/lit/ - Literature

There's a memory or dream saved away, deep within the complex subterfuge that is my mind. I can hear it like a far off echo begging me to listen on its ill-defined calls.

I can see I am a child, this being the single memory that remains from that time, and my vision tells me that I'm soaring through the air looking over the Landscape. Seeing its true scope. Boundless. Neverending. Horrific. Hearing about the fields that surround our facility on all sides for hundreds of miles in every direction is one thing, but actually seeing them with your own pair of eyes? I can assure you it's another matter entirely.

I remember, those four-legged beasts with shadows so large and bodies coated with muscles striations and thick sheets of desert-bronze fur rolling over their galloping backs. I remember how they bared their fangs big as men from behind the thick flaps of meat that made up their mouths. I remember watching them roam below me in packs, these sterling examples of formidability, and I remember them tracking through the tall thickets of dried underbrush with predatory movements some just-under-equally-ferocious monstrosity that had been dealt the unlucky hand of living within this harsh Landscape alongside these feline behemoths. I remember the thick mist of red that soared out in a heavy plume from the smaller beast's gouged neck and stomach. I remember the streaks of crimson splaying themselves against the arid plains I flew over. And lastly, I remember my young mind praying with futility to turn around and go back the way I had come.

There's a memory or dream saved away, deep within the complex subterfuge that is my mind. I can hear it like a far off echo begging me to listen on its ill-defined calls.
I can see I am a child, this being the single memory that remains from that time, and my vision tells me that I'm soaring through the air looking over the Landscape. Seeing its true scope. Boundless. Neverending. Horrific. Hearing about the fields that surround our facility on all sides for hundreds of miles in every direction is one thing, but actually seeing them with your own pair of eyes? I can assure you it's another matter entirely.
I remember, those four-legged beasts with shadows so large and bodies coated with muscles striations and thick sheets of desert-bronze fur rolling over their galloping backs. I remember how they bared their fangs big as men from behind the thick flaps of meat that made up their mouths. I remember watching them roam below me in packs, these sterling examples of formidability, and I remember them tracking through the tall thickets of dried underbrush with predatory movements some just-under-equally-ferocious monstrosity that had been dealt the unlucky hand of living within this harsh Landscape alongside these feline behemoths. I remember the thick mist of red that soared out in a heavy plume from the smaller beast's gouged neck and stomach. I remember the streaks of crimson splaying themselves against the arid plains I flew over. And lastly, I remember my young mind praying with futility to turn around and go back the way I had come.

>After reading a page of IJ and deciding it would be a supreme waste of time

It's funny, because I decreed your post to be a waste of time from the first sentence.

>>4497263
Innsmouth and Color Out of Space for me.
Also, Rats in the Walls was a fun read.

But my favorite probably goes to The Whisperer in Darkness. It was pretty goddamn predictable at points and the main character was outright retarded at times, but goddamn, those final sections.

If I could turn over the switch of isolation, I'd opt to tear the socket out of wall and chew into the exposed wires until all that was left was a mangled mess of copper and plastic overlay.

The story is I'm sick, but I just don't believe it yet.

I'm not sitting here asking for a change to the surrounding schema, I'm only asking for the output of my labor to mirror in some way all that I've put in. I don't want fame or success, I just want something to show for self-prescribed social disease and complete divorce of every other mind I've come across since this all started.

The story is I'm sick, and that's perfect for me.

This detachment from normal--this distance wedged between my mind and everything else--it's becoming apparent that it is in fact NOT feeding into this complete systematic overload of artistic creativity that will shape my mind with orgasmic force into this absolutely perfect gestalt.

But then again. It might be that I haven't pushed myself far enough.

There's a memory or dream saved away, deep within the complex subterfuge that is my mind. I can hear it like a far off echo begging me to listen on its ill-defined calls.

I can see I am a child, this being the single memory that remains from that time, and my vision tells me that I'm soaring through the air looking over the Landscape. Seeing its true scope. Boundless. Never ending. Horrific. Hearing about the fields that surround our facility on all sides for hundreds of miles in every direction is one thing, but actually seeing them with your own pair of eyes? I can assure you it's another matter entirely.

Four-legged beasts the size of suburban trailer park RVs equipped with their striated muscles and their thick sheets of desert-bronze fur rolling over their galloping backs and their fangs big as men hidden beneath thick flaps of meat that covered them. I remember watching them roam below me in packs, these sterling examples of formidability, and I remember them tracking through the tall thickets of dried underbrush with predatory movements some just-under-equally-ferocious monstrosity that had been dealt the unlucky hand of living within this harsh Landscape alongside these feline behemoths. I remember the thick mist of red that soared out in a heavy plume from the smaller beast's gouged neck and stomach. I remember the streaks of crimson splaying themselves against the arid plains I flew over. And lastly, I remember my young mind praying with futility to turn around and go back the way I had come.

---

The facility I mentioned is simply a steel-box prison of indefinable size and utility that we call home. The Caretakers claim that this facility is the closest place we have to a safe haven. My memory begs me to believe otherwise. It informs me that I come from somewhere else, somewhere very far away and truly without threat. Not this metal deathtrap that has hanging around its undiscovered corners and hallways nothing aside from that all too familiar and absolutely putrid smell of paroxysm-inducing fear.

My memory also reminds me this facility is surrounded for an untraversable distance by creatures that are stronger, better, and more attuned for survival than we are. This I have always known but never bothered to share with the people I have met, grown close to, and on most cases watched die as I sat quietly crouched in corners with my breath held tight inside my chest and hands clasped around my head to block out the shrieks people I called 'friend.'

We, with our thin layer of soft skin and fragile bones that don't crack against Residuals' bites, but instead simply tremble for only second and then shatter into dust beneath the astronomical PSI of their jaws--we are not met to inherit this world. We're meant to feed it. This fact I have also had implanted into my subconscious by some nameless force I can't understand.

---

>>4137353
Number three with a bit of two(I loved IJ for chrissake). Do Androids and ASD are the only ones I've ticked off from Dick. Ordering Ubik once I finished my Lovecraft.

>>4137007
I personally felt it was just a small bit of commentary on the general usage of language by people--specifically American people. DFW was a massive stickler for grammar, 'and but so like anyway' seemed to be this kind of idiosyncratic phrase used by the ever mentally dulling population.

My guess is Wallace was the kind of person who hated people who always started their sentences with, 'Like,' or 'anyways,' and decided to put that at the forefront of regular speech for the people of this horrific future he had envisioned.

I dunno, it just blows me away that people could read the entirety of IJ and get -nothing- from it. Make absolutely no parallels between this ridiculous fiction that was written in the early nineties to what is literally happening in our present. The book talks about us--cuts deeply into our culture and presents to us all of our worst weaknesses and most vapid of desires. To not like this book always seemed to me to be synonymous with simply not understanding it. You could easily argue that it wasn't a novel with fantastic prose and sweeping descriptions that laid beauty out for the mind's eye, but to me it wasn't supposed to be. IJ was a raw and damn dissection of our culture, and what our uncontrollable and childish -need- for entertainment has done to it. It's a warning. And to hate the book for something as trivial as the author's writing style has you overlook the true merit and message contained within the text.

>>4136851
Gah, this is bringing back some feelings.

I haven't read Ubik yet, but goddamn this book was so brutally good. Easily my favorite from PKD.

Oh, that was odd. Sorry. I'm starting to run a fever and I must've skimmed over it and typed in 'bite me' incorrectly into CTRL+F

Where'd my post go?

>>4135439
Great goddamn book, right?

>>4136674
No. You and I both no the story that exists in Demon's Souls is minimal at best. In Dark Souls it's practically non-existent.

>>4136547
>>4136575
Sounds like a fun exercise. I'll do it and then proceed to keep it to myself.

Do your own homework, anon.

I have The Night Land sitting on my shelf.

Haven't read it though.

I really want that shirt. And you can bite me /lit/.

You guys do a great job at disallowing most memeology take hold of this board--using individual mindsets to stop yourselves from typing in opinions that aren't your own and thereby subscribing to some board-social stigma that's been passed on to you--outside of the case of DFW.

Stop jumping on the wagon of disdain for the man's writing simply because you didn't feel motivated enough to power through the first three-hundred pages of the book. It's untasteful and tactless.

>>4136580
As the first poster said; maybe.

But I really hope not. There's something really raw and mentally overstimulating found in reading a truly great book. At least, if one would just take the time to sit and truly digest and what was being fed to them.

I think things like good storytelling and presenting solidified themes, ideals, and character development can't really come to light in other mediums without its creator at least reading a substantial amount of what one would call 'worthy' or 'high' literature.

I mean, if you look at something like Breaking Bad and why it's considered such a successful and acclaimed show, that comes -completely- from its writing. The shows creator is a writer by career and many of his cast will give all credit to the script for the show being as great as it is.

So, yes, I would say that if we want our other mediums to continue yielding complex stories, thrilling scenes, and being overall wonderful and great, then their creators need a strong foundation in enjoying literature.

>>4136620
That said, I haven't read a massive amount of his stuff.

Just started going through a collected works of Lovecraft, myself, OP. What's you're favorite story from him? Some of his stuff is a bit cheesy, but the early 1900's horror atmosphere that's considered so classic and oft emulated really does shine the brightest in his works. The man really knew how to set a scene.

>>4133584
I really enjoyed The Mist. Not much else from him though.

>>3850916
You're a funny guy. But I suppose they did.

>>3849736
I'll just get back to work.

>>3849714
>Speeds alright to write on but half of its just babbling
See Stephen King's "The Stand"

>>3849686
Eh, the chapter I just finished up was super draining. Figured I'd dick about a bit.

>>3849674
My processes and habits are what they are, and if they're currently effective, why would I go about altering them? I write outside on my back patio in the heat of summer with a bowl of peanuts, a half-shot of a condensed energy drink, and a load of cigarettes. It's far from healthy, but I get roughly 2k+ done every day. There's hardly any personal reason to it. No image I'm trying to make myself into. The energy drink is there to wake me up, the cigarettes stave off hunger, and the peanuts ensure I don't starve.

>I imagine your work to be a bunch of self-aggrandizing angsty scribblings, "muhh writing, hrrrr"
I should hope not. I'm writing a heavily plot driven novel with diverse and varied characters that combines themes and philosophies primarily presented by Lewis Mumford and Joseph Campbell within the subtext. I try my very best to stray away from self-aggrandizing messages by giving characters most similar and relatable to myself either unlikeable personalities or negative outcomes.