/lit/ - Literature

>>22703496
I'm in the same boat, man. It's up and down. For some reason the book that was the first turning point for me was Beckett's Molloy, I think because of the way he looks face-on at how grim and boring things are, and sharply and lucidly makes an admirable go of creating things anyway (I mean he couldn't have written Molloy if he pussied out and spent all his time getting stoned and watching urbex videos). But that was really specific to me and how I was feeling at the time. You might just have to keep reading different books while maintaining the vague abstract awareness that 'there's more to life than the endless weed haze', and hopefully you'll stumble across something that connects. Good luck.

>>22703496
I'm in the same boat, man. It's up and down. For some reason the book that was the first turning point for me was Beckett's Molloy, I think because of how he looks face-on at how grim and boring things, and sharply and lucidly makes an admirable go of creating things anyway (I mean he couldn't have written Molloy if he spent all his time getting stoned and watching urbex videos). But that was really specific to me and how I was feeling at the time. You might just have to keep reading different books while maintaining the vague abstract awareness that 'there's to more to life than the endless weed haze', and hopefully you'll stumble across something that connects. Good luck.

>>21959565
>>21959563
Any more ejaculations and it would feel like a Ren Aizawa video.

You have the rhythm down -- it's neat! -- but what you need, if Poe be your preceptor (the style's addictive), is a hook weirder than 'nice thing turns creepy': some hint from the very start of the fatal passion or hubristic flaw or lurking obsession that will send the narrator spiralling into the pit.

Like: man is always fascinated by dolls, but can never find the perfect one to suit his exacting taste. Then one day, entering by chance an old antique shop, barely can he steady his trembling aesthete's hands as he reaches for...

Or: man explains to friend his arcane theory about the eyes of inanimate faces. Then one day, entering by chance an old antique shop, he cannot rid himself of the sense of a strange intelligence staring back from deep within...

Or: man has terrifying, vivid memory of encountering a RenFair jester in his childhood. Then one day, entering by chance an old antique shop, whose countenance does he see in grotesque miniature but that of...

>>21818669
I'm hesitant to suggest him because he's way too dense to glean much from on a casual read, but Adorno has a very subtle approach to this theme. I recommend his essay 'Is Art Lighthearted?' as a starting point -- but the relationship between art's power and its separation from the world is a theme that runs through all his writing on aesthetics.

>I guess these are the hardest cases, because they want so hard to be professionals that it doesn't take very much encouragement to make them think they are.

>to hear this fellow and his wife discussing and analyzing stories was a revelation in how much it is possible to know about technique without being able to use any. If you have enough talent, you can get by after a fashion without guts; and if you have enough guts, you can also get by, after a fashion, without talent. But you certainly can't get by with neither. These not-quite writers are very tragic people and the more intelligent they are, the more tragic, because the step they can't take seems to them such a very small step, which in fact it is. And every successful or fairly successful writer knows, or should know, by what a narrow margin he himself was able to take that step. But if you can't take it, you can't. That's all there is to it.
t. chandler