Hi /lit/, I'm trying to remember the name of a book and maybe you can help me. All I remember is that the author liked to fuck horses and the writing style was inspired by Finnegans Wake.
Does anyone have any idea?
>>7732228
my diary desu
>>7732228
thus spoke zarathustra
>>7732228
Wolfe?
Hey there /lit/, last time I came here around 8 or so months ago I think, and you guys gave me some really solid advice about imagery and themes, and I hate coming here and bothering you all about my writing projects, but I've run into an obstacle that I just haven't been able to weigh on myself, and I'd just like some advice if you'd be generous enough to share it with me.
I am not exactly the most literature consuming individual, but I love writing stories. For a great length of time I've worked on a setting that most of my stories have in common in some form, and that setting is a "pure" sci-fi setting: as in there is no magic or magical elements. There are sci-fi counterparts to fantasy elements, and I've tried very hard to make them THEMATICALLY similar, but not "space-magic" if you know what I mean.
However, I am having some problems, and they are kind of complex to explain. I'll try my best to explain the problem first, and then the thought process that is behind it. I will make this as short as I can.
Basically, I have numerous stories that are all connected at certain points and they all interlock to a small degree. There are 3 settings within that universe: 2 of them are "pure" sci-fi, one of them is sci-fi fantasy.
Originally I wrote a fantasy story, but the main character I wanted to come from a futuristic sci-fi setting. The idea was "cyborg vs. demons." It sounded pretty fun, and I still love the idea. Later down the road. I decided to try my hand at a pure sci-fi story, and I ended up doing extensive work on the setting, and the setting impressed me so much, I decided to use that setting as the "homeworld" of the cyborg that would appear in my fantasy setting, having them just move from one world to another through some strange supernatural means.
But now I've added extensively to the sci-fi setting's stories, with many stories taking place in that universe. The fantasy story however is still quite relevant to it, because there are parts that intersect quite often.
For example: the ending of sci-fi story A sees the protagonist vanish into a gateway, but the antagonist is thwarted. That same protagonist who vanishes is talked about in the fantasy story by proxy, where a demon character bears her face and voice, but it is not her, and describes as having been raised by her mother, who was a human trapped in another plane of existence, where the demon character was "formed." As the only other being the demon character knew, it bears her face because that was the only face it knew.
In the fantasy setting, there is also a frequent recurring area: a church on a mountaintop high in the clouds bathed in orange twilight. It appears frequently in the fantasy story, but this same setting is projected as a hallucination into the hardware worn by and thus seen by many of the characters in sci-fi story A.
There are many times where these stories interlock and exchange things.
>>7732220
continued
There's so many examples of this I can't even list them all. Even the cyborg character who gets moved to the fantasy story appears as an antagonist in 4 of the other stories.
So I feel that having these intersecting points is very crucial to forming a larger story that isn't told directly, and thus is very good for all of the stories as part of a series. I think that this is a good thing.
The problem is that I also feel that mixing fantasy and sci-fi devalues the sci-fi immensely, because it is no longer "pure" sci-fi, and now has magical fantasy elements in it.
I've thought about converting all of the fantasy elements into a cyberpunk story, because there are some stories that happen in a simulation-like dreamworld, and that's been a serious consideration, but then I feel that that significantly devalues the fantasy portions, and makes some intersecting points difficult if not impossible.
I'm sure there are ideas and factors I have not considered. Would anyone be so kind as to give me some advice on this matter, or perhaps just add some ideas to the mix? I feel like I'm too attached to my vision as it has grown and cannot see other solutions. Perhaps the input of others would help free me from my own mental constrictions and something better may arise.
Thank you very much for your time, I very much appreciate it.
>>7732220
The demons are 5th dimensional aliens or something. Problem solved.
>>7732262
It's a lot more complicated than just one element. The fantasy story has 3 stages:
Stage one is where the cyborg protagonist dies and awakens in a dark fantasy realm where they are imparted a sword that consumes souls
Stage two they go from realm to realm along a giant cosmic tree to take the strongest souls from each realm to proceed to the second realm, the first branch of their own world, which is their only chance to stop the event that ended in their execution at the start of stage one
Stage three they end up committing the act that they were gathering strength to try to stop, and proceed instead to the first realm, which is within the trunk of the cosmic tree itself
It's pretty fantastical, the character appears at times in other stories, some in their pre-soul eating form, some others in their post-soul eating form, one of them they are talked about in a major religion as a "Heavenly Swordsman" that fell from the sky and eradicated a giant beast that had eaten everyone in the entire world
I've considered a few approaches, making it a cyberpunk matrix-y type of story, in which everything that happens in the dark fantasy realm is part of the EarthNet, a dreamworld created from abandoned sattelites around abandoned earth, but during the plot the protagonist must return to their own realm, so it wouldn't make sense to go from a virtual being to a real one like that
I've also considered revising it into a weird sci-fi in which instead of souls they have a device that collects minds of the most brilliant scientists in history, but then that creates a whole new slew of plot holes about why they'd need such a thing, how it would work, and what they'd use it for, and what it'd create, and I feel that it would be arrogant to have such a thing make anything that I made up off the top of my head, like saying, "yeah, this is the most clever thing ever" is pretty arrogant
The only other solution is to simply not explain it, which I don't know how I feel about that, it feels lazy
Just read an amazing little head trip called The Tunnel Under The World, what pulp have you guys found and enjoyed lately?
Pic related it's my newest get
>>7732187
check out some James Branch Cabell
>>7732196
Titles in particular?
>>7732196
Any titles in particular?
What does /lit/ think of Henry Fielding?
>>7732148
not as good as laurence sterne, but better than tobias smollett.
not as good as samuel richardson, but better than daniel defoe
>>7732148
not as good as cub cadet, but better than s club 7
What are your thoughts on Graham Greene?
>>7732096
A Gun for Sale is a great mob book
I dont know enough about the rest of his books to know where to go, except that The Power and the Glory is supposed to be top tier.
The Quiet American and Brighton Rock are up there with my list of novels that I've enjoyed.
BTW, seriously under appreciated writer on this board.
Is William Butler Yeats a /lit/ approved poet? He's my favourite, and his best poem was the Lake Isle of Innisfree.
Pic tangentially related
>>7732010
>Lake Isle of Innisfree
tf
>>7732027
He was Irish and wrote about Irish things, he was very active in the Gaelic revival
Definitely not.
I find that each chapter of Finnegans Wake can be taken alone as a canto.
In fact, in conversation with my friends (usually over espresso), I prefer to refer to Finnegans wake as "The Cantos of Jim Joyce".
"Jim" because I feel that I've developed something of a bond with the bespectacled Irishman. You see, on my mother's side we're Irish. Imagine what it would be like having a mustache like his. I close my eyes and, when I concentrate, I can feel the tickle of whiskers, like a trace of pepper caught in the steam rising off of my grandmother's mashed potatoes-- caught, drawn in by my breath to rest just inside my left nostril and sending my nose into a nervous little wiggle.
I'm currently reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and with each chapter I feel like my eyes have been opened. What books have changed you, /lit/?
>>7731976
shut the fuck up. you arent going to become the ubermensch. you are a neet hipster, and you will die alone. it didnt change shit. stop being a pretentious little faggot.
>>7731976
the god delusion
>>7731988
Lol
A poem about a cult of skeletons.<
please post such a poem
>>7731932
Shake the dust from bones
that hang in worn out burlap
rattling a way home
>>7731932
Clubbing bones
rattling stones
i want to be alone
the time is near
sigil and spear
for the dance of the skeletones
we the skulls
we the hulls
we sing in candlelight.
blood sacrifice
marrow will suffice
in the cult of skeletones
Hey /lit/, sorry if this is the wrong place for this.
I'm trying to find a niche book for a research project (Functional and Evolutionary Ecology of Fleas by Boris Krasnov), and my university's library is unable to get it in.
My question: Do any of you know where to find something like this? Are there academia sharing sites?
If your university library does not have the book or is unable to obtain it through an interlibrary loan with another university, it's complete shit and you should just drop out.
>>7731926
https://filetea.me/t1sieRILSO7QxuxQRtxWhd77Q
>he doesnt have a comprehensive pdf collection on fleas
ITT: We post timeless pieces of literature, literature who's themes and morals can be spread to any generation, young or old, and can teach us all, to strive for greater things of ourselves
Pic related
>>7731832
>who's
>>7731843
nigga square up before you catch these hands
What are some good resources for learning Old English?
>>7731817
read first
>>7731897
then read this
http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/
best website for translation
>Monsieur Valjean! Could it really be you!?
>'You think I'd miss this party?'
Holy shit.
Does this book get good at any point?
literally stephen king tier
overrated on lit
>>7731783
according to imgur, it's widely known as a doubleplus ungood novel.
read Zola, Stendhal, Proust, or Balzac instead.
What books do I read in order to understand what makes a great book great? Alternatively, what critics do I read?
>>7731776
Not him thas fo sho
>>7731776
In all seriousness the only way is to read the classics + a good chunk of western philosophy. Anything less and you are faking it
>>7731823
this.
Maybe its off topic, but Im rereading some of Platos dialogues and was really entranced with the segments of the Protagoras and Phaedrus when Plato decides to write about Greek cosmology and mythology at length. It might not be great writing, but it still has an amazing sacrosanct stink that imo makes reading the classics so engaging. I got the same from the Inferno and some of Milton.
Hello friends. I'm looking into early American lit.
Can anyone recommend some introductory (preferably shorter) writing by any of the following:
>Ralph Waldo Emerson
>Nathaniel Hawthorne
>Louisa May Alcott
I'm interested in prose, essays, poems, anything you think is good and/or characteristic.
>>7731739
have you considered some of the early political writers? like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine? how about Charles Brockden Brown?
>>7731739
Hawthorne Tales & Sketches. Whatever emerson book is in print (he writes essays, so they are all short).
Dunno anything about Alcott's daughter
>>7731739
Kate Chopin
>A Farewell to Arms
>They never rip off their arms and throw them away
>reading abridged novels
>one flew over the cuckoo's nest
>isn't about bird migration patterns
>Naked Lunch
>It isn't about an indecent ham sandwich