/lit/ - Literature

>>3412132
>>3412117
Well, it is nostalgia rock, but it isn't lame in my opinion.
He certainly is passionate, and a fairly talented musician. However, I feel like both the LPs have been slightly over-produced, but that's just my personal taste. Overall, some very cool stuff going on there, I look forward to Tame Impala's future releases.

>>3412122
To be honest with you, I haven't listened to Bedlam or Octahedron yet. However, I DID listen to Noctourniquet, which I really liked. Some great hooks on that record, which I guess is part of why many fans thought it was a step towards generic pop-rock or Muse-like theatrics.

I'm not quite so harsh on it. 6 or 7/10, I'd say. Not enough prog wankery for my liking, but a really solid effort.

To put it in perspective, I consider Deloused an 8/10 and Frances a 9/10.

>>3412005
>>3412023
>>3412036
Some good taste here.

>>3404357
Maybe McCarthy just finds the human brand of violence more disgusting?
It's interesting that Holden says he'll live forever at the end of the novel... The Yale course suggests that this refers to the author's status as immortalized by his "Great American Novel." But I always leaned towards the interpretation that Holden's living forever referred to the violence in the hearts of men and so forth... You know, that old chestnut.

>>3404308
I've seen those lectures, not bad. Not as much depth as Bloom's writing, but I'm guessing it's an undergraduate course. The "revision" isn't all that complicated, if I recall correctly. It's mainly that there's no interiority in Blood Meridian. Whereas the reader has full access to Ishmael's mind in Moby Dick. Moral complexity is reduced as a result. I guess you interpret the implications of that for yourself.

Joanna Newsom
Thomas Pynchon
Paul Thomas Anderson

Pretty stoked that my second and third choice are working together.

>>3346584
That was just *one* of the things she thought he might have represented. I watched this a couple of weeks ago so it's pretty fresh in my mind. She analysed him in much greater depth, if you remember. She went into his historical inspiration, the significance of his War speech and the Kid's great final act of courage (telling the Judge, "you ain't nothin'") and what it might mean. All this stuff seemed more important than the literary legacy topic, if you ask me.

>>3346211
They look nice all lined up like that, I like the colours, but the worst part about them is how prominent the review excerpts are. It's pretty obnoxious.

I feel you, OP. I have about half of McCarthy's work published in the style of my picture. The cover designs in these editions were mostly pretty photographs, the font for the title and author was clean and simple. Before I could complete my collection of all his books they changed to this new cover design, which I despise. And now the spines won't match on my bookshelf. It's petty, I know. But I care about book aesthetics.

>>3335363
Fair enough. I personally enjoy an artist being flashy, as long as they can back it up with substance. But yes, stylized prose without content can be annoying, unless of course the lack of content is the whole point (which it sometimes is - see The Crying of Lot 49).

May I ask what are some of the major postmodern works you've read? Which you appreciated, which you outright hated?

>>3335341
I'm not quite so harsh on him. I thought the screenplay for Munich was good. It's very taut, as they say. For an overtly political subject, the film itself is mostly apolitical. The story is reduced to a tense action thriller. I think this was for the best. Spielberg wouldn't know how to deal with anything more and Kushner's main problem has always been being too preachy at times.

>>3335298
Care to expand on what you *dislike* about postmodernism? Might make for interesting discussion.

Well, you listed some of the best there.

My main man Pynchon, obviously. Delillo is good too - though I haven't read Underworld yet, which I'm led to believe is his magnum opus or whatever.

Some others I like:
E.L. Doctorow
Kathy Acker
William Gaddis
Tony Kushner
Philip Roth

I'm not sure if Nabokov is included in the movement, but I always saw Pale Fire as having a lot of postmodern qualities. Anyway, I like him.

>>3326571
Obviously I was being facetious. I know Harold Bloom isn't popular here.

Reading up on some /lit/core. And some other stuff.

>>3318304
That's hilarious. I don't think my professors were quite that brutal, but I've been pulled up for quite a few errors that anyone else would have let slide.

>>3318317
What's your problem, pal? I'm not hurting anyone. And Daniel Day-Lewis is a respectable gentleman from literary stock. Not to mention a pretty good actor.

>>3318216
Yes, absolutely. It's strange because the professors who teach the older literature courses are generally dinosaurs. At my university many of them are great academics, but horrible teachers. They've been in the system for so long they've lost any and all passion they may once have had. The professors who are teaching po-mo and modernist courses are often fresh off the conveyor belt and still believe they can make a difference in the lives of their students. They tend to mark assessments more harshly and hold better discussions in tutorials...
So why that kind of learning environment doesn't attract a better class of student is perplexing to me.

>>3318114
Take it easy, dude. I was just joking around. So, you don't like my main man Pynchon. That's cool.
I think I was just unlucky enough to be in a very close-minded class, I'm sure other classes were more open and responsive. Let me give you the list of authors that received largely negative feedback from the girls that semester (and these are entry level po-mo authors for a reason, it was a 2nd year course):
Vonnegut
Doctorow
DeLillo
Acker
Gaddis
Borges


Strangely, the authors that most people seemed to enjoy were Rushdie and DFW.

I've taken a bunch of 19th Century and Modernist courses as well. The female contingent seems much more open to those texts. This just my university experience, I don't mean to generalize about the entire gender.

>Be 2nd year English major
>Take class on Postmodernism
>Tutorial is made up of about 18 females and 5 males, including myself
>The assigned reading one week is The Crying of Lot 49 by my main man Pynchon
>Every girl in the class either hated it or didn't finish reading it
>they cite reasons such as "the characters didn't seem like people, I didn't care what happened to them"
>they ask questions like, "if the book is about nothing then why bother writing it?"

>mfw all 5 guys in the class loved the book

And that's when I knew.
I wasn't an introvert at all.
I was a misogynist.

>>3314129
Pisses me off that PTA is making a Pynchon adaptation, but of one of his worst books.

>>3304681
That's insane. Wouldn't know what to do if I ever met him. He's an imposing figure, it seems.

>>3304603
I'm so glad that the Stanley Tucci thing stood out for someone else. I even wrote it down somewhere when I read it. I liked The Corrections a lot, but that chapter was just ridiculous in so many ways.

The Crying of Lot 49
The Sound and the Fury
Blood Meridian

Judge Holden and Iago have my vote.