/lit/ - Literature

Brainlets are a real phenomenon bud.

>>11705622
They're the prisoners in Plato's Cave. These people never look deeper than the absolute shallowest aspects of their existence. Don't feel too bad for them though. As far as they're concerned, you're the fool and their way of seeing things is perfectly fine.

because they're outdated and written for the time period. it's like watching silent movies from the 20's. absolute waste of time when modern material is more entertaining, engaging and enlightening.

>>11705622
absolutely based and blessed image

where the frig do you even talk to people???

>>11705831
>the gym
>work
>bars
>surfing

That's about it for me, I'm a social person and I live in Los Angeles, so there are a lot of other social people as well

>>11705840
you're at the gym asking people about the canterbury tales?

>>11705622
They can’t understand the language and cultural differences across time

>>11705846
No, but I go 5 days per week and I know all the other regulars, so we usually say hi and how are you. Sometimes we hang out outside of that.

>>11705849
That's just plain bizarre when do you sllip in the question about the canterbury tales?

>>11705821
Almost unbelievably stupid post

>>11705859
Huh? Sometimes reading comes up when you hang out with people. Do you know what socializing is like? Topics move around. I'm not necessarily getting in deep convos at the gym, but sometimes people want to talk a bit. I was giving you a rundown of where I talk to people, sometimes books come up

>>11705859
My English literature teacher at university skipped over chauncer lmao, like how tf is that possible. Dropped the class when I realized half the books we're be reading is by Jane Austen

>>11705622
The classics can be great but human nature doesn't exist. You can read them to appreciate human impulse changing and recognizable through history though.

>>11705861
have fun with your "classics". lol .

>>11705896
>human nature doesn't exist

Why are people so willfully ignorant?

>>11705923
Because being edgy and disagreeable are qualities of a cool lad. Who cares if you're right when you can be cool instead?

>>11705934
Good insight, thank you friend

>>11705923
You're a fucking faggot holy shit. Every time someone posts that fucking photo of that FUCKING bust of Caracalla with that dumb nigger caption 'disdain' for plebs you know that their IQ is at most 105, that the highest they'll ever amount to is middle management, that they don't have the congenital capacity to achieve anything which isn't easily replicable by any other person on the precipice of the bell curve. Just because he appears to be FUCKING SCOWLING [where, if you colorise the bust, his scowl appears to be a grimace of a much less-displeasured orientation] doesn't mean he was some elitist tory-equivalent within the Romans holy fuck and if you actually know the slightest thing about Caracalla you'll find that he's one of the most pleb-sympathetic emperors there was

>>11705937
t. SEETHING

>>11705911
I do because I’m not a fucking retard who can’t appreciate writing from a different time period. You assume that modern writing is somehow more valuable in of itself even though the struggles of today echo throughout human history. Thankfully I’m not brain diseased, I can enjoy classical writing and modern writing without cognitive dissonance.

"I can't relate to them" is probably the most honest thing I've ever heard someone say about the classics.
Usually all I hear is "it's hard" when people talk about wrestling with famous old titles.
I think the reason why people find them difficult to grasp is because there is a lot of context for the time they were written, which is not provided for them the way it is with contemporary literature. You can't just curl up with Chaucer like you can with a trashy urban fantasy title or a thriller mystery novel. It takes effort and dedication to understand, and most people prefer to read as a way to unwind.

>>11705859
have you never had a conversation that lasted longer than 5 minutes before?

>>11705622
Not interested in stories about and by old dead white men sweetie but go off I guess *sips tea*

>>11705622
I couldn't connect with the classics when young because I had no use for literature, yet. Music and comedy, including Handel and Flowery Twats, thousands of things disparate as Beavis & Butthead to Zzzzra, still supply the most of what I need in fine or nutty company, consolation, and celestial flights of mood.

Though always a reader if still not bookish, by 35 I needed more, partly because of life's usual calamities, and a falling away of my own imagination's potency at spontaneous conjuring of pleasant dreams. (There is also the general sufficiency of raw intuition + science for navigating around the hazards we're all subject to.) I needed a personal renaissance for the 2nd half of life to continue with something of the 1st half's inward vitality, access to joy. This is probably a typical pattern for comic spirits, though the motive for soaking up books of extraordinary life & longevity is always personal as a only biographical account of its workings can register.

In retrospect, I feel fortunate that I'm anything but a prodigy of literature, since for most of my life I've felt very little of the want its use implies, and now proceed without much risk of becoming a total junkie of the word-virtual, who either loses too much of immediate sense-banquets to it, or falls too much under the influence of any one writer's vision--productive as overinfluence is for spawning genius. What I'm not saying is that you're better off not being a prodigy or planting the seeds of genius in hope of some flower or fruit. That would be almost like saying abnormally good health is a problem that warrants address through Faustian depravity. (Though to give the Devil due credit, palliatives for ennui do more good than harm in moderate doses, especially for the low-stimulus seeker who likes things attenuated, suffused, atmospheric, low-key allegro as a placid August dawn.) What I am saying is that, by their nature, developmental timings differ so much in the human animal that only an idiot, incurious always, wouldn't find the causes baffling and their courses disconcerting, from time to time. And that if you ever get the feeling that Shakespeare scratched his head over these matters more than anyone else ever did, your feelings do not lie.

>>11705622
>of being a human being
they aren't actually human beings

>>11705981
The first thing in this thread that wasn’t complete balls. Reading is almost always more of a personal endeavour rather than predominantly a cultural one, in the sense that unless you’re studying literature or give far too much of a shit about what /lit/ thinks you’re reading for yourself. If you enjoy reading because it gives you perspectives into how other people have thought and acted and written or whatever else throughout time and space, then fantastic; if you get a real resonance from books not written in your current context, then that’s fantastic as well. If you don’t then you’re like most people and that is absolutely fine.

I think it’s fantastic to read outside of one’s comfort zone, I think it’s really brilliant; but I also think it’s important to have a comfort zone and not feel obligated to not read within it.
Especially if you aren’t interested in reading in a deeper way and just enjoy good stories.

Also regarding OP’s suggestion that things have ever somehow been different in history - total balls.

Half the time it's boring shit for pseuds

>>11705821
I can't tell if this is lazy bait or if someone really is this stupid to believe any word of this. I really don't want to bite but I love silent films and I want to smack this dense cunt

>>11705859
some conversations do go through what people are reading and if anyone asks what you like to read oh boy oh boy am I gonna mention the hairy bum kiss from Canterbury Tales

>>11705945
I don't know why but this cracked me up, good post anon

>>11705622
Because the classics are fucking boring.

>>11705622
Some classics are short but I think a lot of people think of shit like war and peace when they think "classic." So reading so many pages and so many books it's just easier to come up with an excuse.

>>11705868
>Do you know what socializing is like?
No. Any books to learn more about this?

>>11705911
Thank you, anon. I'll try. Have fun with what you read too.

Imagine treating the 'classics' as some homogeneous thing in the first place. There are so many from different time periods, comprising different movements, forms, content matter ect, that if you like reading, there must be something deemed a classic you like.

>>11705622
they read shitty anglo "classics" like hawthorne, twain, austen, dickens, and assume they are all like that

>>11705622
Some people just aren't smart or care enough to give them an honest try. In school, I often heard people saying the reading was boring, even when reading Shakespeare, and I also noticed that people would stick with their initial impression long after we had finished, but you can see this kind of stubbornness everywhere, even /lit/.

I wonder how exactly school ruins reading for people by forcing them to read and try and think more about the book? Granted most people try to do that deep reading in a poor way, but still.

>>11706560
But Austen is great. Emma is unironically a great book

>>11709261
I preferred pride and prejudice but they are pretty similar so whatevs I guess.

>>11706494
Lots of them are boring. Lots of modern works are boring. But some of both have been write interesting. I need a better way to tell in advance. At least the classics are free.

>>11706560
>shitting on Hawthorne
Yeah, I'm sure your average guy has no interest in old books simply because Hawthorne was a shitty writer. That's got to be it.