Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3869. page

>>8012307
i guess she deserved it better than malala deserved her nobel peace prize but it doesn't say much

She doesn't even write her own books.

You don't even read the books you own, who are you to talk?

why tho

>>8012278
Why not

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>>8012273
became an avid reader like fifteen months ago and I can't stop. I stopped watching tv and I don't spend much time spamming my message on 4chan anymore.

Here's how I did it.

-Remember the average person reads like zero books a year. If you read 5 pages a day, you are 5 pages above the average person

-Don't force yourself to read. Commit to read 5 pages a day. I swear after three days you'll feel like reading more and after a month or so you should be reading 50-100 pages a day for pleasure

-Read various books at the same time. When I grab a difficult book or one that makes me sleepy I grab another and switch. This should refresh your head. Keep them thematically different. I read economics and fiction.

-It isn't a race. Reading slowly won't make you sleepy that fast. Try to acknowledge what books are for you to read fast and which aren't.

-Buy the physical copies. When you get the books from your own money you'll feel the need to read them to avoid the feel of wasting your money.

-Start with books highly discussed here so you feel motivated to discuss.

>>8012265
Is game of thrones in danish? It might actually be useful since it will talk about things that might be useful or something man

Who cares about Danish?

Forgot to mention I already have Sommerfugledalen by Inger Christensen incoming since she's pretty much the only danish poet I know of.

>>8012269
Pardon?

>>8012283
I do, it's a beautiful language.

Thomas Pynchon

>>8012254
Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir
.

by Andrew Gordon

[This article appeared in The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel, ed. Geoffrey GrDUDEeen, Donald J. Greiner, and Larry McCaffery (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994): 167-78.]

This is a story aboWEEDut the sixties: it's about me and some friends of mine, it's about Berkeley, and it's about Pynchon. It's about a decade in which we were all young together and thought we would stay young forever. Berkeley was our Vineland, a dream of a perfect new world. The time was ripe, America was ours, and we were going to change the world: Paradise Now or ApocalyLMAOpse Now.

Neither one happened. As the decades pass, is anything left of that refuge, that Vineland, apart from memory and isolated dreams? Where are the sixties now? Where are we? And where is Thomas Pynchon?

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion-year-old carbon,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
(Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock")
Ultimately, I suppose this story is all about me. Everything you write always is, disguise it as you may. I don't know what I can tell you about Thomas Pynchon, but I can tell you something about myself, about the impact that the sixties and Berkeley and Pynchon had on me. Vineland looks back on the late sixties, and I'm going to look back on 1964-67, from ages 19 to 22, when I was first going out into the world on my own and when my life became enmeshed with the fictions of Thomas Pynchon. I want to trace some of the parallels between life and fiction.

According to his friend Jules Siegel, when Pynchon lived in Mexico in the sixties, "The Mexicans laughed at his mustache and called him Pancho Villa." There's a hoary old joke whose punchline goes, "Did I know Pancho Villa? Hombre, we had lunch together!" Mine goes, "Did I know Thomas Pynchon? Man, we smoked dope together!" Except it's no joke; it really happened.

I often feel that way about the nineteen sixties in America: they were no joke, they really happened to us, and they happened to me, although in retrospect they boggle the imagination and seem too incredible to be real. The truth of the sixties is stranger than fiction. As Philip Roth wrote about the period, "is it possible? is it happening?" ("Writing American Fiction" 121). That's why the sixties have so rarely been captured well in American fiction, except by a few authors such as Pynchon: if somebody told you the history of the decade as a story, you wouldn't believe it. You'd wonder: Is this for real? Is this some kind of joke? Is it supposed to be farce or tragedy? You wouldn't know how to feel, to laugh or to cry.

And although I met Thomas Pynchon one evening in Berkeley in June of 1967, I cannot say I really know him. He remains for me a figure as mysterious and ungraspable as Pancho Villa, a dope-smoking guerilla warrior of the imagination, disappearing into his Mexican desert.

>>8012254
any others? is it true shakespear sniffed some of the old snuff snuff

>>8012210
Do I get bump or does the bump get me?

>>8012210
I am curious as well.

>>8012210
What the fuck are you talking about

Pynchon disowned it for a reason.

yeah it's not for everyone but i love it
definetely not a 'substantial' kinda book, it's just early pynchon (V/GR) distilled into a short short novella

>>8012209
Definitely not knocking the book, it flows well and I found the second chapter to be excellently crafted. I've never read any other Pynchon, but is this a good encapsulation of his body of work? Was hoping for something stronger in theme and character.

Dont read the news much do you

>>8012166
What

>>8012176
He is dead.

what i do is i don't hate myself

>>8012163
sounds hard

kill self

you first

>>8012043
yes, that is correct, i did go first.

What is final frontoer

>>8012006
Post hoc ergo propter hoc

>>8012006
Nobody deserved AIDS more than this pseud.

>>8012006
Out of all the Pseuds (Sartre, Camus, Rawls, etc.) I like him the most.

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>>8011959

>>8012667
Nice pick when it comes to Reilly, but Terry Gilliam has never made anything good

>>8012667
i think this could legit be turned into a good movie

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>>8011860
I've read Angels and Demons, and I'm sure it's fairly similar.

Like most John Grisham-esque books it's perfectly enjoyable, but it's like bubble gum. You might kind of enjoy it when you're chewing on it, but ultimately it's unsatisfying and you barely remember it. I couldn't tell you about a single character in Angels and Demons and I've only finished it a month ago. The style of writing lends itself more to a TV show than a novel desu. There's nothing it gains by being a book. It wouldn't lose anything by being displayed through a strictly visual medium. Description is sparse, the dialogue is thread-bare, and the prose is almost insultingly blase.

If you're 40, going through menopause and looking for some time to kill while you sip your mimosa's by the beach then this is the book for you. Otherwise wouldn't recommend.

>>8011918
>40
>menopause

I don't think that's how it works. Maybe you've watched too much sex and the city.

>>8011921
Some people do start the menopause that early bro. I agree that it's not that common tho.

Typically it's the women that get paranoid about it and think they'll be barren by 30.

>>8011847
They're both easy as fuck, man. Just read them.

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>>8011847
This: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215485.The_World_of_Odysseus

Read Greek: An Intensive Course and The Cambridge Guide to Homer.

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>>8011820
I don't know if I've become a better person, but my perspective has definitely changed since I've read this book.

>>8011820
the holy bible

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Infinite Jest has made me stop wasting time on the internet. I'm actually only here because I'm waiting for my pc to deinstall some games (I also quit gaming) and then I'll leave. By the way, what do you think of my cat?

Is it illegal to share these pdfs? Like uploading them somewhere?

>>8011859

it's (not)^p illegal with p odd

I'm going to bed. But you guys can post here and I'll fire emails off tomorrow.

you're a cool guy op