Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 3920. page

The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for A Raise - Georges Perec

>>7988140
Rene Descartes' Meditationes

>>7988140
Nausea - Satre

Not really, drinking and doing drugs make me depressed

>>7988100
normally are how you deprresed?

>>7988110
>normally are how you deprresed?
what did he mean by this?

>>7988075
vurt
the once and future king

>>7988075
wow you are gross. why anon? why

catalog. sage.

Why would you ever want higher, meme free content?

>>7988056
>browsing bullshit forums
>instead of actually reading

>>7988063
Because jerking off with other dilettantes is fun but not educational

Melville himself wrote about this in the allegory of the candle-maker in the Confidence Man. He needed Hawthorne even if it ruined him.

No you aren't you living fucking meme. Stop this. Every time I go into the fucking bookstore or come on /lit/ there's some post-ironic faggot who is like "Ulysses' language.. it's so poetic. It's the PINNACLE of PROSE! IRISH MEN, RUNNING THE WORLD.. A NEW AGE!"

NO IT FUCKING ISN'T

IT'S A FUCKING IRISH FARTFAG PLAYING GAY IRISH WORDSMITHERY GAMES

>>7987897
>grammatically incorrect sentence fragments.
>Did Joyce ever take an English highschool class?
*head explodes

>>7987897

I'm in your position except I just finished Shipping Out. It's a pretty funny read, on the surface, but it's morbidly transfigured by DFW's suicide.

Every other page includes a note on self-elimination as a 'wry joke.' The ocean as a 'primordial stew of death and decay' is a running motif. The entire conceit of the piece is DFW-as-clever-neurotic 'seeing through' the corporate processes used to induce relaxation in cruisegoers.

DFW's go-to capsule synopsis of Jest called it an investigation into the purposes and limits of pleasure; its central device, a magical film that is so enjoyable it makes viewers want to do nothing else but watch the tape continuously.

It's stupid to try connecting authorial biographies to literary analysis and it's stupid to guess at contributing factors of a suicide. In the case of DFW it's incredibly difficult to respect these rules. The question animating his entire career was, 'why bother?'

In interviews, DFW comes off as maybe the gentlest author ever recorded. He's unfailingly patient, respectful, and soft-spoken. But in 'Shipping Out,' seated next to middle-aged, midwestern dining companions whom he professes to deeply like, he spends eight paragraphs deconstructing these peoples' foibles to hilarious effect.

Have you seen the Charlie Rose talk where DFW is seated opposite Franzen, his long-time friend and, at that time, much lesser rival? DFW is polite and deferential towards Rose. DFW cautiously qualifies his generalizations in case you think he's leaping to conclusions or putting words in your mouth. But then Franzen, his friend, says something pretty innocuous about literary fiction; that its fans are much less likely to spend time with lowbrow TV entertainment.

"So the only people who read serious fiction are people who don't watch TV?" Says DFW. He's looking directly down his nose at Franzen.

"No, no--...ah, thank you for drawing that out for me, Dave..."

"No, no. If I misheard, enlighten me," says DFW. There's no mistaking his tone for the quaint circumspection marking DFW's NPR appearances. He's telling Franzen to fuck right off.

I could keep going, but basically I agree with OP. I'll try DFW's fiction but I'd be shocked to discover he could render a character believable, broken, and also loveable. I think most of DFW's life was spent mistaking one cause of unhappiness for another and proving that hatred is a habit that you can conceal, but which is very hard to slow or break.

>>7987884

Look up pictures, read up about it, use your imagination

You have both an advantage and a disadvantage. You may not really know the city, but you still have a romanticized vision of it. No previous experiences have ruined your opinions about the city, and it still has a mistery aura around it in your mind.

>>7987890
This, and obfuscation.

Navidson Johnny at same time till the end

faggot shit,

start in july or not at all

I'd have loved to be a part of this but it's starting too early for me; going into exam period. I'll catch up with you guys if you're still going a month from now.

>>7987886
YOU could always start in July, and then just talk about the chapters you've read.
>>7987900
I hope we will be. Regardless of whether everyone else stops or quits, I'm going to finish it.

Pretty good actually, it's basically a clever self-aware subversion of fantasy tropes and then of genre fiction in general, while also being interesting reads and an interesting setting in their own right. Fun on several levels.

Anyone remember that Daikatana demo review by Lowtax?
>I CAN SMELL COLORS

File: f_that_nig.jpg (54KB, 780x438px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 780x438px

>>7987850
>clever self-aware subversion of fantasy tropes and then of genre fiction in general

Is it really? Or is it just a fantasy story with more swearing and fucking?

I wouldn't say it's quite as genius as >>7987850 says, but it's definitely not bad. If you're into fantasy, give it a shot. Last Wish is short stories, so read a few and decide if you like it.

No answer to those two, but what's the best translation of Kafka's Castle? Even chapter counts differ...

>>7987819
No doubt it depends on the person, but it's definitely the distraction for me

>>7987819
this is "good in concept", except its actually not really even that

I have four novels in progress. If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium.

Start with the Blue and Brown Books.

Move onto some of his essays: On Certainty, Remarks on Color, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, etc.

Then finish Philosophical Investigations.

>>7987838
No Tractatus?

>>7987841
Different anon here. The Tractatus is very important. Understanding what he was trying to do there and some of the basic facts about how he went about it are a must to understanding what he was doing in later work, which was largely a reaction against the earlier stuff. But the Tractatus is not something you're gonna get much out of if you read it without a decent amount of background.

You should probably start by learning some basic logic (propositional logic and predicate calculus), then by reading Russell's Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism. Maybe worth reading some Frege and some more Russell, but this is probably enough to make reading the Tractatus not a total waste of time. Russell's views were not the same as Wittgenstein's (many even think Russell misunderstood Wittgenstein), but they're closely related, and his presentation is easier to follow on a first reading. Having knowledge of Russell as a backdrop helps a lot, I think, in understanding Wittgenstein.

Failing this, at least read some sort of guide or companion to the Tractatus or to Wittgenstein more generally, or some of the relevant Stanford Encyclopedia pages. I really do think the basic logic is required, though.

Also, I disagree with >>7987838 that you should read On Certainty, Remarks on Color, and Philosophy of Psych, etc., before reading the Investigations. The Blue and Brown Books would probably be helpful to read beforehand, but I think not absolutely necessary. But in any case, the main thing to read after the Tractatus is the Philosophical Investigations. I recommend the Hacker and Schulte translation.

It's probably also worthwhile to read some commentary on the PI too. If you're ambitious, check out Baker and Hacker's four part commentary. Perhaps more philosophically interesting, but less concerned with getting the exisgesis right (though some think he did get it right anyway, including Anscombe apparently, who was W's student), is Kripke's book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Highly recommended.

Finally, there's a good biography about Wittgenstein by Ray Monk. Not absolutely necessary to understanding his thought, but nevertheless illuminating. Also entertaining and lighter than the rest of the stuff above, so good for taking breaks as you mull things over.

1984, orwell, dystopian science fiction

The crying of lot 49
It is a book about executing of wills and postal intrigue

The Time Machine by H.G Wells.
A Time Traveller in the Victorian era goes something like 800,000 or so years into the future to cause a ruckus.

The New Annotation of H.P. Lovecraft

Joshi's stuff is pretty trustworthy though probably needlessly exhaustive unless you REALLY have an interest in Lovecraft, sometimes.

If you like audiobooks, check out Wayne June's readings of Lovecraft stories on Youtube. Try out Rats in the Walls to start out or something.

>>7987768
You can pretty much just start anywhere; his prose is fairly consistence throughout and the atmosphere it creates is more impressive and effective at conveying his "cosmic horror" philosophy than the content itself.
Rats in the Walls is a good beginning story in that it is short, engaging, and has a satisfying payoff that leaves little open to interpretation.
Other good ones are Dunwich Horror, Shadow over Innsmouth, and Pickman's Model.
His work can roughly be separated into two "cycles" of work: his famous Mythos Cycles focusing on encounters with frightening beings, and his Dreamlands cycle concerning the Randolph Carter storyline and its accompanying landscape. It is more fantastic than the mythos cycles. Dream Quest is the pinnacle of the dreamlands cycle and my personal favorite Lovecraft novel.