/lit/ - Literature

>>12094121
lolita

Anna Karenina

>>12094121
>riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs
The image is completely relevant

>>12094121
Neuromancer

>>12094121
I am actually trying to think of a worse one but its hard

The Gunslinger. Stephen King really nailed it with this one line. "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed".

>>12094293
War and Peace is the ultimate great book with a shit-tier opening line

>Waking up to a loud crash rarely means amything good

Still nothing can surpass this

Call me Ishmael.

>>12094291
Its a great opening line because I immediately closed the book after reading it. It told me perfectly that I'm in for some pretentious, annoying drivel. I like it when books are honest about what they are.

>>12094121
> I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man.

There is heard from heaven a scream.

>>12094121
>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

>>12094696
Absolutely based

Can anyone explain to a new reader who the fuck DFW is and why is Infinite Jest memed so hard on this board?

>>12094722
What's the password?

>>12094722
He's the guy who wrote the only good novel of the past 20 years.

>>12094722
Infinite Jest tackles the issue of pollyanna-euphoria drive in American society better than anyone. However, I would honestly not recommend the book to a new reader and would rather say if you want to get involved with DFW, his essays in "Remember the Lobsters," are amazing and relatively accessible, thereafter, his short stories "Oblivion" are great, and honestly his unfinished novel "Pale King" is better than Infinite Jest by light years. You'll see Pynchon pop up and Gaddis who are similarly postmodern. They're whole philosophy is essentially the rapid erosion of society in terms of memes (traditional sense), as they merge and become closer to reality, and then the simultaneous increase in geometricization of the world for optimization. Don DeLillo's White Noise is more enjoyable and readable than any of these authors, and Richard Ford has some good stuff floating around.

>>12094121
Gravity's Rainbow has the GOAT opener and nothing will convince me otherwise.

>>12094746
say it to my face narc

>>12094859
I’ve just recently realized that “A screaming comes across the sky” is a subtle allusion to the first line of Duino Elegies

>It has turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace.

>I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.

>>12094859
Anna Karenina's is good even in translation, I'm curious what the effect is in the original Russian

>>12094455
Hey Ishmael

>>12095214
No he's telling Ishmael to call him

>>12094121
One Hundred Years of Solitude

>>12094614
Literally was just about to post that

>>12094455
i love moby dick, great book

>>12095009
>Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders?
this one?

>>12094859
It's even more powerful because apparently when you've already heard the "scream" of the rockets it means they've already fallen and exploded, not that they're on their way.

>>12095168
Opening line of Anna Karenina is used often as an aphorism in Russia, I knew it long before learning where it comes from.

>Avril Incandenza is the sort of tall beautiful woman who wasn’t ever quite world-class, shiny-magazine-class beautiful, but who early on hit a certain pretty high point on the beauty scale and has stayed right at that point as she ages and lots of other beautiful women age too and get less beautiful.
how to write like the maestro, lads?

>>12095273
I too love my dick.

>>12094121
>And but so a screaming comes across the porch, from the stairhead, Tommy bearing a bowl of lather on which a pinecone and a toy rocket lay crossed—he sits on the steps surrounded by heads and bodies of characters never to be created, Wallace having quit and thrown himself upon his belt, ha-ha o my, Tommy thinx, don't throw rocks at the thrown, ha-ha.

>>12095282
>rockets are silent on launch

>>12094746
It was actually 22 years ago now

>>12095576
>carli
>niccagelaugh.gif

>>12094121
A screaming came across the face of Gregory Berrycone who was glued to a dead television color.

>>12094522
>I like it when books are honest about what they are.
this stupid sentiment doesnt make any fucking sense. what is finnegans wake supposed to be? what does the first line imply about what the book is? what is the dissonance between these two things?