Is learning foreign languages to understand texts in their original language really worth it?
What do you mean? It's not like there is an alternative...?
>>9188167
Reading texts that have been translated into English would be an alternative.
>>9188159
Nope. How many languages would you have to learn to feel satisfied?
GOD TIER:
Harper's
Paris Review
n+1
TOP TIER:
New York Review of Books
New Criterion
Lapham's
First Things
Good tier:
Jacobin
American Affairs
The American Conservative
New Yorker
Meh tier:
Current Affairs
Slate
The Federalist
New York Magazine
Retarded tier:
Salon
Magazine's are outdated.
youa re liek a little child
>>9188132
Yes, I used possessive.
Read Dubliners but didn't think it was anything too special. Nice prose and comfy stories but didn't real hit home with me.
Is this any better? If so what should I read before hand? Surely there aren't as many allusions as in Ulysses is there?
not a lot of references outside of Irish politics you can google in 5 seconds and my penguin edition is fucking bogged down with endnotes anyways.
just read it today anon :)
>>9187906
just prepare for the best book you've ever read
>>9187919
is the edition in pic related ok? Got it a used book sale cheap but its pretty old
I can completely see that my outlook on life was unknowingly given to me by a dead economist who was given his own by a dead philosopher.
So where are the alternative ways of looking for at life? Religion, or even believing in philosophy's ability to give non-trivial insights, seems to be a safe space bubble for pseuds who either think they're intellectually above nihilism or they knowingly use it to help their feelings cope.
>>9187901
how about you stop relying on outside sources and instead use your own experiences and conclusions to form your individual world view and value system?
you can still compare them to others and you can still find new shit dou want to add to your own mentality but it won't be simply "given to you"
>>9187933
I do that. But then ten trillion people come at you with abuse. "Read ten thousand pages of Plato or else you have no right to have an opinion!"
my professor told me that this introductory sentence is bad:
It should be noted that...
he underlined "it" and said "what?"
well.. what follows "that" you fucking retard.. i see this in writing all the time, is he correct? i feel like it may be a matter of preference, just depending on what i'd like to stress. an example of some hume that i'm reading right now:
THAT POLITICS MAY BE REDUCED TO A SCIENCE
It is a question with several, whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another....
in my professor's eyes, he'd say it should be rewritten as follows:
Whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another is a question with several.
what should i consider when making these types of sentences?
wtf are you trying to say?
>>9187855
literally from the next paragraph:
It is true, those who maintain the goodness of all government consists in the goodness of the administration...
is there any noticeable difference in the way he starts his sentences and the way i started mine? is there something i'm not seeing? is this not applicable to modern usage?
from samuel johnson, impeccable prose writer:
It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature...
>>9187855
>It should be noted that...
Address the reader directly:
>One should note that...
I need help /lit/
I once read here about a philosophy or a philosopher who said that life is nothing but suffering and avoiding pain IIRC till you die.
Anyone knows who's this? if not, do you have any similar philosophies?
Something that indicates that life is nothing but pain/avoiding pain
Sounds like Epicurus.
>>9187678
Yeah that really is epicurus and his apprentice lucretius.
Democritus was vastly more based.
So fellow anons, does /lit/ have a consensus on Joyce? What are your personal opinions on his work? Let's discuss.
>>9187628
>does /lit/ have a consensus on Joyce?
yes.
>people who have actually read it
genius, unique work, certainly one of the books even written, a lot of people believe literature will not reach such high peak ever again
>people who quit in the middle of it
meme, retard, pretentious intellectual jerking off
>>9187688
*this post was pointed at ulysses*
>>9187688
True. Those who read all of it realize they have to parrot the erudite opinion of it, despite not being learned enough at all to appreciate it themselves (some of them even reading a fucking annotated version without reflecting on that very fact at all), lest they be seen as what they are, total posers who failed to realize that the emperor, in fact, was not wearing any clothes.
Those who quit halfway learned a valuable lesson on the importance of not being a middlebrow pleb.
This isn't even an ironic post. I do not believe for a second that there is as much as a single person on /lit/ with the erudition needed to appreciate Ulysses. If you read the annotated version, I have nothing to say to you. That is beyond any doubt the lulziest fucking thing of all time.
I've read a bunch of books but only a few that have anything to do with this movement. What are entry pomo books I could begin with?
This guy knows his stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2_0Y-w8eXc
Fruitless endeavor, don't bother.
>>9187627
meme trilogy
- development during the story?
- a fleshed out background?
- his/her actions and behaviour?
- if he/she is relatable?
depends
I would say Motivation and Response to Motivation. A character has agendas and obstacles to achieving them. Their personality is revealed in that pursuit: how they go about the task,how much effort they put into the task,and how they deal with the frustration of not succeeding at it. All these actions are coloured by their skills,intelligence (or lack thereof),and what passes for their past. And the enviorment they find themselves in will dictate their choices,and how far from their comfort zone navigating through it will be.
For example, Fagan from Oliver Twist,Tony Soprano from the Sopranos. Two Crime Bosses,wanting to get rich. Different methods,underlings and tools,different obstacles. But both with opportunistic criminal minds. Now plop them both on a desert island: how would they respond to the new paradigm? Such is character,you have a vague idea based on what you know of them.
a mix of all of this.
i'd say the first is being relatable. then comes development,after that actions and behaviour and lastly background.
I'm literally shaking right now.
Did a mean bully get elected as your pwesident
>>9187565
I would run to the top and jump off.
>>9187647
>implyig "the top" exists
What the fuck is supossed to be wrong with the "6%" in this sentence?
>>9187444
47% voted iirc
>>9187444
>select the correct error
>correct
>error
>>9187444
hmmhh
What is the greatest good?
>>9187313
God.
>>9187315
yes
Life
I've been an avid reader ever since i was a child and i've eaten through countless books of many genres and i've started to notice a pattern
Why are male characters so much better written?
Often female ones will have a lot more backstory and introspection, yet they always seem detatched from the reader
Even something as simple as "my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die" gives me a better start than 2 whole chapters on how Melissa ponders while sipping tea
IMO it's because authors (of any gender/genre) seem to be more comfortable in showing their male characters suffering and changing, while women seem to have devolved into wish fulfillment Mary Sues
Because you are a FUCKING WHITE MALE and you resonate better with male characters.
Whoopsie fucking doo.
Or maybe you are just a self instering autist.
I have no problem with female characters
>>9187206
>my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die
my nigger
anyways, i do think that that's because it's mostly male readers that do serious fiction. and they often lack the ability to grasp women. so they also can't portray them in a good way. they usually stay manic pixie dream girls with ko personality. or their personality is based on something like how they look, qhat they do and how they act and not about intrinsic motivators. as in your example: it instantly makes you relate to inigo because you feel like you'd want to find the fucker who killed your father tol and get revenge. you feel a bond there. you feel that he has a drive, a purpose and a goal and that e won't stray from it till he has accomplished what he has set his mind to. i'm yet to see a female character develope such mental endurance.
>>9187216
I'm neither of those things, i'm just tired of reading stuff where every woman is either McBadass OC or a vapid cunt
What do you think of intermedia? My school offers it as a minor.
Seriously get a STEM degree. Don't waste your money on that shit. Study cultural stuff in your spare time.
>>9187438
OP should actually get a degree in whatever he wants to. I do also think that a well-read STEM graduate is the most patrician thing one can be, and I'm actually aiming towards that. But that's just me.
And OP, I don't know about intermedia, but I would recommend reading some book/essay on it and see if it's your thing or not.
What is 'virtue', exactly?
Tits
Excellence
These jezebels