/lit/ - Literature

"William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers."

>>19021929
Does anyone have any recommendations for how to present the text of a letter in a story? One of my characters reads a printed letter out loud. It is convention to present such text in a different format from the rest of the story's prose, isn't it? (E.g. with smaller line spacing and different font.)

>>17339488
>not give them themselves a two thirds senate?

That would be a lot more obvious and more difficult because it would involve 20+ candidates. On a similar note, why did Trump allegedly lose in places where Republicans in lower offices on the same ticket won their respective elections?

>>16927814
>They’re violent, selfish, lazy and cowardly.

When a woman calls a man lazy or cowardly it usually just means "He's not doing what's useful for me."

>>16870722
>Why does he make everyone seethe so much?

He's advocating that men return to being responsible men. Popular culture considers this to be an affront to its influence because it has an interest in keeping men weak—namely because weaker men are easier to control, and the name of the game with culture and politics is control. Progressives are not strong people, and as Peterson points out, strength—whether physical, mental, or spiritual—shames the weak.

Popular culture progressivism these days is built on a rather elaborate set of lies. They insist that mutilated men are women; that the abortion of viable infants is not the death of a human life; that genetics have no role in intelligence, and so on. Where a normal, rational person understands how simple and straightforward the truth can be, progressives are busy engaging in convoluted word games and ignorance of the obvious for political expediency. They hate Peterson because he pulls the curtain of their obfuscation away. And not only this, but he does it in a well-spoken manner that most of their opponents aren't capable of doing. Peterson bewilders progressives because they don't know how to engage in rational argumentation, and as a result he exposes their vulnerabilities, which makes them angry.

For some time now progressives have been able to sidestep actual discussions with their opponents by calling them names such as racists, xenophobes, and the like. This is, of course, an attractive strategy—after all, why would you go to the trouble of cutting down your cultural opponents by engaging in laborious logical argumentation? It's much easier to call them names and be done with it, and then see to it that the power of these negative epithets increases so that your power in using them also increases. Similarly, the fight for hate speech regulations and compulsory speech (being forced to refer to people by their preferred names, pronouns, etc.) represents the other side of this rhetorical coin. Peterson is a man who has withstood attacks of both types (both being maligned as an anti-progressive x-phobe and as someone who resists their compulsory speech), and despite all this he remains not only relatively unscathed but monetarily successful and popular. This is not to say that there aren't valid criticisms of him, but it's easy to understand why he's hated by people who are used to getting their way.

>>16801344
The end really hit me in the feels.