Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3339. page

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post dank, obscure literary factoids

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I am an atheist, but I wonder how in this day and age, a person can feel a sense of wonder and passion and beauty for life, or more precisely, mental well being. I feel like everything is so superficial, a lot of times I just feel oppressed by looking at the world around me. I look at it on most days and it looks like a grey canvas, it looks like it has no vibrance, even if it's a beautiful sight it doesn't fill me with any sense of wonder, because I know in my heart that it's all meaningless to me. It's weird because every once and a while I get these inexplicable experiences where I feel like I'm experiencing life with more of my senses and more vibrance, and just being conscious is nice. I don't know how I could feel that way all the time.

I wish I knew how I could change that, I feel like I can grasp that sense, like the sense is there just waiting to be felt. I can almost feel exactly what it would feel like, but the feeling is so faint that it is really only a memory, but I can almost taste it. I want to feel that feeling where everything is vibrant and I feel happy when I'm experiencing the world around me.

Realizing you're own existence is a paradox, because the mind can't undo the incalculable error that it brought upon itself. I want to have that sense of reaching outside of myself, I want to feel that sense of wonder for the world, instead of everything else around me with it's superficiality and it's constant reinforcement of meaningless seems to instill in me. "yolo" "life is very short" "take out a life insurance policy" "when you grow old" "your parents won't live forever" "we're all only mortal". People just reinforce these obnoxious soul crushing statements like it's nothing, it sickens me.

So, I gotta cap off the thread by asking, since this is a literature forum, is there a book that will make me feel this way if I read it?

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Solar system editon

What planet has the best SF and why is it Mars?

Previous: >>8283010


Recommendations:
>Fantasy
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg/
Flowchart: http://i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg/
>Sci-Fi
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg/
General: http://i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg/ http://i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg/

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Why does /lit/ so rarely speak about Proust? Is it just because noone bothers to read In Search of Lost Time?
He's so widely acclaimed by the literary community, yet I don't see him mentioned on this site as much as, say, Dostoyevski.

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Why do we have so many foot fetishists in this board?
wtf lit?

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Anyone else reading UNSONG?

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can someone explain to me the appeal of this stuff?
why is it considered god tier?
I've read the synopsis on wikipedia on all books and it really seems like an incoherent mess... basically it seems that at each chapter a new "random" thing is going on and that there is no coherence to the world, like King threw up every conceivable idea possible in the book.

Is it really like that or is it worth reading?
For instance in the book do they ever explain the lore / setting etc? or do they ever explain why Roland is looking for the dark tower?
or why the tower sends him back in time at the end?

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Is there a chart or a general set of books for one who wants to feel while reading?

Anything that covers the topics of depression or tragic events?

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ok am i dense? right off the bat i am confused. did log jam turn into a gay bar or not?

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How can other books even compete?

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Is there something like last.fm only for literature?

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How do we save academia, /lit/?

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Just a few general questions on anarchy and revolution from a faglord here

I guess technically I should address /pol/ but let's be honest I don't want to lose more brain cells than I already have.

How is anarchy (or the revolutionary ideals that inevitably lead up to a state of anarchy) different than other ideology? I shack up with the Solzhenitsyn critique that ideology has skullfucked the modern polis into being a shit storm of "means justifies the ends" oppression. How can anarchy not end up like this? My general thoughts are the truistic claim that mostly cults of personality that spring up around revolutionary figures are to blame for skewing revolutionary regimes into some autocratic or oligarchic form of government. But betting on that being the only problem with
"the revolution" is a thick bet.

Also, my general train of thought with anarchy is along the lines that it will remove power from the hands of the oppressor, eliminate private property which allows for a definite capital power over another, and democratize fulfillment of capabilities as things would be in an idealized "state of nature," i.e., a state without the foreign imposition of law or the demand of capital productivity. So, yay, sounds intuitively good. But who's to say that in this state free of the oppressive powers (the powers that do, in fact, aim for and secure peace in some semblance, following Hardt's logic) that some other form of oppression will arise. And, in fact, this might be even scarier or more oppressive because it's not concentrated oppression as is implied in "the law" (where you could just lash out at the judicial system or whatever). tl;dr, Who's to say that in an anarchic state, men won't tend toward forming militias to reimpose private property with an even more brutal force? My initial reaction is to say that these militias would just kill each other out, and people would quickly realize that killing or attempting to monopolize property is ultimately more harmful for all parties involved than good. But, again, that's an idealistic bet.

Keep in mind that all of the evils these questions could yield are to be compared to the evils produced by an oligarchic control of capitalism. That's what's really doing me for a woozy because fuck if I know which is more evil: hoping that everyone will cooperate while armed factions run amok in the streets for a (again, hopefully,) brief period of time; or, knowing that a vast majority of individuals will never have the opportunity to pursue the fulfillment of their capabilities because the powers that be have their testicles in a vice grip with bills to pay, jobs to work, ends to meet, etc.

P.S. Can we please not let this descend into a Hobbes vs. Rousseau argument? Both didn't know jack shit about a true "state of nature" seeing as how all of their evidence was derived from bullshit, half-assed anthropology or mere speculation.

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just found this for cheap in a used book store and got it based on reading somewhere that it's great, and the cover art. what should i expect?