https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8czs8v6PuI
kinda autistic t b h
Ezra Pound reading Canto I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fUEYs3TsFA
I discovered this video while studying Pound for a course in Modernist Poetry and wanted to hear a reading of the Canto for rhythm and thought "jeez, this faggot is really ruining Pound's poem" until I realized it was him.
>>8044623
just because it's him it doesn't matter that the notion doesn't stand :3
Discussion Time! Lets talk about Stephen Vincent Benet's short story By the Waters of Babylon. Link to full story here if you haven't read it: http://www.tkinter.smig.net/outings/rosemountghosts/babylon.htm
Can we talk about WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? AHHHH I'M SO CONFUSED
I mean, I thought it'd be nice to read something together like /co/ does but if /lit/ isn't into that kind of thing...
>>8044174
I've just read it. Meh Standard postapocalyptic fare. Not much to talk about, for me.
>>8044283
I'm wondering if it's really about Indians because I kind of got that vibe. Either that or small people/bugs, I don't know it's really confusing.
If this picture was a book, what book would it be?
I'm trying to look for a book about solitude, depression and early adulthood that is set in a relatively modern setting.
I'm not looking for meme young adult books like Maze Runner or Hunger Games, am I asking for too much?
>>8044087
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
>>8044087
No Longer Human
Taipei
Anyone read Arabian Nights / One Thousand and One Nights?
Which stories are the best? I've only read Simbad the Sailor so far
>>8044085
I like the one about the street-rat that wins over the princess with genie powers.
>>8044115
Did you actually read it though?
>>8044115
RIFF RAFF
Third rate Murakami.
>>8044072
short story game untouchable
>>8044072
Who?
What other writers have prose on the same level as Joyce and Proust? Preferably modern, but any writers are good.
>>8044050
Woolf
instead of "any writers are good," one should read the post as "it's fine if they are not modern"
Dog
What types of books do (only) English majors read? Not text books, I mean what types of prose and poetry are they assigned to read and analyze that a casual reader might not consider. I was originally going to major in English/literature but switched. I'm still really interested in it as a hobby though.
>>8043997
not an english major but I took a few 200 level literature courses, this is what I read:
canons and canonicity:
-eugene onegin
-hamlet
-merchant of venice
course i do not remember the name of:
borges - labyrinths
grillert - jealousy
marquez - one hundred years of solitude
shalamov - kolyma tales
>>8043997
literary theory.
get the norton anthology.
>>8043997
lots of "classics"
required reading:
Arabian Nights
Beowulf
The Wanderer
Canterbury Tales (Bonus if you do the Decameron)
sonnets from Petrarch, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, etc
poetry of the Romantics like Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc
long story short, lit majors learn a lot about the various "segments" and trends that have appeared throughout literary history
What are some cool Greek words?
anime is a mistake
>>8043935
Evangelion
>>8043935
grimbuts
>he talks about My Twisted World as if it is a work of literature
>>8043869
it is technically a work of literature even if it is bereft of artistry
>>8043869
>called a manifesto
>is an autobiography
>>8043869
I like to consider it as if the actions Elliot took afterwards had never occurred. A stand alone piece of fiction, satirizing certain aspects of modern pop culture and the pursuit of pleasure and love. damn it ellie. If you had just written the final act as the killings in third person, pretended it wasn't autobiographical it would have probably done well. your dad would likely made it into a movie too.
Nietzsche's suggestion that aesthetics should be the supreme value above truth, as opposed to truth as the supreme value above aesthetics, is what lead to the catastrophe of modern aesthetics whose quality isn't beholden to truth, there is no such thing as "true beauty" anymore, it's just a matter of who most represents the "spirit of the age" (or the "current year", as it manifests politically).
Nietzsche's idea of truth here is contaminated, and it is the contaminated conception of truth that he rebels against. After truth passed from subject (revelation, truth reveals itself consciously) to object (freethinking, the Enlightenment, truth is an object to denude), materialism rebels against the incoherent, freethinking enterprise, and identifies truth strictly with empiricism: what we see and hear, and ends up raising utility above it (and Nietzsche is actually rebelling against utility as the supreme value more than he is against truth). Nietzsche is working with the materialist conception of truth, and of course realizes that the empirical is altogether a matter of perspective, if what we see and hear is synonymous with truth, then there is no monolithic truth, each person has his own "truth". But in order to accept this conclusion, one must first accept the entire post-freethinking enterprise, the materialist, realist enterprise. Once truth becomes purely relative, then it ceases to have any significance beyond taste, and if truth is merely a matter of taste, then taste itself is the predicate upon which it dependent, and taste itself is aesthetics, so Nietzsche says truth as a product of taste is of no value compared to the taste itself, merely a servant of taste. And once this is accepted, then the taste which is the most exotic will always be most valued, whatever is the "spirit of the age", the "current year", is what is most fresh, and therefore most exciting, and this impulse assumes control over all art and politics. But of course the dialectic is not complete, to be complete in abandonment of God, the vagaries must be abolished, and destruction becomes the measure of all things, because destruction is the ultimate excitement, the ultimate in freshness, as it is always the ultimate rebellion against every creative act prior to itself.
Anyone interested in reading about this in depth, Father Seraphim Rose wrote a work on it (you can skip the preface, which just explains it's a chapter of an uncompleted book): http://oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw8XE3j_c0U
tl;dr
>>8043614
Just read the first sentence, then
PhD Candidate in Literature here, ask me anything!
So, I'm working on my PhD in phil...literature in the United States. Ask me anything about literature, books, the contemporary state of the field, individuals. Or about what it's like to do a PhD in the humanities, if you are curious.
>>8043448
Would you stick your tongue in my asshole for a million dollars?
>>8043448
nobody in my department takes sticking tongues into assholes seriously, it's very derivative
. I already have a PhD.
Books will you never understand the circlejerk over.
>>8043396
/r/books might be more your speed
>>8043396
Agreed but only particular to /lit/. It isn't typical meme fare
It's really short and the prose is straightforward as hell. I guess maybe it's the historical aspect of it?
My mom's really into reading fiction so I don't read fiction because I don't want to end up like her. I only read non-fiction. Am I wrong?
>>8043291
Yes
>>8043301
she does nothing with her life desu
>>8043291
>reading fiction
Unless she's a child, reading fiction is nothing to boast about. It's honestly quite pathetic to read fiction, because you put your brain in autopilot and does the same thing that you do when watching TV: you just absorb information and accept it. There's no critical thinking, no curious thoughts that leads to research and discovery. What does she do when she closes a book? She goes to sleep or just have daydreams about the fictional characters.
If you read nonfiction that are philosophical, I can only say that you've barely escape the ranks if your mother.
Just started this today. I'm about halfway through it. It's pretty great so far. Surprised it's not a meme here, to be honest.
To those of you that read it- did you like it? Anything similar you'd recommend?
finish the book first and we can discuss something.
GOD i hate so much these "just started today blah blah" threads
>>8043192
I hate so much your English, but you're right.
OP, you're a bigger-than-average faggot. Just go read the book.
>>8043175
I liked it, largely because of how uncomfortable it was. His sickliness really comes through in his increasingly pedantic and exhausting musings. It was one of the first "real" books I read after teenage years of YA shit, and honestly I don't think I was able to even close to fully appreciate it, but it still managed to give me some insight to my own hobbies/inclinations which I prosecute to nearly autistic extents, and helped me become a bit more forgiving for failing to measure up to my ideals.
I also think I would enjoy a second read much more than my first, if only since I am now infinitely more familiar with the ancient writers on whom des esseintes spends (I think) a whole chapter. It would be cool to have a brief accompaniment guide for the text, with blurbs about the droves of authors, pieces of art, and weird plants he catalogues.
I hope you finish the book soon and can comment on it more fully; I've only seen a handful of references to it in my last year on /lit/, and would like to know what you think of it.
PS does anyone have pictures of the extremely limited edition version of the text, with, I think, a leather binding and gold decorations? I remember stumbling on some appropriately decadent edition, long out of print, but can't find it anymore, don't have photos, and seemingly can't even remember anything specific about it which would help me google it.
Being happy or satisfied feels unnatural to a person. While they will gain some temporary elation, it is only a brief distraction.
The base, comfortable level of being is to be unhappy and dissatisfied. This is, paradoxically, where you will be the most satisfied.
You should not trust any ideology that attempts to increase levels of happiness or satisfaction.
Schopenhauer right?
>>8042977
This is very true, our brains are problem-solving machines and get confused when they don't have a problem to solve. However, if you continually remind yourself of the unimportance of the things you worry about, it's possible to train yourself to be more satisfied. It feels unnatural at first but the result is, in my opinion, worth the effort.
This is the result of toxic guilt usually caused by narcissistic parents rather than 'it's right to feel bad all the time'
Children are fragile, when you are raised with the destructive underlying, unarticulated subjective truths that you are given by your parents, you internalise them into later life and sense 'I ought to feel bad'
Schopenhauer (if this is him) and a host of others just had parenting issues rather than anything else most likely.