/lit/ - Literature

>>19970271
Skip all this trash>>19970412
>>19970416 >>19970493 >>19970290
Read Stanislaw Lem, Clanticle for Leibowitz and Ursula Le Guin

i love you too man.
Read Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock, it's great fun.

The emptiness of peace.
I have recently rekindled a relationship with an old Russian friend. Last i knew him, In his mid 20's, a dangerous, angry, skinhead. Fiercely intelligent, and self educated, he was better read, and more informed, then anyone I met in Uni or since.

Now he's out of prison – accessory to murder – and has come back the image of, institutional reform. Though he's lost his religion, he is genuinely sorry for his past, he's been doing whatever possible to atone and find forgiveness. Now, all this is perfectly wonderful is it's fairytale, hallmark movie cliche. But having known him before, i cant help but be sorry for the lost of the brilliant man i ones knew. For there is, in his peace, an emptiness that wasn't there during his years anti government war.

Now i can imagine all sorts of psychological reasons why the change. Prison is hard, Russian prison even more so. That's not what this is about. Speaking to him now im left with the feeling a great void, through which i have to shout in order to be heard. Of curse he claims the void was a there previously. But i feel he's simply exchanged one prison for another.

Are there books about this? the emptiness of love and peace, set against the other emptiness of war. Not in the nihilistic sense, for meaning was, and is, there, but rather the natural emptiness (and mass) found in meaning itself. Not a dismissal of conventional morality, but the empty spaces found in all morality.

I don't know. im just exasperated him.
Anyway, either literature or philosophy will do.

Thanks

>>18391879
>thinking smerdyakov is not a total beauty
my based KING smerdyakov is an such iconic take on the trickster archetype and the absolute best character in that shit book, i can't believe people aren't subtle enough to see it. and as with any good trickster, the entire narrative revolves around his purely self-motivated and absurd actions, which is expertly hidden until it is revealed. he IS a total beauty. his shadiness and strangeness is absolutely charismatic if you read the book with the right kind of attention, words cannot express how much i love that character. and no you should read demons don't take it so seriously, it's entertaining as fuck and has funny homosexual undertones. anyway, translation is really important when reading dostoyevsky, so pick the right one.
t. russian, has read the original and all of dostoyevsky's work