Dear /lit/,
I have been reading lots of postmodernism but I am getting tired of le 20th century difficult prose man.
What should I read? Point me to your favorite books that aren't posted on here day after day
Look at the sticky, wiki, etc.
>>8818150
>I am getting tired of le 20th century difficult prose man
You'll enjoy Joseph McElroy
revert to the greeks
Fuck, i loved it.
I know it's on the starter kit but i never see it discussed here
You must be 18 or older to post on this site.
I like how at the end nobody but the narrator decides to get out of the underground and try again. It's all his decision.
>>8818133
It's a masterpiece
/lit/, I have a few questions as an aspiring author and an 18 year old useless sperg. I'd like to get into writing, and I've been writing casually since I was a little kid, but I'm not the best at it. Nothing I write sounds even vaguely intelligent; I can only shit out half-baked Rick Riordan teenybopper tier godawful gimmicky adventure stories(probably because that was all I read until about three years ago) that sound like they were poorly adapted from anime, or two page, depressing introspections about why my life is the way it is. This might seem like bait, but I'm really just that bad. What do? Read more? If so, what? I like Vonnegut and Orwell a lot, but reading through these threads I feel like I've only scratched the surface of literature. And I wouldn't even mind writing teenybopper adventure stories, as long as they had substance, but I don't always feel like mine do. What do I do, /lit/?
Read more. Also go and experience things, Orwell wrote based on his personal experiences.
>>8818100
>/lit/ is for the discussion of literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but ideally those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.
Start with Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading.
Read it until you agree with everything he writes.
Then proceeding to reading 20 pages of The Complete Works of Willliam Shakespeare every night, read at least one book every day, and write at least 20 pages a day (Times New Roman, 12, spacing 1.5). 10 of those pages should be in iambic pentameter, the others formally free.
After a year of this, you might be ready to learn latin and greek. If by age 21 you can't write in these fluently, you might as well give up. But if you succeed, then proceed to reading ALL of the available greek texts, and the essential medieval theology. Continue until age 23.
At 23, you should dedicate yourself to writing a novel and submitting it to an International Writing Competition.
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I'm a new /lit/erature enthusiast, and I keep having problems getting into books. My main problem is that I have a pretty big backlog of about 10 books to read, and every time I start reading one, I always keep thinking of all the other books I have to read after, and this distracts me and I get fed up and end up putting it down. Or, I just flat out can't get into it.
Does anyone else have this issue or had this issue? How can I get over this?
give all your books away, except one
the books aren't alive there is no external obligation to read them or think of them while you are reading something else, read what you want to read and realise you're getting spooked, son
>>8817933
like don't think "all the other books I have to read after" you dont have to do anything my man, just read what you want when you want. this is the best advice i can give. there's no reason reading has to feel like an uncomfortable obligation just because of the way you're thinking about it in your brain, not even because of the books themselves just because of the way you're approaching them. dont worry man.
What was Pynchon trying to convey with Gravity's Rainbow?
goofs, gags, and rambunctious behaviour
Goofs, gags, laughs, gaffs, slip-up, bloopers, blunders, woopsie-daisies, uh-ohs, zingers, pranks...
the military industrial complex as a manmade god that demands human sacrifice
Anyone have any thoughts on Whitman poems that deal with:
> failure of language
> language as a representation
> Language being unable to fully capture the "real"
> authentic vs aesthetic
Doing a school thing and would love some ideas on which poem would be most fruitful in regards to this
>>8817830
lol dude schools for nerds
>>8817830
Don't know much Whitman, but When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer would be worth checking out for that.
>>8817847
Love it
I'm interested in reading Thomas Sowell, specifically Intellectuals and Society. Does /lit/ have any other suggestions in the same vein as this book?
Paul Johnson's Intellectuals would be a great companion to Sowell's book. He essentially examines the lives of prominent intellectuals, mainly leftists, and notices a reoccurring theme of them being incredibly shitty people in their personal lives. Before you write the book off as one big ad hominem, trust me, if you are interested in Sowell you will love it. There is an actual point being made, just be patient. Be sure to also check out Christopher Lasch's Revolt of the Elites which covers many of the same themes in Sowell's work.
>>8817783
Road to Serfdom
>>8817844
Lasch is much better than Sowell who is just a typical neoliberal Republican, albeit a more articulate one. Lasch is critical of both liberals and conservatives, which makes him more interesting to read.
Would it be okay to start with philosophical investigations rather than tractatus?
>>8817760
No. It would be intellectually dishonest
>>8817760
Tractatus -> Blue and Brown books -> Philosophical Investigations -> Kripkenstein or pass it over in silence bruh
>>8817760
The Tractacus is fucking ridiculous and Philosophical Investigations is at best mildly interesting.
The man never produced anything of value.
Self-inserting as Humbert: plebeian
"Eww, disgusting pedo": even more pleb
Imaging that you are the little girl: patrician
>>8817714
>Having a personal connection and identification to anything in this world instead of existing in a state of perpetually increasing alienation
Plebeian.
>Not self-inserting simultaneously as ever character
Child-like.
Why do you think Lolita hardly got any characterization?
Let's settle this: who is /our guy/?
http://www.strawpoll.me/11831288
>tfw voted for Nietzsche
bump for the memes
>having to choose between zizek and joyce
wew
I don't understand Wittgenstein's epistemology.
My mind is so polluted by the metaphors and conceptual machinery of German idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, etc., that everything he says, I keep instinctively trying to translate it into my comfortable way of seeing mental acts, objects, dynamics. Always translating Wittgenstein, badly, into Gadamer, Heidegger, Hegel, Kant.
I know the point is to jettison the pitfalls of idealism, like mind-body dualism. I can come close to understanding this. But fundamentally, I just keep trying to picture Wittgenstein's descriptions of mental contents as rooted in some kind of ethereal mental "stuff" inside skulls, like I'm used to doing.
The farthest I can get with it in my thoughts is:
>Well, Wittgenstein is simply indifferent to the mental "stuff," the "real" ethereal mental content that undergirds speech acts. He's only interested in the speech acts. But the "stuff" is still there, surely! It's just bracketed!
I know this is wrong for like five different reasons but I can't stop PICTURING it that way. It's driving me fucking nuts. Please help.
>>8817595
I'd recommend looking into Rorty. Wittgenstein's attempts to undermine metaphysics are in fact somewhat similar to the attempts of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (although Merleau-Ponty always seems to have idealistic undertones and never seems to gfully escapes its grasp). The details are too intricate to really do justice in a 4chan post, and I don't have time to go into too much detail, but I think Richard Rorty provides the best analysis ad can help you understand the underlying issues and arguments.
>>8818398
However, I will say this: we conceive of both speech act and mental states as of a "representational" nature. Of course we can always ground natural language in mental representation, but at some point the chain of representation has to stop, so to speak. At this point we wont be able to ground the notion of representation in terms of "content" or meaning, because this is what our analysis of representation is ultimately trying to explicate. At this point the "content" gives way to practices and relationship that are grounded in action or life or the world (or something like that) itself. Ultimately all signs, even mental ones must be completely arbitrary in that there is no connection between their phenomenological "content" and what they represent (no matter how convincing of similarity we may find). At this point "content" gives way to praxis.
(If this is filled with typos, forgive me, my keyboard is fucked up and I don't feel like rereading everything and trying to correct it a million times.)
>Hegel
My god man! You actually went through with it? I tried to warn you.
How can any of you still have a modicum of respect for Sam Harris after he was utterly BTFO and humiliated by Chomsky?
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse
>>8817591
>Sam FAGGOT
>Can't even think of his last name, the name FAGGOT comes automatically comes up
>Sam Harris
Who?
>checks google
Oh, it's another of those "If you're atheist, you must be aware of and worship these guys" idiotic threads.
>>8817608
Oh come on, there are threads about him here daily
Every time I write in my diary I resort to whiny confessionals almost automatically. What is wrong with me? How do other people even write something about their daily life? There's such an enormous tendency to over-exaggerate your life's worth and interest. I want to face the grim reality of life without sounding like a dorky nerd. Help me /lit/.
you have a personality disorder
like most of 4chan
>>8817577
>I want to face the grim reality of life
I don't recommend this
>>8817586
He doesn't really. He just wants to be cool. Its normal among the immature.
Hey, I'm currently trying to become an ubermensch, and I know that because ubermensch have a lot of self-mastery, they are all fucking jacked, so I'm trying to get jacked. According to a bunch of fitness gurus on youtube, if I eat fruit, I will get fat because it has a lot of sugar. But, according to Nietzsche, you have to eat a lot of fruit to become the Ubermensch. So, there is a paradox in Nietzsche's philosophy: you must be both jacked and fat at the same time.
How do I resolve this? Did I just refute Nietzsche's philosophy?
pic related is my ideal body type
You don't fat because of what's in your food, genius
That only has to do with how much you eat
>>8817511
Nietzsche was dapper as fuck before he went insane.
Was he a manlet?
How do you feel about explicit sexual scenes with children in a book? Should it be illegal to write about it in detail or should the Author just mention it or imply that it happen?
>>8817474
>Should it be illegal to write about it
m8
>>8817474
Nothing should be illegal to write about, nothing. If it's in bad taste then he'll be rightfully ostracised but actively arresting someone for something they wrote? You're going into dangerous territory there.
>>8817474
Go read Lolita