/lit/ - Literature

>>23412076
A recent book I read felt like this, A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney about his 2 year son old being diagnosed with cancer and dying. Fucking heart ripping, but hopeful, and full of love, and joy.

Hogg is one of my favorite novels but man... the fact that Delaney considers it erotica is some rough shit. I just like it because of how deranged it is, the weird premise and setting, and the fact that the second half goes full schizo terroristcore.

>>23376559
Tolkien tapped into the myth of "Merrie England", i.e. the feeling that at some indeterminate time in the past things were rural, low-tech, and basically cheery and friendly. A sort of lost "Golden Age". The Shire is rural England — part fantasy, part reality (more reality than people these days realize, I think).

The USA has naturally created its own similar myth. It's the Wild West. You have to decide whether to use this (perhaps altering or expanding it) or go for something completely different.


The big change that's taken place in the USA is the move from rural to urban living. The Wild West is essentially a wide-open landscape. These days most people live in cities. So where writers try to create a completely new myth, they usually go urban, to reflect this, e.g. Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney. (Charles Dickens did something similar with Victorian London.)

I don't think this can ever work, because the countryside is life and cities are death. But you might feel differently.


Suppose you want to try to update the Wild West mythos with modern technology? Just going by feel, I think you could do worse than watch some road movies.

The feel of someone driving huge distances, stopping off at little towns for ADVENTURES — there's a poetic vibe to this which has a lot in common with the old Wild West, but is also quintessentially modern. It can incorporate the modern urban landscape (Drive, for example).

Quite what you do with this is another matter.

>>23373200
I recently read the first two books in the series on a whim, really enjoyed them. Checked the wiki to see how Delaney developed the characters in the later books and my interest immediately evaporated.

>>23357505
Sci-fags are almost always some mixture of pervert and curmudgeon, it gets old fast. It's like a spectrum from Ellison to Delaney or Heinlein or whoever. So the All Tomorrows guy being soi-adjacent was astute

>>23293936
Morrissey’s favourite books [circa 1983]:
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
Popcorn Venus by Marjorie Rosen
From Reverence to Rape by Molly Haskell
Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams
The Lion in Love by Shelagh Delaney
Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller
The Angel Inside Went Sour by Esther Rothman
Men’s Liberation by Jack Nichols
The Murderers’ Who’s Who by J.H.H. Gaute & Robin Odell
The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing by Casey Miller & Kate Swift

>>23285738
>Delaney
Nova or his short stories
>Disch
Camp Concentration or 334
>Crowley
Little, Big
>Lafferty
Wrote only short fiction IIRC

>>23285957
I thought Delaney's best was considered to be Triton?

>>23285738
>Delaney
Dhalgren

>Crowley
Little, Big

>Lafferty
Is best in short stories. His stuff is hard to find but the Best of R.A. Lafferty is a good starting point. If you are dead set on a novel go with Past Master or Fourth Mansions (if you can even find it for a reasonable price).

>Vance
Read anything in The Dying Earth cycle.

Haven’t read Disch so can’t recommend anything. Also, OP mentioned him but go with Wolfe if you haven’t already. He’s in the upper echelon of SFF writers.

>Samuel Delaney
>Thomas Disch
>Crowley
>R. A. Lafferty
>Vance
What is their best work?

>>23285390
>Read synopsis of Hogg on wikipedia
>Find out Delaney is gay

Why are they all like this?

>>23284899
Jack Vance is very underrated and underread even though he is incredibly influential on SFF.

Also R.A. Lafferty and as this >>23285050 anon said, Samuel Delaney (don’t do Hogg though, unless you are a literal niggerfaggot).

>>23284899
Try Samuel Delaney or Thomas Disch. Also John Crowley though he's mostly alt hist/fantasy.

>>23266342
>>/lit/?task=search&search_text=Delaney
Considering how many misspell his name.

>>23257261
>the "pace is molasses-slow"
Someone busts a fresh load on every single fuckin page and this guy has the audacity to complain about the pace?!

>gave expression to the author's hostility
Delaney is a submissive bottom who gets off serving as free-use hole at homeless encampments. He doesn't have any anger, he's just writing his fantasy husbando. The violence against straights is just incedental.

>>23256685
Hogg by Samuel Delaney. Never before had I cast a licentious eye upon my fellow man when I happened upon what I thought to be a wholesome yarn about the misadventures of a hardy trucker and his youthful companion. I swear, I wouldn't have opened the thing up if I'd known that their relationship would develop to be anything more than platonic, yet by the time Delaney's captivating narrative brought me there I was simply too emotionally invested to turn back.

Wolfe is peak prose and literally the only ppl who disagree are plebs who have not studied latin and greek and get filtered by archaic words.

Also:
>dat copypasta
Lmao. Imagine pretending Moorcock is anything special.

>dunsany
Machen is better

>leguin
Ugly femoid seething with ressentiment


>eddison, peake, delaney
Influential but hardly the best. Tolkien is more influential. And better. But that's also a bad thing since he is therefore ripped off furthermost

>herbert
Lmao. Fat fuck fetishist writing goyslop. New movies was kino tho

>>23236410
>What do you expect from a people that have been in chains for some 250 years followed by another 100 of social oppression?
Sure, dude. Hey, look at the Russians. 1,000 years of serfdom followed by 70 years of Communism punctuated with Nazi occupation. That's why Russian authors never came up with a great universal literature, and instead write about nothing but the trauma of being serfs once upon a time.
>Delaney Forrest etc,
See, this is the whole problem of affirmative action in literature. Yeah, there are fine and interesting black writers. Not 'Dambudzo Marechera,' ferchrissake, but Reed and Baldwin are solid. So is Charles Johnson, Chester Himes, a few others, But they're all second-tier. Baldwin is no Montaigne, just like Chester Himes isn't Raymond Chandler. They're good, and worth reading, but the fact remains that the heights are populated by white males, period--Plato, Homer, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Milton and Shakespeare, Dickens and Shaw and so on. Maybe one day there'll be a black guy in the Pantheon, but it hasn't happen yet, and it'll never happen if all black writers do is whine about having a black ass and a great-grandfather who got it kicked by some white man. They need to stop writing about the black condition and start writing about the human condition.

>>23234976
>>23235875
If you consider any American books in the Western canon then that necessarily includes African Americans, considering they've been there as long as any white person. What do you expect from a people that have been in chains for some 250 years followed by another 100 of social oppression? Probably going to be a good amount of authors talking about that experience, dumbass.

Here are some actual authors for those who read and aren't pol-brained leftovers who don't actually read/study any of the canon or any books for that matter.

Samuel Delaney - Dhalgren (weirdo sci-fi, very violent and sexual)
Leon Forrest - Divine Days (post-modern tome, in the vein of recognitions, gravity's rainbow, etc.)
Israel Reed - Mumbo Jumbo (Harold Bloom's favorite)
Dambudzo Marechera - The House of Hunger (underrated Zimbabwe writer)
Frant Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth (non-fiction)
Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist (contemporary but p good)
James Baldwin - Collected Essays (his speeches are just as good)

Yeah? Well, I found a book so rare there is no record of it on the internet. It's called The Big Race by Delaney Kate Johnsen and it was created specifically for a child named Gavin.

I am building a rare book collection for my kid.

Samuel Delaney gets memed on a lot here for Hogg but Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is a very thoughtful and well-written account of gay life in NYC in the 70s/80s. He has a real talent for dialogue and for describing unique, memorable characters with only a few lines.

>>23114247
Probably something like Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, or Dahlgren, both by Samuel R. Delaney.

>>23114065
I have read over 1.200 books I’ve the last three years and here’s my absolute top four books for getting smarter
1. 12 rules for life by Dr. J. B. Peterson
2. Deep Work - Cal Newport
3. The Bible by J. Christ
4. Hugg - James R Delaney
5. How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie
6. Atomic Habits - M. Houellebecq

But be aware: intelligence is not a skill but a habit you must water every day to blossom but you will 100% without a doubt become an alpha male when you reach intelligence

Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America
by Carol Delaney