Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3749. page

Start with the Greeks, then.

>you need to be spoonfed
I read all of Finnegans Wake at 17 and both loved and understood it, all before I ever touched a greeky book. I'm not even a super smart person, just adequate

>>8085955
Didn't you read? My room is FULL of copies of "Infinite Jest" and Dorian Gray books laying on the floor

Anyone?

>>8085910
You're mixing intensity levels. Either be more banal, or less.

>>8085910
Couple of things come to mind.
>using the same word over and over in quick succession is generally a bad idea unless you're doing it on purpose for stylistic effect
>you aren't very descriptive. Few adjectives, few adverbs, little description beyond the absolute skeleton. Like the above it can work if you're doing it on purpose, but you aren't so it looks "like a 9th grader".
>you're jumping around way too much. Ties into the above, because you finish up an idea (e.g. your feelings about theft) in about 2 sentences and then abruptly start talking about something related without any segue.
>stop spamming commas holy fuck

>>8085850
Cantos

>>8085851
anon pls

>>8085850
Buckowski, John Green

>>8085788
He's mostly know for Illuminations (a collection of prose poems), A Season in Hell (a long prose poem), and The Drunken Boat (a long poem). I've only read the first two, which I recommend highly, and some of his earlier work, which was a bit lackluster. So my advice to you would be to seek out his prose poetry, that's what he does best in my opinion.

Read him like you feel it. He is most known for:
Le Bateau Ivre
Une saison en enfer (I know it's not a poem)
Sensations
Voyelles
Le Dormeur du val
Ma bohème
Morts de Quatre-vingt-douze
Oraison du soir

Ophélie, La Comédie de la soif and Le bateau ivre are my favorite

The library...

>>8085785
my parents smoked a lot of crack when I was a kid. sold a bunch of my library books for some fucking reason. tried explaining it to the library but they didn't even believe me

eBooks are also a choice.

>>8085690
>The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
It's a torture porn fantasy novel, why do you want to buy it?

>>8085723
no comment

>>8085690
Swap out Cormac McCarthy's corncobbery for "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J. M. Coetzee.

>>8085544
no. yur wrong

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> Wild posting because I need a place to share this:

You are the question I could never answer. My theory that ends with an ellipsis; my hypothesis that evades empiricism. The one mystery I could never figure out. How could I ever hope to stay away?

>>8085544
The kind of people who study English or creative writing are the kind of people more interested in idea of writing itself than trying to communicate an idea, as a consequence all of their writing is aimless waffle.

>>8085498
it's shit

it's excellent

it's book

I wasn't on Reddit to witness the event, that's for sure.
How about you OP?

>>8085488
not on reddit

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>>8085488
I wonder if Zizek's wife is jealous of Stalin.

Elliot Rodger's My Twisted World is all about whiny rich kids who can't get anything done

>>8085479
thanks for making me feel worse, that was a pretty low joke. you didn't actually make me feel really worse, I'm just sort of disgusted by your poor taste. That's very temporary though, I'm already over it. In fact, as I type this I feel a bit better. So thanks.

You're me except it's my sister. Four years for me too.

I feel completely stuck. Dropped out of school.

Reading the fourth part of "My Struggle". Lots of youth memories of falling in love, meeting girls, realizing I have had none of that which makes me even more depressed. I just want to meet people, find some girl, do all those thing's I've been missing out on. But I'm just a shy fuck. And also not attractive. So, sort of finding a job wouldn't do much, sure it would be nice but I would still have nothing. No friends or girls or anyone to be with. Just going to thd job. That's not hapiness. I just want to burst out of this bubble. Also live in a shitty small village so there's really not a whole lot of people to meet. I feel like I'm completely done by now.

Um. Book redonmendations. I don't know. You've probably read The Stanger.

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>>8085406
So you're saying that you can't handle 12 years old girl you pussy faggot?

>>8085406
I fell in love with the prose from the get go. If you aren't digging the style, maybe you should put it down. Don't force yourself through something you don't like.

Why the fuck is it "agony" to read?

Yukio Mishima
Natsume Sōseki
Haruki Murakami
Ryu Murakami (although more thriller)
literally just type in japanese authors in google, they're all pretty depressing

Mishima is considered their best modern writer by the Japanese themselves.
Start with The Sailor That Feel From Grace With the Sea and go from there.

I also liked Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. 1920s Writer who managed to roll Gogol, Kafka and Poe all into one.

Shusaku Endo

Cambridge Histories are good for research and overviews but they aren't great for survey reading unless you are a really particular kind of person

It's really helpful to be able to get an overview of the scholarship and basic contours of a certain topic (like "The Roman Slave Economy" or "Ireland 454-960"), but it's tedious as all fuck to read if you're just looking for history. They are academic articles, so they're mostly talking about scholarly problematics.

I've read certain self-contained single volume ones for "fun" before but it was nothing like reading a nice holistic survey designed for students and academic readers.

>>8085250
What do you recommend for holistic reading? Classical History preferred.

>>8085302
Cambridge Histories contain sections that scholars will gush about as best in subject, but they arent very fun for "holistic reading" as you say.

Something like Kagan's series on the Peloponnesian War, The Landmark Thucydides, the Dryden translation of Plutarch's Lives, or some research on your own using oxfordbibliographies would probably benefit you if you are reading for pleasure.

Are you describing Great Britain's rise to power or something else?

>>8085179
I'm just saying, maybe you really do have to be ugly to produce good art. Only great suffering and all that.

>>8085187
Unfortunately most art is made by rich nobles more attractive on average, then and now

>>8085078
Someone dies at the end or something. There really isn't a point other than BEE's usual vapid bullshit about how vain and hollow everyone is.

Don't read the spoiler OP, just finish the book, it's pretty good and not that long. It has a point, it's nothing that's going to change your life or anything, but as you said the story is about these people doing drugs and shit, that's not going to change.
>>8085087
>Someone dies at the end or something.
nobody dies, but there is a 12 year old sex slave. That's probably the most fucked up thing.

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>Lots and lots of felonies