/lit/ - Literature

>>17611619
It is astounding how long it took for me to digest this book and I say this is nothing but praise. Honestly, it's not like I'm sure the process is completed; I tend to believe the best books are the ones you never wholly digest, the ones that keep nagging at your mind for weeks, months, years, forever, too, if that is what it takes. And the best books are, also, the ones that, lo and behold, turn out to be but little mirrors of yourself - and more often than not, very much to your own dismay, shame, embarrassment, and a tiny, timid ember of inner joy.

Meet young Martin Eden: a sailor, a commoner, an illiterate, a Mr Nobody, were it not for one thing: his boundless, painful sensitivity to beauty. Martin Eden can be described as naive in many (or possibly all) respects, but not this. He may not be able to give a cultured, sophisticated definition of what art is or is thought to be, but he just knows. He would say that he just knows it in his guts, though he wouldn't be able to elaborate further than that. He uses a metaphor that I took to heart immediately, probably because I find it not only strikingly to the point, but also poignant, smeared with sadness, and that was what stuck; it goes, "Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun."

I think we're all, a little, like dogs asleep in the sun. Martin Eden aimed at the stars, sought to express the inexpressible, to strip humans of their own skin; but aren't we all a little like Martin Eden, like that slumbering dog, every minute of our life? I, for sure, feel like that constantly. I constantly feel like I've got tons of things to say, and never manage. And it's frustrating, so terribly frustrating. But I guess I learned to live with that, with our never-ending communicative stalling, with beating around the bush, with being close but never really there. Yes, I feel this is a good definition of what Martin Eden is: close but never really there. He is one of "the legions of toil", a "hoodlum", but he does not conform: he is too aware and awake, almost criminally so (there is a reason if his family, or part of it, almost disowns him). But even later, after he becomes a learned man, a famous writer when he is finally allowed into the upper classes, he cannot ignore that he doesn't belong there either, as if he still hadn't got out the last bit of dirt from under his nails, or rather, as if the fact that they didn't have any, had never had any, could never, ever sit well with him. I know London didn't intend for him to be idolized, and I'm not idolizing it (obviously, or what I'm saying wouldn't have sense at all) but I see myself in him. I see myself and you and you and all, and I see myself projected in him as the minuscule Titan I am in my mind. Did London intend for this? I can't tell, but I certainly thank him for Martin Eden.

>>17065884
>How far in are you?
I have a rough draft finish and just looking over what I've written.

>>17065884
>Any leanings one way or the other?
In the beginning, I leaned towards fast-paced, it made sense at the time, both from a readership and from a narrative standpoint. But, now that I finish and have a clear look at it, I see many faults that can only be rectified if I start over and include new chapters.

>>17056682
Come to terms that you will write no better than the standard YA and be at peace instead of going on a self-destructive path.