Where does one go after Baldwin? He seems to have no successors or peers. No one carries his legacy in an intellectual way.
His idea of dealing with people as people, only people, seems like the need of the world right now and yet everyone has gone radically right or left of him in the black community.
He was anti-nationalist while having a meaningful discourse with black people about responsibility for their own identity, and the sources of racism/how to overcome such things without any mystifying. He told them that the "nigger" is a myth, but that black people can't end that by fulfilling the role of the nigger.
I know black thought isn't popular here, but I hope some of you are willing to engage my pursuit.
>>8605498
Also I'm not interested in any religious "peaceful" men that shared some ideas with him.
I think his anti-religious stance is a very important part of his identity as a thinker, good or bad, and his differences from MLK and Malcolm X are a middle of the road rut that very few other black intellectuals seem to fulfill.
Where would you recommend to start with Baldwin?
I'm /pol/ but not really biologically racist, only culturally. I'm interested in black thought, especially black thought that doesn't originate in the white establishment/in white culture.
It seems like blacks have lost any authentic voice by being duped into buying the condescending charade of white institutions.
>>8605498
I don't think there is a continuation of Baldwin. He's a fork in the road. He was never very popular because he was a homosexual in the 50's with controversial ideals.
Then there was the whole moving to France because he didn't want to be "merely a negro" or "merely a negro writer, something he couldn't escape in America. He just wanted to write and be treated as human.
Blacks didn't like him because he wrote so neutrally and his works didn't fall into the strong racial narratives of the Harlem Renaissance and he modelled his work after white writers (Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Conrad)
White's didn't like him because he was black and gay.
Artists liked him, but nobody cares what they think.
He got grilled pretty hard in his day, I know Morrison says he influenced her, but I don't think anyone else pulled from his writing like they would other writers.
Once upon a time there was a boy who went for a walk in the woods.
He met a rabbit, talked with it for a bit. He quickly became friends with the rabbit and asked, what are you going to do tomorrow? Tomorrow? it asked curiously. You know, they boy said, the day after today! The rabbit had never thought about tomorrow, and quickly asked, what kind of absurd question is that? The boy was just as confused as the rabbit, it went quite of a few seconds before the rabbit said, why would you ask about something which doesn't exist? The boy didn't understand what the rabbit ment, was it crazy? He looked at the sun, it was getting dark. The rabbit didn't seem to be in a hurry and sat quietly for a while and stared deep into the boys eyes. I have to go home, it's getting late, the boy said without moving. Late? The rabbit asked. The boy was getting annoyed with the rabbit's stupid questions and said angrily, Yes, I don't have much time, I need to be home at 9 o'clock or my mom will get mad! The rabbit looked at boy now more confused than ever, peculiar creatures you humans are, and jumped into the woods.
>>8605484
>Once upon a time
Hack
>>8605484
I like this.
i feel as though highly advanced philosophical concepts are just the manifestation of autism that philosophers share because a lot of them are in no way applicable to the real world. deconstruction is an interesting concept, but the purpose in conceiving it? at least in math and science each subsequent discovery helps lead to achieving a greater goal, but philosophy a lot of times does nothing, in my opinion.
>>8605451
Any examples?
your 'real world' is different from their 'real world.'
How do I analyse references and metaphors an author makes in his story if I don't get it naturally? The other day a teacher said that Borges wrote about vandals in his third phase as a reminiscence of his early years,and that in his new story he ridicules them in order to demonstrate he has grown as a person through the years. There is no way I could have gotten that by myself.
look at abstract art
watch artsy happenings
abstraction is key
you must have a low iq
>>8605337
You just fucking make it up like that teacher did. Make a connection between two points in their work, and then make your argument for why that connection exists as ridiculous as possible. The more ridiculous it is the smarter you look.
>>8605440
>>8605432
You are mocking me. I know it's part of the culture but seriously,even if the teacher was full of bullshit what happens when I don't get the underlying message of the story by myself? Do I read the critics? Discuss it here? Or just spinning the ideas in my head like I'm used to?
Also,I thought literature as a form of art is made to evoke feelings instead of intellectual realizations,so my IQ doesn't have anything to do with it,I want to believe.
Is it bad if I'm reading poetry with zero knowledge on 'how' to do so?
I enjoy how phrases evoke scenarios, ideas, abstractions, and I enjoy beautiful combination of words, but that's all there is to it for me. It's the same way in which I appreciate lyricism in music - I'm not much for staring for half an hour trying to decipher what was meant, or learning about the technicalities of the craft. I find that the way I do it suffices, but still I wonder, am I doing it wrong? Am I missing anything?
Of course you're going to be missing things if you're not familiar with the technical details and meaning. Anyone can enjoy poetry just by listening to it (or reading it), but if you want a greater appreciation about it you need to analyze it, just like any other work of literature.
>>8605335
just write from your heart bb
truth is your structure and love is your theory
>>8605335
Most analysis of written works is just intellectual masturbation on the part of the critic anyways.
Unless you think picking apart how almost certainly coincidental tidbits about the structure of a poem betray some deep meaning the author never actually even thought about, what you're doing is fine.
I'd even argue you're making the world a better place.
What's a word that combines 'facetious' and 'asshole'?
>assetious
>fasshole
yw
>>8605318
I'll give you a (you) for making me chuckle
>>8605324
wow! thanks Mister! okay, listen here, maybe you want "mischievous"... or "rapscallion" if it has to be a noun... but you didn't hear it from me
After hearing an interview with the world's most wonderful windbag I've decided to memorize a work from the western canon. Right now I'm thinking Paradise Lost, but I'm not certain. I want your opinion. What work should I commit to memory?
>>8605283
The Flight to Lucifer
>memorizing Paradise Lost
That's ludicrous. A book or two of it would make sense but the whole thing?
You could also try for a canto of Dante.
What is the most /lit/ religion?
>>8605282
Episcopalianism if you are American.
Satanism, or slaaneshism for some extra /d/
Shakespeare and Dante. You literally just have to read those two. That's it.
>Shakespeare and Dante are invariably the exceptions to the descents of canonicity; we never come to believe that they have read too deeply in Joyce and in Beckett, or in anyone else. That is another way of repeating what I have been moved to say throughout this book: the Western Canon is Shakespeare and Dante. Beyond them, it is what they absorbed and what absorbs them. Redefining "literature" is a vain pursuit because you cannot usurp sufficient cognitive strength to encompass Shakespeare and Dante, and they are literature. As for redefining them, good fortune to you. That enterprise is now considerably advanced by "the New Historicism," which is French Shakespeare, with Hamlet under the shadow of Michel Foucault. We have enjoyed French Freud or Lacan, and French Joyce or Derrida. Jewish Freud and Irish Joyce are more to my taste, as is English Shakespeare or universal Shakespeare. French Shakespeare is so delicious an absurdity that one feels an ingrate for not appreciating so comic an invention.
and Cervantes
>>8605269
Homer, seriously c'mon
For a while, I mostly read only science fiction. I kept thinking that the more renown fiction literature outside of scifi would be far more difficult but nevertheless more enjoyable. But I was wrong. So far I've read A Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man and Ulysses by James Joyce, and Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, The Castle by Franz Kafka and also Metamorphosis as well. They're certainly weren't average but they weren't amazing either. Most of the notable or worthwhile points about the literature listed is interesting or unique prose. But in most of them the quality of the prose is ruined by an unexciting plot premise. And a particularly disappointing story was A Picture of Dorian Gray, which didn't even seem to be an attempt to be the supposed beauty it is made out to seem in many reviews I've read. The writing is actually instead very contrived and seems unnecessarily wordy. Swann's Way is very long-winded but ends up going nowhere, and much of the novel is just straight up boring. After everything I've read, I still believe the most beautiful writing ever is either the Bible or poetry by W.B. Yeats. But never have I seen poetry as beautiful as W.B. Yeats in fiction literature in the form of a novel. Discuss.
Pic unrelated, I've yet to read something by Herman Hesse though I will at some point.
>>8605256
>is either the bible or yeats
You're just a pseud, it'll pass when you read more
>plot premise
Fucking really
>>8605266
What's wrong with saying plot premise? A Picture of Dorian Gray literally revolves around an annoying little self-entitled literal faggot whose only even half interesting event in the novel is stabbing his friend.
>>8605277
Wow it's almost like you didn't get that it's a book about vapidity and a satire of the upper class!
Next you'll be telling me that Oblomov was slow or that Dead Souls seemed ridiculous!
It's almost like you have zero reading comprehension because you're bound to a novel's narrative as opposed to its style and actual substance as a result of years of diluted shit filtered through the lens of sci-fi!
Is this a good book about African people?
>>8605187
The other two books in Achebe's African Trilogy
Depends on how many yams you own
pick one
what for?
big guy
for you
Is Folio Society worth the money?
>>8605113
obviously not
>>8605113
its a luxury good
if you have to ask you cant afford it
you dont buy it cause its "worth" the money
>>8605113
worth the money, no.
they're some of the best hardcovers you can buy, better than Everyman's, and they're boner-inducingly nice, but no. It's just a book. Its got the same words as a mass-market paperback.
They're something you buy because you want them.
What's with all the songs?
>>8605057
Ask Shakespeare... or the radio.
I don't know, OP. It's real weird, he just...
Wait a second, do you hear that?
(The beat to Eminem's "Lose Yourself" starts playing)
What is that?
Lookâhow can, one man, be so fucking epic,
To send a man down the toilet in a war novel.
Could it be magic? Or is it genius?
Yo
I've recently become obsessed with 1920s literature. Can anyone point me toward any great 1920s literature that involves monstrosity? Something like Flannery O'Connor's, "The Displaced Person" that paints the immigrant and capitalist system as a monster. Or maybe technological progress as a demonic element that lead to the destruction of WWI and consequential social upheaval demonstrated in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
>>8604880
Some of Lovecraft's stories have monsters
>>8604883
lol
A bit past the time period you request, but Foucault wrote about "the monstrous."