Are there any literary works similar to picrelated, that is meaning the main character being socially isolated miserable failure, being a wimp, coward and stuff?
Notes From the Underground by Dostoevsky.
Search him on Literature Map, imma pretty sure Yukio Mishima wrote some works, similar to No longer human (though not that extremely sad)
The Day of the Locust
Ask the Dust
Too Loud a Solitude
I feel like I've read way more of this kind of book than those three but I can't recall very many right now. Also my diary desu
Any recommendations for worthwhile short story collections?
Tolstoy - Collected Shorter Fiction
>Dubliners.
>A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters(Yes, some call it a novel, I know. It can be labeled as short stories collection, too.)
>>7323090
Gogol, The Collected Tales.
Alternatively, just The Petersburg Tales. They're the best.
All philosophers claim that a healthy mind must reside in a healthy body, but few walk the walk. They're either scrawny DYEL's or, even worse, obese.
What are some philosophers that actually hit the weights, or at least did some (any!) kind of sport?
Ignoring that he wasn't strictly speaking a philosopher, skipped leg day and was a manlet, there's this guy. But I don't know anyone else, hell, even nietzche, who always talked about muh ubermensch was DYEL.
>>7323089
The greeks.
They're also literally the only worthwhile philosophers besides early Christian philosophy.
>>7323089
Socrates was a soldier who fought against Sparta. Even in his old age, he often was in the gymnasium exercising.
Plato was a wrestler.
Wittgenstein fought in WWI so he was surely pretty fit.
I like to think that Machiavelli was in good shape, especially after he was exiled.
Aurelius was definitely fit and saw the importance of having a healthy body.
>>7323101
>ww1
>physically fit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy1ZAMTENTI
this is the O.S.S. from WWII, literally the elite of the elite and high school athletes would fucking destroy them 1v1.
>"If your primary sexual relationship is with your hand, something is wrong."
Did he really say this?
P
A U D I E N C E
S
S
Y
this nigga talks about jerkin off all the time though
When I see this thread I don't feel bad at all because my primary sexual relationship is with your mom, OP.
![c8ee0a83ba1ee330a97c3d9bfb055702.300x445x1[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vTQxajE.jpg "c8ee0a83ba1ee330a97c3d9bfb055702.300x445x1[1]")
Okay forreal hold on, don't ban me. Is this literature? When do works go from being X to literature?
Like Romeo & Juliett obviously wasn't literature when it came out, but then eventually it did.
So
a) is this literature?
b) more generally, when does a work become literature?
inb4 massive shitstorm and we get banned. Please keep it together /lit/
>>7322981
It's /lit/ until you invade Poland, then it's /pol/.
>>7322981
You should ask when does a piece become art, and use the example of somebody's random stick figure sketch compared to the mona lisa.
The safest/least exciting answer is that it's a social consensus on what we recognise as artistic.
>>7323086
Well yeah that's the question but it's really hard to say.
![283211c5cf2416562716aba40ac22c47[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QbCvpJd.jpg "283211c5cf2416562716aba40ac22c47[1]")
So /lit/ I've been in love for about 2 years and I just can't get her out of my head.
Now I'm a very logical person and seeing love being overused in all forms of art, I wonder is there is a spiritual element on romantic love or is just biological functions.
Is there a book that analyzes those two possibilities?
>>7322906
I have been in love for 4 years
There's some days I don't think about her but mostly everyday I do
>>7322906
Love does not exist--it is the result of chemical processes. However, it is unknown how exactly the chemical processes translate to the feeling of the illusion of love.
How The Mind Works
Particularly the Hotheads chapter and the stuff on rivals, etc.
Realest thing I've never had to fake...
Piece of cake...
You're different from the ones before...
I know you don't believe it's you I've waited for...
Rate the languages you know and provide in what order you learned them. Maybe how good a language seems depends on how many early experiences are tied to it.
For example I read Harry Potter in German first (I was 12), and found it amazing, then in English it seemed robotic and unrelatable.
My favorite languages:
1. Russian
2. German
3. French
4. English
The order I learned them in
1+ 2. Russian/ German
3. French
4. English
Just Portuguese (native) and English. I don't really remember when I "learned" English, I think I was about 11 or 12.
I haven't fully learned a language yet, but I've dabbled in Norwegian/Swedish and some very minor Japanese. I'm currently committing to Russian right now and I have been for a few months. So far Russian is my favorite. Would any of you guys some pretty good resources for learning Russian? All I have is pic related.
>>7322686
>favourites
1.English
2.German
3.French
4.spanish
>Order learnt in
1+2 English + french (Father's french)
3. German
4. spanish (2nd year learning)
Honestly I like english and german the most, english more so as i'm much better at it.
Thoughts? Having been forced to read this I'm really unimpressed. Is everything Wilde wrote this lame?
Just started the book yesterday and honestly cannot say that I am enjoying it so far. Maybe it gets better?
>>7322611
>forced to read
Sorry about that. Maybe come back to it when you're more mature and willing to read it.
>>7322627
Not really. You should probably finish it for, like, cultural reasons because it isn't a hard read at all, but it doesn't get very good.
Has anyone learned another language for the purpose of reading literature in its original language? Did you get any worthwhile insights over the translations? I want to learn German so that I can read all of the great philosophers in their native tongue.
I've been learning German for eight years and spent a couple months in Brandenburg. Still can't touch the philosophers. Can read Hesse without a dictionary and Kafka and Goethe pretty well though.
English translations clear a lot of stuff up for German, since Germans can make infinite sentences packed with relative clauses that make sense but are awful to read. The original is nice because it keeps article gender and of course some words are hard to translate. It's a really directional language so it's fun to start thinking in German terms about movement and space and stuff.
>>7322540
I'm doing this with Arabic.
No, but I am currently studying Ancient Greek so hopefully I will be able to read it soon enough.
Oi /lit/, lets talk some books from the last ten or so years that you think deserve some recognition.
I'm offering up Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. Great book by an Irish author. Some describe it as Hogwarts with drugs and corruption instead of magic. Related characters, very funny, beautiful prose and wide vocabulary. (Can also recommend his other two novels, An Evening Of Long Goodbyes and The Mark and the Void, which came out earlier this year.)
Close runner up would be & Sons by David Gilbert, about a reclusive Salinger-esque author on the verge of being on his death bed, set in Manhattan.
What've youse got?
i thought the luminaries by eleanor catton was pretty damn good.
I've been singing the praises of David Rakoff for years, very funny essayist who died way too soon.
I friggin love Skippy dies. And it's the first time in years I've heard of it.
>buy avant garde novel consisting of 500 blank pages
>read it
>>7322451
Order Phenomenology of Spirit, In Search of Lost Time online at premium prices.
>>7322451
>print out lengthy strings of numbers from a random number generator
>read it
I am reading infinite jest for the 10th time.
I wish I was kidding.
Get on my fucking level plebs
Hey /lit/, I've compiled a bunch of books that increased my understanding of the world and would like to share them with you, and hopefully get some recommendations as well, most are focused around Black radicalism but include anti-colonial/imperialist/oppression and non-racially focused books.
Includes:
>Critical Race Theory - Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic
>Medical Apartheid - Harriet A. Washington
>The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon
>Are Prisons Obsolete - Angela Davis
>Assata, An Autobiography - Assata Shakur
>The Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
>Racism without Racists - Eduardo Bonilla Silva
>Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire
>How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney
>Huey P. Newton Reader
>Lies My Teacher Told Me - James W. Loewen
>The Autobiography of Malcolm X - el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (with assistance of Alex Haley)
>The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander
Revolutionary Suicide - Huey P. Newton
>Negroes with Guns - Robert F. Williams
>The Black Radical Tradition - Collection of works from many black radicals.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/oo31iudyahban6t/Good_Shit_Mhm.7z
>>7322361
Nice, thanks for the books.
>>7322361
most of that is old school shit
if you are looking for more anti-colonial lit, some more contemporary authors are spivak, babha, agamben. i left the academy years ago, not sure who is highly cited of the last 20 or so years
>>7322487
No problemo
Just wanted to share
>>7322517
Yeah its definitely old school. I'll check those out for sure, thanks for the tip.
>"the academy"
spooky
How do you guys distinguish good literature from bad literature?
I can read a book, get really into it, like it or hate it, but I am so bad at actually valuing a book on its literary content/value.
I seriously thought Murakami was high lit before I came here and someone explained to me why he is not high lit. I can only recognize this shit when people cut it out for me. I want to be able to judge things myself, not be dependent on other people to see what I don't see.
What shall I do? find an introduction to literary criticism?
>>7322339
>he subscribes to the good/bad dichotomy
>>7322339
read more
1. What does this work of art try to do?
2. Did it do that?
3. Was that worth doing?
If you could make mandatory the reading of 5 philosophy books for everybody which would it be?
Mine:
1
Being and Time
The World as Will and Representation
Being and Nothingness
Cartesian Meditations
Anything by Emil Cioran from his French days
“An Essay on Time” by Norbert Elias
“Being and Time” by Martin Heidegger
“The Technological Society” by Jacques Ellul
“The Concept of Anxiety” by Soren Kierkegaard
“Matter and Memory” by Henri Bergson
The Republic
Critique of Pure Reason
The Science of Logic
Negative Dialectics
Physics
The Republic
Cartesian Meditations
Treatise on Human Nature
Critique of Pure Reason
Philosophical Investigations
