/lit/ - Literature

>>11199523
Henceforth I shall only be reading texts written (composed) by my own hand.

>>11199523
Honestly never had interest in reading Tolstoy either. I know the Tolstoy-fags praise him like crazy, but I've never had any real interest in reading him. The craziest thing is I don't know why

>>11199523
>>11199774
Your loss.

>>11199523
Joyce desu

>pynchon
>dfw
>land
>mcelroy

deleuze

i'm reading him now just because i wanna understand nick land

>>11199862
What is with the recent insurgency of these Land followers.

>>11199866
they want an ontologicool gf

Virginia Woolf
Jane Austen
William Faulkner
Alice Munro
William S Boroughs
Schopenhauer

I am never gonna read their works. Maybe The Sound and Fury if i can have that colored text edition, otherwise non

William Faulkner. I have this impression that his novels are all parochial, like they all take place inside a single house, possibly a small town, and are peopled with simple folk whose lives I have no interest in. That sort of literature is just too narrow for me.

Never read a single word of Pynchon, Dostoyevsky, or Celine and I never will. Also don't really care about any of the German-language writers like Mann or Hesse. I've read Kafka (he's hard to avoid) but I'll probably never return to any of his works again.

>>11200087
+1 for Burroughs

>>11200087
>Munro
oh nooo think of all the beautifully bland ideas you'll miss

Started the Grapes of Wrath when l was 18. Never made it past chapter 2 and haven’t cared about Steinbeck ever since.

Tolstoy is one of the GOATs but takes a lot of time and immersion.

>>11200665
>he reads for ideas

Dickens. Everything I've read by or about him has convinced me that he was a childish whiny faggot

>>11199852
all memes, you're not missing out desu

>>11200674
Not just the ideas, Alice. The characters, the plot, the pointless prose, all of it. You're a short ferry away from a bitchslap

>>11200651
holy shit, this cunt.
must be bait.

>>11200651
I try p hard not to spend money on books I won't read, but Celine managed to fool me.

>>11200669
Shame. The grapes of wrath is my favourite book, and I think Steinbeck is great.

>>11200686
This

>>11199523
Pynchon and DFW

Anything postmodern really.

>>11199523
Dostoyevsky's the 'intellectual,' Tolstoy just tells a great story. Start reading him and you can't put him down. Youll be surprised when finally getting to him. He's really 16 yr old accessible or thereabouts.

>>11199523
Pretty much all the non males

>>11199587
Not trying to talk shit, but that's a good way to be a bad writer.

ayn rand

>>11200986
>>11200686
these desu, also DFW

>>11199523
Phillip Roth

>>11200703
Not baiting. I genuinely have no interest in any of these writers.
>>11200710
What convinced you to buy?

>>11199523
There's a lot of authors that I'm not interested in, Tolstoy is one. I think I'll read him when I'm a lot older.

Pynchon comes to mind, I read about 100 pages of GR and had to put it down. I wasn't necessarily bored I just don't get it.

anyone but peterson desu

Pynchon and Stendhal.
I mention these specifically cause I own the original Gravity's Rainbow a friend sold to me for the equivalent of like $3, and a 70yo french edition of The Red and the Black an ex gave to me back when I was first learning french.
Not even for a set reason, I just never had the will to read them

>>11200087
The first two and >>11199862 are the ones I tried and absolutely regretted it, so good for you.

>>11199876
>ontilogicool gf (male)
ftfy

>>11200942
This. Tolstoy's attempt to establish an objective aesthetic criteria in 'what is art?' is fucking atrocious.

>>11201041
I read an excerpt I liked and fell for the meme
I have only myself to blame

>>11199523
more psychoanalysts
more Proust
more Sade
more phenomenology
"the russians" I will but not now

Anyone from the USA

You should give Tolstoy a try. War and Peace is very entertaining and accessible.

>>11200651
>Never read a single word of Pynchon, Dostoyevsky, or Celine
2 outta 3 aint bad

>>11200469
I thought so, too, but this impression you have is false. His characters at least in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are among the most interesting I can think of.

>>11199523
Shakespeare
Dante
Milton
Chaucer
Homer
Virgil

>>11199523
any conservative philosophers that aren’t de Maistre or Schmitt or Maciavelli

any Christian philosophers who aren’t Leibniz

basically all 21st century lit (that’s not Houellebecq or Bolaño)

Most of Kant’s works (thank the Kantposters)

Guenon (I will read Ebola’s best works tho)

The Koran

Meinkampf (just fucking read Jünger, Spengler, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schmitt)

Most of Goethe’s works (ive come to the realization he was somewhat an overreaching pretentious upper-midwit; still will read Faust)

Most of Dostoyevsk’s works (word rather read Gogol)

Naobokov (besides Pale Fire which i will read because i bought it already)

Any female authors (i refuse, as a matter of socio-biological survival I refuse to empower that which is devouring my prospects)

Any socialist theory at all that isn’t from Adorno or Marx/Engels directly

Any economics books (its a fake science, does no experiments, has no real constants, cannot find physical correlates so just steals them from information, systems, physics theory)

The Origin of Species (absolutely pointless when you cannjust open a textbook)

Most of Shakespeare’s plays (save for Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, reread Macbeth as an adult)

Aristotle (i have Nicomachean ethics but ive already read a few books from that and the Physics, he’s a lying faggot and gave birth to a legion of insufferable cunts)

Kevin MacDonald (dude Jews are the WORST)

Proust (seems gay)

that’s it

>>11199523
C.S. Lewis
I read the Narnia books as a kid and liked them, but all of his "adult" fiction seems to be the same story about how the devil is corrupting modern society.

>>11201529
Thats a lot of knowledge your excluding. Honestly cant gauge you.

Reasonable:
>>11200686
>>11200986
>>11201040


Passably tolerable:
>>11199774
>>11199788
>>11199852
>>11199862
>>11200469
>>11201089
>>11201147


Idiots:
>>11200087
>>11200651
>>11200669
>>11200917
>>11200942
>>11200957
>>11201282
>>11201489
>>11201529

honestly just bizarre to me that people would purposefully avoid Tolstoy but I suppose that's the point of the thread

personally I avoid Vonnegut but maybe that's equally incomprehensible to others

Marquis de Sade, Nabokov, Dante. Besides those I've read a good amount of the basic, plebby western canon, of course if you started listing them there would be a lot I missed. There's lots of unread books on my shelf I've avoided reading but will read someday. Idk why I keep buying them and getting more at the library every week. My main problem now is that there are so many books to be re-read, and so many more to be read to begin with. I read and reread Baudelaire and Poe. And I want to re-read moby dick. I want to read Fontaine's Fables but don't know when, there's so much.

>>11200087
give Schopenhauer a chance and I think Burroughs has some merit, the rest is in agreement with my sensibilities, all of those are pseud hacks pushed by MFA’s and highschool english teachers (and bugs of all kinds on this board and reddit)

>>11201761
>ironist
>dumbfuck
>choose

>>11201761

You say that someone who doesn’t want to read Tolstoy is “passably tolerable” and someone who doesn’t want to read Pynchon and DFW is an “idiot”. You just lost any credibility with this move.

I've been ignoring Tolstoy too for years but I'm planning on finally reading his corpus this summer.
Victorian novelist in general including Austen I just don't ever find motivation to read.

>>11202003

Start with some small novelas, Kholstomer and The Death of Ivan Ilyicht. You can read both in a week.

If you like him you can jump straight to one of his great novels. Anna Karenina is more balanced and perfect in form, but War and Peace is really something extraordinary.

I also suggest reading his diaries. They are very funny and show just how someone who doesn’t seem to have any talent can raise himself by discipline and willpower and become a cultural giant.

>>11199866
he got really popular and a clique of twitter people started worshipping him. blame twittereddit imports, as well as for any other meme author i.e. bookchin

>>11201529
is there anything you're actually interested in reading

>>11202062
That was actually my plan; got a short story collection and was then gonna work chrono through the rest of his stuff up to Hadji Murat + confessions. Was thinking of skipping his novels pre-Cossacks though, unless you think someone thinks youth trilogy and family happiness is worth reading.

>>11200957
This, I've read some female authors. I regret all of them. I can't see myself doing it again.

>>11202128

The youth trilogy is interesting from a biographical point of view: it’s pretty much Tolstoy talking about himself. Is funny to see how much of an egocentric and narcissist he was; anybody who knew someone like him with 18 would never guess what he would become.

I still strongly suggest Kholstomer as a first read. Is not that well known but is probably one of the greatest short stories ever written.

If you are interested in a biography of him, I suggest the one by Henry Troyat. There is a whole chapter dedicated only to the writing of War and Peace and Tolstoy’s working routine at the time.

>>11202154

Try Memoirs of Hadrian. It will reconcile you with females.

>>11202160
Alright, I'll consider that. If I'm really into him by the end of it all I'll check out the trilogy.

>>11201761
Brainlet post.

>>11201529
Stop conflating Nietzsche with NSDAP you absolute fucking carrot. He believed in the exact opposite of them.

I'm a man but i always feel i identify more with female authors

>>11202215
We have a name for that...

>>11199523
Proust. DeLillo. Every woman writer save Shirley Jackson.

>>11202233
What do you mean?

>>11200942
Further proof dostofags actually hate literature and read it as a substitution for philosophy because they are too midwit for it.

>>11199523
Will only read Tolstoj's War & Peace in order to mock it more efficiently.

>it's 1255 pages long
>tfw bro-tier antics with Chad and Stacy
>tfw Napoleon shows up in the last part

>>11199866
The thing driving people to Land was the same thing that drove people to Deleuze and Guattari

not proud to admit it but I am extremely prejudiced against some american literature, specially "school-literature" authors like Orwell, Fitzgerald, Lovecraft and Salinger. I have a bit of that prejudice against Poe too but not strong enough not to read him, although I have intention of doing in the near future.

>>11203413
no* intention

>>11199852
All justified except for Pynchon

>>11203413
>Orwell
>American

read road to wigan pier

>>11200651

Pynchon and Dostoevsky are lolsorandumb bullshit and DUDE JUST BE CHRISTIAN LMAO bullshit. Though notes from the underground is short and a really great book

>>11201761
/thread
Perfect.

>>11199866
Ching chong ling long internet shills

>>11203597
eh, my bad, but still fits the bill as being a classic school book. I know prejudices are extremely retarded but for some reason it happened. Again, not proud of it

I'm not going to read Woolf or Austen. No more post-modern bullshit (or whatever you want to call Pynchon / DFW self indulgent pseud nonsense). No theology (at best rigour from bullshit but no doubt all bullshit). No poetry. No continental philosophy (bullshit). No Faulkner (probably like McCarthy but somehow more boring).

No modern writers who denounce you know who. No modern writers who write for the new Yorker or seem like they would.

No more social science books unless I think the author could have a higher IQ than me. No science or modern business related books by anyone except scientists or business people.

No books by journalists or political scientists.

No secondary philosophical literature that tries to "make old philosophy relevant".

No fantasy. No books by any author I suspect of being a "Marxist".

>>11203693

And of course no books by non whites who write about their non whiteness in anything but passing. The same with women

>>11200651
>I've read Kafka (he's hard to avoid) but I'll probably never return to any of his works again.
You seem really stupid and this is a good example. Are you saying that you've read him multiple times but won't do it again? The last sentence is nearly incomprehensible.

Any woman author desu.

I will most likely not read much of American literature. I am sure the novels and works are great but they seem foreign to me.

Judith Butler
S. King
Joyce
Beckett
R.R Martin

>>11203718
>R.R Martin
Goes without saying.
In fact, it's far worse than not interested in reading. It doesn't even count as literature as it lacks "superior or lasting artistic merit."

>>11202082
Hey leave bookchin alone

>>11203699
What? Is English your first language? The sentence just means that I have read his works but will probably not read them again.

>>11199523
James Joyce.
Oh I have tried, i read like a maniac but he is so irrelevant in 2018, I cant make the connection, I cant feel the furor. Many exciting authors of the past centuries have lost their appeal and luster, because of the changes in ethics.

On the other hand I still enjoy Henry Miller, there is no shock factor anymore in his books but the stories and language are still there.

>>11202619
>dumbfuck
registered..

>>11203706
I'm American and they seem foreign to me too.

>>11201344
I'm glad to hear that. I want to be wrong about Faulkner. Maybe I'll read one of his novels this summer.

>>11199523
>this thread
/lit/, I...

>>11203971
What?

>>11202154
What wrong do you feel in them?

>>11203718
Why Beckett?

I'm Hungarian and we have these huuuge corpus of realist prose by 19.century writers, i go into an second hand bookshop or to used book markets and half the books are theirs, I open a box of hrown out random books and 3/4s are from them, suffered through some works as obligatory reads.

I jut got no patience for their old time language that feels so slow to move and for their deciptions of a word that just feels stale and gone-by.

A lot of the more contemporary American writers, DFW, Philip Roth, Franzen etc

Junot Diaz, Dickens, Ayn Rand.

That's what comes to mind anyway.

>>11200469
You’re right about the setting, wrong about everything else.

>>11199523
Reminder that this bearded faggot is an overrated hack

>>11203857
>I'll probably never return to any of his works again.
Why did you include the last word? It gives nothing and takes away everything.

I want to read them, but I probably won't read them soon:

- Any German writer other than lyrical poets, because I want to learn the language, so I won't waste my time reading 800 pages of translated material when I could be memorizing short lyric poems instead, and thus expanding my vocabulary;
- Any works by Aristotle other than the Poetics, the Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics;
- Cicero, Roman historians and such, also because I wish to learn the language, but I'll have to spend some two years reading the Vulgata and Medieval authors before I get to their level (I have read the essential authors in translation, though);
- The great Chinese and Japanese authors, because I'm too busy exploring the many literary traditions which I'm able to read in the original (English,
Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, and many others around them, such as Occitan troubadour poetry, Catalan literature, Middle English verse, Italian dialectal poetry, even African, Caribbean and East Timor stuff, besides the usual main colonies), so I have little time for translation;
- John dos Passos, Doctor Zhivago, Lady Murasaki, Erico Verissimo, Cien Anos de Soledad and other big books which are not essential for me at the moment (usually, I'll read one or two short stories or novels before deciding if I want to postpone the author or not).

When it comes to poetry in languages I know, however, then I wish to read everything, including that which doesn't even deserve to be read.

>>11204964
Yeah.

Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Herman Melville, Eça de Queiroz, Machado de Assis, Perez-Galdos, Maupassant, Mark Twain, George Eliot, George Sand, Huysmanns, Turgeniev, Puchkin, Dostoievski, Tolstoi, Gogol, Zola, Hugo...

All of those are necessary, and yet I've read few of them. They're all great, but the main problem is that, as Pound once said, after Flaubert it became easier to be a novelist, and pretty much everyone started writing within that same realist/more-or-less-realist tradition.

I would rather explore Roman, Provençal and 20-century American poetry than read those authors, wasting one whole week for every single 800 pages book of theirs, not to mention the fact they always have some four, five, six or two hundred masterpieces that you absolutely shouldn't miss!

>>11205206

Are you Brazilian? I suggest you give One Hundred Years of Solitude a try. It deals with universal themes, but it feels specially pungent and natural for us, Latin Americans. It’s pretty simple and straightforward and, despite all its fame and acclaim, it is really a great book, not just a popular meme.

>>11205247

Tolstoy is one you shouldn’t miss. He drastically improves what Flaubert did; he is in a league of his own. When you compare Anna Karenina to Madame Bovary you cannot fail to realize that the first one is a far greater artistic achievement.

>>11205117
Because I enjoy having pointless arguments about grammar with people who are annoyed at me for not caring about their favourite writers.

John Green

I don't think I'm quite at the level where I can understand his complex masterpieces.

I only recently picked up reading again, back in January. I wouldnt be suprised if it takes me at least half a decade until I have the courage to pick up Joyce, Melville, or DFW

>>11205460
Loving this Austro-Hungarian meme!

>>11205489
it's from the Kaiserreich subreddit. They've got good memes for a community centered about an obscure mod for a WW2-simulator.

The experience I've had with it has convinced me never to bother trying again with non-western non-far-eastern literature (including non-fiction).

>>11201848
why is Burroughs worth reading? just finished naked lunch and thought it was trash. the only reason it's popular is because it was banned.

>>11200651
>hes not learning German to read all their great literature and philosophy

>>11200651
pleb

Jacques Musbodijk and Alfonse Lo Bello. Will be a long time until i can comprehend those guys. Will reach Tolstoy well before them

>>11205590
>german literature

>>11203957
I think it somewhat applies his minor novels, but you ought to read at least the two I've mentioned and Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August.

>>11199523
Thomas Pynchon
David Foster Wallace
Jack Kerouac
Tolkien
Basically anybody who's universally praised as a genius. They can't possibly live up to the expectations their insufferable fans stuff you with.

>>11207767
None of those are close to being universally praised as a genius, except maybe Pynchon by /lit/.