/lit/ - Literature

>Post your favorite epitaphs.

"I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."
-Guy de Maupassant

What's your favourite short story that you read recently lads? For me it would probably have to be The Olive Grove by Maupassant

Started reading Pierre et Jean this week on my breaks at work, and although not even a full 4 chapters in I'm enjoying it tremendously. Very comfy read on the surface due to Maupassant's masterful prose, but still with an acute tension and a threat of tragedy looming constantly. Reminds me a lot of Dostoyevsky's style of writing with how much time is spent in Pierre's head as he's walking about town almost always slightly manic, and yeh fuckin top read so far. Anyone else read this and have anything to say? Or about Maupassant's work in general, I've not actually read any of his short stories yet but I know that that's obviously meant to be where his best work is so I'm not too worried about them, but how about his other novels, how to they compare?

bel ami

proves that hemingway is heir of maupassant

>there is no need for bizarre and complicated jargon to convey a difficult idea. instead watch the position of words, express everything in the language we already have. dont weaken, obscure or corrupt it, dont make our living language less vigorous.

>It is, in fact, more difficult to handle a sentence as one wishes, to make it say everything, even what is not expressed, to fill it with inferences, secret and unformulated intentions, than to invent new expressions or to dig out of old, unknown books all the ones that are no longer in use, have lost their meaning, and have become for us a dead language.

did faulkner really not appreciate this angle?
or was this just a fake beef anyway

>There is no need for the bizarre, complicated, elaborate, and tortuous vocabulary forced upon us today in the name of artistic style, in order to clarify all the finer points of thought. But we must distinguish with the utmost precision all the modifications in the value of a word according to the position it occupies. Let’s have fewer nouns, verbs, and adjectives with almost ungraspable meanings, but more variety of phrases, diverse in their construction, ingeniously divided up, full of sonorities and subtle rhythms. Let’s strive to be excellent stylists rather than collectors of rare words.

>It is, in fact, more difficult to handle a sentence as one wishes, to make it say everything, even what is not expressed, to fill it with inferences, secret and unformulated intentions, than to invent new expressions or to dig out of old, unknown books all the ones that are no longer in use, have lost their meaning, and have become for us a dead language.

t. maupassant (pierre et jean intro)