/lit/ - Literature

>>14719094
"your friend's"

I would have read it if you hadn't been so presumptuous as to self-identify with DFW.

Sorry pops

>>14719094
>spaces around em-dash

>>14719094
Sorry, I can't read 276 pages on a whim.

>>14719101
But he’s relevant in relation to the analysis that follows. I would’ve put up related but it’s a literature board, fag. At the very least, I’m sure DFW stans would be interested.

>>14719124
> literature board
> I’m not reading anything

Ok. I mean, your loss. For real.

>>14719125
What is a stan?

>>14719134
What brainlet /mu/tards call fans. You can tell this kid is a retard.

>>14719094
where can i find the The Checkhardt Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

>>14719167
It’s a trick. Read more.

>>14719094
Its clever and interesting in places, but the prose is bland (no doubt somewhat intentionaly; no doubt the stage off the hysterical realism critique) to the extent that the thing reads like what it is: a rather tedious academic excercise. As an essay for a limited, localised audience of faculty and friends, it's quite good. As a standalone piece of literature for a wider public, let alone the ages... no.

Should've engaged with Adorno, if anything, and realised a radical critique requires a radical aesthetic. (A bunch of paragraphs with 'indifferent hipster' titles interspersing one another doesn't make for a radical aesthetic.) He could have at least evoked Nabokov's prose since he was riffing on Pale Fire anyway

>>14719094
Published 2015. What is this genius doing now?

>>14719220
"No doubt to stave off the hysterical..."*

I'm enjoying this, strangely enough.
No epub is kinda gay though

>>14719220
Ok. I don’t really know anything about writing, I just thought it was really clever how as a reader you get a sense the narrator is being evasive and full of shit so a) you identify that that, then b) you piece the story together for yourself and make your own conclusions.

But yes, he’s written it obviously to correlate with a specific analysis, and yes, he’s very clever so any way he’s approached it, prose-wise or otherwise, it’ll have been deliberate.

We don’t talk anymore. I just felt like showing it to other people. It really impressed me.

>>14719227
It was embargoed for a long time. I have no idea. I hope he’s happy, anyway.

>>14719246
I dont hate it. I think it's quite successful in context and it's no doubt of interest to like-minded people here.

>>14719229
Good. I didn’t find the novel part hard to read. It’s pretty immersive so I just gorged it in a day. Felt very satiated after.

>>14719270
Well I appreciate your obviously better understanding of these things. Thanks, man.

>>14719220
Agreed
>>14719246
All narrators possess a degree of this detachment. It is clear the writer is aware of this and maybe even fabricating more. It's off putting. It's like watching a master deliberately work with a lesser medium to absolve themselves of criticism. All it is accomplishing is shying away from something sorely missed and hard to find in literature; sincerity. He's hiding. But hiding itself is not an interesting topic to explore or expound upon. It's mistaking the trapping for the essence. Hiding has no meaningful essence, only obscured origins.

>>14719220
Oh, one other thing I’ll say is I wholeheartedly agree with him in the analysis regarding what makes comedy effective. I don’t know who James Wood is, but he strikes me as a total cock. Clearly, when Basil Fawlty attacked his car with a branch of a tree (possibly the greatest comedic moment in history), you don’t laugh because you feel superior to him - you laugh because you can relate to the absurdity of what he’s going through and the futility of trying to do anything meaningful in this shitstain life.

So yeah, I thought that was brilliant and thoughtful and very astute.

>>14719340
I agree with you. It is evasive and for all he’s very clever, it’s frustrating. I don’t know enough about literature though like I say, so I can’t comment on it technically. I think there are hints of a great compassion, though. The narrator seems to debase himself deliberately; as though he is well aware of the injuries he’s inflicted but instead of atoning for them, he gives himself what he thinks he deserves as a punishment - lovelessness, humiliation, and the realisation he’s largely irrelevant; he’s a nobody who deserves no recognition at all, even from the reader who has to piece the story together for themselves. That’s what I got from him anyway. The way he introduces the character ‘Grace’ was the biggest giveaway for me. She’s not a person, she’s the redemption he deserves.

I mean, I loved it. I hope he has the courage to write it better for the rest of us.

>>14719094
And in case it hives while I sleep:

Work: The Gospel of Something or Other.

Institution: University of Glasgow

Author: Paul Joseph Abbott.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=85rr5SqrCZI

>>14719246
Don't know the circumstances of your friendship, but you should tell him you not only read his thesis, but were impressed by it. I'm sure you think this sounds weird but I'm sure he'd appreciate it, there's no real downside

>>14719823
I'm pretty sure OP is the author himself.

>>14719823
We don’t talk anymore.

>>14719832
Nope. But I am in the story. He made only one mistake: you wouldn’t eat a sosatie at a rugby game, and my father was a fan of Province.

>>14719342
Jimmy Woods is based

>>14720257
I’m amused that if you googled James Wood, the algorithm would give you him instead. I bet it fucks him right off.

ayy my friend got their masters at glasgow

they let pretty much anybody in

>>14720303
But they didn’t let you in, so there’s also that.

>>14720495
never applied

I cant stand ppl being clever, makes me feel bad :(

>>14720520
Who is this? He also looks like a cock.

>>14719863
so did he kill the kid or no?

>>14721185
Honestly, I don’t actually know. There are a few things he mentions that he’d told me about previously so I caught on pretty early on that the narrator is lying, but you know, I can’t honestly tell you that he wasn’t lying to me all along, either. I don’t actually know very much about him at all. It’s pretty amazing. Who knows.

>>14719126
>http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7328/
even being generous and saying you can average 1 page per minute this is still more than 4 hours.

>>14721386
the first 230-odd pages are a novel
the final section is a short essay on dfw and james wood

>>14721386
It’s two parts - the novel took me about 9 hours clear, and that was really relishing it. You don’t have to read the analysis at all. It’s clearly marked so it wouldn’t be, in any way, difficult to avoid.

Or don’t read any of it. It’s your life. Little be it for me to suggest people read something original and that feels like getting slow head for nine delicious hours, but up to you yo.

>>14721441
>me
hmm

>>14721449
You’re right. It could’ve been longer, actually. Downloaded about nine in the morning. Read until two, work, then dinner, dog. Back to read at eight until about eleven. Then sleep, and finished this morning about nine. So, what... about 10 hours? Felt a very short amount of time anyway.

>>14719094
he looks like the guy from How I met Your Mother which is objectively better than Friends.

>>14719094
Your "friend" is a bloviating retard. Who the fuck starts a PhD thesis like this:

>If I’m reading Freud correctly, there’s a problem with having too many television channels. Maybe you disagree, but I think the period of four terrestrial choices was a high point in recent history. We were mostly on the same page in those days.

Your "friend" is everything that is wrong with academia at the moment. Learn to code or end up at Starbucks.

>>14721506
If you read further, you’ll see he discusses the various opening options he had. Seems to me - and I know fuck all about writing - he’s deliberately begun with the exact opposite of some big show-pony killer opener precisely to make the point (and he DOES discuss this later) that the narrator doesn’t (intentionally) actually have much of an interesting story to tell.

Or, you know, maybe he did it purely to wind up shrill predictability-loving faggots like you. Could be. I guess you’ll never really know, huh?

>doing phd
>can't figure out how to use typeset a document

holy shit microsoft word default theme settings

>This thesis is comprised of two components
>comprised of
>English literature doctorate
>comprised of

>>14722840
I don’t really get it. Like you did a whole little bitch .png and all. What’s the problem?

>>14722869
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprised_of

Unless the guy was using "comprised of" to make a point, I think anyone studying English would avoid the phrase entirely.

>>14720520
This but unironically.

>>14722893
So, let me get this straight: you posted up some herp .png, green-texted like a fucking newb thinking you were making a ‘point’, and then, when asked to explain, posted a WIKI entry that doesn’t even support your ‘point’ at all.

In other words - you just made a total tit of yourself. 10/10 would play again, etc.

>>14722921
Overt defenses of "comprised of" are uncommon, but Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker considers its deprecation to be one of "a few fuss-budget decrees you can safely ignore"

pinker supports it, that's all you should need to know

>>14722830
I dunno, man. I get the feeling, seeing as it’s been uploaded to a specific format platform to do with this institution, that he may have had shit all control over the ultimate formatting anyway. That’s just my feeling but you go ahead and hit me up with any specifically relevant information you may have otherwise.

Besides, the formatting seems fine to me so I’m failing to understand the issue, but ok. You don’t like the formatting. Definitely something worth taking into serious consideration when judging the work overall.

>>14722938
> Harvard
> Glasgow
You see your problem, right?

Man this thread really reminds me what pseuds are on this board. They're literally falling for every obvious filter in the book.
I honestly thought it was the most original piece I've read in a long time. So refreshing a read.
I love how much it BTFOs smoke & mirrors authors.

>>14722921
>>14722938
>I'm going to listen to a guy who is known for being an extreme descriptivist linguist, one that thinks that ebonics is just as acceptable as standard English, and ignore all other style manuals and dictionaries
Pinked is pure midwit.

>>14721506
It was this opening line that made me keep going despite it being a pdf and despite having half a migraine. I ended up reading the whole thing.
You're the retarded one, sorry.

Are people seriously complaining about the length? It's a fucking novella for christ's sake, written in most part with simple language.
The midwittery of this board astounds me.

>>14722993
Wow. I’m stoked you think so, man. My hope is this thread will somehow cache somewhere and he’ll come across it some day, and see what the mighty 4chan had to say. So yeah, excellent. Like I say, I know fuck all about writing, and he means a lot to me anyway so I’m already biased, but I was genuinely captivated by it. I’m reading it again, and I’m getting all the little nuances I missed the first time round and yeah... I think it’s amazing. Anyway, thanks!

I hope you’re well, Paul, wherever you are. I hope your days are full of rain.

>>14723016
>Like I say, I know fuck all about writing, and he means a lot to me anyway so I’m already biased
This has got to be a woman. Are you Paul's girlfriend?

>>14722997
I don’t even know that he’d have been responsible for the abstract, anyway. Maybe there’s some bod who does it and uses the same language whatever the author sends them. Who knows. I just don’t see the issue. It’s either “comprised of” or it’s “comprises”, but, really, who fucking cares. His prose is so beautiful for the ‘Grace’ portion that I actually felt like I was watching a film. But nope: let’s all get picky over some abstract that isn’t even in the actual work itself, anyway. Pfft.

>>14723032
No, dope. Read the thread. I don’t actually know him at all.

>>14723047
These guys are just inventing excuses because they're too lazy to read it.
It's just like every other thread.
Quite frankly it's fucking pathetic

>>14723047
>>14723087
Jesus Christ I'm the one who posted the reaction image and it was just a flippant shitty joke and you're taking it this seriously holy shit first day on 4chan or what? I actually liked what I have read of the thesis.

>>14723056
>My hope is this thread will somehow cache somewhere and he’ll come across it some day, and see what the mighty 4chan had to say. So yeah, excellent. Like I say, I know fuck all about writing, and he means a lot to me anyway so I’m already biased
what did he mean by this

I didn't like the ending; I felt like it ripped off evangelion

>>14723093
No I'm just sick of the constant bitching on this board about things being 'too hard'.

>>14723087
Well, it’s 4chan. 90% shitposting and lol, 10% input from the above-average intelligent. As expected, and I’m just delighted at least one other person read it and confirmed my thoughts on it without all my baggage. Feels good, man.

>>14723093
Ok, that’s fine. As long as you are actually reading it, that’s all that matters. I agree that “comprised of” seems clunky, but I feel this may be part of an overall pogrom I have launched against ‘of’ generally, and its sad and miserable, borderline sadistic, tethering by ‘could’. I don’t actually know. I’m pretty sure he didn’t write the abstract anyway. He’s very meticulous when it comes to language.

>>14723135
Whats with you and this guy? On one post you say you hardly know him and in the next it sounds like you cucked him and regret it

>>14723151
I don’t know him. We talked online for about five years, then I bailed. That’s pretty much it.

>>14723168

>>14723168
What did you talk about? What was the nature of your relationship? Why did you bail? Stop being vague

>>14723168
This makes me sad. I had many internet friends who "bailed" and I feel like a part of my family has died.

OP is a literal fag

>>14723176
Everything. I would write him really long PMs, then later emails. I just liked talking to him. He’s really fucking clever, and so cool and so thoughtful - so I suppose I felt quite privileged that he even opened them at all. I never honestly thought he read them (which is why I’d just blather out all my thoughts and feelings about my thoughts and feelings and blah blah) but now I read this and I think he did all along. He was always reading and listening. So yeah, I don’t know what else to say. I just hope he’s still out there and he’s ok.

>>14723183
I have a really low opinion of myself, I suppose. I suppose I always thought that if I went it wouldn’t matter at all.

>>14723174
Innit.

>>14723224
There is something very weird about the way you talk about him and your relationship with him, but i just cant quite put my finger on it.

>>14723237
"sounds like a girl or fag"

>>14723237
Is there? It’s a straightforward internet bullshit story. Two people talk loads to each other and feels develop then the feels-developer fucks off. Pretty standard. You should’ve been round usenet, man. You’d have been able to fill your this-feels-weird-to-me boots to the brim, believe me.

>>14723251
>You’d have been able to fill your this-feels-weird-to-me boots to the brim, believe me.
go on....

>>14723256
Well, all I can really tell you, newb, is we had a gold standard rule: if you start talking to someone and you dig them then you meet up fast. No fucking around. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is you’re being played. But life is complicated. Sometimes you think “ok, this is just someone I’m talking to, it’s not a biggie, I’m not a baby, I can cope”. But then, one day, I suppose I couldn’t cope anymore and I an heroed in the literary sense. That’s why, if you read very closely, he’s actually laughing at ‘Emily’s’ melodramatics. Her big exit, with a tongue-in-cheek hagiography and all. Like I say: he’s a genius.

>>14723251
Its like you are pretending to be a human being with human feelings and human relationships

>>14723275
No; I just don’t think I matter. That’s all there is.

>>14719094
Thread will probably be gone by the time I finish reading it

>>14723298
I’m shepherding, and it’s about a 9 hour read max so I doubt it.

I'm more interested in the relationship between OP and the author at this point.

>>14723272
couldn't cope with what? the distance?

>>14723404
I don’t know. My feelings, I suppose.

I should be sage-ing, sorry.

>>14721386
>reeee my time is so precious
kill yourself turbopleb

This is the weirdest fucking thread and I can't really understand why
OP sounds like the real life embodiment of someone who would have little baby tampon boy thoughts about this guy

>OP posts his friend's literary work which is a story about the narrator being evasive
>thread becomes discussion of the OP being evasive about the relationship with his friend

>>14723486
life imitates art, brainletwojak

>>14723476
Hamster goo goo, so kawaii ^_^

>>14723476
>>14723486
Seriously, read the thread. I fucking hate repeating myself.

>>14719094
Your friend can't write for shit. Fucking word salad and a complete misunderstanding of grammar marks.

>>14723764
>0 examples
Another uninspired cynic who read less than three pages of the work, I presume?

>>14723786
I didn't even download the file. The abstract is written by a possibly retarded person.

>>14723799
>quite literally judging by cover
Your loss.

>>14723801
I feel like the actual loss would be investing any more time into such a fruitless enterprise. I even feel guilty typing out this reply. Enjoy your like two downloads a month for an analysis nobody asked for or cared about I guess.

>>14723814
I'm not the author, nor am I the OP, I just think you are an ass.
We do agree on one point though--that your reply was a waste of time.
I'm sure your precious seconds would have been better off curing cancer or whatever it is you do with the tweezers in your desk drawer when not online complaining about the abstract to a manuscript you never read.

>>14723830
Cry like a baby, you pathetic faggot.

>>14723844
How eloquently put. I'm sure you're just a terrific writer.

>>14723786
>0 examples
?
The author uses regular dashes in the abstract instead of em. It's a sign of things to come.

>>14723857
Appealing to eloquence is the calling card of homosexuals who lack visceral craft. We can be sure you've never even gotten out of first draft hell, let along sold a book.

>>14723871
With leaps like that I feel you are squandering a fruitful career in track & field by being a writer.

>>14723888
Oh, what have you written?

>>14723894
Just a small thing about bringing dinosaurs back to life using genetic engineering. You've probably never heard of it; I wrote it back in the 90s...

>>14723911
Nobody has heard of it, but good chat.

>>14723920

>>14719094
read the 1st page and I liked enough and what he said clicked I'm going to save it and read it in full later hopefully.

>>14723911
because the homosexual and the talentless never succeed in hollywood, am i right

>>14719094
I’m stealing it

>>14724048
Ok, cool. Report back with your thoughts if you can.

>>14723814
> muh precious time
And yet here you are, constantly flouncing back with your limp-wristed fruity replies. I lol’d.

>>14721506
Jesus. This has to be a troll. I’m at a loss as to what it is dimwits like you are doing on this board. Even the damn abstract makes it clear the novel is about author identity and how narrative failure can be used creatively.

The opening paragraph is smack down perfect in this context. It tells the reader the person telling the story may not actually know what they’re doing and then it craftily drags the reader into his “chatty” kind of musing style as it starts moving on. The reader starts to get comfortable and entertained and stops trying to look for what they’re used to as narration. They go along for the ride of what preoccupies an author, how they pick a character, flesh them out. Underneath that, using things like notes and what have you he’s telling an actual story, partly to do with the characters but also touching on broader themes of trust and reliability, not just as an author but even saying the reader should exercise caution when believing the characters.

I have to agree with OP and others. It’s very original and masterful. Guy knows his shit. It has a vague sense of maybe Foster Wallace but also Paul Auster’s New York trilogy. I’m about two thirds though and I haven’t been able to put it down.

Quit being a lazy faggot.

>>14723764
Another total asshole. You faggots have to be the Christcuck crew or the shitty 12 year old “philosophreee” edgelords that shit up the board constantly. No other explanation.

>>14723860
I don’t frequent this board much, admittedly, but this is just retarded. Why the fuck would he be in control of the university’s typesetting for their website? Genuine question. Oh, and why would an _unpublished_ work be set out as though it had been galley-set at Random House or whatever? Another one for you. I’ll wait.

>>14725428
> The reader starts to get comfortable and entertained and stops trying to look for what they’re used to as narration
100%. It’s not even inefficient as such, or try-hard. My overwhelming first impression was of someone actually not giving a shit, and just fine to have a reader’s attention at all before he then decides later to manipulate it. Maybe, anyway. The narrator, not the author (which is actually a much harder distinction to make as a reader I now realise). Reading it again more slowly and closely, he gives away loads of hints of narrative subterfuge, too, but so subtly - for instance, he runs through a range of words to describe ‘Emily’s’ suicide, one of which could be ‘gesture’: i.e. she didn’t commit suicide at all (given that ‘gesture’ is relatively innocuous an action). Anyway, I’m rambling but there are more. For anyone who is or has read it, I strongly suggest a second go because there’s even more glinting through all the gaps and pretended clumsiness. What a guy.

OP now is the time to come clean, you're freaking me out
What have you done to the guy?

>>14725848
In fact even the abstract sort of gives away some of this, the way he talks about everyone sharing common knowledge during the period of UK television with only four channels--I'm pretty sure he's making a hidden reference to 18th/19th century works like Tolstoy/Austen whereby there was a common knowledge pool that people treated as 'fact'.

And the narrator/author distinction thing is Flaubertian for sure.

>>14725872
OP is Emily

>>14725876
Oh wow. I wouldn’t ever know about something like that, but that’s so interesting. And yeah, that is _exactly_ the kind of thing he’d reference. He reads fucking shitloads. I remember him talking on our forum years ago to some other guy about his reading piles - one for the day, one for the night if I remember. Most of what I’d talk about with him was books. That’s how we started talking. He recommended ‘Portrait of the Artist’ to me, and I wrote back some long dirge-fest about it thinking he’d think I was a nut, but no he replied back and seemed genuinely interested in what I thought. Made my heart soar. I actually landed up going to uni because of him, I suppose both directly and indirectly - graduated last year. I guess he gave me confidence maybe.

But yeah, that’s such a great and interesting spot, thank you. I’m reading the bit where he’s walking after the ‘suicide’, and this is the one bit struggled with previously. It’s so overtly descriptive and never seems to go anywhere, but looking more closely, I think he’s making a point about description (maybe?), or the usual narrative approach which seems to be alluded to like that voice at the drive-thru in that Whitecastle film. The woman: “and then?... and thennn?... aand thennnnn?”. You know? Like, it’s so fucking tedious. He’s settled on Bill, now he has to “walk” him into a story but following the usual structure, it’s just so essentially dull. So yeah, I think he goes overboard with this to make that point. Maybe it’s narrative structure or whatever - I don’t know what this stuff is called but I think that’s what he’s doing in that portion. The later description of ‘Grace’ really bring the juxtaposition into focus, too.

Sorry. I went on there.

>>14725986
You're that UTV stalker from that godforsaken /sp/ general aren't you
You talk exactly like him

>>14726024
No. But I will stalk you if you give me money, princess.

>>14725986
Yes, yes! That part specifically, I took it to be a flaneur parody, the 'master watcher' that is at the crux of modern realism. Again it comes from Flaubert and has been heavily used and abused ever since. Like the book is obviously written for writers but it doesn't come off as pretentious at all, while still calling into question (it seems to me) all those tropes.

I totally get what you mean about writing huge meandering passages about something you're passionate about--another thing I miss about usenet, since here (or anywhere really) you run into the barrier of cool irony that rejects such sentimentality.

I'm pretty sure the scene you referenced is actually from "Dude, Where's My Car?"

Congratulations on graduating. Do you write?

>>14726058
> flaneur parody, the 'master watcher' that is at the crux of modern realism. Again it comes from Flaubert and has been heavily used and abused ever since
God. See, this is why whenever books come up at all, I just want to talk to him so badly (or anything, really). I don’t know anything about this so I’m going to have to google it now. Thank you again :)

And yes, absolutely. He isn’t at all pretentious. He never criticised me, never made me feel like shit, never tried to exploit me, nothing. He’d give me a book to read, I’d read it, then write back with endless blah and, yeah, I guess he must’ve read it all. I think that experience of writing to him honed my essay skills. Not formally, or deliberately, but I did law at UCL and needed to do the LNAT. Which is like an aptitude thing everyone freaks the fuck out about. Anyway, I got a really high score on that - which is again down to him because he seemed to encourage me to read very closely (never obviously, though; I never once got a feeling of being instructed or what have you by him). So yeah, I think that definitely helped with that test. Reading judgments, too. Oh, and yeah anyway, part of the LNAT is you have to write an essay for a question they give you. Mine was “to what extent should morality be a factor in the law”. Anyway, I wrote (seriously it was fucking amazing) this essay and in the little cubicle I was in, i just approached it like I was writing to him. And so I got a place because of that, and I genuinely don’t think I would’ve without my experience of talking to him, and I suppose always wanting to impress him (although I doubt I did much).

But yeah, you’re right. For someone as gifted as he is, he’s the most remarkably down to earth, easygoing person I’ve ever known. Absolute legend of a man. I agree with you totally about that “cool irony” crap. I see he talks about DFW in the analysis part and challenging these Updike/Roth type voices. These sneering, lofty men. And I think he’s very careful about that. I think it shows here but that was definitely my experience talking to him as well.

>>14726058
Oh sorry, and yes! You’re right - ‘Dude, where’s my car’. Strange that. I don’t think I’ve seen that film for over a decade but that woman’s voice came into my head out of nowhere when thinking about that portion: “and then..?, andddd... then?”. Hah. Quite funny.

Yes, I read the analysis about Updike. I never made the connection between his standoffishness and the reason his work doesn't do it for me--the answer is going back to the author vs narrator divide. Since he puts himself on a pedestal it ultimately separates him from the characters (he's basically the antithesis of DFW) and so he ends up injecting his voice into parts where it should be the narrator's voice and it looks out of place and wrong.
Again Flaubert already 'solved' this long before. That's not to say I believe there can only be one way of writing, and I have been put off from modern realism myself. But when you look at DFW you see that he really evolved the field, by making it all about the characters. That was a natural step forward. Whereas Updike is a real lateral move at best.
He's showing off, basically.

Anyway, many such epiphanies were to be had by this work of your friend's.

>>14726229
I don’t think Paul ever recommended Updike to me. I vaguely recall buying something (rabbit something?), and telling him but he didn’t seem interested in what I thought about it all, so I binned it. Roth, yeah. Sabbaths theatre I think. I liked the story and from what I remember, the narrator seems a bit more self-effacing but again, this kind of sneery attitude towards women especially crops up every now and again. I was interested in the analysis on this, actually - that DFW had an issue with this and wanting to develop a kind of ‘ideal’ (coached?) reader as an antidote, but also that it’s possibly just a reflection on the context of the time they were in. I’m sorry I don’t know more about this, really. I got, broadly, most of the analysis but it was very engaging and dialectic and I feel there’s loads I’ve missed. But ok, there we go, I guess.

You're fucking weird, Emily

>>14726346
I don’t think I am, actually. I mean, there are bits of me there, but a lot aren’t me at all. Probably a composite. I hope so, anyway. She’s a bit pathetic. Kind of hallowed but in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way; like she’s full of shit basically. So yeah, I hope not.

>>14719832
/thread

This thread's still up? The writing is terrible and the OP trying to split himself into four or so separate people pretending to like this drivel is a more entertaining narrative than the piece itself.

>>14725801
>_unpublished_

>>14727330
You seem so bitter, man. I guess it’s true and that it must actually hurt when you come across someone truly kissed by the gods. I mean, I actually do feel truly bad for you. Enjoy your shitposting.

>>14727620
>30 posters
Don't you feel a little pathetic shilling than praising your own work?

>>14727761
Hah. No, not all. I’d literally prostitute myself for him. What now?

This thread is the peak of pseudery. Reference, reference, reference, do you have a single original thought? The curve has not been kind to academia.

>>14727868
It’s a thesis for a PhD, dope. He’s had to write it according to those specific requirements.

>>14719832
>>14719863
>>14723032
>>14723056
>>14723135
>>14723151
>>14723168
>>14723228
>>14723237
>>14725872
>>14726346
>>14726405
>>14727784

Is this real? Not real? Huh

>>14719393
> I hope he has the courage to write it better for the rest of us.

Retracting this. Reading it again, it’s clearly perfect. Fuck the lazy arseholes who can’t be bothered. I find It extraordinary that it can work on a level even for idiots like them to misunderstand but still think they ‘got it’. Obviously deliberate, too.

>>14728080
Wat?

>>14728091
Is this thread a sort of meta-extension of his thesis? There is for lack of a better explanation, a slyness about this thread. Others have noticed, and You are playing, toying with your own words, quite unreliably?

Happy V day
Now dilate.

there's something really gross about trying to be this clever. dfw never would have performed this meta garbage. this shit is done and over with. and im talking about this whole thread. it's obvious what you're doing bud.

>>14728132
really really gross

>>14723476
>little baby tampon boy
:^)
>>14723486
Miles better than the average /lit/ thread.

>>14723135
>Well, it’s 4chan. 90% shitposting and lol, 10% input from the above-average intelligent.
Please fuck off back to r3ddit.
>>14728132
>>14728179
Is this the OP samefagging?
OP either wrote the piece or he is close friends; either case, eccentric. You can be close friends and not be gay.

>>14728132
You spend too much time online, and it’s addled your brain. I’m the OP, the author of the piece is someone important to me, I posted it to have a discussion on it as - as I’ve repeatedly pointed out - I am a) blown away by it (and that’s even knowing previously how talented he is), and b) I like to talk about books with other people who like to talk about books.

Everything else you ‘think’ is purely just your own internal psychodrama.

Anything else?

>>14728179
No, it’s not. I suggest you remember his name, friend, because you’ll have to make room to take it in your mouth while you’re chewing on that big fat crow eventually.

>>14728361
>putting spaces around hyphens
>just like the paper
OH SHIT SON, YOU JUST SLIPPED
YOU ARE YOUR OWN FRIEND
YOU ARE THE WRITER

>>14719094
>hey guys what do you think of this 300 pager just read it super quick and validate my opinion of it
If I were to actually take your request seriously it would take me like 3-4 days comfortably to get the time to read and evaluate it. So stop getting pissed at the faggots ITT that obviously only skimmed four or five pages. Maybe isolate an excerpt for us to focus on, but don't start reeing because all of /lit/ didn't drop their entire schedule to power through some pretty average work at best, given my reading of about 30 pages or so.

>>14728440
God, you’re such an infant. We all do that in the U.K. Maybe publishers put those long ones in, but, by and large, when you write essays and crap you go: “blah blah - blah blah”. It’s just how MS word is set up. I’m sure there is probably a command to do them longer but even if I knew it, I’d still put spaces before and after because I think it looks neater.

Seriously, the shit you babies fuss over. Hilarious.

>>14728457
I haven’t got pissed at any of them. I didn’t say “read it now!”; and, besides, I was fine to even take input from people who had clearly simply skimmed a few cursory pages. Isn’t “zomg speed-reading!” a thing for you autists on this board?

Also, you read way too slowly. A shot novella taking four days or whatever is ridiculous.

>>14728487
See, you're still operating under the assumption I'm gonna drop everything I'm doing just to read some amateurish prose for shits and gigs. I am 100% not going to take time from work, social life, writing, or the time I take to read genuinely decent work. When I said 3-4 days to comfortably get the time to read it, that meant time I spend on the toilet, train, or trying to fall asleep in bed within a 96 hour period or so, because this bland rag of a thesis is really only fit as a time killing sleep aid.

What the fuck is this thread?

>>14728514
Fucking hell. The absolute state of you. If you’ve got so many more important things to do with your fabulously valuable time, then don’t read it, dummy. Nobody gives a fuck - least of all me. I doubt you’d be able to read it in any meaningful sense anyway, so absolutely nothing of any value lost at all.

>>14728526
Some halfwit deluded about the quality either his own or his gay lover's amateurish college thesis, seemingly frustrated by his lack of success in real life, so has resorted to samefag shilling said piece of work in some sort of strange impractical attempt at creating an underground appraisal circle, on 4chan of all places.

>>14728531
Lemme know if I got any of that right at all. Also, if you want to win epic internet arguments maybe comprise rebuttals slightly more complex than "I actually didn't want you to read this thing I asked everyone to read, so ha". Logical stupidity that thinly veiled really only works on the halfwit boards like /tv/ and /pol/

>>14728567
You can read it, bitch tits. I just don’t care whether you do or not. See the difference?

Once I found some law school grad student's thesis on the legality of killing goldfish. It was earnestly-written and the guy cared deeply about animal rights. It was published in the mid 2000's. I looked at the viewcount: fewer than a dozen.

This shit makes me so sad. OP, even if it is you samefagging, I empathize with your struggle and I care about your efforts. We all just want to connect to people. There is hope for us yet.

>>14719125
>stans
kys

>>14728589
I’m not samefagging. I think what many on this thread are struggling to understand because they’re so jaded is that other people can actually really appreciate what you create in a deeply meaningful way. That you can actually create something that in and of itself can be priceless to another person who experiences it. And that, in itself too, can be prize enough. I mean, I don’t know. Little be it for me to tell any artist how they should value their work, but I do think it’s entirely possible that great masterpieces have been produced throughout history and have only been known to very few, or possibly even nobody. Objectively great masterpieces as well. It’s like that one Stephen King book (I think the first Dark Tower), and he talks about the most perfect rose blooming and then dying on some vacant scrubland somewhere (or behind a set of drawers?). Nobody even knew it existed, but it did exist anyway, and no other rose that came before or after could even compare.

So yeah, others may disagree, and I’m not saying this is timeless perfection, I’m just making the point that there is way more to appreciating art than ‘hit rates’ or ‘downloads’ or whatever. Simple as that.

And yes, I realise I may have got the King reference wrong but it’s something like that.

>>14728583
Ah yes, because you're selectively dismissing all opposing views in a vain attempt to create some sort of self-masturbatory safe space. This is generally indicative of someone about 7-8 years away from full mental maturity. You're either too young to post here, or you simply lack the appropriate mental acuity for your age to even accurately assess the works cited by the thesis.

I know posting on 4chan can be hard, but it can be a lot simpler once you pick up a few things like rationale or even valid sentence structure. My responses address specific points which can then be easily understood and argued with, while your responses are babyish grousings that really only elucidate your impaired mental state. See the difference?

>>14728179
This. It's very disgusting, outdated and doesn't even feel like literature.
Sincerity ftw

>>14728567
>Some halfwit deluded about the quality either his own or his gay lover's amateurish college thesis, seemingly frustrated by his lack of success in real life, so has resorted to samefag shilling said piece of work in some sort of strange impractical attempt at creating an underground appraisal circle, on 4chan of all places.

/thread

>>14728632
Zzzzzzz.

Whatever, bitch tits.

this is some next level samefagging desu

>>14728648
lmao, based OP further proving my point about his underdeveloped brain

>>14719094
Gonna be honest here, read a decent chunk of it as earnestly as I could. I have no idea about the academic quality of Scotland, but where I went to school this thesis on its own wouldn't be worthy of a Masters degree, let a lone a PhD. The parts I read had sloppy, unpolished structure, with sophomoric prose at best. It touches on some great themes and I can tell there's some good thought behind it, but its not really executed very well as is.

Unless that university is the scottish equivalent of a second tier state university i.e. SUNY Stony Brook, UC Santa Cruz, etc. the panel that approved this should be removed

>>14728658
I haven't read the thing, but I'm curious how much more OP can make this man seethe

>>14728677
> seething
Lol

>>14728677
I'm gonna have to agree with this faggot right here. Shit reads like a bad experimental novel. Academic standards aren't what they used to be.

>>14728756
> seething samefag

>>14722893

Are you esl? because comprised of is perfectly valid

>>14728677
Glasgow is one of the top-ranked universities in the country. What US universities do in relation to their PhDs is irrelevant, and given you have not provided any evidence you yourself have even attended any university, let alone have a PhD of your own, or, indeed, even any examples to support your assertions, I think we can safely dispense with you as being the same whining faggot upthread that keeps making a giant tit of himself.

Go dry your eyes, bitch tits.

>>14719094
fake and gay

this thread is turning into little baby tampon boy levels of complete derangement
OP I don't know what you're doing with your life but you have creeped me out in ways I didn't think possible just from reading /lit/ posts

>>14728801
>Glasgow is one of the top-ranked universities in the country
>country being Scotland

All I did was offer my genuine opinion, but your complete inability to understand that has inspired me to delve into the topic a bit more. I'll admit it dude, I was wrong, I'm sorry. Most authorities place Glasgow as having around the same academic rigor as the universities of Utah and Arizona, which sort of makes sense given the quality of this thesis. Just so you know, those two schools are well below Santa Cruz and Stony Brook from an academic standpoint. And what US universities do in relation to english PhDs is actually quite relevant, as geographical location isn't the concern here, academic standards are.

And if you want to discuss credentials your inarticulacy alone betrays you as having a shoddy at best training in the english language, incapable of composing a simple, coherent argument let alone a proper thesis as exampled by your original post. I earned my MFA at NYU and I can guarantee you with certainty that the prose and structure contained in that thesis would have barely passed in one of my undergrad classes, with reference to my reasons above. I'm sorry you're so sore about actual criticism, maybe if Glasgow offered any you would've turned out a halfway decent writer.

>>14719094
I'm going to use that dung beetle line in its simplest metaphorical form, not where he took it. Thank your buddy for me.

This whole thread is so sad, it could be just a really big troll but I don't think it is.

Really hope this gets to like 250+ replies for maximum exposure of OP's blatant samefagging and nonsensical argumentative shitposting

>>14728589
>>14728839
>>14728921
honestly at this point i feel like even some of these people could be OP

>>14728926
t. OP

You people are so bitter holy shit
The first half interesting piece of new literature to pop up and you immediately pounce on it to protect your fragile egos.
Go back to your 500th Megan thread why don't ya

>>14728885
If you're so well trained in the arts, how come you can't even figure out OP isn't the person who wrote the thesis? They sound literally nothing alike.

>>14728885
And you are a retard englit graduate who is lambasting the first few pages because you think everything that isn't written in modern realist style is immediately bad.
I bet my left nut every single thing you've ever written is derivative, predictable garbage.

>>14728642
>This. It's very disgusting, outdated and doesn't even feel like literature.
>Sincerity ftw
How is it "outdated", dipshit?
Every single book that comes out apes Flaubert, shit that came out in the 1860s.
You're not so much a pseud as a glaring fraud.

>>14719094

This entire thread is one big samefag. It's very hard to switch prose styles, and you're not quite to that level, hombre.

That said, it's furthered my newfound belief that all complex cognition is a waste of calories. Literary analysis was a mistake.

>>14728974
oh shut the fuck up, the OP sounds nothing like the author of the thesis or the people who aren't ballless enough to praise the work.
You're bitter, jealous, and petty, is what it boils down to.

>>14728981

Just embarrassing at this point. You know it's fucked up when even I'M the OP.

>>14728981
lmao, you're replying to yourself a little too fast to make it believable

>>14728677
I agree with this anon. It didn't strike me as academically appropriate. Reads like someone doing an imitation of an imitation of a DFW essay.

This thread is a recursive casserole and it's going to give me nightmares tonight.

>>14728964
>How is it "outdated", dipshit?
it's the worst aspects of modernism - gimmicky meta commentary and affectation - without the meaty stylistic ingenuity to support it
nobody cares about your oh so clever critique of realism, this shit was already old in the 50s. it's not new, it's not avant garde, it's not aesthetically satisfying, it's just a lil bit clever and meta. is that what you wanna hear? that you're a clever boy?
I'd rather read a hundred thousand pages of Knausgard than this academic exercise in self-seriousness

While I enjoyed it, if this thesis meant that somebody earned a doctorate, then the PhD title has been completely diluted.

A doctorate was awarded for advancing your field, not writing your favourite author's fanfiction.

>>14728958
There's nothing more predictable than the 'half quirky confessional style' every sophomoric would be wise-man who believe they're more interesting than they are adopts, which is precisely how I would describe the first few pages. I didn't read beyond them admittedly, but that's because I felt I've already read it all a thousand times before.

OP here. I apologize for all the samefagging.
Mods, please delete this thread.

This thread is testament to /lit/'s need for poster IDs.

>>14729050
But then how could you vacuously argue against a work that you didn't even read?

>>14729050
oh booo hoooo people are actually discussing literature and not the 100th philosophy thread or the 50 billionth guenon thread. How dare they discuss something half-relevant!
Mods, quickly! Activate the shit from /pol/ that instantly turns people into egomaniac pseudotripfags, we can't have this!!!

>>14729005
Perhaps the failure to create real literature will be the defining trait of the current movements, what do you think?

>my time is too precious to spend 2 hours reading a novellla
>spends 8 hours on a thread bitching about same novella

Can someone explain this logic?

>>14729005
>avant garde
kek, I bet you enjoyed reading Liveblog, too.
Go fuck yourself you ponce

Got bored after the second page. Way too solipsistic for my tastes.

lmao apparently everyone on this board is now Harold Bloom

>>14729168
Boosting your ego is never time wasted

>>14728480
illiterates in the UK write like that; college level, they don't use spaces around them. Interesting so many people think this post is OP samefagging praise though/shilling for some reason...nah, couldn't be something there...

>>14729458
O rly. I got my upper 2:1 with firsts in unjust enrichment and commercial from the second ranked uni for law last year, and this was never once raised with me, chucklefuck.

Man, you guys are just seething at my based friend’s superb skills. Absolutely adorable.

>>14728983
You’re not me, but your glaring buttrape rage is now visible from space, bitch tits. Thanks for keeping my thread going :)

So let me get this straight, their entire reason for dismissing this work is because he used spaced hyphen instead of em dash?
For all you dipshits know it was the university typesetter that replaced them.

I'm beginning to see a pattern when it comes to bitter jealously; it's almost a badge of honor.

>>14729600
Yeah, I keep seeing it being occasionally remarked upon. I posted your response a while back, too - that he won’t have been responsible for the typesetting, and certainly not for the website.

Like I say, anyway, we don’t use the long dash style at uni here. I’ve never seen it anyway, and I know for sure I used them like this in my own essays and it was never remarked upon.

So yeah, I dunno. Of all the things they could find to freak out about, it’s certainly one of the oddest I’ve encountered.

>>14729013
This is actually fair comment. I know precisely what you mean, and that was my sense, too, on the first reading, but it’s more nuanced the second time round, and approaching it more ponderously. If you look at the brief conversation I had with the based person who pointed out the Flaubert connection last night, seems that the author may actually be making a commentary on precisely this. Remember, too: it’s a PhD thesis; he’s limited to writing something that he’s then had to analyse and self-critique in relation to other authors.

But, I mean, you know - you have to read it. I don’t think just looking at the style here and there is enough. He’s chopping and changing constantly, trying to figure out what to do but (and ingeniously) taking the reader along for the ride. Like, after the overly descriptive walking scene, he enters a mini market and the prose becomes more vivid and illuminating (he literally refers even to lights making the narrator ‘liquid’, thereby diminishing him) - and this seems to be because he starts introducing people and their actions, memories, and decisions. So the reader is removed from the heavy vice of the endless tedium of description, and they’re invited back into the story with feelings and their own experiences in how they relate to the characters. And, if you go back to my exchange with that other poster last night (who clearly knows about this stuff), you’ll see they mention this in relation to DFW: the shift to the character.

But anyway, I think that’s valid, yeah. I just don’t think it’s anything more than scratching the surface, though.

>>14720303
I have a friend who's got her MSc from Glasgow as well
I want to be inside her so bad, I have fantasized about it for the past 3 years

OP if you really aren't the author, what do you think he'd say if I showed him this thread?

>>14729746
He’d probably just laugh. I doubt he’d even click on it, to be honest.

>>14729811
What's he doing now?

holy shit this autist is still samefagging

get some sleep dude, damn

>>14729839
Being full of win, wits, and awesome somewhere out there, I should imagine.

No idea.

>>14729871
Go back to Guenon Thread #5,000,003

>>14719111
Those, retard, are en dashes.

>>14729876
Why don't you contact him? It's clear you are infatuated.

>>14729935
porque no los dos

>>14723251
>You should’ve been round usenet, man. You’d have been able to fill your this-feels-weird-to-me boots to the brim, believe me.

Do any of those communities still exist?

>>14728885
Just coming back to this: Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. Again: your American universities don’t mean anything in relation to estimating the fucking awarding panel for a PhD and whether or not it should be removed and a doctorate rescinded. In fact, I’d say that alone, and if I knew your name, puts you well within the territory of justifiably lodging a complaint with your awarding alma mater. Get a grip.

Secondly, I have no idea what ‘MFA’ means in relation to writing. Here, this award is in relation to fine art specifically - so, again, I’m not entirely sure you’re even capable of reliably critiquing a literature PhD. You make a lot of appeals to your own authority, yet you persist in providing fuck all in the way of evidence of your own work so that we may gauge for ourselves whether you’re in a position to establish the author’s abilities according to _your_ purported ‘accomplishments’.

Finally, and again: also again - you have failed, again, to pull out examples from the author’s work to support your assertions. All your blah blah blah, yet you can’t even supply that.

Now deliver, or fuck off.

>>14730267
Based pseud-destroyer

>>14728440
>>14728480
>>14729458
>>14729574
Hyphens and dashes look identical but they aren't the same thing. A hyphen is used to compound words and doesn't have spaces. Dashes are used to parenthesise or create emphasis
downys

>>14730380
just read the fucking book retard pedant

Spaced en dashes is just the British style (like single quotation marks) - and many other languages besides. (And then the French do (ideally thin-)spaced em dashes...) Using hyphens instead of dashes - common as it is typing on the internet, as one can see - in a manuscript/thesis is sloppy, however.

>>14730434
we don't use single quotation marks unless there is a quote within a quote.
>>14730394
No, I don't read anything that was written after I was born.

>>14730434
Again: this is pedantic shithousery that, in no way, is even close to a relevant factor when it comes to critiquing the proffered work. This is purely a way to try and malign the work because you’re either a) too lazy to actually read and think about the work, and/or b) you’re seething with jealousy about the work. That’s it. You should be embarrassed.

Furthermore, even if this obsession had some merit as regards, at most, a throwaway observation on the author’s rigours (and it doesn’t), you have no idea who is responsible for the typesetting - and given this has been posted to an institution’s website with what would, logically, be their own standards that, again logically, would/may be besides those of the author - you _really_ would need to have to eliminate this variable to even come close to a fraction of a reliable modicum of the ‘observation’ it is you think you’ve made (yet have resoundingly failed to).

Finally - you’re entirely wrong about how we use quotation marks here. It’s the same standard rule: double for a quote, single for emphasis or quote within a quote. Not rocket science.

What else you got, faggot?

>>14730627
>>14730683
You lot have become fully burgerised then.
As for the typesetting, giving this is just a digitally uploaded thesis on the university's depository, it's usually the author who's responsible for all that. But, from what I've seen, such imperfections are quite often not noticed by supervisors and readers. I wasn't complaining however, I don't have anything bad to say about the work in question, if anything I was pointing out to the burgers that something other than unspaced emdashes exists in different styles.

>>14730834
It’s just simply irrelevant. All you have ‘achieved’ is wasting bandwidth and a post slot granting an opportunity for someone to post their considered and engaged opinion which was the entire point of the thread. But, you know, whatever - you do you. I’ll just rest easy in the certain knowledge that, even after 200+ posts, not one of you came even close to being able to even begin to effectively criticise him. I knew I was right. Feels good.

>>14719124
Hahahahahahaha

>>14729976
> infatuated
You people really are low. You are literal insects squirming in the shit of your own distorted realities. Base, grunting, nothing. Not one of you, not one, has even begun to impress me with anything even approximating an understanding of just how rare, fragile, and extraordinary the high art of the human condition is. This is why I’d eat every one of you if you were on my plane that crashed in the Andes. Pure meat. Sad meat. Nothing meat. Just lol.

>>14730683
What do those underscores mean? I've seen them several times now but never understand why people use them, not a native English speaker

>>14730952
Same as italicising for pronounced effect.

>>14730883
aw you sound so gay holy shit hahahahahaha i'm cringing at every one of your replies. Honestly, its a better than average but not a "work of genius". You even admit to your lack of literate knowledge but still act dogmatic throughout the comment situation; no wonder so many of these retards haven't read it - you are either the author or you want to suck his dick istg, i've literally never seen another man shill another like this in my entire life

>>14730924
Hi, Paul Joseph Abbott.

>>14730963
It's not a man you retard, it's Emily from the book.

>>14730968
Still nope.

>>14730970
Also nope.

>>14730924
Lmao take your meds you fucking schizo
It's clear you have some sort of weird bizarre deviant attraction towards this guy, I don't even want to know the details of your thoughts regarding him or how it was you met him
I've suggested you contact him after you said you haven't spoken to him in a while earlier in the thread, but on second thought disregard my advice, god knows what you're thinking about doing to him right now

>>14730990
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wCGoOPM2_x0

kek, do we have a new schizo poster?
Londonfrog will be happy

>>14731029
seems so

>>14731029
I think she's just scottish. They're all wee batty bitches.

>>14731059
Scottish grandmother. Scotland otherwise is a shithole. Another nest of worthless cunts who do nothing but continually fail themselves.

>>14731092

>>14731112
> muh reaction folder .jpg rattle
Pathetic.

>>14731194

Uh hello guys! Check out this amazing work, I love this guy so much, not him though btw I'm a grill :)

Wait, isn't Paul Joesph Watson that faggot on youtube with the effeminate voice?

>>14731332
Hah.

Here you go, small, babbie-tier ‘troll’. Lurk more.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mT5bRqSOpEo

Wild thread, many lols
time to go now

>>14731723
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EdfsTj4YfxM

My work here is done. Godspeed, internet.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pnw_6YRMaUc