/lit/ - Literature

>>13991119
Normal people don't even know what "the Canon" is when they are kids. Not even smart people and scholars. Kids wouldn't understand nor enjoy those books.

>>13991119
There’s really no point thinking about it, anon. You live now.

>>13991119
Just read the Wikipedia articles

>>13991172
I know a lot of people actually do this and it hurts me

>>13991137
Normal people die not knowing what "the Canon" is

>>13991119
Most people don't read the "canon" from an early age and those that dont usually enjoy it that much
Better to read it now with an understanding of what you're getting into and what your goals are

>>13991217
based. “Better well hanged than ill wed,” says the Bard, and better to read a few books well than many books poorly.

>>13991119
When you're that young you're probably too dumb to understand them anyway so just read them now.

>>13991119
Welcome to our 21st century. Most of us are in the same boat. Personally, I didn't get serious about reading until I was almost 26 (~2.5 years ago). While it is okay to lament the lost time a little, it's not something to tear yourself up about. My life has been immeasurably enriched by the experience, in spite of how insignificant my reading list may have seemed to historical personages.


I'm in a book club with many well-read 40-65 year olds and even they have huge and glaring gaps in their knowledge. Just do your part and read, and maybe some of what was lost in the calamity of two world wars will return to our civilisation.

>>13991172
>>13991188
Don't resort to rubbish like this. There's nothing worse than spouting some other fuckwit's opinion. It is disrespectful to the artists which have brought us these masterpieces to even countenance such an idea.

>>13991119
>Does anyone else struggle to cope with not having already read the canon from a somewhat early age?
All is vanity, who cares, embrace ataraxia.

>>13991119
I’ve had to reread all of the significant works I read before age 21 because I didn’t even understand how to properly go about reading them. It’s not a big deal, there’s plenty of time.

I didn’t read much of the canon during formative years, and I’m glad I didn’t. I feel like now that I’m out of grad school and have time and interest in literature again, I have to not only read large chunks of the canon but reread basically anything I touched before the past two years cause I was retarded. I feel bad for past acquaintances who read Moby Dick or Ulysses as high schoolers and definitely ultimately wasted their time

>>13991172
Yeah. Fuck listening to music, I just like skimming descriptions of it.

>>13991337
based rational poster

It's more worthwhile to fully understand and master a few classics that personally resonate with you, which you can return to throughout your whole life, than to consume boatloads of books just to up your literary street cred (unless you really want to be a scholar or something). The Canon exists to help you find those books that are worthwhile by putting humanity's accumulated wisdom into a list. Some people are content with spending their whole life studying one author.

Just accept that you won't be able to read everything out there and enjoy the journey.

This quote from Italo Calvino's essay Why Read The Classics really applies here

1) The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say: “I am rereading…” and never “I am reading….”

This at least happens among those who consider themselves “very well read.” It does not hold good for young people at the age when they first encounter the world, and the classics as a part of that world.

The reiterative prefix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of people ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reassure them, we need only observe that, however vast any person’s basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read.

Hands up, anyone who has read the whole of Herodotus and the whole of Thucydides! And Saint-Simon? And Cardinal de Retz? But even the great nineteenth-century cycles of novels are more often talked about than read. In France they begin to read Balzac in school, and judging by the number of copies in circulation, one may suppose that they go on reading him even after that, but if a Gallup poll were taken in Italy, I’m afraid that Balzac would come in practically last. Dickens fans in Italy form a tiny elite; as soon as its members meet, they begin to chatter about characters and episodes as if they were discussing people and things of their own acquaintance. Years ago, while teaching in America, Michel Butor got fed up with being asked about Emile Zola, whom he had never read, so he made up his mind to read the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle. He found it was completely different from what he had thought: a fabulous mythological and cosmogonical family tree, which he went on to describe in a wonderful essay.

>>13991119
Just be happy you read at all, it’s a godsend in itself

>>13991430
>I feel bad for past acquaintances who read Moby Dick or Ulysses as high schoolers and definitely ultimately wasted their time
kek. reading the final bosses of the canon during high school isn't wasting your time. Everything but reading the canon since an early age is a waste of time.

>>13991119

>Muricuck problems

Over here al the classics were mandatory reading in high school. Feels good being a EE patrician

Mandatory reading of the classics in a young age is basically indoctrination.

I am actually pretty glad i read them when i was already a formed person. Also a lot of them are bs, but most are simply out of depth for a high school student to understand or enjoy.

You can’t really appreciate the classics until you’re ready for them, which a youthful, inexperienced you may not have been, and thus it would have been wasted time.

Be thankful that you stumbled into them at the right time instead of remaining ignorant for the rest of your life or resenting great works because you were forced to read them.

>>13991749
>>13991751
While the /lit/ards cope, Victor Hugo said: "i will be chateaubriand or nothing" at the age of 16, rimbaud read Horace at the age of 15, and Borges read Don Quixote at the age of 9.

>>13991119
If you were borne 500 years before, you'd be a peasant serving a feudal lord with no prospect of improving your situation. The correct mindset is to be grateful that we have the opportunity to read the classics to gain deeper knowledge about ourselves and the world. I started to take literature seriously at 24, and It feels good to see the changes in my perspective about life in general just two years later.

The feeling of having a huge gap in your education is a good sign, the real issue is when you feel content or no feeling any necessity for knowledge and improve. Just keep reading at your own pace without vanity and desire to impress your peers. I highly recommend the Essay XXIV from the book I by Montaigne: Of Pedantisme. He describes perfectly how it doesn't matter how many books you read, how many philosophers you know, or how can you outline complex concepts; the difference between a well-read person and a wide-read person is how you comprehend and incorporate knowledge to your soul:

>"It is not enough to joyne learning and knowledge to the minde, it should be incorporated into it: it must not be inckled, but dyed with it; and if it change not and better her estate (which is imperfect) it were much better to leave it"

>>13991119
>Does anyone else struggle to cope with not having already read the canon from a somewhat early age?
Nah I was reading Lavoisier and Buffon at age 7. Went through the kiddies classics like Hugo & Dumas at age 8. The greeks from 11 to 14. Keep this in mind brainlets, there are people here more well read than you will ever be, even if you had ten lives.

>>13991137
Whatever helps you cope.

>>13991217
>>13991262
>>13991337
>>13991430
etc....
Wrong. Being dumb is one thing, limiting intelligence to your own mediocre achievements is another. This is peak pretentiousness, the most prevalent caracteristic of modernism. Swines do not know their place, which is the source of their own corruption and filth, ironically. A dumb person knowing his rank is infinitely more honorable than a pseud browsing /lit/.

>>13991781
Wrong. Those inclinded towards intellectual matters were always able to develop their intellect. In fact, modernism has completely ruined true intellectualism, true geniuses are lost, institutionalized "education" only exists to diminish one's intellect. Imagine thinking 'vulgarization' is a good thing, it's right there, under your nose, it's vulgar. I'll leave vulgarity and mediocrity to the masses.
>The feeling of having a huge gap in your education is a good sign
A good sign of being intellectually irrelevant, although I do not limit intelligence to mere erudition.

This place needs to be cleansed, and if it means getting rid of 95% of the posters then so be it. /lit/ was never the vanguard of intellectualism but the elitist attitude that used to be the norm has vanished. The fact that I'm an arrogant prick is irrelevant to this post. I will never be more pretentious than the masses.

>>13991906
uau sincerely this post is unbelievably based. i don't care about if its real. keep this great job

You wouldn’t have understood it anyway. Teenagers are too dumb to understand most of it

>>13991119
>thinking video games and the internet are inherently a waste of time (yet still being here on the internet)
>thinking reading books makes you smart
>actually wanting to participate in any sort of scholarly debate
Yikes

If you want to read the canon then read the fucking canon, you gain absolutely nothing by being sad over not having read the canon. Also, don't expect to turn into some kind of super-genious just because you read a bunch of books.

>>13991906
For somewhat who has read a lot you sure express yourself poorly.

>>13991119
goes for everything, sex, music, math, literature, sports, ...

>>13991906
Shameless self aggrandizement is one of the most telling signs of midwittery

>>13991771
None of us are Hugo or Borges.

>>13991119
The cannon is a meme, dude. Stop feeling bad about it. No one in history ever read the entirety of the canon. It's just a general guide.

>>13991906
low IQ stylometry. this post would be a great argument against reading the classics if even a fraction of your claims are true.

>>13992051
I am, and I didn't even need to read the classics when young. I spent my time playing video games and hanging out with friends and only started osmosing books when my mind matured. Now I breathe books like air. I think in 5 to 10 years I'll write a contemporary classic.

>>13991119
I'll make a conservative estimate that you spend an average of like 2 hours a day wasting time on the internet. I don't know your reading speed, but it probably wouldn't take you long to get to a speed of at least a page a minute. At a page a minute a 400 page book is a little more than 6 hours of reading.

You could read a sizable chunk of "the canon" in a year if you actually cared.

>>13991119
Best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Second best time is now.

>>13991771
Borges had a based library gifted by his father
I don't have a single book, only read epubs and pdf.

>>13991119
You didn't develop an interest in the cannon until later on, because your mind wasn't advanced enough to understand it at that age in the first place. You're committing a teleological fallacy thinking this way.

>>13992209
canon*

Leave. Now.

>>13991119
You now have knowledge of the video game canon which is just as valid.

>>13992033
>>13992061
Here I am talking to you in my 3rd language. You couldn't be bothered to count to 10 in spanish. Uno! Dos! Tres! Hahahaha. Just shut your mouth after you've rinsed it with acid. Stylometry is unecessary to me as I have an impeccable sense of aesthetics and I need not open my mouth nor use my quill for inferior subjects to immediatly apprehend my splendor. But then again, as your limited horizon prohibits you from visualizing something you do not possess; all of this is wasted on you.

>>13992045
Hahahahaha, this is exactly what I was talking about.
>self aggrandizement
Excuse me? I have just stated my experience. If you are hurt because someone has had a twenty year headstart reading the canon then you are a dumb prole. None of what I said is aggrandizing in any way, I even kept it brief because the rest would have certainly seems nigh impossible for such a confined spirit.

>>13992209
/thread, but without the unnecessary use of teleological

>>13992460
hindsight bias* that better? I guess you could use teleological, although it's usually applied when talking about intelligent design, the existence of an almighty being, general determinism etc.

>>13992446
stop

>>13991119
whats the canon?

>>13993637
White man's greatest weapon against women and poc undergrads ever conceived...

>>13991906
Doi doi im a retard.

>>13991119
The Chad Kantian vs the Virgin Porn Addict.

>>13993665
I can't BELIEVE how hard you just owned him!!

>>13993637
>newfags aren't even aware of what the Western Canon is

I find it odd to think that all the people who reiterate the "you'd have been to young then" line (which I agree with btw.) are probably 23

>>13991119
You were never as full of knowledge as you are now. The fact that you are applying yourself now is genuinely all that matters. It is not certain that learning such a thing early on would have meant you would inherently understand it better.
A simple example, for instance, is people who grow up in devoutly religious homes. They may be immersed in religious teachings and literature on, reject it later, and come to resent whatever that specific religion represents to them. An adult not raised in that religion may choose to learn about it as an adult, or even convert to it, and understand it more fundamentally and intuitively than the child ever did.
It doesn't have to be literal "children" either. People think and develop differently in the "formation years," as you labelled it. This does not make their understand or grasp of those concepts any inherently deeper than yours.
People in their formation years are generally fucking stupid. There is no such thing a the untainted wisdom of youth.

>>13991119
Reading is not a checklist or a race, especially if you're not in academia. Neither is it a tool to make yourself smarter, as you imply; is a state one lives in. Formative years are those in which you form yourself - it is only fear and laziness that say you can do that only within some specific time span.
There is nothing to cope with. You have books, go read them.
>it will probably take me a decade before I feel truly qualified to participate in any sort of scholarly debate.
Speaking as someone studying lit: debates are worthless, and they only exist on /lit/ and among more aggressive personalities in academia. A debate requires wide knowledge of the field, obviously, you can't attain that quickly. That's why you shouldn't even care about debates but about dialogue and mutual education rather than beating somebody else with arguments.
I repeat - this is not a race. Even Harold Bloom regretted not reading some books, I'm sure.

>>13991119
this image forced me to enter this thread, because it encapsulates how I feel about literature a lot of the time. Whenever I find myself in a position of leisure or "childish" activity I feel a dull but ever-present shame for not spending that time instead tackling some intellectual pursuit - not for the sake of my own desire to advance myself in those disciplines, but for the sake of my ego. Despite my protestations, I deeply feel that the outward appearance of being engrossed in an imposing book, and desiring that I and others think of me and my identity in that context, is what has led me into much of my knowledge and efforts in literature.
It reminds me of a short story by Thomas Mann, in which a young man is isolated from his peers and develops a passion and eventually a career and identity in literature, but discovers it to be empty, an escape, when the woman he desires fails to be impressed by him, with his peers successful, passionate, or in the worst case, simply kinder, and he a boob who cannot bear to be outside, or around other people. In his anguish he realizes that he had never wanted the life of a man of letters, but he had imagined that his thorough knowledge and immersion in literature would unlock some door that had barred him from human connection since his childhood, he would be eventually be accepted and recognized by his peers as his talent increased; but as he sunk into his reading chair he was forced to accept that he had been using the talent of others without developing any of his own. He could write, but what had he to say? He could critique, but what had he but bitterness left to offer? In forsaking the frivolous acts of dancing, sport, politics, humor, popular culture, games, he was also forsaking the humans around him, who had no interest in engaging with this so-called expert merely because of his expertise in one arena.
Consumption of media is merely that, unless you set yourself to engaging with it, or to interact with others who have consumed and wrestled with it. I am always struggling with whether or not a desire I have is genuine, whether I seek only to have completed it, or whether I really do benefit as a whole from the process in-between purchasing a book and letting on to others that I've read it

>>13994226
Hey dude im not sure if you'll see this but apparently Harold bloom just passed away.

>>13992460
Based
Also t. Pic related

>>13994395
That's my point.

I suppose it's easy to feel insecure when you hear of children who were reading the classics in Greek at age 12 and so on but I'm usually just grateful that I read at all when I was young. Most of it was age-appropriate, Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket and that sort of thing but it makes you feel a hell of a lot luckier when you imagine that there were kids your age who hated reading and likely have never read a book in their entire life.