/lit/ - Literature

Where does the Gene Wolfe Pringles meme come from?

Also rec me some good stuff similar to Lovecraft, I just finished reading basically everything he's ever written

In La Vita Nuova, and more completely in The Divine Comedy, Dante develops the idea that a thing can be fully itself, with its own distinct existence, and can also, simultaneously, be a symbol for something else. He posits a kind of multi-level reality in which the things and people we encounter have their unique subsistence but also point towards something above and beyond the surface level of their being.

When have you encountered this in literature? Have you ever known of characters and events in writing that have their subsistent reality but also exist on a separate, symbolic level?

>>6329537
>>6329711
This is the picture I think.
And this is the passage that I think the picture you posted is based on:
"Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain."

>>5962364
And you know, to that end, I think I have recognized one of the things the alzabo means. I realize it means several things (such as the Eucharist), but I think among those it represents the way writers draw on other writers.

Wolfe is a great lover of Borgers, and he owes much of his style and interests to him. Through Wolfe, Borges lives again, and to read Wolfe's writing is like eating the alzabo's flesh because you absorb Borges- and all the writers Borges was influenced by, in turn.

Likewise, since I am influenced by Wolfe, when someone reads my writing, they will absorb Wolfe, and through Wolfe absorb Borges, and through Borges absorb HG Wells and Mark Twain and so many others.

So that when Severian becomes the Autarch and takes on the memories of all who comes before him, what does he become, more than anything else, but an author? Who more than an author is a 'self-ruler,' since the author is the lord and god of all their stories, and all things within those stories?

And of course, since he's an author, Severian writes a Book.