/lit/ - Literature

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.

>>15277701
Kek
>>15277709
Basado

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure

>>15277690
Being dead is more appealing than being killed

>>15277690

does anyone else skip the first few pages or so?
I like jumping in and not starting on some overly scrutinized paragraph

>>15278202
holy fucking cringe

>>15277690
>There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
Only book I unintentionally finished without setting my mind to.

>>15278209
why wouldnt you jump right into the book DUDE I just LOVE the hustle and bustle of the middle prose it's so DYNAMIC

>>15277690
>One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.

>>15277690
Dante
>Midway upon the journey of our life. I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

>>15277690
The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the highvelocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette onehanded then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.

>>15278303
Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen.
Alistair MacLean; When Eight Bells Toll

>>15278243
kek

IT HAS turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn
to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those
two States the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to
which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means
should be employed.

>>15278243
ebin
>>15278407
>Braunau-on-the-Inn
I wonder what book this could be!

>>15277690
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

>>15278202
Cringe post of the day. Whew. This one is bad.

>>15278444
upvoted

>>15277690
Let me quote from memory:
>Smugly, lewd Bert Mortensen took a trip of three steps from the top of the stairs, having just learned that his momma had died that day; or was it the day before? >The sky above Howth castle and environs was the colour of a 404'ed 4chan thread. He was a man of many twists and turns who, while walking in the woods at about the midpoint of his life's journey, saw the spirit of God hovering above the face of the waters.
>"Call me Bismillah", he quipped.

>>15278543

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."

A few that spring immediately to mind:

>MASON AND DIXON (PYNCHON)
The image of snowballs "starring the walls" is perfect. It reassures you the guy knows exactly what he's doing, so you can relax and trust him, however weird he might get.

>LOLITA (NABOKOV)
"Standing four foot ten in one sock". This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you paint a complete picture with a single stroke of the brush.

>EMMA (AUSTEN)
"Handsome, clever and rich". JA says it absolutely straight but you KNOW she's being slightly ironic. The tone is pitch-perfect. She's good, that girl.

>THE SOUND AND THE FURY (FAULKNER)
Nice, easy prose but it gives us a mystery we have to solve. "He hit and then the other hit". Already it's just a little bit too clumsy. Why? Faulkner isn't a clumsy writer. What's going on?

>UNDER MILK WOOD (THOMAS)
"Moonless and bible-black." McCarthy stole this for the opening of Suttree.

>BLOOD MERIDIAN (MCCARTHY)
If I'm going to accuse the guy of plagiarism I suppose I ought to include him too. I only had to read "rags of snow" to know I was in safe hands.

>MOBY DICK (MELVILLE)
John Gardener wrote an analysis of the first paragraph showing how good the rhythms are and how we know right away that this is a writer who has found his own voice. "Some years ago, never mind how long precisely..."

>REBECCA (DU MAURIER)
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Yeah, the book is trashy compared with the others in this list. Too bad. This line establishes the mood perfectly.

>FREE FALL (GOLDING)
Golding doesn't get discussed much, and Free Fall even less. Never mind. "My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder." Maybe you have to be older than the average 4chan anon to know just how chillingly good this is.

>PINCHER MARTIN (GOLDING)
This is how you do "in medias res".

>>15278444
Oh, John.

>>15277690
>Magnus realized, with a sort of laugh, that every joke he had recently heard had been told by himself, to himself, and at his own expense.

>>15278630
Tickle me more

>>15278444
... He was in the beginning with God.

Waking up to a loud crash rarely means something good is happening. It's never “CRASH! Mom made pancakes!” or “CRASH! We decided to adopt a Golden Retriever!”

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
/thread

>>15278665
Absolutely based moocow poster.

>>15277690
The one about the archbishop and his catamite.

>>15279012

Burgess, Earthly Powers. I bet that has the biggest ratio for "people who know the first line compared with people who have actually read the whole thing."

>Ayo hol up, so u be sayin dat ...

>>15277701

>>15278665
Does everyone else burst out a wee laugh when they read this?

>>15277690
Call me Ishmael.

>>15278202
What the fuck is wrong with you.

One of my personal favorites is Charles Williams, War in Heaven:
>The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
The rest of the book is even weirder, and Williams has never been much read, but his work was praised by both T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, and it's worth checking out (especially The Place of the Lion).

>>15278610
Good post, I actually learned something today.

>It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future

“‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.”

anyone else have the first chapter of lolita memorized?

>>15278209
>>15278447
>>15280597
Lurk more

>>15278665
/thread

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”

bump

>>15278444
based trips

"True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story."

Beautiful

Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

>"Well", I said, "I will try. I honestly will try to be honest with you, although I suppose really what you're more interested in is my not being honest, if you see what I mean."
>The doctor smiled slightly.

Reading this book was the first time in a long time I was unable to put a book down. It just captivated me.

>Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

>That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

>Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

>>15278243
poor grand, never got his "hats off, gentlemen!" :(

>>15278303
meh
>>15278407
this is really good stuff

>>15278641
would you fuck off? this meme was funny once, 10 years ago. you strike me as the kind of lurker who doesnt even read jfc

>>15282279
>implying anyone on /lit/ actually reads

>>15277690
>back in the day in the boulevard of Lyndon, we used to kick routines and the presence was fitting.

>Oh, I just remembered - one time I made out with this retarded kid in church.

>>15278243
kek