/iraq/ here, just wanted to drop by and say hi.
Have you guys read any books by Iraqis? Currently reading pic related. I recommend it strongly, it's a very dark and grim short story book.
>/iraq/
There is no Iraq board, what the fuck are you on about?
>>8200914
>he trusted an Islam
what is some essential /travel/core? Accounts of people travelling to exotic places.
happy birthday
bumping own thread
Ibn Fadlan and The Land of Darkness:
It's a collection of texts written by Arab travellers who went north. Most of the texts are about the steppe nomads (Bulghars, Khazars, Pecenegs, the Rūs, etc.) in the Ukraine/Black Sea area. A small amount of texts are about Western Europe (the land of the Franks). Ibn Fadlan is also known for writing down the only account of a Viking burial. What is remarkable about his writing is that it's not politically coloured, it's amazingly open minded for it's time.
>>8200852
thank you anon!!!
Obligatory "I just finished Moby Dick thread."
I thought it was amazing. I really appreciated the extensive build-up to the finale. What are some other books like this?
I've heard that Blood Meridian has some similarities including its style of prose and I plan on reading it soon.
there's nothing like moby dick. it's a truly original work.
>>8200851
This. You've read the book, OP, there's nothing else.
>>8200836
dropped by 30-th page, the most boring book i've ever attempted to read. That's why i hate those promoting their shotty classical books and people hating on stephen king and a song of ice and fire
Should I read Levinas? Where should I start? Which philosophers should I know about before reading into him?
Discuss.
>>8200740
Heidegger, general theology, broad existentialism, Buber... especially Buber.
>>8200740
Yes, he's enlightening. It's a good thing to have a clue on Heidegger, phenomenology and all of that, but it isn't necessary at all cost. You may read him without all of this.
>>8200740
Ethics is the first philosophy.
Ethics comes before metaphysics or ontology. This is the revolutionary and perhaps difficult idea of Levinas' philosophy but it's literally wonderful.
Most underrated philosopher of the 20th century.
What does lovers in triangle not on square mean?
really makes you think
>>8200659
Threesomes > Foursomes
>>8200659
It means you are a square if you don't have anyone on the side
critique my prose /lit/. i wrote about a stupid topic to make it not a shitty diary thread
It's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it. something about spamming dog faces to thousands of people amuses me endlessly. there are thousands of people in an online chat room, reading what people are saying, and i have the power to force them to look at dog faces. jesus. this is the the state of the world and i love it. i can sit in a room and force thousands of people to look at a stupid fucking dog face. and the best part is, when i start making people look at dog faces, other people start making people look at dog faces. it's not the attention that the dog faces recieve that i care about, it's not the power to make people post or look at dog faces that i care about, it's the fact that this is the world that i live in and it's so comforting to know that in a world where terrible things occur and people are slaughtered and beaten and raped and destroyed on a level that can't be seen that i can spam stupid fucking dog faces to thousands of strangers.
thx senpai
>>8200642
I thought atheism + communism + gay culture = Foucault
Start spamming dog faces already idiot.
stop posting this faggot picture you queer
Does burden of proof apply to philosophy? Why or why not?
>>8200618
google is your friend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof
>>8200730
This doesn't really answer my question. I was more surprised by the fact that this board seems to be totally accepting of religion on a philosophical level, despite it being an unprovable negative.
>>8200750
why didn't you specify more on the first post OP?
stop being lazy and explain yourself better - then maybe someone will reply
>enjoy fantasy as a genre
>most fantasy that I try to read either bores me to death or annoys me with contrivances
>when I was a kid I was reading Redwall instead of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings like the other kids around me
>The last fantasy series that I actually enjoyed was A Song of Ice and Fire.
Call me a shitter with the most plebian of taste. But I'm trying to find some more fantasy that I can tolerate.
If the magic in a particular fantasy book is too obvious and unsubtle, I lose my patience with it. If the political intrigue is too broad and grandiose, I start to struggle caring about anyone.
Why is it so hard to find good fantasy? A friend tipped me off to try out a particular book but the main protagonist had a sword that sang when enemies got close and he was accompanied by a halfling, an elf, and a dwarf. I had to put the book down after three chapters it was so fucking bland and cliche.
Yes I know A Song of Ice and Fire it's pretty much the popcorn summer blockbuster equivalent for literature, but I appreciate the armor and weapon porn that was in it and how it was moderately grounded. Is there any other fantasy series out on the market that keeps things low but is able to tell them in an interesting way? I think that's why I preferred redwall over Harry Potter when I was a kid. Yes Redwall had talking animals in it but there was no real magic or any supernatural bullshit; I couldn't get into Harry Potter because of that stuff despite it being insanely popular around that time.
Recommend me some gud fantasy /lit/
you're a shitter with plebeian taste, and also, go fuck yourself frogposter
>>8200615
If you have trouble sticking with fantasy novels then maybe short stories are more to your taste. Robert Howard's Conan and Solomon Kane stories come to mind. They are collected by Wordsworth and Penguin among others.
>>8200641
Hi there!
You seem to have made a bit of a mistake in your post. Luckily, the users of 4chan are always willing to help you clear this problem right up! You appear to have used a tripcode when posting, but your identity has nothing at all to do with the conversation! Whoops! You should always remember to stop using your tripcode when the thread it was used for is gone, unless another one is started! Posting with a tripcode when it isn't necessary is poor form. You should always try to post anonymously, unless your identity is absolutely vital to the post that you're making!
Now, there's no need to thank me - I'm just doing my bit to help you get used to the anonymous image-board culture!
commonality of prose?
So I see alot of y'all being all into foreign writers and stuff, notably hurakami and mishima for weebs (all respect due etc), maybe brecht and thomas mann and some french guys maybe.
I was wondering how many of you think you can really fully appreciate translated prose. I mean unless you've got a pretty strong understanding of the foreign culture and language wouldn't you lose alot of the intricacies of it all?
Think david foster wallace once said in that interview with the german tv station that he thought his own novels wouldn't translate well at all, etc. So I'm wondering how many of you, feel like you really really get it reading foreign writers or if you think that good literature is universal.
>>8200593
Most of why I read is for the writing, the prose, etc.. So if I can't find a translation of something that sounds phenomenal I just try to find something in my own language. It's kind of depressing desu.
>>8200593
>foreign culture
Not really, there's a huge amount of sharing between cultures in the modern world anyway. Subtleties might be lost but who cares if it's meaningful/enjoyable for you?
>foreign language
That's literally what the translation is for. Why on earth would you need a strong understanding if a language to read a -translation- of it?
>>8200619
>>8200613
well I mean especially in eastern languages, in Chinese (probably similar for Japanese and Korean as well)
They have a thing called Cheng Yu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu
there's an entire other level in the way they use language, not just as a simple idiom or a reference, but also has to do with the interplay of the pictographs and radicals that exist in the chinese characters, while the translator can probably find a similar english idiom, reading without the knowledge of the original language seems like you'd lose so much of that, unless the translator also includes like an entire section of dfw-ish footnotes. I'm wondering if there's examples of this kind of thing in other languages, especially Russian, German and French. Wonder if there's a native speaker that's read the English translation of any of the classics that can share their thoughts about this
So is it satire, or was that just a meme?
People who call it satire just do that to fit it to their modern sensibilities
>>8200590
Elaborate?
I've never seen a compelling piece of evidence to suggest it was in any way intended to be satyrical.
Is literature the artform with the deepest reach?
As a photographer myself i enjoy a lot the act of creating images, but i reckon the reach of photography is kinda superficial. I dont know anyone who has felt his life changed because of a photo, but that happens often with books.
Music can be pretty thrilling as an abstract sensory experience, but how deep it goes into actually shaping someones life? Not taking lyrics or subcultures into consideration, but music alone and itself.
Well done sculpture can be pretty moving, but thats it.
What do you think, is literature the most packed and dense and actually mind rearranging art form?
>>8200523
>is literature the most packed and dense and actually mind rearranging art form?
literature is inherently "mind rearranging" because its form and content are made up of language, which is what constructs the human mind, more or less. so literature is the most direct/accessible artform because its project is essentially to control the reader's thoughts as directly as possible.
that doesn't mean that photography or music or architecture can't be moving, but literature, and more specifically poetry, is probably the most direct artform.
Yes and photoghraphy is the shallowest "art"
>>8200523
>What do you think, is literature the most packed and dense and actually mind rearranging art form?
so far, yes. cinema could have been, but literature had a really long head start so, yeah.
>which is what constructs the human mind
i don't think that's true
So what would you consider the essential classic literature? I was thinking about getting an anthology of english literature so I can have access to a wide selection of greats and not spend a ton of money on a bunch of people's individual works. Would you say that it's really important to understand the classics, and that the classics necessarily have anything more or less to offer than our modern day literature?
>>8200385
Unless your head is in the sand you can guess what the essential classic literature. It is what has come down from hundreds, sometimes thousands (as in Homer, Plato) of years of history, the canon.
>>8200407
As to your other questions I would argue that classics are, on the whole, more worthy than modern day literature. The fact that they have survived, by being chosen to be painstakingly copied from crumbling papyrus and codices by scholars, and enduring still in our minds, centuries later, suggests that many of the old classics contain eternal truths. In this manner, they are more worthy.
>>8200407
Well, you know, I made this thread asking the essential literature is.
Are there any books as moving as “Stoner” that are actually about stoners? Something that shows a character get ruined by smoking too much weed/becoming a pothead. Something about the aimless mediocrity of a weed addict? Or even someone who uses it medically but has side effects and questions their usage? Apart from Infinite Jest I haven’t heard of or read anything that deals with marijuana addiction as something tragic rather than inherently hilarious. I’m having a hard time thinking of many realistic depictions of weed addiction in any medium. I’d love something like the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury but, you know, portraying the viewpoint of someone retarded from weed rather than just plain retarded.
I thought Infinite Jest was pretty realistic and balanced , even though you had stuff like people drooling ridiculous amounts during withdrawal it wasn’t like he suggested pot was bad for everybody all the time. Just that certain people can’t handle certain drugs and it’s really difficult to figure out why that is.
I often wonder how much of the deleterious impact weed has on one’s functioning is due to the drug itself versus anxiety and guilt about using it. I wonder if, say, DFW would still be alive and maybe even writing if he had changed his attitude from “weed=dangrous drug” to “self medicating with weed isn’t great for my writing but at least I’m alive.”
I’ve noticed that the people i know who have the biggest problems with smoking weed all come from very socially conservative families who basically threatened to disown them for their use. Meanwhile, even if addicted, the hippe-types I know from pothead families who either think it’s a panacea or at least something which shouldn’t be a source of shame all seem to be fine. Their lives might be mediocre and not going anywhere but they’re happy to smoke and play endless hours of COD.
I don’t think this necessarily has to do with intelligence; I think . I used to be a militant teetotaler as a teen so I guess I’ve always felt some residual guilt over “selling out” by using, and I think the sense of having crossed a Rubicon by smoking at all encouraged me to resign myself to addiction. Not to mention my dad calling me a drug addict the first time he found out I was using, even thouhg it wasn’t out of a control at the time.
Anyway, I think the internal conflict of “am I a loser because of weed or just because I’m a defective human being” is an interesting one. Pic very much related.
>>8200371
your diary desu
Chronic City by Johnathan Lethem
Like his other books, lots of strange pseudo-magical happenings with the characters fumbling about just trying to figure out 'what's going on' but in this case all the p.o.i. are basically just stoner buddies that are blazed out of their minds all the time. But they are all thoughtful interesting people with their own talents and weaknesses. Pot isn't presented as a hazard nor as a panacea. It's virtues are highlighted more often than not, but Lethem avoids tub-thumping. It is, in the end, just the thing that facilitates the friendship of these people.
Can't help you pal, but I really identify with
>I used to be a militant teetotaler as a teen so I guess I’ve always felt some residual guilt over “selling out” by using, and I think the sense of having crossed a Rubicon by smoking at all encouraged me to resign myself to addiction.
I'm clean now, but after first experimenting with getting drunk and high and seeing how much fun it was I felt the urge to both experiment with every other drug I could find, and to I guess make up for all the lost time I'd spent sober. It didn't help that my first exposure was during a particularly depressed point of my life. Eventually the lifestyle begun to really take its toll on me and I embraced sobriety again, but now I feel this immense guilt and shame at ever having bothered with all the drugs. I guess it isn't necessarily the drugs themselves, but rather the lifestyle of excess I adopted with regard to them, but the guilt and shame are potent nonetheless.
Again I can't really help you but I wanted to get that off my chest.
Are there any books based on this concept
>protag finds miracle drug
>protag becomes a genius/superpowers
>but drugs have consequences!
Not really "finds" or "drug" but if you're ok with "undergoes" and "procedure", Flowers for Algernon is the standard text.
Short story original > novel.
yeah probably
>>8200334
Excellent
Lit humor thread
haha!
>>8200315
I DONT GET IT
I would an Allison though