/lit/ - Literature

>>16770192
This is such a stupid platitude. Cancer treatment sounds good. Faster internet sounds good. A higher standard of living sounds good. Most good things sound good, because they are good.

What he's implicitly doing here --- creating a dichotomy between "working" and "sounding good" --- is wrong. That becomes obvious when you point it out. But Sowell's whole schtick depends on an uncritical audience, so the people he's addressing won't notice.

Sound off a snappy one-liner, and hope nobody comes along to point out the dumb assumptions beneath it. You can make a career out of it.

>>12794756
If you're so smart, then why don't you do something about it? Surely a man of your intellect can come up with a way to stop shitposting and beating your dick pink.

>>10346224
I disagree.

The prose snaps along without any needless digressions and the imagery is strong. There's several great moments of assonance like "boiled boar urine," and internal rhyme like "blistering sun-thing."

The plot has a pretty well-defined three-act structure: we learn the characters' "want" (the canned goods), they quest for their "want," and the "want" gives way to the "need" (suicide). Context and characterization are woven into the plot without being obtuse or overly vague.

There's many layers of symbolism — criticism of the 1960s' war machine, mostly. Benny undergoes a transition from brutalizing mankind (as a scientist) to brutalizing specific people (as an ape-thing). Gorrister is an ineffectual protester — he claims to be against war (and AM), but actually goes along with both. The image of "light at the end of the tunnel" is always inverted — light doesn't mean escape, it means more harm, just as a war doesn't mean peace, it means the groundwork is laid for another war.

And so on.

>>10341846

>>9495308
Meh, I've read a couple pages in the store cause I wasn't sure about it and it doesn't seem bad, I like the setting a fucking lot and I haven't read anything like this before. It can't be so popular if there's nothing good about it.