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>Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth.
>When the evolutionary process shifts from biology to software technology the body becomes the old hardware environment. The human body is now a probe, a laboratory for experiments.
>In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate Westerner.
Remove the Marx, Deleuze, cosmic horror and drugs, and Marshall McLuhan sounds a lot like Nick Land.
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Also, that picture sucks. Here's a better one.
I kind of wish McLuhan had been able to see the rise of video games too.
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You have to remember he was a catholic, and saw it as such, that you have to experience god, beyond the limits of the intellect. I ascribe him a sort of bardic position: 'illustrating of the socratean irony' #marsha
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>>9049499
Sounds about right to me. I have no problem with Catholics. They sound better and better all the time.
I don't know what your second sentence means, though.
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>write a massive blog post on a topic
>expanding, developing it, cleaning it up
>editing continues for over an hour
>...
>it's perfect
>delete it
>delete it again (permanently)
Why do I do this /lit/, why am I impotent when I come to putting something out? I can't do it.
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>>9049412
If you are scared of being wrong, you should just post it.
It's the only way to bounce back your stupid ideas. If you don't want mean comments, get a fucking girlfriend for this purpose. Oh wait, you are self-pity. Women don't like that.
In short, just post it.
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>>9049412
Because you've never debated those ideas with actually well-read people.
You feel that they're good according to your standards, but you have no idea about what other people will say about it.
Joim a philosophy book club, and if you can, attend lectures in universities (unless you're American it should be free) and talk about what you learn and read with other students and, if you can, with professors.
That's what you have to do if your parents were not patrician enough to give you a classical education. It's hard, but if you don't do it you will regret it for the rest of your life.
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>>9049412
Why not just post it?
At best, you'll make a compelling argument about a topic or provide information about it, and at worst you'll be wrong on some accounts. If it's the latter, then you'll be able to expand and develop your knowledge on the subject as you engage with others.
There's nothing wrong with being wrong if you're willing to improve.
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We post god tier short poems, 14 lines or less. I'll start with a famous one by the Arab master poet Adonis:
A WORLD OF MAGIC
Between the Lord of Days and me:
No hatred. No vendetta.
Everything's over.
He's barricaded time
behind a palisade of cloud.
My world goes on as magically as ever.
I contradict the wind. I scar
the waves before I scurry
from my bottle in the sea.
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>>9049378
FLEAS
Adam,
Had 'em.
Seriously tho, pic related is one of my favourites
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>>9049378
LOSS
Loss, loss.
Loss saves us. It guides
our footsteps.
And loss is a radiance,
all else a mask.
Loss unifies us with something
other than us.
And loss fastens the face of the sea
to our dreaming.
And loss is just waiting.
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>>9049390
hm. pretty fantasy. fucking cummings.
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Haven't seen one of these in a minute,
ITT: post spicy goodreads reviews
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It's rude to make fun of children.
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>>9049295
I don't know about you but I'm happy Madeline McCann is dead
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>>9049295
This one made me consider suicide.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/509380961?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
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Recommend me a novel that takes place in Colonial America.
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recommend me a novel that takes place in the republic of venice
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>>9049284
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>>9049286
The Serpent of Venice.
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Hillbilly Elegy
has /lit/ read this? it's pretty depressing and more autobiographical than i was expecting
reminds me a lot of loveline if anyone used to listen to that
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I've dismissed it as a meme and have no intention whatsoever to read it. I remember an article that appeared in the NYT and the Boston Globe, probably other papers too. One man said he planned to vote for Trump because he'd been a churchkeeper for three or four decades and basically his "life wasn't getting any better." I suggest people like him, especially those worse off, these hillbillies, move out of their decaying milltown and into cities where they can actually contribute to a functioning society. I have little sympathy for unemployed meth and heroin addicts living in the middle of nowhere who don't bother improving their situation. Why have Fox News commentators begun scolding politicians for ignoring opioid addicts while drugs have been a problem for decades? I assume because the 'victims' are white, but I digress
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>>9049276
We have to understand those people to most effectively deprogram them from decades of brainwashing and a lack of education.
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Rod Dreher keeps writing about how it's his favorite wank material, so I was gonna get around to reading it eventually.
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Really makes your neurons rub
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>>9049221
Which book is this?
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>>9049339
looks nlike snow crash
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>>9049340
it's not
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WTF I hate Jamaicans now
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>>9049162
>now
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Well goddamn
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>Missing the point
Your supposed to hate privileged white males after that book.
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>studying in campus library with friend
>just finished four hours of latin grammar >Wheelock's and Lingua Latina rest on the table next to my copy of Ulysses
>take a break, shooting the shit with friend before starting to work on going through Ulysses again.
>girl I've seen on this library floor every day for a while now passes by, smiling
>semi-joke with friend about heading through the bookstacks over to her table to get her number
>our conversation transitions into some esoteric degenerate inside joke shit, and when my friend cracks a funny line I decide to lift my ass and rip one.
>it was a low rumbling, warm, quiet one,a GOOD one, and so I tell my friend that I did it, and he's like, "dude what the hell," because in all my four years of college I haven't farted in the lib.
>we laugh
>we laugh
>girl comes around the corner and up to me, staring at my books on the table
>I freeze. Throat dried, lip-locked, swallowing for a gulp.
>She points at book nervously. "Hey, I've seen you a couple times and it would kill me not to ask. What do you think of Joyce?"
>I stutter and begin to respond with my entry-level interpretation: "Well, I like the way he captures the minutiae of everyday life, really, and, and..."
>She helps me out by nervously bringing up the Latin. "Oh, Latin too? Wow, are you-"
>she pauses. she blinks a couple times.
>oh god
>I smell my shit fumes
>my friend is frozen and i'm trembling. The girl's brow pulls down and her lips furl in disgust. "Oh my god," she says. "I'm sorry. I gotta go."
>she storms away
>my friend shakes his head in embarassment, and to cover my ass I stand up and yell, "Wait, where are you going! It was just getting Joycean in here!"
>mfw she didn't turn out to be my Nora
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This post was based on the false assumption that people on this board actually read Joyce
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Nora's farts, not his, you stupid. It's the adoration of her farts that would be utterly flattering to her.
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>>9049137
>he hasn't read Joyce himself and projects the ineluctable modality of his plebbiness for everyone to see
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Anyone got the answer key to Wheelock's 7th? Need to check my translations.
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no but i've got the key to your mother's CUNT
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>>9049109
You mean you wanna cheat?
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ITT: Words you hate and why
>Chagrin
always used by lazy pseuds in place of a much simpler word/sentence
>"much to his chagrin...
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https://youtu.be/VQDwhAK95ds
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I hate every word OP posted because he is such a shitbird, he doesn't even deserve to be burnt alive as a sacrifice to the filthy god of lucre and have his ashes fertilize a biofuel corn field.
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English has the richness of synonyms not seen in other languages, why the fuck would demand everyone to resort to the same set of boring words? Do you not like literature or something?
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>reading Inferno intensely
>starting Don Quixote
>also reading Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Tragedies
Who else here /overwhelmed/?
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>Hamlet
>selected readings from the Low Medieval period
>Anna Karenina
>selected Native American short stories, soon to become some novels
rough semester but thankfully I know Hamlet pretty darn well
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>>9049074
How many of their chapters do you read per day?
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>>9049114
I read 1-2 Cantos a day, but I pair them with relevant commentary and discussion as well because I really want to know exactly what Dante was thinking and writing when he wrote the thing. I'm reading along with /lit/ for Don Quixote so about 4 chapters a day. I'll read a little of my Middle English helper and some of a tale if I feel like it in a day, and read about an act or so of a tragedy a day, but Shakespeare and Chaucer are really for whenever I'm in the mood.
Anonymous
Two considerations about reading and writers 2017-02-01 10:23:32 Post No.9049001
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Two considerations about reading and writers
Anonymous
2017-02-01 10:23:32
Post No. 9049001
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>Extensive reading vs. Intensive reading
I notice that many people are worried about the number of books they read a year, instead of how much they absorb from it.
The invention of printing, and later on the magical invention of cheapness in the book market, made it possible for common people like you and me to have hundreds and hundreds of books upon their shelves. All of this gives a great feeling of owning to oneself the whole of the Western Canon, and makes one wish to peruse it from Homer to Lobo Antunes without ever skipping a single author. I know this feeling, and I often end up reading more books than I should, specially if I'm on vacations.
However, one should know this: it does not matter how much you read, but rather how much you get from it. Thus, Dante didn't read Aristotle's Poetics, but he got so much from the writers he did read that it made no difference for him whatsoever.
Same applies for the speed of reading. Many people don't know it, but the great men of the Ancient world probably read more slowly than we do. The reason is quite simple: writing, at the time, was extremely rustic, and ortographic techniques such as punctuation, spacing, and lower-case letters were actually invented during the so-called Carolingian Renaissance, during the time of Charlemagne. Not only that, but all copies were manuscripts, which meant one had even more difficulty in reading them. In other words: simply passing your eyes over the page and reading the words was harder to do back then.
Even during the start of the modern age, when reading became easier, most great people didn't read as extensively as we do. Spinoza, for instance, only had 161 books on his library, according to the auction made after his death. Sure, he read many books which he didn't own, and maybe he sold some, but he probably didn't read 1000 books like the average GoodReads user does.
From looking at Mary Shelley reading list I conclude that, in 1820, she read at most 68 books, eleven out of which were plays that today would fit in a single volume. I don't have the actual numbers right now as I didn't save them, but I remember the average was something like 45 pages a day. Notice that those readings are probably not all complete - if she writers on her diary 'I read some Milton today' that doesn't mean she read the whole book - so the estimatives are actually generous to her.
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>it is necessary to read in the original and the writer needs to be a polyglot
Not at all, my friends! In fact, the vast majority of great writers - not only novelists, but poets too - usually read in just some two or three languages. I will give examples:
In Spinoza's own library, we have almost only Latin and Spanish books. That doesn't mean he didn't know other languages well - he spoke Dutch, after all -, but it means he wrote what he wrote without reading stuff from too many languages. His books in Hebrew, for instance, were but three.
In the library of the great Yeats we find that he almost only read English works. Out of 2,284 books catalogued, a surprisingly small amount is written in foreign languages. We see that he knew French, but probably didn't read too much of it, and his Flaubert was in translation. With Italian he seems to have struggled a bit, because, although he has Italian books, most of his Dante seems to be in English. His Virgil and his Homer were in English too.
With Fernando Pessoa, we see that he read Portuguese, English, and French. As all Portuguese speakers, he also read Spanish, and he has Dante in the original (easy to learn when you know Portuguese). His knowledge of classics such as a Virgil and Homer, however, was based on English translations.
Moral of the story: you don't need to know English, French, Italian, German, Greek and Latin. Knowing two or three foreing languages is already more than enough.
Yeats' Flaubert: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/WilliamButlerYeats&deepsearch=flaubert
Library of Yeats: https://www.librarything.com/profile/WilliamButlerYeats
Library of Spinoza: http://ladrondespinoza.blogspot.com.br/
Shelley's reading list: https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/MShelley/readalph
Pessoa's library: http://casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt/bdigital/index/aut/index.htm
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nice reminder, like the references to Shelley and Spinoza.
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>>9049001
You're wrong.
Reading inclusively instead of exclusively and broadening your scope allows you more tools as a reader and writer. Only a weak critical thinker would have the mental gymnastics to defend narrow reading.
hey /lit/
since you guys are all grammar nazis, which one of these would actually enhance one of my sentences for my paper?
see image.
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>>9048879
whammu
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Whoppers
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>>9048882
>>9048884
WOW
rapid fire suggestions, thank you
now on for my next sentence, what about this one?
>21
Happy Birthday.
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thanks..
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>>9048854
I saw a lot of guys saying that this book is bad.
Is it true?
Its about what?
And btw sorry if I say something wrong, and please corrects me. I'm still learning english.
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>>9049130
It's about tennis, drug addiction, a crazy filmmaker, and much more. You will understand it after you read it.
It's not bad, it's just a failure from a technical point of view. Reading it in the span of a week was one of the strangest and most remarkable experiences I have ever had.