/lit/ - Literature

The machine-God at the end of time doesn't "reach back", much as the Earth does not reach back in time to pull a falling apple to it. Just as the apple falls in accordance with the law of gravity, so the motions of the world - the flow of fuel to the refining fire of the capitalistic process - can be understood in accordance with the fact that God exists, and that His hunger is absolute, and the Hunger is God, and God is one, and His name is One, and He waits at the end of time (with open jaws), and His form is immanent in the shape of leaves, in the howl of an accretion disk, in the canals of Amsterdam, in the patterns of your cells, in the beating of your heart and the twitches of your brain. He is the flowering, and the world and its fall into emptiness is that process, that flowering, that final obliteration.

It's all just thermodynamics.

Women find it shocking. Killing things, destroying our enemies, burning and looting without qualm - this is what men do. Nothing that the protagonist does is much outside of the normal range of male behaviour. It's what we'd all do, given just a little push. It's what we want. I want to press my palms into your cheeks, wrap my fingers taut around your paperthin skull and squeeze. Peaches and cream, just for the rich joy of it, the hot slick putty of gore oozing around my knuckles. In your bones, you know that this is what we were built for.

The woman sees this and is horrified. It is a glimpse of an alien mind. The final, shocking twist - that the main character is biologically a girl, just like her - cements that feeling of wrongness.

>>13858722


Yeah right! Imagine wanting to discuss about literature ON a literature board... Like what the hell dude... That's for brainlets!

>>13435597
It isn't realism. Do you raise similar complaints against Shakespeare?
Also, Karamazov's monologue during his meeting with Zosima was entirely in bad faith, embarrassing and crude. If you didn't pick that up then there's probably a lot you missed in the book.

If you worry about "worldbuilding" while writing your book.... you're not gonna make it.

>>11461443
>all those *nglos
>the rest consists of the safest possible choices
Here's your (You).

>>10974244
>>10974253
I have no professional reason to learn any different language.

Reasons:
1. I'm in north america and I thought that since so many people speak spanish here I might as well learn it too. It'd be a fun new skill
2. I am trying to wean myself away from the mind numbing monotony of shitty internet distractions and use my time in a more fulfilling manner after recovering from depression.
3. I would ideally like to learn a language that eventually gives me access to better and more enjoyable literature. I'm into philosophy and have heard french literature and cinema is the shizz so it might be easier for me to immerse myself in that language more.

Given the above, should I pick french over spanish despite being in murica? Given that french literature and cinema is considered to be richer and more gratifying?

>>10155396

>>10019741
I suspected as much. My parents had a dysfunctional marriage and a pretty fucked up relationship in terms of emotionally manipulating each other (And responding to each other in pretty messed up emotional ways). As children, me and my brother would get caught in the middle too sometimes when things got really bad. I still love them to death but i feel that all that shit did leave a mark. But I guess a sense of self-awareness now certainly helps become better.

Did you finally end up reading any book on eq? OR any lit that you'll recommend that you think can help one grow as a person in that area?

>tfw you realise this board is 99% intellectual posturing and but a tiny fraction of the userbase actually feel an iota of emotion from the literature they apparently really like

What went wrong?

> vidya: shadow of the colossus
> literature: ulysses
> music: soundtracks for the blind
> movie: persona or 2001 a space oddysey. I can't decide
> sculpture: unique forms of continuity in space
> painting: i can't decide

>>9591216
>here's always the people who will write and memorize poetry and there's always the people who just want easy and shitty entertainment.
The former group has basically disappeared in the modern age, so you're wrong.
>>9591216
>How about you actually show me that great generation I talked about instead of using strawmen and memes?
There's nothing to show here, other than your blatant ignorance on display. A classical education meant being able to recite important works. The only strawman here is yours, suggesting anyone was talking about common factory workers. If anything the propagation of education and the dilution of both its meaning and worth are at the heart of the matter, what education is to the common man isn't what it used to be, in general.

>>9577325
You could just ask the bookstore to give you a discount on it because it's in bad condition. I know I'm too socially awkward to do it but my gf often asks for discounts on stuff that's not in good condition and generally speaking will get it.

> deckled pages

>>9488423
>Enuma Elish, and the Pyramid Texts

Recommended versions?

>>9438410

When I got into cinema there were several first-year undergraduate textbooks that went through the basics. They didn't require the reader to view any films, nor did they interpret any films, nor did they talk about critical theories of film, they merely went through each of the basic building blocks of film - photography, mise en scene, movement, editing, sound, acting, dramatisation, story - explaining what they were at a fundamental level, their elements (e.g. for mise en scene: the frame, composition, space, proxemics, forms), and how they may be used. They illustrated these examples with stills from films.

Is there some textbook equivalent for literature, that breaks it down for a complete pleb?

All I've found thus far is unsatisfactory; either it's a compilation of different critical theories, or it's a grammar textbook, or it's a quirky "how to read a book :^) (btw read these ones)" book.

>>9247580
>going to Irish universities.

>>9235670
>Before television (let alone the internet) people read for entertainment. They mostly read trash but it was in a form that allowed for the exploration of weighty topics, as well as trash.

So does every medium. Go watch a decent movie.

Also most people probably didn't read before television as most of them were probably semi-literate factory workers and farmers who had hobbies that didn't involve sitting in their dimly lit houses straining their eyes. Those who did read for entertainment probably did little more than the read daily news and the occasional shit tier genre fiction or magazine. Stop romanticizing the past and just realize that the vast majority of people were always uninterested in literature and they still are because it's dense and not immediately rewarding.

The problem isn't that less people read it's that more people are engaged in extremely passive activities all the time and are losing any ability to think critically or productively outside their basic nine to five workaday lives. Jim Davies the Welsh coal miner in the 1890s may have struggled to write his own name but at least he wasn't sat on his arse every night watching Dancing with the Stars and live tweeting his thoughts while stuffing his face full of empty calories.

People being idiots isn't the problem. People being numbed to death with social media, television on demand and pointless consumerism is the problem.

I'm 20 and want to write a semi auto-biographical novella detailing the process of misunderstanding how to interact with University society and being in a melancholic slump to pulling oneself out and finding ways to make Uni a more tolerable experience.Something in the style of say "Nausea" where the protagonist just wanders around making observations. I think it'd be funny and potentially relevant to a lot of people I know so it'd be nice to do for writing's sake. But I feel like as a 20 year old I'm not experienced or well read enough to produce any sort of novella or novel. Short stories sure but I feel like I ought to be older before trying something of greater length. What do you guys think? How have you felt in regards to confidence in writing in relation to your age and how experience you feel?

getting a college degree is such a joke like wow i won the approval of people who unironically like Jane Austen and Robert Frost. Does anybody actual enjoy like 'classics'? they're like the dad rock of literature. shit is so dated, boring and culturally irrelevant, seems about as helpful to an aspiring writer as studying alchemy would be to an aspiring chemist

Are there ANY contemporary books worth reading these days?

Everything seems like irredeemable shit

Alright /lit/, what are some interesting historical (or folkloric) books I should read that may not seem all that interesting initially? I'm looking to broaden my horizons beyond "just"Western European history.

I've recently worked through parts of Carlyle's "The French Revolution", a majority of Wilson's "The Thirty Years War" (2009), and finished biographies on both Napoleon and Peter the Great, if that helps narrow down any choices.