/lit/ - Literature

This is the same guy as the "When you find out your real good friends does a hecking wrongthink!" Meme isn't it

>>20130383
>Does reading a lot of famous authors like Dostoevsky and Pynchon and Hemingway actually do shit for you
If you have to ask, you'll never know, hylic faggot.

>>20130383
>Hemingway
Well definitely not him.

>>20130426
I immediately know a person is retarded when they start flapping their dicksuckers together about gnostic bullshit
If the material world sucks so bad, kill yourself. Do it faggot.

>>20130395
The nose knows

>do shit for you
what the fuck does this mean?
does it get you money and pussy? is that what you're asking?
if so the answer is no

>>20130730

>>20131002
No, not asking if it gets you money and pussy (answer is obviously no), but asking if it actually makes you happier or positively impacts your life in any way except becoming "le deeper and more profound"

>>20130730
Nice seething, hylic. Keep it up, you have no other options.

>>20131153
>le deeper and more profound
You're too dumb to waste your time reading literature. Consider training as a welder or longshoreman.

>>20131160
I would tell you to touch grass, but THE NATURAL WORLD IS DISGUSTING AND PROFAAAANE
You're a faggot and I hope coyotes eat you alive, asshole first

>>20131171
I actually have read many of these authors and I have read a good deal of philosophy. I just seriously question what this adds to one's life. I mean for some people it seems to have a good effect, but for others, just makes them more conceited and pseud and gives a false sense of intellectual superiority, like you

>>20131184
>adds to one's life
What does hiking up a mountain for a beautiful view add to one's life? What does learning how to paint add to one's life? Why do we get so many midwits posting low-effort threads with thinly veiled hostility asking about the utilitarian value of the literary arts on this board?

>>20131175
>continued seething
have sex

>>20130730
based

>>20131258
>sex
>being trapped in the perceptible world
lmao get a load of this lover of sights and sounds

>>20131283
>t. heard about gnosticism once
You should read a book, hylic, "gnosticism" (stupid catch-all term for 110iq faggots) was responsible for some of the most salacious heresies and heretical sects in Christian history.

>>20131258
>larps as a wizard
>thinks the only reason he doesn't have psychic laser powers is because an edgy version of the Abrahamic God... doesn't want him to?
>will live his life in disdain of the stunning beauty of the natural world, BECAUSE IT'S A LIE MAAAAN
>tells others to have sex
Seriously, release the divine light, man. Shed this filthy carnal prison. Do it faggot.

>>20130383
It has both "done" shit for me and turned me into a more conceited douchebag who can pretend being smart. Now stop shitting up this board with your shit posts, faggot.

>>20131292
Kill yourself kike-loving LARPer, the material world is a hideous prison. We'll be fine without you. Do it faggot. Fucking craven fool

>>20130383
>Does reading a lot of famous authors like Dostoevsky and Pynchon and Hemingway actually do shit for you

Yes. You read these novelists because you enjoy them. "Don't study Shakespeare's works; enjoy them."

>>20131299
>further screeching
Read a book retard. Or just keep seething on chink flyfishing forums about something your pastor told you was a wrongthink once.

>>20131316
Thats the thing. I hated reading that shit and being evaluated for it in college. I only enjoyed it if not being evaluated

>>20131293
>KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF
You are a damaged individual

>>20131317
When you die, and absolutely fucking nothing happens, all of nature will continue to be perfect and beautiful, and the material world will continue in its ancientry, uncaring of what fat faggots like you made of the mythology of dead heebs. Keep LARPing. I'm sure you'll turn into Neo from. The Matrix any fucking day now. Don't bother enjoying any of the natural beauty in your local area, trees are a lie and hiking is just embracing a fallen world.
You're a fucking faggot.

>>20130383
>Does reading a lot of famous authors like Dostoevsky and Pynchon and Hemingway actually do shit for you or is it just to make you a more conceited pseud douchebag who can pretend being smart?
It's just another form of entertainment, except it requires a little bit more from you and the reward is that you get to understand references and allusions by other people who make entertainment as well as having a higher standard for it.
Here's a tip: give up the utilitarianism, it is autistic leftist bugman bullshit. You'll enjoy life a lot more that way.
>>20131160
>hylic
cringe

>>20131341
>yeah I totally hike and enjoy nature and stuff I appreciate beauty
You're the only LARPer here, someone calls you a hylic and you descend into screeching rage about "muh gnosticism" and beg people to kill themselves. Take your own advice unironically and go touch grass

>>20131330
By his own philosophy, anything and everything he could experience in his life is A VILE FALLEN PROFANE MASTURBATORY DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL TRUTH, MAAAAAAN. I'm simply encouraging him to make good on the stupid bullshit he's LARPing to feel like some cool cyberpunk wizard and not the asthmatic NEET he really is. I mean, he won't, not only because he's a faggot coward, but because he doesn't actually believe this fucking wicca-adjacent horseshit, it's a LARP to give his specific brand of pseud a mystical flavour.

>>20130383
I'm a writer before a reader, so I read the kind of novels I want to write like. If I was a reader first, I suppose I'd read the stories I'd want to read rather than reading something just because it's been called good or complex or a classic.

>>20131348
>utilitarian
>leftist bullshit
cringe. every part of the modern political spectrum is dominated by materialist utilitarians arguing that their way is the most Prosperous and Universally Good way. Go listen to leftists and they're accusing le rightwingers of the same thing. drop the retarded leftwing/rightwing construct.

>>20131350
The fact that you think hiking is some far fetched activity that the majority of people don't frequently engage in is only demonstrating further that you are a fat LARPing faggot.

>>20131362
you're not stable, go camping for a few days with the dao de jing or something anon

>>20130383
i read to entertain myself and to learn

>>20131374
>The fact that you think hiking is some far fetched activity that the majority of people don't frequently engage in
when did I say that? you're incapable of posting without bringing a pile of baggage, did a "gnostic" cuck you in grad school or something?

>>20131387
Gnosticism is a cope

>>20131450
Any and every religion, ethic, ideology is a cope.

>>20131248
based, i applaud you

>>20131458
oh yeah? well you're a cope! What do you say to that?

Art allows the expression of thought and feeling in a way that flows most naturally to us. It is an interpretation and expression of the world as one person (the artist) sees it, thus it can expose us to new perspectives and contexts, that’s why some art is created in order to challenge its audience’s ideas, some can do that without trying to. It can also be entertaining, but with the more lauded art writing (“literature”) that you seem to ask about it’s the expression of experience and ideas, along with the specific emotions of the artist that draws people to it. Moby-Dick isn’t really any more entertaining than The Count of Monte Cristo, but the former is a more interesting expression of the author’s experience of the world, how his life has shaped the way he relates ideas and emotions, in a shift of context to the artist’s perspective we might understand something we didn’t know before, or reinterpret something we already thought we knew. Some people do read (or usually start reading in their young adulthood) literature in order to affect the appearance of an “intellectual”, but usually they will either give it up because they don’t appreciate it and they are bored, or even though they began reading out of a cynical desire to be “interesting”, they will come to appreciate the art they are exposing themselves to as moments of profound insight and aesthetic sublimity reach them and affect the way they think about themselves and the universe.
Anon, why are you, someone who doesn’t understand the appreciation of artistic beauty on the literature board?

>>20131458
The difference between my mysticism cope and organized copes is that mine is coming from the outside. Manifesting my mystic cope has the potential to shake things up whereas the established copes are actively contributing to the inertia of reality. You're not going to see anything new from Catholicism. You might see something new from the distortion my mysticism creates. Ultimately I'm not out to change the world, I'm just beating out an alt rhythm curious to see who is interested in dancing to my songs. It's about finding community based around desires I deeply hold rather than working from within the established score to manifest known characters into my life. Fruits of organized copes do not make ideal companions for the experiences of life I wish to explore. And if my mysticism is shit then I'll get my just reward of isolation, but that isn't going to stop my search for community through creative activity.

>>20131248
I mean I didn't mean to be hostile. I am genuinely curious what reading adds to life. It seems that a lot of people do it just to seem smart and cultured, being able to say "yeah I read dostoevsky and pynchon, sartre, etc.". I'm wondering if that's all it's for, just a flex of your intellect, or if it really serves anything more

>>20131659
Holy fuck you sound like a massive faggot, dilate you fucking tranny kike.

>>20131458
yeah, you are a massive black person

>>20131734
This isn't reddit, you know you can say nigger right

>>20131792
I am currently evading a 30 day ban for calling someone a shitskin on a blue board

>>20131798
Yeah but nigger doesnt have the same racial overtones as shitskin

>>20131811
I get banned for saying nigger pretty regularly actually,

>>20131811
It's strange that this makes sense

>>20130383
I realize you're asking this because you're in your late teens or early 20s, but eventually you do stop giving a shit about how people perceive your hobbies. Not even in a cool I don't give a fuck what you think way, but more a I'm too tired to argue way. If you doesn't enjoy reading for its own sake it's almost impossible to do a lot of it.

>>20130383
Books are essentially just tools, so It'd most likely be up to the individual how they use those tools.
You could buy books for no other purpose than because they look good on a shelf. You could read a few books that are trendy and easy to digest so you have something to discuss with other people. You could pick out authors with opinions and viewpoints as close to yours as possible, and then read their works so as to feel better about you having those opinions and viewpoints in the first place. You could read enough about a given subject, be it philosophy, physics, psychology, chemistry, or whatever you like, to become an expert on it. Or, you could just read for personal enjoyment, following whatever piques your interest at any moment in time.
With regards to "famous authors", there's often a reason why they became famous in the first place. I'm sure if you jumped into reading Dostoevsky for no other reason than to gain e-clout and argue on the internet, you could very well achieve that. However, if you jumped into reading Dostoevsky because you want to gain insight into his place and time, or perhaps to relate to his writings which often still ring true today, you could achieve that also.
So to answer your question, "are books a cope?" Only if you want them to be, nigger.

>>20130383
Books do make you more intelligent.
Conversely, posting on 4chan makes you more retarded.

>>20130383
This thought returns to me periodically when I consider one of my closest friends, my best relations, and his struggle against the world. He thought reading the "top 100 lists" of different sorts made one "deep". He killed himself. "Took his own life" is the appropriate way to describe it now.

He lived a life of sour grapes. He had great financial and academic success. He kept his affairs ordered well, finished college before 20, started a prestigious STEM program, all paid for by huge grants, participated in athletics, social culture, made lots of friends, but somehow refused to modify his behavior to attract women. I set him up with some nice, cute, pretty enough girls from an advanced class I was taking in undergrad. The anime types. They thought he was attractive and he told them they looked like they could use a shower. Over discussions he later explained that he thought he deserved a 6ft blonde with big tits that was a fields medalist who had read the western canon (Although he clearly hit on my gf, now wife, all the time who is not those things).

His parents provided him with a comfortable start in college that allowed him to live in genteel poverty without work, so he never worked a real job. Somehow he felt work was below him. After he abandoned his STEM program 4 years into it, near the finish, he sat around for a few years doing drugs and reading "Deep" literature from approved critics.

I think about him everyweek when I think of the things I read.

>>20132049
You should join your faggot friend

>>20132049
A cute foreign girl that looked like Pic related one time asked him to work together on an advanced STEM project in a research group. She obviously liked him. He shot her down and I watched the whole exchange at a coffee shop. I said, "Did you not notice she was asking you to get together?" He dismissed my concerns saying "Yeah, she's a Jew." as if that explained why he couldn't date her.

>>20132074
Is this a reference to Mein Kampf I didn't get or something?

When did the idea start that the only reason why people read books is to be 'productive' or for 'personal development'?

>>20132056
I'm only mentioning this story here because this place attracts people like him. There's a sickness in society. Formerly advertising, now social media and the internet, has convinced people that they need nearly unobtainable things.

A college degree will get you a job that makes six figures, with no manual labor and huge benefits, a smoking hot wife who caters to your home, and personal fulfillment outside of your community. Don't you need that vacation? That larger house? Those cigars and whiskey? Those overpriced new limited edition tchotchkes? That sort of lifestyle is limited to very few and most are born into it.

So try to live like Seneca said one should (not as he did) and practice death.

>>20132079
Nope, though I have read a good deal of it. His thinking is too disordered for a real weltanschauung. He's like an undergrad going through kant and hegel and thinking that they're gonna produce a new, unique, synthesis DFW style and then hangs himself a few years later like that idiot.

>>20132056
Eh, I'm too busy at the moment for such a thing if you mean suicide. I do have some of him with me so I have joined him I suppose.

>read books
>internal voice becomes more interesting, copying authors i read
>get entertained
cool, thanks books

>>20132088
You sound like a short whiny faggot and if you wrote >>20132049 you obviously made it up, but the thread's been derailed since before either of us came here, so I guess it's okay.
Read more, and maybe find a hobby. Your story was cute but needs work.

>>20131248
/thread

>>20132098
>I do have some of him with me so I have joined him I suppose.
post urn with timestamp or gtfo

>>20131727
You've been answered half a dozen times and you opened the thread by being actively hostile, calling everyone who engages in the hobby of this hobby board a "conceited pseud douchebag." Just go find utility by selling your plasma or something and stop posting.

>>20132098
>and then hangs himself a few years later like that idiot.
He shot himself, retard.

>>20132100

It's not clear to me how I was whining, I had already broken ties with the guy for 5 years and washed my hands of him when I got the call. It's a pretty condensed version of a 20 year ordeal.

The thread was about ideas surrounding those who read literary greats. My intention was not to derail, but relate this characteristic, which became increasingly central in my friend's mind, that somehow reading dostoyevsky and the master and the margarita made him "deep".

He, like a lot of those people, searched for meaning and happiness in the wrong places. He had a love affair with that romantic idealization of sickness, addiction, and mental illness.

>>20132111
I meant DFW, I don't think Hitler was an idiot--just under some stress from Stalingrad and his buddies dying.

>>20132104
I'm heading to bed, got things to do with the senpai tomorrow.

>>20132116
>spacing
> reading dostoyevsky and the master and the margarita made him "deep"
10/10 bait my friend, catch you in the next thread.

>>20132127
In bed, phone posting, I can probably pull up the Gchat messages from Nov. 2011 when he was explaining this to me. He had previously made claims about "best literature" in 2009 when I was reading Fontane, Balzac, Lermontov, and Patricia Highsmith. I still haven't, and likely never will, read master and margarita or Kafka. I don't give a fuck if a bunch of fairies got together and made lists of the best books. You know who else made lists? Oscar Schindler. You can't trust people and their taste, people like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis .

I like house of the dead, demons, notes, but bros Karamazov is just okay. I haven't read crime and punishment yet. It's essential to have your own taste. Fuck all the trendy people.

>>20132157
He was clearly brilliant, btw, but strive to be perceived as having depth when I don't think he found much pleasure in reading. He also began watching esoteric landscape films from the 1960s and refused to watch great newer films like sexy beast, or Heat, the edge, or the guard.

>>20130383
No, reading books wont turn you into a 200-iq gigachad, but depending on your habits it may help you growing as a person. Is not authomatic and of course depends on the individual, but the answer is no, books are not just cope.

>>20130383
reading is fun
/thread. yes I am /thread'ing my own post.

>>20131153
They're entertaining, among other things. Isn't that enough?

>>20132429
>/thread. yes I am /thread'ing my own post.
Based

>>20130383
>Are books just a cope?
As contrary to...what? What is not-cope?

>>20131373
>every part of the modern political spectrum is dominated by materialist utilitarians
not true
>that their way is the most Prosperous and Universally Good way.
duh, why else would you care about politics if you don't think there's a best way?
> Go listen to leftists and they're accusing le rightwingers of the same thing. drop the retarded leftwing/rightwing construct.
You just contradicted yourself in this one sentence.

>>20131373
>every part of the modern political spectrum is dominated by materialist utilitarians
not true
>that their way is the most Prosperous and Universally Good way.
duh, why else would you care about politics if you don't think there's a best way? wanting the best way doesn't equal utilitarianism.
> Go listen to leftists and they're accusing le rightwingers of the same thing. drop the retarded leftwing/rightwing construct.
You just contradicted yourself in this one sentence.

>>20130383
Bro I would want to sue someone for putting cringey captions over a photo of me

>>20133397
>not true
Yes, it is.
>You just contradicted yourself
No, you're just a brainlet. I never said left/right doesn't exist, but it's a retarded dichotomy that depends on people self-identifying because of frivolous positions on culture war idiocy.

>>20133458
> Yes, it is.
No it isn't. What does all the culture war stuff have to do with utility? or populism? Most people don't think in terms of the utilitarian autism of Bentham, at most, people might give utilitarian arguments to convince others of their position but that's probably not what motivated them to their position in the first place. The Right, for example, tends to care more about things like tradition and values and liberals mostly care about maximizing market efficiency or personal freedom.
> I never said left/right doesn't exist
But you implied that it's somehow wrong to speak in terms of left and right which is the very thing that you then went on to do--curious...
> frivolous positions on culture war idiocy.
Culture war stuff isn't the only thing that distinguishes the left from the right, there are also considerations such as economics, law, the structure of government, the duties of government to it's people, etc. Sure, all of these things can't really just be reduced into a 1-dimensional line or even a 2-dimensional plane but who said it could anyway? left and right is just a very useful way to discuss the major types of political view-points that people tend to sort themselves into.

>>20130383
I read Dostoevsky because his protagonists are literally me and reading is the only thing I can do to stave off my permanent feeling of dread since video games don't do it for me anymore

>>20133874
The world isn't binary, consider variability.

>>20132157
I really enjoyed C&P, thought it captured well the feelings of vague guilt and paranoia that many modern people suffer, and it can be read as a window into the mindset of the "Targeted Individual" as well.

>>20133874
>But you implied that it's somehow wrong to speak in terms of left and right which is the very thing that you then went on to do--curious...
Only to illustrate that people who self-identify on "the other side" of the spectrum think exactly like you do.
Also conservatives/right wingers are often said to be the people concerned with market efficiency (libertarian stereotypes). Nobody in the mainstream is comfortable arguing for a policy or ideology without justifying it in terms of its ultimate results towards maximizing prosperity (materially defined). The great 20th century struggle of communism vs. fascism vs. liberalism was a struggle between materialist ideologies.