Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 4104. page

Just read leaves of grass. If you like it read some collections

Should one start with the first edition of the book or read the edited death-bed edition?

>>7833342
First edition.

If you're making youtube videos about Jonathan Franzen the likelihood that you are a funny person is about the same as that you are a billionaire.

He's the apotheosis of Clueless White Male. You don't even need to make up stuff to mock him because his books do it for you.

>>7832024
This.

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The Theory of the Leisure Class

Rich, powerful people are boring and universally too stupid even to realize that they benefit from their wicked cool social networks, and too stupid to cultivate the POWER ELITE culture on anything other than an unconscious level, as evidenced by the fact that they're all turning their kids into spoiled Tumblr-using duds. High end lawyers in particular are all jobbers who think they're part of a cultural elite when that's only barely true if they're from a metropole and then they're still considered nouveau riche.

If you ever want to kill yourself, get in good with someone whose parents are millionaires, then meet that kid's friends and peers. Find out cool things like: The way to raise a good kid who will pass the SATs you've forced him to take 7 times is to let them have a limitless credit card and go on lavish vacations every time they skin their knee! America's aristocracy is universally a bunch of braindead hedonistic hipsters who care about Twitter hashtags! If that experience doesn't quite push you over, go to a charity event or mixer, or get invited to the country club. Bring your chosen suicide method with you for that one. You will need it.

It's completely unconscious. For how well they actually do groom their kids to get through the institutions, for how much money they're willing to dump onto their brats, it's pretty amazing how formulaic it is. They don't sit there and AUGMENT THEIR EMPIRES. All but the top 0.01% are basically nigger rich, bourgeois Gatsby garbage to the core. It was disappointing to find out.

>>7831968
downloaded.

>>7831977
Well, this is not as infuriating as it fills me with hope - but still, got any in-depth writing?

Anyone?

Stoner

I wouldn't say that I love them or that they're basically unknown, but I've really enjoyed every Warhammer 40k book I've read.

>>7831901
uhm... be a scientist?

>>7831929
This.

Learn to suck a mean dick. I'm sure even desolate research bases need a town dick sucker.

>>7831791
Such a man would likely be dead

"Don't spit the beauty of the world at my face; in the city, even the sky is stolen from us"

>>7831792
stop trying so hard
>>7831791
better, but it sounds pretentious

>>7831792
I actually like your response more than your sentence.

mens sana in corpore sano

It's a convenient meeting spot.

There was little else to do than banter and mire fit dudes at the time because women stayed in the house and they had slaves to work.
That or war/going on the sea.

>>7831758
Cause cities were disgusting and filled with retards so you went to the equivalent of a private club to get some training and thinking and reading done with your bros.

>>7831629
Those are some nice books

My dad has the same edition!

Try reading one book, they're good escapism from someone who's never left his village, but nothing spectacular if you're older than 18

>>7831629
>Is Karl Marx worth reading? I read many books of him when I was a kid.
>Also general Karl Marx thread

Jesus Christ, dude...

>>7831602

nothing happens : the 900 page book

>>7831605
>a book is its plot alone

Ask me how I know you're American

>>7831607

I'm not American though.

But have it your way, let's move aside from the (nonexistent) plot for a moment. Prose? Nothing to write home about. And don't get me started on the characters, Tengo the boring asshole and pederast and Aomame the feminist ninja, give me a break.

To put the icing on the cake, the last 300 pages are the two blandest characters in the history of fiction doing fuck all while waiting for each other in two apartments within walking fucking distance, while Gary Stu Ex Military Badass and Ultra Rich Old Lady solve all their problems for them.

I don't get the hype, it was bland and boring when not outright obnoxious.

>>7831554
i've only read two of his novels but i think he's pretty great.

I've read a few of his books recently. Like him a lot. Does the impossible of making sci-fi patrician-tier.

does anyone know if his older brother used to beat him up when he was a kid, or is that just a recurring theme in his work?

Mary Magdalene and his mum Mary

the woman in blue is mary. the woman in red is mary magdelen, the woman who washed jesus' feet with her hair.

depending on which book of the bible you read the first mary could be his mother, or the mother of james and joseph, but since she's wearing blue, she's more likely mary, jesus' mother, in this pic.

the other mary can be jesus' mother's relative, also called mary, but since her hair is down and she is wearing red, it's likely mary magdelene.

tl;dr- >>7831550 is the most likely answer but it's not always the case since there's many marys to choose from for this scene.

Yes what the other two said. I seem to remember hearing that if a Renaissance painting depicted a figure with gold around their head it means they're a Saint of some sort, basically they won't just be nuns.

But like do they dream of *real* sheep just like us, or are they more sympathetic to other artificial life?

>>7831509
what does sympathy have to do with it?

ok tho I kind of get that

like if they're an electric version of us do they aspire to live in a world where being electric is normal?

you actually shouldn't count sheep when you're trying for sleep but actually imagine a calm soothing environment e.g. lying on the beach as the sun sets in front of you and the waves in high tide lap up on the beach, which may qualify as a sufficiently calm image to foster drowsiness for some people.

also just read it instead of spitballing on the title

>>7831213
Hi,
I will not reply to you regarding The Rebel because I didn't read it, but about the "not understanding part".
I often spend a lot of time re-reading the same part before going to another, but it's out of pure obsessiveness (it's hard for me to accept the fact I'm not getting it, and I believe that's your point?). It's not really wise, because a first read is only a first read, and things will emerge later. So I re-read (entire book and the parts which interest me), re-read, re-read and so on. It also implies reading secondary sources, texts the author is referring to, authors referring to the text I'm reading, "history" or context around the text, etc. (so, a never-ending work, as long as the text interests you)
Sometimes, not understanding is just because of one's "dumbness" on the moment of reading, but I think the fact you couldn't "get it all" is necessary for a book to be good. A good book should not be understandable at first glance (or even second, third, etc.). Or rather, one should be able to squeeze something from each reading, without being able to say : "I understood it all". I don't know if this is the kind of answer you wanted?

Camus is a fucking quack, OP
he contradicts himself often

>>7831213
a child can use his passions as an excuse, and they are forgiven since they are children

but for an adult, this no longer excusable. but, ideology/philosophy gives the adult an adequate excuse, and can even make himself appear as the righteous rather than the judged.

that's what i get out of it.

Just read it more than once, or even come back to it later.

Part 2/3

We travel through each page of the past, writing diaries in our mind; impressions, smells, places, people. Creation of memories is something we do subconsciously. We live in the present and look back into the past while riding into the future. A sense of time is not knowing a number but allowing yourself to be in the present, future and past at once. The past is something we forget, and the future is what we fear or long for. Some experiences go quickly, while others seem as if they will never end.” And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze. About a star of deathless and painless peace. But no astronomer can find where it is.” To achieve happiness one must live in the moment and pursue life to the fullest until the future comes down to the end of the book, its last page. The combination of wants and a focus on the future and past creates an unfertile mind for creating happiness. Once we created society, we created false senses and impurities that overtake us and create our distracted minds. The ability to create memories subconsciously is the greatest and worst attribute that has been granted to us. Life is an experiment, “there is no escape except escape until death.” One of the few things that allows us to see our purpose in life is when we leave it. For some people who have shared their lives and given other people an opportunity to develop and grow, it is a happy experience. What footprint we have left in the ground and what leaves we have crushed? We look back to see what time has engulfed us into living a short life (or maybe a long one?) and what change we have created is perceived in a moment to be taken and remembered by others living their lives. Our pages blend into someone else’s book. We have no control over it. Others compile their memories from the scraps we leave behind. How creative are they? We do not know and cannot control the process. However, we do know that the goodness we have left behind, the good deeds, will most likely beget other good deeds. All we can do is to hope and to act.

Part 3/3

We look back, but it is the quality of our deeds that permeates the past. Is there an inherent quality to good and bad? How do we tell them apart? God only knows. However, it seems that the good deeds will ultimately beget the good, and the bad, the bad. Thou shalt know the results of your deeds by the fruit they bare.


One can look at our memories as indelible chinks in the rock of time. Fate creates the book of our lives that we will be asked to account of the end of life. Is that a real possibility? Some people seem to think, like the ancient Greeks that our fates are written way ahead of our lives, and all we have to do is to ask an oracle to give you a clue. But the clue is never mathematical or complete. It contains another mystery in it, which we have to find out by living. King Oedipus thought he knew the meaning of his life when it was divined to him by the oracle. But it had a twist in it. By telling him that he will marry his mother and kill his own father. So Oedipus knew the meaning of his life. But did it help him at all? Not really, so the Ancient Greeks were attempting to tell one that the meaning of life, even if known in advance, is still inscrutable.

>>7831086
What exactly are you looking for when you say, "make it good?"

Once, but he'd written the textbook and it was a pretty good textbook so I could understand why.

If I were a professor I would totally do this. I'd make them read my erotic fanfiction and analyze it. I'll call it postmodern, they'll be none the wiser.

A psychology professor I have wrote his own textbook. Super smart, but he's a pretty bad writer, and he has this weird habit of talking about his own research in third person when he cites paper's he wrote. Is this standard in academia or is he just weird?