/lit/ - Literature

>>22956748
>In the matter of intelligence we find the caninites making amusing claims—amusing because they so naively measure what they conceive to be an animal’s intelligence by its degree of subservience to the human will. A dog will retrieve, a cat will not; therefore (sic!) the dog is the more intelligent. Dogs can be more elaborately trained for circus and vaudeville acts than cats, therefore (O Zeus, O Royal Mount!) they are cerebrally superior. Now of course this is all the sheerest nonsense. We would not call a weak-spirited man more intelligent than an independent citizen because we can make him vote as we wish whereas we can’t influence the independent citizen, yet countless persons apply an exactly parallel argument in appraising the grey matter of dogs and cats. Competition in servility is something to which no self-respecting Thomas or Tabitha ever stooped, and it is plain that any really effective estimate of canine and feline intelligence must proceed from a careful observation of dogs and cats in a detached state—uninfluenced by human beings—as they formulate certain objectives of their own and use their own mental equipment in achieving them.
>There is a wearying excess of bad manners in all this doggish fury—well-bred people don’t paw and maul one, and surely enough we invariably find the cat gentle and reserved in his advances, and delicate even when he glides gracefully into your lap with cultivated purrs, or leaps whimsically on the table where you are writing to play with your pen in modulated, serio-comic pats. I do not wonder that Mahomet, that sheik of perfect manners, loved cats for their urbanity and disliked dogs for their boorishness; or that cats are the favourites in the polite Latin countries whilst dogs take the lead in heavy, practical, and beer-drinking Central Europe. Watch a cat eat, and then watch a dog. The one is held in check by an inherent and inescapable daintiness, and lends a kind of grace to one of the most ungraceful of all processes. The dog, on the other hand, is wholly repulsive in his bestial and insatiate greediness; living up to his forest kinship by “wolfing” most openly and unashamedly. Returning to beauty of line—is it not significant that while many normal breeds of dogs are conspicuously and admittedly ugly, no healthy and well-developed feline of any species whatsoever is other than beautiful?

>>22674120
I do not wonder that Mahomet, that sheik of perfect manners, loved cats for their urbanity and disliked dogs for their boorishness; or that cats are the favourites in the polite Latin countries whilst dogs take the lead in heavy, practical, and beer-drinking Central Europe. Watch a cat eat, and then watch a dog. The one is held in check by an inherent and inescapable daintiness, and lends a kind of grace to one of the most ungraceful of all processes. The dog, on the other hand, is wholly repulsive in his bestial and insatiate greediness; living up to his forest kinship by “wolfing” most openly and unashamedly. Returning to beauty of line—is it not significant that while many normal breeds of dogs are conspicuously and admittedly ugly, no healthy and well-developed feline of any species whatsoever is other than beautiful? There are, of course, many ugly cats; but these are always individual cases of mongrelism, malnutrition, deformity, or injury. No breed of cats in its proper condition can by any stretch of the imagination be thought of as even slightly ungraceful—a record against which must be pitted the depressing spectacle of impossibly flattened bulldogs, grotesquely elongated dachshunds, hideously shapeless and shaggy Airedales, and the like. Of course, it may be said that no aesthetic standard is other than relative—but we always work with such standards as we empirically have, and in comparing cats and dogs under the Western European aesthetic we cannot be unfair to either. If any undiscovered tribe in Thibet finds Airedales beautiful and Persian cats ugly, we will not dispute them on their own territory—but just now we are dealing with ourselves and our territory, and here the verdict would not admit of much doubt even from the most ardent kynophile. Such an one usually passes the problem off in an epigrammatic paradox, and says ‘that Snookums is so homely, he’s pretty!’ This is the childish penchant for the grotesque and tawdrily ‘cute’, which we see likewise embodied in popular cartoons, freak dolls, and all the malformed decorative trumpery of the “Billiken” or “Krazy Kat” order found in the “dens” and “cosy corners” of the would-be sophisticated cultural yokelry.

>The cat is for the aristocrat—whether by birth or inclinations or both—who admires his fellow-aristocrats (even if Little Belknap isn’t especially fond of Felis). He is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe, and who worships that beauty in all its forms without regard for the sentimental and ethical illusions of the moment. For the man who knows the hollowness of feeling and the emptiness of human objects and aspirations, and who therefore clings solely to what is real—as beauty is real because it pretends to no significance beyond the emotion which it excites and is. For the man who feels sufficient in the cosmos, and asks no false perspective of exaltation; who is moved by no mawkish scruples of conventional prejudice, but loves repose and strength and freedom and luxury and superiority and sufficiency and contemplation; who as a strong fearless soul wishes something to respect instead of something to lick his face and accept his alternate blows and strokings; who seeks a proud and beautiful equal in the peerage of individualism rather than a cowed and cringing satellite in the hierarchy of fear, subservience, and devotion. The cat is not for the brisk, self-important little worker with a “mission”, but for the enlightened dreaming poet who knows that the world contains nothing really worth doing. The dilettante—the connoisseur—the decadent, if you will, though in a healthier age than this there were things for such men to do, so that they were the planners and leaders of those glorious pagan times. The cat is for him who does things not for empty duty but for power, pleasure, splendour, romance, and glamour—for the harpist who sings alone in the night of old battles, or the warrior who goes out to fight such battles for beauty, glory, fame, and the splendour of a kingly court athwart which no shadow of weakness or democracy falls. For him who will be lulled by no sops of prose and usefulness, but demands for his effort the ease and beauty and ascendancy and cultivation which alone make effort worth while. For the man who knows that play, not work, and leisure, not bustle, are the great things of life; and that the round of striving merely in order to strive some more is a bitter irony of which the civilised soul accepts as little as it can.

>"I have named her ‘Nigger-Man’— partly because of her jet-black colour, and partly because of her intense and intolerant hatred of dogs and other cats. She is a bizarre, stealthy, leering, puzzling, pink-eyed creature whose form has no relation to the other feline outlines I know so well."
>(Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, August 16, 1921)

>"My little black cat Nigger-Man is a darling. He ambles round, purring, and makes all sorts of intelligent sounds which betoken affection and sociability. Last night he lay with me and purred while I read, and when I stopped reading he put out a paw and touched my hand as if to say 'go on'."
>(Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, July 18, 1924)

>"I have an engagement to dine with a friend tonight, but must return early to see to the wants of Nigger-Man, who has now become an absolute monarch of my heart and household. The tiny tyrant rules me with a velvet paw, and makes my life one long round of eager submission to his whims and wishes."
>(Letter to August Derleth, September 23, 1930)

Why do writers love cat?

Are cat lovers better writers than dog lovers?

Is there any writer who makes leftists seethe more than Lovecraft?
They either get up and arms about his racism and disregard his entire works or make a lesson about "separating the man from his writing"
It's not like the racist parts of his stories were meant to convince anyone. It's *comically racist at worst, just read this lmao

"The negro had been knocked out, and a moment's examination shewed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon."
- Herbert West - Reanimator, H.P Lovecraft

Do any of you know where to look for if I want to get interested in Lovecraft

what's his name again?

>>19087560
Do you have anything about cats? I love cats.

Whiteman, because dogs are the superior pet.

reminder that it was Lovecraft's DAD who named the cat Niggerman, not him.

>hugs niggerman

I took leave of my father's decrepit farmhouse in my modest Guatemalan automobile, making reasonable pace across a landscape bereft of anything resembling what I had come to know as modernity. I eventually reached the general store, a flimsy wooden structure that emitted a dark cloud of smoke from a narrow chimney. Two locals sat outside in the midday sun, accomplishing nothing and seemingly content in their doing so. Their bestial stupidity, likely the result of generations of inbreeding and race-mixing, was apparent in both their appearance and vocabulary. My eyes were immediately drawn towards the words emblazoned above the door. These words perplexed me in such a manner that defy ordinary description. I shall not repeat them here, for I fear that anyone who stumbles upon this tome will meet the same fate as I should they read them. I have not slept in weeks, as I have tried in increasing desperation to decipher the true meaning of that inscription. I fear that it is pointless. The fate of this city slicker is sealed.

heres a decent list i think would be good if you walk her through it correctly

1. great gatsby pretty easy read beautifull prose very vivid descriptions and of course relationship drama to cater to her feminine nature

2. LOLITA all pedo memes aside its a exceptional great read nabokov will properly enchant her within the first 5 pages plus the novel requires a second/third reading to catch everything so should help with memory retention, and prose absorbtion

3. don quixote a extremely fun read even in translation it is filled with such vitality it is a book of pure life and romanticism which she should probably like

4. hemingway short story collection/old man and the sea hemingway short story collection should be a fantastic start prose is easy enough to understand yet has enough tempting depth for her
to dig in to

>>14684708
>Lovecraft
>I wrote about the State of Israel
BASED

Trying to get into classic horror writers.
What are HP Lovecraft's most essential works?

>I took leave of my father's decrepit farmhouse in my modest Guatemalan automobile, making reasonable pace across a landscape bereft of anything resembling what I had come to know as modernity. I eventually reached the general store, a flimsy wooden structure that emitted a dark cloud of smoke from a narrow chimney. Two locals sat outside in the midday sun, accomplishing nothing and seemingly content in their doing so. Their bestial stupidity, likely the result of generations of inbreeding and race-mixing, was apparent in both their appearance and vocabulary. My eyes were immediately drawn towards the words emblazoned above the door. These words perplexed me in such a manner that defy ordinary description. I shall not repeat them here, for I fear that anyone who stumbles upon this tome will meet the same fate as I should they read them. I have not slept in weeks, as I have tried in increasing desperation to decipher the true meaning of that inscription. I fear that it is pointless. The fate of this city slicker is sealed.

It was indescribable

Whats his name again?

I'm gonna say it

>>14220904
>I took leave of my father's decrepit farmhouse in my modest Guatemalan automobile, making reasonable pace across a landscape bereft of anything resembling what I had come to know as modernity. I eventually reached the general store, a flimsy wooden structure that emitted a dark cloud of smoke from a narrow chimney. Two locals sat outside in the midday sun, accomplishing nothing and seemingly content in their doing so. Their bestial stupidity, likely the result of generations of inbreeding and race-mixing, was apparent in both their appearance and vocabulary. My eyes were immediately drawn towards the words emblazoned above the door. These words perplexed me in such a manner that defy ordinary description. I shall not repeat them here, for I fear that anyone who stumbles upon this tome will meet the same fate as I should they read them. I have not slept in weeks, as I have tried in increasing desperation to decipher the true meaning of that inscription. I fear that it is pointless. The fate of this city slicker is sealed.

>>I took leave of my father's decrepit farmhouse in my modest Guatemalan automobile, making reasonable pace across a landscape bereft of anything resembling what I had come to know as modernity. I eventually reached the general store, a flimsy wooden structure that emitted a dark cloud of smoke from a narrow chimney. Two locals sat outside in the midday sun, accomplishing nothing and seemingly content in their doing so. Their bestial stupidity, likely the result of generations of inbreeding and race-mixing, was apparent in both their appearance and vocabulary. My eyes were immediately drawn towards the words emblazoned above the door. These words perplexed me in such a manner that defy ordinary description. I shall not repeat them here, for I fear that anyone who stumbles upon this tome will meet the same fate as I should they read them. I have not slept in weeks, as I have tried in increasing desperation to decipher the true meaning of that inscription. I fear that it is pointless. The fate of this city slicker is sealed.