The truth, briefly stated, is that Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature. He is modernist in that his fiction shows a first-rate human mind stripped of all foundations in religious or ideological certainty -- a mind turned thus wholly in on itself. His stories are inbent and hermetic, with the oblique terror of a game whose rules are unknown and its stakes everything.
And the mind of those stories is nearly always a mind that lives in and through books. This is because Borges the writer is, fundamentally, a reader. The dense, obscure allusiveness of his fiction is not a tic, or even really a style; and it is no accident that his best stories are often fake essays, or reviews of fictitious books, or have texts at their plots' centers, or have as protagonists Homer or Dante or Averroes. Whether for seminal artistic reasons or neurotic personal ones or both, Borges collapses reader and writer into a new kind of aesthetic agent, one who makes stories out of stories, one for whom reading is essentially -- consciously -- a creative act. This is not, however, because Borges is a metafictionist or a cleverly disguised critic. It is because he knows that there's finally no difference -- that murderer and victim, detective and fugitive, performer and audience are the same. Obviously, this has postmodern implications (hence the pontine claim above), but Borges's is really a mystical insight, and a profound one. It's also frightening, since the line between monism and solipsism is thin and porous, more to do with spirit than with mind per se. And, as an artistic program, this kind of collapse/transcendence of individual identity is also paradoxical, requiring a grotesque self-obsession combined with an almost total effacement of self and personality.
Alright, where did you steal this from?
>>7400460
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/books/review/07WALLACE.html?_r=0
its funny cus its by DFW
(Pynchon has also written some very good reviews to NYT)
>>7400462
>its funny cus its by DFW
guessed right at "pontine"
What does /lit/ think about tutoring? Have you ever been tutored? Have you ever tutored?For money?Been touched inappropriately by the girl with big titties next door because your mom wanted you to not fail maths in your senior year of high school so she asked her to teach you polynomial and quadratic equations?
Personally I'm against taking money for any exchange of knowledge, as I believe any form of interaction should be completely based on one person enjoying the other's company and wisdom, as well as views, no matter how different, they have to offer each other.
I despise the notion of knowledge being something that can be assigned a price, no matter how high or low. Fuck sophists too while we're at it, and people who live off of tutoring others.
The reason I'm asking is because I've taken up teaching English to chink kids over an app, it pays 10$/hr, and I do enjoy their company, but once every few minutes while talking to them and this is usually while waiting for them to make a coherent sentence, I get the feeling I'm pimping myself out. It's even worse when it's a student of the opposite gender, and they're paying me by the minute, literally 17c a minute. I can't put a price on my company to these people, or the quality of the "service" I provide to them, I feel sick just by writing that.
I don't know /lit/, I just don't know.
>>7400409
You using Tutor.com?
>>7400419
No, it's an app.
>>7400424
They have an app you tutor through as well. It sounded like you might, from the similar pay rate and preponderance of Chinese.
Anyway, I feel that way when I'm doing it too, unless it's a younger kid. If it's a college or high school kid, it feels a bit dirty. But I'm more than happy to help a middle schooler figure out how to understand a poem, or go over some vocabulary words with them.
Is it possible to write a suicide note that doesn't come off as edgy or pathetic?
Lets discuss suicide as and act and the messages associated with if from it's perpetrators.
Also, lets have some fun writing our own and imaginary suicide notes and rating each others.
Anyone?
>>7400335
Start with: "This is going to sound pathetic, but..." Boom, not pathetic.
"I was just getting bored. Love you all, goodbye folks"
How boring is the bible? I've always avoided attempting it because I feel it would just be a total slog
>the creation of everything
>incest
>rape
>genocide
>wars
>satan
>slavery, starvation, locusts, murdering firstborns
>the incarnation of God
>crucifixion
>boring
>>7400334
Depends on the book. I will admit to not having read the whole thing, but there parts that detail long genealogies in a way that makes textbooks look interesting. I also tried reading Job once and it was ridiculously repetitive. If I remember right, it was like Socratic dialogue except twice as repetitive and twice as self-indulgent.
There are other parts that are quite easy though, especially in the New Testament. Books like Timothy that part pretty succinct with clear details that would make even the most fundamentalist Christian cringe.
>>7400334
Its purpose isn't really to be entertaining.
Do you agree with the lit map?
>>7400329
Got this in higher res? can't even read most of the names on it
Realism should be next to science fiction and mystery 2bh
>>7400329
No offense, but this looks like Namedropping: The Map.
What are you gonna read of the list, /lit/?
1. Oregairu
2. Sword Art Online
3. Tenkyou no Alderamin
4. Eirun Last Code
5. Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?
6. No Game No Life
7. Toaru Majutsu no Index
8. Danmachi
9. Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata
10. Escape Speed
>>7400316
Is haruhi a meme series? I read the entire first book and i did not enjoy a single page of it. It was written as though it was a script for an anime the author hoped would happen.
Now Oregairu on the other hand had eightman, and decent writing
>>7401638
m8, all light novels are supposed to read like anime, otherwise they'd be treated like real novels that have shots at winning awards in Japoland.
>>7401678
I know, I know. But haruhi just doesn't have anything going for it, there's no substance or even attempts at fake substance
the goat
that's clearly a woman
>>7400272
Sort of looks like a goat
>>7400272
It's not so clear at all
How can something be sad and banal at the same time? That literally makes no sense
Something sad that's also an everyday occurrence. Like someone dying of heart disease.
>>7400216
You're right and there's something incredibly sad and banal about that
>>7400323
banal implies a pejorative though
saying it's banal to die of heart diseases just makes you sound edgy
saying something is sad implies a sentimentality, unless dfw was using sad ironically similar to how we sometimes say some things are sad when we in fact mean they are pathetic.
>write drunk, edit sober
Can you even begin to approach and fathom this? When I'm inebriated it's just silliness and sentimentality, I could never understand people who write drunk.
>>7400204
he means drugs in general
not a real quote or a good idea
Hemmingway never said that.
He always wrote in the morning as the sun rose and then got hammered afterwards.
It is a bad idea.
shit thread.
Let's make a serious topic for serious people, none of this joke topic shit.
Do the americans on here realise that these days there exists almost no culture outside their country? And what does exist is shit? And that any attempt by any of us non americans to pretend otherwise, is an attempt to troll the americans?
Do they realise how shit the rest of the world is in terms of culture? Sorry, I meant Culture. big black C U L T U R E that can be proudly displayed alongside BIG DEAD WHITE MEN old fashioned culture. We have none of it. I live in Britain and the old buildings are nice but that's literally it, there's nothing else and there never will be anything else. The United States of Europe is going to become a more pleasant China and that will be the death of non American culture.
>>7400177
It's only American culture because Americans figured out how to commoditize media first and so won the market. What you're actually complaining about is capitalism.
>>7400177
>almost no culture
>and what does exist is shit
that's mainstream white American culture though
our culture is memes, Big Bang Theory, Marvel movies, and garbage
>>7400177
>america
>culture
>first class degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford
>acclaimed journalist
>had a book published
>scholarships at Harvard
Why is she so much better than you? Just from looking at the above stuff I can tell that she would stomp us in to the ground intellectually. Imagine the raw IQ advantage she has over any of us.
But you don't understand dude, she's repressed. She's had way more advantages than you, makes more money, has more fame, but she's been repressed by society and deserves more than you.
>>7400111
>IQ
Still, I'd let her stomp me into the ground and I don't even have a giantess fetish.
>>7400111
God damn it, why do you keep making this thread?
Bring on the femdom.
Just finished this big guy. Loved it.
This is a general discussion thread since there's so much to talk about.
Starting prompt: What do you make of the ending?
OP again. My interpretation of the ending:
In a weird way, kind of hopeful. Mason and Dixon end up propagating little Masons and Dixons, which is all anyone can ask for.
And on his deathbed, as his sons talk to him, Mason might be hearing the remnants of his travels with Dixon--maybe even the beginning of a new adventure.
Notice that Isaac talks as Dixon might have about magic Indians and fish jumping from rivers (referencing that which is down. Fitting, considering Dixon's occupation as surveyor).
And William, who seems the glummer of the two, talks about the stars, as Mason might have.
I feel like what I just wrote was sentimental bullshit, but I hope not. I don't think that Pynchon has a cruel streak and would give the two protags meaningless endings.
N... no one wants to talk Pinecone?
It's been too long since I read it (which as a personal plus also means it won't be so long until I get to re-read it)
for me to say anything about the last chapter other than yes, it did clearly strike a hopeful note even in the end
Anyone else way spooked by the waxhouse?
My dad recommended I read this since I binged on Dostoevksy not too long ago.
Is it worth it? What are your thoughts on it?
>>7400045
Tell us about your Dostoyevsky binge, anon.
Do you actually value strangers opinions on a korean webcomic clipboard more than your own father's recommendation? You're a terrible son if you don't read it to be honest.
>>7400066
Read most of his short stories (except for I think 4?), then I read Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground. Not all, but I very much enjoyed him, especially his short works.
I just bought this old edition of 'On the Road' by Kerouac at a used books market. What's your opinion on the book? I've never read Kerouac before.
Whatever it is, it's a great book. Make sure to check out 'The Original Scroll' later if you like the edited version.
Kerouac appropriated the literary methods of Balzac and Proust to put together his oeuvre and for my money, OTR, Subterranneans, Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Big Sur can be read as one text.
Hard to go wrong with that, and then he still has a vault of poetry and other writings to check into after the main works.
It's a nice comfy travel story for about 50 pages or so but then you realize that it isn't going anywhere and that the only reason it's acclaimed was because it inspired a bunch of hippies to go on road trips.
it's very good at a certain point if ur life
after it's ok
What are the most significant criticisms (or flaws) of utilitarianism?
utility monsters
the classic is-ought
>>7399839
>utility monsters
>look up example
>it's about eating a cookie
God damn it philosophy.
bumping for interest
