/lit/ - Literature

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>>7209034
To a certain extent, I think you're right about this: Apophenia, the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data.

That said, I think it's important to understand how Pinecone is actually using this idea that we are super-paranoid to be self-effacing about what he suspects (or maybe knows) is going on with re: to the Military-Industrial Complex, Globalized Corporations. If someone came out and made all these loosely based claims about the dangers of the MIC and Globalized Corps., people would just shrug him off as a paranoid conspiracy theorist; it's through this constant self-effacing Pulp style that we are able to-- paradoxically--take ourselves and each other seriously.

If we as a culture suspect that there may some foul play surrounding the 9/11 attacks (speculation that the CIA funded them, [insert truther theory here]), then the only way we are able to discuss it, or mention our suspicions, is through obvious, self-effacing jest, i.e., BUSHDID9/11, JET FUEL CANT MELT STEEL BEAMS.

It's funny because it's so ironic and playful, but we say it because it's the only way we can talk about our suspicions in the world, especially those which we have little to no evidence for.

>>7203912
mfw I read everything from the Pendragon Adventures

I suspect that at 20 it still informs my thoughts on morality and ethics

mfw Saint Dane ruined everything

Slow Leaner
Food of the Gods
Things Fall Apart
White Teeth
Lolita
Moby Dick

Do non-subvocalizers just live with the fact that they only get to properly experience the text in that moment? In the cursory research I've done it seems like nothing is lost during the process of reading, but due to not subvocalizing, one cannot as accurately comprehend and remember the features of a text.

I can do both, and if I have the time, I much prefer subvocalizing, especially when reading character dialogue or inner-dialogue.

>>7186068
my girlfriend is pretty chill about it, although after her semester abroad in Ghana she's been on a Chimamanda kick; haven't been able to get to Purple Hibiscus or Americanah yet.

She's very familiar with DFW/Pinecone memes, I was reading GR when we met and she knows the memes.

Aside from her, I find it really difficult to find anyone else to discuss lit with, other than my professors.

Went to a Scribblers meeting on campus for the first time this week and cringed for a full 45 minutes. All rhyme-verse and fantasy novels.

Wish my gamer/sports friends read more...

From someone who read it for the first time this summer: just enjoy it, at least the first time through. You'll pick up on some of the important things Pinecone is doing, but don't bang your head against a wall trying to decypher every weird block of prose, at least for the first 150 pages.

I would argue someone like Charles Wright is someone that still does poetry, but it is becoming a lost art. More and more (and with myself as well), we can't get away from "ourselves" (inb4 DFW solopschim shooplopshichism), and most of the stuff that people today consider "poetry" is really just Prosaic Memoir, or character study. Not that it's bad, just an unpracticed art. People want to be able to read something and know it, e.g., people on this board that read Metamorphosis or Gravity's Rainbow and lose their shit because they don't "get it" on the first reading.

Reading poetry takes patience and repetition, like viewing sculptures by walking around them, taking them in at all possible angles, letting image and not self-explained meaning speak to you.

>>7167003
I hope you guys do. I read it this summer and it was pretty manageable with the companion reader, which you honestly don't need if you're discussing it on here. Would love to chat with you guys as you go.

Just remember: keep the divining rod at home, enjoy the roller coaster the first time around. I myself cannot wait for my 2nd reading.

For a Lit Crit class and for fun, I've recently picked up

>Collected Tennessee Williams, Vol.2
>Not About Nightingales, Tennessee Williams
>Henrik Ibsen Collection
>Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
>Coastal Disturbances Collection, Tina Howe (This is some playwright that my professor used to have a hardon for, I suspect)
>The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel
>Illustrated Gravity's Rainbow, Zak Smith
>Between the World and Me, YouKnowWho
>Slow Learner, Pinecone

and mo-fucker you know I'm headed to Half-Priced Books rn

>>7166765
are you at all interested in using mind-altering substances? I worked a pretty boring internship this summer and I would go back to my college house everyday (roomies were gone for summer) and smoke 1-3 blunts, get creative, write, make art, do fun shit. I would've done LSD or shrooms or DMT if I had the access, hell, even tried Heavenly Blue Morning Glory once. Take a book to work, write at work, do subversive shit, plan a trip somewhere you always wanted to go, find an artistic community, become a contributing member without being an over-encumbering white male; be an observer of the world, be a chronicler of your time.

P.s. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but, smoke sativa only.

>>7166196
yo whats good 402 /lit/?!

>>7163783
what's the significance of Ed Conklin?

Advice from Old Men


He said to work in the meat-packing plants you only needed two things: a strong back, and a weak mind.

He said he was the first responder to a Marine, who before approaching the range with an M16A2 (fully-automatic) and his rationed fifteen-round clip, decided to put the barrel beneath his chin and pull the trigger. His finger got stuck down and he killed two people sitting next to him.

He said if he got in a real pickle, all of the sudden-like, he’d crawl in the angled polygon space between the three-ton motor and the twelve-ton pump. That’s where he’d be.

He said the kid drove across the divided highway without looking.

He said the guy who came to check if he was okay asked if he had a blanket or tarp.

He said it’s so preventable; just get checked, because it takes ten years to metastasize.

He said all those things, but I just heard the universe whispering,

“Velocitas Eradico:
‘I, who am speed, eradicate.’”

>>7157874
If you knew anything about literary history then you would know that Mrs. D was hand-in-hand with Ulysses as one of the most important pieces of literature, concerning the birth of postmodernism of course.

>>7152609

>20

>Northwest Missouri St. Uni.

>Gravity's Rainbow

>Just finished East of Eden, reading Mrs. Dalloway for a class, working on Thomas McGuane/Pynchon short-story collections

>MO

>Yes. I post poetry and prose on here, short stories, This is Paul.

>I don't really like all the Sartre shit-posting just because it seems like most shit-posting is actually just because people like to talk about what they like a lot but it baffles me that anyone actually likes Sartre. Kafka is an annoying one as well.

>I like critique threads, Pinecone threads, rec. threads, DFW/Franzen shit-talk threads

>>7155866
NWMSU checking in. What's good fam?

This is Paul.

This is Paul.

Paul is 5’8” and gaining decorative pounds everyday.

Paul eats Wendy’s on MWF and Chik-Fil-A on TTR.

Paul works as an operational specialist at the Mio Corporate office.

Open Mio, Open Fun! Paul says to himself as he logs on to his company computer.

If Paul had kids, Mio would reimburse them $1500 a semester for good grades in school.

If Paul was married, Mio would provide his spouse with health insurance.

If Paul wanted a raise, Mio would pay for him to take classes at night.

If Paul ends up getting diagnosed with diabetes or high-cholesterol, Mio will pay for a gym-membership.

Be you! Be Mio! says the wallpaper on Paul’s company computer.

In the break room there is a TV that plays Mio!TV.

The TV is on the same switch as the lights.
When the office is on, so is Mio!TV.

Mio!TV shows members from Mio Corporate offices around the world that have won the internal company lottery.

Everyone gets one ticket in the lottery.
If you win the lottery you and one other person get to go on a Mio!TV adventure.

Mio!TV’s slogan is Excite your water! Excite your life! Be Mio!

Mio!TV takes employees to exotic places they’ve never been before.

Mio!TV shows employees parts of life they’ve never experienced before.

Mio!TV gives people a new thirst for life.

Paul goes into the break room and fills up his company water bottle with plain water.

Paul looks at the complimentary Mio selection.
Paul thinks about Bombastic Berry! or Cherry Crush! or Citrus Blast!

Paul started the summer with Citrus Blast! but wore himself out on it.

Paul then took two weeks drinking plain water, in hopes of reinvigorating his interest in Citrus Blast!

>>7150883
Hey OP, I'm in a Lit Crit. class right now and I've found that a lot of kids in my class were helped by reading out assigned text, "Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory". Though it's dry at points, it helps you understand what it means to be a "close reader," and how to interpret different texts in a variety of ways.

We actually went over Metamorphosis in class, and I can definitely see how someone who has only ever read from a Reader-Response, Impressionistic, or Moralistic viewpoint might be baffled, compared to someone who reads Kafka with a Russian Formalist mindset.

It never hurts to get help! Even Stanley Fish is clear about the idea that meaning of a text is made by the text's "interpretive community."

>>7127031
yeah I'm pretty sure anyone who has done a handful of puzzles and found this board got the >140 score on that lame 30 question pattern recog test

[Non-poem interlude]

Yep, I'm a fag for bringing this back.


[Begin Poem]
a.
Capturing a still moment
In that milky obsidian black.
Developing--
Treated with all chemicals, increasingly inorganic.
Dying only
When the sheet that is "I" is exposed.
Her mind interpreting.

b.
The fluid t says, “Your eyes are the drawstrings of the cosmos,
some broken, dead at another hidden end.”

c.
Igloo in negative--
Edges melt
Into themselves at
Every discernible point.

[End Poem]

Post a recent essay you had to write for a lit class, bonus points for criticism

E.M.W. Tillyard’s essay, The Cosmic Background, makes the case that Shakespeare’s Histories contain a dual appeal, both to the learned readers of the texts through the use of contemporary theological and political theory, and to the common people through exploitation of conscious patriotism. Tillyard argues, using examples from Shakespeare’s work, along with copious examples from contemporaries, that the essence of the aforementioned dual appeal is the revelation that the Elizabethan rule of the Tudors is a restoration of worldly order to a sort of symmetry with divine order. Through this subtle suggestion of heavenly cosmic order, Tillyard argues that Shakespeare is “…not so much try[ing] out and discard[ing] a provincial mode as present[ing] one of his version of the whole contemporary pattern of culture.”
To evidence these claims, Tillyard first explains that despite there not being overwhelming proof for this idea of Divine Elizabethan Restoration, the vast knowledge of these ideas does show through in specific excerpts of Shakespeare’s work. Tillyard adds that Shakespeare probably did not learn these various theological and political concepts through stringent learning and vigorous academic study, but rather, as he quotes Johnson,
“…various conversation, by a quick apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered nothing useful to be lost…”
Tillyard’s first examples comes from a section of dialogue that Lorenzo gives when speaking on music in Merchant of Venice, which Tillyard then links to Plato’s Republic, and more obscurely, his work Timaeus. This is one of the few example the author provides directly from the work of Shakespeare.
Throughout the essay, Tillyard links not text, but rather, ideas from the work of Shakespeare to the ideas of cosmic or heavenly order (first in the most basic ways, and later, that the Elizabethan rule of the Tudors is, in fact, Divine). Part of Tillyard’s defense of such little use of actual Shakespearean work is that, unlike other writers of the time, Shakespeare was “not in the least anxious to parade his learning [,]” and as such, we should not fear putting such weight on such few lines of Shakespearean text.
One of the major ways that Tillyard makes his case is the through the work of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Someone like Shakespeare had no real motivation to reveal his influences and inspirations, and to do so through stage plays may have been seen as vain, overwrought, and pompous.

Let me know if you want more

3700 words in on something that's my first longer piece of fiction...not sure if it's a short story or a novel or neither.

I've submitted chunks of it to critique threads and most of you seemed to like it/would keep reading.

Excited for where it will take me while I apply for MFA's and continue creating. Thanks /lit/.