/lit/ - Literature

>>11129636

Interesting, never heard that one before.

I wonder if, by some circuitous route, that was actually the basis of the following joke:

[note for Yanks: a "scouser" is a man from Liverpool]

Dave the Scouser is touring America on holiday and stops in a remote bar in the hills of Nevada. He's chatting to the barman when he spies an old Indian sitting in a corner, complete with full tribal gear, long plaits and wrinkles.

"Who's he?" asks Dave.
"That's the Memory Man," says the barman.
"He knows everything. He can remember any fact. Go and try him out."
So Dave wanders over and asks: "Who won the 1965 FA Cup Final?"
"Liverpool," replies the Memory Man.
The tourist is amazed.
"Who did they beat?"
"Leeds," comes the reply.
"And the score?"
"2-1."

Dave tries something more specific.
"Who scored the winning goal?"
The Indian does not even blink:
"Ian St John."
The Liverpudlian returns home and regales his relatives and friends with his tale, and he's determined to return and pay his respects to this amazing man. Ten years later he has saved enough money and returns to America. After weeks of searching through the towns of Nevada, Dave finds the Memory Man in a cave in the mountains.

The Scouser steps forward, bows and greets the Indian in his traditional native tongue:
"How."
The Memory Man squints at him and says:
"Diving header in the six-yard box."

>>11129636

>Dostoyevsky's character and interests made him an outsider among his 120 classmates: he showed bravery and a strong sense of justice, protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticised corruption among officers and helped poor farmers. Although he was solitary and inhabited his own literary world, he was respected by his classmates. His reclusiveness and interest in religion earned him the nickname "MonkPhotius."

>At the parties I gave, Dostoevsky showed himself to be a charming person. He told his stories, and he displayed his wit and humor, as well as his unusual and original way of thinking. As a new person entered the room, however, Dostoevsky became silent for a moment and looked like a snail retreating into its shell, or like a silent and evil-looking pagan idol. And this lasted until the newcomer produced a good impression on him…. If the stranger engaged Dostoevsky in conversation, one generally heard him make some rude remark, or saw a sour look on his face.

>>11129674
Literally me.

>>11129681
Nah.

I doubt any person on 4chan has the same moral and personal standard as Dostoevsky.

One of the comfiest anecdotes from Boswell's Life Of Samuel Johnson:-

When people in London didn't want to receive some guest, they would usually just tell their servant to say they weren't at home. (This was used so much it's become an accepted euphemism.)

Dr. Johnson was very much against this because he said, if you tell your servant to lie like this, you will corrupt him. It's important to set a good example to your servants.

The trouble was, when he was writing, he didn't want visitors disturbing him, but he didn't want to seem rude and just tell his servant to tell them to go away.

So he hit on a cunning solution. When he wanted to write, he would say to his servant: "I'm going out now", and leave, ostentatiously, through the front door.

Then he would sneak around the back, come in unheard, and sneak up a back staircase to his room at the top of the house and keep very quiet so his servant didn't realize he was home.

Then if anyone called, his servant would answer the door and say (truthfully, he thought): "Sorry, Dr Johnson is not at home".


Gotta love Samuel Johnson.

>>11129636
>the eggman from florence

>>11129691
you haven't met me then, friend

>>11129910
I believe I have, old sport

>>11129636
>The Villa Diodati is a mansion in the village of Cologny near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, notable because Lord Byron rented it and stayed there with John Polidori in the summer of 1816. Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had rented a house nearby, were frequent visitors. Because of poor weather, in June 1816 [called Year Without a Summer] the group famously spent three days together inside the house creating stories to tell each other, two of which were developed into landmark works of the Gothic horror genre: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story, by Polidori.

>Hans Mayer, the great German-Jewish literary critic, writes in his autobiography Ein Deutscher auf Widerruf how he visited Musil at his home in Switzerland during their emigration. It was 1940, and there was a widespread fear that the Nazis might invade also Switzerland. Musil couldn’t get into the USA, and Mayer was suggesting the relative obtainability of Colombian visas as a pis aller.
>'Musil', he wrote, ‘looked at me askance and said: "Stefan Zweig’s in South America." It wasn’t a bon mot. The great ironist wasn’t a witty conversationalist. He meant it… If Zweig was living in South America somewhere, that took care of the continent for Musil.’ (quoted by Michael Hofmann: Vermicular Dither, London Review of Books, 28. January 2010)

*

>In the third volume of his autobiography, Elias Canetti describes how he after completion of the manuscript of Die Blendung (Auto-da-fe) in 1931 sent it as a parcel with an accompanying letter to Thomas Mann, hoping that Mann would read it (and possibly recommend it to a publisher). Alas, the parcel came back unopened with a polite letter by Mann, telling the unpublished author that he was not able to read the book due to his work schedule (Mann was working on his multi-volume Joseph novel at that time). The disappointed Canetti put the manuscript aside for a long time, until Hermann Broch arranged a few readings for him in Vienna. One of them was also attended by Musil who allegedly said to Broch: “He reads better than myself.” (Not surprisingly, Canetti was an extremely gifted stage performer in the mould of Karl Kraus.)

>Later on, when the novel was finally published in 1935, Canetti wrote again to Mann, who now – four years later! – congratulated Canetti and wrote also very positively about the novel (which in all probability he hadn’t read except for a few pages). With this letter in his pocket and beaming with self-confidence Canetti was running into Musil one day when Musil brought it about himself to also congratulate Canetti. Not knowing about Musil’s strong antipathy regarding Thomas Mann, Canetti blurted out: “Thank you, also Thomas Mann praises my book!” – to which Musil answered with a short “So…”, turning around and ignoring Canetti for the rest of his life.

>>11129636
>>11129674
cool
>>11129884
what a fucking moron

>>11129952
can't handle the ol' johnson, huh?

>>11129946
>>11129946
Hahahaha. Can absolutely see both of these. Just got to the part in musils ‘the blackbird’ where narrator leaves his wife without a word because of a mystical experience with a nightingale one night. Can absolutely see the man who wrote this and came up with Ulrich behaving this way

>>11129654
top kek

>>11129674
I love the dosto man. Even though i think out of the four or five or six 'great russian writers' his writing is the least good, he is the man in russian lit, perhaps even overall literature, that i would be the most astounded to meet in person, like if one of them hopped on the bus and sat next to you. Gotta love fyodor man, despite everything

>>11129933
polidori can't jump

>>11129636
If you guys love these little stories, pick up some David Markson and thank me later

>>11130190

Who doesn't love an amusing or piquant anecdote?

Apart from anything else, having a store of a few thousand of these bad boys is pretty awesome in social situations T B H.

>>11129636
Kafka

>"It is said that when he was a child, since he hated school so much, he was dragged there by the cook with slaps and threats, because his parents were never at home.
Like all writers, he was equipped with a vivid imagination and a well-established sensitivity. One day, to comfort a little girl who had lost her doll, he began to write letters for her signed by the lost doll. In these letters, the puppet explained why he decided to leave: She had the desire to visit the world."

Come on /lit/ let's hear some Amusing and Piquant anecdotes. Open up those treasure-houses of memory.

Here's a fairly well-known vignette to keep the pot boiling:

Lord Byron was something of a wild man at university. Among other things he kept a bear in his room. Eventually the administration decided they had to take steps so they invited him for a chat.

University Administrator: We hear you have a bear in your room, sir.
Byron: That's correct, sir.
U.A.: I'm afraid, sir, the university regulations state quite clearly that undergraduates may not keep tame animals in their rooms.
B. <absolutely deadpan>: Ah, well, I am happy to say I can set your mind at rest, sir. It's not a tame bear, it's half-wild and extremely savage.
<leaves>

>>11130324

I like this :)

>>11129636
Off topic but I love that film. Any other /lit/izens like La Dolce Vita?

>Someone threw a party in Paris and had the bright idea of inviting both Joyce and Proust, to see what brilliant literary sparks would flash during their meeting.
>They both showed up, and were sat next to each other. Accounts differ about what happened. One account says that they both did nothing but complain to each other, Joyce saying, "Oh, my eyes. I can barely see these days," and Proust replying, "Oh, my poor stomach."
>Another account says that their entire conversation consisted of the word "no." Proust asked Joyce if he had met the Duchess de So-and-so. Joyce said no. Joyce asked Proust if he had read such-and-such a part of Ulysses. Proust said no.
>Proust left early, claiming ill health, wrapped himself up in overcoats and went out to the cab. Joyce went along with him and also got in the cab (along with a couple of other people). During the ride, few words were spoken, although Joyce lit a cigarette, and was told to put it out by one of Proust's friends, because of Proust's asthma.

>>11130390
Yes, it's one of my favorite films. At my college, they showed art movies in the campus theater every weekend, and I ended up seeing it four times.

I later rented the video tape, but seeing it on the TV didn't appeal to me. It's much more of a "big screen" movie.

Shelley was very intellectually precocious but also weird. His nickname at Eton was "Mad Shelley".

He used to get bullied severely (English public schools in the late 18th century were 10x worse for jock/nerd stuff than anything today).
One guy beat him up and made him do a massive translation into Latin for him. Shelley did it, but in the middle of the Latin he put "by the way, teacher, I didn't write this because I'm a smoothbrained Grug, I bullied Shelley into writing it".
Shelley then pretended to be mad (or went mad) to avoid the retribution this jock was going to inflict on him. Well done Shelley!

>>11129636
I like the one with Proust and the rats

>>11130851
huh?

>>11131163

There's a story (often considered apocryphal) about Proust paying people to stab rats to death in front of him with hatpins to help him get off.

Obviously this is salacious enough to excite some people round here.

A pity, this could have been a good thread if people had actually posted good anecdotes.

I heard the rumor pre-modern-internet, and the last time I tried to look it up a few years ago using the internet, the results were inconclusive:
Yeats had monkey balls surgically inserted into his sac.
Apparently this was a thing back then, not exclusive to Yeats.

>Gaddis lived a considerable distance from school, and when he missed the bus home, he would stay overnight with the Parkes. By Marilyn’s admission, her parents “soon became a second father and mother to Bill.” So much so, her father was forced to intervene when a Gaddis prank caught the attention of the local police.
A “small, preening, strutting” local businessman — a character type that appears frequently in Gaddis’s writing, especially in JR — set this incident in motion. “It all began with Mr. Christie,” she writes. “He was a new haberdasher in town who had a vision of becoming the Brooks Bros. of Farmingdale.” When this business owner put up a large billboard, dominated by his own portrait, overlooking the local highway, Gaddis and his friend Henry decided to strike back.
“They felt J.I. Christie was a blot on the countryside,” she continues,
and something should be done about it. So they did it. They painted glasses, mustache, cigar, etc. on the sign one dark night and the first thing the next day people began to stroll past Christie in his doorway with a more than ordinary interest in him. Finally someone mentioned something about his new sign and he oozed with good will until he was told that the picture really didn’t seem to resemble him at all.
When Christie saw his defaced portrait, he went to the police. The local cop found out the names of the culprits after a very short investigation. Gaddis had not done a good job of hiding incriminating evidence. The police officer went to the local five-and-dime store and asked if any boys had recently purchased paint. The clerk immediately told him their names. “That’s how easy it is to sleuth in a small town,” Weir comments in her memoir.

Gorky recalls one incident when Tolstoy, on the road to Graspa, discovers that his way is blocked by tree Grand Dukes, all uncles of the Tsar: Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), Georgy Mikhailovich, and Peter Mikhailovich. Gorky writes:

>The road was blocked by a one-horse vehicle, and a saddled horse was standing a little to one side. Leo Nikolaevich [Tolstoy] could not pass between them. He stared sternly and expectantly at the Romanovs, but they had turned aside before he came up. At length the saddled horse pranced nervously and stepped aside, allowing Tolstoy's horse to pass. After riding on in silence for some minutes he he exclaimed: "They recognised me, the fools." And added, a few moments later: “That horse knew it must make room for Tolstoy.”.

>>11129952
pleb

One day during a lecture tour, Mark Twain entered a local barber shop for a shave. This, Twain told the barber, was his first visit to the town.
“You’ve chosen a good time to come,” he declared.
“Oh?” Twain replied.
“Mark Twain is going to lecture here tonight. You’ll want to go, I suppose?”
“I guess so…”
“Have you bought your ticket yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, it’s sold out, so you’ll have to stand.”
“Just my luck,” said Twain with a sigh. “I always have to stand when that fellow lectures!”

----------

The celebrated dancer Isadora Duncan once wrote to George Bernard Shaw declaring that, given the principles of eugenics, they should have a child together.
“Think of it!” she enthused. “With my body and your brains, what a wonder it would be.”
“Yes,” Shaw replied. “But what if it had my body and your brains?”

----------

Tolstoy was a great pacifist and was once lecturing on the need to be nonresistant and nonviolent towards all creatures. Someone in the audience responded by asking what should be done if one was attacked in the woods by a tiger. Tolstoy responded, "Do the best you can. It doesn't happen very often."

>>11129691
*gambles away all his money and has to beg Turgenev for money*

>>11130324
Comfy

>>11131170
Guess you'll just have to fuck off then

>>11129912
Based Beethoven refused to get cucked by Duke Chad and Duchess Stacey

When Kierkegaard was still engaged to Regine Olsen, he had planned a romantic outing, inviting Regine on a carriage ride through Copenhagen. Since Kierkegaard was normally aloof and distanced, Regine was thrilled with her fiances plan. When the day came and they arrived at the carriage, Kierkegaard walked away, musing that the joy of anticipation is always greater than the joy of the thing itself.

>>11131526
Kierkegaard was such an autist and I love him for it

Concerned with his masturbatory habits (15 times a day), Proust's dad gave him money to go bang a hooker. As detailed in this letter Proust wrote to his grandfather, the thoroughly spilled his spaghetti:

18 May 1888

Thursday evening.

My dear little grandfather,

I appeal to your kindness for the sum of 13 francs that I wished to ask Mr. Nathan for, but which Mama prefers I request from you. Here is why. I so needed to see if a woman could stop my awful masturbation habit that Papa gave me 10 francs to go to a brothel. But first, in my agitation, I broke a chamber pot: 3 francs; then, still agitated, I was unable to screw. So here I am, back to square one, waiting more and more as hours pass for 10 francs to relieve myself, plus 3 francs for the pot. But I dare not ask Papa for more money so soon and so I hoped you could come to my aid in a circumstance which, as you know, is not merely exceptional but also unique. It cannot happen twice in one lifetime that a person is too flustered to screw.

I kiss you a thousand times and dare to thank you in advance.

I will be home tomorrow morning at 11am. If you are moved by my situation and can answer my prayers, I will hopefully find you with the amount. Regardless, thank you for your decision which I know will come from a place of friendship.

Marcel.

>>11131526
>>11131529

I vaguely remember a story which I think refers to Kierkegaard - perhaps someone can confirm?

It seems K. had an acquaintance who was always saying what a lot of wonderful ideas he had and how if only he had the time and someone to write them down, he could be a great author. Finally K. lost patience, so one Sunday, when they'd agreed to meet for something or other, he brought a pen and paper and said to his friend, right, you always talk about wishing you had someone to write down your great thoughts - let's go! And he opened the notepad and got the pen ready and stood there.
They stood there in silence for a few minutes then K. put the pad away and said come on then, let's do <whatever it was they were going to do>.

>>11131547

The more I hear about Monsieur Proust the more I wish he was still alive so I could push him off something high.

>>11130456
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpPsAojqcKo

Bump

>>11129654
>note for Yanks
>he thinks that his only non-English audience are Yanks

Nice little Wittgenstein snippet (he isn't literature obviously but /lit/ seems to be home to unwashed, unwanted, homeless philosophers so w/e):

When W. was studying in England, Bertrand Russell wanted to know if he was any good, so he asked the philosopher G E Moore, whose classes W was attending.
Moore: "Oh, I think he might be pretty good."
Russell: "What makes you say that?"
Moore: "He's the only person in my lectures who actually looks puzzled."

>>11132732

You gonna pull that knife outta your pocket or just sit there all day and stare?

Didn't think so.

(Yeah, maybe coulda phrased "Yanks" better. I always assume that non-English-first-language people are going to have no problem going the extra mile with idioms/slang anyway.)

>>11132780
People here shit on Russell too much. He had a really good sense of humour.

>>11132732
tfw no comfy sicilian lifestyle

>>11131345

Based Tolstoy

>>11132986
Analytical autism and lending an edgy talking point to internet atheists aside I don't really know why people would feel strongly against him

>>11131460
These are great ones. The story of Twain losing his job in the senate (many reasons attributed to the loss) was an inspiration to me when I worked in the senate as a low level shitkicker.

>>11131262
Hahahahaha. Probably fake but I wouldn't put it past Yeats. It always wonders me how someone so retarded could be such a poetic genius. I love him dearly. No poet has ever been more /ourguy/ than him.

>>11131547
>If you are moved by my situation
LMAO

Couple of philosopher ones. Most of you probably know it, but Wittgenstein and the poker is great:

>On 25 October 1946, Popper (then at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper's, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points (read: threaten Popper, on some accounts chasing him with it), gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have replied "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers", upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out.

And another one: Quine wrote his entire life on his 1927 Remington typewriter. Having to make extensive use of symbolic logic, he had to replace some of the keys. One of the ones he removed was the "?" key. When asked by a reporter if he ever missed and needed the question mark, he replied that he dealt in certainties.

>>11129884
Was it autism?

>>11130840
what an anglo way to get out of it

>>11131262
he did, his poetry skill resurged after taht too

fucked up, makes you wonder if poetry is real or just testosterone/horny

>>11131526
this wasn't autism, he was playing the scoundrel to turn her away so it wouldn't hurt unduly

>>11134631
D-o doctors still do this surgery?

>>11134631

Yeats himself said exactly this:

"You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attendance on my old age.
It was not so when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?"

>>11129946
based musil

>Scandalous stories spread locally. The Albanian servant Vassily was the source of rumours that Byron had consulted an English doctor passing through Athens about an anal rupture from which Nicolo was suffering, common amongst Ancient Greek and Roman concubines. The doctor was almost certainly Charles Lewis Meryon, then travelling with Lady Hester Stanhope and Michael Bruce, who gives an account in his memoirs of Byron's anxious consultation on the aliments of a young Greek, 'about whom he seemed much interested'.

>Keats was never attacked, but he did on one occasion fight a butcher's boy for bullying a kitten.

>Shelley was not much affected by the official life of the college, for he swiftly organised his own making a point of keeping an outlandish timetable, frequently reading for sixteen hours a day, and often sleeping between 6 and 10 in the evening curled up like an animal on his hearthrug in front of the fire, then getting up to talk and conduct chemical experiments through the night. It was also noted that talking would sometimes take place in his sleep 'incoherently for a long while'.

>>11133168
He also shat on Nietzsche for being a misogynist, while Russel himself was a huge, literal cuckold.

>>11134591
Wittgenstein was literally autistic, in the noncolloquial sense that he robably was on the spectrum

>>11135284
Shelley <\3 too pure for this world

>>11133914
It’s unfortunate that my first reaction to this is ‘Goethe is autistic.’ Labels are fucked up and reductive

>>11135420

The trouble is most of his poetry just isn'tverygood. (There, I said it.)

What do we take with us on the generation ship when we finally set out for the new planet? Ozymandius, OK. Ode to the West Wind, if you like. After that I'm struggling.

>>11135508
>>11135508
I agree, I’ve never personally gotten too much into his poetry. I’ve always liked him as the almost mythic character he is though. But Ozymandias kicks a lot of ass.

>>11134631
can i get a cite, pls?

>>11135516
read mont blanc, if you haven't already

>>11134591
>When asked by a reporter if he ever missed and needed the question mark, he replied that he dealt in certainties.
And then the weight of his fedora broke his neck

>>11135876
fucking kek

>>11131609
aahhahahha

When he liked, he could be extraordinarily charming,
sensitive, and tactful; his talk was fascinatingly simple
and elegant, but sometimes it was painfully unpleasant to
listen to him. I always disliked what he said about
women--it was unspeakably vulgar, and there was in his
words something artificial, insincere, and at the same
time very personal. It seemed as if he had once been
hurt, and could neither forget nor forgive. The evening
when I first got to know him, he took me into his
study--it was Khamovnik in Moscow--and, making me sit
opposite to him, began to talk about "Varenka Olesova" and
of "Twenty-six and One."* I was overwhelmed by his tone
and lost my head, he spoke so plainly and brutally,
arguing that in a healthy girl chastity is not natural.
"If a girl who has turned fifteen in healthy, she desires
to be touched and embraced. Her mind is still afraid of
the unknown and of what she does not understand; that is
what they call chastity and purity. But her flesh is
already aware that the incomprehensible is right, lawful,
and, in spite of the mind, it demands fulfillment of the
law. Now you describe `Varenka Olesova" as healthy, but
her feelings are anaemic--that is not true to life."
Then he began to speak about the girl in "Twenty-six
and One," using a stream of indecent words with a
simplicity which seemed to me cynical, and even offended
me. Later I came to see that he used unmentionable words
only because he found them more precise and pointed; but
at the time it was unpleasant to me to listen to him. I
made no reply, and suddenly he became attentive and kindly
and began asking me about my life, what I was studying,
and what I read.
"I am told that you are very well read; is that true?
Is Korelenko a musician?"
"I believe not; but I'm not sure."
"You don't know? Do you like his stories?"
"I do, very much."
"It is by contrast. He is lyrical and you haven't got
that. Have you read Weltmann?"
"Yes."
"Isn't he a good writer, clear, exact, and with no
exaggeration? He is sometimes better than Gogol. He knew
Balzac. And Gogol imitated Marlinsky."

*https://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides8/Twentysix.html

1/2

>>11136334

When I said that Gogol was probably influenced by
Hoffmann, Sterne, and perhaps Dickens, he glanced at me
and asked: "Have you read that somewhere? No? It isn't
true. Gogol hardly knew Dickens. But you must clearly
have read a great deal: now look here, it's dangerous.
Koltsov ruined himself by it."
When he accompanied me to the door, he embraced and
kissed me and said: "You are real muzhik. You will find
it difficult to live among writers, but never mind, don't
be afraid, always say what you feel even if it be rude; it
doesn't matter. Sensible people will understand."
I had two impressions from this first meeting: I was
glad and proud to have seen Tolstoy, but his conversation
reminded me a little of an examination, and in a sense I
did not see in him the author of "Cossacks," "Kholstomer,"
"War and Peace," but a barin who, making allowances for
me, considered it necessary to speak to me in the common
language, the language of the street and market-place.
That upset my idea of him, an idea which was deeply rooted
and had become dear to me.

2/2

>>11129636
This story is obviously fictitious.

>>11135508

wtf is wrong with u
Witch of Atlas
Prometheus Unbound
ADONAIS

seriously adonais alone is enough to make him a great poet.

>>11135508
Yeesh. How about Prometheus Unbound, Adonais, The Cloud, To a Skylark, Love's Philosophy, Stanzas Written in Dejection, "Ariel to Miranda", Epipsychidion, the Triumph of Life.... these all contain some the most beautiful Iines of poetry ever written in English.

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The mood arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass...

>>11129884
> Boswell's Life Of Samuel Johnson
did you read the whole thing? how was it

>>11136550

It's pretty darned comfy although a big slog and you have to accept there's not a juicy plum every single line - only every few pages.

The main problem is Boswell only met Dr. J. after the latter was famous, i.e. when he was about 55. So the book covers everything up to there (including the writing of the dictionary) in about 10 pages, and then goes into obsessive detail for every moment of his life from then on, which is a bit unbalanced. Nothing to be done, though.

>>11135508
>>11135516
>his poetry isnt very good....
>lists two of the most mediocre
shelley is about aesthetics, arnold called him 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain'

>>11129636
this thread is disgusting, god normalfags are creeps

>>11136612

What is normalfaggy about this thread? Seems to be pretty much mainstream /lit/ vibe from what I can see.

>>11136656
everything about your reply

>>11136664
>>11136612
normies out

>>11136602
should be added that quote came after being very critical about the substance his writing

I saw David Foster Wallace at a grocery store in Los Angeles in 2006. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

A shopkeeper in Stratford-upon-Avon remembered Shakespeare as being a funny kid. Good sense of humor.

Also, both the actors as well as Ben Jonson himself couldn't understand how he never seemed to cross out any words or have any edits on the pages he presented to them. This has, of course, provided fuel to both sides of the authorship argument. The one saying it's clear evidence of his true genius, the other saying it's clear evidence he didn't actually write the works.

When Tom Pynchon was young he was obsessed with Argentinean literature. Particularly Borges. He one day wanted to write the essential history and analysis of the Argentines.

>>11137616
>When Tom Pynchon was young he was obsessed with Argentinean literature. Particularly Borges. He one day wanted to write the essential history and analysis of the Argentines.
fuck,thiswouldhavebeenbased

>>11129636
Dante practices seminal conservation and lived a chaste lifestyle. This leads to great memory and focus.

>>11131616
(you) did it. best post in the thread.

>>11138240
I mean, it's entirely possible he's been working on it this whole time...

>>11130390
I like it but I think Fellini is a bit overrated. I can appreciate his movies and like them but they never really resonate with me on a deep or emotional level.

>>11129636
Florence had a population the size of a trailer park in Dante's days.

>>11138336

... let it be so

>>11138791
Have you seen La Strada? I Vitelloni? They're my favorites.

Charles Dickens was somewhat bipolar (as well as a chronic insomniac) - and in his jubilant phases was extremely exuberant. At one party he was up till 5 in the morning cracking jokes, drinking punch and dancing - he apparently left the house after jumping hop-frog over the other guests.
>Also
Dickens, as a young man, seeing the carriage of young Queen Victoria passing, went on one knee and shouted his proposal to marry her.
>Dickens' rival Thackeray once threw a copy of Dickens' "Dombey and Son" across the room and cried, "There's no writing against such a power as this! One has no chance"
>Dickens met Edgar Allan Poe in America and told him about his pet raven (called Grip). Poe was inspired by the anecdotes told about the bird and proceeded to write a certain poem.

Balzac was once awoken in the night to the sound of a thief rummaging about in his room. Balzac began to laugh.
"Why are you laughing?" the thief asked, angered.
"Because," answered Balzac, "You're looking for something by night that I cannot find by day!"

>>11129884
A man of true honor.

August Strindberg, the Swedish playwright. On his wedding night he tried to strangle his wife; after she struggled free he explained to her that he’d had a nightmare and imagined she was his previous wife.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
He enjoyed practical jokes – and is said to have once sent a telegram to 12 of his friends, all people of great significance and power. The telegram said: ‘Flee at once, the secret is discovered’. Within 24 hours all 12 had left the country.

Rudyard Kipling.
He once painted his golf balls red so he could play in the snow.

W. Somerset Maugham.
He always traveled in French ships. When asked why he replied, “Because there’s none of that nonsense about women and children first.”

T.S. Eliot
W.H. Auden found him playing solitaire one day and asked why he liked the game; Eliot replied, “because it’s the closest experience to being dead.”

>>11139089
I’ve seen Dolce Vita, La Strada, 81/2 and Amarcord. Haven’t seen Vitelloni, I had planned on Roma or Satyricon next but maybe I’ll check that out instead.

Samuel Beckett
Once, during his teaching days in Belfast the principle told him his pupils were ‘the cream of Ulster’. “Yes, rich, and thick!” Beckett replied.

>>11139130
But what was the secret and why was the fear of it being discovered enough to cause such a response?

>>11139130
And then he said “it was just a social experiment bro”

Pindar
He once insulted the poetess Corinna by calling her a pig.

>>11139105
How can Thackeray even compete

Cicero
He once boasted, after winning a legal case against the evidence, of “throwing dust in the jurymen’s eyes.”

Catullus
His father was a friend of Julius Caesar – something that apparently did not stop Catullus mocking the future dictator in several works. Caesar acknowledged that Catullus’ attacks had stained his reputation, but upon Catullus offering an apology, Caesar invited the poet to dinner that very day.

Seneca
He once proclaimed: “whatever has been well said by anyone is mine.”

Petrarch.
In his will he bequeathed 50 florins to his friend Boccaccio “to buy a warm winter cloak” – but was merely joking. 50 florins could have purchased 20 winter cloaks.

Hafez
A story has it that the brutal and mighty conqueror Tamerlane (Timur) once angrily summoned Hafez and demanded if he was the poet who wrote he would exchange Tamerlane’s great cities, Samarkand and Bokhara, for the mole on his mistress’s cheek. “Yes, sir”, replied Hafiz, “and it is through being so generous that I have reached this state of poverty.” Tamerlane was so amused by the answer he sent the poet away with many great gifts.

Erasmus
He was painted several times by his friend Hans Holbein, but scribbled in a notebook "if I were as handsome as he painted me I wouldn't lack for a wife."

Ariosto
According to a story, Ariosto was once walking alone in the province of Garfargnana when he was accosted by bandits. When the chief discovered Ariosto was the author of "Orlando Furioso", he apologized for his lack of respect and let him go.

>>11139224
the first recorded instance of "tfw no gf"?

Rabelais
His will consisted of one line: “I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.”

Calvin
He only agreed to marry a woman that was offered him on the condition that she learned French – he later changed him mind saying he wouldn’t marry her “unless the Lord entirely bereft me of my wits.” He instead married a widow with two children.

Luís de Camões
He began writing his epic masterpiece "The Lusiads" while working in Macau. During a journey near the Cambodian coast he was shipwrecked – miraculously swimming to safety while holding his unfinished manuscript aloft.

Milton
At university he was teased by other students because of his long hair and fair complexion. They called him “The Lady of Christ’s College”. He was once temporarily expelled after quarrelling with a teacher.
He went blind at age 46 – thus ‘writing’ his masterpieces with the help of his 3 daughters, who doubled as (unwilling) secretaries. He married again after the death of his first wife – and again after the second died. He never saw his last 2 wives, due to his being blind when he married them.
After he died his widow sold the copyright of Paradise Lost, the greatest epic poem in English, for £8 .

Daniel Defoe
Though his surname was originally Foe, he added the “De” to make it sound more aristocratic.
He was imprisoned in 1703 after he wrote a pamphlet that suggested all nonconformist preachers (of whom he was one) should be hanged. His words, which were meant to be ironic & funny, were taken seriously by the establishment of the day. He was also subjected to public humiliation by being placed in the pillory for 3 days.

>>11139178
>>11139239
lmao

>>11139276
>his widow sold the copyright for £8
Guess he did not see it coming

Jonathan Swift
He claimed to have only laughed twice in his whole life & that on both occasions he was alone. He also, once, refused to speak to anyone for an entire year.
After his friend Esther Vanhomrigh asked him to marry her he declined in the most public manner possible, in his poem Cademus and Vanessa.
He once wrote a treatise on excrement under the pen name “Dr. Shit.”
Was such a fanatic for exercise that when it was raining he ran up and down the stairs of his house for hours on end.
After an astrologer named John Partridge falsely predicted the deaths of several church officials, Swift published an article attacking him by stating Partridge would die on March 29 – even following it up with a pamphlet the following day falsely claiming that Partridge indeed had died.

Le Sage
He was as independent as he was witty. On one occasion he was entreated by a duchess to read a manuscript before her and her guests. He was an hour late due to a lawsuit. When he arrived and apologised the duchess haughtily scolded him for making her guests lose an hour waiting. “It is easy to make up the loss, madame,” he replied. “I will not read my comedy, and thus you will gain 2 hours.” With which remark he left and could not be persuaded to return.

>>11139249
what dick, also literally most retarded christian sect>>11139254

Samuel Johnson
At school he was proud despite his poverty, once tossing out a pair of new boots a boy had given him out of charity.

Adam Smith
Smith was described as having been comically absent-minded and in the habit of talking to himself. He once unknowingly put bread & butter in a teapot – drank it and declared it the worst cup of tea he’d ever had. On another occasion he went out walking in his nightgown & ended up over 20 km out of town before some nearby church bells brought him back to reality.

Madame de Staël
2 weeks after her marriage, she was presented to Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette at Versailles. She was wearing a magnificent dress, the seams of which, unfortunately, she had weakened in getting out of her coach. As she curtsied before the monarchs she trod on the inside of her dress so that, when she straightened up she tore the top half off, leaving her standing in her undergarments. Though the king smiled and didn’t mind, the next day’s newspapers poked fun at her clumsiness.

>>11139197

>>11139164
Who knows? It just shows that politicians have always been into shady shit.

>>11139311
based

>>11139291
>He once wrote a treatise on excrement under the pen name “Dr. Shit.”

>>11129933
lord byron was an absolute degenerate and so were mary shelley and percy shelley
poor polidori

Jim Morrison of the Doors idolized Jack Kerouac and considered his writing to be life-changing. He emulated Dean Moriarty and even once drove down to Florida where Kerouac was living with his mother and drinking himself to death. Trying to meet him, Morrison was turned away by Kerouac's mother, who hated anyone associated with the hippie movement. Kerouac drank himself to death in October of '69. Morrison OD'd not even 2 years later, never getting the chance to meet his hero.

>>11139113
great. Great thread

>>11133168
He was a literal cuckold.

>>11139276
>After he died his widow sold the copyright of Paradise Lost, the greatest epic poem in English, for £8 .
Reminds me of the countless anecdotes of women who sell the prized collections of their husbands, vintage video games or trading cards, for pennies.

Late in life, Joseph Heller was occasionally asked why he had never written anything else as good as “Catch-22”. “Who has?” he'd reply with a self-satisfied grin.

>>11139153
Absolute fucking kek.

>>11139291
>DAMAGED

>>11139306
>comically absent-minded
Now known as Alzheimer's

>>11129636
What's exceptional about that? It was the same street and the same man, and only one year had passed, and the original event was weird enough to be memorable (How often are you stopped by strangers in the streets asking you about your favourite food? Or favourite anything?).

This is supposed to be impressive?

If the space between the events had been 5 or 10 years it might be more "exceptional" but even then I think I would be more impressed by the dedication of the man stopping him than Dante's answers.

>>11139534
Ive never seen a picture of Kerouac until now. I didn't know he was a massive Chad. What the hell did this faggot have to be upset about?

>>11139881

Yes, it isn't that exceptional; I've done things like that several times and I'm sure many others have.

A much better story along similar lines concerns the world chess champion of the 1930s, Alexander Alekhine, who (like most top chess players) had a phenomenal memory.

Shortly after Alekhine became world champion, he went to Dublin where he gave a blindfold simultaneous exhibition. [For those unfamiliar with chess, that means the player plays several members of the public at once, without looking at any of the boards. It's kinda hard.]
All of Alekhine's opponents were moderate amateur players, but unbenownst to him, a grandmaster, a Polish fellow called Pzepiorka, snuck in and "helped" one of them.

Alekhine won all the other games, but Pzepiorka got the opportunity to play a devastating sacrifice which won the game. Then he sneaked off before the other games finished so Alekhine never saw him.

About 10 years later, Alekhine was celebrating his 40th birthday with a bunch of his friends.
Alekhine was NOT a teetotaller. As he got drunker and drunker he started teasing them all, saying "I love you, <friend X>, because I've beaten you three times and you've only beaten me once", or whatever it would be.

Pzepiorka happened to be there, and Alekhine said "I love you! I've beaten you once and you've never beaten me in your life!"

"Not true" said Pzepiorka. "Our personal score is actually 1-1".

Alekhine stared muzzily at him for about five seconds then suddenly burst out laughing.

"It was YOU who played Bishop takes pawn against me in 1928!" he cried.

>>11139291
>He once wrote a treatise on excrement under the pen name “Dr. Shit.”

>>11134639
Doubtful. But you can get a vagina.

>>11134639
Only in Brazil and they only use spider monkey

>>11139210
Fucking absolute mad lad over here

>>11139875
heh yeah probably
G.K. Chesterton was similar. Once he went out on an errand and forgot why. He sent a telegram to his wife with the message: "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?"

>>11130840
This confirms Shelley was the most based Romantic

>>11140097
speaking of Chesterton. Once, in London and during the war, he was asked by a woman why he wasn't at the front with the other journalists. His reply was, "If you were to walk around me, I'd think you'd find that I am."

>>11129674
someone get their dsm out and tell me if thats more borderline or bipolar

>>11140240

>every eccentric trait is pathology

>>11139224
Typical incel.

>>11139888
His friend was even more of a Chad.

>>11140240
probably not bipolar. Bipolar people don't "retreat into their shell" when meeting someone new, they usually don't give a shit and are overbearing. Sounds more like a social or personality thing, like he wanted to wait and see how he should act around a person. Can't armchair diagnose based on one anecdote that probably never really happened.

>>11139224
>be incel
>too cucked to even leave the Chadtholic Church when they brand you a heretic
The Virgin Erasmus vs The Chad Luther

>>11139276
my lecturer had a great old joke about Milton

>John Milton, of course, is famous for writing Paradise Lost. Then his wife died, and he wrote Paradise Regained.

>>11139291

If he was a fanatic for exercises why did he had that layer of fat under his chin?

>>11139144
primo bantz.

>>11140641
kek

>>11140234

>>11139534
Kerouac fucking hated hippies, too.

>>11139153
this cant be real. lmao

>>11129674
>>11129884
>>11139153
>>11130840
Why the fuck would anyone want to be a writer? Do you guys seriously think it's coincidence all of these people have a sever case of the 'tism?

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carrol in order to make money when poverty stricken. When he received his first payment from the publishers he bought a new pair of expensive boots. Matt LeBlanc bought a hot dinner.

>>11141293
yeah - but hey at least Kafka was kinda normal, right? Look at what he wrote to the girl he wanted to marry:“Marry me and you will regret it. Marry me or marry me not and you will regret either.” She declined.

>>11142062

It doesn't sound as though he really wanted to marry her. It sounds as though he wanted her to reject him.

>>11139888
Because he lived what is perceived to be a perfect life - traveling, engaging in hedonistic activities with your best friends, pioneering an entire literature movement. Then one day in his 40s he woke up and realized that none of that shit mattered and that he was still the same degenerate idiot he was when he was in his 20s. While it sounds like nothing, that's really something that can fuck a person up. Not to mention he basically didn't want anything to do with Beat literature by the end of his life because he overdosed on redpills and saw that hippies were ruining America - and that they were all influenced by his writing. Chad or not, I'll probably drink myself to death if that happened to me too.

>>11142140
he knew she would reject him and simply bitterly "anticipated" this in a defeatist "proposal" - just wanted to make an negative impact on her mind, autist-style. She married some other guy and had a family.

>>11142238

Kafka.

If I could find a tee-shirt with

Joseph K
deserved
what he got

on it, I would pay anything up to <some amount of money> without a second thought.

>>11140234
I don't get it.

>>11142278
He didn't tho...

>>11142304

Chesterton was quite portly. He's saying that he *is* standing at the front, but because he's so big, she, standing behind him, doesn't realize it.

>>11142319

Interestingly, Orson Welles discussing his film of The Trial said he thought Joseph K was actually guilty. He might have been being a little whimsical but I don't think it was entirely unserious.

>>11142323

(FWIW, I think the whole point of the Trial is the protagonist's inability to connect with the woman - that's why she weirdly appears in the last scene as the two men are dragging him off. So in that sense, yes, he IS guilty.)

>>11129636
I once heard Baudelaire used to be a drug addict. Which kinda explains his poetry if that is true.

I also heard that Rimbaud stopped writing at 22 and decided to become a slave owner.

>>11142323
I began thinking that he was guilty towards the end, but he would have remembered what he did if he deserved that punishment.

>>11129691
Oh, well if YOU doubt it then...

>ppl thinking their opinions matter

Apparently Kant was very hung up on his habits, like smoking one pipe of tobacco each day after dinner.
This went actually so far that every time he wanted to smoke more, instead of just smoking two or three or whatever pipes, he sent his servant to go and find a bigger pipe each time.

>>11131460
Upon meeting a Tiger
>note taken from Wm James' Varieties of Religious Experience, the Sick Soul chapter. Anecdote swiped from the Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohammedan Gentleman, Leipzig, 1857--
'It was about eleven o'clock at night...but I strolled on still with the people....Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, 'Ho hai!' involuntarily reechoed by all of us, was over in three seconds; and then I know not what happened till I returned to my senses, when I found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if prepared to be devoured by our enemy, the sovreign of the forest. I find my pen incapable of describing the terror of that dreadful moment. Our limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beat violently, and only a whisper of the same 'Ho hai!' was heard from us. In this state we crept on all fours for some distance back, and then ran for life with the speed of an Arab horse for almost half an hour, and fortunately happened to come to a small village....After this every one of us was attacked with fever, attended with shivering, in which deplorable state we remained till morning.'
>just so story

>>11141513
I thought he was rich after the success of pickwick, etc?

>>11142516
He also apparently got really angry at Rousseau because reading one of his books delayed Kant from going on his daily walk on time.

>>11142062
>>11142140
>Lets pretend Kafka wasn't gay as fuck

>>11142355
By reading Kafka's diary mi impression is that he was guilty of the original sin and he was punished not just for being guilty of it but for never considering if he was guilty at all.

>>11143015
>historical revisionism, the post

>>11131262
>>11134639
I want to fuck a manslut who has monkey balls. As I bury my dick in his monkeyballslutass, I will insist that he has a pen and paper at hand at all times. At predetermined intermittent periods during the fucking, I will ask if he feels inspired yet. I will maintain a cockring during the fucking in order to maintain the strong penor THOUGH MY WILL IS ALSO STRONG AND WILL IRONFY MY BONER but cockring just for in case. I will restrain from orgasm until monkeyballslutass has written at least one poem. I will evaluate his poem while continue to fuck. If it is not sufficient, fucking will continue until satisfactory poem exists.

>>11129636

is 'Taccuini Storici' really the book? for i could not find it online is why i ask

>>11139210
What a good friend.

>>11139241
Rabelais always seems like someone I'd want to buy a pint or two for.

>>11139291
>He once wrote a treatise on excrement under the pen name “Dr. Shit.”
I want to read it.

>>11139311
That's some anime shit right there.

>>11139197
lmao

>>11142518
what a fucking idiot, Tiger isn't going to come back that Cat had food for a few days if not a full week. Such a coward, also none of them fired off any shots or were armed

>>11139291
the original shitposter

>>11139289
Kek

>>11132780
>philosophy is not literature

The absolute state of /lit/.

>>11139888
i read somewhere that he was schizophrenic

>>11131547
i dont get it, if his father gave him the money to pay the prostitue then why does he need the same sum again from his grandfather? Does he want to go there again because he didnt manage to screw the first time or because he didnt have enough money to pay the full price after he broke the pot

>>11130030
>Even though i think out of the four or five or six 'great russian writers' his writing is the least good

There's no way you weren't memed into this opinion.

>>11144499
Sounds like he paid the 10 for the whore but couldn't screw her so he needs another 10 to try again and he owes 3 for the pot

>>11129636
Chuck Jones used Santayana's description of fanaticism when describing his Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote cartoons- 'redoubling your efforts after forgetting your purpose' -or something like that.
He also subsidized Bertrand Russell for a time, with whom he was in fundamental philosophical disagreement.
Upon leaving Harvard forever in April, 1912 he was at a podium gathering up his lecture notes at the beginning of a class when he said, suddenly, 'You will excuse me gentlemen, but I have a date with the Spring,' and left. He lived on in Italy until the mid 50's, his personal needs overseen by a group of Irish nuns in a convent.

>>11139929
Damn, Magnus Carlsson said he had 50,000 games memorized, but anecdotes like this put that in perspective.

>>11132780
>>11134591
According to pic related, Hitler was Hitler because he was bullied by Wittgenstein as a schoolboy.

No one posted the one about Fitzgerald's dick size?

It so happens that one time at lunch Fitzgerald brought up to Hemingway the embarrassing problem that his wife Zelda had called his dick too small to "make any woman happy". Denying it staunchly, Hemingway brought Fitzgerald to the bathroom where they had a look.

>'You're perfectly fine,' I [Hemingway] said. 'You are O.K. There's nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.'

>'Those statues may not be accurate.'

>'They are pretty good. Most people would settle for them.'

>>11131283
What happened as a result?

>>11144860
Pic related is wrong, most worthwhile historians disagree with it. Wittgenstein couldn't even speak properly, he wasn't bullying anyone.

>>11139153
>W.H. Auden found him playing solitaire one day and asked why he liked the game; Eliot replied, “because it’s the closest experience to being dead.”

>>11135508
Julian and Maddalo

>the thought that he was greater than his kind struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind my gazing on its own exceeding light.

>>11144571
based

>>11143015
he has to entire books of love letters to two different women

William s Burrows accidently killed his wife in 1951 when he tried to shoot a glass of the top of his wifes head, he was convinced later in life if it would never have happened he would not have became a writer if not for this

>>11146883

Mike Tyson can't speak properly and he hasn't ever had a problem.

>>11148007
>if it would never have happened he would not have bcame a writer if not for this
The absolute state of /lit/

shocked Hunter S Thompson hasn't made an appearance yet, guy could fill a whole thread

>>11148086
Yes I didn't proof read before I posted, will my suicide atone for this ?

>>11130456
The actual conversation, according to Joyce:
>Aimez-vous les truffes?
>Oui

>>11148087

No need to go overboard. Just give us two or three things to get the ball rolling.

>>11135284
>Keats
adorable

>>11148042
He's actually a pretty good reader....

>>11129912
>when will they learn

>>11146883
Yeah I first heard it in a trivia thing and thought it was weird, but funny nonetheless.
>>11148169
Not him, but as reported by the man himself:
"I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: Four bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef-hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert... Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty four hours, and at least one source of good music... All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of the hot sun, and preferably stone naked."

>>11148042
can't speak properly as in lisps you fucking newt?

Big difference between lisping when you talk and having to say the same word 23 times because you cant make a sound that remotely reminds the receiver of the word.

>>11138333
What is it I wanna see the whole quote

>>11139254
>swimming to safety while holding his unfinished manuscript aloft.
Epico

>>11141513
>.

my sides!

>>11139792
Their loss really.

>>11139311
Then she slapped the king and said B-BAKA HENTAI

>>11145330
>Most people would settle for them
HINT HINT - Hemmingway probably

>>11148598
Thompson was the king of comfy

>>11135508
The Cenci- but as mentioned at least twice already Prometheus Unbound. It helps to have read Aeschylus' play (Bound) before reading it. It's not just a fantastic poem, but remarkably clear and easy. In the tradition of Milton's Samson Agonistes, another great work.