Authors that legitimately changed your life

File: WolfeBigPimping.jpg (27KB, 240x180px) Image search: [Google]

27KB, 240x180px

>>10008504
Go to bed Aramani

Nietzsche, Karl Popper.

>>10008504
>he didn't get introduced to catholicism by dante
foreverapleb, aramini.

>>10008515
>>10008517
Aramini got confirmed in his childhood I believe.

File: mgXnILi.png (58KB, 636x674px) Image search: [Google]

58KB, 636x674px

>>10008504
the meme man himself

Gene Wolfe taught me how to read. Not to just skim and get the basic points for scoring high on quizes, like what I learned in school, but to really imagine things while reading. To most of you that probably comes natural to you, but for me, I had to learn it the hard way. And thank God that I did or I'd have no idea what actual literature was.

>>10008515
Op says he was uneducated. While Aramini approves this message greatly, his formal and autodidactic education reached demigod levels in early childhood. Aramini loves to sniff in disdain at the limited and coarse intellectuals unfit to tie his shoes, let alone clothe Gene in his regalia of lupine might. Do not be fooled by the third-person pov in this post.

File: weil in marseilles.jpg (38KB, 530x474px) Image search: [Google]

38KB, 530x474px

>>10008504
Similar story for me too. I started studying Catholicism as a way to connect with my roots (I was atheist but all my forebears were devout Catholics). Then I read Simone Weil and I finally understood how to believe, and why to believe.

>Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

>To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.

>I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

>>10008504
nietzsche mostly.

Since reading Mein Kampf I've had a different perspective on life to be honest. Previously I didn't used to analyse what I face everyday the way I do now. These days I can see plainly the threats to Western culture I couldn't prior, hidden in all forms of media and places most wouldn't even think.

Melville and Dunsany. It wasn't until these two that I really understood what it meant to read, just like >>10008896 said. Something about Moby Dick and Tales of Wonder made me really invested in their stories, and I found myself paying much more attention than usual and trying to visualize each character and situation. I will be forever grateful.

File: 1479646642084.jpg (36KB, 400x400px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 400x400px

>>10008504
Bit off topic, but is it possible to be a Christian and ignore all the supernatural elements (ie. Jefferson Bible)?

Do people like this exist? What do Christians who believe in a literal God think of them?

Tolstoy's War and Peace

>>10009120
I know this is bait but seriously Mein Kampf is such a fucking shitty book.

>>10009120
This. Just that it wasn't "Main Kampf". I never actually read this one.

>>10009193
That they're not Christians.

>>10009193
It doesn't really work because the effectiveness of Christ's teachings relies on God's grace, which is received largely through a close relationship, which is accomplished through deep, regular prayer.

Personally I don't think Christian Atheism is all that bad, it's just kind of stupid.

>>10009193
>>10009193
If you just want to live my the moral principles expressed in the New Testament then go for it, lol you'll be more Christian than most "Christians" by that alone. Just dont be all special snowflake about it.

File: 14cdfb4b7e5422a75d80805da906c336.jpg (44KB, 480x622px) Image search: [Google]

44KB, 480x622px

>>10008516
>Karl Popper
ah jeez

>>10009089
What do you think those phrases mean, and how have they influenced your beliefs?

>>10009226
The Bible says christ gave God's truth and grace in his teachings, so his teachings are sufficient. And prayer is a meme, any insights you think God give you in prayer are indistinguishable from insights you'd get from general delusion, drug induced or otherwise, unless you compare them to the teachings of christ at which point you're relying on the teachings of christ anyway

>>10009584
>Prayer is a meme
>Christ literally teaches us to pray
Is this the power of private judgement?

>>10009584
>[Christ's] teachings are sufficient. And prayer is a meme
Christ teaches us to pray. He actually spends a good bit of time detailing how we are to do it.

>>10009624
>>10009634
He simply modifies the prayer method, but doesn't explain any benefits you may get from it such as a closer relationship with God, so teaching you how to pray when prayer is already an established phenomenon isn't the same as teaching that you should pray

>>10009637
There are injunctions to pray in the New Testament:
>Matt. 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
>Col. 4:2 Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;
>1 Thess. 5:17 Pray without ceasing.
>James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
etc.

>>10009637
>>10009637
>this is your brain on Christian atheism

File: bove.jpg (24KB, 220x315px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 220x315px

Anybody here read Emmanuel Bove?

>His characters, drawn from all classes, are often paralyzed by a failure of will, poisoned by envy, cursed with bad luck or betrayal. With relentless clarity, Bove imparts a deeply felt and lasting impression of the lives of these solitary and emotionally shattered young men whose fortunes and futures hinge on a stroke of luck, an immoral act, an accident.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag/emmanuel-bove/

I marathoned about three quarters of his book My Friends this weekend (around 150 pages) and I have to say I'm underwhelmed overall. He reads a lot like Elliot Rodger, and the plot is often pretty clumsy or obvious. Hopefully his Winter Journal will be better.

Regarding Christian atheism, the form with which I am familiar isn't simply reducing Christianity to an ethical system, but a reflection of the idea of the death of God. That is that Christianity as a religion had a purpose in the past, which was to seed Christian morality into the world, and now that that morality has taken root in society (so they claim) the current role of Christianity is to die as God has died. So its something that is purposefully ending itself. I don't see the point of adhering to such a thing as its own purpose is for you to take from it without the dependency of its own existence. At least that is my understanding of it.

Do you mongrels actually like Wolfe or just meme this gross mustached hack because you got introduced to your common imaginary friend recently?

>>10009657
Prayer is simply symbolic of your forgiveness and goodwill to people, which is why it's recommended. Except in thessalonians, in which it was an actual standalone direct command, but that was from Paul so it's, just, like, his opinion man of what a Christian should do

>>10009637
He says the benefits are getting what you are praying for from God. There is a parable that deals with exactly that. And he doesn't modify the method, because the method is still repeating a form. He gives a new form, not a new method.

>>10009694
>>10009703
More or less proof that everything John Henry Newman wrote about was true, if you remove the Church, Christ necessary becomes unintelligible and arbitrary.

I've only read BotNS but I really do not understand the Catholicism meme attached to wolfe. The allusions are superficial at best and the point of it has more to do with memory and time and playing with genre convention than being like "sun-son, get it?!" How can this shit in a story of an edgy guy walking around with a meme sword and fucking every girl he sees and becoming a simultaneous consciousness with other people make anyone reading it say "that's it, I'm going back to Sunday school mom"?

>>10009697
He's my favorite writer and likewise the man who introduced me to higher literature. A life changer, I've read something like 14 novels by him, if we count the series as a single one. He never ceases to impress.

>>10009722
>if you remove the Church, Christ necessary becomes unintelligible and arbitrary.
What?

>>10009737
We clearly read deeper than the obvious plot into it. For example, the whole death and resurrection of Urth in a parallel personal sense within Severian and the planet where he slowly receives various sacraments in albeit incomplete forms and they as symbols and acts of grace intertwine and lead to his redemption.

>>10009740
Read Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine and Apologia Pro Vita Sua. They'll be pretty enlightening, but this is the gist of it.

>>10009747
I was more asking for a clarification for what you meant to write

>>10009743
No but I mean there isn't a recognizable Catholicism in there, you wouldn't be able to reverse engineer it from the various scattered allusions. And I think it's a mistake to count out the surface narrative just as it would be a mistake to count out all the subtext.

>>10009768
You think baptism, Eucharist, turning water to wine, resurrection, redemption, literally enacting Christ in the desert being tempted by Satan isn't recognizably Catholic?

>>10009768
Every character named after a saint, seb turning water into wine at saltus, stumbling under cross shaped sword during healing at the cataracts escaping thrax ... okay bub, no discernible catholicism here

>>10009808
Great minds think alike

>>10009697
Yes, plebs just can't get him, inured to original content by the gross and dull genre espoused by the lowest common denominator "literary" circles like the New Yorker. So limited, so pathetic. Lawrence sterne, dostoevsky, wolfe, proust, shakespeare- real artists.

None so far. I guess I'm not easily persuaded.

but one film director did..

>>10009810
>>10009808
The things like transmutation carry no actual weight or significance other than bearing a symbolic resemblence. It's entirely stripped of its proper context within the Catholic tradition (hey look he fell in water, totally baptism guys right?). That's what I mean, it's an entirely superficial set of Easter eggs and is a thousand times removed from waking up on Sunday and going to mass.

>>10009889
Eucharist leads to a kind of strange immortality ... in short sun these symbols are made manifest and solve plot mysteries. I dont know what more application you want. One mysterious "goddess of purity" is actually the virgin mary

>>10009926
The mechanics of it speak differently, does the effect of the eating of the body not render the comparison superficial? And if it was not a last supper what even was it?

>>10009889
It's set in a distant world where they serve to show that the grace of God is imbued with the world. The supernatural aids the natural even when the Church isn't physically there. It's not a random number of easter eggs because they impact Severian on his way to redemption in the same way the sacraments do it for us. I don't know what is a more Catholic theme than a story of sin, redemption and self sacrifice.
>>10009978
None of the sacraments are full, they are all imperfect because there's no priests and stuff, so they weave grace in the overarching symbolic plot.

>>10009066
ura faga Ara

File: Jacques barzun.jpg (52KB, 270x360px) Image search: [Google]

52KB, 270x360px

Everything became so clear.

Kazatzakis - The fratricides.
Read it in my 14teen after my grandfather took me to a concentration camp.
Bleak book.

>>10009066
Glad I came back to this thread. Don't think I've seen the start of an Aramini copypasta until now.

>>10009193
Might as well just be a deist.

>>10009697
Wolfe's Solar Cycle is easily one of the best pieces of fiction produced in the last century.

>>10009737
If New Sun was too obtuse try Long Sun and Short Sun. Those two are as subtle as a crucifix pounded into your chest with a sledgehammer.

>>10013425

File: bear meme.png (57KB, 853x619px) Image search: [Google]

57KB, 853x619px

>>10008504
Jaan Valsiner: Psychology's only chance to become a legitimate science.

>>10009738

This. I genuinely love the man. The only other person I can think that's influenced my thinking as much as Wolfe is Jonathan Bowden.

File: montaigne.jpg (42KB, 323x499px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 323x499px

>>10008504

So what happened to aramani? I haven't seen him around in a while.

>>10009208
this. the meme stops being funny when you've actually read it and realize how retarded the content is.

>>10016881
>>10009208
Did you actually go read Mein Kampf because you saw praise for it on /lit/?

fucking kek

>>10016689
He frequently posts in the Wolfe Facebook group.

>>10009280
Curiously, I haven't read Popper, but what's wrong with him?

>>10009226
>>10009584
You can't do anything to "get" gods grace. You are selfish, unchristian.

>>10008504
Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer

>>10017932
Schop was right about almost everything, but I'm curious as to whether you read Kant first.

>>10017942
I have read Kant and I'm interested in him as well but Schopenhauer's essays are what endear me towards him. He has writings that are far more human than Kant.

>>10017709
God's grace can be attained through Christ's teachings, read the Bible

>>10017709
Grace can be lost and regained by confession.

>>10018507
>>10018512
No. Grace is completely out of your control and you do not follow the teachings in order to receive it. You have either not done the reading or distorted it to your own ends.

>>10017942
This is you, ain't it?

>>10017596