Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 258. page

Not even Bowden wanted to be like Bowden, hence why he killed himself.

>>9934462
Scream Nietzsche at the ocean with pebbles in your mouth.

>>9934462

Genius like him is simply rare, 1 in a million or even more. RIP Bowden, one of the greatest heroes of the West.

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>>9934449
ass

>>9934449
Pinker writes for a general audience. He isn't a French pseud who's trying to impress and confuse American undergrads, he's a specialist trying to explain complex ideas to laypeople in as clear and accurate a way as possible. This requires simplicity

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>>9934480
Pinker is actually someone who does stick to the point most of the time, and being a linguist he knows how to use words.
>he's a specialist trying to explain complex ideas to laypeople in as clear and accurate a way as possible.
Why I used him in op.
Why aren't everyone like Steven Pinker?

Sure better angels of our nature could be 400 pages shorter. But his other stuff is ok.

My personal recommendations

Notes from Underground: Katz
Crime and Punishment: Ready
The Idiot: Myers
Demons: Katz
The Brothers K: Avsey

For Dante, Binyon for poetry and Sinclair for prose.

Every single day

>>9942457
don't and i mean DON'T read the fucking Divina Commedia in translation
just accept the fact that you're a fucking monolingual anglo pleb and enjoy exploring the vast landscape of english literature
but don't (and i mean DON'T) read poetry in translation
NEVER

Good poet. Pic is good enough, just print it in yellow.

Les Amours jaunes was a great read.
There are very few pictures of him, yours might be the best.

Fucking frog

where do you study, op? France? Which univ?

>>9934234
I use this word to describe ham beasts who say they can't lose weight

>>9934243
Huxley uses it once per page.

I read this book because my dad bought it for me.

>>9942476
nice
your dad is a good person

>>9942481
I dunno man he was reading Ready Player One a short time ago and all he seems to read is WH Smith-tier novels and old-ish sci-fi. But he keeps buying me patrish books, and he seems to have read everything I have. And he bullies me for mispronouncing stuff...

You should keep two things in mind: (1) Authors are only human beings, and (2) one book doesn't equal one tidy emotional climax, or monolithic point of it all.

On (1), for various reasons our culture takes literature as a cult of heroic genius. Every famous author, every "canonical" name, isn't taken in historical context as a human being with a unique mind full of unique elements and motivations, but a Genius who is supposed to produce Works of Genius. The truth is, great authors wrote shitty or mediocre books, authors can be famous for strange reasons, or not be famous until years after their deaths, and authors can have redundant and rambling literary styles. A good example is Les Miserables, which was considered saccharine and disappointing by many contemporaries. Zola is considered by many to be a genius, but Lukacs considered him a second-rate talent; Lukacs considers Flaubert to be a genius for certain reasons, but many consider Flaubert mediocre.

When you read, you should not be trying to access the singular Genius Essence at the gooey centre of the book. Just treat it as something written by a purportedly very smart guy. It can be redundant, it can be genius but have shitty redundant parts, it can be genius but flawed, etc.

On (2) more specifically, you should allow for the possibility that your mind has been trained to expect easy and predictable gratification. Movies and other modern narrative forms are extremely simplified and can be almost childlike. It's similar to what has happened to modern music, where the innovations of the classical tradition reached a point where they required cultivation to appreciate, and then capitalism moved in, crudely extracted the "sweet spots" that are easy for anybody to enjoy, refined them to the point that they could be reproduced easily, and then bombarded people with them from birth until expectations were permanently lowered.

A book is the horizon of another world, a point of contact that opens up a space where you can think of something other than that is already in your head. A movie, by contrast, is designed to meld with your already existing space of expectations, and entertain you for an hour. You should be more scared of ready-made and easily induced "heights" than of boredom. Boredom is at least forcing you to think and opening up the possibility of learning something completely new.

Also, after you read enough, the spaces opened up in your mind by books will start to fuse with each other and with your historical knowledge of the context in which they were written, and even the boring parts of Flaubert or Moby Dick can start to be a bridge to insights whose possibility you hadn't realised before. You start to inhabit the same space as Flaubert did when he wrote, or as his contemporaries did when they read him, and you'll start to see surprising things.

Flaubert is not really an author of emotions or dramatic exuberances (see his theory of impersonality).

>There were the seemingly inevitable moments of quasi boredom
Madame Bovary is, ultimately, a novel about boredom

>>9942431
Great post, man

>>9934201
I think SCUM Manifesto was like that but I don't read chick books.

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>>9934201

Who hurt you

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read the underground notes, some nietzsche, eugenics, artificial selection, nazism etc

also, fuck off fascist scum

bampo

Art is capable of providing a visceral emotional reaction
That book probably isn't

>>9934550
Is an erection a visceral reaction

>>9942003
We pray. Not so that God may listen, but so that we may speak to God

>>9942015
not much sense in speaking if the addressee does is not capable of listening now is there?

Horus
>born dec. 25
>12 disciples
>born of a virgin
>sun of god

Jesus
>born dec. 25
>12 disciples
>born of a virgin
>son of god

really makes you think

Dan Dennett is to philosophy what televangelists are to religion.

>>9934075
I find it very hard to derive anything substantial from his quote. Sounds like something a person who just read an introduction to philosophy would say.

I don't have advice. However I came across Henry Adams in a book listing a number of conservative thinkers in history. And if I remember it correctly he was the one who resonated with me the most. So I might start reading him directly and about him more and perhaps we can discuss him in the future.

>>9934061
Read it along with Mt. St. Michel and Sartre (sic). Theyre companion pieces, comfy, and still great.

>>9934164
Ill keep an eye out
>>9934189
Thanks, and nice (sic)

Love Ballard but I haven't read that one yet. Anyway I'm gonna recommend Unlimited Dream Company.

>>9934056
It was cool, I hear it's like a sequel or rehash of Cocaine Nights. And High Rise sounds pretty close in idea to Super-Cannes too...

I think I'll read Crash next.

>>9934018
Been meaning to start Ballard with Super-Cannes. Did you like it? Ballard seems to trigger the fuck out of people.

I for one, really hate our celebrity elite overlords.

>>9934010
both were ghostwritten

Never blamed Edith because the protagonist enabled her to be that mentally weak. Sometimes in life people want to be called out on their bullshit, but Stoner allowed her to live a life of middle class unfullfillment and she hated him for it

>>9934025
Though Stoner wonders this before death, I have to disagree. For one, Edith's disposition was well-established by the time Stoner first meets her. I can see why you see Edith as a pitiable character, and in a sense she is, but I understand that her bedridden spells of illness, forlorn weeks of weeping (which end once Stoner shows no real care), separation of Stoner from his daughter and subsequent oppression to the point where Grace gets pregnant to get away and still becomes an alcoholic are solely intentional manipulations, not a side effect of Stoner's absence of 'putting her in her place'. If you recall, Stoner directly points out that Edith hates him and after a weak denial she replies that Stoner will never leave her anyway.

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that's just how women are.