Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 4082. page

this was literally the worst book ever written.

>>7846315
>using 'literally' figuratively on a lit board
Pretty brave, m8

>>7846292
she hit the road

>>7844752
Never read it. I read the first 30 pages or so of Wind-Up Bird though and it was pretty decent. I just realized that 1984 and 1Q84 are pronounced the same in Japanese.

>>7844752
DONT YOU EVER READ THIS FUCKING BOOK

It's a comfy read, but some anons are upset about the lack of payoff at the end. I'm a journey-not-the-destination kind of guy, so I thought it was time well spent.

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Berkeley is pretty fun to read.

>>7844622
it depends why youre reading them, but generally chronological is nice

>>7844622
skip spinoza

"When the red rivers following, take the brown road home"

"The first draft of anything is shit, unless you're a woman then all the other drafts are shit too"

>>7844092
get rich or die tryin'

also, OP is a total faggot

>>7843329
"Pegasus exists" should be a statement.
>trusting wikipedia

You need to remember that by 'statement' the anals (analytic philosophers) mean something entirely different than one would expect ordinarily. By 'statement' most of them mean a declarative sentence that has a definite truth-value (belonging to {T, F} or {1, 1/2, 0} or whatever). In this light, "Pegasus exists" bears neither of the truth-values because "Pegasus" is a non-denoting proper name, and so the sentence as a whole does not qualify as a statement.

But there is however a family of logics termed 'free' (as in 'free logic') that embraces non-denoting terms of that kind.

>>7843329
In the time it took to post this you could've just corrected the wiki.

Gravity's Rainbow

1984

my diary desu

>>7846630
1 9 8 4
9
8
4

> I writhed with joy, which I experienced for the first time, and kept writing with excitement.

>The day a computer wrote a novel. The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans.

This is actually a pretty beautiful ending

Fuck synths

>>7846122
Ancient shitposting

>inb4 "lost knowledge"

I hope at the very least original documents and not just an iliad translation

i love how these fucking people cannibalize their own so often

they just always need some kind of thing to be upset about.

>>7845050

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.

>>7845057
what?

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>character represents something

>>7844305
>male protagonist takes action for no reason other than 'it advances the plot'

>each characters represents a different part of the human brain

>>7843793
Pollutes the mind just like pornography or mind-altering substances.

>>7843834
>he doesn't consider literature a mind-altering substance

back to /r9k/, kid

>>7843834
i have something to tell you about some of your favourite writers anon

are you seated?

How can you concentrate on shitting when you're reading?

dude, i just took an excellent shit, but i only read a music magazine, i've been looking for something patrish to read while shitting, might subscribe to paris review or something. it disgusts me my roommates watch tv on their phone while taking a shit, what the fuck, do ppl really do this? apparently.

>>7842815
>concentrate on shitting
just push dude

Is there a valid reason to do anything at all?

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>>7842641

>>7842636
Enjoyment.

Taking a strictly 'practical' approach to life leeches all the joy right out of it.

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Has nobody around here even tried reading it?

>>7840703
I've only heard of it. What happens? Do they join the army in it?

>>7840311
>>7840703
Please explain, I have no idea what this is

Rats in the Walls, Dunwich Horror, Shadow Over Innsmouth

Check out Wayne June readings of some Lovecraft audiobooks if you like audiobooks

Avoid Librivox

John Barth Lost in the Funhouse

Anyone who posts the meme poem is a newfag.