Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3308. page

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>>8306679
>the music is upside down
I dunno don't judge a book by it's cover

My reputation precedes me

Can somebody transcribe this?

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>>8306625
>the gift you bought me is horrible because your taste is horrible. there's nothing you can do about it now but i just thought you should know.
go give your girlfriend a hug you meanie

What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

>>8306645
That said though, don't tell her.

It's a gift. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

>>8306622
Boléro is objectively the worst thing Ravel ever wrote

>>8306622
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

>>8306627


also this, Ravel is great and he doesn't deserve that kind of abuse.

>>8306627
This is true

fookin ell

>>8306603
I buy that there is shit going on that we can't experience.

2 people that think they are way smarter than they actually are.

prejudice

>>8306537
Literally just watched a Zizek giving lecture including this quote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5WNcRoCXCM

It's in the middle somewhere. It's about ideology ofcourse and so on

I would wager that most of the things we know we don't actually know that we know.

No, he should be in prison for giving up state secrets.

>>8306515
Michael Bay is actually a fucking genius. He graduated at the top of his class in his prestigious film school. The guy isn't dumb and he is capable of making quality shit. However, he doesn't, and instead manipulates the industry and gets a shitton doing close to nothing. He ironically makes shtity movies that both reel in the crowd that likes them for what they are, and the opposite end of le smart anti-corporate fluff xD intellectuals'""""" to viral it as well. It's a formula that works and I salute him for being the one to tarnish his name to show how shitty the film industry really is.

Maybe. Either him or Tom Clancy

Nice meme

> Reading American books
Nice guy, but no.

Yes.

(No.)

Add to whatever people suggest here, a nice and didactic history of philosophy. Always help to systematize what you learn, and to know what's important to understand from each book.

Would recommend some, but don't know any in English.

selfless bump

If you want to start with the Greeks. Read a book on pre-Socratic thought, then read Plato's books on Socrates, then Plato's other works, then Aristotle works.

I think that continuing to spam your book here is only going to piss people off.

>>8306386
Someone posted about this book before here? I just stumbled upon it and thought it was really extravagant.

>>8306386
also did you sage my thread? fuck you dude

>>8306311
not if you're a fan of his

>>8306326
of who

>>8306328
probably tylo be chillin

Badly translated Light Novels are better than this.

It's OK. People only say they hate it because it's for girls. It's actually better than Harry Potter.

>>8306303
Light novels are significantly worse than this.

I steal the book. That way no matter what I've struck a blow against an enemy.

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Sparknotes the summary and main points of such books. Only read books you will enjoy.

You shouldn't need to force yourself. Critiquing ideology is a necessary step to forming your own, consistent and rational, ideology. If you want to beat your opponents' arguments you need to understand them. If you want to live in an ideological bubble then you should go to R*ddit.

Watch it live in a theater like it was meant to be experienced.

>>8306282
Agreed.

it's all good

Pls respond

>>8306298
being ironic like finding the juxtaposition of political personalities as if communism wasn't the opposite of democracy, as if we needed a ralph nader and not a darth vader.

Too much internet, especially 4chan. I say embrace it, though, and dig your way through the deepest, dankest depths of ironic memery into paradise. True salvation comes only through hardship. May these digits please kek.

Provocative literature like Moby-Dick and philosophy should tax your mind, yes. Do whatever you need to to refresh yourself and then go back into it.

I don't see the purpose behind your enterprise?

What do you want to get at, or where do you want to go?

>>8306213
Thanks for the reminder, I feel even dumber for having not thought about it that way.
>>8306234
I want to learn more. I want to be smarter.