/lit/ - Literature

>>12630836
Just read Fanged Noumena.

Alternatively, parse and dwell on the following quaint summation of the state of things, extrapolate and form your own conclusions:

>The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.

What is it /lit/? What is your favourite little piece of writing?

Don't have to justify or explain it if you don't want to, just post that piece of prose that is perfect to you.

I'll start:

The woman and the daughter do not speak. The crippled man does not stir. The breeze comes in the window and stops the scene from turning into a painting.
-Cloudstreet, Tim Winton

Should every single detail and passage in a book have to relate somehow to the 'point' of the book, be it thematically, symbolically, the natural progression of a character through the world etc.?

For instance, lets say a character is on a train and the author decides to describe the family sitting down the carriage, what they're wearing, doing, eating, saying or whatever. Even if it is wonderfully written prose and possibly quite interesting to read despite having no impact on the plot, the characters themselves or any relevance to the point of the novel, should it be included?

A lot of authors do this, particularly contemporary ones (looking at you Murakami) and I'm really starting to question why they do. At the end of the day it's simply there to bulk the word count it seems.