Is Rand worth reading or is Objectivism just a meme?
epic spam d00d
>>9592223
Well, objectivism IS a meme regardless of the answer at your question. Red it and it's cool, I get the aura it has. On the other hand its philosophy seems meh overall and generally disputable, which given the title it has is quite ironic
> is Objectivism just a meme?
Yes
>Is Rand worth reading
Pic related
Who here got meme'd? Wast of $15.
>>9592132
never post here again
>not using the public library
>>9592416
>flipping through cum stained pages
>What are you currently reading?
>What do you think of it?
>What's next on your reading list?
>>9590066
Pic related.
I don't often read non-fiction but its pretty compelling so far so I'll stick with it.
Next up is Heart of the Dog.
>>9590066
Currently unironically reading Infinite Jest for the first time
>>9590099
This. It's okay. DFW is clearly a very sheltered person.
Noam Chomskys office
Just imagine being in there reading late into the night about government policies and massacres and neurology with no one but pupper
seems about as organized as this thoughts
This looks a lot like my apartment, I've got books and handouts and papers everywhere.
Just recently starting to see that some traditions of magic/sorcery are a bit more profound than the typical mumbo jumbo its represented as. I have a couple questions I wanted to lay before the /lit/erati:
1. Is there anything to this magic/sorcery stuff? The obvious answer seems like no, but I guess what I mean is, is this at all contended by somewhat legitimate personal accounts or stories, in similar way that spiritual experiences are? What evidence is there that any form of magic or sorcery actually exists? I'm very curious.
2. What philosophy or texts should I look into that give a more detailed account of supposed magical systems? I've got this book on quantum sorcery and I've heard whispers through the grapevine of names like Hermes Trismegistus and Simon Magus, but I'm hoping someone can give me an informed opinion of where to start.
Thanks as always for the knowledge offered by you guys.
>>9588616
it's not what you think it is, but yes it is real
>>9588629
Don't tease me like that bro, what shit should I look into?
It's a pretty deep rabbit hole. Philosophy is very porous with theology and mysticism, and theology and mysticism are very porous with the occult. There are whole traditions, relatively mainstream, that you can indulge in if you want to be an /x/ guy and read about sp00ky demonic entities, esoteric rituals, and other hermetic secrets alongside your idealist metaphysics. From the theosophists around the turn of the century, to a thousand similar things. Many of these movements have extremely brilliant thinkers attached to them, and much of the stuff is plausibly deep.
Just as a forewarning, a lot of the people into this stuff tend to be burnouts and schizos who waste their lives on it. It's always got some more shit for you to delve into, always got something else to draw your curiosity. It's enough to waste decades on. It's basically a hobby for weirdos.
Who's that one author that just immediately connected to you on an extremely deep spiritual level? The author who you immediately understood?
Pic related is mine.
Melville and Keats.
It's not even necessarily that I 'connect' to them, I am just in constant awe of their literary powers.
>>9588256
Shakespeare/Poe. If you're including all writers it's easily Larry David.
I really need to read more Joyce and Yeats. The Irish have been through just as much as my people.
Bandanaman, sadly.I've been stopped and "saved" during past suicide attempts one day I'll join you Deefwubs, in pseud hell
itt: meme books
>>9587862
>>9587896
not at all. doesn't have anything gimmicky about it, it's jsut a recently discovered classic
>>9587862
Written in French without the letter 'e'. Then translated into English without the letter 'e'.
Finally red pic related.
I don't get it. i find it very poorly written, the universe is quite original but it's not a strong story and the style made it almost impossible to finish... Am i missing something here? Why is it so popular?
because nerds love their star wars ripoffs
>>9587722
I agree with all you said and I never figured out why people liked it.
At the time it had details about desert survival and technology that made it more balanced than most other sci-fi. (It lacked Techno-Logical holes so big you could drive a cruiser through it.) I would guess that's it. See no other explanation.
>>9587730
star wars: 1977
dune: 1965
me: baited
>tfw sophocles wrote over 120 plays
>tfw only 7 of them exist today
any other feels like this?
>>9587058
>Kubrick never directed Napoleon
>>9587058
>any other feels like this?
You think you have profound thoughts but you will die as less than a speck of dust on the spectrum of humanity
>>9587058
>the entire fucking library of Alexandria
ITT: Post your mental disorder and get book recommendations that fit you.
I'll start: STPD
im too smart for my own good
Schizophrenia
bipolar
I've yet to see a thread like this on /lit/ so lets try it.
Take the prompt and write 200 words (minimum) about it, in your own style.
>>9583939
Death then pulled out his cock from under the robe and then assfucked OP's mom with it for 18,000,000,000 hours.
>>9583939
Reddit Jones reread his writing prompt several times before leaning back into his beanbag. "What a twist," thought Reddit, "A story in which a major character...dies. Who would have expected that?" He immediately put his 107 IQ to work. "Which characters died in season four of Game of Thrones?" he asked himself, recalling how his excitement when its trailer dropped.
>>9583939
"Yeah, well, you fucking suck at your job, so there." said Humphrey, the Time Reversal Snail. Death didn't like Humphrey. In fact, Death had a seething hatred for Humphrey. Even his name would have made Death's blood boil, if he had any.
Who gave a snail this job? Who thought it was a good idea to give someone the power to reverse time within a relative temporal area? This little shit would show up and reverse time for Death's clients. How can you kill a baby-faced twenty something, or a baby goat. Death had been trying to end Gary the Goat's life for nearly three thousand years, but every few decades Humphrey would always show up and reverse Gary's age. Every. Single. Time. After five-hundred years of this, Death finally started just putting Gary on the end of his list. Why not, when that little shit would always show up. Fuck that guy.
write whats on your mind
i should have another bowl of oats
>tfw you let deleuze finger your ass to deconstruct his heteronormativity but you forget he has howard hughes fingernails
Youre fucking supposed to write with your whole arm and not with your fucking fingers?
No wonder my handwriting has been shit my whole life.
What do you know about Portuguese (from Portugal, not Portuguese Language) Literature?
>inb4 The Book Of Disquiet
"Os Lusiadas" and "Os Maisas" are on my to-read list. Sorry Anon, Portugal is a beautiful country with a rich history but as far as the arts go Brazil has surpassed their motherland.
>>9578701
Os Lusiadas, Os Maias, Fernando Pessoa in general, Felizmente Há Luar, Os Cus de Judas, Luiz Pachecos which is kind of like the portuguese Burroughs except without the talent or literary experimentation, Cesario Verde, Gil Vicente, Saramago who is a fucking hack, and probably a lot of others i'm forgetting
>>9578767
>Saramago who is a fucking hack
Explain
i want to bring you with me into this swirling ocean of my thoughts and not have to voice them i want them to wash over you and into you and i want you to decide what you think of me after you know all that i am i want to be honest more honest than i could be i want you to want me for everything and if you can’t thats okay i understand but i want you to feel every dream memory and thought i’ve ever had before you decide
and then i want to see youAll the beautiful and smart women of /lit/ hmu i'm horny af niqqas i'm outcheer jonesin for a fine lass to finger mah ass!
>>9572406
What's this for? Is it part of a journal, a part of a poem, a novel? I like the flow. It's smooth enough, but has the potential for hiccups --
unless you're Joyce and want words to run into each other stumblingly for stream of consciousness feelings. I can't really say much about what is *says*, as such, as in, the soul of it... there's not enough here to read anything deep into. But what's there is nice. It's almost self-contained... if that means anything to you... In retrospect, I feel like
>i want to bring you with me into this swirling ocean of my thoughts
would actually do more thematic work without "with me"
>i want to bring you into this swirling ocean of my thoughts
This is just imo, and the recommendation probably seems completely antithetical to the fragment's theme of "you, I, together", since it gets rid of the "with me" ... But something makes me wonder if it would be the best idea to saturate the fragment's infatuation with "with-me"ness... Despite the self-directedness of the self who is narrating, the full passion they are throwing at the other would inspire them towards trying to eliminate themselves, wouldn't it? It's just a thought, but give it a spin.
>>9572831
This is mine:
Amy steps outside. Cold air to breathe once more, life-giving as water. She looks up for the first time that she can remember. The act of lifting her head feels ritual-like — something is completed.
Tonight the stars are washed black. Stormclouds swell grey. A great shatter of web-lightning breaks the sky, lingering in an after-image of brilliance and white wonder, then tinkles away.
Time had stopped for that moment, and it was forever that moment. All possibilities hung possible. At each ghostly fork was frozen the freedom to choose in any foreseen direction; all taken whitely at once. How possible is anything! Amy’s heart stutters.
Gallant lagging thunder rolls in overhead. It implodes, a huge subsonic rumbling down into the core of her. Movements of massive air, more massive than her: settling giants. Suddenly you understand why the Greeks did it. With a tingling in her fingers, Amy becomes an ant, nay, smaller, a mite. And the hillock becomes the entire cosmos of limitless direction she can never reach the end of, can never find the meaning of. Vertigo swoons her head. Her eyes roll. Weak-legged, she kneels, overcome by a faintness, some profound weightlessness, something almost religious — and for a fantasy of a fleeting moment, almost raises her arms in surrender to the sky and devotes herself to unfathomable Gnosis. But she would never come back.
Flinching, she returns, to the now. Jaw hanging, unattended lock of hair swishing across her eyes, sternum rigid, sphincter slack, she breathes worldly air again; vaguely underwhelming oxygen. Molecules. Explainable in terms of explainable terms. Electrons and nucleus components. Outer shell 6e, inner shell 2e, nucleus of 8p and 8n. Diatomic non-metal, electron configuration 1s2 2s2 2p4, atomic number eight. Strength returns to her limbs. Blood — erythrocytes carrying bound oxygen, leucocytes feeding on pathogens, plasma carrying all sorts of goodies, thrombocytes/platelets with nothing to clot just yet — circulates. As a matter of fact, Amy stands. There’s some grass clinging to her knees, itching. She brushes it off and looks over her shoulder at the yellow-lit doorway. No one’s there. But the glass-clinking, the bantering, the chair-skidding, the table-knocking noises of joviality rollypolly out. They sound oddly near in the motionless night air, with nowhere to go, like they’re right behind your ear.
>>9572833
lightning spiders shatter the sky with their cast webs
Is there a non-academic route to being a high quality, well-respected writer in this day and age? It seems like the ambiguous standards of quality in post-modern literature (as there are many shitty writers who are published simply because they have an English degree from an Ivy League school) make it easier for academia to serve as a form of gatekeeping, regardless of the actual quality of the writing. What would a non-academic writers path to becoming a literary giant look like today?
yeah
write good shit
>>9595953
>assuming even quality writers are relatively respected in 2017
Pic related. Even if you achieved moderate success and acclaim like Franzen, you'd be pigeonholed as muh white male dudebro author at best.
Literary giants no longer exist, regardless of the path you take.
>>9595953
You could try being a 70-year-old Hungarian