Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3174. page

>>8360338
It can if you try. Pain comes from longing.

>>8360338
I legitimately had to check if I was on Reddit when looking at that image.

>>8360363
But what's life without longing? And if things and the ego are in flux, as Buddha probably claimed, then what's to stop you from turning suffering into a positive force by mental willpower, or at least diminishes? Removing longing seems to almost be removing life to me, and I think the second option -while harder - is more attractive.

>>8360327
infinite jest

>>8360327
More DeLillo is the only answer, DFW liked to think he was his successor but really he was just a "special" boy who DeLillo found kindness in his heart for.

>>8360341
That's what i was inclined to do, but why though? >>8360355
Which specific Delillo books would you recommend?

>>8360322
I am a high functioning member of the autism spectrum.
I have a problem with motor skills and short term memory.
I'm also very sensitive on certain things with certain people.

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>>8360322

I want to be a writer but I am a hermit anti-social fuck that doesn't have a lot of experience with human interaction and I have no idea how to write an interesting plot. I am more interested in existential philosophy, psychology, location, and ambience.

I am mostly just a insufferable pleb that talks too much though.

>>8360322
>personality disorders

Unless you're a diagnosed sociopath I wouldn't worry about having one of these made up "disorders"

Also aspergers is grossly over diagnosed, along with ADD, dyslexia, etc. I know several people that claim to have aspergers when in reality there just much smarter and logical than the rest of us. Unless you spend all day talking about clouds or memorizing sorts statistics from the 19th century, I wouldn't think you have aspergers. Its a shame that autism activists are on a campaign to declare every eccentric person in history an aspie. Quite similar to the LGBT movement's need to claim great historical figures as one of their own.

>>8360268
By being politically incorrect, yes. In this fashion, people are more easily shocked than ever.

>>8360268
It seems like we're moving away from people being shocked by obscenity and towards people being shocked by non-PC shit. The whole SJW movement is, for the most part, about being shocked by how racist/sexist/anit-Apache Attack Helicopter-ist something is, regardless of reality. That is our new shocked reader.

>>8360285
I think there is a difference between shocking and offensive though. It's easy to offend but much harder to shock

Just keep reading and not masturbating brother, it's not hard

Acquire wife

>>8360258
Congrats on turning to Christianity, man. When I stopped masturbating as a teen, I found it hard to concentrate for a few days. I can read just fine now though.

One of my favs:

>chilling with friends
>put morton feldman's second string quartet
>confront myself and my self (as an ontological historical entity) with the mirror of atonality (as a mirror is not an empathic but a reflexive entity, alien to the space and time it reflects and only existing by itself in relation to the other) and realize the boundaries of human thought, comprehension and consciousness
>reach rational ecstasy
>pleb friend gets up and says "what is this silence shit, lmao, put some nirvana"
>get angry at their rockist subaltern consumption conditioned by the structures of power of the imperialist white economies, but contain it
>calm myself down by remembering quotes from finnegans wake, my favorite book since i was a teenager
>mfw can't express myself because i'm a spectator in the society of spectacle

"It is not the slumber of reason which engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality. - Gilles Deleuze" - ~Astigmata

I literally can't express how much better my life has been since I attended Oxford. I went to a state school and gradually became the stereotypical moody, withdrawn sensitive type who both despises the quality of his immediate culture and feels a weird pride for having been raised in a sort of anti-intellectual and brutal environment. I was all set to take my Russell Group humanities BA and spend my life working as an anonymous, insecure wageslave forever thankful of being offered a job and forever too insecure to pursue my creative ambitions. The chip on my shoulder had become something of a wedge, and I felt too out of place regardless of my environment, too resentful and bitter to even attempt to make it in the artistic world. Then I finally applied for Oxford and got in to study an English MA, with reassurance that should I work hard enough a career in academia or within one of Oxford's affiliated companies would be almost guaranteed. I turned up as apprehensive as usual, and the first few days were spent regretting my decision and desperately feigning a cultured personality. But then I realized that the people there were just interesting and that the snobbery and exclusivity I had anticipated was just a myth borne out of my working class upbringing. I've since graduated, having spend the year dining in grand halls with groups of interesting people, dating several girls (one of whom, a petite Russian whose family traces back to the aristocracy, is now my fiancee). I work four days a week at a publishing company and earn £38k a year. I regularly meet up with friends from my college and visit Oxford for nights out and for meetings with my professors. The Martin Eden-esque novel I have been writing for two years has been selected for publication at a major British publishing house and, honestly, I could not have imagined a few years ago how great life could be. I come on /lit/ and see how pathetic you all are and just shake my head and chuckle. If I saw you guys on the street I would of course throw you a penny or discuss Bukowski or whatever "realist" writers you enjoy, but ultimately I would be able to tell within ten seconds if you're an Oxbridge grad and would dismiss you as a potential source of good company if you are not. I never thought I'd know what it was like to be objectively better than somebody else, for the value of my existence to be superior to the value of a stranger's, but now I do and I've never been happier. People are awed by power and prestige. All I need to do is mention the university I attended (if only for a year) and they immediately begin to hunch and look at their feet because they know they are in the presence of greatness.

>>8360236

This is way too heavy handed. The best pastas flirt the line of sincerity and parody

>>8360289

Too esoteric for me, but I appreciate it

>>8360344

A+, upboated

>>8360231

Yes, and so were the other HP books.

>>8360231
Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won't end it. The Harry Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as J. R. R. Tolkien did, and then wane.

The official newspaper of our dominant counter-culture, The New York Times, has been startled by the Potter books into establishing a new policy for its not very literate book review. Rather than crowd out the Grishams, Clancys, Crichtons, Kings, and other vastly popular prose fictions on its fiction bestseller list, the Potter volumes will now lead a separate children's list. J. K. Rowling, the chronicler of Harry Potter, thus has an unusual distinction: She has changed the policy of the policy-maker.

Imaginative Vision

I read new children's literature, when I can find some of any value, but had not tried Rowling until now. I have just concluded the 300 pages of the first book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," purportedly the best of the lot. Though the book is not well written, that is not in itself a crucial liability. It is much better to see the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," than to read the book upon which it was based, but even the book possessed an authentic imaginative vision. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" does not, so that one needs to look elsewhere for the book's (and its sequels') remarkable success. Such speculation should follow an account of how and why Harry Potter asks to be read.

The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes' book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School Days" and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkein. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time.

In what follows, I may at times indicate some of the inadequacies of "Harry Potter." But I will keep in mind that a host are reading it who simply will not read superior fare, such as Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" or the "Alice" books of Lewis Carroll. Is it better that they read Rowling than not read at all? Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult pleasures?

>>8360351

If you think Harry Potter is shit, then what the fuck do you like?

>inb4 namedrops some "famous author" or "undiscovered gem"

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>>8360224
newfags, this is pasta.
don't eat the pasta.

>>8360224
>literary criticism and review is impossible
Laffin

>>8360224
>academia-media-publishing industrial complex

my favorite meme desu senpai

>new ideas
>newness
>Ecclesiastes 1:9

>>8360196
there are only a few plot-equations in which all plots could be categorized into. Like six or so.

>>8360196
Everything has been said or done already.

philosophy is for gay boys

Probably Camus, in the sense that the dominant ideology in the face of religious decay and nihilism is just awkwardly shrugging it off and continuing to push that boulder while trying to convince yourself that you're happy.

>>8360137
ehh..i see him more as a writer than a philosopher...


the only answer to this question, honestly is Wittgenstein.......maybe Heidegger as well

>>8360097
Oh fuck

it's a hoax.

>>8360097
WTF? IT'S TRUE!

>>8360069
/lit/ has actual value.

>>8360069
There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.

“Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.”

Is there any point to even reading The Bible? The conclusion I've come to is no. Its boring as shit, long, and only has a few interesting parts that can actually be counted as history. Most of it is mythology or other random bullshit like ancient geography that has no meaning to the average person. You can learn more about the Jews and Egyptians through modern books that address the subjects much more thoroughly, and without the mythology and other bullshit.

>>8359904
He's not doing modern historical research. He's doing "historia" (inquiry) into causes.

Herodotus still serves as the primary, and often only, source for events in the Greek world, Persian Empire, and the region generally in the two centuries leading up until his own day.

Also it's fun to read.

That he loves us and wants us to be happy.

>>8359843
>Shakespeare
>Catholic
Nice meme.

>>8359843
>God
Nice meme.

>>8359804
And you need others to tell you what to do?

kys

>>8359816
nigga i got it narrowed to two

>>8359835
Flip a coin or read both.

Or accept the philosophies of Kierkegaard into your heart and realise why you must make the choice yourself.