/lit/ - Literature

>>8936299
>It explores feminism, mind/body dualism, distraction portraiture, and the contrast between culture and sexuality.

>>8918037
>"I couldn't understand the deepest thinker Western civilization ever had and the method he uses, hence he is an idiot"

>told myself I'd stop reading wealth of nations and nichoas Nickleby and ranted about them on lit
>now feel too guilty to do it even though I tried to read wealth of nations again and read only 10 pages before getting really bored
>read some of Nicholas Nickleby and in a rare point where Dickens has Nicholas shoe any personality it was the same boring expected "muh honour muh sister" shit

The sign of a dead art form is that you can't use your own taste. Everything has become a mechanism for social signalling.

English literature in general is a female dominated low risk university degree leading to a half assed office job for well connected vanity careerist women to be near the investment bankers / power centre of their country.

Nothing worthwhile happens within the novel format these days. It is dead.

It's funny how /lit/ sees it as forbidden to discuss the business aspects of literature yet will only take words seriously if they're in the novel format.

It's funny how the creation of his has allowed literature to stand alone on this board and lit has absolutely nothing to say because the medium is dead. /his/ has the pseudo intellectual cred now

>>8842841
>Its really not hard to btfo Aquinas

>See this
>Type shit in Google for curiosity's sake
>Forced to debate another antinatalist

>finish a paragraph, flip the page
>suddenly forget how to read
Hate it when this happens.

>>8735337
It's a meme you dip
Learn how to 4chan

How can I trust that the great books are worthwhile if the academia-media-publishing industrial complex is fucking vacuous?

Jesus christ, when you become "character in your book", and just started to act all edgy and shit irl to have something to write about. Just kill me now

>>8705918

>Peter Singer
> A leading light

>Animals
>Having value outside the one we ascribed to them

The Secret History is the only book I've read this year and in recent times that I really liked. Why are books so fucking boring in general?

Can you recommend actual top tier books. I don't mean boring shit like Dickens that people read just so they can reference it and signal that they received a certain type of education.

I can't stand pomo lolsorandumb trash anymore. Most literary fiction books are narcissistic barely disguised memoirs.

>be me when I was younger
>I would do well at school and use all my free time to play videogames
>I thought books were ok and I would read if I had stuff but I was never interested in buying lots of books
>become 18 / 19
>feel too guilty to play lots of videogames and they're not as good as they used to be
>stop playing video games
>start reading
>read lots of entry level books an enjoy them
>read more on the internet about books
>"Reading makes you smart. Reading makes you cool. You must read these 5000 books in order to be intelligent, including these boring as fuck ones that either no one has read or they were force-fed at Eton. It doesn't matter that almost all non fiction is worthless mental masturbation, you must read it anyway."

Between the social posturing / pseudo intellectual aspects of reading described above, whether through boring non-sequitor filled pomo lolsorandumb trash or boring as fuck overwritten western canon novels written back when nobody had anything better to do; and the shitloads of "important" or "insightful" non fiction books that could be summarised within a few sentences; and the new exalted status of books as spiritual fuel instead of entertainment, how does anyone get enjoyment from reading anymore?

I mention videogames because it is the fastest changing (due to technology) and most modern form of major entertainment (apart from maybe hyper reality), which shows my unpretentious tastes when I was younger.

>See classic
>Good price
>Seems like a good edition, pretty cover and whatnot
>About to pick it up
>See ''the text has been revised for modern readers''
>Mfw

What's the point of caring about most history when it's just killers having wars about land and primitive trade routes? Studying history of course is about social posturing but I think also a yearning to go back to simpler times.

I pay so much attention to politics these days and when I disengage for a few days from it it's like I come up for air and gain the perspective that it's all pointless bullshit, both past and present.

>using 'penultimate' as "last"

>certain unexplored areas are slightly more interesting in the eye of the public the others
>"Philosophers" and "Humanities" "scholars" pile in to these areas with shitloads of books, newspaper articles, seminars, study groups, courses, television appearances, new job titles (mainly created through the addition of suffixes), jargon filled journal articles, and degrees
>institutions claim a monopoly over the ability to make any "worthwhile" speculations about these areas
>the "failure" of the scientific method is advertised far and wide
>Hegel and Marx are shown to have predicted everything already
>the bust of Aristotle sheds a tear on the chalk

>you have to read X before you read Y

Is it the greatest meme of all time?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/as-lionel-shriver-made-light-of-identity-i-had-no-choice-but-to-walk-out-on-her

> As the chuckles of the audience swelled around me, reinforcing and legitimising the words coming from behind the lectern, I breathed in deeply, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. The stench of privilege hung heavy in the air, and I was reminded of my “place” in the world.

>The modern reader

>People that browse reddit for content
How are these people I share the world with?

Why is there a huge disconnect / blind spot / willful ignorance over literature as "objectively judged art" and literature as "part of the entertainment industry" and / or as completely subjective in quality? I think it's because of pseudo intellectual and pretentious posturing from the people on this board.

You pretend that literature is the former when it is the latter. You use the endorsement stamp of a large enough publisher as a sign of minimum quality even though we live in the age of the internet, which allows a huge diversity in the types of content available to read and their distribution. You're lucky that you were born a long time after the invention of the printing press, otherwise your "bar for art" would have to be explained within the context of a previous disruptive technology that you blindly accept.

I think the NEET caricature annoys this board a lot. /lit/ tries to portray reading as a worthwhile and enriching end in itself, yet the extreme version of the "reader" (ignoring anyone who was born rich) is seen with disgust and disrespect. Getting /lit/ to admit that going outside to learn about the human condition is a valid strategy is tricky and I don't think that I have ever managed it.

I could go on but I'll end now by mentioning how I think seeing the worship of the academia-media-publishing industrial complex on this board mainly reminds me of Steinbeck's quote about Americans being millionaires temporarily down on their luck. /lit/ is desperate for the industry's stamp of approval, and associates it with the works of the Western Canon (ironically including books such as The Republic) even as it is responsible for the horrific YA and alt-lit / Mira-Tao trends.

I'm just so jaded with art / literature / philosophy / humanities as a whole. I've repeatedly talked about the Munchhausen trilemma and the academia-media-publishing industrial complex and its relation to social posturing. I can't stand all of it. Even Harold Bloom fucking agrees with me.

There are more tiresome trends I'm noticing as well. The institutionalisation / academisation of things is brain-dead. There are so many low IQers / underagers on here talking about which degree they should do to be a writer (and analogous topics on /tv/). Holy lol.

>listen to interview with a non conformist economist
>he's constantly referencing culture and religion in an overlong way to make trivial points

>listen to a radio show that talks about famous people in the past
>scientist on the show chooses to have michel de montaigne as the subject

>reading and going through an actual science textbook or pop sci book by an actual scientist
>author keeps referencing Greeks or Romans
>"Heraclitus says stuff moves. Quantum Neuro Linguistic Partial Differential Mechanics says stuff moves. Heraclitus pretty much predicted Quantum Neuro Linguistic Partial Differential Mechanics!"

It's all just desperate attempts to look cultured and worldly. It's just a slightly less efficient equivalent to dumb Instagram sluts posting selfies on a beach.

This stuff disgusts me and makes me want to go full stemtard. Maybe become a Neoclassical economist just to piss people off.

Why should I care about people's books and pretend to care about their aspects of the human condition when no one cares about the fact that I can't get girls because I'm a non Chad and they think I'm a bad person just for bringing this up?

Seems hypocritical to me.

Seem like they want all the attention and money for themselves.