/lit/ - Literature

Name a more iconic duo

I'll wait

brap

>>12335085
Not possible.

>>12284430
>another Bloomsbury is outed as an over-privileged bigot who embraces progressive ideas only in the abstract

colour me surprised

>>12259539
>Tolkien
>was a based catholic
>his novels are a profound evocation of the work of grace in conquering the soul
>the reader can even empathise with the villians in the novel, like Denethor, because their evilness is tragic

>Martin
>doesn't believe in good and evil and that life has meaning
>his writing is filled with decadence, rape, incest and corruption
>there is no goodness or resolution whatsoever, just an endless orgy of power

really makes you think

>>12236329
Great post. This letting myself be vulnerable, tossed to the wind as it were, is something I've been slowly trying to do, but naturally I'm scared. I've been talking to a girl lately (been on two dates so far) and I'm already feeling that exact threat, that threat that if I invest in this person, then I lose the "absolute control" that I have over myself. But really, I don't have that control. No one does. I become more truly myself through the Other. But that takes courage, and its easier to retreat into solitude, where I can cautiously maintain my own self-image.

Interestingly, that very girl recommended me Chesterton's writings, and he's been confronting me with this very truth:

>If we were to-morrow morning snowed up in the street in which we live, we should step suddenly into a much larger and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygiene and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and goes to Timbuctoo. He goes to the fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. And in all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born; and of this flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive. He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare at the Chinese because for him the Chinese are a passive thing to be stared at; if he stares at the old lady in the next garden, she becomes active. He is forced to flee, in short, from the too stimulating society of his equals—of free men, perverse, personal, deliberately different from himself. The street in Brixton is too glowing and overpowering. He has to soothe and quiet himself among tigers and vultures, camels and crocodiles. ... What we dread about our neighbours, in short, is not the narrowness of their horizon, but their superb tendency to broaden it. And all aversions to ordinary humanity have this general character. They are not aversions to its feebleness (as is pretended), but to its energy. The misanthropes pretend that they despise humanity for its weakness. As a matter of fact, they hate it for its strength.