Any french /lit/ fellows here? I came here a while ago for reccomendation on french litterature, which I have followed and expanded upon, but feel free to suggest more obscure titles or dense works.
I was here called a pleb for liking Voltaire and, upon verification, it was true.
Can French people be plebs?
What did you read so far?
>>8137337
Léon Bloy - Le désespéré
L.F Céline - Mort à Credit
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle - Le Feu follet
Honoré de Balzac - Le Père Goriot
Gustave Flaubert - L’Éducation Sentimentale
>Mine:
>Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
>A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
>The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
>The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
>Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
>1984 by George Orwell
>Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
>>8137031
How is middle school, kiddo?
>>8137035
Really easy by the way.
>>8137035
>James Joyce
>middle school
I was reading goosebumps then, nigga
Bickering knights edition
Recommendation
>Fantasy
Selected: http://i.imgur.com/3v2oXAY.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/
Previous >>8129875
One thing, as a farmer, that bothers me. Is the lack of disturbance towards the concept of agriculture in novels. Seriously, it's like nobody considers it. Especially given how little of a choice there was in the far past towards our social caste and unwillingness. It's terrible social horror shit. It's dirty, dehumanizing, it fucks up what you look like to others forever. The effort starts bending your spine. It's just, awful through and through with some positive elements.
But I don't like how it isn't explored, demeaning and dehumanizing labor we have no choice but to be put through is a concept I don't that's ever been handeled well or properly. Maybe it's me, it's a deep seated dissapointment of not breaking the family tradition's mold, that king's desires for cannon fodder in the past, or just the need to nourish an overpopulated planet, override our own autonomy and emotions towards others, making you feel like they don't see in you what you see in them.
I don't know what I'm saying. I just wish farmers weren't constantly written as "Poor people! That cultivate crops!", and not facing the dirty wirty disturbing bullshit dealt with is. Or how we're forced into believing its acceptable to look down on people as "plebs" when the aforementioned are, for some people, and for many people, vital sources of aliments. This was even more prevalent in the past I'm assuming given the feudal system.
>>8136906
Dorcas is a woman, her husband is the man.Both Sev and Dorcas are resurrected by the Claw, which Severian doesn't know he has.
>Mine:
Aeschylus, Oresteia (or any other drama) (Greek)
Al-Hakim, Tawfiq, Fate of a Cockroach and Other Plays (Arabic)
Aristophanes, Lysistrata (or any other drama) (Greek)
Babel, Isaac, Sunset (Russian)
Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot or Endgame (English)
Shaw, George Bernard, Pygmalion (or any other drama) (English)
Brecht, Bertolt, Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage) (or any other drama) (German)
Büchner, Georg, Woyzeck (German)
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, La Vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream) (Spanish)
Chekhov, Anton, Vishniovy sad (The Cherry Orchard) (or any other drama) (Russian)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Shinjūten no Amijima (Love Suicides of Amijima) (Japanese)
Churchill, Caryl, Cloud Nine (English)
De Filippo, Eduardo, Filumena Marturano (Italian)
Dryden, John, All for Love (English)
Dutt, Utpal, Three Plays (Bengali)
Euripides, Bacchae (or any other drama) (Greek)
Everyman (Old English)
Fo, Dario, Mistero buffo (Comic Mysteries) or Morte accidentale di un anarchico (Accidental Death of an Anarchist) (Italian)
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Faust (German)
Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly (English)
Ibsen, Henrick, Hedda Gabler (Norwegian)
Kushner, Tony, Angels in America (English)
Lillo, George, London Merchant (English)
Molière, Misanthrope (French)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) (Gikuyu)
Pirandello, Luigi, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) or Enrico IV (Italian)
Racine, Jean, Phèdre (French)
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (or any other drama) (Greek)
William Shakespeare (any drama) (English)
Sheridan, R. B., School for Scandal (English)
Soyinka, Wole, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite or Death and the King’s Horseman (English)
Schiller, Friedrich von, Maria Stuart or Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) (German)
Tang Hsien-tsu, Mudan ting (Peony Pavilion) (Chinese)
Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Earnest (English)
Wilson, August, The Piano Lesson (or any other drama) (English)
Zeami, Hagoromo (The Feather Mantle ) or any Noh play (Japanese)
my friend said he'd loan me his infinite jest
my stepmom just loaned me an ian mcewan book and the liars club' by mary karr
i'm tryna read some iris murdoch and sometimes a great notion by ken kesey
always looking to read more kerouac
there's so much gertrude stein i haven't read
and i've been on a shakespeare bender.
gonna see where my whimsy takes me m8
>>8136616
Wow anon you seemed to be very distracted.
>Good luck!
>>8136736
the post-postmodern adhd is real, but thank you anon
So I should probably read The Phenomenology of the Spirit before I read this, huh?
Nah he's a charlatan. Schop was right. Hegel is bullshit.
>>8136441
nigga keeps talking about spirit and ideas and i'm having a hard time totally understanding his definitions of these things because i'm a dumbass and decided to start here with hegel because i like history and thought the premise of the work sounded interesting
>>8136433
Not necessarily. Hegel's writings on history are pretty digestible if you have basic knowledge of Idealism and a vague sense of what Hegel's on about. Much, much more digestible than the Phenomenology, which is notoriously obscure and which even Hegel said was a product of the time in his life that he wrote it. It's still ideal to read the Phenomenology, but I sincerely doubt anyone reads it before skimming over Hegel's other stuff. The Introduction to Phil. of History is most commonly given as an accessible intro to him, I think, actually.
what is the most disturbing, fucked up book you've ever read? I don't mean like, disturbingly bad, or disturbing as in the amount of graphic visual gore it entails in it's texts, but I mean disturbing on a visceral level. I'm looking for the real deal too, not some poorly written baby goosebumps pap. I mean, what is the height of fucked up and disturbing that you've ever known? I only want people who are confident in their expertise to answer this question.
Blood Meridian sure spooked me the judge hid in the Jakes and heforce-fed the kid tortillas
Parts of the Sound & The Fury disturbed me just like the scene with Jason acting like he'll let Caddy see her baby and then he takes money just to drive right past her
Threw my book at the wall.
Also The Story of the Eye was pretty fucked up, but the disgusting shit was so constant it was practically boring by the end to me
my diary desu lad senpai
Ask a Norwegian guy who is going to spend a whole year by himself in a cabin writing a novel anything
what are those books on the shelf>>8135890
>>8135890
Do you worry about leaving your many friends and girlfriend behind?
it's real
Forgive them Lord
>>8134127
The people who made that book know exactly what they do, though.
>>8134137
I know, that's why I left the second part out.
So, I have been immersing myself in meaninglessness. I read the stranger by albert camus, I picked up a large book on the dadaist movement from the local art museum that I have been reading. I've been trying to get into other authors, but I find neiztsche very difficult to read, as well as schopenhauer, and I'm ashamed to admit I found camus's essay sisyphus difficult to read too. I was thinking about reading some william s burroughs, but I also found that difficult to read, and naked lunch untouchable in terms of difficulty and incomprehensibility. I think I'm starting in the right places, I want nothing to mean anything and I hate being attached to meanings and words, they confine you. I just want to experience things on a primal level, but this reality is constantly dragging me back and reminding me that I'm nothing more than a slave.
What do I do lit? I think that I basically love the idea of reading, but I don't think that I really enjoy reading that much. I think that this is because of so many years of the internet. What I have noticed about the internet is that it's like a drug. Although I can write sentences and read pieces of text, my reading is to gather the information and then form my own response to it, but when I'm reading longer texts I often find myself overwhelmed because it's a sustained effort. I am so used to my mind shifting into multiple other pathways of distraction, it's hard for me to pick up a book and actually enjoy reading it. Instead it's a supreme exercise in attention span and focus.
(cont.)
Okay, so I'm actually not looking to detach my mind. I just said that because I was trying to put words to a concept inside my head which isn't really a concept. I actually think that I am just searching for something that gives me the confidence to live, and feel as though I have some grasp on how I am experiencing reality, or the inverse. I dunno. I don't mean that I want to die or something. Do you ever feel that the more words you attach to something the less meaning it has? That bottle of whisky right next to me is tantalizing. It's a beautiful jar of irish whisky, made of ceramic I think, or something. It's beautiful. The thought of swallowing it is tantalizing. I wouldn't really do that for no reason though, it's not like I crave it. I just imagine myself drinking it, but I know that all the pleasures in life are measured. At the risk of sounding like a pessimist, I just wanted to say that I'm not even sure I really know what pessimism means. You don't care, your probably an asshole. That's sort of what I've come to expect of people on this website. I've never really been able to relate to people. I relate to sun ra, and music, I don't listen to sun ra all the time, but they came up next in my music library on my computer. I relate more to throbbing gristle, not as if that would really pertain to you. I don't think that I'm really much of a human being in your eyes, but then again what is anyone in anyone's eyes? Did that sound horribly contrived? I did that on purpose, to fuck with you. You assume you know something just because you've made a superficial "conclusion". Consider this, a conclusion isn't a conclusion.
>>8134013
>>8134014
What does it really mean to feel whole lit? Someone who's totally disconnected is just as whole as someone who isn't. It doesn't really matter what my senses come to, but in so realizing that it may lead me to feel a sort of emptiness. The brain searching for a chemical reaction in which it can tell itself again assuredly that there's sort sort of order. I know this notion is false and I reject it, I know that in life it's the pursuit of aesthetic that is what really drives someone to live. I wish I could say I heard that from some book, I'm probably not even describing in words that would be adequate what someone else before me has already tried to say, in fact I don't think I really know what I'm saying at all.
I degrade myself a lot but it's hard for me to tell in this life what isn't really worth degrading myself over for. I tried one time to reach the height of my consciousness, but people just told me that I was going crazy, they told me that I was crossing over into another place where I wasn't supposed to go. Okay they didn't really tell me that literally, but I was there and I felt that I was on the brink of something, but I think now a days I would chalk up the whole experience to the fact that I think I was just drinking too much coffee at the time. The same sort of fleeting experience may come to you, unappreciated, because really why should experiences be relegated, the ones that are truly worth appreciating, to being appreciated. I don't think that there's a whole lot of things that one may appreciate, because really to relegate what you should and shouldn't appreciate seems arbitrary. You may change what you appreciate depending on some arbitrary circumstance and become and optimist or a pessimist, it really makes no difference, it's all the same.
Faced with this absolute nothingness attached to meaning, I wish that I could somehow detach myself from meaning. I think that that's what I was trying to say earlier, is that I want to detach my mind from meaning because meaning robs things of their value. Once you know the meaning of something you've reached the end, to which there was no beginning.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
>>8133033
>name of the wind
>>8133078
>He who smelt it
>>8133078
Yep, that's the one! One of the most immersive books I've ever read. You recognize it so I assume you've read it, what did you think of it?
About to begin reading The Illiad? Any tips, advice? Using the lattimore translation
Should I try to memorize the whole thing? If so, Greek or English? Do you think it would impress people? I know Mark Zuckerberg did that.
Anyways, general Illiad thread
>>8119240
>Any tips, advice?
Use summaries. Just normie ones you can easily find online. LOTS of shit happens, many parallel scenes, lots of names. Easy to get some things mixed up.
>Should I try to memorize the whole thing?
No...
Lattimore's great if you can read Greek. Can you? I definitely recommend selecting passages you find particularly striking and going through the original using the translation for help. Lattimore is very literal, shouldn't be too difficult if you're familiar with Homeric Greek. Geoffrey Steadman has written wonderful commentaries (from a purely grammatical and entry-level standpoint) which you can find online. For something more in depth, De Jong is a personal favourite. Enjoy!
>>8119240
>.
If you have the choice between Greek and English, why would you choose English? I assume the Greek would be closer to Homer.
The advice I have is not to feel bogged down by all of the patronymic writing, and the catalogue of ships. It is not necessary to recall minor and incidental characters.
>>8119240
H-h-have people on /lit/ actually memorized the Illiad? What autism level do I need to unlock this skill?
>Green text the plot of your book
>>8116817
I'm not giving you my ideas.
>>8116817
>guy comes up with 5 internet friends to trick a girl into dating the real him
>Mother shows up pregnant in ruins of previous world
>She builds a shelter
>Gives birth to a kid and gives him a weird name
>Kid grows up with her until she dies
>When she does, he roams an empty earth
>He sees a bunch of spooky shit
>There's a spooky black monster at the bottom of a cave
>There's also some spirits that roam the earth
>Insert plot here
>At the end, the boy looks out into the distance with his cool dog that he found
>In everything we encounter in our lives, its essence precedes its existence. Yet in our consciousness, existence precedes essence.
>“There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide.
I'm tired of feeling that life is meaningless and becoming anything is a trivial pursuit. I want to unlearn.
>>8139798
Your problem is that you made the same mistake every nihilist, absurdist, French fuck made.
You applied the dichtonomy of "meaning/meaninglessness" on the realization that "meaning" itself is not a thing, falsely deducing everything must be meaningless.
The entire idea is false.
Schopenhauer may have been one of the few European philosophers who kinda-sorta resolved their own problem. Je just didn't realize it.
>pic related
>>8139815
>*dichotomy
Uh... I need sleep.
>>8139815
>on the realization that "meaning" itself is not a thing
wut
Hey /lit/,
I need to contribute 10 literature-oriented questions for a quiz night in a couple of days.
Give me your best normie friendly questions, the participants are all university educated, but vanilla as fuck. Topics can range from popular novels/fiction to more classical literature.
Pic unrelated
Which wars did Stendahl fight in?
Which Pliny died in his eruption?
How many broads get raped, in total, in the Greek tragedies?
What did Hitler say was the "secret" to reading books efficiently?
How many female equivalents of Shakespeare or Kant have there been throughout history?
What was the full name of Huck Finn's companion?
Which group of people was equally hated by T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton, and Kingsley Amis?
Which continent did Kant and Hume agree has never achieved anything notable in history?
What is the gender of the five most cited authors in feminist critical theory?
How did Pericles say women could help Athens, at the end of his famous Funeral Oration?
What was Walt Whitman's favorite word for his black friends?
Name one Lovecraft poem.
>verse translation
>>8139553
>translation
>>8139553
>verse
Verse translation is the greatest kind of translation. Only a true patrician translator is capable of doing it. This is why inferior translators are butthurt about them, because they make their work look bad.