I don't want to start with the greeks
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Then start somewhere else
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>>9409797
Start with Confucius.
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>>9409797
>yfw you already started reading somewhere else because you're reading this.
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Do you remember your history lessons and learning about the town fool in Elizabethan England? You know who I mean. The court jester - dressed in 'fool's motley', a tricornered hat, red-and-blue outfit, and bauble - whose purpose in life was to remind the king he was not God. Vancouver had its very own town fool.
It was April 1, 1968 when 35-year-old Joachim Foikis received a $3,500 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in order to finance Foakis' mission of being the town fool.
Joachim was an educated man. He held two university degrees - one in economics received from the University of Berlin and one in literature from UBC. However, his goal in life was “to spread joy and confusion”, while at the same time to “mock the four pillars of society: money, status, respectability, and conformity.”
Foikis spent his days in the courthouse square. There he would talk to anyone who was willing to talk with him. He petitioned the city council to establish a fool's tax - one cent for every ordinary citizen and two cents for every politician. He held street parties for residents of Vancouver's down town east side - the poorest postal code in Canada. He went to the annual general meeting of the Architectural Institute of B.C. with a group of mimes and a loaf of bread. He had a wagon drawn by donkeys and would drive it along Cambie Street during rush hour. Foikis was dedicated to playing the fool, angering some and delighting others while promoting discussion. And he would disappear as suddenly as he had appeared.
Our town fool first appeared at the city's 1967 Canadian Centennial celebrations. There he was threatened with a knife by a sailor who thought he was a communist.
“Vancouver’s Town Fool disturbs you,” a 1969 editorial in The Vancouver Sun stated. “He is warm and friendly, easy to talk to, almost always cheerful. Yet he challenges. Not only in what he says but by being who he is, he insults your rat race – the business of working for a living or for a reputation or to acquire things. Joachim Foikis has opted out with style. What he’s saying is that we’re caught up in the things of this world more than we want to admit to.”
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Joachim Foikis was a father of two and a husband. He had a few careers such as social worker, labourer and was partway through training to be a librarian when, in early 1967, he decided to become the Town Fool. He announced his decision to his wife and the two rushed off to get material to make his costume.
“Our needs are slight, so I can work for a year at a good salary, then take a year off to read,” Foikis explained, in a 1968 interview with Weekend Magazine. “It is foolishness that man should be the servant of money. Money should be the servant of man.”
“The trouble with many people is that they can never reach a threshold for what they think are their needs,” Foikis said in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. “They keep escalating their needs up and up, and they can’t keep up with them. I don’t want to spend more time than necessary making money. I want the freedom to study and philosophize.”
Is he, dare I say, our guy?
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serious question:
Is there a good book on a fool. An actual fool.
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>>9409781
Do you mean one which the M.C. is deceived or one which the M.C. is a court jester?
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How do I start with Scruton?
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>>9409672
>le tobacco industry shill
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You start with Burke.
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Throw it in the trash.
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Name a book series that you read or want to read.
I'm going away for a few months, with not internet.
Bookseries I'm bringing with me, so far:
Sherlock Holmes
Harry Potter
Goosebumps
Working on collecting:
Hercule Poirot
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youll never find #62
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>>9409651
I'm doing the exact same thing this summer. In fact I do it every year but I like bringing a lot of good lit with me, I'm planning on taking with me this all of In Search of Lost Time which is one of my reading goals for this year.
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>>9409651
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I need more works like Beowulf.
Is it the epitome of literature? Nothing else is as well made.
Also, is learning German and Norwegian the key to reading the great Anglo texts like Nibelung and such?
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>>9409641
Which translation did you use?
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>>9409653
McNamara
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>>9409641
>as well made
My intention is surely not to antagonize, but on what level?
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Reminder to get off the internet and go read otherwise you'd turn out a lazy retard like Chris.
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>>9409572
What if I write instead of read? It's almost the same thing...
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too late
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>>9409588
whats up Nick Smith
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Whats the best way to kill a character?
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>>9409564
A duel
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Halfway through
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How do I get into (visual) art? Into knowing about the Bauhaus, or what romanticism was, into knowing about the most important pieces and why they're important, into knowing the names of the hot upcoming artists? It just seems so impenetrable - there are no museums or galleries in my area, there's no site like RYM or Letterboxd for art, and I know of no forum that discusses these. It all seems terribly closed to college students and first world countries with an active scene. How is one supposed to even follow the current status of it?
Is there a canon of literature I can check out that could orientate me? Particularly interested on having a good grasp of the overall history, avant-garde movements, and criticism.
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>>9409529
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Art
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>>9409529
you really just have to do some digging on the internet. I find out about contemporary artists usually by accident. As far as history goes you can just get any general art history book. Some are more comprehensive than others of course, but any will give you the ability to start investigating a movement you're interested in or whatever. Here's a list of artists that I've found that I like. Some of them aren't that great and most of classic guys I leave off because I already know they're work. A great deal of this list is post-1950. I hope you can get something out of it.
https://pastebin.com/a4BBmVjU
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>>9409532
This is a really great accessible introduction.
Janson and Janson's History of Art is a standard but wonderful textbook on the history of art. You can definitely find an older edition at any used book store.
I'd also recommend pic related for more information of Modern Art. Anything Robert Hughes is great.
John Richardson's massive biography of Picasso is a great read, and because Picasso is so important you get a good history of that era of art as well.
No one reads Walter Pater's The Renaissance as a serious history, but he's such a great writer and has a very important attitude towards art that you have to check it out.
Robert L. Herbert's book on impressionism is great. The subtitle is "Art, Leisure and Parisian Society" but don't mistake it for something overly historicized or drowned in theory or something. There is definitely a huge focus on the art itself.
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>“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
What did he mean by this?
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>>9409424
He means he read it multiple times.
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>>9409429
nah dude
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>>9409429
Kek
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What do you think about stream of consciousness surrealist literature? Whenever I sit down to write it's almost always something like this, dreamlike sequences with no overarching coherent plot but I haven't really expanded on books of this type and I'm not sure how could I structure it to be suitable for a release.
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i take a sip of tropical green, as I peruse through a boring post.
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It's the literature equivalent of mumblecore. Nothing inherently wrong with that writing style, just difficult at times for readers to break into.
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I despise it.
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I bought pic related at a thrift shop for 1 €. I dimly recollect that /lit/ hates it. Somebody care to explain what's wrong with it? I just started reading the introduction.
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Fuck /lit/. it's a great read.
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>>9409272
Russell did not even try to be unbiased
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It's not only /lit/, you just have to use Google, at best it's very controversial, I would never waste time on it personally when I can instead choose Copleston.
>I would prefer not to.
What did he mean by this?
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>>9409221
I would prefer not to.
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This post shouldnt have any replies
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>>9409426
I'd prefer not to not reply to this.
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>He says no to no and yes to yes. He says yes
To no; and in saying yes he says farewell.
How much crack and/or PCP did this Wallace Stevens guy like smoke?
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>>9408876
Anachronisms. Shitpost what u know, yo.
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>>9408876
he wrote a poem about dairy queen
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>>9408876
>read Comedian as Letter C
>mfw
The language is great and all but just... what the fuck.
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Hello i need advice on some new books to read.
I just finished the Millenium trilogy and the Kingkiller chronichles. any advice would be appreciated.
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please /lit i need your wisdom
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>Millenium
>Kingkiller
You've probably covered enough ground to move on to some of the less complex YA novels
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>>9408815
Inheritance Cycle by Paolini!
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Why is it so hard to really, REALLY understand another human being? To have a true, sincere, understandable interaction with him? Language is really limited, isn't it? Why is it so hard to truly share what is inside your mind?
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>>9408755
language stems from imagination which only rationalists claim as a a tool to improve what they experience through the 5 senses. these people take seriously a factory which is just here to create fantasies.
The interesting question is whether you need imagination to have reflexivity.
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now it turns out that once you see how useless imagination/language is, you also lose the need to try to understand another human, precisely because there is nothing to understand in the first place.
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