/lit/ - Literature

EDITOR SAMAAAAAAAAAAA

>>20855418
Posted this in all the local cafés, gonna hit the libraries tomorrow. Any tips for where else? Please help spread the word, anons, we just want to bring our boy home.

conveniently i have a list of good ones i noted from a year ago. i dont remember all of them very clearly and i havent read all of them either. there was talk of collecting the high effort ones in the last thread but some of the best are actually the really low effort ones like "you will rue what you have done/dodgemedge to catalonia". anyways none of these are mine, so pls go back and read all issues so mine can be given a chance too :3

>1
the justice system
>3
the good/the bad
6 things to do
>4
deep under the covers
super bowl
esoteric epstein
>5
only and only the intro to gardner interview, along with every other editors note really
newlyweds
generals
trillionares
thine is the kingdom (editors own greentext piece, a must imo)
jumper and runner
>7
the lizard cartoon
nahma
the one with the upside down title that starts with mr president
area 22
psvchoenergetics
>8
milk
baseball one
subject/self help
mademoiselle

>>20855401
>(do not) put it on your résumé!
Can I at least brag to my favorite English teacher from high school?

threadly reminder that you DO NOT
I repeat
DO NOT
have to be any good to submit to &amp
(you hardly have to be literate)
all submissions are welcome and most entries make it in unless editor misses an email

>>20855615
Thanks for the list, you've got good taste. Was going through the early issues and really loved Thine is the Kingdom, so it's cool to know that editor wrote it. Just read the good/the bad and lol'd.

I agree about some of the low effort ones being great, but it's hard to rank them on the same scale as the "serious" stuff. Could have chapters for different types of works (something a little more granular than "effortposts" and "shitposts"). I'm currently digging through the older issues and I'll keep an eye out for the ones you mentioned. If you've ever got any other suggestions, feel free to shoot me an email at unofficial.drivel@gmail.com.

>>20855691
Yeah, go ahead and tell her you got published next to a rape greentext. Remember to explain what a greentext is. And say "cultural zeitgeist" somewhere in that conversation.

>>20855401
Hi, I submitted some stories and I would like some honest criticism.

Edition 12.
>Warszawa Wileńska, December 25th

Edition 11
>Shiva's Phallus
>Burger Crusader (this one is bad and Zi know, wrote in 30 minutes or so lol)

Edition 10
>Off the Boy, Satan

You don't need to read it all.
I'm just sad because I have no time to write at all lately. The one in edition 12 should have debuted in December, but Prussia fucked us up in that one.

I'm sad because I know I'm not a great writer, I write better on my native tongue and I'm considering to write in Portuguese and then translate it, I think my ideas will flow more naturally.
The sad part is, I have great ideas, I can see some literary scenes as if they happened to me, but again, I am poor with words, I'm unskilled in detailing and transmitting that feeling. I have some ideas in mind and I would like to share with (You).

>A story about a hundred year old japanese toy that is possessed by a Tsukumogami. This toy is inherited by a Brazilian gaijin.
>A novella about a victorious Nazi Germany, but as soon as the Hitler dies, inner struggles in the Nazi party leaves a power void and many prominent Nazi tries to seize the power, each having their own agenda, saying their views are what the original Fuhrer actually envisioned.
>A post-apocalyptic story where the global technological society collapses, but the story is on the perspective of a tribe that never relied on tech in the first place.

I tell you these stories unafraid of you copying the ideas, since the story I want to read is the one I have on my mind. You see, I don't write because I want you to read these things, I write because I wish the whole characters and scenarios I have on my mind came to life, it's not something other people can do.

And by the way, shout out to whoever wrote "Marginal Lives", it's such a sensible story that I wouldn't expect to see it on a non-profit magazine. You have talent and a beautiful mind, fren. Keep writing.

>>20855765
Hey, if you want feedback I’d be happy to give you some. It’s late, but I’ll try to post it in this thread tomorrow, or alternatively you can email me at atlaspherea@gmail.com. That goes for anyone else, too.

Jumper and Runner, &amp issue 005. End scenes.

>>20855765
Ah yeah, I've read all your stuff. The ESLness is obvious (especially in 012), but it's readable. I'll try to give them a re-read and get back to you tomorrow or so with something more detailed. Shiva's Phallus was the sort of thing I'd like to see more of, and the Burger story was funny, but I remember reading Warszawa Wileńska and finding it be a sort of obvious/pointless story with very stilted, awkward dialogue. Sadly, as another anon said last thread, being ESL is going to really hold you back until you've got a really good handle on the language. I think you've just gotta practice more before you can hope to express yourself clearly in English.

Also, on Marginal Lives, I didn't find it as good as other anons had said. I saw it mentioned in the 011 release thread too. It managed to capture a sentimental feeling, but I didn't find it particularly interesting or well-written.

>>20855765
maybe you could work with another anon to smooth out the gramnatical kinks in your writing before you submit?
loved shiva's phallus, by the way

the graphic design in &amp is very underrated

>>20855885
Sent an email your way

>>20855978
Thanks for the feedback. What do you think I miss the most? Grammar?
I admit my stories have an awkward pace and dialogue, I often lose time describing things I don't need and then as I hurry through other things that needed some development. Maybe because I write too damn fast and don't spend a lot of time polishing the work.

>>20856539
I used to work with my ex, who was a linguist, but what I wrote with her was never published here. Back in the day I was working on a novel that I never finished, never went past three chapters. It was a silly boy meets girl story with a road-book twist, nothing special.
It would be cool if I had another grammar freak backing me up...

finally fell into submission

¡VIVA EL ESTADO DEL BEISBOL!, &amp issue 008. Baseball and fanaticism.

Since ffa is basically canceled I am taking the flash fiction I wrote on "interesting object at the bottom of the ocean" and submitting it for the issue after next as I've already submitted this month.
The object in question? A terracotta Sardonic mask. The last one on Earth.

>>20857572
>It would be cool if I had another grammar freak backing me up...
i hope you find one soon.
here's a tip on improving your grammar: read a usage dictionary (e.g. Garner's Modern English Usage) or grammar textbook when you're free. or when you're pooping. you'll learn something new each time.

Dear Mr. Pynchon, &amp issue 003. An impotent letter to Pynchon.

Anybody know if editor used the &c (see bottom of pic related) or triforce in any issues past 004? He talked about them in his letter in 003; said &c was to denote quality works, triforce for amateur-ish stuff. When I read that I kept my eyes open for an idea of what shit editor deemed Good(TM) (and to make sure I didn't get branded with a triforce), but I didn't see them pop up anywhere else.

>>20859491
&amp 012, "No Audience Needed."

>>20857572
I went through some of your stuff again, and apart from the ESLness which really brings it down, it all feels really overwritten. I'm guessing you're being verbose to make up for your rough handle on English, so I'm not going to go into specifics on the prose itself since you need to learn more English first.

About December 25th: what was the point? Girl trying to go home meets a bum who's secretly Jesus? I found it pretty boring, and the "twist" was pretty obvious. And again the dialogue was fucky. I don't know what you were trying to set up with all the description and the Jesus fella, but it didn't do anything for me.

Again, Shiva's Phallus was good for what it was, so I'd like to see more of that kind of thing (schizology?) from you. Liked it over December 25th and Off the Boy. Also seemed like it was more cohesive than your other stuff. I like the /x/ shit that turns up in &amp.

>>20859588
Thanks, I remember that one. I wasn't a fan, though.

>>20859491
it doesnt denote good works. he just gives some authors the chance to have a signiture and that one is one belongs to justice. imo he never came close to writing anything as good as his first. he quickly gave up on the triforce though.
>>20857960
submit as much as you can. dont wait. he doesnt have enough to fill one issue.

>>20860474
Shit, guess I misread. Thanks for the correction. Was hoping there'd be a bunch of entries with editor's stamp of approval I could trawl through.

has there been any music-related content in &amp?

>>20860474
>he doesnt have enough to fill one issue.
Submitted to email.

>>20860474
>he doesnt have enough
How many pages do you think he's got now? I submitted a 5600 word story and I can submit another 1000.

going of the last threads, it would seem people have submitted more than usual..

>>20862061
quantity allows quality!

>>20862056
sweet. can't wait to read it anon

>>20862086
Flash fic is >>20857960
Actually a tie-in with my other story and I had fun trying to evoke all the things that the mask does.

>>20861258
I've put up ads for my radio show in the last couple issues. Pic related.

>>20855401
will you accept pictures of Lolis?

>>20862619
no, you fucking nonce

>>20862619

>>20860451
I actually thank you for reading. It's being constructive.
I wrote Off the Boy and Shiva's for &amp only. The Christmas story was something I wrote for a friend and sent to &amp because it was December then.
I recognize the latter story is foolish. I just wanted to write a story about someone who has no religious mind finding Jesus, but I know it's not great.

I realized my issues with overwriting, it happens a lot because I don't take many hours of effort for each piece and the final result is not as good as I envisioned neither. The first pieces I wrote on a deadline because I didn't want to miss the edition, but if you see the great writers, they wouldn't drop a short story per month, and when they did, they would work on it for months. And when comes to me, a unskilled and inexperienced guy, I needed a double effort to write a story. Maybe my mistake is doing it too fast, without pondering over the manuscript.

I will take long to submit my next works, I'll work on them for months and it will be finished, it's finished.
I would be happy if you guys could say "Well, kgf finally came with a good piece. Well done."

I was planning to expanding on Shiva's Phallus too. The idea was to create a number of connected writings where a secret glowie force has a task to shut down paranormal activities and spiritual awakening.
I'm a weird guy, I like collecting conspiracy theories. It's my unsavory hobby. To be honest, once I wrote a hoax in /x/ about CERN experiments creating an infinite time loop and we are living the same years over and over again without being aware that history doesn't go further. To this day they still discuss it and take my hoax seriously.
I think that pretty much defines me, I'm creative, but a terrible writer in the end.

>>20855765
>>20862764
Hey, I’m going to respond to your email in a bit, but here’s your crit:

I agree with >>20860451 that Shiva’s Phallus is by far the best of the works you’ve submitted— it’s bizarre in a fascinating way, and the paranormal element works really well. I think it’d be cool if you followed through with your plan to expand upon it. I thought the “found document” formatting was a great stylistic choice, and the handwritten comments were a nice touch. I’d say its worthy to be included in a “best of” issue.

I noticed some issues with the prose, though— clunky sentences, strange word choices—so, if you want, then I’ll help you re-edit it for the “best-of” issue. If you can send me just the original text in a google docs file, then that would make it a lot easier for me to go through and leave comments. I’ll also point out any errors in diction and syntax.

One other suggestion: if you choose to do a rewrite, you might benefit from reading some actual case reports and psychiatric evaluations first. This will help you to get a better sense of the sort of formal, detached, clinical writing style that they employ in the psychiatric profession. At times you failed to achieve that, and the narration in the report seemed too sensationalized and not observational enough. Some of the diction was also too casual for a medical context, which broke my immersion while I was reading it. When using a narrative frame like this, you need to employ a certain subtlety: you don’t have the same freedom to use dramatic and descriptive language, so certain things need to be insinuated rather than stated outright.

For your other works, I don’t have as much to say about them. I didn’t read the burger story closely, but it seemed like an unremarkable attempt at comedy. With W.W Dec 25, the whole “lonely person working through the holidays” plot is a cliché, and you did nothing to subvert it.
Stilted diction and syntax seem to be the most apparent issues in your work. You’re not a bad writer, but I’d suggest that you work on improving your English, as that’s really the biggest thing that’s limiting you.

>>20855765
>>20855978
I mentioned it briefly a couple of threads ago, but I actually disliked Marginal Lives. The writing was clumsy, the dialogue was stilted, and the plot lacked all nuance: “a pure-hearted, intelligent, bookish outsider marries a brutish cartoon-villain and meets an untimely, tragic end” reads like something out of a cheap movie. The aging couple at the centre of the story were a stereotype as well: a one dimensional portrayal of a domestic, practical woman fussing over her absent-minded husband.

There was no meaningful conflict or mystery, and the protagonist conveniently found out everything he wanted to know in a single phone call. (Why would the dead woman’s sister share the most intimate details of her life with a complete stranger at the drop of a hat?) The sentiment about feeling like an outsider and fearing death/being forgotten is interesting, but it should’ve been incorporated into the story in a subtle way, not dumped all at once in a sappy graveside monologue. It felt as though the author was beating the reader over the head with an idea that should’ve been handed over delicately. Anyway, I appreciate the author making the effort, but trite moralizing doesn’t create a meaningful work of art. The story wasn’t transgressive or innovative in any way.

I’d recommend “The Only Computer Crime for Which Theologians are Consulted” from Issue 11 for the best-of. It’s very well-written and has an interesting premise.

>>20863852
I think that was my favourite from 011. What did you think of the two-part bondage story that finished in that issue? I think it was a little rough around the edges, but I liked it.

>>20863852
that shit was top-tier /lit/. loved it

>>20863852
pic related for the uninitiated

Bump

hoping we get a release this month or the next :-\

If this can be a little /crit/, what did people think of "For they are the ones who do the research" from Issue 3?

>>20867285
I liked it. It feels like a novel I'd spot and buy at a bookstore because the cover was pretty.
I have a few personal issues with some of the sentences. Here they are:

>There is little light pollution off the coast of Angola. The platform's flaring on the horizon dissipates, leaving a clear view of the stars. I stared at them for a moment. [Not because astrology or constellations interested me, but because] the glittering blackness reminded me of the High Plains.
The text in brackets is perhaps a useless clarification to make.
As an aside, I really like the word blackness. I get hyped, for some reason, when people use the word.

>My phone picked up the wireless signal after passing through the door, and [proceeded to download emails.]
Maybe something "began downloading" would be a little less clunky?

>[Now was not a good time to buy, after the stock plummeted 30% in the past weeks.]
The grammar here is a little awkward and jaunty. Maybe "[...] to buy; the stock had plummeted 30% in the past weeks." would flow better.

By the way,
>This industry was fucked.
Is a good line! Sometimes I feel like people use the word "fuck" just for the sake of using the word "fuck" and it makes for horrid bumps in the rhythm prose, but this felt right. Maybe talk a little more about the entire stock market situation so you can have a better build up to this line?

>The regular[,] foreign workers
The comma seems off here.
>[smuggled in]
A hyphen would clarify this and make it much easier to read.

>The crane operator obsessed over this barracuda below, and referred to the fish [(in his broken English)] as “the monster”.
I think the characterization here is good, but maybe find another place to do it. Here it just seems weird.

>Only the blue and yellow fish would bite at our meal[, the red snappers swam uninterested.]
I know this is a style guide thing, but I think a semicolon (or an em-dash!) would be much better than a comma here.
Also, this is another personal thing, but how about something like "[...] the red snappers swam ABOUT, interested."?

>[had almost every left-wing political statement on her door.]
is a bit cringe (NOT because of the politics— I would have said the same had you said "right-wing") but because of the implication that any political belief has a set number of numbered statements. Almost every? How many leftist political statements are there?

Hitting word limit so I skipped a chunk of the story—There are other issues further on, but as you can see, it's just me being a bit pedantic about minor wording issues. I'm sure you can go through it again yourself and iron out the wrinkles in an otherwise very very enjoyable piece. I liked the vibe, I liked the voice, I liked the scene with the fish blood.

>Would this professor understand what I was talking about, or would she turn away from the idea of fish blood on my hands?
Great.
I liked this piece.

Smarter anons: please tell me if you disagree with anything I said.

>>20867893
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. Always thought about publishing all of my oilfield short stories after reworking. Reading that one now feels so cringe and rushed in spots.

>>20867963
>after reworking
That's a great idea. Try to be more deliberate and thoughtful about your phrasing. Sometimes the reader can find something you wrote hilarious without your having intended it.
For example, let's say an author writes a scene where the protagonist, an art school student, is receiving live critique on a piece from a professor. And maybe let's say the protagonist, after weeks of hard work, is finally done with a painting and is nervous and excited because he's proud of it and can't wait for the professor to notice his use of colour and depiction of texture and all. And let's say the professor, upon seeing it, passes by without stopping to look, only saying, dismissively, "It's too small."
This is devastating to the protagonist. The author intends it to be a scene where the protagonist's world is shattered by the professor's bluntness — He didn't even stop to LOOK?
And the protagonist, at night, repeats to himself:
"It's too small. It's too small. That's it? That's all he had to say?
Too small?"
Anyway, you get it. The opposite can also happen. So read and re-read and revise and revise again. Good luck! Again, comfy story. Can't wait to see more!

>>20868136
>Can't wait to see more!
Submitted a story couple days ago that maybe tried too hard to imitate DFW's "Brief interviews". Focus on structure was a distraction.

>>20867893
Based feedbackanon
Do you have anything that you’ve submitted to amp?
Favourite all-time piece? Most hated piece?
>>20855765
I loved shiva’s phallus, I found it very creative and all the esiteric/occult was interesting. Had an scp vibe.
How does it feel to have a self-made hoax that is still repeated on /x/ (cern)? Does it make you think about how easily bullshit spreads? I’d unironically love for you to make a piece about cern timetravel. How much of what you read on /x/ do you believe?
>>20855615
Most of the time the pieces that the editor puts in at the beggining are 100 times better than everything else
I never knew if anyone liked the subject/selfhelp/schizoprenia shitpost, happy that you liked it.

How do you think a best-of issue should get made? A google forms that the editor would send out to everyones email? >>20865756
Probably my favorite piece

>>20868971
>Most of the time the pieces that the editor puts in at the beggining are 100 times better than everything else
not the case at all. a lot of the times he just gets it out of the way

>>20868971
>Based feedbackanon
Thanks, but unfortunately, I'm a horrible writer!
>Do you have anything that you’ve submitted to amp?
I have, but I'm not proud of the piece I submitted at all — It was a shitpost piece that I wrote last year in about ten to fifteen minutes. I submitted it to &amp because I didn't want to submit anything "good." I regret it now because I have come to love this magazine — It deserves better.
I sent in an experimental 300-word piece to &amp for August! It involves a frog.
>Favourite all-time piece?
Definitely "The Only Computer Crime for Which Theologians are Consulted!" And, if the editor's letters count as pieces, the one in issue 12. And the untitled piece about pornography on page 27 (page 29 of the .pdf) of issue 12.
>Most hated piece?
I don't really hate anything. I don't hate works of art in general, be it music or literature or drawings. There are undeniably good moments in everything. \


> >>20865756 Probably my favorite piece
Great taste, anon!

>>20868971
>Favourite all-time piece?
Coffee and chili
>Most hated piece?
Tryptic

>>20869269
>Coffee and chili
What issue is that in? I have coffee and chili almost every single day.

>>20869269
do you mean the shit-eater triptych? bc im pretty sure that and the chilli story were written by the same person, lol

>>20869269
It’s in issue 010, iirc

>>20869309
Same person. Duality of anon.

>>20869269
>Coffee and chili
good shit. bit wonky in parts, but i like it.

Bump

Your Judgement Is Worthless, 003

who are your favourite authors? wanna see who is influencing &amp

>>20871952
Difficult for me to follow an author based on short stories.
For novels, Ogden Nesmer.

>>20871952
William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe and John Milton are the biggest inspirations for me right now. I read a lot of other stuff that but those are the authors that struck a cord with me the most.

>>20872264
Oh, for reading: Pynchon, Delillo, Franzen.

>>20868971
>How does it feel to have a self-made hoax that is still repeated on /x/ (cern)? Does it make you think about how easily bullshit spreads?
Yes, I think it was a great sociological experiment. In this case, I think people wanted to believe that they would go back in time with their memories intact.
The idea was simple, there was an specific time and hour for the "rewind" and if your brain was chemically wired through drugs, your conscience would transcend back in time intact. I schedule one hour and many people said they actually tried DMT during the loop time. Some claimed it was their first time and, as nothing happened, some said they were thankful for the experience since it allowed them to think about their life in a meaningful way.
In my opinion, this is the power of stories and literature, to create context in order to rethink your own human experience.

>I’d unironically love for you to make a piece about cern timetravel. How much of what you read on /x/ do you believe?
Just after that I started working on a novel, and even wrote a few chapters of it in my mother tongue. I've done some research and cut down the CERN shenanigans in order to create a more elaborate explanation on why the arrow of time appears to be going on a full circle rather than onwards.
I have a whole universe on my mind, with characters, experiences, existential ponderings... The story is similar to The Groundhog Day, but rather than a single man experiencing a single day of loop in a small town, it's about a small group of people experiencing a 7 years long time loop, being able to go anywhere and do anything. Their goal is to understand why this is happening and they can't simply die. My research was very detailed and I wrote a summary of events I would like to present in this work, however, it's a gargantuan task and I need a lot of improvement on my own writing.

>>20873185
>In my opinion, this is the power of stories and literature, to create context in order to rethink your own human experience.
well-said, anon.

>>20872264
>Thomas Wolfe
Absolutely based.

>>20871952
Here’s a list of some of my favourite poetry— I’d like to see more discussion of poetry in these &amp threads. I’ll find some poems that I like from previous issues and post them here later.

>>20869349
the sheer contrast between the two really takes you on a wild ride

>>20869203
which shitpost was yours?

>>20872254
Based. Eggchads rise up

>>20874455
This is embarrassing, but it was "The School of Athens" in issue 014. A lot is wrong with it that is also wrong with my "better" pieces. It was partially based on a conversation I'd witnessed in a certain comment section.
I don't know what I was thinking.

>>20874664
Don’t be embarrassed. It’s a process, and we’re all amateurs. I’m still looking forward to your frog piece.

would anyone like to give me some feedback for writing? the last time I sent in was way back in the single digit issues but I never really asked on these threads
I wrote the following

Issue 4 who were you
Issue 5 senseless and needless: the book of virtual disquiet
Issue 6 Suburbpunk
issue 6 A town by the beach; or Anon-Oedipus

>>20873185
>>20873497
>In my opinion, this is the power of stories and literature, to create context in order to rethink your own human experience.
fiction can do so much more that whenever someone talks of it as if at the end of the day its highest potential is to make comments on Life or be a veichle for a viewpoint, it sounds to me like, "the power of books is that they can be stacked into staircases." your story for example sounds very interesting-though high concept, but that may only be because youre just presenting the premise-but im sure it will be completely irrelevant to Life or my life or even if it made me go huh at something in a way that could have been done much more easily outside of a whole novel, it will be relatively unimportant to the experience i have being immersed in the novel for its own sake.

>>20875310
which of these do you like the most? i'll read it and try to get back to you

>>20875310
Choose one?

>>20867285
I liked it, but it felt a little fetal. The split in the piece between being on the rig and then burgeoning into academia is something I liked, but it also felt like neither side was developed enough to really convey anything important about the experiences. The half about the rig itself seemed to jump through a few different points (living conditions, economics, fishing) without completing any of those ideas individually or connecting them to each other--how the backwards economics influenced your mindset and lifestyle on the platform, for example.

I also think there were also some problems with repetitive language, like "I was *offshore* when [...]" then "[...] different *offshore* production platforms" stood out to me as clunky and unnecessary. It's also written with very little context, so stuff like "platforms flaring" was vague. (I'm assuming it's about the gas being burned?) Same with the stock-talk. I think you need to ask yourself questions like "have I said this already?" "does this matter?" and "will the reader know what this is?"

And the stuff about snipers and hostilities felt like it came out of nowhere at the end. I figure that's deliberate, and that it's probably about signs of collapse and differences in mindset, but I think you need to introduce those sorts of things better. There's a lot of room you can fill with your own thinking in the writing itself--the piece could have included more of your own thoughts and thought processes.

I'd read more.

>>20869301
Pic related. A Chili April, &amp issue 010.

>>20869269
>both by me
Neat. What about the triptych made you hate it so much? Language-wise I look back on it as better-written than Chili April, but I also see that I made the narrator insufferable/maudlin. Both suffer from the "nothing fucking happens" problem, though I guess Chili April has something more akin to a conclusion.

>>20869363
Any wonky bits in particular you could point out? I look back and see awkwardly written parts I wish I could revise, though it was the first piece I ever called "done" since I set myself a deadline of sending it in to &amp.

>>20871952
I'd hazard to say Dosto and Hamsun are some of my favourites, but I haven't read enough from any single author to say "favourite" confidently (and I haven't made any deliberate effort to analyse their styles). That said, I read "Death on Credit" and "Journey to the End of the Night" last year and found the style inspiring (though I was an anglophone reading a translation), and felt similarly about American Psycho when I read it earlier this year. I read the latter around the time that I finished the triptych, so III at least took something from that, and if I remember right I read "Death on Credit" (before Journey) around when I wrote Chili April.

>>20873801
Thank you for this. If I can force a best-of edition into existence I want to make sure I include poetry, but I'm skeptical of my taste in the stuff.

>>20876258
>If I can force a best-of edition into existence I want to make sure I include poetry, but I'm skeptical of my taste in the stuff.

The list I posted is long and eclectic, but if you’re looking to get into poetry I can give you more specific recs. I’m passionate about the stuff, and it saddens me to see it losing its cultural relevance, so I shill it every chance I get. Based on your &amp submissions I’d really recommend that you read Larkin— a lot of his work expresses similar attitudes to your own, specifically poems like “Love Again,” “Sad Steps,” and “Aubade.” I suspect that you’d like Eliot too, if you haven’t read him already— start with “Prufrock” and “Preludes,” because they’re more accessible.

Also, not poetry related, but if you like Hamsun I bet you’d love “Ask the Dust” by John Fante. It’s set in depression-era Los Angeles and strongly reminds me of Hamsun’s “Hunger”— Fante was hugely influenced by Hamsun, and the title of his book is actually taken from Hamsun’s “Pan.”

>>20871952
Here are my non-poetry favourites:

Proust is my favourite author of all time. I started the Modern Library revised “In Search of Lost Time” last summer, and found it life-changing in both style and content. Its reputation for being a slog is totally undeserved. Proust is the most insightful writer that I’ve ever encountered. Reading his work is as though every half-formed vague idea that you’ve ever wanted to write about yourself, but couldn’t quite grasp and articulate, has been put into words perfectly, and with greater depth and scope than you could have ever envisioned. He has an incredible understanding of the complexity of the human mind, how memory works, how we experience time, how we experience and judge the quality of art (books, music, paintings, theatre) and why it resonates with us, and most of all, social dynamics, human relationships and human emotion. He deconstructs everything—love, infatuation, jealousy, familial relationships, friendship—with painful accuracy. Also, his depiction of societal pretensions and lampooning of people’s idiosyncrasies is hilarious, and still resonates today. His prose style takes some getting used to, but at its best it has a deliciously hypnotic quality.

Other favourite books that I’ve read in the past year or so: “If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller,”“Stoner,” “Lolita,” “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and “Crime and Punishment.”

My favourite short stories are by Kafka, George Saunders, Sherwood Anderson, Raymond Carver, and DFW.

>>20867196
same. pls come back editor anon, we’re lost without you :(

>>20876258
>What about the triptych made you hate it so much?
Formatting. 2pt font on mobile wasn't worth it.

>>20875681
>>20876073
sorry anon I fell asleep
a town by the beach was my first piece I ever submitted, it went through the slushpile and I reckon the roughest spot is probably where I could use the most critique. If you wanna read that one I would be appreciative.

>>20877684
alright. >>20875681 here.

there are grammatical mistakes throughout. i'm sure you're aware, so i won't focus on correcting them.
an example is "bare with me," although i'll give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a mere typo.
you might want to exercise your control over language: at one point in the story, the narrator goes:
>You’re still using the word “degrade”. I think your speech is fine.
'degrade' isn't a particularly sophisticated word. this wouldn't sit right with the reader.
here's a tip for clarity: disregarding quotation marks is okay, but there still has to be *something* that indicates speech. maybe an em-dash.
you have to give more thought to how you describe things. the formatting confuses the reader. makes for an unpleasant read.

but i like it. there is sincerity in your expression. i want you to focus on that and let that sort of sincerity pour out.
just think a bit about the reader. they don't know you. they don't know what you're thinking.
is what you are saying being understood? are you projecting your thoughts into the reader's mind clearly (and more importantly, beautifully)?

i liked the last line.

sorry for the short post. i'm swamped right now

>>20877843
dont worry about the length of the post anon, the content within it helps a lot.
the whole degrade bit makes sense. I didn't think it was particularly fancy but the idea of someone just examining their own speech and motor function while lit up as all get out came from an in joke long ago.
as for the comments regarding separation of speech and formatting, I've always had some trouble with it, to the point where often I wouldn't have any dialogue in my stories whatsoever. I'm taking a higher level writing class in uni this year so hopefully I can get that settled about. Thank you for the compliment regarding sincerity, that is what I strive for most in my work.
>think about the reader, they dont know you
thus where the bit about degrade falls a bit
but thank you anon, appreciate your help.

>>20877279
ah
desu it was more legible originally but the typesetting got a little fucked up in &amp

>>20877279
you could just… zoom in?

If I get caught up on my novel editing this week (up to chapter 8) then I will finish and submit my flash fic. Finally figured out the ending for it that I'm satisfied with.

>>20878367
dont slander editoranon like this

Bump

>>20855615
Thank you anon. 3 of mine made your list

>>20879602
Which three were yours?

>>20878851
It's not a jab at editor, it's just a note. I sent in my stuff as a PDF I typeset in LaTeX on Ubuntu, so I'm gonna guess that whatever free TeX font I used wasn't available in (probably) Canva. I've run into this problem before trying to export PDFs from GIMP, or if a printer doesn't support a font I used. Pic related has the original on the left and the &amp version to the right. It was still incredibly cramped when I sent it in, but something with the different font changed the kerning and made it hard(er) to read. I wouldn't try to cram so much in a second time.

>>20880028
>a shaved ape

is this u?

>>20878851
editor anon did me dirty too with some low effort and uncomplimentary designs. i think im entitled to one reeeee
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>20880562
could u do better?

>>20880826
undeniably. the designs are very pretty overall, even for the worst of the bunch, so i enjoy reading other peoples, but goddamn some of mine are lazy or unrelated

>>20880890
maybe your work is low-tier, man

>>20880890
much worse has gotten incredible designs and he gave high praises the few times i submitted last couple issues

>>20880930
much worse has gotten great designs and he gave high praises the few times i submitted last couple issues

>>20880984
cope

>>20876647
Thank you for the recommendations, I'll read them soon. If you want to take a more active role in ranking the poetry for a best-of issue, unofficial.drivel@gmail.com is me.

>>20875310
I really liked your pieces, Suburbpunk most of all. I haven't got any extensive notes, but overall there was some awkward punctuation (e.g., semicolons and em-dashes used weirdly in many cases) and lack of clarity (e.g., the shift to the memory at the end of Senseless and Needless, the shifts between dialogue and daydreams and descriptions in Anon-Oedipus which may have been intentional and were sort of interesting but still a little too confusing at times), plus things like spelling errors.

About Senseless and Needless: I felt it could have started with page two, "I wasn't exactly sure [...]", and that the first page didn't really add anything in particular to the story. Maybe it could just be reordered or mixed into the rest of the story, but the first paragraph of page two felt like it would have made a more captivating start.

Suburbpunk: liked this one a lot and it's probably one of my favourites across everything I've read in &amp so far, but sometimes the writing itself was weird.
>melodramatic monotonal emotional haze
Melodramatic and monotonal (monotonous or monotone) are more or less opposites, so this was confusing.
>not so much as I wanted to as much as she may have found something enjoyable about the fact I was asked out
Confusing again, but due to repetition. Could have been "not so much because I wanted to but because she [...]" and worked better.
>Red leaves
Petals, not leaves.
>I visited it a total of 5 times
Vague "it" that isn't immediately clear as being the field. If you look at the end of your last paragraph you had been talking about various other things which you could call "them" or "it" so you lose the strict continuity of "it"="the field".
>She never put a safety on it
Maybe I'm clueless, but a safety is a built in part of most (all?) guns and only prevents accidental discharge. I figured you meant a lock.
>I’d splatter the poppies
You wouldn't splatter the poppies, you'd splatter the gore all over the poppies. Another case of the object being misrepresented in the sentence's meaning, so be careful of that.
One last thing: the child came to grasp death very quickly after starting from almost nothing, and I found it slightly unbelievable. There's talking of death being a "going away" but that doesn't quite translate to how the child understands death as also meaning stillness, although the surprise to the twitching is probably realistic. (This may have been me overthinking this and underestimating how well a kid would intuit these things; I also got the impression that this was at least based on personal experience, so you can throw some of this out the window if it was more or less true to life.)

>>20880221
In essence.

Also: fuck mobilefags.

>>20855401
I keep seeing this, what the fuck is this general?

>>20882424
Do you have some kind of profound mental disability?

>>20882424
>Heboro doesn'tboro knowboro
kekboro

>>20882513
editor anon screenshot this for the magazine

>>20882424
If you’d read the original post then you wouldn’t need to ask this question, you illiterate fuck.

>>20882513
NTA but I am probably mentally unwell from having been on some of the strongest SSRIs for 15 years. I am glad I quit them, but still vividly remember some of the otherworldly sensations as if I was pure motion, both fast and slow but always smooth and unreal. Itd last for half an hour sometimes like a trance of one definite motion after the other and I'd ask adults if they knew what I was talking about and none of them did.

Does anyone have suggestions for the design of a best-of issue? Editor is thus far uninvolved, so there's a lack of skill to contend with. And in an effort to be "fair" I've considered that maybe it should be a fairly plain issue where the selected pieces are (let's say) allowed to stand on their own. Maybe some embellishments or illustrations at the start and end of each piece. Dunno.

>>20883580
Ai generated art from each poem.

>>20883580
just rip the pages from the magazine. then all the graphic design we have to worry about will be that of the cover

>>20883597
I'll keep that in mind if there are any poems where the theme fits, but in part I want to keep a focus on the writing and not the illustrations.

>>20883614
I'd like there to be an extra layer of editing before presentation. A lot of pieces have glaring mistakes, and I think it'd be worth it to tidy them up. An issue like this can run more based on the appeal of the writing than the display, and admittedly some pieces were worse-off than others when it came to the design choices (e.g., cases of text being formatted poorly, fonts that can't be read on the background, compression buggering up some illustrations). I also don't want to just pillage &amp wholesale.

>>20881397
>Thank you for the recommendations, I'll read them soon. If you want to take a more active role in ranking the poetry for a best-of issue, unofficial.drivel@gmail.com is me.

No prob, hope you enjoy. And you actually emailed me last week; I’m atlaspherea@gmail.com.

>>20883580
Maybe this is a weird idea but I was kind of thinking it might be cool to do more of a stripped-back “best of” issue. Editor’s designs are usually slick and colourful and complex, and while I admire them, that sort of stuff isn’t my forte, so I doubt I’d be able to create anything comparable. So maybe we could try to do a best-of in a really old-school style.

I was thinking black-and-white, with the selected pieces reformatted in a sort of retro monospace typesetting, like something printed from an old typewriter. We could try to include hand-drawn illustrations and sketches, or even hand-written letters from the editors and contributors, if people were interested in doing that. Maybe some black-and white photos as well. I draw a little, so I’d definitely contribute to illustrating some stuff.

Maybe the idea is lame, but since so much content in the zine is focused on the internet and the current cultural zeitgeist, it seems to me like it could create a compelling contrast if we were to curate a best-of issue in a format that’s sort of antithetical to that. Could be cool just to try something different, anyway.

Just realized that the &amp website is down— it shows an “account suspended” error message when you try to access it. Anyone heard from editor and know what’s up with that? Or does anyone here have the previous issues saved as pdfs?

>>20884020
ah, so it wasn't just me
RIP &amp

>>20884033
I remember the website being down once before, a couple of months ago. But that time it was back up after a little while, I think? Hopefully it’s not down for good this time. I don’t think editoranon would just abandon the project for good— if he couldn’t be involved anymore I hope he’d try to find someone else to take the reins. Anyway, I hope he’s okay and is just taking a hiatus. Maybe I’ll email him and ask what’s up, although I don’t want to keep spamming if he’s not checking the inbox atm.

>>20883869
Gotcha, I like your ideas on it, especially a sort of anti-&amp look. Having letters from past contributors is something I'm especially interested in. I'm going to reach out for some extra help (specifically some past contributors) and I'll keep you in the loop if I get any replies back.

>>20884020
>>20884033
I've got copies of all the PDFs, so I'll upload them to Google Drive and post a link.

>>20884104
Backup of &amp issues 010-014:
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K3JNLg0xCcojM-Iuu0JtbLB5ngpPJdbs?usp=sharing

If anyone has full-size copies, let me know. Most of mine are compressed versions, but I'd like to have full-size too.

>>20884104
> Gotcha, I like your ideas on it, especially a sort of anti-&amp look. Having letters from past contributors is something I'm especially interested in. I'm going to reach out for some extra help (specifically some past contributors) and I'll keep you in the loop if I get any replies back.

Sounds good, keep me posted. I get that it’d be best to have past contributors be the ones to make decisions regarding the “best of.” It’d probably be gay of me to expect to be involved with it upfront, since I’ve only contributed to &amp in a behind-the-scenes capacity and my own work won’t be showcased or anything. (I sent in a couple of submissions for 015 a while ago, but they won’t actually be part of &amp until editor comes back and releases the next issue. My own fault for procrastinating, I guess.)

Anyway, I have the free time to help behind-the-scenes with editorial and design elements, if you aren’t able to find past contributors who want to do that stuff. And I’ll go through the past issues to rank the poetry for the best-of, if you’re still interested in that.

>>20884262
I'd definitely still be interested in you picking your favourites for consideration, especially poetry. I don't think it'd be a good idea to restrict ranking to contributors, since there are only a few regulars and I don't know how many I'll actually be able to contact directly (let alone who'll respond). Anyway, even just favourites posted in these threads are going to be part of my considerations, so I'll encourage you and anyone else reading to discuss their favourite entries in here. The threads are more fun that way anyway.

>>20884302

Okay, I’ll post my favourites later. It probably makes sense to select a definitive list of favourites before trying to focus on design anyway.

> there are only a few regulars and I don't know how many I'll actually be able to contact directly (let alone who'll respond).

I’m pretty sure KGF (author of Shiva’s Phallus) is in contact with some of the other past contributors on telegram. I know he has the contact info of the author of the Computer Crimes piece (which is a personal favourite of mine) because he mentioned it in a previous thread. It might be worth it to email him and ask if he can help you in your efforts to track down the regulars. Or I can reach out to him about it if you’d like.

>>20884388
Please do, since I don't know any way to reach the guy. I've got addresses for a few contributors, but haven't reached out yet. Hoping those will open things up a bit.

For context, the protagonist is a wizard soldier kinda gal, and is falling to her death.

So, I do what I do best. I leave another mind to generate the saving idea to repair my current woes while I ready myself for the fall, far away from any quicksilver pool to break it. Should my own Pact be uncooperative, then I shan’t listen to it. And with only sixty feet left before a truly unbecoming second place, I pluck one of the trinket grenades from where I’d stashed it in a pocket of my robe.
The egg-like device is an intricate network of electrum circuitry, encased in glass frosted with runes. A product of Lunar Sultan’s alien psyche, the trinket grenade threatens to blast a Warlock’s Pact out of their soul and forcefully into their surrounds. Madness to give this metal air and clustered owls the Red Queen’s insight. That is, were it not for that same insight guiding my hands. So, I grasp the pin and tug it, letting the barb slice through my glove’s leather, through my necrotic skin, siphon a sacrifice of my soul. And in an instant, the trinket grenade’s frosted glass surges and flickers with rainbow light. The ground draws close. I clasp the grenade.
The bloody light coruscates ever faster, warping the world to a mindless mayhem. The parasol, what skeleton remains of it, slips from my mangled grasp. Thread-thin tendrils of my own iridescent lifeblood follow it. I had to mortify to cast that spell, I knew and my body is screaming as my flesh burns and corrodes to power the energies that the trinket grenade would amplify. Mortification is a terrible thing, so awful that I can only hope that following the fragments of Red Queen’s advice will vindicate it. This pain is worse than death, for it is the death of the soul.
Little can compare to mortifying oneself, drawing out the dreg’s of one’s power and burning their blood to do so, then casting a trinket grenade. To call it a jarring experience would make the transition from Arena Port to the Celestial heavens a pleasant cruise. Making it a fair and comprehensible process. And that blur of bright and dark, hope against despair, Red against Black and White, is not that. It is not that.
The detonation is all-consuming. There are no further limits, nothing to surpass as the artifice throws the power of my soul into the heavens. By the Red Queen, my world was already gray, but now it is not even that! My mind and my senses, human or divine, mortal or blessed, a mere djinni cannot…!

>>20884388
>>20884302
Also, forgot to mention it, but editor forwarded me a couple of email submissions from the July issue so that I could copyedit them. I don’t think that the authors were &amp regulars, but I do have their email addresses, if you want to reach out to them about the “best of.”

>>20884463
NTA, but that sounds like a good idea

>>20884432
>>20884463
Okay, I’ll send him an email and CC you on it.

>>20883869
I also like the idea of a mostly text-only, black and white, paperback book. Not a fan of the monospace typewriter look, desu; my suggestion would be an old-style serif like a Caslon, in fact the text design of The Yellow Book periodical is a nice example.

>>20884729
Although I’m personally partial to the monospace look, I know that it can be a pain to read, so I think your idea of an old-style serif like a Caslon is much better. I looked up The Yellow Book; it seems like a great concept to draw from and the illustrations are cool. It seems like you have some knowledge on design— what other ideas do you have?

>>20855401
first time seeing this, why does it say account suspended if i click on the link??

>>20884833
Read the thread if you want article links, we're not sure yet what happened. It's a recent development.

>>20884453
Are you posting this as a submission for the next issue? That’s usually done over email, for future reference. And editor isn’t here, so he won’t see it.

>>20884262
you don’t have to be a past writer to be involved w/ creating &amp. the editor lets anyone work on it if they want to help, bc he doesn’t always have time himself, and he wants the zine to be a communal thing. he’s let other ppl edit some of the previous issues before. he even had a thing on the chat section of the &amp site (while it was still up) saying that he was looking for new ppl to be editors and designers for future issues. there was a canva template for anyone who wanted to design the layout posted there too, i think i might have it somewhere so if i find it i’ll share it. the editor wants &amp to be something anyone can make, so if you want to help create this then there’s no reason that you can’t be a part of it

>>20883580
>>20883869
>>20884780
these are all good ideas. a more minimalist edition of &amp would be interesting, bc sometimes the visuals stand out more than the actual content. it would let us see if the actual writing can stand on its own

>>20885719
He was talking about being involved in the best-of, not &amp in general. Editor is so far uninvolved in the best-of discussions, so it's a little different for now. But yeah, technically &amp has always been very open to collaboration, though most of the effort has fallen on editor. That's part of why I like the idea of the best-of being from readers and contributors, maybe even as a bit of a props to editor.

>>20885773
> Editor is so far uninvolved in the best-of discussions

does anyone actually know where editor is? is he taking a hiatus? idk when anyone last heard from him or if he’d made plans for an august issue at all

>>20885942
Last I'd heard he'd vaporized himself and was hitch-hiking via nostril to the Grand Tetons, plus he's got himself a job as a copywriter using some funny smell-to-text (&vice-versa) thingy. If I'm picking up on the right odour, next issue is apparently slated for "Leptember".

>>20885975
> Last I'd heard he'd vaporized himself
last i heard ur a useless small-dicked faggot

> If I'm picking up on the right odour
why dont u stop sniffing the odor of ur own shit and try picking up some bitches instead

>>20886019
I'm picking up a new scent. I think it says you're gay.

>>20883869
>We could try to include hand-drawn illustrations and sketches, or even hand-written letters from the editors and contributors, if people were interested in doing that.

This is a cool idea. It would be nice to see the past contributors provide some author's notes and maybe some more personal commentary on their pieces. Handwritten stuff would be especially interesting, cause it’s much more unique that way, almost providing a little window into the personality of the anon who wrote it while still staying anonymous.

On that, I often wonder about the sort of people who contribute to &amp. Not in a creepy way, but in my head I picture &amp contributors as a homogenous group of typical lit browsers: dorky young-ish white dudes who are all hunching over computer screens in our respective basements. It’s stereotypical, I know, but it’s funny. I know some contributors are ESL so I suppose there’s cultural diversity of some kind being represented in &amp, but I wonder about all of the people who are just totally unknown and whether they fit into my imagined mold. Like, are there older people who submit stuff? Any submitters who actually write professionally under another name? Have any femanons participated? Not-knowing adds to the charm, and the ambiguity is a big part of why I love &amp. It’s cool to have the sense that what you’re reading could’ve been written by absolutely anyone.

Who will choose for the best of?

>>20886025
sniffing out gay scents makes u sound like even more of a faggot

>>20886261
ur mom, but even she wont pick urs

>>20886260
I like the cross-section it gives of /lit/. Even the shitty stuff gives some impression of the person behind it, going beyond laissez-faire shitposts into something deliberate that they decided to share. Even if it's a cohort of "dorky young-ish white dudes", I think it runs the gamut in terms of what each contributor does with their life. We've got an (ex-)oilrig engineer, editor is now doing copywriting, at least a couple contributors with novels, a chemist working for a pot company, and at least one STEMfag grad student.

>>20886261
Collaborative. I've been trying to reach out to some of the contributors, but I'm also going to consider suggestions posted in the threads. If you post a list of your favourites I'll take note, and I'll also be looking through the archives for which pieces were discussed/liked most. Won't exactly be democratic, though.

>>20886260
> Have any femanons participated?

women don’t frequent this board unless they have serious autism, you fucking pseud. i’ve never met a woman who reads anything but chick-lit, let alone one that was actually a coherent writer. even the shittiest stuff in &amp is better than anything a woman could write.

>>20886397
have you read all issues?

>>20886513
I've read maybe half of them front-to-back, then scattered pieces from the rest. Been a while anyway, so I'll do a full read of everything soon-ish.

>>20886520
> Been a while
lol, sounds like ur a loser if u have nothing better to do than reread the shit written in &amp, bet its been a while since uve known the touch of a woman too

>>20886492
any chick who uses /lit/ is retarded or ugly or both, no exceptions. theyre dumb egirl sluts posting themselves as picrel so /lit/cels will sub to their onlyfans or ugly boring sperg girls whining about their pathetic lives. 90% of so-called femanons are trannies anyway

Bump

>>20886492
>>20886583
stop same-fagging and get the fuck off my general, retard.

>>20879727
6 things
Super bowl
Nahma

>>20884453
Why the fuck would you post this absolute schizology here?

>>20886397
>(ex-)oilrig engineer
My pronouns are ex-oilfield engineer. Funny distinction, but it matters (to me). Sorry I haven't contributed more, was busy skiing and focused on novel. I'll read through archives tonight, trying to remember the hits. Please don't let this thread die.

>>20888425
wait, is the difference significant? how and why? thanks. looking for ward to your oilfield stories. good luck with your novel, anon.

>>20886844
I hope editoranon hasn’t OD on crack

>>20888571
Oil rig engineer implies rig employee. I was neither oil company nor rig. Oilfield service companies are "3rd party" when offshore. Go from job site to job site. Multiple companies as customers, multiple rigs to work on.

>>20888635
srsly hope he’s okay, he mentioned having been in rehab in lots of the &amp threads last year and whenever he goes mia i start to worry about him. hopefully he’s just busy w/ something positive like a new job or w/e.

Bump

sending love to editor-anon

>>20889508
same, hope he’s doing well

>>20888640
I appreciate this oil industry lore

Flipped though old issues today. What stood out:
Issue 3 >>postmodernism
Issue 7 real men eat their girls shit
Best of Issue should have at least one burgerpunk.
Issue 1 burger punk (I liked this ending)
Issue 3 bvrgerpvnk (too long?)
Issue 5 burger spunk
Issue 6 suburbpunk.

>>20890389
things like this make these threads so much fucking cooler. best threads on /lit/ right now.

>>20890849
based, &amp gang rise up

>>20890436
What’s your favourite issue overall?

>>20891463
I'm still working through the second half, they definitely got better.

>>20891474
It's 10.

>>20891486
Keep posting your favourties, anon. I'm keeping track.

>>20891489
>favourties
kek

>>20891497
Dammit, I thought spellcheck was fucking with me over the "ou" so I didn't notice. And then I thought you were laughing at me for being a Commonwealth fag.

>>20891486
Issue 8 Longing
Issue 8 Second opium war
Issue 9 Everyone else is at home
Issue 9 Burgerpunk delivers - Was this Zulu?
Issue 102021-04-22 (No title, not sure if it goes with 1,2,3 before it, poem before that was good too)
Issue 10 crime which theologians are consulted
Issue 10 Burger Crusader
Issue 11 phantom tollbooth
Issue12 Void
Issue 12 panther pride interesting setup, but too long for best issue
Issue 14

Didn't like: Bdsm sessions. Issue 9(?) that talked about raping Iranian woman. Issue 11 women killer, or child molestation. I think there was one that was making fun of Catholics but I can't remember.
>>20890389
Most of my time was spent with field workers, Mexicans on the high plains, Africans and SE Asians offshore, etc. Not too much time luxurious like North Sea. Was an interesting time in my life.

>>20891511
Nah, I’m a fellow Commonwealth fag, so I wouldn’t laugh at you for not following retarded Amerifag spelling.

>>20891514
I like your favourites— Phantom Tollbooth was interesting (save for the fact that the title was a blatant rip-off of Norton Juster), but I haven’t seen any discussion on it. Longing and Void are great as well. I was reading some of the oldest issues this morning, and concluded that 08-014 are much better overall than 01-07. I’ve been trying to select good poems from previous issues, but it’s slow going, because the majority of the poetry in &amp is pretty bad to be honest. The prose is much better in comparison.

>>20891567
>Phantom Tollbooth
I wrote that for one of those prompt threads, so the rip-off was intentional. Didn't know anything about the book apart from pic related.

I noticed that the quality of the design improved and became more consistent as the issues went on. It's nice to think that &amp was a real avenue for editor work on his skills considering the amount of time and effort he put in. Though some of the design work seems strangely inconsistent, so maybe it wasn't solely editor piecing things together.

>>20891595
> Didn't know anything about the book apart from pic related.
I’m sorry that you were so deprived of quality reading material as a child.

>>20891595
i know that another anon helped edit some issues last summer while editor-anon was in rehab so maybe that’s the reason

>>20891531
Webster purged French influence from the proud Anglo Saxon language

Longing, &amp issue 008. A work of k-anon.

>>20891514
>>20891567
I remember reading Longing a ways back, and it does really stand out. K-anon did up all of his &amp works into an anthology called "The Dose Makes the Poison", and he even credits &amp, except he calls it "L&mp" (I don't blame him for trying to put some distance lmao).

>>20891665
That'd make sense. Originally I was going to screencap Suburbpunk, and the comparison between the design there and with Longing is pretty stark. I'd like to get that one into an image for the thread so more anons see it, but it might be hard to do a good job.

>>20891656
I'll keep an eye out for children's lit threads so I can try to make up for it.

>>20891722
K-anon’s submissions are all pretty interesting, from what I remember. Have you reached out to him about the “best of”? I wonder if he’d have any input.

>>20891771
I don't have his contact information (he has a Twitter, but I don't). Seems he and Ogden know each other, and I've reached out to Ogden, so hopefully word will reach him.

>>20891567
>because the majority of the poetry in &amp is pretty bad to be honest. The prose is much better in comparison.
as far as i remember there was a lot of interesting poetry that you wouldnt find anywhere else whereas most of the prose stuff instantly reminded me of something much better. shit ton of hegel essays and naked lunch ripoffs. i might go back and make a poetry list.

>>20891771
the only k anon piece i didnt find even slightly ameteurish was also his shortest newlyweds.

>>20892043
You should make a list. I’ve found a few that I like so far, but most of the poems aren’t my kind of thing. Maybe that’s based on my subjective, personal taste though.

Perhaps I’m just not picking up on the derivative nature of the prose because I’m a pseud who hasn’t read “Naked Lunch” yet, haha. I read “Junky” last fall, and liked it, but I’m apprehensive about starting NL because I’ve heard that some of its content is pretty disturbing.

>>20892192
>Naked Lunch
There's only two books I gave a one star review: NL and Ishmael.

>>20892192
>but I’m apprehensive about starting NL because I’ve heard that some of its content is pretty disturbing
damn dude, how paper-thin is your psyche?

>>20892582
Why

>>20892192
If youre hesitant about starting Naked Lunch because its disturbing I can kind of see why you wouldn’t like amp poetry

>>20892634
My psyche is like tissue-paper. Seriously though, a friend I was talking to said that the book has extreme scenes of graphic violence and sexual violence/pedophilia, and contains strong elements of “body horror.” He described it as even more disturbing to read than “American Psycho.” Not sure how accurate that comparison is, but I’m sensitive to those sorts of things so I generally prefer to avoid books that describe them in graphic detail. But maybe I’m just a pussy.

>>20892877
I didn’t find &amp poetry particularly disturbing. It was more that some of it came across as incoherent and schizophrenic, and not in a stylistically
clever or interesting way. Besides that, a lot of it was just tedious, pointless doggerel—take the MRA poem and the apricot poem from 014, for example. But, to be fair, I haven’t read it all thoroughly yet, and I have come across some stuff that I like.

>>20893084
You might wanna steer clear, even I thought American Psycho was a fucked up read in the graphic parts. It's still my favorite postmodern book but it's nothing like the movie that can pan away from the horror, the books forces you to imagine the details (Clockwork Orange style). I mean sometimes it helps build for a satisfying ending but I've got limits to how often and how far things go in a book.

>>20892877
Because at 100 pages I thought, "What in the ever-loving fuck am I reading?"

>>20893084
I just meant if you find those things disturbing you might have a more... "old fashioned" mind and taste and therefore wont appreciate more
>incoherent and schizophrenic
stuff. Altough i might not have any idea what youre talking about because i havent read the last four issues. Ill check those poems to see.

And as for NL, every disturbing element is played as stylized and extremely black comedy. The overall tone is slapstick hell, but i might have said the same about american psycho. If youre sensitive at all I still wouldnt advise it. Though sometimes i wish i was more sensitive so i was affected more.

>>20893455
Why is that bad?

>>20893157
I read A Clockwork Orange in my early teens, so it’s been roughly a decade, but I didn’t find it all that disturbing back then. I remember being almost bored by it at the time, because I’d expected it to be really lurid, but the depraved acts are described in a pretty detached and almost perfunctory way. I think the use of Nadsat creates a sort of emotional distance from the reality of what’s actually occurring— the protagonist is indulging in these acts of horrific violence, but describes them in a very casual and routine way, using these absurd, strange slang terms that sound almost comedic to the reader on their own. In retrospect I’d hazard to say that Burgess makes the violence more psychologically impactful by defamiliarizing it like that. When Alex describes beating and raping people in the same casual way that you or I might describe a typical evening out, it shows the reader just how desensitized he really is. However, my teenaged self was probably too dumb and uncultured to fully appreciate Burgess’ technique.

What I remember most about that book is the part where Alex describes reading the Bible in jail so that the priests will think he’s pious, but really he’s in search of all of the sexual/violent parts. Growing up, I used to do the same thing during church services sometimes when I was bored— I’d pretend to be following along with the sermon, but really I’d page through my Bible looking for all of the really fucked-up passages. In my case I wasn’t really enjoying it— it was more of a compulsion to satisfy a sick curiosity, or a horrid fascination of some sort. But when I read that in ACO I seriously wondered if I was a psychopath like Alex, and then I started to have nightmares about being forced to undergo Ludovico therapy. Seems funny, looking back.

>>20893483
I wouldn’t say that I’m old-fashioned necessarily. I’ve read other post-modern/experimental works and
have enjoyed most of them. I just don’t like reading about graphic violence and body horror. And I can appreciate stuff that reads as incoherent and schizophrenic, if it’s from a skilled writer who uses that technique to evoke some significant idea, or even just to meaningfully explore a state of mind that’s disconnected from “collective”reality. But some of the more schizo stuff in &amp (not all) just seems lazy and uninteresting, like the ravings of someone who hasn’t been taking their meds and has gone down some weird rabbit hole on /x/. Not everything transgressive and unconventional is inherently profound, you know? Genius and madness don’t always go together.

I still sort of want to read “Naked Lunch” because it’s supposed to be a fascinating insight into drug subcultures and the mindset of addiction, which was what I really liked about “Junky.” But if it’s truly disturbing, I don’t think I can stomach it.

>>20893691
I didnt mean I thought Clockwork was overly disturbing I meant the whole "forced to watch something horrible" thing.

>>20893483
>Why is that bad?
I suppose you like Pollock paintings too.

>>20893710
Oh okay, I see— you meant literally being forced to watch something disturbing with eyes held open, Ludovico-style. I thought you meant that ACO is a disturbing book because its descriptions of violence force the reader to fill in the details with their imagination.

>>20893691
>describes them in a very casual and routine way, using these absurd, strange slang terms that sound almost comedic to the reader on their own.
Exactly how i would descrie naked lunch, but naked lunch goes much further in the disturbing content while having a much more laid back presentation
>I still sort of want to read “Naked Lunch” because it’s supposed to be a fascinating insight into drug subcultures and the mindset of addiction
Thats not really what it is at all. Kinda sounds like someone trying to justify reading it by forcing a "heh i learned something" on it. It would be like reading the book of revelations to learn about the customs of Patmos. Its similarly hellish and surreal actually but the selling point is undeniably burroughs' creativity and his sense of humor that was ages ahead of its time.
>But some of the more schizo stuff in &amp (not all) just seems lazy and uninteresting, like the ravings of someone who hasn’t been taking their meds and has gone down some weird rabbit hole on /x/. Not everything transgressive and unconventional is inherently profound, you know? Genius and madness don’t always go together.
In theory id argue that everything truly transgressive and not "transgressive" is at least inherently original and interesting but id agree that that doesnt mean it will work. And also again in theory profoundness however it is meant isnt always the goal. But so much of &amp is just
>schizo stuff in &amp (not all) just seems lazy and uninteresting, like the ravings of someone who hasn’t been taking their meds and has gone down some weird rabbit hole on /x/.
that i completely understand, though ive still read more prose pieces that fit this description.

>>20893732
sure

Phantom Tollbooth, &amp issue 011. Deep-seated hatred of crickets, title theft, roadtrippin', inter-species violence.

>>20891514
>>20891567
What were your thoughts on Phantom Tollbooth? I struggled with the dialogue and I don't think I was ever happy with it despite re-working things a few times over. Also didn't know where I was going with it apart from trying to take the pic and title in >>20891595 as inspiration, which seemed to say something about dread and ennui. When I first posted the thing (pre-&amp) I got comments on the hatred of Josh being weird and abrupt, and his characterisation as confusing. (I realised I just hate crickets, which is what I figured he was. See "Author's note" which makes me cringe now.)

>>20893691
Nothing in Naked Lunch felt concrete enough for me to see it as a description of anything as literal as drug subculture, and even in the realm of the addiction mindset it's a portrayal that you'll see often enough elsewhere: you want it so bad you do anything for it, you want it without realising it, you always go back to it, you always have it [addiction] in you. Maybe that's just because discussion of the internals of addiction has become much more prevalent since Naked Lunch's time. I saw it more as a slice of the depravity that addiction brings on, and not as some horrible descent but as what all of reality becomes--it's not about falling into addiction and the woes of such, but about the world as it is in the throes of "junk" and the following junk-in-absentia. Of course, more than that it's a comedy--everything is sick and depraved, but that's just what the world is in Naked Lunch. My reading it was prompted by an alcoholic friend describing his withdrawal symptoms as being like Naked Lunch, so I may have gone in with a similar mindset of trying to find an "experience" in it. Dunno what I'm getting at, but to bring it back around I'll say it's about something more mental than anything as broad as subculture ("mindset", as you said, might be right). Since the whole world of Naked Lunch is just "as it is" and taken as such, it made me look at how I treat the world, how I might be numbed and climatised to depravity around me.

American Psycho to me was much more about isolation. Bateman is batshit and things reach a level beyond one-to-one relating to the guy (I don't want to be one of those edgy fuckers with a ">literally me" shtick but:) but the extremes put some common problems into a clearer light, e.g., isolation, inability to relate to others, commodification of ideals and character, speaking but not being heard. And it's extreme enough for it to be absurd (including the idea of the favourably conspiratorial world Bateman lives in). I don't think the book would have been as funny if I couldn't relate to Bateman, so I don't mean to paint relatabilty as some strictly dour or sad thing. Though Bateman's final moments with his secretary on the date made put the book down and wallow for the night.

>>20894210
Also: pic related was a photo that I sent in with Phantom Tollbooth, so the two technically go together. Poem isn't mine, though.

>>20894210
I actually really liked it because of the author's note. Gave the otherwise straightforward story a new angle right at the end.

>>20894237
Thanks, I'm really glad to hear that. I was worried that including it was immature, though my cricket experiences undoubtedly affected the writing.

>>20894254
Through most of the story, I'm imaging a giant bug like out of a Cronenberg film. Then at the end I'm imagining the artist as a young cricketphobe. I'd keep the note in reprints.

>>20894309
>cricketphobe
I had to laugh at myself the other day after laying down some bug poison at the doors around my house. I was just starting to feel smug then felt the tip of my gymshorts' drawstring brush my skin, thought it was an ant, and proceeded to scream at the top of my lungs.

>>20893808
> Thats not really what it is at all. Kinda sounds like someone trying to justify reading it by forcing a "heh i learned something" on it.

It’s not a justification, really— more of an explanation of my curiosity. When I say the book is supposed to contain insights on addiction, I don’t mean that its depiction of drug use is the main selling point of the book— just that it’s one aspect of the book that sparks my emotional or experiential interest. I’ve read that NL really delves into the experience of being an addict in a totally different way than “Junky,” through Burroughs’ innovative use of technique (creativity, humour) and his narrative subjectivity. As in, he explores how it feels to be immersed in drug addiction through his portrayal of the desperate, paranoid, depraved headspace that it induces; this existence in a hellish, surreal world that’s been stripped of societal and moral contrivances, this exposure of the bleak reality that’s been there all along, but that we so often choose to avert our eyes from. Maybe that’s not accurate at all—it’s just the second-hand impression I’ve gleaned—but that’s more accurately what I’m curious about. I never read solely to “learn something” specific, or to force a certain interpretation though; I primarily read in order to have some kind of aesthetic/emotional experience with the text, however that plays out. But of course, I can’t actually know what experience I’d have with NL until I read it.

>>20893808
> In theory id argue that everything truly transgressive is at least inherently original and interesting
>in theory profoundness however it is meant isnt always the goal

I shouldn’t have used the word ‘transgressive.’ More accurately I meant edgy/shocking. And when I say profound, I don’t only mean it in the sense of conveying larger truths or insights. I also mean it in the sense of having some sort of intensity of quality, or of evoking some sort of intense response in the reader.

In general, the work I’m criticizing is work that confuses originality with value, because I don’t agree that everything original is necessarily also interesting. It’s very easy to point out problems with past artistic conventions, and to reject those conventions in one’s own work. It’s much more difficult to create something original and nonconformist that is also truly innovative: innovative in the sense that it goes further than what’s been done before, not that it simply goes in a different direction. I could dump all the ingredients in my pantry into a pot and create a very novel dish that tastes like nothing else, but if I just combined everything randomly, the result would likely be uniquely revolting and I’d have to throw it away.

For example, with the modernist transition away from formal verse, we have poets like Eliot. His poetry diverges from the poetic tradition, yes, but he never rejects that tradition entirely—in fact, it’s the very foundation of his work and he alludes to it constantly. And after Eliot we have poets like Ashbery. His work is avant-garde, obscure, and different, but he plays with language in a way that situates his work as grounded in a deep respect for the poetic tradition, even if it requires the reader to think in a new and associative manner.

In contrast, we have poets like Bukowski— he changed the poetic tradition and wrote in a different, more colloquial and earthy style, but the vast bulk of his work (not all, some is decent) is what I would describe as lazy, maudlin trash. Perhaps the “establishment” poetry of his time was overly pretentious and inaccessible to the layperson, but it doesn’t follow that the response should’ve been to discard all poetic complexity and replace it with a series of crude banalities. Or a poet like Kaur (who I view as one of Bukowski’s spiritual successors)— she’s openly stated that she doesn’t really read, and her work is bad. Sure, the visually focused, short form “Instagram” poetry she’s created has changed the cultural understanding of poetry, but not for the better. She’s degraded the cultural conception of poetry to “writing trite, generic drivel about your feelings, and inserting random line breaks.”(These are just my personal hot takes—others may validly disagree, and perhaps I’m just full of shit)

>>20893808
>>20894646
All this to say: I feel like a lot of amateur “schizology” (like some of the poetry and prose in &amp) falls into the trap of confusing edginess or esotericism, or simply “difference,” with quality/value. Work that is graphic and extreme in content, or is related to conspiracy theories, or rejects narrative structure and convention, or is littered with occult references isn’t inherently skilled or avant-garde. It can far more often become lazy, immature, and incoherent.

>>20894662
I write prose but in my side studies of poetry I am wondering about poetic devices and if there is something not being used that could better express this generation. Not that it's a new technique altogether because I think there's lots of well established techniques. I guess my question is what style must I depart from if I was writing poetry? And in that departure of technique does it have a meaningful effect on the reader?

>>20855568
try to stop loving ugliness

>>20855568
is that egon schiele

>>20893691
>But some of the more schizo stuff in &amp (not all) just seems lazy and uninteresting, like the ravings of someone who hasn’t been taking their meds and has gone down some weird rabbit hole on /x/. Not everything transgressive and unconventional is inherently profound, you know? Genius and madness don’t always go together.
being too low iq to enjoy schizo posts ngmi

>>20894952
embarrassing that you completely missed the point

>>20894210

i agree that bateman is batshit, but part of the humor of the book is that its all taken to an absurd extreme imo. like its relatable bc you see all the shitty superficial tendencies and gross thoughts you have not reflected in him but but vastly magnified

on isolation and inability to relate, i couldnt really see myself in bateman on that. everyone in the book seemed to be similar to bateman in being sorta lonely, it was just exaggerated for him but it wasnt unique. and what irked me was that it all seemed like a choice on his part to stay alone. i dont recall him rlly attempting to connect at all, it seemed like he liked being alone bc it let him get away with more fucked up shit. idk i didnt see isolation as a important takeaway i guess.

whatd you find so relatable about that secretary scene? that part just really threw me off and it didnt make sense. i found it a bit moving, i suppose, bc it seemed to represent him stepping back from the darkness a bit and resisting his predatory impulses for a minute before returning to his fucked up reality. but he never grew as a person from it, and other than that it didnt really appeal to me emotionally. maybe because the interaction would never play out that way irl. her being naive or infatuated or whatever wouldve just made her an even more perfect victim for batemans cruelty and it wouldve been more impactful if hed gone all in and sullied that innocence and taken advantage. her stupidity shouldve earned his contempt, not whatever lame sappy thoughts he had after he left. the sentimental tone of the chapter just seemed misplaced. i didnt get the whole moment they shared on the date or the dynamic between them, he didnt even seem to like her and he was a dick to her whenever they were at work, so whyd she even want to go out with him or invite him in afterwards in the first place? the chapter was like a weird and pointless detour. idk, i dont get it.

>>20895235
>what irked me was that it all seemed like a choice on his part to stay alone
NTA but my impression was that Bateman was afraid that if he didn't "fit in" and instead became a trust fund socialite in order to reach Dorsia he might not be able to control his impulses more than he already did. I'm basing that off the chapter about Bethany, also him meeting his little brother in Dorsia. Couple that with the repeated implication that his psychopathy is partly genetic in the past few chapters: his cousin murdering a girl, Bateman starts acting like his brother, their family photograph of none of them smiling, the photograph of their father having "something wrong with his eyes" which I thought was either heavy medication or possibly a lobotomy which goes through the eye.
Sure, Bateman had the choice to make but I think part of the frustration was that his life was almost certainly over if he stopped working and tried to be himself since there was nothing for him to be (except maybe a father with a bombed out brain which honestly might be a happy ending in comparison). So he thinks the only way out is confession of his crimes.
It's not the only literary comparison but to me the story is like C&P except Bateman has no way to admit his crime. In that way I also look at Bateman and Jean like Raskalnikov and Sophia from C&P. Patrick has this kind of awe at what she offers him and even contemplates the babystroller nearby. There's also Detective Kimball which really reminded me of Porfiry's intimidation.

>>20888635
don’t even say that, it makes me worry :( if you read this editoranon, we all hope you’re okay and we’re rooting for you

>>20895381
idk, for whatever reason i assumed the original anon was talking about the chapter “date with secretary” when bateman refuses to go into jean’s appt after they get kicked out of dorsia, not the chapter at the end where they go for brunch and see the baby in the stroller. but either way the dynamic between them made no sense imo

>>20895381
>>20896036
I was talking about the date, specifically when the two kiss and he feels a brief glimmer of hope. But if I remember right, that quickly goes away and the chapter ends.
>And though it has been in no way a romantic evening, she embraces me and this time emanates a warmth I’m not familiar with. I am so used to imagining everything happening the way it occurs in movies, visualizing things falling somehow into the shape of events on a screen, that I almost hear the swelling of an orchestra, can almost hallucinate the camera panning low around us, fireworks bursting in slow motion overhead, the seventy-millimeter image of her lips parting and the subsequent murmur of “I want you” in Dolby sound. But my embrace is frozen and I realize, at first distantly and then with greater clarity, that the havoc raging inside me is gradually subsiding and she is kissing me on the mouth and this jars me back into some kind of reality and I lightly push her away. She glances up at me fearfully.
[...]
>On my way over to Park Avenue to find a cab I pass an ugly, homeless bum—a member of the genetic underclass—and when he softly pleads for change, for “anything,” I notice the Barnes & Noble book bag that sits next to him on the steps of the church he’s begging on and I can’t help but smirk, out loud, “Oh right, like you read …,” and then, in the back of the cab on the way across town to my apartment, I imagine running around Central Park on a cool spring afternoon with Jean, laughing, holding hands. We buy balloons, we let them go.
End of chapter. That's when I had to quit reading for the night.

Earlier there's
>Sitting across from Jean right now in the darkness of Arcadia, it’s very easy to believe that she would swallow any kind of misinformation I push her way—the crush she has on me rendering her powerless—and I find this lack of defense oddly unerotic.
which I think helps to explain why Bateman doesn't kill Jean. And more than that, she might be the only character with genuine faith and esteem for Bateman (potentially excluding Luis), even if she's entirely wrong. Maybe the thought that she corroborates his ideal image of himself as a human is what makes her attractive. I went back and forth on whether I see some truth to the C&P comparison, and I guess it's there in Jean, though I think the roles are more archetypal (woman as symbol of innocence and an escape from the self) than just being like C&P. Also, Bateman repeatedly confesses, but nobody believes him.

Bateman is unlike his high-class associates--they may be hopeless and unhappy like him, but they simply "live" as they are, while Bateman has in almost every way that he can forced his existence into place. He's not really capable of fitting in, and it's a draining effort to pretend that he can. There's no one that understands that, and nobody who could. He'd like out, but he can't. He's totally isolated, and I think that's the crux of the novel..

>>20894880
Yes.

>>20894609
>It’s not a justification, really
I meant it for whoever gave you that impression.
>>20894662
Yes then i mostly agree. I dislike bukowski and kaur too but there is great potential in simplicity, maybe innovating on eastern poetry, and irreverence, innovating on the tride and true shitpost tradition. I guess this is still a case of not knowing which poems youre reffering to exactly because outside of a pretty nice pinecone issue-a different chan zine-i havent read
>edgy, graphic, esoteric, conspiratorial, occultish
poems in &amp. Are there really that many?

>>20896775
> there is great potential in simplicity, maybe innovating on eastern poetry
> and irreverence
Agreed. I’d say Pound would be an example of someone who showcased the innovative potential in simplicity, as he manages to evoke a vast array of associations with very few, carefully selected words. And perhaps Larkin would be an example of irreverence as innovation, as his work incorporates crude language and sexual themes, but still employs a skill, subtlety, and thematic complexity that Bukowski could never have approached.

> edgy, graphic, esoteric, conspiratorial, occultish poems in &amp. Are there really that many?

I’d have to go through all the issues to give you a full list, but off the top of my head, two that fit that category would be:

012
Pornography/Harmatiology
011
Le City Brie

>>20896679
>>20895381
>>20895235

> I guess it's there in Jean, though I think the roles are more archetypal (woman as symbol of innocence and an escape from the self) than just being like C&P.

The key difference between American Psycho and C&P is that Sonia is fully aware of Raskolnikov’s crimes, yet still refuses to condemn him. She possesses a seemingly infinite capacity for understanding, and chooses to embrace and love R despite his sins, while encouraging him to do the right thing and confess for the sake of his soul. That’s why her love is ultimately able to help him towards redemption.

Jean’s love for Bateman is equally sincere in intent, but it’s based on a complete delusion. She totally believes in the facade that he’s presented to the world, and sees him as a sweet, sensitive, emotionally complex and well-intentioned person. Like you said, she corroborates his ideal image. She is one of the only characters who actually cares about Bateman’s well-being, so she tries to get him to open up and share his thoughts and feelings with her, but she could never begin to suspect the true extent of his inner emptiness, coldness, and depravity. She wants to understand him, so she tolerates his dismissive treatment and persists after he pushes her away, but if she knew about the reality of his crimes, it’d be impossible for her to ever understand him, let alone continue to love and admire him.

That’s what makes it so tragic when Bateman rejects Jean’s affection. He desperately wants the warmth she is offering him, but is too emotionally vacant, isolated, and disturbed to ever admit this desire to himself, except tacitly through his brief moment of fantasy in the cab. He knows that he doesn’t deserve Jean’s love, anyway, because if he revealed his true self (or more accurately that his “self” is non-existent) then there’d be nothing left for her to care about. So he feels her warmth for a moment and enjoys that “glimmer of hope,” but quickly retreats into his total isolation.

On the isolation, I found it interesting that Bateman is so incapable of fitting in, yet is likewise incapable of “dropping out.” He can’t simply abandon the rat race, because his career and social status are a form of sublimation that create the only clear identity he has, even though he hates having to fake it. I often think of loneliness as a form of intimacy with the self, but Bateman doesn’t even have that small intimacy, because he really believes that has no inner self and sees himself as a totally empty person. So he’s not capable of being alone and living a sort of simple hermetic life where he’s at peace with his solitude— he has to engage with the world continually to maintain his facade of personhood, and has to commit increasingly depraved acts to satisfy his compulsions and fill the ever-widening void within. It’s bleak.

>>20894662
Examples?