Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3865. page

There is no such label.

people like it here...

>>8016209
Everyone whose anyone likes that book.

>>8016098
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

>>8016123
Well said, Anon.

>>8016123
>As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times
The word "stretched" appears only seven times in the book, and none of them refers to any character's legs.

I mean, I agree with Bloom on the Harry Potter series, but this was a big fat lie.

pebis :D

>>8015879
essence is concealed

Women will waste money on what is considered fashionable even if they know it is vapid.

Men will earn money doing something that means nothing to them if the end result is necessary and/or honourable.

>>8015780
what is your native language?

>>8015787
tacospeak.

I know my english is broken.

would you like to explain why is broken.

>>8015780
To not be an idiot, you need to know some Philosophy, Logic, and Rhetoric; if you don't want to be poor you should know some Comp Sci as well

>>8015566
>I refuse to even use the name of this person. I call her Dracula's daughter, because her father was a Dracula scholar.

if i were him i would file a defamation suit against that woman btw

>>8015592
She's a major cunt, LOL.

>>8015566
What a based old man

you have a containment board for this shit

>>8010109

>>8015554
>reading for plot
>reading for enjoyment
>reading translations

>>>/r/books

>>8015565

The Iliad predates the fantasy genre.

Anyone who says no is just butthurt that they could never get into a frat

>>8015478
no it's normie

>>8015478
пкф? looks like vodka runes

I don't read oldshit. People were objectively more stupid back then.

>>8015465
modern /lit/, everyone.

>>8015465
Ok pal, go back to read some modern stuff in your line, like Stephen King or George Martin.

>>8015404
Untranslated. It reads too smooth

>>8015404
Translated. Armchairs.

>>8015606
Nice one. Now you post

You should learn to greentext properly before making a thread

>>8015385
nah just keep buying more books retard.

maybe buy a bookshelf so you can take a picture and participate in those retarded bookshelf threads with the rest of the morons.

I haven't fully read something in 3 months.

The clock stared at me; its pale face scowling in my direction, its arms frozen in time. Moonlight crept beside my curtains and illuminated the side of the room on which the clock hung. The closet door stood open, alert, and waiting. My window called to me, begged for my presence, and to the window I went. My feet felt safe on the soft, yellow carpet beneath my bed, but as I made my way to the window, ominous shapes of irascible creatures leered at me, and distrustful objects and electronics snickered in hushed whispers at their plots.
I ventured towards the window; it seemed as though I’d been roving for an eternity by the time I arrived. The clock continued to stare its evil stare as I stood in front of the window, and its ravenously sour intent spiked the hairs on my neck. Time’s relentless refusal to relinquish its mighty grip on my throat, whereby it strung me up, helplessly frozen in the echoes of the night, made my ears go cold and my lips quiver. I pulled back the curtains, and opened the window, exposing my body to the tempestuous woes of the outside world.
The air rushed onto my face and made my lips dry-up and my eyes flicker. The sky rang its bell, propositioning me. How dare it request me; a travel to the sky would’ve been the end of me, though the bastard believed me too ignorant to know this. I replied back to the heathenous realm, attacked it with the thunderous boom of my voice, which resonated from deep within my chest, “You cannot tempt me with your illustrious blues and your vibrant oranges you vile thing! The sanctity of isolation within my chambers shelters me from your bilious ways, and I know of the manner by which you’ll attempt to seduce me, but my will is strong, so give up now you demon-sky!” I slammed the window shut and sunk back into my room, not bothering to close the curtains.

shameless self bump

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>>8015377
Christ you're an uncultured fag

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>>8015371
Goddamn.

>>8015371
read the trial and the castle

Maybe try and read it and decide for yourself whether she sucks or not.

Or tell him you won't read it because some posters on 4chan said she sucks.

>>8015358
Why would I think for myself when I could listen to what 4chan has decided what's good or not? I've let this site decide everything for me for years and it's never been wrong

That greedy fucking cunt should be erased from history. I consider myself open to ideas of all kinds, but not that kind of reprehensible, dehumanizing bollocks.

I have not finished it. I do not know that felt as of yet.

>>8015193
>How did you felt
better than you

>>8015193
What is your book about?

I've never written a book, so I don't know how I would felt accomplishing a task like that.

Quite possibly, though I haven't read it. T.S. Eliot was a pretty lousy literary critic but a great poet. By that same logic, Schneider is the worst possible 'literary' critic; therefore he should be the best possible poet.

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>>8015055
i lol'd

I like that this guy is a meme here now.