sci fi or something.
>>7695039
I'm sorry anon. She was wrong to do that.
Well, fuck her.
Don't allow her to disturb your live like that.
Get drunk over the pain instead.
What are the best Steven King novels?
I know he's a main stream pleb tier normie author, I'm just looking for some fun scholck to read.
Hearts in atlantis has a genuinely good first section.
The library policemen is a good yarn, and actually scary.
Bag of bones is pretty good.
Lisey's story is alright but not as good as the rest.
Most of his novels are terrible though.
IT is kinda fun
I liked 11/22/63
If you're just gonna read a few of his books, stay in the 70's and 80's. Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, Dead Zone, and Pet Sematary are all fantastic genre novels. Truly the best of the best when it comes to trashy lit.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/12/dream-of-the-red-chamber-cao-zuequin-chinas-favourite-novel-unknown-west?CMP=fb_gu
How is it?
Read it and tell us
It's good, but a lot of the reason it's not read in the West is that you need to understand Chinese allusions and puns. It's China's favourite novel because it's the basis of standardised Chinese which means you have to be able to understand it, unlike older works which were made obsolete by Redology.
Dissing Journey to the West while calling it Monkey makes me think that the author missed a lot of subtleties to the culture once he got his cheque for the translation advert.
It's a good book, but most of the reasons why it's so "well loved" are to do with politics and linguistics more than because it's the most universal of their stories, and those that aren't would probably be lost somewhat in translation.
I know Penguin released a Chuang Tzu book where they redacted elements of Chinese culture like the different kinds of ghosts as uninteresting to Western eyes, and erased most of the puns the translator tells you he enjoyed while translating it in the introduction, so I'm suspicious that they've done this one justice.
I read a 100 or so pages of an abridged version and didn't like it. The style of it: describing outfits, vases, courtyards, and all pointless unnecessary details (or of some cultural context I'm missing) bored me. I might try it again later.
Best self-help book ever.
It was a submeme for a while along with Bartleby. Pretty forgettable text honestly, hence the "sub-" designation
