/lit/ - Literature

What is your general attitude towards life, and did any books help shape that perspective?

I have always felt great admiration towards men who view life as a kind of joke and take hardships (lack of money, unemployment, low status, deprivation, etc) as a small, temporary problem that will work itself out and have essentially established a personality that will not give way to the demands of normal society. Personally, my attitude towards life has been that of a pathetic little man, defined by fear, paranoia, anxiety, often resentment, immense pressure to "succeed" in conventional terms, a tendency to compare myself to others and judge myself to be lacking, outward emotional coldness (but internal emotional mania), feelings of inadequacy, and in general a sense that life is this dull, rigid, largely tedious experience in which the best I can hope for (like a child begging for attention or food) is a small, anonymous, pointless job in order to scrape by, loathed by myself and almost welcoming the loathing of others for being and living this way.

Why don't you just write an autobiography?

>van Gogh already had an extensive network of contacts for his art due to his family's art business and earned more money each month from his brother's donations than the average full-time working class man at the time

>Houellebecq had his first apartment in Paris paid for him by his father and could have taken the Tedpill and lived on his family's farm in Spain at any point if he wanted to

>Tolstoy was from a very wealthy family and could LARP as a serf in old age and be praised for throwing a few more shekels to the peasants who looked after his family's estate

>Steinbeck lived rent-free in his wealthy father's spare home while writing his first novels

>Knausgaard was born in Norway at a time when writers could literally spend years living off grants in beautiful locations (e.g., a lighthouse, a remote cabin) and had the support of a state-financed literary establishment

Etc.

When did you realise that simply "dreaming" of being a writer is retarded unless you were born into a wealthy family or in a nation which actively supported its artists?

>>16833610
Do you think he deserves to be called the Norwegian Proust?