/lit/ - Literature

>1. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In in the middle of that, why did you like it so much? Did you read it in english or spanish?

>>1990851

English, though I actually intend to read it in Spanish sometime, once I'm fluent enough.
But when it comes to the English-Spanish languages, translation from the latter to the former isn't even that big of a deal. I probably lost more of A Hunger Artist stylistically by not knowing German.
As for why I liked it, because it's an amazing feat of literature. Though I'll admit I also read it at a very impressionable time. Funny story, actually I'd mostly forgotten about liking it so much until I dropped acid for the first time a few days ago. Before that I probably would have put Portrait at one.

>>1990851

>sage thread and ask a question

So are you lonely or just stupid colleague?

>>1990847
Would you hate me if I said this was an impossible task?

My all time favorite is Aleister Crowleys 'Diary of a Drug Fiend' even though its place in the fiction category is debatable.
Some other favorites, in no particular order, are:
Bukowski - The most beautiful women in town
Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
Niels Lillelund - The american collector

>>1990874

It's cool. Feel free to spout your favorite whatever type of fiction in whatever format, ordered or otherwise. And since my early morning boredom remains uncured, here's my next five:

6. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake
7. Ulysses - James Joyce
8. Light In August - William Faulkner
9. Leaves Of Grass - Walt Whitman
10. Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

>>1990881
i don't think poetry is fiction

>>1990884

Dully noted.

>>1990865
I always sage. The e-mail field has it saved as the default and I can't be bothered to erase it.

1. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
2. Eyeless in Gaza - Aldous Huxley
3.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
4.House of Leaves - Mark Danielewzki
5.Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

There are probably better books than these but I haven't read them yet lol.

>>1990889

That's nice of you.

>>1990897
It's not like it harms anyone, it just doesn't bump the thread.

>>1990884
Why wouldn't it?

>>1990901

Short answer, it would. He's just a bitch.

Under The Volcano - Lowry
Don Quixote - Cervantes
A Country Doctor - Franz Kafka
Fictions - JL Borges
Blow Up and other stories - Cortazar

>>1990901
>>1990904
Poetry isn't as limited to fiction as novels, short stories, etc are. They tend to explore themes rather than tell stories, although they often do tell stories.

>>1990910

Right, there's that. But then, consider this:

http://www.poetrykit.org/pkmag/pkmag11/029.htm

>>1990912
I don't agree with that dude. That uses very, very limited examples of poetry and poets.
The narratives within poetry are similar to paintings, you can't really call a painter's rendition of something fictional, but I guess it's not necassarily based on reality. I wouldn't call romanticised notions of things fictional.

>>1990906
WILL FINALLY CHECK OUT A COUNTRY DOCTOR I THE NEAR FUTURE, THANKS FOR REMINDING ME ANON.

Harry potter
Finnegans Wake
Fight club
The bible
Atlas shrugged

>>1990923

eh that's your opinion though. The fact is a lot of the purpose in calling something 'fiction' is just to categorize it as aesthetic. But it's not even necessary to do that in painting/drawing because in a more exclusive sense all drawing is aesthetic. So there's no need for a word to distinguish it. But I mean, when you really think about it most poetry is clearly and elaborately fictional. Paradise Lost, for example, or The Marriage by Blake. But overall it's sort of a pointless argument. I prefer to call these my favorite works of fiction over works of literature, because I think it sounds less full of shit.

>>1990927

You should read all of his stories/parables.

>>1990933
IF YOU'RE GOING TO TROLL, PUT SOME EFFORT INTO IT YOU LAZY FUCK

>>1990935

Wouldn't you feel bad if he was being serious? Oh wait, no you wouldn't.

>>1990941
no one should feel bad about someone who has hp, the bible, fight club and rand in his favs list.

>>1990934
this is a pretty dope post but i think there's a lot of poetry that's actually not fictional, but that is still aesthetic and literary. there's a lot of poetry that's kind of elaborately self-confessional, or reflective, or meditative, you know? like, is "elegy written in a country churchyard" really fictional? is "the wasteland" really fictional? i don't know. it's difficult to say.

i would say, though, that outside of some narrative poetry, it's probably more accurate to call it "literature" instead of fiction.

1. Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
2. Tolkien- The Hobbit
3. Goethe- Faust
4. Christopher Paolini - The Inheritance Series
5. Pullman - His Dark Materials Series

>>1990952

The Waste Land? It's definitely fictional. It has characters.

>>1990973
oh shit i fucked up

but you take my point, i hope

>>1990973
That was a bad example on that dudes part. But the poetry of Robert Frost or DH Lawrence for example:

"I dare do all that may become a man"
But tell me, oh tell me, what is becoming to a man!
tell me first what I am,
that I may know what is unbecoming to me.

How can that be construed as fiction?

>>1990980

No, and neither Portrait of the Artist and In Search of Lost Time are autobiographies.

And besides that, neither of the poetic works listed as fiction were even autobiographical in a fictionalized sense. So you're not making a point.

>>1990985

Well I don't know if I'd call that fictional, but it's pretty mid-tier in my book anyway, so I barely care. I feel like Leaves Of Grass constitutes fiction though. And The Marriage of Heaven and Hell definitely does. I forgot I put Rimbaud in there, but in that work I'd say him too.

So I mean, fuck all. Maybe some poetry isn't fiction. Just good poetry.

>>1991012
For once I thought /lit/ was going to have a conversation without being pretentious.

>joyce
>woolf
>kafka
>faulkner

oh, pose.

pretentious hipster thread

1. twilight saga
2. Crime and punishment
3. harry potter
4. Lord of the rings
5. a clockwork orange

>>1991026

lol.

>>1991041
I like the subtlety

>>1991039

Right. Fucking hipsters, reading their William Faulkner and Goethe.

>>1991039
>stop liking what I don't like

>>1991012

Oh right, I hadn't even used the list down to Rimbaud. weed's a hell of a drug fellas.

11. Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud
12. Paradise Lost - John Milton
13. Dubliners - James Joyce
14. O Lost - Thomas Wolfe
15. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
16. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I presciently threw O Lost in there because I needed something uncanonized.

1. The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
4. Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carre

>>1991086
>>1991086
Really? Have you read the perfect spy by Le Carre? I preffered it much more.

>>1991092

I prefer the TTSS trilogy to be honest, although I acknowledge it isn't considered his best. Just one of those personal preference things that /lit/ hates so.

>I also think he is better than Greene

Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pinceone
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs - Proust
Moby-Dick - Melville
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner

As far as short stories/novellas are concerned

Hadji Murad - Tolstoy
Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - Borges (could list so many)

Poetry

Leaves of Grass - Whitman
fragments of Sappho

Peer into my soul

>>1991086

This guy's a yankee cunt.

>>1991106

I've peered into your soul and I think you're a cool guy. I take it you speak french?

>>1991116
I'm >>1991086 and English.
Why on earth would my list make me a 'yankee cunt' you neo-literate mouth breather?

>>1991132

AH, A MONARCHIST. Hey I hear your country's having fun getting its ass kicked by comrade Muammar Gaddafi over in Libya, you complacent douche.

Fuck that whiny satire crap.

>>1991141

0/10 - Must try harder.

>>1991116
Good guess, I am a 'cool guy' and oui, bien sur, c'est ma langue maternelle.

>>1991161

Not really trolling, I just don't like your tastes. Orwell wasn't that great of a fiction writer.

>>1991189

That's cool. I want to learn it.

>>1991219

>Orwell wasn't that great of a fiction writer

never change, /lit/

>>1991244
its pretty much true though

>>1991244
He wasn't.

>>1991244
I'm not that guy but he's not really that good, he's average.

>>1991219
>>1991248
>>1991249
>>1991250

>>1991244
his non-fiction is vastly superior

>>1991276

I don't think anyone's biting, bro, but feel free to try a few more posts.

There's really no point in arguing with you. 1984 and Animal Farm are canonized classics. You don't like them. What else is there for anyone to say?

>>1991287
Lol oh wow.
>canonized classics
jesus
>you dont like them
nobody said anything of the sort. Orwell is a mediocre novelist. I bet you haven't even read his non fiction.

also there is at least two of us holding this opinion right now. like orwell if you want, he is just not that skilful a novelist.

>>1991287
I think you're far overrating the extent to which they're canonized classics

They're certainly extremely popular and well-known works, with a good reputation in mainstream culture. But a substantial amount of that popularity comes from the fact that 1984 and Animal Farm are extremely accessible works. This means that a lot of people read and enjoy them, especially at a fairly young age, but I don't think it makes them canonized classics - nor, I should emphasize, does it make them bad. I think, personally, that they're entertaining works but kind of mediocre - they're pretty obvious - and that Orwell is better as an essayist

also, Keep The Aspidistra Flying is probably a better novel than either 1984 or Animal Farm

>>1991290

Bloom's Western Canon

George Orwell
Collected Essays
1984

He's there along with hundreds of others, but he's there.

>>1991294

>essays

>overrated novel he wrote

>that list at the end of the book is bullshit and even the author admitted it

>>1991294
So... his essays are good. Like we've been saying.

And Bloom, while a smart guy with good taste, is not the be-all-and-end-all of taste, you know? Ipse dixit is not sufficient proof.

>>1991290

You have no idea what you're talking about.

>>1991299

oh no, he does.

Pic related, the work by Orwell that's worth reading. Nonfiction.

>>1991299
Enlighten me.

>>1991300

lololol.

>>1991301

Are you aware of what the Western Canon is?

>>1991304

Are you aware you're mad?

>>1991304
1984 is worth reading. I like 1984. That doesn't mean Orwell is a good novelist. He wrote a story, that wasn't very original but has some good themes nonetheless.
Bloom has a lot of opinions. That doesn't mean you have to accept them as your own.

>>1991298

I am no Orwell fantard, but 1984 has aesthetic value. It's fuckin worth reading, no one can deny that.

>>1991308

You said it wasn't canon. It is. You don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not defending 1984. You don't have to like it.

>>1991290

>Lol oh wow.
>canonized classics
>jesus

you're a moron is all I'm saying

>>1991308

>Bloom has a lot of opinions. That doesn't mean you have to accept them as your own.

not what we're talking about. we're talking about what is and isn't western canon. cool backtracking, bro.

>>1991313
I didn't say it wasn't canon. I said jesus after you said it was canon, it was an expression that it's canonisation doesn't mean it's a great novel. I'm not going to resort to insults.

>>1991313

No, he's saying it isn't canon, and it isn't. And Harold Bloom's opinion on it, the work, and the author, who he values at least equally for his nonfiction, and more generally (I mean, have you even looked at that list? He's very thorough in including authors but his choice of works by authors is a bit heavy-handed, to say the least). Being in your high school English curriculum doesn't make it canon either. Neither does its popularity, in anything more than a superficial sense.

>>1991314

Yes, but you referenced a book written by Harold Bloom to authenticate your bloated sense of Orwell's merit.

>>1991327


Okay, you're right. 1984 sucks. So does Animal Farm. Terrible books. Every single bit of praise they've gotten is wrong. An anonymous poster on 4chan.org says so. We get it. Will you shut the fuck up now?

>>1991327

I think you REALLY want to argue with me about Orwell. I don't give a shit about Orwell. I read 1984 and Animal Farm like 15 years ago, and don't even remember a thing about them. I read Down and Out in Paris and France a few months ago when I was stuck on jury duty, and I thought it was pretty crappy, a young starry-eyed kid trying to justify being a bum.

I have no fucking bloated sense of Orwell's merit. I said it was Western Canon. It is. This cock said it wasn't, got proved wrong, and now is saying that's not what he meant.

>>1991350

*multiple posters

>>1991363

don't care if there's 800 of you. i said you're right. orwell sucks. you win. can you tell i'm into debating you?

>>1991361

He didn't mean the book The Western Canon by Harold Bloom.

>>1991369

oh no? what did he mean then?

>>1991361
I'm the guy who said Jesus after the canonized thing. I already explained that I never said it wasn't canonised, just that it's canonisation wasn't an indicator of how good or bad it was.

>>1991368

Well now you're just saying something that's not true on the other end of the spectrum.

Soviet satire doesn't hold up.

Anyone want to post their lists and maybe discuss choices other than Orwell? This thread was promising.

>shitty thread devolves into a "no, you" argument about whose side harold bloom is on

>>1991382

oh yea right dude, like NOTHING has been going on other than that. Maybe if more of you assholes were contributing it'd be different. And Harold doesn't regulate canonization, that's the point I was making.

In no particular order...

The Road, McCarthy
Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut
The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
A Clockwork Orange, Burgess
Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck

>>1991399

Man, not a lot of people like things that aren't novels.

>>1991409
Are you saying that they're shitty?

>The Fountainhead
>Atlas Shrugged
>Ulysses
>Finnigan's Wake
>Infinite Jest

In no particular order.

>>1991417
>The Fountainhead
>Atlas Shrugged

>>1991416

Naw. Though I, personally, don't care for Steinbeck much. And I think 9 Stories and Franny and Zooey are both better than Catcher.

>>1991421
0/10 SHITTY TROLL
I AINT EVEN MAD
YOU FUCKING RETARD

>>1991426
so meta

>>1991421

hey...hey now, guys...

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
Poems - WB Yeats
Molloy - Samuel Beckett
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

I'm puzzled by my own choices.

Lolita - Nabokov
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Ulysses (annotated) - Joyce
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Mothers and Daughters - Turgenev

>>1991433
Maybe I'm just unintelligent. But I couldn't get through the sound and the fury. I like different styles of writing..but it didn't feel like he transitioned between characters well. I couldn't really follow it.

>>1991432

Good picks. I'm reading Yeats right now. Haven't read Molloy, but I just finished Watt and I've read a lot of Beckett's shorter prose. Good shit.

>>1991436
What do you mean by transition? you wanted there to be some overlap of styles or timeframe?

>>1991422
I always liked Seymour: An Introduction about as much as Catcher, but Franney & Zooey never appealed to me.

I guess I like Steinbeck more because my Dad read his books to me when I was a kid.

>>1991436
You need to read it twice, it's structured to be read at least twice. If you're looking to read it again I suggest you read the first two parts quickly, and then read the last two parts slowly, which are much more linear, then reread the first two parts and things will start making sense. It's structured in the same way it tries to represent time, such that you can't process events first-hand, only once they've passed.

Another thing is the italics for the Benjy part signal a time change, so a paragraph in italics will show you that his mind is going into another time, but the tricky thing is figuring out after the italics are over, if he's stayed in that time zone or gone back.

And once having finished it, it's really hard not to read the first page and feel really moved.

>>1991442
It didn't flow to me. Idk. I'm weird. But I'm not trashing Faulkner, by any means. The mans a genius, I just didn't like that book.

>>1991440
I open up my complete Yeats at random quite often. I can be confident that I'll read something astoundingly beautiful that will leave me with goosebumps. Even if it's something from his later poems, which I often find impenetrable, the imagery is often good enough still to be enjoyable without a full understanding.

For example "Fragments". I don't know what he's talking about it, but for reason I enjoy the mystery.

I
LOCKE sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

II
Where got I that truth?
Out of a medium's mouth.
Out of nothing it came,
Out of the forest loam,
Out of dark night where lay
The crowns of Nineveh.