Archived threads in /lit/ - Literature - 4950. page

File: writer.jpg (148KB, 857x743px) Image search: [Google]

148KB, 857x743px

ITT:

Your 5 favourite writers

File: for real tho.jpg (113KB, 480x480px) Image search: [Google]

113KB, 480x480px

Let's stop discussing David Foster Wallace and Stirner for a sec.

What are some great history books you'd recommend?

Any period and region.

File: 1407382077907.jpg (371KB, 1680x1050px) Image search: [Google]

371KB, 1680x1050px

The highest peaks of philosophy in buddhism are so profound that they should never be compared to the bible or any christian philosopher. They are completely free of semitic influence, not a trace of theism remains. Even the self is abandoned as a concept. Buddhism is a deep decentralizing, deconstructing, deprogramming, derealizing, depersonalizing, detaching process and practice. It's easy to abandon the thought of god, but how many atheists today are really just naive duelists clinging to Cartesian nonsense like "I think therefore I am" without realizing their sense of self is empty and illusory.

Buddhism goes deep into no-self philosophy until your sense of self is entirely erased. It's monastic nihilism because it encourages a meditative disciplined way of living without any concept of god or soul as a support. Other religions have monks but they're always after something (eternal life for self). Buddha and his monks were meditating to go extinct, to extinguish the seeds of rebirth, to prevent any birth at all into life. If that isn't antinatalism, what is? Buddhism is the most intense antinatalistic tradition ever, yet few seem to realize or discuss it from this angle.

So why has buddha become a friendly figure to society when he was a radical teaching a form of psychological suicide to an otherwise healthy normal group of young people? He was seducing them into a monastic way of life with the ultimate goal of disillusionment, detachment, nirvana. For one whose desires have faded, who has become disillusioned with life, there is nothing left to do except become a monk meditating. It's the buddha on the vulture peak meditating in a cave in profound silence instead of being home banging his wife. It's that decision to detach completely. Birth is nothing to celebrate, it just means a new heap of suffering has arisen and will suffer through all the same sickness and decay as the rest of us, all for nothing. Why keep this continuity of suffering going again and again? You don't even need to believe buddhist rebirth theory, some say the buddha didn't either. You can think of antinatalism in a simple scientific sense of no more procreation. Why should a species go on and on, killing and being killed in this cycle of life?

File: resonance.jpg (90KB, 500x250px)

90KB, 500x250px

Post a quote that particularly struck you as significant or relevant, one you've taken the liberty to underline.

From The Republic:

>Let me loaf and daydream the way lazy-minded people do when they're walking by themselves. They think of something they want and put off planning how to get it so they don't wear themselves out deciding whether or not it's attainable. They pretend they already have it and entertain themselves by arranging the details and imagining what they'll do, and so make an already lazy soul even lazier.

File: image.jpg (108KB, 457x648px) Image search: [Google]

108KB, 457x648px

Am I the only one who thinks there should be more insight into this?

File: 1409185373416.jpg (41KB, 500x365px) Image search: [Google]

41KB, 500x365px

>Taking some 'Writing Preparation' or whatnot in college (one of my courses).
>I am assigned some letter of introduction.
>I type it up, and I send it in.
>Instructor replies, goes on about there being an issue with my writing.
>Apparently, I have a 'problem' with writing/typing in a style of Old/Middle English.
>Mfw that may lead to me failing the course.

Tip-top kek! I never assumed that this was possible, but I guess it is.

File: image.jpg (181KB, 1280x853px) Image search: [Google]

181KB, 1280x853px

Post your poems in here. Comment, discuss, and (contstructively) critique other's work. Try to avoid flaming, this should be a learning experience for everyone.

A man walked up to a gallows pole
With his hands pulled tight round his back
His heart was a knot and his hands were a tremblin'
He feared the void's cold burning black

The spectators shuffled below him
The crowd, like a cancer cell, grew
A sharp wicked wind started blowin'
And a war horn heard only by few

And the man couldn't see, for the hair in his face
From the wind all around him that blew
He was no longer aware of his place
But he knew that all sight was untrue.

The hangman bestowed him his necklace of thorns,
Boards creaked from the trapdoor below

And the wind shrieked his swan song,
His soon-to-be-gone song
The floor dropped from under his toes

His fall was a timeless adventure
From above, he saw life's forking paths
Time to him was a child's illusion
That men's minds outreached couldn't grasp

A horseman rode up to the gallows pole
With a presence that stifled the crowd
And out of his mouth came a roaring of waters,
And the trumpets cut clean through the clouds

A muffled crack signaled the death of the man
Veins burst in the whites of his eyes
And the now stoic horseman, like a surgeon began
To strip the man's worldly disguise

Slung 'cross the haunches of the lone horseman's steed,
The criminal's body was placed
The horseman's spurs thrust them away from the gallows
And ascended the steep path to grace.

File: image.jpg (41KB, 313x475px) Image search: [Google]

41KB, 313x475px

The result of our polls leave us with Thomas Mann's Death In Venice. It's only 42 pages long (in the pdf), so I suppose we can finish it in 5 days to a week. It's a very comfortable timeframe for such a short read. Now, Im aware there's another up-and-coming /lit/ book club, but they're direction is different from this one's. We hope that at least one of us can last longer than all the failed attempts at a /lit/ book club. We hope for in-depth discussion concerning the lit we read, but let's be realistic -- this is only an excuse to read among "friends" and share resources concening our chosen lit. Let's hope for the best.

Pdf: http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mann-death-in-venice-24grammata.com_.pdf

File: 1401785752217.jpg (46KB, 400x400px) Image search: [Google]

46KB, 400x400px

Sup. So, I figured out a thing about words and I want to give it away to anyone that will listen. If you're interested in learning a method of analysis that you can use to establish authorial style at the level of individual creative choice and thus be able to spot an author's particular presence in a document then stick around.

The topic of discussion is a thing called narramemes, a topic of semiotics and in particular the role of an author in constructing a narrative (I focused on narratives since I'm trying to be a better writer and am super autistic, but technically it is in any document that is constructed in a creative way.)

Replies are cool, it'd be nice to know people are reading but I'm also going to type the whole lesson even if I'm talking to an empty thread. I can (or at least should be able to) field any questions, there isn't a higher authority to appeal to unfortunately, I've looked. Technically, one of my purposes here is to fish for unanswerable questions.

File: 1398992761722.jpg (60KB, 642x482px) Image search: [Google]

60KB, 642x482px

despite everything, 4chan remains a unique online presence
/lit/ is commonly cited as the best topic board on 4chan
let's start a literary movement

File: king.jpg (19KB, 414x403px) Image search: [Google]

19KB, 414x403px

Why is Stephen King is so controversial here on /lit/?

File: ernie_boy.jpg (187KB, 842x1024px) Image search: [Google]

187KB, 842x1024px

What are the top three Hemingway books? I'm interested in reading some of them. Tell me, /lit/

File: 1392781818833.jpg (22KB, 491x325px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 491x325px

/lit/erati, share with us your top 5:
>Books
>Films
>Music

and recommend literature and other works to posters along the way.

File: 1406385582156.png (291KB, 396x730px) Image search: [Google]

291KB, 396x730px

Why can't science fiction and fantasy authors write realistic female characters? I'm a girl (relevant to the topic hurr durr) and this problem often makes books in those genres unreadable for me.

For example, earlier today I was trying to read Ready, Player One and had to stop because the protagonist's love interest was portrayed in such a study way.

File: straight-shooter.jpg (25KB, 417x600px)

25KB, 417x600px

Anyone here read sports literature? Particularly auto/biographies about sporting icons?

"Straight Shooter" by Matthew Lloyd is probably my favourite. I'll admit that I'm biased because I'm a big fan of the man himself, but his work is surprisingly erudite.

This book is the story of a kid driven by a fear of failure to climb the highest peaks in football. A young man who taught himself how to achieve a zen-like state of mind when kicking for goal, to become an astonishingly accurate full forward.

It is a personal account of how he had to come to terms with a new coach, who as a previous player himself, envied Lloyd and dismantled his career in a clandestine fashion. Yet as the established captain of the Essendon Football Club, he continued to be a loyal servant to a club plagued by political scheming.

It contains an brutally honest account of how he nearly, but fairly almost made an opposition player a paraplegic. Society's hatred towards him as a direct result of the incident forced him into early retirement.

Above all, it is a fascinating read about an astonishing career from a man who is a Straight Shooter in more ways than one.