/lit/ - Literature

>>21923762
I really need to go to Tijuana again. Girls like this but younger for pennies on the dollar

I want to see huge spurts of foam erupt from your blowhole. I want your spermaceti, by far the most precious of all oily vintages, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state, sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. (A large whale's case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaked, dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what you can.)

- Anonymous

I’m sorry, but there is no book better than Moby-Dick.

What should i even write about?
Give me some ideas/topics whatever you can think of.

Just finished Moby Dick. Is it the best piece of American literature ever written? Also mandatory Moby Dick thread

plebs think old man and the sea is the best, and so one can easily identify a pleb when they harp on about it.
Patricians know its a nice little tale but it's childish scribbles compared to pic related.

So... Ishmael just kind of transitions into Herman Melville after they get onto the boat

Not that I have a problem with this, but does anyone else get that vibe?

So what exactly did Pip represent?

Is Moby Dick genuinely worth reading and studying? I feel like the book is overrated by this board so hard I like the premise but i'm still on the fence of such a big time investment.

How important is historical accuracy to you in a fictional narrative? What if the historical event (i.e. a war) isn’t the main focus of the narrative?

Talking about minor things here, obviously I wouldn’t change anything major about said war. Just little things to help with the narrative.

I love Moby-Dick so much. Even though it's a somewhat despairing book, its message to get through life together through humor and camaraderie fills me with a lot of joy.

"There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!"

Talk about how much you love your favorite books!

>>13022991

>>12997273
read Land obv. but follow the rest of the trail, from Spinoza through Marx, Heidegger, Deleuze, all of it. understand that we live on one hell of a world.

i don't know if it's a worthy aspiration but it's helped to clarify a lot of things for me. weirdly enough i think i'm probably just going to go full buddhist at this point and not look back.

>>12997284
philosophers are rarely paragons of virtue, all they have to do is exactly get the age right.

what are books I'll regret not reading?

Anybody got tips for focusing with a fucked brain?

I have pretty severe sensory modulation issues and it's rare for me to get through a page without being distracted. It's rare for me to read more than 10-15 pages at a time before loosing all ability to concentrate. I'm trying to get through Moby Dick right now but it's taking forever.

>>12717113
Ooooh. more doxing!
OK....
Evola
sex
Moby-Dick
NGNS/Libertarian

>>12690231
They help with the mood of the book. If you are having trouble with M-D I suggest immersing yourself into the book at a time when other distractions are absent. Turn off your 'phone, turn off your computer.

Why is Moby Dick said to be such a difficult read? Anyone who finished high school should be able to complete it without difficulty. I'm stupid and barely finished high school, with english not as my first, second nor third language, and still breezed through it.

>>12615016
That book is pure beauty.

> Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?

>All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.

> On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip. As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.

> Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

>>12590746
Excellent article. One of the best I've read from James Wood.

>>12590873
weak bait.

Is there a particular advantage of using the traditional pen and paper over computer screens to write?

>>12485651
Moby-Dick

>>12340939
Moby-Dick
The Man Who was Thursday
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
The Gray Prince
The Plays by William Shakespeare (pseud.)

>>12255400
No.