What book do you recommend?
Fisting Unto Death by Michel Foucault
>>7421350
The sticky, by anonymous.
>>7421350
The Pedigree of Specificity by Walter Bronswut
Just finished the Greeks and I don't feel like I'm an intellectual yet. Where do I go from here?
Stick your finger up a teenage girl's asshole while making out and worrying that she's actually 15 and not 16 like she said and feel a poo and pretend you didn't and lick your finger so she makes a weirded out face and forget about it and then 5 years later remember that you did it and wonder why
The Romans.
Are there any books that you are hesitant to share on goodreads? I've checked out Mein Kampf, and own a copy of The Turner dairies, but I use books like these to further my education and to get a perspective on how some people think. ( A bit of paranoia on my part, but can't goodreads be used as a possible data base?)
if you don't feel comfortable being tracked don't use social media.
also cool literature thread
>>>/g/
I'm just wondering how others feel, I really like goodreads, but I'm hesitate about "questionable books".
>>7421454
Thousands of people have read Mein Kampf on goodreads
I spent the last couple of weeks reading books about reading and thought I'd post some short reviews.
First up: ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound - 4/5
It's the most entertaining of the bunch, but the least useful in practical terms. It's written quasi-aphoristically, in a very informal style. Almost blog-like. Small paragraphs, big statements. Loads of CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis, etc. The focus of the book is on poetry.
Pound is a highly opinionated elitist and isn't afraid to show it. In his opinion unless you learn Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Provencal, and Chinese you might as well not bother reading poetry at all because you won't get it ("You cannot learn to write by reading English."). He loves Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, troubadour poetry, early translations from the Latin (Chaucer, Gavin Douglas, Arthur Golding), Chaucer. Dislikes nearly all English poetry since then, especially its "un-European" aspects.
>Chaucer wrote while England was still a part of Europe [...] In Shakespeare’s time England is already narrowing. Shakespeare as supreme lyric technician is indebted to the Italian song-books, but they are already an EXOTIC. Chaucer uses French art, the art of Provence, the verse art come from the troubadours. In his world there had lived both Guillaume de Poictiers and Scotus Erigena. But Chaucer was not a foreigner. It was HIS civilization.
At the same time he clearly loves poetry, and tries to transmit this love.
>Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.
His method of reading and learning about poetry eschews abstractions, de-emphasizing form and technique:
>In English when we define things we move toward the general, abstract, etc. In pictograph languages the symbol is the thing. The latter is how poetry should be studied. This is a scientific approach: don't bother with definition games, LOOK AT THE THING!
>Homer did not start by thinking which of the sixty-four permitted formulae was to be used in his next verse.
And what should we look at? In Pound's opinion you should closely study a small number of great works:
>And it is my firm conviction that a man can learn more about poetry by really knowing and examining a few of the best poems than by meandering about among a great many.
He's a big proponent of musicality in poetry (this is where the troubadour stuff comes in) and spends a lot of time discussing setting poetry to music (or music to poetry).
>Dante says: ‘A canzone is a composition of words set to music.’
>I don’t know any better point to start from.
>Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.
The three ways poetry conveys meaning:
>you charge words with meaning mainly in three ways, called phanopoeia, melopoeia, logopoeia. You use a word to throw a visual image on to the reader’s imagination, or you charge it by sound, or you use groups of words to do this.
On ulterior motives:
>Partisans of particular ideas may value writers who agree with them more than writers who do not, they may, and often do, value bad writers of their own party or religion more than good writers of another party or church. [...] Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn’t matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the bad writer wants to do harm.
Some general stuff:
>Incompetence will show in the use of too many words.
>The reader’s first and simplest test of an author will be to look for words that do not function; that contribute nothing to the meaning OR that distract from the MOST important factor of the meaning to factors of minor importance.
>The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain WHATSOEVER on his habitually slack attention.
>France may possibly have acquired the intellectual leadership of Europe when their academic period was cut down to forty minutes.
>Real education must ultimately be limited to men who INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
>More writers fail from lack of character than from lack of intelligence.
Finally, the second section of the book is filled with practical examples of readings (though I didn't find them particularly illuminating or helpful), with various "exercises" that are sort of aimed at a classroom setting (such as: write a parody of a bad poem, and have other students guess what it is parodying).
How to Read Literature, Terry Eagleton - 3.5/5
I liked this one, it does a lot of "teaching by example" by providing the reader with a wide range of literary analysis. Somewhat dry style, filled with annoyingly bad jokes. The focus is on novels, and pays almost no attention to the classics, poetry, anything published after ~1950, etc. Eagleton really likes to juxtapose the "realist" novel against the "modernist" novel and constantly brings it up (realist novels do THIS, but modernist novels do THAT) -- it's not always successful. The advice of this book is to focus on technique and form while de-emphasizing "content", and that's the type of readings he presents us with.
Eagleton loves Dickens and spends a lot of time on him, especially Great Expectations.
The book suffers from a lack of structure. It's divided into 5 chapters: Openings, Character, Narrative, Interpretation, Value. The first two chapters are fairly coherent, but the other three are a clusterfuck. It jumps all over the place, from one example to another, with only the faintest connection to the chapter and between the texts/readings. The book needed a better editor, someone who could impose a stronger structure on it.
>Openings
Starts out analyzing opening sentences/paragraphs. A Passage to India, Macbeth, Pride and Prejudice, The Canterbury Tales, Moby Dick, Waiting for Godot, The Third Policeman, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
>Character
Provides some general discussion of characters in literature: how they are constructed, various archetypes, etc. Some questions to ask when thinking about characters:
>Is a particular literary figure presented simply as a type or emblem, or is she subtly psychologised?
>Is she grasped from the inside or treated from other characters’ standpoints?
>Is she seen as coherent or self- contradictory, static or evolving, firmly etched or fuzzy at the edges?
>Are characters viewed in the round or stripped to functions of the plot?
>Are they defined through their actions and relationships, or do they loom up as disembodied consciousnesses?
>Do we feel them as vivid physical presences or essentially verbal ones, as readily knowable or as full of elusive depths?
Some of the realist vs modernist stuff:
>The realist novel tends to grasp individual lives in terms of histories, communities, kinship and institutions. Personal history has a coherent evolution.
>The modernist novel quite often presents us with a single, solitary consciousness. Identity is pitched into crisis. They press the complexity of the characters until it overflows (e.g. Woolf)
Then he goes on to some deeper analysis of a couple of characters, particularly Sue from Jude the Obscure.
>Narrative
This is where the structure starts becoming muddled.
Starts off talking about narrators, the various types, how entangled the author is with the narrator, etc.
>If characters them-selves are reluctant to commit murder, the narrative itself may always step in and oblige.
There's a discussion of political/social implications of happy endings, and how they're often ironic. Then some "plot vs narrative" bits.
Realism vs modernism:
>Realism: straightforward plots, beginning-middle-end, there is logic and order to the universe, etc.
>Modernism: all that shit falls apart. WWI? No clear causality, collection of independent mini-narratives, etc. => all narratives must be ironic and keep their limitations in mind. Contra "progress".
>Interpretation
Literary works carry their context within them, which makes interpretation challenging. Fictionality is one reason why literary works tend to be more ambiguous than non-literary ones - good use of the lack of context can be used to generate creative ambiguity!
A realist novel presents (the illusion of) characters and events which seem to exist independently of itself.
Form, genre, etc. mediate content - should interpret in light of them. But ignoring them can make for fun readings.
>One should not make a fetish of personal experience.
>In the ancient Jewish practice of midrash or scriptural interpretation, it was sometimes deemed acceptable to assign new, strikingly improbable meanings to the Bible.
Then there's a long analysis of Great Expectations that spans everything the book has discussed so far. At the end of the chapter he moves into a (thankfully short) fairly bad analysis of Harry Potter...a misguided attempt to appeal to millenials?
>Value
Originality: not necessarily great, and in some ages it was viewed with a lot of suspicion. Then the Romantics came and their individualism, etc. was packaged with a reverence for originality. Pomo sheds originality again, instead going for something like creative recycling.
Are all great works timeless/universal? Opinions differ. Probably.
>A literary classic, some critics consider, is not so much a work whose value is changeless as one that is able to generate new meanings over time.
Is it well executed, judging by standards of excellence?
Complexity: not sufficient for greatness, not always good.
Some more examples, this time of a more general analytical nature + an evaluation of "literary worth".
>If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism.
Name a better publisher.pro tip: you can't
Easy: NYRB.
>>7421076
Penguin books, friend.:^)
What are the qualities of a great screenplay writer?
>>7420992
They write great screenplays.
>>7420992
How many scenes you can set in a strip club even though it doesn't add anything.
>>7420996
thanks anon
I would like to contact Slavoj Žižek by email- but how does one go about finding their email?
Are there any other literary figures like this guy that is easier to contact? I am trying to get a hold of them for scholastic purposes.
>>7420946
I found his email on the site of Philosophical Faculty of university of Ljubljana, but I think it's outdated, nobody uses arnes as their email anymore.
>>7420946
He has pretty good hearing. Just yell really loud.
I emailed him at his NYU german professorship email address but I haven't heard back. the best way to get in touch is buy a ticket to his show or go to a book signing.
>This world was created from God's fear of solitude. In other words, us, the creatures, have no other meaning but to distract the Creator. Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we live dramas for the boredom of a spectator, whose claps have never reached the ears of a mortal.
Probably would have been astute over 200 years ago. Now, just seems like quaint rephrasing of a highly famous line in King Lear. Not remarkable in today's world. In fact, quite mediocre.
>>7420847
The phrasing of Cioran's thoughts is where the substance lies entirely. You're missing the point. The authorial intent is not to philosophize.
What's the point of an author referencing previous works of literature? It seems lazy to me.
>>7420803
It's to keep the plebs out.
>>7420803
the whole system of 'literature' kinda depends on reference and meaning being assigned retroactively
Conversation.
Does anyone know of any other good literature forums on the internet? I don't have many problems with /lit/, and I have a few with /his/, but they're both fairly slow – so I'd like extra sources of discussion someplace else.
Get some quality goodreads friends
>>7420725
/r/books
>>7420725
I don't have anything good but this post reminded me of the poetry forum I frequented back in high school
http://www.emule.com/2poetry/phorum/list.php?5
Some of these poems don't even make me cringe Tbh fàm
Hey /lit/,
Let's get this thing rolling!
Template
>>7420722
So it's good? From what I read about it here it's got some war propaganda. Your thoughts?
>>7420782
It's good, but it's indisputably pro-fascist.
>It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.
Who /Latro/ here?
Anyone here is christian? Can you justify your faith or at least help me understand it?
Grew up with it. Parents passed it on like a gene.
>>7420666
Stop lying Satan.
The only justification for faith is "I have faith"
So /lit/, which is better, cheap happiness or exalted suffering?
>>7420563
Exalted suffering.
Exalted happiness.
Memes are always best.
>Handsome
>Athletic
>Highly Intelligent
>Artistic
>Loved by the mass public
Why did he kill himself /lit/?
>>7420492
Severe depression.
>inb4 career move/publicity stunt
>>7420492
The insincerety of the (post)modern world drove him to despair.
career move/publicity stunt
![catholicism-sample-image[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/w3IZ82U.jpg "catholicism-sample-image[1]")
