Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3432. page

>>8248864
toilet

What is the Killer 7 of literature?

Probably the rosc passages in the Tain Bo Cuailnge.

The Tain is a genre of gaelic sagas, and particularly there is a cycle of these sagas that center around the hero Cuchulainn. While the Tain Bo Cuailnge is already extremely difficult to piece together, there are passages of rosc - which typically occur in times of prophecy, or important conversations in the book - that as of yet have been untranslated. They can be understood, in brief moments of clarity when studied by Gaelic scholars, but more or less cannot be effectively communicated in modern English.

As far as "most difficult piece within the Western canon that becomes even more difficult because of cultural differences surrounding meaning" I think that's probably not a bad parallel. As I recall, Wizardry 4 is borderline impossible, right? Instadeath ninjas, you get like nine spells tops, all of your summons are useless, you are openly declared by the game to be the bad guy, you're punished for dying, which means dying compounds the problem...

It's tough though. I find parallels between video games and music much easier than parallels between video games and literature. Structure isn't studied quite as much in literature as it is in music.

>>8248790
couldn't get laid

>>8248798

Wrong. He was handsome in youth and a renowned womanizer.

white dude

oh shit just saw the file name when it posted, tis Pierre

Wow just imagine if you read them in order!

>>8249004
I usually/always do, but I'm very glad I didn't for this one.

I'll probably read a much more recent translation soon since this one was really old and I like translation and translation theory, and I'll definitely read it in order then

>>8248710
I read norwegian wood and the only thing I liked about it was the ending
I didn't get the book, but maybe there was nothing to get
that's all I've got to say

>>8248710
It's the only Murakami novel I really like, although I havent read many. I've been meaning to reread it.

literature for people who don't read literature

it's not bad but it's not good.

>>8248643
Je pense que les grenouilles sont mauvaises. Je préfère les auteurs americains.

>>8248665
Ah bon, que lis-tu au juste? Y a pas trop à prendre chez les américains. au moins à ce que j'en connais... une recommandation (sérieuse)?

>>8248643
Chui américain mais je comprends le français. Est-ce qu'il serait difficile de lire les livres de rousseau en français? J'ai acheté un exemplaire à Paris

damn, I want this too. bump

>>8248641
ming liang is shit

Edward Yang > Hou Hsiao Hsien >>>> Ming-Liang

>>8248641
Infinite Jest

>>8248610
>reading anything from an English speaking country beside Shakespear.

You're lucky to have him

Replace Britain with 'Murica if we're talking the last 200 years.

>>8248610
Britain isn't even the most relevant in English language literature.

Dashiell Hammett is pretty much classic, even tho he's formulaic. James Ellroy is probably my favorite.

>>8248553
ellroy

destined to become /lit/core

Rafael Bernal - The Mongol Conspiracy

Only blue-pill cucklords think this book isn't the 20th century equivalent of the Torah

Currently reading the fountain head actually. My first book by her.

I'm on page 74 taking a break to shit.

I like it a lot so far, it almost seems like a coming of age novel but I know it will become more complex hopefully.

She is very heavy handed in some places which is a little frustrating. But I like her writing so far.

Not OP.

Just finished this, What a fucking struggle it was to finish it. Especially the 70 page monologue chapter, yes I get the fucking point of her philosophy.

What makes it worse imo is that she portrays the looters as as retards, who 'cry' everything vs. the heros who 'calmly say' everything.

>>8248502
>mfw reading about his visit to Dickens' house

Austistic af

>>8248512
tell me more. i'm intrigued.

>>8248533
THERE is nothing worse than a guest who outstays his welcome, and that was how Charles Dickens felt when Hans Christian Andersen came to stay 150 years ago.

The English novelist's patience was so strained by Andersen's refusal to leave, after staying for weeks, that Dickens's daughter nicknamed him the "bony bore".

The unfortunate episode has been recalled through an inscribed volume that has come to light before the London Antiquarian Book Fair at Olympia next month.

The Danish author of fairytales such as The Ugly Duckling first visited England in June 1847. He was a guest of the Countess of Blessington, who attracted the cream of Europe's intelligentsia to her gatherings.

It was at one of these assemblies that Andersen was introduced to Dickens, whom he worshipped, calling him "the greatest writer of our time".

Dickens, who reciprocated the admiration, visiting him at his lodgings the following month. Discovering that Andersen was not in, he left him a parcel containing 12 presentation copies of his books, of which the Olympia example is one.
A cordial correspondence developed between the two and Andersen returned to England for a fortnight as Dickens's guest at Gad's Hill in the summer of 1857. Before his arrival, Andersen had written to Dickens, promising: "I shall not inconvenience you too much." But it was an invitation that Dickens would soon regret.

The Danish man of letters, a tall, gaunt and rather ungainly character stayed for five weeks.

Dickens dropped polite hints that he should leave. After he finally left, Dickens wrote on the mirror in the guestroom: "Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks - which seemed to the family AGES!"
Dealer David Brass, who is bringing the volume to the fair, said: "To Andersen, the visit was a timeless Elysium, a holiday, a fairytale come true."

To the Dickens family it was eternal torment. Dickens's daughter, Kate, would later recall that Andersen "was a bony bore, and stayed on and on".

He was, she added, "a social blockhead. Andersen never quite understood why Dickens ceased to answer any of his letters".

>>8248497
>Letting a feminist teach you about Ancient Rome

Oh fucking kek anon.

Well conditioned, you have been.

Caesar turns in his grave.

What are your thoughts on it, OP?

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read pic related

and then read The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

I really dont have time for that.

>>8248310
>When did you finally realize you had nothing important to say about things and no artistic merit whatsoever, that everything you create will be an unoriginal chewing of vomit of greater people and gave up the attempt to write?
When I actually tried writing for the first time. I just sat there because I had absolutely nothing to talk about and no life experience whatsoever.

I don't have anything """important""" to say, I just wanna write a nice story with nice prose.

>>8248203
Actually the only Gaddis I've read so far.

I really liked it alot, anon. I'm a big fan of anti-climax in a narrative, but there are plenty of crumbs provided that allow the reader to interpret, or remain mystified, as to what happened. The events don't actually matter though, it's the fever pitch of deplorable humanity that made the book work for me.

I read Gaddis' Paris Review interview, and a review of the book by Cynthia Ozick as well, and Ozick and the interviewer both hone in on the possibility of McCandless madness, but I think they're lending it too much importance. I think that contemporary readers often try to use mental illness as something more than it is, but if you look at people suffering madness from syphilis in a text like Ulysses, it's more of a character flaw than any sort of extenuating condition. I get that it is a by product of the syphilis, but I think the point I'm coming to is that it's more a description of a perceived societal condemnation than it is the clinical exposition of why a person is the way they are.

>>8248543
It's not what happened that was the issue for me, but how jarring it all was as a whole.

I did enjoy it, but I guess it was as strangely constructed as its eventual title. That aspect of it caught me off guard at the end somehow.

I have a first edition signed copy.

At least for a while Tolkein imagined that Turin would come back during Middle Earths Ragnarok, when Morgoth breaks through the Door of Night and the final battle begins, and that little ole Turin would be the one to deliver the final death blow to Morgoth himself.

Thinking of that kind of makes it all ok.

>>8248038
Did you never hear of Kalevala or at least Greek tragedy?
Because this is the retelling of the first and could be seen as influenced by the second.

Tolkein was big into old Sagas and pagan tales. Don't be surprised when a work influenced by them is full of death, intrigue, and misery.

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>>8248029
>he enjoyed the stranger

HAHHAHAHAAHHAAHA

Shouldn't you be in school kid?

the most overrated legitimate work of literature i've ever read

it's like catcher in the rye for college students

>>8248037
What's so bad about it?