Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 702. page
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Dear /lit/
What defines god-tier literature? God-tier writing mechanics? Stories capable of entertaining the masses? I feel it is easy to define a "good book" as one that I enjoy, but is it more accurate to define a books worth by its ability to teach, or bear significance on the world?
I found pic related highly entertaining though lacking in many manors.
>>7867533
>lacking in many manors.
Here's one, hope it helps.
Not to imply entertainment and value are mutually exclusive.
>>7867538
LOL
hey /lit/, i own this copy of gravity's rainbow. haven't started reading it yet. ive heard about the errors in this publication. should i sell it to my local used bookstore and buy an older copy? how bad are the mistakes?
Man how the fuck does a big publishing company actually fuck up a book like GR lmoa
You cant get rid of it dude. Not only is it riddled with errors, but its cursed. I tried to chuck mine out the window and it came boomeranging back inside and flew rigut back into its place on the shelf
>>7867475
The mistakes are inconsequential and few, and from context, you can work it out if you're not retarded. People need to stop losing their shit over this as if it destroys the coherence of the whole book.
http://www.bookerrata.com/books/gravity.html
About two months ago I started reading consistently, but I still read pretty slowly. Are there any tips you guys can give me on how to read faster. Is the best thing to do to just keep reading consistently.
>>7867346
Reading speed is largely genetic, just learn to be comfortable with your current rate and use it for pacing purposes.
Don't be fooled by speed-reading tips or techniques they're scam designed to sell a lot of worthless media, also delete this thread before anyone comes here and starts making "recommendations" based on their own inner sadism.
Keep reading though.
Reading is done when the eyes pause over text. With your eyes paused you can read 3-4 words at once, more if you're talented or practiced. So you can break up a line into 2-3 eye movements and go down the page like that.
Reading slowly is better than reading quickly. If anything, those who read quickly should try to slow down.
“As I say at the beginning of my workshops, 'Everything I say here is a lie -- bullshit, in other words -- because anything that you put in words is not experience, is not the experiment. It's a representation -- a misrepresentation.”
Remember the motto passed to us (from G.C.C. via S.S.C.U.): "Cosmic Love is absolutely Ruthless and Highly Indifferent: it teaches its lessons whether you like/dislike them or not."
― John C. Lilly
Anyone on /lit/ familiar with John C. Lilly and his work? He seems to me like a person who saw beyond the illusory nature of language, noting how it could never fully explain the truth of the cosmos. Nature is, as he words it, indifferent and ruthless. And yet we are a society that operates on ideological discourse, making all these various meanings that have nothing to do with nature.
Interview of Lilly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVf81iwSXT4
>>7867288
>take a lot of acid
>experience sensations you can't rationalize enough to express in English
>decide those sensations were related to real phenomena and spend a lifetime insisting on this
Tedious, to be honest.
>>7867294
Have you ever taken acid?
>>7867298
As a matter of fact, yes. I just have the presence of mind to look at the experience critically afterwards.
Is materialism the final stage of metaphysics?
Is the universe just a giant machine functioning according to the laws of physics?
I'm finding myself returning to more "fedora" like beliefs when it comes to ultimate truths, after dabbling for a while in Christianity/occultism/perennialism.
When I looked at what Plato and Aristotle were trying to achieve, I realized they would have come up with completely different ideas if they knew the laws of physics and encountered Descartes' skepticism.
Was Bacon right? Were the greeks the "childhood" period of philosophy? I haven't read Pythagoras, but it sounds like he was the only one with the right idea.
I know religion is "extra-rational", in that whether or not it's entirely rational isn't important. I'm also aware of the millennia of tradition packed into the allegories of the bible, and even of the seemingly practical effects of occultism.
But from a strictly metaphysical perspective, how do you rise above materialism? The functions of our universe are being mathematically proven as we speak.
materialism isn't really fedoric, and if you pay attention to fedoras you might notice they don't exactly follow through with their materialism and don't accept hard determinism
there's lots of idealist edgy rightwing fedoramen on this website right now too
i think they like to post those naked marble aryan men so you can identify them easily
>>7867218
Materialism was already a well-known view among the Greeks before Plato and Aristotle, with advocates such as Democritus, Leucippus, and Empedocles. Arguably Thales was a materialist. It was not a lack of exposure to modern physics or Cartesian skepticism (pyrrhonian skepticism, anyone?) that made Plato and Aristotle hold their views.
For now, maybe try AJ Ayer and Wittgenstein, that would prepare you to see past "ultimate truths" in terms of materialism or idealism or whateverism.
>>7867321
None of the ancient skeptics had found the formulas the universe abides by. You really think they (especially Aristotle) would come up with the same philosophies and accept the pantheon of gods as a given if they had Newton's Principia?
What would Humbert Humbert think of Mathilda? Would he classify her as a nymphet?
Literary exercise: write something about Mathilda in Nabokov's style, or some very poetic style, like Shakespeare's metaphoric jungles.
Or (easy mode): just write somethign about Natalie Portman at that age.
Some songs to inspire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc5bCExt6L0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml0ySvrVd6o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVMnQ1ypjmY
>>7867078
my copy of Lolita is in another castle so I can't look up what Humbert's exact words are, but I feel like Mathilda wouldn't qualify. Are nymphets not the product of idealized dreams, while Mathilda is a corrupt byproduct of reality, a child jaded and prematurely matured by the cruelty of others?
I mean, surely Hit Girl is not a nymphet, and I feel Mathilda leans more in that direction than Dolores.
Lana Del Rey is my muse
>>7867078
>Mathilda
you mean the kids' book by Roald Dahl?
What's your favorite cosmic horror?
Lovecraft is pretty shit
>>7866862
Tell us what you liked not what you didn't like.
>>7866863
I couldn't describe the reasons without descending into utter madness.
What is the best Buddhist literature? Things including mindfulness?
There are so many options of such varying quality. Any suggestions? Also any tips on maintaining mindfulness day to day?
>>7866728
start with the greeks
>>7866737
the greek buddhists? You mean the stoics? Or are you a mindless memer.
>>7866744
Stoics are quite literally the memest philosophers the world has seen.
>somehow developed an iron mental strength
>somwhere along the line forgot to assign direction to this strength
>aimlessely wander through life without letting anything affect me, good or bad
How does it even feel to be really moved by a book so much that you just have that click in your mind to look at things differently, to live a new life, to change your perspective almost completely?
Even the assumed greatest works of literature have not been able to break through to me. I can be appreciate a good book, but I'll just say yeah, that was a good bad. I will never somehow relay the book unto my life's current circumstances or my own person.
A book has never changed me as a person or set off a chain reaction that led to a drastic change of personality. I basically let nothing change my own self. This means that I dont learn from much of anything either. My vocabulary doesn't even expand.
Are there any other people like me here? How do you deal with it and should you even? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage?
>iron mental strength
>directionless
lolwut
also you should probably read some buddhist literature
>>7866598
Well, it's solid as opposed to fluid. In the sense that it is like an immovable object that lets nothing in or out. No new ideas adopted and no new ideas formed.
Religious literature is pretty much cultist literature to me. They have a tendancy to tell beautiful, intricate stories but then, at the last sentence, they will throw something about their religion into it so as to tie a nice end to it.
Except this upsets me because I feel almost cheated, like I just read several hundred pages of basically, ads. Ads for a particular religion. Not written for the story's sake, but for religious purposes. It can be very subtle or very obtuse, doesn't matter.
Buddhist literature I found is more subtle, in the sense that it doesn't pressure you into anything. But it's still subtle brain-washing.
>>7866567
>Are there any other people like me here?
There are a lot of people who like to make thinly-veiled /adv/ blog posts on this board.
You aren't the only one.
To start off with, I've never been on this board before so I'm not even sure if this belongs here, but let's give it a go.
The book is always better than the movie.
Except in THE FUCKING CASE OF LORD OF THE RINGS
I cannot understand what makes people think that this book (trilogy = book in this description) is better than Peter Jackson's movies, so I'd be very grateful if someone could explain that.
And no, being the first at something doesn't mean that you're the best. Not many people go around saying "oh man the lyre is the best instrument ever because it's (one of) the first, fuck "insert musician name here".
First off, the books have absolutely no soul. Sure, JRRT is pretty damn good at describing nature and shit, landscapes and whatnot but man, his characters are black and white, nothing more, nothing less. Gandalf dies - two lines uttered by Frodo and Aragorn to commemorate their fallen comrade. Boromir dies - same fucking thing. There's more emotion from a truck driver from Oklahoma running over a snail than in this shit.
Second of all, some subplots are useless. Ayy I'm gonna make the hobbits get lost again and introduce this all-powerful wizard type fella who isn't affected by the main cause of havoc in the world and then just.. forget.. about.. his.. existence.. OH NO! HOW COULD PETER JACKSON NOT INCLUDE SUCH AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER!??
OH NO!
Prove me wrong.
a lot of whats impressive about LOTR is its world building. JRR tolkien created the world, peter jackson just filmed it.
Might add this too:
I loved The Hobbit (the book) and am planning to read the Silmarillion. This is exclusively about the LotR trilogy.
>>7866243
>no soul
You obviously don't know how to read poetry.
The soul is what Jackson stripped out of the novel, not the other way around. Screaming and writhing over a wizard's death is really not worth it considering how fucking old he was, it's fine. Also, how many books have you read with good mourning scenes? Shit like that would read horribly on paper, and if some great flowery eulogy, it slows down the novel (believe it or not, there is pacing in the writing even if you're too bad a reader to appreciate it), and would've been too saccharine after... two lines.but if this is b8, m8 I rate 8/8
Now that /lit/ has degenerated into shitposting and poor quality posts, where can us oldfag patricians, who are actually well-read and determined to discuss literature, go?
You can go to hell
>le token "I've been here 1 month and boy have things turned for the worst!" post
/lit/ isn't a spring of constant entertainment, fuck no board is. Every board is infested with people who've slithered away from /b/ in an ungodly pool of their own waste, including you and me. think about that for a second. We're going to shit post every now and then, and certain times of the day and certain months of the year and certain days of the month (e.g. spring break) are much worse than others.
What does lit think of this?
Post-humanism avant la lettre. I like his love for animalx.
One of the most boring book I ever read. I remember the deep and undivided joy I felt after finishing it.
>>7866004
I like it very much.
Look at him! He is all goofy and nice and then he writes some fucked up shit like Naked Lunch! What the Hell is even going on in this Book? Is there some Background information important to understand that book? Or does anybody understands that book at all?
not all books are meant to be "understood". Just let it take you along for the ride, it might not be for everyone.
>>7865694
Good point anon! I quite enjoyed it but always got the feeling there is some drug related content behind all of that. Like a diary of drugged thoughts and haluzinations
Have a look at the movie, it might partly help
What fiction writers were influenced by Wittgenstein in some way?
the greeks
People say DFW but they would have to explain it more to me because I don't exactly see it. Wasn't his father into him?
>>7865666
William Gass, who studied under him for a time.
