/lit/ - Literature

>>10847204
Can we find and kill these people? It seems important.

>>10847204
Wow brainlets actually exist

>>10847387
give me your fuking stack right now

Goodreads, where the snowflakes come to melt and flood their angst at reality. Neurotic dykes and cat ladies.

>>10847204
Is this a goodreads review of the Iliad? You have to admit, as a modern reader, it gets tedious reading the catalogue of ships and names of warriors.

>>10847758
>he doesn't like warrior genealogies and tales of great feats

>>10847387
HAND OVER THE GREEKS AND NOBODY GETS DISGRACED BY THE GODS

Whenever I check Goodreads reviews and its a bunch of women with 1 star rants that book goes on my to-read list.

>>10847387
damn, you started and ended with the greeks

>>10848571
>>10847586
Oh, all right. Can I at least keep my new Thebiad and Argonautika, though? I haven't read these translations yet!

>>10847747
I honestly don't understand how people can become so self absorbed

>>10847387
>English translation

I threw out.

>>10849842
Being taught from a young age how special and important you are will do that.

>>10848583
Exactly. When I want to know wether or not a book is worth reading I never look at the positive reviews, always the one-star reviews.

>>10849842
>>10850034
I bet none of you are lining up to read books about trans people or dykes then. Of course readers want to be projected into a work of art, otherwise there's no semblance of culture for you to take away. It's very silly, sure, but they're not being a proper art critic. It's their small review on goodreads. I wouldn't read Homer if I didn't have small commonalities with the characters.

>>10847204
>pick random, well liked book
>go on Goodreads
>filter reviews by 1 star
>screenshot
>post on /lit/
Why do you actively shit up the board with this crap? What are you trying to accomplish?

>>10847204
I am a female with a PHD in Classics and this makes me rage with a special kind of hatred

did they miss the part of the poem that concerns itself entirely with the domestic feminine sphere and the courage and tragedy of women in wartime or did they just read it to cherrypick some trigger material

>>10847387
Where is Clouds?

Does Athena show up a lot in the Illiad like she does in the Odyssey?

She is best girl

>>10850092
>domestic feminine sphere
yes, the book's true saving grace

>>10850054
>I bet none of you are lining up to read books about trans people or dykes then. Of course readers want to be projected into a work of art, otherwise there's no semblance of culture for you to take away.
I'd read a book about a tranny or a dyke if any of them were good. I'm not a king, nor a prophet, nor a soldier, nor a scrivener, nor a catholic, nor a latin, nor an italian, nor a woman, but I read books about such persons all of the time.

>>10851241
She supports the Hellenes in the war, and she even pulls Achilles' hair lol

>>10847758
Not liking those is a sign of a pleb

>>10851241
She's a cunt. She got in the way of based Achilles

>>10847758
>not being fascinated with the philosophical implications of time, mortality, culture, and masculinity that undergird the cataloguing

>tfw you just picked up the Folio editions of The Iliad and the Odyssey from your local bookstore for twenty dollery-doos.

>>10850054

>Of course readers want to be projected into a work of art, otherwise there's no semblance of culture for you to take away.

Tell me why gender and sexuality are the operative markers of identity vis-a-vis projecting yourself into literature. Why not religion, political belief, nationality, whatever? Why is it that your genitals and who you want to fuck are so crucially important? This question is where the backlash stems from. Criticizing a straight character or a white character or a male character, by claiming to be unable to identify with them, enforces the idea that sexuality, race and gender constitute incommensurable differences between people. That the differences these characteristics bestow on people are so great that they cannot be bridged, that there can be no common understanding. So much for all of us sharing a common humanity.

Which leads me to my second point: do you honestly believe that art is about projecting yourself into other contexts? If that is the case, art is not much more than solipsism, narcissism and masturbation. This is another reason for the backlash against the identity political points of the kind you are making. Art is about transcendence of the self, transcending the markers of identity you have for yourself. That's why I can take away something from Alyosha despite not being a saint, why I can take away something from Ahab without being a monomaniacal pure force of will, why I can take something away from Anna Karenina without being a married woman in 19th century Russia, why I can take something away from Hamlet despite not being a vengeful and pensive prince etc. etc. etc. I'm using characters as an example, but the same goes for authors: I can take something away from Woolf and Plath and O'Connor despite not being a woman, something from Dostoevsky and Gogol and Tolstoy despite not living as an orthodox christian in tsarist Russia.

>I wouldn't read Homer if I didn't have small commonalities with the characters.

And this is where the identity political critique falls flat on its ass. Everyone has commonalities with everyone else in virtue of being human. Identity political fags deny this in their ill-fated and belligerent hyperindividualism. They lament that no one understands their plight after deeming themselves too special to share anything with any other human being. It's fucking mindboggling, and it is literally the purest strain of spiritual cancer that modernity has spawned.

>>10847747

>unironically invokes the "current year" meme

>>10852450
A1 Grade post

i doubt if anyone here understands homer any more than that lot

>>10852450
I love /lit/

>>10852450
>we do not allow our consciousness to become engrossed by abstract thinking, concepts of reason, we devote the entire power of our mind to intuition and immerse ourselves in this entirely... we forget individuality, our will... and we can no longer separate the intuited from the intuition as the two have become one, and the whole of consciousness is completely filled and engrossed by a single intuitive image

>>10852533
Well I'm fat and I like beer and donuts so...

>goodreads

One star review of the phenomenology of spirit.

>Okay, I'll make this brief. As a Black studies philosopher in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter, I view the 16th century invention of man and by extension the Hegelian dialectic to be an oppressive tool that was constructed to demarcate whiteness as being the sole possessors of the category of "human" and Blackness to, not only be its opposite but better served as its property. This critique is not a stretch for it is riddled throughout this book but also throughout his other work, namely in Philosophy of the Mind and Philosophy of History he asserts that Africans (and by extension Black individuals who live in the diaspora) do not offer the world any culture or value and exist to be intruded upon (2001, 117). This framework is present here, the easy spot to turn to is the "Master-Slave Dialectic or Lordship and Bondsman" but really I believe it reveals itself through how Hegel discusses property and the ownership of things. Hegel takes special consideration to assert the value of things/objects as being complex and in order to fully "understand them" (read consume) he turns to "life's resources/forces" to assert man's right to consume this property to take ownership of all things in effort to gain access to achieving "absolute knowing." Knowledge, for Hegel, is measured by one's property, one can think of the implications that arise of Foucault's Homo Oeconomicus subject that is defined in Biopolitics. Of course, only some individuals are able to be in some positions to achieve knowledge by extension, which according to this structure is fine because it adheres to the natural forces that exist in life. To be honest, my criticisms can not be fully explained within this review (because I choose not to have these reviews exceed a certain word count), and Hegel's dialectic is something that I intend to critique more fully in my research. For those who feel that they have to read this book to legitimatize their graduate school experience, I suggest reading Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks instead.

These people are teaching kids.

>>10852673
>>Okay, I'll make this brief. As a Black studies philosopher
stopped reading right there tbqh

>>10852450

>>10852630

what book though

>>10852450
thank you anon

>>10852450
this doesn't stand up. no one can sincerely like tolstoy and dostoevsky they're mutually exclusive.

>>10852707
The Fault in Our Stars

>>10852450
Best post on /lit/ right now.

>>10852450
Preach.

I don't read so much Jane Austen because Im a qt high society British girl

>>10852743
they're not opposed they're just different. Tolstoy is very comfy whereas Dostoevsky is like being slightly manic

>>10852630

>>10847204

>>10847747
>It made me not happy to have come from the European tradition
Don't worry, you came from its drainage pipes.
But of course it would have been so much cooler to have come from one of the numerous other cultural spheres that produced advanced societies with rule of law, liberty, egalitarianism, abolition of slavery, LGBT tolerance etc. etc.

>>10852781
they are opposed, on an essential level. tolstoy is life-affirming

>>10852533
Enlightened post. Why can't everyone be more like you?

>>10852832
no one understands homer.
as it happens almost anyone who does probably hated him initially because of bad translations or having it dissected in the classroom.

>>10852795
God I hate Atheists.
This is why I habitually LARP as a Catholic apologist.

>>10852842
don't take the lord's name in vain then

>>10852450
Pure

>>10852845
I am an Atheist though.

>>10850054
>I bet none of you are lining up to read books about trans people or dykes then.
But that's just it. Nobody made these people read these books. Nobody made them write their reviews. They chose to read it, and chose to keep reading it, and then chose to review it. Do you really believe they expected these books to be PC and chock full of SJW memes. It's pure virtue signaling.

>>10852919
nobody made you read their reviews etc etc

>>10852942
Correct, and I had the good sense to stop once it was clear I wouldn't enjoy them. If your response isn't a strawman, then you'll see my "review" was actually a normal part of an ongoing discussion (>>10850054) instead of the publicly visible moral masturbation we saw in the Goodreads reviews.

>>10850092
I think you already know the answer to this.

>>10853000
well i wasn't specifically arguing with you. i'm making a point; that although the sort of people on goodreads are wrong, it'd be a folly to make out that they're worst than the rest of us

>>10853033
I can agree with that point, though saying we wouldn't read a lesbian love tale makes us no different than the virtue signalers is clearly not true. It's pretty much the opposite. We are at least honest enough with ourselves (and the world around us) to simply say we wouldn't read it, rather than gruelingly force it down our own throats so we could legitimately mount the soapbox and cast judgment on cultural icons.

>>10853061
And fwiw, I have enjoyed my share of lesbian love stories haha...

>>10853061
>gruelingly force it down our own throats so we could legitimately mount the soapbox and cast judgment on cultural icons
you don't really think that only the 'sjw' types do this
besides, cultural icons shouldn't be like caesar's wife, that is to say, above the law.
the case is >>10852533 i think

>>10847747
>snowflake

back 2 facebook please

>>10850054
I'd read a book from a kathooey, that sounds interesting as fuck. Some of them lead amazing lives and some are human cattle, stolen, kidnapped, and forced into prostitution. I'd read either of these tales. Would I read about some trans person from a Wisconsin suburb? No, who cares, you face no real struggle other than possibly against evangelicals, and I already hate them with a passion so you've got nothing to add for me. Now if that same trans person wrote something about the deeper human condition in relation to their experience? Sure, I would in a heart-beat. That's the difference between something like the Iliad and some feminist literature. The latter goes out of it's way to be exclusionary while the former tries to encompass greater emotion.

>>10850084
>He doesn't spend time doing this for fun

>>10847387
whatever autist put all the time into reading those fucking translations should have learned the damn languages. Latin isnt even that hard

>>10850092
can I ask what you did with your degree? I'm a classics undergrad and want to get my PhD but I hear it's incredibly hard to get a job as a classicist at a university

>>10853319
she posts on 4chan and misses out the matriarchal origins of the iliad

>>10850054

>I bet none of you are lining up to read books about trans people or dykes then.

I have no interest in reading books about people whose identity revolves entirely around sex. They are the most boring people imaginable.

>>10850092
it wasn't missed, it just offended sensibilities because women are supposed to be breadwinners and warmakers while men are meant to mind their meagre station

>>10852228
Woah, dude... deep

>>10853342
the greek's had plenty of myths about hermaphrodites and lesbians (both of these words are greek in origin). they understood these things much better than we do.

>>10853383
>Greek Hero kills some freak
Based greeks

>>10853513
nope

>>10847387
looks like you're missing the other three volumes of Livy.

Is learning Koine Greek a meme? Does anyone here know it?

>>10850054
Brainlet: the post

>>10852743

>completely misses the point

>>10852830

Tell me more about how Alyosha and Myshkin aren't life-affirming.

>>10854391
i got the point - it doesn't stand up under any real study. are you joking? myshkin goes back to the asylum does he not.

>>10854099
Sadly true, but I'm missing a lot that I want. I just made a "purple stripe Penguin" stack for fun.

>>10850054
From time to time I do read lgbt books, they are mostly garbage no better than litrpgs. gayness is often a gimmick and all the drama is very repetitive. It holds true for romance books(see Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins) as well so I guess only a specialized audience could love any of it

>>10853513
kek, this

>women

I wish there was a way to filter female users from Goodreads.

>>10855576
Stunning review that suggests to me that Flashman is a series I need in my life. Sounds like a missing link of the picaro.

>>10855590
Safe to say if there is an excess of chicks reviewing one or another book you're looking into, it's not the book for you. For example, Anna Karenina. A terrible overrated dimestore novel about some girl who cheats on her husband and a loser who mows grass, has thousands and thousands of female reviews extolling its greatness or dullnesss. Mayhaps one might avoid such books to conserve what little time there is for things of greater merit, such as shitposting.

>>10855576
>NeoGaf Bookclub
A-are we the 4chan bookclub lads

>>10855610
>implying anyone here reads or discusses literature

>>10847387
>>10848621
>>10854880
Can I be friends with you guys?

>>10854880
How old are you, anon? Out of curiosity.

>>10852450
GOOD post

>>10852673
>Hegel is racist yo
>read dis nigga rite here that says whiteness is evil

Emancipation was a mistake.

>>10852855
He's talking about Richard Dawkins.

>>10854151
I know it

>>10854122
I can read Koine Greek, but that’s mostly about reading the New Testament, the Septuagint, and literature form that time period. Plato/Aristophanes/Thucydides and the like write in an older form of Greek, and Homer wrote a still older form. Classical and Homeric greek are all separate fields of study. If you know Classical Greek, you can read the New Testament without much trouble. Not so much he other way around.

>>10856050
homer used an archaic form of greek for even his time in order to conceal his jokes

>>10854841

>i got the point - it doesn't stand up under any real study. are you joking? myshkin goes back to the asylum does he not.

This is just too low-effort mate.

For one, you didn't consider Alyosha, a character that pretty much annuls your terribly crude idea that Dostoevsky is life-denying (go read the last pages of Karamazov), despite being asked outright. Second, Myshkin's ultimate fate doesn't detract from the idea that he is life-affirming - tragedy can be life-affirming. Third, your idea that Tolstoy is life-affirming is just as unrefined - out of numerous examples, consider Bolkonsky as the most obvious. Fourth, even if we were to accept your completely unsubstantiated idea that Tolstoy is somehow life-affirming and Dostoevsky is life-denying, it doesn't even touch upon the post you are responding to originally. It doesn't talk about "liking", it talks about taking away something. So no, you clearly did not get the point.

If you want to sincerely argue that you cannot take away something from each of two mutually exclusive perspectives (again, a crude distinction that you've made no argument for is the case with Dostoevsky/Tolstoy), be my guest.

>>10855659
Ancient (40s). I'm an adjunct prof.

>>10856510
adjunct at 40 lol

>>10856519
that's alright. i think robert graves was the same in his 40s

>>10852842
As a catholic, I habitually don't post at all in such threads, so thanks for covering for me.

>>10856530
female btw

>>10847204
To be honest, the genealogical stuff was only interesting to homer's contemporary listeners, since they could probably track down their ancestry to the heroes he's singing about. But of course /lit/ autists would claim otherwise.

>>10856519
It's the norm these days. Around 16-35% of PhDs are getting full-time positions, depending on the discipline. The rest of us are permanent part-timers unless we go into another field and leave education. There are ever-decreasing FT jobs, and increasing doctoral students. Having the degrees doesn't guarantee you a job. I teach courses at two universities.

>>10856536
quite right. homer had to strain his imagination in describing novel varieties of manslaughter, because they were credited to the ancestors of his hosts.

>>10855576
I'm actually way more approving if this review than the others. This seemed genuine.

>>10856546
Would you mind sharing where you got your doctorate? im going into mine this coming academic year

>>10850054
>I [...] have small commonalities with the characters
>Homer
no you don't lmao

>>10855610
no we're the 4chan youtube philosophy club

>>10850092
>I am a female with a PHD in Classics
Funniest thing I read all day

>>10852450
This is the /lit/ that I believe in

>>10856536
>But of course /lit/ autists would claim otherwise.
Mallarmé (or Valéry, I don't remember which one) said that if you don't appreciate the ship catalogue in the Iliad or the endless genealogies in the Bible then you don't really understand poetry or literature.

>>10856785
Does he provides any arguments for this, or it's just "cause i said so"?

>>10856785
in that case robert graves doesn't understand poetry or literature

>>10856739
It was one of the "top 15" Canadian universities. If you want to have a chance at a FT position, I would not recommend anything in Canada aside from maybe UofT, McGill, or UBC. I have degrees from four Canadian universities, and they get no attention: it's a buyer's market, and everyone just goes for the big ivy degrees. Any English graduate degree is a fool's choice now, in any case.

>>10856932
If this is yours you need to stop hoarding.

>>10852778
L O N D O N
O
N
D
O
N

>>10856546
>Julian of Norwich
BASED

>>10852673
>Black Skin, White Masks
Frantz Fanon was a terrorist sympathizer though who wrote one of the seminal works for modern terrorists based on the Algerian struggle for independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wretched_of_the_Earth

>>10847204
I wouldn’t know, faggot.

>>10857169
I'm not hoarding: we had just moved in and I was putting the upstairs library together. I teach a range of courses, so many things come in handy.

>>10858335
I somehow don't think you've read all the books in these couple of photos.

>>10858343
I've read most of those, and most in the downstairs library as well, and God knows how many more in my life. I read a lot. But I do have a lot that I haven't read now (the local $1 library bookstores are irresistible). Besides, a personal library is a reference tool, and a friend ready to give you an unread book to suit any mood: it's not important if I've read them all, or if I get through them all before I die. It's not a contest.

>>10857484
I love Julian. I can't believe people discuss deluded bitches like Margery Kempe in the same breath as genuine mystics and profound thinkers like Julian and Hildegard of Bingen.

>>10856759

Everything contemporary, once again, BTFO by the greeks.

>>10852450

>>10847747
I saw this review too about a year or two or more ago. Glad someone else noticed it.

>>10847747
Goodreads, where people reviewbomb books before they even come out.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1948569908
http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-of-ya-twitter.html

>>10848621
What is it about the Greeks in particular that draws you to them?

>>10856546
A while back I read a collection of Eliot's poetry and realized why I've heard fuckall positive about anything he's done other than The Waste Land.

>>10860858

>Goodreads, where people reviewbomb books before they even come out.

S A D A N D B A N A L

bad

>>10853308
Greek on the other hand are as hard as it gets

>>10855610
>reading books
>reading ebooks
only true patricians listens to books

>>10860858
That Vulture article is so fucked up.
I usually think people are exaggerating when complaining about sjw crusaders, social media drama, etc.

>>10852450
Capped for future reference
I don't know if its impressive or disappointing that the most succinct criticism of the culture i've ever seen has come from /lit/

>>10852450

>>10861548
Sometimes yes, but fan cultures have gone to the shitter in general. I don't even know where I would begin.
>Stephen Universe shitters bully an artist to attempt suicide because she didn't draw a character brown enough
>Supernatural fans harass and threaten actors' wives because they claim that the two main actors are secretly gay for each other and their wives are just a cover and need to get out of the way
>If you don't like a piece of media featuring a historically marginalized group, you're racism/sexist/homophobic/etc. regardless of what actual reason you have for not liking the media. If you're part of that marginalized group and don't like the piece of media, it's internalized homophobia/misogyny/etc. and your opinion should be discarded.
>Everything involving Voltron: Legendary Defender, fucking christ.

VLD could take up an entire post on its own. Give me a minute and I'll see how much I can remember.

>>10861680
Ive heard of the steven universe stuff before, but never the Voltron stuff.
Spin me a tale, anon.

>>10858367
I hope to have a library like that when I'm old. Given that I would read most of them.

>>10858367
Replace the white shelves with brown ones

>>10861689
80% of this cancer spawns from the perceived age gap between certain characters and the rest is ethnic and sexuality stuff. There's six main characters, the five mecha pilots plus the alien space princess. Five out of six of them are reported as being 'in their teens', except the head pilot who is reported as being around 25. This is obviously a problem for the people who pair him with the other pilots (these ships are collectively referred to as 'Shaladin') because then that's pedophilia.

>Mass doxxings, spam, etc. towards Shaladin shippers, some of whom reported being sent gore and bestiality along with actual CP.
>Shippers routinely abuse and harass staff members, especially the VAs, calling them pedophiles or pedophile apologists for liking/retweeting non-explicit, often non-romantic fanart or making jokes about Shaladin ships, despite having been repeatedly told by multiple staff members to not do that.
>One VA said on her tumblr that the fandom hurts her and other VAs' enjoyment of working on the show.
>Another VA recently deleted his tumblr because people were threatening his wife and child.

For the lesser but still persistent gripes there's:
>Female character who crossdresses for plot reasons
>Obviously this means she's FtM.
>Showrunners come out and say she's just a regular girl.
>Tranny brigade take this to mean that she was born male, transitioned to female, had to present as a boy again for a while, then outed herself as FtM to the rest of her team. Or to put it more simply, MtFtMtF.
>Disagreeing that this character is trans or not using gender neutral pronouns for her is a great way to get doxxed and dragged through the mud.

>If you do not support the Cuban/Asian-American ship, you are a racist who hates interracial couples, even if you ship them with one of the other nonwhite characters.

>People getting harassed at not drawing the "black" girl (actually a brown space elf) black enough.

>That time when a retarded shipper almost got the fucking animation studio sued by Netflix because they tried to blackmail them.

Those are the broad strokes of the situation up to this point.

>>10861871
*outed herself as MtF
Sorry, hard keeping track of that kind of retardation.

And the reason why the animation studio (Studio Miir) almost got sued was due to some leaks around S3. They're generally nice and allowed tours of the studio. A girl took pictures while she was on the tour, some of which included confidential material for the upcoming season, then posted the pictures on her tumblr. She was asked to take the leaked material down and did so. However, a retarded shipper reposted the material and said she wasn't going to take them down unless the Studio Miir made her OTP canon. This resulted in Studio Miir being threatened with violation of NDA, but the retarded shipper got dogpiled to death and eventually took the leaks down. I believe Studio Miir is no longer allowed to offer tours because of this incident.

>>10852450
Best post I've read here in years

>>10858367
Very nice

>>10852450
>art is not much more than solipsism, narcissism and masturbation.
This

>>10860858

>But a growing number of critics say the draggings, well-intended though they may be, are evidence of a growing dysfunction in the world of YA publishing. One author and former diversity advocate described why she no longer takes part: “I have never seen social interaction this fucked up,” she wrote in an email. “And I’ve been in prison.”

Honestly, it's comedy gold.

>>10862091
>If that is the case
He's saying that if the purpose of art is to reflect the viewer then its those things, not that it is innately
Ironic that you took his statement about narcissism and removed its context to suit your views

>>10860858
I'm part Greek, but my parents couldn't be bothered to teach me much modern, and ancient is very different--but my grandpa did tell me myths and stories, so I've been a fan ever since.

Eliot's other poetry varies, but some of it is on level with Waste Land (Ash-Wednesday) or superior (Four Quartets). I've been reading and studying the Quartets for 20 years or so now, and I keep finding new meaning.