Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 2173. page

I have the problem with the visual descriptions. When they start listing plants or architectural pieces it's just a list of random words to me (I could use google images, but why? I don't care about it anyway - how do people find this interesting?).

I look for authors who stay on the abstract side without going into the "this could mean anything" field. For example Kundera and Borges.

Sounds like it's your personality. I have the same issue, don't mind it. Most literature is written to impress others, anything less than that is written to help people enjoy it. If you're having a hard time with literature then it's doing its job.
There's no balance to strike, it's what you prefer most at the time. What you prefer is constantly cycling, so it's worthless to please you, and even more worthless to try to please many people at once.
Which is why all great artists please themselves first. You might not like a paragraph or two, but as long as you read the whole damn thing it's fine. I personally don't care as a writer myself, even though I want people to enjoy my work I know how fickle people are.

>To me, dialogue and characters are important artifacts insofar that they are used wisely and exclusively to advance the story.

How absolutely boring and artless.

Succor

>>8919440
>Coruscant
Go back to /tv/ if you want to talk about Star Wars.

Cacophony

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>>8919442
>Mother-succor

Also "penultimate"

he was so much smarter than all of us that thats basically what hes doing

I disagree. It's more like a dialogue with the reader, trying to convince them of his side. He's not nearly so obvious and expressive of his way of thinking. I'd say he's really one of the more subtle writers I've read.

>>8919382
This. I wouldn't consider Tolstoy didactic, he maintains a fairly neutral tone.

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slut posting is not /lit/ related

sage

>>8919223
>then shamefully look up the definitions of said terms
Looking up the definition of a term?
OH!
How did you do it? I would have died of embarrassment.
How mortifying!
The humanity!

Trust me, you probably know English better than most native speakers.

Gibson has a very particular writing style that not everyone can appreciate. It's not literary masterpiece but the whole Sprawl Trilogy is fundamental understanding cyberpunk.

you should try the sci-fi general before making an new thread next time

>>8919184
>you should try the sci-fi general before making an new thread next time
my bad, i don't come here often so i'm not very familiar with the board culture. thanks for the input though. i didn't even realize it was part of a trilogy so that's cool

I read it, then read a synopsis online;
I feel like I read a completely different book.

It's a pretty 'classic' piece of late 20th century sci-fi.

I get the same feeling reading certain philosophers, but Shakespeare is easy to me

>pick up Phenomenology of the Spirit
>sweat my way through 50 pages before dropping it altogether

wtf dude

>>8919117

I'm "smart enough" for philosophy, but every year I lose more and more respect for it. I'm at a point where most of it feels like pointless masturbation over life / universal questions that will never get answered anyway, just written to amuse peers and people with too much free time on their hands. I'm not fond of this narrative built around philosophy that tries to claim it's SUPER IMPORTANT or LIFE CHANGING.

>>8918965
The film is nothing like the book; the book draws on his whole body of work, things from his imagination, parts of his biography, his autobiographical data, etc. So it's like a mash of the man and his creations.

I guess you could argue the book is a bit of this too but to a much more abstract extent and plus/ minus some of the films from the movie.

I would honestly recommend Junkie before Naked Lunch.

>>8918965
gay alien-insect rape saex

>>8919113
Wat

>>8918808
I bet this person is more preoccupied with the aesthetics of having a marked book than with actually making useful notes

>>8918823
i know why the caged bird memes

I can understand taking notes, but taking notes about plot points?

>guy likes peanut butter
>runs into guy with jelly
>they spill on each other
>/pol/ father freaks out cause "mmuhh" purity

>31 year old manchild tries lsd
>spurring him to undergo a spiritual journey to cure his own autism

a semi-autobiographical picaresque

>climate change is real and shiet
>earth factionalizes and sends people to moon and space
>shit ensues

but the joke is i'll never ever write it

joined

How long is it? Do you have a schedule or are you just playing it by ear?

>>8917999
Why Makioka Sisters? Tanizaki is at his best when he's writing tightly controlled prose works. Why not Some Prefer Nettles?

>>8917503
Postmodernism is shit

The currect cultural zeitgeist is also shit

So it goes...

>>8917503
your the on retard term

ok let me just guess what book that is

*closes tab*

>>8917323
>favorite book

>>>>r/YA/

>>8917323
Why?

>>8916626
I can't
Going to learn Polish for 2017.
Starting with Duolingo. Any recommendable resources? Duolingo is only good to get to kindergarten level, desu

>>8916626
>miłosz?

>>8916626
If Poles are so smart why did they get invaded so quickly?

Pretty much everything Nabokov ever said about most authors.

>>8916428
Nabokov criticisms were purely due to his stupid idea of aesthetics. He was treating those authors like his precious butterfly collection.

>>8916416

http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm
Dan Schneider:

But let’s keep things simple. I am a poet. I am also a great poet. I am also a great poet who has written many great sonnets. I am therefore uniquely qualified to focus on & discuss them. Not that I could not provide exegesis of his plays- their dramatic vs. poetic content, etc.- but a sonnet’s very brevity lends it more easily to fruitful explication. & like it or not Shakespeare’s sonnets have the reputation as being the best in the biz. This is a fallacious claim, I believe, because very good arguments could be made for Petrarch’s, Spenser’s, Donne’s, Browning’s, Millay’s, Baudelaire’s, Rilke’s, Frost’s, Lowell’s, Berryman’s, & especially my own Omnisonnets all being better examples of the form’s felicitous engagement. I will now endeavor to point out some of the best & worst of the Bard’s sonnets; & explicate the merits & demerits of each.

>>8916055
feelings are for women and liberals. Real men use rationality

Instead of posting on /lit/, read more Chekhov

>She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint. Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes. They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco.

The main thing is that you have to make the descriptive environment cave in to the emotion itself. This, Chekhov excels at. He can turn the landscape surrounding the narrator into a fountain of joy or a mire of depression depending on his descriptions. He chooses the best images for the most effective conveyance.

Your example spends too much time on the person's body feeling, but you have to vary it up with many other descriptions that show the perception tainted by that feeling.

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>>8916056

But if you write, you need to write for your audience who include women and liberals. Isn't it rational to understand how other people function to more accurately communicate with them?

>>8916080

That was a lovely piece of writing. Though I want to get deeper.

"He felt suddenly frightened" could be written as "His heart suddenly began to race and his eyes flitted from one box to another"

Instead of explicitly telling the audience that 'he felt suddenly frightened', you can demonstrate physiological reactions of fright, elevated pulse and increased vigilance to let the audience put the dots together as they see fit.

One person reading 'He got frightened' will understand as much as another. But by writing "His heart suddenly began to race and his eyes flitted from one box to another" different people will understand the reaction differently.

Though, I like what you are saying. Using the environment like a mirror to show emotion in a literary way.

My example was less about literary writing and more about learning how people feel. I have a condition where I can't identify emotions, I don't know what any of those emotions I listed feel like. I do however feel the physiological effects and can link those effects to the emotions after the fact.