/lit/ - Literature

Where I live, every summer there is a big fest of new German Film. Holy fucking shit, they are so incredibly bad, in a way of Brave and Beautiful - petty social dramas and shit. And Germans basically started whole medium. Sad.

IDK about literature, it still cast massive shadow and influence but it's not looking good. Germany is currently in some kind of cultural coma, most Americanized nation of Europe. Shitstained tourist also.

>>11423932
aaayyyyyyyyyyyy

>>11411173
>>11411114
>>11411104

Guys, really, how to stop boomerisation of yourself when you are nearing thirty?
Materialist aspect, as car, house, all that middle class bullshit, is something I'm safe from, I;m too poor for all that, but spiritually what to do?

If I'm gonna think of one guy that transcended boomerisation in all it's aspects that would be Zizek.

>>11388062
Machiavelli - Discourses on Livy
Edmund Burke - Reflections on the revolution in France
Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae (big compilation of important texts)
Dostoevsky - Notes from underground
Alistair Horne - The age of Napoleon

>>11395448
there is actually a book called essayism by brian dillon. it might give you some idea how to do it. but, beware, brian is a bit reddit.

45% of lit post as a Londonfrog.

>>11330091
I'm reading through meditations and when Marcus thanks
>that my wife is as she is, so submissive, loving and unaffected...
Made me feel a little too hard Anons knowing I only know of two women like that and both are gone.

>>11342061

>>11274060
must read but very hard.
fuck Roger Scruton btw.

>>11238662
>spinoza is 17th century ayn rand

>>11166524
>>11166534
>>11166580
>>11166608
>Kneechee waSn't aN atHEisT, yOu RETARD
Oh, sorry, I might have been mistaken. What was he, then?
>I wOnt teLl yoU, BRAINLET, rEaD hiS WorKs
Well, where might I start, though? Reading everything the man wrote seems like too much, I only asked one questio-
>READ EVERYTHING OR YOU MAY NEVER SPEAK OR ASK QUESTIONS
Dude, are you literally autistic, or just pretending to be?

>>11163127
Beautiful, especially the Saget appearance.

Friend's recommended reading list. What does /lit/ think?

Part One:

My all-time favourite writer is Hermann Hesse. If you haven't delved, I recommend:
Siddhartha {short yet powerful; the best place to start}
Steppenwolf {my favourite novel}
The Glass Bead Game {from his later career, with all the maturity and wisdom that comes with that}
Also, a huge fan of T.S. Eliot. Not sure if e-books of poetry are hard to come by, but I'd recommend the following (in chronological order, so you get a sense of Eliot's various phases and stylistic development):
Prufrock and Other Observations {his first collection, and possibly my favourite--the first four poems are exemplary}
Poems (1920) {includes classics like "Gerontion", "The Hippopotamus", and "Whispers of Immortality"}
The Waste Land {goes without saying}
Ash Wednesday {the best example from his religiously-reawakened period}
Four Quartets {his final work of poetry, and probably his most complex and stunning work}
The Cocktail Party {his best play, in my opinion. Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion are pretty excellent as well, but this one just resonates with me on a deeper level}
If you really want more Eliot, "The Hollow Men" isn't perfect but it's the source of his famous "Not with a bang but a whimper" line; and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (the source of Webber's musical) is a fun time. He also wrote a lot of excellent literary criticism, but my book of his essays was just a Selected Works, so I don't really know where to point you first.
If we're talking living writers, Milan Kundera is my perennial dream for the Nobel Prize. This time, I think your best approach is in order of quality:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Immortality
The Joke
Now, if you're in the mood for some contemporary/postmodern literature, hypertextual and fragmented, check out:
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion {absolutely stunning, and miles more nuanced than Cuckoo's Nest. This is the story of the Oregon logging family I was briefly telling you about, where the stream-of-consciousness is frequently shifting between characters}
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow {I'm pretty sure you've already read this, but since I'm not certain, here it is}
Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch {the foremost Argentinian author, situated squarely between Borges and Bolaño. This is the novel you can read the first half of straight-through, or jump back and forth with the ancillary chapters that flesh out the story a bit more. I recommend doing the first method the first time you read though: it definitely makes the novel stronger. Also, Cortázar is an exemplary short story writer, so check out some of those while you're at it (he wrote the story that Antonioni's Blow-Up was adapted from)}
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves {the sort of work that invites you into its world; less a novel than an experience}

hi i am trying to into literature primarily to become a better/more woke person, only secondarily for aesthetic enjoyment.

what is good to read? anyone have any good info graphs?

right now im pleb smallbrain so my list is random and haphazard:

>> probably actually good:
> the bible
> dostoevskyi's 4 masterpieces (ive read c&p)
> tolstoy
> mccarthy (reading blood meridian rn)
> 100 years of solitude
> book of disquiet

>> meme books:
> ij (ive read it)
> gr
> ulysses
> confederacy of dunces
> stoner
> 2666
> lolita
> JR

>> old zzzz books i guess i have to read
> don qx
> moby DICK
> shakespeare
> plato republic
> homer
> divine comedy

>> meme highmindedness:
> camus (ive read the stranger)
> heggel
> nietzche
> kierkegaard
> kant
> stirner
> art of war

please leave if you recommend gutter tier trash like marcus aurelius, 48 laws, the rational male, etc.

>Morality ought to be objective.

best one so far.

What is required reading in countries that are not the United States? I always see foreigners shitting on American education, i'd like to call you out to post what your country wants you to read in High School / College. Sources welcome.

>>11036158
>>11036188
>>11036208
>>11037253
What are your opinions on Metamodernism? I found the idea very interesting, but then again I'm a brainlet. Curious to see what /lit/ thinks.

Whats your gf's favorite book anon?

Whether you're a writer, a person with a dream, or any type of solo entrepreneur, you have to achieve scale or else ‘it is all just a waste of time.’ No matter how pure your product is, don’t kid yourself–it’s all about scale.

Scalability is the way society validates ideas. If your idea is useful, you should have the opportunity to scale. Scalability is the ultimate ‘pat on the back’ via society. You can be reminded that the world NEEDS you. People ARE DEPENDENT upon you for something ‘unique.’ Thanks for manifesting that scalable idea.

If you aren’t thinking about scaling your idea, you have conceded the ideas:
I am poor
I am not going to ascend towards the top of an industry or business’ employment pyramid.
I am not going to create a personal narrative of ‘substantial growth’ that ‘started from the bottom.’
I have ‘settled’
I am just another idiot in this world continuing to arbitrarily exist even though all I really want is food, shelter, and periodic indulgent experiences.

What are you doing to scale your writing /lit/?
Or do you not actually have an idea that could ever matter to anyone?

There is no way to force others to agree with your definition of literary quality. Most people have an artistic quality definition of "Whatever gives me joy" and their definition of joy is their own and may vary from time to time.

What the academia-media-publishing industrial complex and its pseudo intellectual hangers on (i.e., teens on /lit/) seeks to do is band together to form a large group with a common definition of literary quality, a definition which may not be honestly believed by individual members of the group. This gives them many advantages, one of which is relevant to /lit/: the ability to claim to have a superior intellect or literary knowledge based on their literary preferences.

This same pattern repeats itself among many groups.

Anyone successfully learned another language by self teaching?

How long did it take you? Can you read books in said languages?

I have been learning French for the past year and i'm slowly getting there, but I feel like its going to take a long time before I can read it fluently.

I was that guy who started the polling for a 2017 chart about 3 months ago in response that that fake weeb chart but gave up after everyone chimped out.

Soo, when are we doing one? I could scrap this one and start another, or we could continue from were it left off. I just wouldn't know how to make a nice looking chart once polling is completed.

If you want to have a look at the chart and vote:

Form:
>https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KRFhA4nDS2bxbT2pL8fjqF--2LJu9zCTWImmNCuvFBY/edit

Spreadsheet:
>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K_aanz5Q8Czs0aNA2G_ZtnIwYolN7uk3m_h5N1RLhso/edit#gid=1725342026

Aside from a couple of meme and spam responses that are marked with a line through them, and 1-2 people obviously padding the votes for the same 2-3 books, the responses were coming along nicely.