Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3494. page

>>8225036
Infinite Jest because it's the easiest one.

Personally I found 2666 the most purely readable

>>8225036
Infinite Jest and 2666. The Tunnel is the least friendly of all of them.

>>8224953
rad

>>8224953
It's a sign, you should read Post Office.

>>8224953
I saw Bukowski incarnate at my place of work one day. Looked exactly the age in your pic: similar stubble, slicked back hair, same smart casual form of dress just less pockmarked. He kept looking at me like only we knew what was going on. He looked bored.

>>8224815

i've never read one, but maybe there's a warhammer 40k novel about chaos marines?

event horizon is the prequel to warhammer 40k universe

>>8224828
Kek

>>8224828
>event horizon is the prequel to warhammer 40k universe

I don't see the connection at all...

At Swim-Two-Birds

I've honestly never found a book as continuously engaging as this one.

>>8224851
Curious, I found The Third Policeman dramatically more engaging. I'll have to return to ASTB eventually.

>>8224856
I've not read that one but it is on my list after Graveyard Clay.

>God and hence the Universe is eternal
>Something without a beginning can be a "first mover"
>Something without a beginning needs a "first mover"

ok

>>8224756
>everything has just been hanging around jacking itself off for eternity
>literally reducing the universe to a massive masturbatory engine

ok

>>8224754
What caused the first mover?

>>8224725

I've just finished an intro to lit course and I can tell you it's all about how white men are evil. Literally every book is about how white men are racist and sexist.

>>8224728

Sounds about right.

Literary theory totally collapsed in on itself with post-modernism around the 60s/70s (espousing meaning is impossible to nail down). From the ashes arose the notion that all the different particular theories (historical, feminist, psychoanalytic, etc.) had value as points of view, but that there is no singular perspective. At least that's what I took away from a very, very, very brief look into it.

I would suggest Waking Up by Sam Harris. Also watch his talks on Big Think.

If you really want to experience it, I would suggest you give serious thought to taking a psychedelic like psilocybin. Of course, that's not a decision to take lately and you should absolutely avoid it if there is a history of mental illness in the family, specifically schizoaffective disorder.

Relevant?

>In other words, the earliest definitions describe the key defining feature of meditation as an experience of “mental silence”.

>Many other explicit examples of this definition can be found in Eastern literature from virtually every historical period. Lao Tzu, for example, urged us to “Empty the mind of all thoughts” in the Tao Te Ching.

>Yet Western definitions of meditation have consistently failed to acknowledge its significance. Perhaps this is because of the predominance of the Cartesian dictum “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) that has come to characterise not only Western philosophy but the psyche as well.

>This might explain why for most people in the West, including the academics and researchers on whom we rely to generate our scientific knowledge, mental silence represents both an alien concept and an illogical experience.

https://theconversation.com/meditation-mindfulness-and-mind-emptiness-21291

>>8224737
>>This might explain why for most people in the West, including the academics and researchers on whom we rely to generate our scientific knowledge, mental silence represents both an alien concept and an illogical experience.

This must also be why the west has so many great achievements in science, philosophy and culture while the east, just sitting around thinking they don't exist all day, still poop in buckets and don't know math.

Are you really that fucking stupid that you can't remember reading my CV when I applied here?

I entertain mentally challenged children and teach them valuable life skills.

File: 1466327020167.jpg (19KB, 300x319px) Image search: [Google]

19KB, 300x319px

>>8224617
"I write articles for several right-conservative print and online newspapers."

>tfw I realize people wouldn't consider this a "hobby"
Goddamn, what do normies even do. I go to the gym and participate in marathons. Ain't that something? Where do winners even get the time for that shit.

>>8224606
What possible reason would encourage you to start with one of the most esoteric and dense philosophers of the 20th century if you've barely read any philosophy?

>>8224651
This. Fuck off, OP... and start with the greeks.

>>8224651
It was recommended to me by my lecturer.

Harry Potter

>>8224527
Bloom's The Western Canon.
Designated pseud killer.

>horned waning moon
Garbage purple prose with no variety.

>>8224500
it adds to the tension and suspende in his stories.

>>8224494
Doesn't set scenes very well. For his time, really good. Best writers of all time? No. Best of cosmic horror writers? Definitely up there as a pioneer.

>>8224455
>How do I die?
By dying of exhaustion due to endless soul-crushing training of your prose skills.

>>8224455
we're all dead inside already

Write anyway.

Take the black pill

>>8224416
Vanitas vanitatum, yes. I write because it makes life less unbearable, as I knowingly partake with others into the shared lie of meaning.

>>8224416
>Is there any inherent value in achievement?

there's no such thing

>Also, what's the point of publishing a novel? What's the point of releasing any piece of art?

there's no such thing as 'points', get rid of illusionary teleologies.

> Does other people reading something you've made somehow add value to your life?

if you want it to.

> Is it nothing but vanity?

as opposed to what.

>>8224413

gee™ bro™ i™ don't™ know™

>>8224413
you sound nearly almost as butthurt as this guy >>8224417

>>8224413
The Waves has good female characterisation.

A lot of front that masks deep insecurity and jealousy.

Ideology subsumed concepts.

>>8224406
"higher causes"

What haunts the universe, and has its occult, “incomprehensible” being there, is precisely the mysterious
spook that we call highest essence. And to get to the bottom of this spook, to comprehend it, to
discover reality in it (to prove “the existence of God”) — this task men set to themselves for thousands
of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a
non-spook, the unreal into something real, the spirit into an entire and corporeal person — with this
they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world they sought the “thing in itself,” the
essence; behind the thing they sought the un-thing.