/lit/ - Literature

>>13433154
Peter Hitchens. Though his work focuses on the historical question of how Britain got to be where it is now and not so much a sustained contemporary meditation.

>>13433154

>>13433154
You could just read Marx. What you're describing is just alienation.

>>13433213
>Peter Hitchens.

Are you serious? Hitched denies that poverty even exists in Britain. He says it's just a lie made up by the left lmao.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1120672/PETER-HITCHENS-Poverty-It-8217-s-just-lie-Left-uses-destroy-middle-class.html

>>13433213
I've read about half of The Abolition of Britain. Any others you'd recommend? I imagine Scruton is similar.

>>13433233
Any books which detail who Marx's theories apply to modern life?

>>13433255
He's also an anti-vaxxer who believes abortion should be banned.

>>13433269
What's wrong with wanting abortion banned?

Do you seriously consider that a "gotcha" accusation?

>>13433278
baffeling how abortion seems like a done and solved topic to most people.
Literally allowing killing babies is a no go issue to most.

>>13433304
Abortion could be used as an acceptable eugenics program, it all depends on who runs the show and the color of the fetus

>>13433304
Abortion is necessary for a functioning society. Even the ancients realized that.

The obvious answer is to shitpost on a British imageboard.

http://britfa.gs/*/

>>13433255

Based Hitchens. Everything in the article is truth.

>>13433352
Real strange that the one society which wouldn't tolerate it at all somehow beat out the rest, eh?

>>13433154
What are ‘deano boxes’?

>>13433154
England looks so fucking depressing. I tend to enjoy cloudy skies, but your island seems to actively try to make its citizens have suicidal thoughts. Even on a bright day, it still looks wrong.

>>13433263

>>13433473
Pic related.

>>13433154
https://archive.org/stream/meinkampf035176mbp/meinkampf035176mbp_djvu.txt

Your country should have been teaching it in schools.

>>13433485
you're telling me that inner city Detroit/Chicago/Baltimore looks any better?

>>13433440
What society are you talking about? Because abortion is universal. It's either clandestine and danced around, such as for most of American history, or openly acknowledged under strict rules, such as in Islamic countries. In the middle ages, at least in England, it was common to permit abortions done before the quickening. Ireland stands out as an example in Europe of total abortion ban but it was a very fraught country until recently and had such lovely features as Magdelene laundries and what most reporters would call "honor killings", hardly the sterling example.
Total anti abortion rhetoric is relatively modern where it's politically viable in America or rightfully treated as a quack issue, such as in most of western Europe.

>>13433485
True, but there's something very comforting about the place being as depressing as it is. Admittedly the north tends to be more depressing than the south, with greyer skies and more rain and poverty, but there's a certain bleakness which you can't help but confront as a British person. I think it's what gives us our understated sense of humour, love of grim self-effacement, air of casual post-ironic superiority, and so on. Nowhere else in the world, as far as I can tell, will you find 400 men standing soaking wet under the sheet-metal roof of a fourth division football stadium on the other side of the country on a wet Tuesday night chanting about how shit their home town is, how shit their team is, and how shit they themselves are. As thick as these blokes tend to make themselves seem, there's a sense of self-awareness in the British people that you won't find many other places.

>>13433504
Given an endless row of these things or commieblocks I'm taking the commieblocks.

>>13433493
Best book in this thread. Maybe not as theory in general but specifically addressing the pressures and depressions of modern Britain.

>>13433213
>I can myself clearly remember standing on Portsmouth shore on the sultry August day in 1960 when the Royal Navy's last battleship, HMS Vanguard, was towed to the breaker's yard. The great 44,000-ton sea monster had been a relic when she was completed in 1946, too late for the war in which she was meant to fight. She had been built for a world that no longer existed, and had spent the last few years of her life as a hulk unable to move under her own power. Yet within her beautiful lines and enormous guns (dating from 1916 and rarely if ever fired) she was one of the most impressive and evocative sights of her times. It was typical of those times that, as she was dragged to her last resting place, she should have run aground on a mudbank. Nothing, it seemed, could go right for us any more.

>>13433542
>>13433493
Are either of you the Anon who recommended Fisher in the last thread? I've ordered his collected essays and looking forward to it.

Care to explain what you personally got from Fisher's writing, what novel theories he proposes etc?

>>13433529
No? I didn't mention any of those cities because I however depressing they are, that doesn't change my opinion on urban England. They even evoke different feelings in me; Detroit looks like a tornado went through the city and survivors are scraping by to just survive (although its suburbia does give me the same depressing feel as England), while England seems like a place that rather than being dead, is suffering a constant agonizing death. Seeing an old man decaying in a chair, breathing through a respirator and only able to consume liquids is more disturbing to me than an actual human carcass. Just my opinion; I don't mean to disrespect the people who live there; I harbor few feelings for them positive or negative.

>>13433550
Been a while since I read capitalist realism but I remember that he elucidated on the sensation of being overwhelmed and beset by distractions, he has a term in the book, hedonistic anhedonia, that reminded me of my time in school. Also, the neoliberal-esque change that has taken over popular culture where frank consumerism has taken over the anti-consumer rhetoric of the past. While it may have been hollow, it was still there, there was an alternative. That's ultimately what the book is about, the drying up of alternatives, and what psychological effect that has had on us and our employers, and the latter group has really run away with the concept.

>>13433535
I do admire your people's attitude, if anything, because of how interesting it is. I also find some comfort in urban decay; some of my favorite landscapes are abandoned urban areas, and while I drive around the country I love the sight of abandoned houses in full decay. Hell, I even like commie blocks because of that sense of bleakness which is still sort of cozy. I don't know why I'm biased against England, because it should check all my boxes on how I enjoy depressing human landscapes, but something about it makes me back off. Maybe I've just seen the wrong pictures; anyway, I do agree with you on your appreciation of these landscapes and it is good to meet someone who does so as well.

Is there a bigger cultural icon in modern day Britain than Ziggy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTKRTDZD40

>>13433538
Same. The commieblocks feels more honest about their intentions.

>>13433535
I'm not English and I've never been, so I don't know if this is a stereotype but I agree that I find the typical English realism a lot more palatable to my own country's insufferable American exceptionalism. That term is normally used for foreign policy but there's a pressure in America for your life to be exceptional and your attitude as well when in fact, maybe your town is shit, your prospects are shit, and it's not looking up. That frankness is very soothing.

>>13433564
Nice one, really looking forward to read it now.

>>13433578
It depends where you go in England / Britain, there's different types of bleakness. I'd recommend the movie Threads if you've not seen it already.

>>13433564
This is the political philosophy side of economics. Not necessarily that interesting to me, but I can see why a lot of you like it :3

Many of you are philosophers (not a good thing entirely)

>bleakness
So are all those images I've seen of English countryside just television fantasy? I've only ever seen it in pictures but they're some of the prettiest sights I've ever seen

>>13433604
I haven't; thanks for the recommendation.

>>13433617
I wish they still had some forests left. Sure, great plains can be beautiful, but I love me some trees.

>>13433593
I personally see America as very much a young country, and because of its relative youth added to its vast size there's a kind of gung-hoism about its culture and outlook that is both exciting but rather unedifying. It still seems, from an external perspective, to consist of a lot of LARPing, either in sense of attempting to reflect cultural personas or to mimic perceived behaviour indicative of old world elegance etc. Maybe that's a bit long winded and off the mark, but I feel that in terms of literature at least the average British young male writer, while possibly tempted to be highly experimental or whatever, still feels two thousand years worth of writers judging him and keeping him in line, so to speak. The American, meanwhile is still in a sense discovering or asserting his culture, which itself (unless localized) a blend of different identities. It's why Confederacy of Dunces is so hilarious: it an absurd case of someone who insists he is a member of old world aristocracy displaying in its fullness the kind of bombastic American culture which is world-leading in its newness and just laughable in its attempt at "oldness".

>>13433617
Problem is, no one lives out there. It is pretty when the weather is nice, even when it's not. But it's full of the English equivalent of Nebraskans and North Dakotans.

>>13433617
This is probably the south and probably during spring or summer. The north (and Wales, Scotland etc) has some cracking scenery and whatever, but only on sunny days which aren't really that common (which makes things all the nicer when the sun's out).

Quaint, Harry Potter-tier England is reserved for boomers and a minority of those who go to boarding school and then Oxbridge etc. But the countryside is on the whole very nice when the sun's out, skies are clear, etc. It feels very much like being in The Shire at its peak.

>>13433535
This

>>13433593
I'm American, but I lived in the UK until I was 11, so I feel like I understand both cultures and can comment about their differences.

In the US, there is this kind of all-pervading, totalitarian sense that everything should be happy and sparkly all the time, and if thing really aren't that way, it's a terrible crime and personal failure. I think this feeling comes from the fact that the vast majority of Americans, whether they are conscious of it or not, believe in a just world, meaning that all personal actions have a fair and moral consequence; this is why socialism is so loathed by a large segment of a population. Their is the belief that the poor or unfortunate essentially got what they deserved, or they 100% earned their lot or are responsible for it (pull yourself up by your bootstraps). The fact that the US has a protestant cultural background, and a strong pioneer heritage, merely reinforces this preexisting belief. While the UK historically shared the protestant workethic, I feel like traumatizing events in British history, like the two World Wars, and the loss of the Empire and the prestige that went with it, and the countries subsequent deindustrialization, have sobered the British to the cruelty of life, and sobered them in a way that American's have yet to experience.

So, while American's have a kind of oppressive optimism, I find British pessimism to be refreshing, intelligent, and unexpectedly, a source of deeply funny and dark humor, that is far more sophisticated that America's bland cultural pastiche of infantile gags. Ironically, the "British humor" most Americans get is Monty Python, and usually this appreciation is limited to the most stupid or slapstick of their productions (Holy Grail), while "Monty Python and The Meaning of Life" goes right over their heads.

>>13433154
I think that (you) need to write this book. You have a good outline...
Now to work, anon!

>>13433637
America is a cultural vacuum, essentially a blank slate. At best, it had the Anglo-Saxon tradition to fall back on, but this heritage became increasingly spread thin over the course of westward expansion, and diluted by wave after wave of non-anglo immigrants. What you are left with, is a cultural petri dish, a kind of cultureless slurry without any higher values other than the preservation of consumer-capitalism and materialism.

>>13433720
The downside to British stoicism and what-not is that exhaustion has long set into British culture, and we're now actively looking elsewhere for a sense of entertainment, community, etc. Islam is unironically the most potent force in British society now, and this is reflected in their birth rates, rapid growth, strong sense of community, etc.White British culture is pretty much over at this point and now only serves to pay penance for perceived historical crimes.

>>13433759
There are tons of writers who don't fall into that category though. Recently read Kent Haruf's books about the midwest prairie lands and life in the small towns there, it's real quaint and understated.

>>13433759
That's basically everyone's culture now though. Reactions vary, but everyone's country essentially encourages economic growth as the sole virtue.
The only hold outs are a handful of Muslim countries and the Chinese, who are at least a little more complicated thanks to the Byzantine nature of the Chinese Communist Party.

>>13433154

Anyone remember the millenium dome?
The millenium dome phenomenon: Crystal Palace for the new millenium

( See Marx, Benjamin on the world expositions of the 19th century coding capital as subjectivity)

The Dome as axial point of Y2K british constellation.

Nü Labour Tony Blair grooves :(architecturally deconstructionist white elephant projects breathless celebration of the city of London's highly finantioglobalised new tech economy),

(SEE, also Cedric Price's 1968 FUN PALACE, the theory of the interactive environment- 60s cybernetics and mcluhanism.)

calfornian technoutopianism and neolib think tank speak jargon slither into the collective unconscious of Britain, as deindustrialisation kicks off, instaurating a fully spectral economic reality, eastern block like total propaganda environment(complete with authentic soviet shoddiness).

The future of education(brought to you by TESCO)

Nick Land's desperate LARPing at CCRU Warwick.

go on a million pound spending spree and see how your money makes the world go round!

But why not chill out at REST?
This zone appears to be infinite dimensionless..

FAITH
in this zone you can explore the different spiritual meanings in a new age.

FIND OUT IF YOU WOULD STILL BE THE SAME PERSON IF YOU CHANGED YOUR SEX OR EVEN YOUR RACE?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CgmQJfDkYCA

>>13433871
Absolutely based.

>>13433871
Harry Potter as the necessary grubby and atavistic ideolgical counterimage to the endlessly cycling sequence of gleaming disposable futures. Britain was the birthplace of modernity liberalism industry etc. that is also how the UK became paradoxically the most archaic and medieval seeming nation in Europe. A Hogwartsian castle keep, part dungeon, part public school, the victorian disciplinary state on its death troes, implanting vague loyality to managerial and proffesional strata, against both reactionary nationalist fascism and the unrepresentable proletariat. neither voldemort nor the muggles. Universal orphandom, narcissism (chosen one motif), replacement of mummy and daddy by various especialled managerial instances, private or public, mass media, and the all encompasssing consumerplex. Smartphones are Magic Wands from the apple store at diagon alley channeling the animal drives of the narcissiced consumer subject, also portable NWO reptoid tracking tracking devices. This is why Harry Potter became Britain's most exportable cultural commodity since the Beatles.

>>13433871
great read if you want a psychogeographical riff on these very subjects

>>13433759
the dilution of american culture is primarily the fault of television and the centralization of the cold war security state. contrary to popular myth america was full of rollicking, vigorous, and variegated microcultures prior to the second world war

>>13433154
I've had more problems with chavs than I have 'pakis' and the upper class hurts me more than any 'paki' does, try being on benefits and the tories are in power, you are fucked at that point

>>13433720
>I'm American, but I lived in the UK until I was 11

youre british

>>13433871
one day i hope someone puts out a long nonfiction overview of 1997-2001, one of the weirdest fucking periods in human history

>>13433530
>>13433269
>>13433312

>>13433269
This isn't Reddit, abortion should be banned.

>>13433720
you are british you fucking tosser.

I bet you got an american accent in what.....5 seconds? Yuck

>>13434520
pretty good years
>>13434710
cringe

>>13434742

The Disappeared by Roger Scruton is a pretty good one

it could be you

>>13433154
Picrelated is a biography of a paki living in London. So I guess thats what you asked for

>>13435776
Stop shilling that faggot

>>13434366
Once Pakistanis (and all other collected Muslims) are the voting majority in this country you'll be WISHING your only problem was the Tories trying to take your benefits away.

bump

I constantly think about ending it all but one of the things that keep me going is wanting to see how bad things can really get, it's honestly thrilling

>>13435953
Why do you want to end your life?

>>13435975
Life is shit and i have no hope it will get better

>>13433154
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_(novel)

>>13436036
Nice one mate, thank you.

Deanoboxes are the more modern version of Chav council tower house estates.

Magaluf=Chav
Ibiza=Deano

>>13433154
I was kind of expecting fiction about this, not non-fiction as everyone has been giving. I only know Michel Houellebecq.

>>13433213
Hitchens is kind of stuck in the 60s, 70s, and 80s though, and he's getting notably crankier in recent years. Even though I like him, he is getting a bit out of date.

>>13433255
>>13433530
>>13433269
>>13433278
I'm going to ignore these posts and so should you if you don't want /lit/ to become even more stupid than it is.

>>13433727
This.

>>13435896
I wish muslims were actually taking over britain, a paki sharia caliphate whatever its drawbacks would represent a tremendous improvement over the absolute sorry state of the place.but duh the reel antisemites qnd the reel homophobes!

>>13436412
I wonder how a British Caliphate would be like and how they'd treat the natives. I hope, for the Brits' sake, that they were as benign as the moors that invaded the Iberian Penninsula; life wasn't too bad for non-Muslims back then. Worst case scenario, we get another Greco-Turkish War with all that entails.

>>13433529
Yes, far better in fact

>>13433233
>Implying an industrial society as described by Marx is any better
Read Uncle Ted

>>13433535
Why the fuck are you bongs using osb board as a fence?

>>13433154
We didn’t start the fire

>>13433530
>Because murder is universal. It's either clandestine and danced around, such as for most of American history, or openly acknowledged under strict rules, such as in Islamic countries.

>Ireland
Ireland isn't going to exist in a hundred years at the current rate. But hey, at least nuns aren't being mean to harlots and their bastards in charitable laundry facilities!

>>13437596
A great book.

>>13433154
The o9a david myatt mythos covers the intersection between the wacky adventures of far right lads, spooky rural paganism, a bit of the old ultraviolence, islamic terrorism, and britain's occult musickal underground.
>
The Yorkshire O9A nexion is run by Ryan Fleming, who went on to become a leading figure in National Action. He was also a prolific writer. Under the pseudonym A. A. Morian, Fleming has written several vampire/satanic books which have an international and youthful audience.

As a teenager in Horsforth, Fleming had a reputation for bullying others and a supreme confidence in his own looks, charm and personality. He liked to portray himself as a swashbuckling and debonair character and made a name for himself by often riding a horse bareback to the local pub or outside schools.

Among many of Fleming’s disturbing heroes and heroines, were the Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, which strangly made him popular with NA.

In 2011 Fleming was jailed for the sexual assault of a vulnerable young man who he imprisoned and tortured before forcing him to perform a sex act.NA refused to disown Fleming as it is thought Satanism played a part in the ‘White Jihad’ theory they and the American terror group Atomwaffen Division (AWD) was developing. Fleming’s books focus on hunting down people in rural settings and feeding on them.


https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2019/02/16/state-of-hate-2019-order-of-nine-angles/

>>13436257
I'm pretty sure none of those are actual words. Speak English why don't you

>>13438082

Magaluf is where the Chavs go on holiday; Ibiza is where the Deanos go.

>>13433255
>https://www.dailymail.co.uk

>>13438091
I think I have a notion of what a chav is. tf is a deano?
Also do chavs know they're chavs? Is it an insulting word to them?

>>13438111
https://metro.co.uk/2016/11/03/funeral-takes-place-for-chav-in-an-adidas-shoebox-coffin-6232479/

>>13433269
Holy fucking based

book of dave - will self

>>13437521
2027:

PARIS. MOSCOW. WASHINGTON. KUALA LUMPUR. TOKYO. BRUSSELS. HONG KONG. BERLIN. JAKARTA. NEW YORK. STOCKHOLM. ROME. SHANGHAI. CARACAS. COPENHAGEN. MEXICO CITY. AMSTERDAM. ATLANTA. GENEVA. MARSEILLES. LISBON. SEOUL. SINGAPORE. SAN DIEGO. NAPLES. BOSTON. ANTWERP. LONDON.

THE WORLD HAS COLLAPSED.
ONLY IRELAND SOLDIERS ON.

>>13438311

Why is there always a Big Dave in every Deano group?

Bump

>>13433233
>durr hurr alienation means existential isolation and ennui

bump

Deano society reminds me of naturalism a little.

>>13433720
Could you have articulated a more basic, 101 interpretation of Anglo-American cultural differences?

By the way , that sparkly veneer gave us noir, and American comedians are at the top of the game atm.

>>13434281
now this is podracing

>>13434520
Funnily enough, this has sort-of been done.

https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007134731/the-last-party-britpop-blair-and-the-demise-of-english-rock/

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/Other/bo27376675.html

>>13437214
The fire falls

Not /lit/ but: I, Daniel Blake.

>>13443930

It was interesting the way Loach was trying to mix Kafka and Dostoyevsky together but I really wasn't feeling it.

>>13443930
Shit movie. Absolutely cringe too. Spraypainting and closed-fist power salutes are the opposite of kino, not to mention the race traitor and her spawn. Billy Bragg-tier garbage.

Bump

>>13433304
I’m pro abortion. Don’t give me your holier than thou moralism when you really don’t give a shit.

>>13433759
This is a terrible take.

>>13444166
wow somebody’s an edgelord with no soul. When he dies at the end, that was fucking terrible. Can’t say i didn’t tear up.