Middlemarch Thread

>>8947642
It's the finest English novel ever written

The opportunity cost of reading women's writings is too high.

Who else /efficient/ here?

Elena. Ferrante.
Check out how hip I am.

Same, it's a reliable indicator that the book is terrible.

>>8947655
LOL seconded. Life is short, you could be like my man Harold Bloom reading King Lear for the thousandth time -- why take the risk?

Not being sarcastic btw.

it's good though.

>>8947648
Shouldn't you be viraling your new book, Julian?

>>8947825
Who is he and what did he had to say about Middlemarch?

>>8947836
"Middlemarch is probably the greatest English novel." - Julian Barnes

>>8947648
>>8947853
It's a very common sentiment

>>8947856
I know, but I thought the wording was exactly the same. Alas, I was wrong.

>>8947856
I pressed my favorite uni professor to reveal which book was his favorite, and he went for Middlemarch as well.

May have to go pick it up

Middlemarch is perhaps the finest English novel ever written. Eliot describes things in life that you didn't even know where there, and then shudder once acknowledged. She's written one of the most frightening passages in all of literature:

"An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person…"

Eliot (who did the equivalent of doctoral study on Spinoza) is trying to bring out a point about what it’s like to be a mind in the world. She describes the concave steel mirrors that used to be placed behind candle flames to magnify their light. These mirrors would easily tarnish and had to be polished frequently. This polishing tended to make tiny, random and densely crisscrossed scratches on the surface of the steel. When the mirror was fitted to the candlestick, however, the light of the flame picked out only those scratches that happened to form concentric circles.

Eliot says that the flame is you, and that the illusion of concentric scratches is what happens to that you when it goes out into the world.

Everyone’s had this realization, usually when looking down on a city from the window of a tall building: ‘Holy shit! All those people have their own lives and every one of them is going well or badly and each life seems just as important to each person as mine does to me.’ But her point is not really about our egotism & the way it tends to dull our sensitivity to lives of others. Her point is really about the people who are the opposite of strangers. The terror bubbles up when you realize it’s precisely the people whom we’re closest to that are most strongly distorted by the self. In this way the people we love the most are transformed into golems of the mind’s own silt: You can imagine the minds of most people as a column of flame on which are focused the gazes of concentric ranks of creatures risen from this.

Run, don't walk to this book

>>8947950
Good post. Last line is a bit Reddit though

>>8947950
>then shudder once acknowledged.
LITERALLY SHAKING

>>8947642

Ay I got you

Hannah Arendt is literally the only female writer I like. I had to read Pride and Prej in hs and it was awful, like 18th century Glamour. Women writers are a meme.

>>8947950
>actually discussing literature on /lit/
Holy...I want more...

>>8947870
I've read this post before.