/lit/ - Literature

>>21954020
BD was good for me because I live in Serbia and when I ordered books from them I was never charged shipping or any extra taxes, regardless of how much book I ordered at once. Obviously, I will now have to find different online stores that offer the same, but I'm not holding my breath.

Also what edition of the Gormenghast novels should I read? I was going to get Titus Groan in one novel but I found out that Titus Alone by itself Is either rare/out of print, so should I just buy a trilogy version. Does anyone have the "The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy?" And is that edition good?

>It is my feeling that our imagery has been deprived of its affect by our strongly rational tendency in the interpretation of images and by our religious traditions concretizing symbols, so that they refer, not past themselves into symbolic themes, but to historical events - when, for example, we interpret the resurrection of Christ as having been an historical event instead of seeing the resurrection as a psychologically crucial moment of crisis

>I distinguish between traditional and creative mythologies in this way: the traditions present systems of images to which one is supposed to have certain responses, and one either will or will not have those responses; the artist has an experience first and then seeks the imagery through which to render it. And these are reverse processes. The priest is a communicator of inherited images. Unless he is a superb pedagogue, he is not watching to see whether the person to whom he is communicating the image is ready for that image yet; and there's nothing more stultifying than receiving all the significant images at a time too early for you to experience them.

>....[we] have a group of teachers [the priesthood] who are not teaching us how to relate our experiences to the imagery.

Gonna try this again. What is the definition of courage? Which philosopher, ancient or contemporary, had the best examination of the subject of courage?

I'm looking for the definition of courage. I've read what Aristotle had to say, which felt like a good starting point but not the most thorough. Is Plato's dialogue The Laches worth reading? Are there any other ancient or contemporary writings about courage I should look into?

>muh definitions are not real philosophy
Technically true but very boring position which will not be paid attention to in this thread.

>>11873896
>Did you like the book?
Yes.
>Will you keep reading Gormenghast?
I'm well into the next book, so yes.
>Did you like the writing?
I'm not used to such an intricate prose, and it took me a bit to get into, but in the end I liked it pretty great.
>What about the characters? Favourite?
All the characters were delightfully insane. I think I liked the doctor the best.
>Is Gormenghast really fantasy?
I don't see why not. It doesn't have much magic or monsters, but it doesn't have much real world in it either. And I'm pretty sure the castle is way bigger than any real life castle has any right to be.
>Titus Groan predates Lord of the Rings with 10 years, how would the genre look today if Peake had gotten the attention Tolkien did?
Maybe all fantasy would take place in big fancy crumbling castles, and there would be no elves or orcs running around fucking things over.
>Any other thoughts?
Fucking Steerpike.

>nominations
City, since I think it came close to winning the last time and looked worthwhile.

Anyone want to talk about actual books? Because I finished Titus Groan just today.

It was pretty great. Slow boil, but picked up a lot as it went. Gives even Tolkien run for his money prose-wise.

Would you agree that genre fiction is usually interesting but banal, while literary fiction is usually boring but cerebral?

To give some examples:
"Swann's Way" was one of the most beautiful things I had seen, but the plot itself was actually kinda boring.
"Stoner" was a poignant book for me as I'm an academic, but the MC was pretty aimless at times, and the story was not exactly a page-turner.
"The Magicians" was full of emotional twists and turns, and the story was somewhat meaningful, but I think I just hated the characters in the end and didn't wish for more.
"The Three Musketeers" gave me characters I could care about, going on a jolly adventure with good vibes, though I couldn't say if it ever had any meanings, and the ending was lackluster.
<Insert techy scifi novels with thought-provoking ideas but clunky prose filled with jargon>

Sometimes I wonder how nice it would be if literary writers could give us an interesting plot and characters we could care about, or if genre writers would try to make their books meaningful and write more beautiful prose. Can you think of books that are a good compromise between them?

>And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls … falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart’s condition. And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky, and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world, filthy, vast and bloody. And then the great winds come and the sky is blown naked, and a wild bird screams across the glittering land. And the Countess stands at the window of her room with the white cats at her feet and stares at the frozen landscape spread below her, and a year later she is standing there again but the cats are abroad in the valleys and a raven sits upon her heavy shoulder. And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy. The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity. And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.

>>9036439
The Gormenghast trilogy