So it was all a drug trip or what?
It's a sex metaphor. She is masturbating for the first time, hence all the holes and wonders.
>>9154683
>>9154679
To add to this, she fingered her asshole, too.
There was a hall 'with many doors' (her pussy and her ass), she has to find 'they key that fits into the lock' (her holes), there is a cake labeled 'eat me', she later grows to a vast size (like a penis), she asks the mouse later 'where is my cat?' ('my pussy'), and this is not all. It just goes on and on.
Postmodernism is an attempt.to blend high culture & low culture
Is postmodernism a normie attempt to bring high culture down to their level?
I'm just wondering when we'll get to postpostmodernism
I can't wait
> post-modernism
.......and it's the 1990's again. Oh goodie
>>9154644
it has everything to do with the furthening still emassment of education, which in turn allows for more and more self-made and not family-groomed geniuses to spawn.
such a self-made high culturalist is bound to once have had a period in life when he was sincerely consuming low culture
and as we all know well, this is the 21st century, so there is "no reason" to be ashamed of "anything", we should all just bee ourselves and so on
was meursault full blown autistic or what
He was a vessel for the author's philosophies and therefore it was crucial for him to be apathetic towards the world in order to tell the story the author wanted to tell.
He wasn't autistic, as that would've defeated the whole point.
Life is absurd! Just bee yourself bro :^)
>>9154616
how does one fail this satirically
>tfw you unironically realize david foster wallace is the greatest writer to ever live
>>9154451
dfw suck dick man
grow up
>>9154467
Stop doing drugs.
>>9154467
sucks dick, I mean, not suck dick
What types of books should everyone own, like cookbook, diarrhea, photo-book, stamp collection catalog, etc?
or TV guide
The bible t b h
Elements of Style, by Strunk and White.
How did he get it so right?
Tbh I didn't feel like he got it very right
>>9154211
b-but at least you do now?
>>9154208
He got it very wrong. Fahrenheit 451 will be the closest we will get to a dystopian novel
>It wasn’t always so. In the trenches of the First World War, English men came to love one another decently, without shame or make-believe, under the easy likelihoods of their sudden deaths, and to find in the faces of other young men evidence of otherworldly visits, some poor hope that may have helped redeem even mud, shit, the decaying pieces of human meat. . . . It was the end of the world, it was total revolution (though not quite in the way Walter Rathenau had announced): every day thousands of the aristocracy new and old, still haloed in their ideas of right and wrong, went to the loud guillotine of Flanders, run day in and out, on and on, by no visible hands, certainly not those of the people—an English class was being decimated, the ones who’d volunteered were dying for those who’d known something and hadn’t, and despite it all, despite knowing, some of them, of the betrayal, while Europe died meanly in its own wastes, men loved. But the life-cry of that love has long since hissed away into no more than this idle and bitchy faggotry. In this latest War, death was no enemy, but a collaborator. Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal afterthought now, and the real and only fucking is done on paper. . . .
What was it about WW2 that made it so drastically different than WW1? In what way was there "love" with WW1, yet "faggotry" with WW2? Does it have anything to do with the idea that War and Society in general were becoming more and more mechanical and 'destruction-focused' after WW2, with the 'faggotry' being a metaphor for a sort of death? Perhaps in a reference to The Cold War and the arms race? That's the only thing I can get from this quote. What do you guys think?
Memes.
>>9154184
Don't do this to me, man.
Also, as I was re-reading Gravity's Rainbow, I noticed that two lines sort of had the same sort of phrasing.
>"“Pirate in the lavatory stands pissing, without a thought in his head.”
This line appears right at the beginning of the book, and the 'without a thought in his head', line reminds me of the Slothrop final scene, where it says
>“Slothrop sees a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth, and his chest fills and he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural. . . .”
Am I being autistic or did Pynchon actually plan a sort of mirroring of these two scenes with the line of 'having nothing in your head'?
>>9154154
I think it's mainly commenting on the isolation of England and the lack of a battle front.
WWi was close quarters, top-down trench warfare. Death unlike any war before still kind of old school war. "death was no enemy, but a collaborator" is less about the reality of the wars and more about the conviction of fighters within them.
That double-edged jab at the abolition and execution of the aristocratic classes of Europe by the capitalist merchant classes is, I think to put the isolation and distance between actor and action on the complete conversion of power into capital.
if you had to give a dictator several points of advice in order to best acquire or maintain their regime in the modern age, what would they be?
>>9154148
dont be a bitch ass nigga
>>9154152
ok, maybe a better question is: what is the reading list you would give the aforementioned dictator?
That's not ominous in the slightest.
Are you in charge of Trump's kindle?
>tfw it took me one hour to write a two pages short story
>tfw it reads like a Borges rip-off
who /not gonna make it/ here
>>9154131
Post it.
>>9154131
I like Borges.
>>>/qa/catalog
How much can I reasonably control the meter of a poem? could I read:
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
as
*u**u*u*u*u
u*u*u*u*u*u
>* stressed
>u unstressed
in which I emphasize "sing" and give it a short pause simply because it's the start of the poem. I feel like this isn't too unreasonable, the original starts with ἄνδρα (*u). I feel like emphasizing "sing" won't make it sound too silly so long as I give it a pause (try it aloud yourself). The second line I feel can only be read in iambic pentameter, anything else sounds wrong, but Fitzgerald gives the first line some flexibility. Now that I think about it, you might even be able to read it in dactyls if you read it slowly.
*uu*uu*uu*u
u*u*u*u*u*u
Is all this right? or is there something fundamentally wrong about my understanding of scansion?
Whether a syllable is emphasized or not depends on how it is read.
If you ever heard a Chink try to speak English, they emphasize every damn syllable and it's painful to hear.
Potentially racist comment aside, there is no guide to emphasis in the written word and it's stupid that poetry 'tards think there is.
>>9154128
Right, but I just want to know if those two readings sound okay (Maybe a little dramatic, but not necessarily unnatural or painful)
What are you drinking, what are you reating, /lit/?
Dogfish Head IBA continuing my trod through Charles Taylors A Secular Age
what should I listen to as well?
Drinking: 7up
Reading: This thread
Listening: Nothing.
lol reating
Drinking: Nothing sadly
Reading: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjg3rhGVXH0
>>9154092
What kind of person drinks alone?
We agree that prose is better than plot, but a common criticism for otherwise beautiful art is that it may lack direction. How do you rectify this?
>>9153990
by having plot as a vehicle for motive??
did you not answer your own question
>>9153990
there isn't any question here in my opinion. Can you clarify?
>>9153999
A novel that is aesthetically beautiful, but possesses little-to-no plot would be panned as purposeless and maybe pretentious too. Would this criticism be accurate?
I've noticed that slam poetry sounds a lot like preaching you might hear over the pulpit at an evangelical church, only with different content.
The sad thing is that these kids think they're writing great works of literature, when really any experienced preacher can achieve that same level of ""poetic language"" without ever rehearsing or writing it down beforehand.
>>9153987
So is this a Christcuck or 'lol librels and wominz'-thread?
>>9153987
There was one kid at my high school who I think is now a published poet that got me into poetry
He performed howl and it blew my mind
>>9154003
OP here
I actually am not a christian. It just struck me that slam poets use all the same techniques as a preacher might, and not as many literary techniques. The poems are driven by the passion of the speaker, not the strength of the words. Its not really poetry, so they should stop pretending it is. Hell the audience at slam poetry performances even shout like a congregation. The whole thing is just that: performance.
Is Japanese worth learning for a non-weeb?
I've got so much free time after graduating I feel like I should be doing something somewhat productive with it.
>>9153971
It's not worth learning unless are Japanese or look like them.
>>9153971
>doing something somewhat productive with it.
Learning Japanese would be the least productive thing. Your skill would allow you to watch Anime with slightly better understanding and pick up ugly japanese girls in bars (if they even exist where you live).
Learn French, German, or Spanish. Latin, if you must. But stick to your own language group; you'll find it easier that way, and it will increase your understanding of English. French specifically is like a non-retarded version of your own language, and allows for deeper complexity.
German has several double-meanings and words that have no direct translation.
Spanish is practically useful if you live in America.
>>9153971
Learn Chinese. I have a feeling it will be very important
How do you deal with looking up words that you don't know while reading?
I hate interrupting the flow of my reading by stopping to look up a word that I don't know, but I don't like just not knowing what it means either (despite the fact that I can get a vague sense of it's meaning from context).
I hate to prick at your perfunctory pander, but prolixity putting magniloquent magnificence might make many puke.
>>9153923
So you can either do it while you're reading or after.
You dislike both because you'd rather know everything all the time.
Solution is to kill yourself, you helpless faggot
>>9153929
i didn't understand your reply because I had to look up the definition of faggot...funny thing it had a picture of your face next to it