Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 1315. page

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Why do we never talk about this masterpiece, /lit/?

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Is this worth reading?

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Thoughts on Plato's Republic? What should I expect from it?

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So according to Harold Bloom the greatest contemporary novels are:

American Author n.1 - American Novel n.1
American Author n.2 - American Novel n.2
American Author n.3 - American Novel n.3
American Author n.4 - American Novel n.4
American Author n.5 - American Novel n.5
American Author n.6 - American Novel n.6
American Author n.7 - American Novel n.7
American Author n.8 - American Novel n.8

Fucking great!

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ITT: Your best/most favorite book-album pairings

Heart of Darkness (Conrad) + Excavation (The Haxan Cloak)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iBaQrDW544

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Why was Dubliners so humourless?

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People don't have ideas, ideas have people.

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Have you realised that the information age, with the huge amount of reading material, everything in English or translated to English, and vastly increased number of (sub-)media for books alone (physical, magazine, tablet, phone, e-reader, website, blog etc.), has destroyed the idea of being "well read"?

I think this for two reasons. First is the huge volume of stuff. You could read all day and never even read 1 % of all that "valuable" stuff. When it was 1600 and you could have read everything during your 3 years of formal education (more than 99 % of people) you could immediately join the intellectuals club. Now that's not true and it's demoralising.

The second reason is the killer. The idea of some sort of central planning bureau setting the list of required books is seen as farcical. We truly live in a much more multipolar world. Back in 1100 the Church told you to read the Greeks and the Bible and you are suddenly intelligent and well informed. There were no universities or companies or groups to tell you otherwise. These days, the huge increase in education means that everyone has an opinion and the arbitrariness of the "canon" has been exposed even to the most soody of pseudo intellectuals. Not only due to the multipolarisation within literature, but also the multipolarisation among activities. Who would claim that some Fields Medallist winning mathematician is an idiot because he hasn't read the Bible? It would take a high level of soodiness. But it would have been easy 1000 years ago.

Ultimately all this "well read" stuff was just a way for groups of people to signal social status / intellectualism or deriving other benefits by grouping their claimed interests together. We see it today when the academia-media-publishing industrial complex tells you that you have to read books or you're stupid. But this has been taken to a farcical new level now that writers like Tao Lin / Mira Gonzalez exist. It's also clear in other activities.

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>you read any form of genre fiction
Fiction is the stuff of legends, the building block of mythos and religion.
>you think fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, young adult fiction or horror are literature
They are better literature than some of the professed "classics" pseuds read
>you barely know your classics
Classics are by definition only read because a bunch of people thought they were good. This means that these people followed the norm of what was considered to be good, instead of experimenting with new authors no one's heard of
>you tend to believe that if you like a given work, it is justified on an artistic level
Notions of "artistry" in a text are pseudosophical self-inserted biases based upon what the "greater" artistic world at large would consider to be artistic
>you think everyone's opinion should be accepted and respected
Everyone's experiences should be respected. All we have is experience. Analysis is secondary.
>you speak a single language
If you speak multiple languages you will not be able to master all of them. A speaker of a single language can master his thought processes in one language instead of being a jack of trades in multiple scarcely examined languages
>you read for the plot
What else would one read for? Even your pseudosophical notions of "artistry" can only manifest themselves when a plot is present
>you don't have a solid grounding in philosophy
Philosophy is unfalsifiable drivel
>you do not at least have some understanding of the Three Tragedians and Homer
Not indispensable in the slightest
>you have little to no understanding of literature outside of your cultural horizon
There's enough literature in western culture to last one ten lifetimes
>you make your literary analysis proceed from ideology
>you engage in literary analysis in the first place
>you think intricate prose is 'pretentious' and that the author 'should just get to the point'
'Intricate prose' is another phrase for 'nice-sounding monkey noises arranged in such a way to get your chimp-brain to laugh like a chimp who just heard another chimp grunt in a certain way'
>your rarely read poetry
read above
>you think Rhythm and Rhyme is just useless rules and laws restricting creativity
The type of "creation" stemming from rhyme and rhythm is the precise aforementioned monkey noises designed to make your brain think that something amazing is going on. So not necessarily restricting creativity, but just redefining creativity to mean 'simplistic monkey entertainment'
>you have a hard time forming structured and relevant literary criticism
>engaging in literary criticism
>you rarely read for more than one or two hours straight
>doesn't spend more time writing and thinking and creating than he does reading

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What's some /comfy/ literature?

I just finished Robinson Crusoe and I'm looking for more cozy books to read.

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Why has nothing beat it since? I want to beat it. I want to come up with the ultimate thing, that all kids will read. Then when I'm as big as JK I will wreck her on twitter. Is it possible??

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"Heaving from side to side buttocks heavy with discontent, she lumbered out of the room."

Are sentences like these meant to make me laugh? I imagine about 80% of the reason behind his enduring fame outside of Japan is just "muh aesthetics" and samurai LARPing teenagers.

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What is his endgame?

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Lit i've been having trouble being 20 myself and young trying to figure out what version of the bible to read. I Grew up with king james and the reason im asking this is sorta a i guess a spiritual awaking in a sense. When coming Across the story Jesus and the woman taken in adultery in Gospel of John 7:53-8:1. This is a good story but im gona focus on one part in particular When the Pharisee come to jesus and request that jesus bring judgement jesus instead. Gets down in sand in starts drawing but the bible doesn't tell us what he's drawing and this leads me to my point.

People have tried to make sense of what jesus was drawing in the sand that day. Some say it was the tend commandments, others say that jesus was writing out the sins of the Pharisee in the sands. But desu im kinda of the belief that if the bible didn't tell us we shouldn't speculate. Can anyone else relate? The idea that the more men temper with things it becomes more corrupted? That's why i only read the king james version and my being 20 i'll be honest. It's hard at time to read the bible especially with it being in paraphrases. But their is a reason jesus says more or less he does this to attract true believers. Can anyone else relate to this in their life someone possibly older with life experience ?

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explain How nietzsche's ubermensch concept is any different from a cynical nihilists viewpoint. Pro tip you can't