Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 179. page
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How to get into Saul Bellow?
>>8216430
My intro to Bellow was Herzog which is considered his tour de force i suppose. It was decent enough and i'm glad I read it -- if only to have an opinion on Bellow. Whether it will stand the test of time I don't know. At one point, Augie March was considered the next Great American Novel. That claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny in 2016.
My advise is to start with herzog -- if you like it then work backwards to Augie march. Like everything else he wrote, it's effuse in jewish neuroticism...
>>8217337
Bellow is in eclipse for reasons other than the quality of his work.
OP read Seize the Day. It's a novella. If you don't like it you can move on desu
>>8217337
I just finished Herzog last month and rather enjoyed it, despite (or perhaps because of) the slow, introspective disquiet that the book essentially is. Should I just jump straight into The Adventures of Augie March, or are there a couple of other books I should read along the way. I was recently recommended Humboldt's gift by someone who's taste I don't entirely trust, and it'd be nice to get a second opinion.
for soemone who wanted to write more 'sincerely' and directly about actual issues - why does he waste so much time on 'postmodern' wankery and dumb humor?
this goes back to infinite jest too. if you watch his interviews on the book he presents a very different image than you'd get from reading the novel. he explains it like a very sad, straightforward cultural commentary. then you read it and you end up getting a shotgun scatter of quirky scenes that need to be decoded and spend half your time reading about all these characters' silly hobbies and obsessions.
and it's very much the same with the pale king. even in a book with no real aim at doing anything but discussing the 'real issues' it's like david shys away from engaging them and instead does some silly author insert story and flips through characters like the one armed ass biting surrealist and the guy with useless ESP. all these things feel so beside the point to his writing.
for someone who criticized dumb entertainment he sure seemed a slave to it, especailly in his wriitng.
Actually the po-mo stuff in this book supports the central theme of the book, which is that valuable work is often boring, tedious and apparently without purpose. The legal shindigs with the authorship and the chapters full of IRS terminology is designed to place you, the reader, in the seat of an IRS employees whose work is mind-numbingly boring but is nonetheless (so his thesis goes) valuable and in a way heroic.
Tl;dr
But Wallace is keeping with a long literary and philosophical tradition of saying one thing and giving another when he had your attention.
Whitman
Kant
Proust
Heidegger
McCarthy
Your conflating sincerity with honesty
>>8216501
but he doesn't do this! he never really explores boredom in this book. it's just one big joke or tragedy after another
the closest he comes is exploring the idea of exploring boredom
/lit/ I have to do a narrative for this creative writing course and there's a cuck word limit of 800 words, I feel like there can be hardly any character development & events taking place pls help
>cuck
pls noone respond this man is an idiot
>>8216387
>there's a cuck word limit
Kill yourself
What is it about the human mind that makes seeks meaning? Doesn't it seem sort of absurd that there's a meaningful and meaningless dichotomy in our heads? Does something cause this in our society or are we innately wired to have this feeling?
>>8216382
>Doesn't it seem sort of absurd that there's a meaningful and meaningless dichotomy in our heads?
Not at all. We have evolved to be pattern-seeking, problem-solving creatures. We find solutions to our basic problems (how to locate tasty animals; where to find reliable water sources) by a process of selection and discrimination.
Meaning emerges naturally out of a sea of solutions and non-solutions; of patterns and noise. Multiply this enough times, and you gain an intuitive sense of what is meaningful and what isn't (try cleaning a disorganised drawer to feel this intuition in action: you may choose to keep a set of batteries which may solve a later problem, yet throw away a bit of wire for which a potential use is less clear - yet you are not incapable of imagining a scenario where that wire could be useful.)
Also I'm drunkposting so maybe what I just said is total horse-shit
>>8216382
This is the literature board.
You should go to /his/
sage and report
>>8216420
It makes a fair bit of sense, when you talk about human beings being pattern seeking creatures. How else would human beings be able to function without these pattern seeking functions? It's hard to imagine.
What were his final thoughts?
I could really go for some tortillasssssssss
fucking lol
>>8216372
"RIP William Gass"
>yfw you write something and its really fucking bad
lets hear what you got, anon. no judging on this board, that's rule number one :^)
Post it asshole
just like this post
Critique thread? All types of literature is welcome.
Do not critique something just because you want yours to be critiqued, critique it if you genuinely have something constructive to add.
Here is my short story.
http://pastebin.com/gds3CyKB
About a school.
http://pastebin.com/28TgF2T4
First Wil and Testicle
1/2
I'm lying down on my synthetic, cat skin, sofa, smoking type O positive laced ketamine, and listening to an audio recording of domesticated penguins having sex.
And I'm writing my masterpiece. My first Wil and testicle. Or, “My First Wil and Testicle”. It's a cop buddy screenplay about a testicle, who after being amputated from an aspiring castrato, leaves his fellow testicle to become a cop. His partner? Former child star, Wil Wheaton.
But all of this writing is giving me jaundice, so I throw the manuscript into the air, demanding it stays there, floating, until I have need of it later. I stab myself in the upper back with my pen, and twist it in until it's about halfway in, and secure, then throw the ketamine pipe on top of my tombstone. Rest in peace, pipe.
Food. I need energy after sucking down horse tranquilizer all day, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And night. And day. And all of the night. Chinese baby pizza. No, you sick fucks, it's not made out of Chinese babies. What kind of monster do you think I am? It's made by Chinese babies. To help pay off debts, some farmers in China sell their excess babies into pizzeria slavery. The ethics are a little sketchy, but damn, these pizzas are incredible. Honey bee crust. Delicious.
When I was older, I couldn't find the ingredients to make even the most basic of pizzas. Pepperoni had been gone for years, hunted to extinction by radical vegan extremists. We thought it an isolated series of incidents, the pepperonis didn't disappear overnight, but one morning we woke from our beds, turned on the television, and the president told us that the very last pepperoni in the world had been destroyed. If the death of pepperoni had been a long drawn out whimpering fart, the death of cheese was a sudden and completely unanticipated diarrhea shit storm violent explosion of a fart. Fuck all that noise, I had decided to revert to my younger self. In a world of pizza.
I'm running late for work. I go to my bathroom and induce vomiting to get rid of the pizza. I need room in my stomach for work, plus I plan to transition to a life of shirtlessness soon, and don't need to build up any excess fat. Brush my teeth, dry them off with an old pair of underwear, and then rub superglue over them. This helps fight the acidity of vomit that attacks the enamel. I look in the mirror and recite my reverse Gatsby opener affirmation before the glue seals my lips to my teeth.
“In my older and less vulnerable days my mother sold me some advice that I tend to forget every day. Whenever you feel like praising any one, just forget that some of the people in this world have had every advantage that you never did.”
I put on two thirds of a shirt (Small incremental steps are best when transitioning to a shirtless lifestyle) and crawl out of my window, ready for work.
>>8216953
2/2 (start of next scene)
Nine in the morning like three bowling pins knocked down by a thunderous God leaving the remaining nine for the great unwashed to aim for to pick up the spare to pick up the toasted french pastries that papa and I prepare every morning spared a morning of empty bellies as they go about their business in businesses or with business partners on their busy days of byzantine barbiturate fueled mock battles while papa has been here since last night painting today's specials on both the glass windows and floors and I have been prepping for that same amount of time drenching bread in time stream harvested pterodactyl egg yolk while speaking french incantations from a long forgotten grimoire recovered from the tomb of Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre but the missing piece of this triumvirate of breakfast fast but not cheap food lords is missing and without that missing piece there will be no one to man the cash register and we will be ruined for the morning rush and we may die. Corncob tortilla. Papa will we die?
How do I write a book in this day and age that becomes a classic? What are some recent books over the past couple decades that you would deem classic either right now or in a few decades and why?
Blood meridian
Lolita
Probably last two true classics
American Pastoral
infinite jest
How can I distinguish well written prose from overwritten purple prose? examples would help.
HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Anything by Lovecraft
>>8216101
well written prose should give you chills and make you feel a little heady, or at the very least leave you in a state of pleasant reflexion while you unweave and examine its construction and meaning at length
purple prose should make you make you feel like the author is trying way too hard to accomplish the former, usually you should instinctually cringe or feel a very natural, almost pleasant, kind of contempt for the author--if it is particularly bad or you are particularly squeamish then embarrassment is not an uncommon emotion
this should come naturally to you depending on how well read you are
>>8216112
is lovecraft the overwritten purple prose?
One of my poems just got accepted for publication to a literary journal. The publishers are asking for a short bio and I'm way too autistic to know what to write. The fuck is my bio supposed to be? I've never been published before and I have 0 previous writing credits.
>>8216096
Congrats.
And relax man. Look in the journal and see what other poets bios tend to include.
They probably want to know your age, location, experience, background etc. in as much detail as the wordcount warrants.
Anon lives with his 14 year old daughter in California. In his spare time, he contributes to his local lepidopteran society and art house cinema.
>>8216104
I literally have zero experience in literary ventures which is what I'm concerned about. I googled what a good bio would be and the first page had this as a good example: Karina Sims is a 26-year-old writer from Beaver Falls, British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of many short stories and an unpublished novel. Her interests include: long walks on the beach, candle lit dinners, world domination and cannibalism.
Which tells me this person has no idea what they're talking about.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - Palestrina, Mass
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami - Liszt, Le mal du pays
>>8216057
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler - Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory
>>8216057
My Diary, To Be Honest by OP - Crawling, Linkin Park
There was a YA book i read at 13 called Struts and Frets that had a pretty great soundtrack
I'm sick of reading comics I want some great contemporary books
On The Edge by Rafael Chirbes
>>8216017
There are none.
From the question of which you are asking, it seems to me that you are inquiring about some literature written after the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Yes, I suppose I could recommend such a thing, albeit your reading prowess is obviously not that of my own considering your delve into... comics...
No worries, I am here to save the day, and to which book I recommend, is of course, the God Delusion.
Nowhere else will you find such a magnificent portrayal of arguments against the existence of "God".
This book has been my guiding hand, and has shown me the way, my friend. Use it to lead you out of darkness, and if you happen to subscribe to a so-called "God", this will cure you of your illness.
After finishing the book, please refer to the works of Christopher Hitchens, one of the most influential men of our time.
Thank you my good sir, and may your travels of enlightenment be swift and meaningful!
sup /lit/ what do you think?
I'm interested in fiction that is chock-full of esoteric references and terms. In other words, authors who do a lot of name-dropping. Books like The Recognitions, Ulysses, Against Nature, or Pynchon novels come to mind (though preferably not as esoteric as Ulysses, please). I enjoy books like this because A) there's an undeniable satisfaction I get when I understand the reference, almost like a reward for reading about the reference in the past and B) it is a great way to become familiar with new topics and ideas. What have you got, anons?
>>8215996
Dante
>>8216004
Of course, should have included him with the names mentioned :p
Moby-Dick
The Waste Land
What are the essential readings in politics? I've already read Republic, Laws, Politics, Leviathan and The Prince.
>>8215927
Greeks & Econ
Figure it out.
>>8215934
Also, finance (if you didn't include that in econ).
find syllabuses from good schools online.
