What should I know before I start reading Moby Dick.
>>7690106
nothin, just read it. i'm readin it now. nothing specifically needed to understand what he's saying.
>>7690106
Prepare for some boring ass chapters with unreliable knowledge bout whales.
Other than that is pretty good.
What is your favorite/most inspiring quote out of any piece of literature?
"Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship."
~Epicurus
"If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or do not marry, you will regret both; Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it, weep over them, you will also regret that; laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it, believe her not, you will also regret that; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both; whether you believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret both. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy." - A
>>7685591
philosophy = regret?
the world is full of memorable quotes and I can't recall any of them.
What is the point of Caesar turning away the coronet three times in the first act? He did so reluctantly and begged forgiveness when the crowd feigned upset, but Antony was the one who offered it to him? Did he offer the crown in stead for the Roman people? Or was this a publicity plot by Caesar? Thoughts?
Caesar had long wielded the long sword, just as Antony had wielded the short sword.
This is true even rhetorically speaking, when Antony comes out to speak to the Romans after Caesar had been slain, the curtness of his speech is meant to send alarm bells ringing, although it doesn't manage to do this among the crowd, the canaille. They lap it up willingly, because the points are made succinctly. The true intention and ambition of Antony is hid from them.
Previously, when Caesar had been offered the crown, he was choosing to downplay his role with an equally pointed gesture.
>>7691588
I always assumed that the standard interpretation was that he was trying to get people to see him as unambitious and benevolent but that he would eventually accept. But he overdid it and it somewhat backfired on him.
The standard historical interpretation of this (real) event is that he was gauging the crowd. Antony was offering it to him as a servitor of the Republic and a supposedly representing the people and government. If Antony gave the crown, and it was boo'ed to shit, Caesar could claim it was Antony's brashness and love of him that blinded his judgment.
The three reactions of the crowd, as it held its breath to see what he would do, keeping in mind that regicide was a virtue in Rome and "king" or "kingly" was a political insult, are very tense moments as Caesar decides how to play his hand. He wanted them to beg him to take it. Instead they fell completely silent and waited to see what he would do. He didn't take it, but he wanted it.
Antony bringing it up later is acting as if Caesar had never intended to take it. "You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, and thrice did he refuse." He's kind of lamely and cynically (to the reader) saying that Caesar was a popularis, a man of the people, but the crowd eats it up.
It was propaganda by Caesar, but moreso he was hoping they'd cheer him to take it. Bringing it up was definitely propaganda by Antony to turn the rabble against Brutus, who had just turned them against Caesar just as easily.
Augustus' grace (depending on your perspective, since maybe people were just sick of civil wars), and one which Antony lacked as much as Caesar given all his oriental god-despot roleplaying, is that he knew how to brand himself as a primus inter pares, "first among equals." Caesar had wanted a crown, but Augustus knew how to get the power of one without taking the bad PR. Of course that also bequeathed the succession problem to Rome for 400 years, so there you go.
Just finished writing my novella today that I started writing six months ago guys. I'm in a super good mood.
How are your novels/novellas going guys, have you finished any?
I'm barely started, like twenty pages of the first draf, ı really need to set up a writing routine/habit.
What's your novel about, Anon?
>>7691512
It's about a taxi driver that continues to drive around the city, hoping to stumble upon a customer that 'saved' his life five years ago.
I never had a routine for this, unlike my other things, and only wrote it when I was feeling depressed, so it's also quite depressing.
What's yours about anon?
>>7691533
Sounds boring
>mfw uni prof calls DFW a "talented but minor writer"
>minor writer
>minor
Should I drop out?
>>7691443
Low quality b8
>>7691443
he's right.
>>7691443
Yes, you should drop out. Calling such a minor writer "talented" is just bullshit.
What makes the play Hamlet so great?
Macbeth and Hamlet are both somewhat special in that they are an opportunity to consider a world predating the onset of the Romanesque era.
Macbeth is like a medieval left-winger, and Hamlet is like a medieval right-winger in some respects. Hamlet could never approve of the French Revolution for example, but Macbeth would be right there at the front like a Voltaire or Robespierre.
Hamlet is an opportunity to consider a time when the world was made of 'softer stuff', and I think that's why I can forgive Branagh's interpretation, although Olivier's has firmer delivery. I haven't seen Gibson in the role, but I remember dispising Kevin Kline's performance in a videotaped form.
>>7690623
>Macbeth is like a medieval left-winger, and Hamlet is like a medieval right-winger in some respects.
Could you elaborate?
>Voltaire
Voltaire died 11 years before the French Revolution.
Burton's Yorick scene is quite interesting. I guess some people feel it deflated him for them, but I like how he invokes legend, book learning, and then song in order to punctuate it. It's such a tidy, Welsh performance.
Gibson's is made a bit obscene with some initially very bad insert shots, yet it also manages to reveal the actor nakedly. It's the most emotional rendering from what I can tell.
http://youtu.be/UbxMhvcxJJc
This is unreadable bull shit.
I got in trouble for reading this back when I was a freshman in high school. I was on the Rumpus Room chapter and that's what the teacher saw. Lucky I didn't get expelled.
>>7689853
>in trouble for reading a book
hahaha what a cunt
>>7689847
all pomo is homojew degenerate art to be honest. better to keep to the greeks shakespeare and so on
Why are devils always seen as grotesque and funny?
Would you guys answer? Devils are things to be scared so they should be portrait so, but in literature they are intelligent and tricky but also somewhat clumsy and crude. Why is this tradition? Even in Divine Comedy - medieval epic, with idea of learning peoples to be good, and be scare of hell - there is scene of devils throwing themselves into pool of sulphur
>>7686747
I think that being imprevise, having a sense of humor and imense power adds to the fear of them fucking you over for the lulz.
>>7686747
They are portrayed as scary not for any physical trait or ability to horrify, but for the ease with which they beguile and tempt man. It necessarily follows that traits which make them irresistible are depicted in their portrayal (e.g. grotesque to appeal to man's curiosity, funny for his sense of humor so that he may overcome any naturally occurring apprehension at considering that this is a devil he is interacting with).
If a devil were to appear to man with horns and a trident, he would scare him away and then fail in defiling his soul as he aims to do; he has to win man over and to do so, must appear with qualities that attract men.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/08/zize-f08.html
> Žižek’s emergence as an open right-winger is particularly significant because he has long tried to pose as an opponent of capitalism and even as a “Marxist” or a “post-Marxist.” In pseudo-left circles of intellectuals and semi-intellectuals he has been celebrated and courted accordingly.
> In Der Speigel, Žižek gives free rein to his hatred and contempt for the oppressed and disadvantaged. His article “A Carnival of Underdogs” culminates in the sentence: “Brutality towards those weaker animals, women, is a traditional feature of the ‘lower classes.’”
> Like all right-wing propagandists, Žižek cares little for facts and seizes on individual cases—real or invented—to slander whole social or ethnic groups. This technique is well known from the anti-Semitic inflammatory writings of the Nazis, only this time it is not Jews, but Muslims, who are the scapegoats.
> The starting point of Žižek’s tirades are the events of New Year’s Eve in Cologne, which he terms an “obscene carnival of the lower classes.”
> He repeatedly warns the readers of Der Spiegel not to be swayed by sympathy for the fate of refugees. “Even if many immigrants are more or less victims who have fled from devastated countries, this does not prevent them behaving despicably.”
> He fumes against “the politically correct liberal left,” which is mobilizing its resources to downplay the incident in Cologne, and refers to “efforts to enlighten immigrants” as “breathtaking stupidity.”
> Žižek divides mankind into “three kinds of subjects”–a “Western, ‘civilized, bourgeois, liberal-democratic subject”; “those who do not belong to the West and who are obsessed by their longing for the West”; and finally, “those fascistic nihilists whose envy of the West is transformed into a deadly self-destructive hatred.”
> “Europe needs to demand of the incoming Muslims that they respect European values,” he says, and, “Europe cannot just open its borders, as some on the left demand out of a feeling of guilt.”
Where were you when Zizek was exposed as a crypto-fascist new righter?
if you ain't fur it
you agin it
>>7684503
>you can't be leftist unless you hold white guilt social views
What is it with american """liberals""" who haven't the faintest understanding of political views
They can't see further than their own "left/right" scale
>>7684574
oh no. never chat with americans about politics. they are completely fucked up and don't really understand any of the words the way the rest of the world uses them.
Who here is enrolled, has completed, or is considering a degree in Creative Writing?
Pros?
Cons?
Yeah, yeah, no one can teach you how to write. If you know how to write, you'll make it. Anyone got anything positive to say on the M.F.A.?
Some of the most painfully untalented people I've ever met were people with M.F.A.s
I had a prof pull me aside one time and told me basically, "If you want to write, then go write. Studying writing isn't learning how to write."
Still think it's some of the best advice I ever got.
>>7684195
>Anyone got anything positive to say on the M.F.A.?
I always used to hire them for menial office jobs, because I knew that nothing better would ever come along. They would sit at their desks doing data entry, moannnnning about how this audition fell through, or this bitch was hotter than her, or that she almost had the part but fucking x celebrity walked in, or that this manuscript or that was about to be accepted. And they never quit. They just went on and on until they drove to JFK one day and flew home, never to return.
>>7684195
>Anyone got anything positive to say on the M.F.A.?
It isnt a masters in sociology or psychology
Hey /lit/ I was thinking of starting a Ulysses group comparable to Infinite Summer. I was thinking of starting it the last day in February and reading a chapter a day until St. Patty's day (lol cuz Ireland). I'm starting this thread to see
1. What edition should we all uses?
2. is there an interest?
3. What are some things we can read in the meantime. I'm currently reading Portrait and will be done before the end of the month
Thanks, guys. I really hope we can tackle this book and better understand it.
>>7683940
>a chapter a day
Yeah, no.
I've read it a few times but I wouldn't mind going again if there was a group to follow along with. Go for it op
>>7683945
Would this be too much? I know it's going to be dense regardless, but the chapters themselves can't be too much page wise, can they?
International Edition
Recommendations:
>Fantasy
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/4chanlit/images/a/a8/1307836551252.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110612005642
>Sci-Fi
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/4chanlit/images/a/a6/Scifilit.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100710233344
http://imgur.com/r55ODlL
http://imgur.com/A96mTQX
>What are you currently reading
>What are some of your favourite SFF Novels from around the world(non American)?
>Who is your new favourite Obscure Authors and from which country do they hail?
>Give recs of SFF books you found while visiting other countries
Old thread >>7667526
>>7681093
>>What are you currently reading
Morning Star. Gonna miss my vulgar space Romans.
>>What are some of your favourite SFF Novels from around the world(non American)?
How can you tell anymore? I don't seek out that information. I read one by a Canadian author about everyone on Earth seeing their future, it sucked. Three Body Problem was pretty cool I guess. And the Inklings, they were great.
>>Who is your new favourite Obscure Authors and from which country do they hail?
Karl Gallagher, extremely technical Traveller-style science fiction. American. My diary tee-bee-eitch. American.
>>Give recs of SFF books you found while visiting other countries
I only traveled in the Hispanosphere, so it probably would have just been magic realism even if I'd looked.
>>7681093
>>What are some of your favourite SFF Novels from around the world(non American)?
Prepare for light novel recs.
>Favorite international SFF
I like Roadside Picnic, which is Russian. I also enjoyed the Witcher series as well, good fantasy, at least the first two collections of short stories. The series kind of goes downhill when it becomes a continuous series.
Does Quantum Thief count? Did he write it in Finnish as well?
How many pages do you read per day? Or how long do you spend reading daily (on average)?
I have managed to work my way up to nearly 50 pages per day over the past year. Takes me longer than I care to admit. Some days I manage 100. I read very casually before, about a book a month so this has been a slow progression. Fifty pages per day still doesn't feel like nearly enough though
>>7688861
Do you realize how uninteresting and worthless of a question that is ?
70-120 since Xmas. I used to read 50-80 before
Three to five hundred, generally.
How many books do you own that you haven't read yet? Be honest.
10 on my bookshelf.
50 - 60 at last count.
Probably about 600 out of the thousand books I own.
I'm working on it, honest.
What's the best translation for The Brothers Karamazov? If I was fine with the Crime and Punishment translation by P&V will this one be fine too?
If I were to get the P&V translation, should I spend the extra $14.63 to get the Everyman's Library version over the Vintage one?
What about Demons, is the the P&V translation for that good too? And should I get the Everyman's Library over the other edition?
Thanks.
>>7684802
>translation
>>7684802
Avsey
>>7684815
>In addition to speaking my native English, I've also acquired the linguistic skills of Deustch, Le Français, pýccкий язы́к, العَرَبِية, Latīna, Ἑλληνιkή Hellēnikḗ, 官話, 日本語, Españoland Italiano
