/lit/ - Literature

>>14777894

They simply lost their meme status. It happens with all /board/core media.

>>14777894
I read a good amount generally, about 40-45 books per year. Haven't bothered with IJ yet, but I read and admired the other two.

>>14777894
I greatly enjoyed Dianetics from the expanded pentalogy.

>>14777973
Ah... here it is

>>14777952
Its great actually. Better than Ulysses. Or at least more enjoyable.
>>14777973
Grocc

>>14778017
Haha no it isn't

>>14777894
New patrician trilogy suggestion what do you guys think?

I'm reading White Noise by DeLillo and it is great so far.

ten years ago this place was filled with MFAs and people posing as MFAs who sometimes talked about literature but more often shitposted about it
Now it's populated by Reddit, pol and other board rejects shitposting relentlessly not even about literature but women and other dumb shit

The true meme tertraology

>>14778327
>not including the train biogrpahy

GR > U > IJ
IMO
GR was the only one I think that lived up to the hype. Not that Ulysses isn't great, but GR really seems like something from another universe. Infinite Jest is worth the time (two months for me) but I didn't get the feeling that DFW was a "genius" like I did with Joyce and Pynchon. More like "very talented and had more time and motivation (and perhaps obsession) than most people of comparable talent".

>>14777894
I've tried to understand the fall of this board (relatively speaking, since it has always been shit on some level) in the last year or so. I think part of what happened is that a link in the chain of /lit/'s heritage was not placed, leaving the board to be usurped by people who rather than thinking there's actually a reason or purpose to why things become memes meme literature for the sake of it. Or at least that's the hypothesis I'm working with now, something like it. Maybe I'll post about it more sometime.

>>14778965
For me, the worst drop in quality was when Guenonposting started and butterfly came back after not being here for at least a year or two.

>>14778965
>>14779013
the first hit was when /his/tory & humanities split. That carved off a big chunk of people who formerly debated philsophy, but because it was /lit/, would also be reading philosphy (think stirner posting memes)

The second hit was the 2016 election, which brought redditors and low effort frog and wojackposters from /pol/. /tv/ saw the same decline in quality, since people were making low effort bait threads with no involvement or need to read a book. These are the threads with "redpill me on x" or "any books with this feel (and a picture of political bait)".

You see these threads on /tv/ too, with "kinos with this feel" threads with either a political bait picture or a picture of a hot girl.
/lit/ used to only rarely have threads that started with a pepe or wojak or picture of an unrelated hot girl, and if it was, it was always something literary discussion related.

the old board culture that was /lit/ has been killed off. Pinecone and DFW memes used to at least require someone to read some books, but all these "books with this feel" thread have no effort requirement to participate, and so they propagate more easily once the cancer is set.
Hell, i never even see these threads anymore on /lit/. /lit/ died a long time ago but i miss her everyday

>>14779013
>butterfly came back after not being here for at least a year or two
Fuck...

Still waiting for the Behead all Satans pdf

>>14780114
this board used to have soul

haha yeah i fucking miss when every single thread on the fucking board was about the same 3 books !! truly the 'golden age' !!

did you know gravitys rainbow is about parabolas??? did you know james joyce's ulysses is based off the odyssey??? did you know theres a secret ending in infinite jest????

endless discussion. so much to say. so much better than the absolute SHIT threads we have now where people are discussing NOTHING
>>14765017
>>14764162
>>14769498
>>14767644
>>14777749

>>14778885
Oh shit I really want to hear what the MFAs are thinking those ar eusually guys with a lot of life expewrience and valuable opinions

>>14777894
I just ordered Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow to my local library. Already read Ulysses back in high school. Wish me luck.

I'm reading through Ulysses right now. I made a few threads about it but they had basically only 9, albeit helpful, replies before they were lost in time.

>>14780351
the quality of shitposting has gone down. Zizek pastas, corncob pastas, and Kolsti. They were all 1000% better than the guenon-loving /pol/baiting schizoposting I see now.

>>14780456
shut the fuck up. I'd rather talk to an MFA than an autistic freshman at community college who hates his mom and just discovered /pol/

>>14780560
Maybe one day you'll receive your own degree and feel less urge to lash out

>>14780572
actually, I have my masters already. why do you think I hate undergrads so much? it's because they are retards

>>14780584
Lol so it didn't work. Well, I hope somehow you find peace, even if a degree wont bring it. Humble millionaires like myself just enjoy litposting with the boys.

>college thread
>moldbug thread
>"do women read?"
>"is Ta-Nehisi Coates the best that blacks can offer?"
>"how do I get a /lit/ gf?"
>guenon general
>nick land
>megan boyle shilling
>"are tattoos /lit/?"
>"where do I start with marxism?"
>"just bought this, what am I in for?"
>stack thread
>"why are blacks, jews and women not /lit/?"
>"books for this feel?"
it's all so, so, so tiring
dont respond to me

>>14780650

>>14780650
Another novelty well needed would be the abolition of the footlights. The light from below is said to have for its purpose to make the faces of the actors look fatter. But I cannot help asking: why must all actors be fat in the face? Does not this light from below tend to wipe out the subtler lineaments in the lower part of the face, and especially around the jaws? Does it not give a false appearance to the nose and cast shadows upward over the eyes? If this be not so, another thing is certain: namely, that the eyes of the actors suffer from the light, so that the effective play of their glances is precluded. Coming from below, the light strikes the retina in places generally protected (except in sailors, who have to see the sun reflected in the water), and for this reason one observes hardly anything but a vulgar rolling of the eyes, either sideways or upwards, toward the galleries, so that nothing but the white of the eye shows. Perhaps the same cause may account for the tedious blinking of which especially the actresses are guilty. And when anybody on the stage wants to use his eyes to speak with, no other way is left him but the poor one of staring straight at the public, with whom he or she then gets into direct communication outside of the frame provided by the setting. This vicious habit has, rightly or wrongly, been named "to meet friends." Would it not be possible by means of strong sidelights (obtained by the employment of reflectors, for instance) to add to the resources already possessed by the actor? Could not his mimicry be still further strengthened by use of the greatest asset possessed by the face: the play of the eyes?

Of course, I have no illusions about getting the actors to play for the public and not at it, although such a change would be highly desirable. I dare not even dream of beholding the actor's back throughout an important scene, but I wish with all my heart that crucial scenes might not be played in the centre of the proscenium, like duets meant to bring forth applause. Instead, I should like to have them laid in the place indicated by the situation. Thus I ask for no revolutions, but only for a few minor modifications. To make a real room of the stage, with the fourth wall missing, and a part of the furniture placed back toward the audience, would probably produce a disturbing effect at present.

In wishing to speak of the facial make-up, I have no hope that the ladies will listen to me, as they would rather look beautiful than lifelike. But the actor might consider whether it be to his advantage to paint his face so that it shows some abstract type which covers it like a mask. Suppose that a man puts a markedly choleric line between the eyes, and imagine further that some remark demands a smile of this face fixed in a state of continuous wrath. What a horrible grimace will be the result? And how can the wrathful old man produce a frown on his false forehead, which is smooth as a billiard ball?

>>14778903
Based

>>14778940
>comparable talent

none discernable?

>>14780551
This is it, the good stuff is the same, the bad stuff is much less funny. Kolsti was terrible, the others were amusing.

>>14780116

>>14778903

>>14780102
Thanks for the crash course in /lit/ history. I haven't been around for more than a few years. From the top 100 charts, it seems that 2017 /lit/ had a sizeable portion of actively reading members, and since then there has been a sharp decline. I could not say whether this is just the 2016 influx's long-term consequences or not.

If there's one thing common to /lit/, it's missing what we thought we once had.

>>14778327
One of those isn't even a book it's a movie

>>14781301
/lit/ has become /tv/-lite, except with books.

There used to be gatekeeping similar to other quality boards like /o/ or /out/. On /o/, you get shunned for being a busrider; on /out/ you get shunned for not going outdoors. On /lit/, it used to be that you would get shunned if you didn't read books.

But once the low-effort pepe/wojake influx from the pol/redditors reached a critical mass, that gatekeeping got drowned out by the newcomers. It's exactly pic related, except first with people who thought /lit/ was for memes, then slowly taken over by frogposters and wojakposters.

> From the top 100 charts, it seems that 2017 /lit/ had a sizeable portion of actively reading members
I used to unironically recommend /lit/ charts to irl friends who wanted book recommendations. The charts are still quality, and the wiki hasn't changed much in many years. But that's probably because people on this board don't read anymore: there's no reason to change the charts, except for autistic reasons.

god i used to love this board

We were all still mired in post-modernism then. Barrack Obama was president, the culture war was just gearing up, and Million Dollar Extreme was still imitating Tim and Eric.

Now we're in the post-postmodernism period where everyone's either a Jordan Peterson Tradcath LARP or a post-Marxist Deleuze/Foucault Leftbook tranny.

Yeah I read, I just pop in for reqs and look up shit from shelf threads I havent heard of to see if theyre interesting. Actually discussing books here is impossible now sadly. Now I have to take this solitary hobby quite literally

>>14778017
>better than Ulysses
I enjoyed IJ but it's not even close to Ulysses and nor is gravity's rainbow

>>14778327
fuck man Satantango is so good.

>>14781315
b8

>>14780102
>>14781358
You guys don’t realize how good you still have it here. I mainly lurked fit and tg up until these last two years. tg is still good but I don’t have a games group currently; fit is an overrun, mummified corpse of what it used to be. You can’t have a serious discussion, the board is flooded with low-effort thotposting r9k/lookism immigrants and jannies couldn’t care less. I would say 70% of people browsing the board don’t lift, and another 20% have only been lifting for <6 months. There is nothing informative posted anymore. At least as a regular reader you can still get good recommendations here and we’ll thought out discussions happen in a lot threads. Just wait another 2 years or until these elections are over and you’ll see how bad things can really get.

I like Pynchon but I couldn't get into Joyce or Wallace. I like Shusaku Endo better and have been reading through his stuff lately.

>>14782635
I remember how I used to get advices about football and swimming on /fit/ many years ago, now it's just memes and dating. Fuck this this.