/lit/ - Literature

>>14154272
I've wanted to read it but I've heard it's difficult. How was your experience reading the series OP?

>>14154334
It's difficult but rewarding.

>>14154334
The two things I've seen that really trip people up are the archaic words and the plot.

Why does the book use weird words few people will know the definition of? The author said:
>The answers are that all the words are real, and I used odd words to convey the flavor of an odd place at an odd time. Some fans seem to be able to tolerate any amount of gibberish, so long as it is gibberish; but let a hard-working writer venture some perfectly legitimate word like epopt, and—but I’d better stop before my tears get my typewriter all rusty.
Basically just treat them like a sci-fi words and try to guess what they mean from the context. No one ever flat out defines what a lightsaber is. If it really bothers you there's a companion book called Lexicon Urthus that you can find the definitions in, but it's full of spoilers (especially when it comes to the names of characters).

The plot can feel somewhere between flimsy and nonexistent. The third book feels especially "episodic" to me. Some things can seem really pointless before you have the context of all four books. The enjoyment comes from the writing itself and it was written to be better when you reread it.

>>14154334
I didn't find it difficult at all and I would be considered a midwit, normie who likes genre trash by this board.

read it all this year, the best were shadow of the torturer and urth of new sun. gotta read the long and short sun books some day

>>14154334
is not difficult, like MOBY DIK you can read it literally without knowledge or allegorically with more reflection

Anyone else see the Alzabo elixer as the master key of this series? Seemed to me that Alzabo allowed the autarchy to be both the first and highest form of government (the master’s question) because with it the problem of succession is overcome since the dead are constantly in dialogue with the current Autarch.

>>14154272
is it possible for someone who's mother tongue isn't english to read this and understand what's going on?

are Erebus and Abaia ever relevant?

>>14156059
No. If you were not raised with English as your first language, the book will be impossible to read.

Sorry anon

Convince me to read this series. I like Borges and Calvino. Also am a philosophy major. Also read a lot of nonfiction strategy books. Will read all responses that convince me given my interests.

>>14156128
damn that's unfortunate... well, guess i'll have to reread gravity's rainbow again :/

>>14156130
Nobody gives a fuck if you read it or not

>>14156130
uhm, i'm sorry, but this anon(>>14156159) completely dabbed on you. now go back to writing your blog about your boring life about which not a single soul on this website cares. thanks in advance

>>14156159
based

>>14156130
The main character has a memory like Ireneo Funes. Also there's a character in the story that's an analog for Borges.

The first book didn't impress me so I never read further. I'll admit that the prose is very unique and engaging, the story however goes nowhere and the characters are as boring as they come

I'm unimpressed by it. It's the kind of book that greasy-handed fat asses with ankle bracelets and sex crime convictions recommend to each other.

>>14156308
What do you mean?

>>14156059
Belgianfrog here, I read it without too much difficulties, even though I was fully aware that I missed a lot of subtleties. Still a great experience, would recommend

>>14156819
thank you for an actual answer. i think i try the fifth head of cerberus first before i get myself into over 800 pages before knowing whether or not i like wolfe's writing style

>>14154272
Severian's revelation on the beach when seeing the bush of thorns is the best thing I've ever read.

>As a fact the Claw was thus an incommensurable. No quantity of money, no piling up of archipelagoes or empires could approach it in value any more than the indefinite multiplication of horizontal distance could be made to equal vertical distance. If it was, as I believed, a thing from outside the universe, then its light, which I had seen shine faintly so often, and a few times brightly, was in some sense the only light we had. If it were destroyed, we were left fumbling in the dark.

>>14154272
>reading fiction
Might as well watch the TV

>>14157277
>reading the insane ramblings of some random autist
might as well go on r9k

>>14157303
Ok I'll give you that but I'm not a Zizek fan, I simply use his funny ass face as rection pics on /lit/

>>14154334
It's one book in four volumes, none of them really work on their own and a lot of things don't make sense until you've finished all of them. It's also fundamentally a work of fantasy. People rightfully hype up how dense and literary the book is, but I've seen more people give up on it because they just don't like sword and sorcery. If you're not interested in a stories about sword-wielding buff guys traveling the land having adventures, you're not going to make it to the end of the book.

>>14157406
I think the argument could be made that even if you don't typically like fantasy stuff you'll like BOTNS. It actually uses its setting to make some interesting points about fate, faith, and destiny. The book basically wouldn't work without the existence of time travel, for example, and interesting things are done with that. Jonas is another great character that couldn't work if the book wasn't sci-fi/fantasy.

>>14157406
so is it basically berserk but for adults?

>>14158151
In the sense that it's about a buff dude in black clothes with a big sword yeah. There's way less action in it than Berserk. He does still fight weird monsters, but he's not an invincible killing machine like Guts is.

>tfw Book of the Long Sun

>>14158151
yes but berserk is actually good

>>14158453
I don't understand the emotion your image is trying to convey

>>14156176
*tips fedora*

>>14158453
Long Sun and Short Sun are both worth reading.

>>14158736
autistic people have trouble reading emotion

>>14154272
I have finished Shadow and Claw, while it has some very interesting individual scenes, it felt pretty disjointing and confusing. I assume that it's one of the things that only makes sense once you finish the whole thing. I also think that it's kind of unintentionally hilarious at times due to how severe of an autist and an asshole Severian can be, his arrogance really comes off in the narration as well.

That being said the part where Severian eats a part of Thecla's body to gain her memories was absolute kino. The entire concept of the corpse eaters in general is something that I really like. Also that scene with Severian in the cave with the man-apes stood out to me, as well, off of the top of my head.

>>14157406
>If you're not interested in a stories about sword-wielding buff guys traveling the land having adventures
sounds like absolute faggotry tbqh

>>14154272
I love book 3, and to a lesser extent books 2 and 4, but frankly find the first book only okay. It definitely has it’s moments, and would maybe be better on a second go around, but I felt pretty lost on my first reading of shadow of the torturer. Absolutely worth reading.

>>14159220
The second part is even better.

>>14156312
He means you and everyone rec'ing the book is an overweight coomer fantasy nerd.

>>14159279
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj_Y0HJBqD4

>>14159247
It's not like that at all, he's just being a reductionist. Sev is probably auschwitz mode for most of it as well

>>14159295
>implying i will open that
no one uses youtube anymore BOOMER get with the times

Currently on book 2 at Dr. Talos's play at the House Absolute. The plot comes and goes between Severian doing supposedly random stuff (I assume will have meaning later). I understand what's going on as far as where they've been and where they want to go and certain actions of characters like Agia. But at the same time there is so much "filler" which is either dialogue between characters or Severian's thoughts that make nearly zero sense to me. Those sections read very philosophical and are just plain beyond me. The prose doesn't really bother me but reading it is a bit of a chore most of the time. Not in a bad way but it's very taxing. I know people say rereads are rewarded but I don't know if I would reread these books in any amount of time where I would still remember relevant details.

Did Severian really rape Jolenta or was it semi consensual or not even rape at all and just feeling her up?

>>14159779
Don't pay too much attention to Severian's words, he is a conscious obscurantist speaking a language that was only imperfectly translated into English (Wolfe's explanation). And whether he raped her or not depends on whether you consider her human or something more...or less. You'll see what I mean in book 3

>>14159779
it was pretty explicit that Severian fucked Jolenta so good on the boat that it made Dorcas cry. Severian later mentions Jolenta, "who I can be said to have raped". The point is that Severian doesn't care and it doesn't matter

>>14154272
yes, it's one of my favorite books.

>>14159779
Yeah. Right before it happens he says he wants to "...shame and punish her, to destroy her self-possession, to fill her eyes with tears and tear her hair as one burns the hair of corpses to torment the ghosts that have fled them. She had boasted that she made tribadists of women. She came near to making an algophilist of me."

>>14159845
you know some shit. any thoughts on who severian's sister might be considering the severian-severa naming convention from Sword?

>>14159861
The lexicon says it's Merryn (the Witch with the Cumaean at the end of Claw) because of a line from citadel. Ava says, “Severian is one of those brother-sister names, isn’t it? Do you have a sister?” Severian replies, “I don’t know. If I do, she’s a witch” (IV, chap. 10).

>>14159914
that witch line made me think it was Valeria, thanks tho I will look into that

is it pointless fantasy like Eragon, or pointful fantasy like LoTR?

>>14160205
Somewhere in between. A few political insights in it helped me come to terms with some weird prejudices I have (speaking of the Vodalarii movement throughout the works). In general it's too novel or "experimental" to be just another fantasy of a lesser Tolkien

>>14159845
Severian, in general, seems to prefer slim women. Jolenta is definitely "voluptuous", maybe an outright hambeast by the likely standards of the reader. He decides to fuck her good and hard, whether she wants it or not, at least partly as a way to get back at her for fooling around with Dorcas.

>>14160205
It's above LoTR in my opinion. Most would agree that it's on the same level.