Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 697. page

>>9729582
I have David McDuff. He is pretty good. My brother has p&v, and he prefers them. Read one of them, and read a more acclaimed translator afterwards to see which one you prefer.

>>9729582
why do people keep asking this? it really doesn't matter that much.

English has some of the worst translations of Dostoyevsky's books. There are a few 'okay' ones, but none are outstanding. Like the anon above said, stick with p&v.

French, spanish and portuguese have the best translations that I know of, you're better off reading one of those or simply reading the original in russian.

I am Brazilian, nationality that, to my shame, is the same as Coelho’s. You want to know what is the problem with Paulo Coelho? Here's the problem:

>a) As a writer.

He is a writer whose books deal only with esoteric themes, new age topics, pseudo-spiritualism and especially religion (a lot of religion). Paulo Coelho writes what people in general (and we all know that the general population does not have anything remarkable in the mental department) want to hear: he talks about the power of the human soul; about God and God's love for everyone; about things like “if you really want something and wish something, than this something will happen for the whole universe is going to conspire to make it happen [go tell that to terminal cancer patients who wish with all their souls, with all the juices in their bodies, the heat in their blood and marrows to just keep on living]”; he speaks that everyone can achieve great things and be significant (usually by just wanting to be so); he pseudo-philosophizes about life after death; talks about his own “experiences” with angels and demons, and so on. In other words: he is just a mix between a self-help writer and a dishonest-priest.

1/2

>>9729290
>the brazilian wizard

fell for his meme in high school. own all of his works. the only book even worth reading is The Winner Stands Alone, and ONLY for the side-plot about the killer. he's really overrated and over hyped.

>>9729323
>b) As a human being.

Paulo Coelho is a despicable person. In reality he is a coward that poses as some kind of saint and guru (and anyone with half a neuron knows what gurus are made with). Some examples of the glorious life achievements of this fellow: when he was young he hit a child with a car and fled the spot with fear; in his youth he was also just a scrawny and shy, a fearful and frightened boy (his surname, Coelho, means rabbit, which is appropriate, since this animal is shy and fragile), but today he loves to tell interviewers about how he was "wild" and "crazy" in this days of youth, and that he was able to fight the demon, sober up and, after long years of toil, changed himself into a much more spiritual and enlightened being. He says he can control the weather and see angels and stuff like that (now, anyone who makes such claims is either psychotic or a charlatan, and Coelho’s eyes look too much like the eyes of a dead-fish to indicate that he actually suffers from some sort of mental illness – what remains is charlatanism). In fact you cannot see an interview with Paulo Coelho without wanting to vomit with his air of superiority and the faker-look. He once had an affair with a woman and got her pregnant. After undergoing an abortion, she had a heavy depression. Coelho encouraged her to attempt suicide (hiss reasons were that he through that such mystical and psychoanalytic approach, a kind of shock therapy, could help her). Paulo Coelho (in a biography written about him) appears forging the signature of his own father, plagiarizing a text from Carlos Heitor Cony (another Brazilian writer) and giving interviews about a meet with John Lennon that never happened. He is, in short, a bad character.

He is that typical character of Portuguese-catholic morals: that kind of people who talks about god and religion and saints and reading the bible but that are constantly acting like cowards and weak-willed sinners. You know, the 2 things that the suburbs and neighborhoods have in greater quantity in catholic countries are churches and bars: this is the typical contradiction of this kind of culture. People rant about Jesus and Mary and the holy ways that will conduct you to heaven and think that it is a big sin to miss Church, but this same people, after church and work, will go to the bars and drink all their salaries in cachaça, and gossip about others, and don’t pay the bills, and don’t go to school, and lie, and cheat, etc.

It is no wonder that Protestant countries in Europe are richer, wiser and much more organized and cultured than Catholic ones.

>>9729069
this sounds too stupid to be nietzsche tbqh

>>9729071
why stupid?

>>9729074
he's saying that investigating cause and effect is fruitless when it isn't
>We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science.
might as well be going full postmoden truth denial. i don't understand the semantics of describing and explaining, "describing" the efficient cause is an "explanation" of why something happens

>not being immortal
I am Borges too.

Thankfully he's been dead for over 30 years

>In an essay published in 1937, Borges attacked the Nazi Party's use of children's books to inflame antisemitism. He wrote, "I don't know if the world can do without German civilization, but I do know that its corruption by the teachings of hatred is a crime."

Fuck him.

>>9729000
>not being zenpilled like Borges
Through socio-historical contextualization, I love you for who you are.

Yup. I'm a ressentimental shithead, forgive me O great moustache man.

>>9728759
Dobson is like that.

I'd post the pic but someone else can.

anticipate this wont work.
if youre not successful at your art in some form by 25 youre kinda screwed.

No. It should be pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that not every event has a cause

>>9728548
Such as?

>>9728556
Any reasonable attempt at explicating a cosmogony

>>9728284
>The seas are sapphires, the fields and forests emeralds. The Himalayas gleam like diamonds.
>The strange blue world to which my father sent me.
>If you knew how you are loved, not one of you would raise a hand in rage again.

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> Are you so much wiser at your age than I am at mine that you understand that wocked people always do some harm to their closest neighbors while good people do them good, but I have reached such a pitch of ignorance that Ido not realize this,
> namely that if I make one of my associates wicked I run the risk of being harmed by him,

All silencing of discussion is the assumption of infallibility. Js mill

>>9727716
Anon first I'm going to ask you why you choose to disengage and unenjoy what should be an objectively delightful experience; and I will add that Shakespeare wrote much more for the groundlings than for the critics. Critics are leeches anon and theater is a living thing which will always defy convention at least i hope but in the USA where I live it is dying a slow death.

>>9727716
>Artistic freedom and diverse cast are great.
Are they, though? For portraying a very carefully constructed narrative, derivation from the source material is almost unquestionably a negative.

>>9727733

Who said I didn't enjoy it? However I would have enjoyed a far more tradionalist approach. I'm all for artistic creativity but if we are going to have a replica of Shakespeare's theatre we may as well have a replica of how his plays would have been, otherwise the theatres potential is squandered.

Exactly 9000 words. Thinking of lifting the "no carry over to the next day" rule.

Lately I ve been reading like 4 books a week...when it was the exams period I didnt manage to read at all. Anyway I want to stabilize at 2 books (like 600 pages total) per week or something.

I'm trying to do 3 to 4 hours a day (that's excluding the shitton of news I read whenever I have a spare moment), but it's not mentally sustainable. 3 hours of Dickens is fine, but trying to read Heidegger for more than half an hour after already having expended your mental energy throughout the day is excruciating

My dad told me his favorite book was Atlas Shrugged and I still haven't recovered

Clive Cussler

>>9726455
i don't know my father, and doubt that he has ever read a worthwhile book in his life from what i have heard of him. god damned niggers, i swear.

Foko

Go-eth

>>9726221
>Foo-Coh

t. French

>>9726032
>implying The God Delusion is a good book

>>9726044
>annoying theists=the work is good
Where did they say this?

>>9726032
>yfw Dawkins is spending an eternity in hell

Stay cucked

He wrote the best secondary works on both Nietzsche and Kant I know of.

>>9724664
A lot. He has more mindblowing concepts than any other contemporary philosopher despite constantly returning to the same themes. He's still a weirdo though.

I like this book
https://archive.org/stream/DesertIslandsAndOtherTexts/GillesDeleuzeDesertIslandsAndOtherTexts1953-1974_djvu.txt

If I'm intent on throughly analyzing a piece of literature I print it of the Internet, provided of course it's in the public domain. This way I can use my pen to mark off significant sections. Label those sections. Highlight significant information types (time/location, emotion/perception/thought, etc). And get an overall picture of the book's structure, section by section. You can't see this if you get the book in its regular format. You need to be able to spread the pages out on a table and draw arrows connecting section to section.

>>9723692
I use Onenote. Let's me write without margin restrictions.

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>>9723692
I write in the book.

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>>9722466
No. I don't turn anything off.