/lit/ - Literature

Pessoa, Pynchon, Jack London, DFW, Kafka...I could go on.

They all had relatively few photographs published of themselves, and in almost every one they were smart, mysterious and interesting.

I, before even publishing a debut novel, have ruined my literary mystique by being photographs and video'd at a time of my life when I was overweight and cringeworthy around others. One person said I looked extremely nervous in the video taken of me, another felt sorry for how I looked in the video, and another said I looked different (pejoratively) in real life than I did in the low-quality webcam photo I used for my headshot for a poetry competition I was shortlisted for.

I AM FUCKED in terms of potentially influencing future generations of teens and women to google my name and think "hmm, this guy seems like someone whose thoughts may be profound, I'll spend money and time reading his work!". Instead, they assume, and already think, that I am just some cringeworthy creepy beta autist.

How do I increase my vocabulary? I’m tired of having to use a dictionary every time I read a book.

>>9362827
>The last thing I'd want to read is the perspective of a person whos entire being consists in the act of self-pitying and who lacks a sufficient meaning towards life that would enable him the power of a writing style full of resonance.

fukkin say that to me face m8 not online see what happns

Fernando Pessoa.

The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
of mine.

i feel like this guy would have made a great philosopher or a sublime poet but all he did was sit and contemplate what passed in front of him without letting it take shape or simply ignoring the shapes that came out by themselves.

he's got great lines, with incredible insights that few attain, but he's got other passages that are just painful to read and could have been written by my aunt... i think this guy remained in his misery even when he was no longer naturally in it... the greatness of an author is to accept what humanity gives him and let this be shaped, not by, but though him.

this guy was given something great, and he chose to shut it down and hide it under his bed. his mind gave him first class material, he chose to let it all rot in a dark corner of some stinky room.

yet another manifestation of the inferiority of southern european people.