/lit/ - Literature

"That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

best quote

The chapter named "Speaking of Courage," you know with the guy that drives around the lake in circles really struck me. I remember messing up the typeface because my tears made the ink run.

My best friend is in the military, deployed in Afghanistan. The other day he wrote to me and said that he feels dead when he is back home because he has nothing to talk about with civilians, and that he can't relate or empathize with the daily lives of the people he grew up with.

Scared the shit outta me man, I don't want to find his limp body hanging in the YMCA locker room.

Great fucking read.

>>2100349
That's my favorite chapter in the book too. So far, at least. I really like when O'Brien, or any author, shifts into post-war fiction. There's this sense that nothing is happening, but really everything is happening, the way he drives in circles over and over again, stops at that little fast food restaurant that offers this macho-man commodification of war, the way everyone else's life seems to have moved forward while part of Bowker is stuck in Vietnam. It's such a lovely chapter but it's so, so sad. I remember just setting the book down and thinking about it. Not wanting to go on. Just wanting to live in that world and think about Bowker a little longer.

>>2100347
bawww

your book is sad? i hear your voice.

>>2100364
what?

scuze me wat is book about?

he came to my school and spoke out against the iraq war.

and that was in aug 2003, back before it was cool to be against the iraq war!

>>2100384
what the fuck am I reading.

That the story where the narrator keeps a picture of an acquaintance and convinces himself he loves her?
Also keeps a pebble in his mouth?
"He just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down."

Phenomenal read

>looks up book on Wiki
Interest piqued

"I stole that fuckers jack knife"

A favorite high school read for sure.

>>2100449
>>2100514
Haduuuuurrrrrrrr durrrrrrrr. He cusses. I'm reading a big people's book. Yaaaay! Big people's books make me feel important. Hurrrrrr durrrrruurrururuuurr.

Am I the only one who hated it?

I don't feel validated by the this, I shall ignore it. I am 9.

>>2100531
You're an idiot, a girl in the high school dual enrollment class took the same stance, she was an idiot too, she's at a community college and I'm at the 53rd ranked college in America

The use of "naughty words" placed tactfully show emphasis on the extremity of the situation

If I wanted to do nothing but hear "bad words" I'd listen to the modern bastardization of rap, the book is worth commenting on because it had an effect on my thoughts, not because "lolz they sed fukk"

>>2101071
> I'm at the 53rd ranked college in America

I abstain from my usual social commentary.

self righteous validation without a subject to direct it. ruled by emotions. self destructive tendencies

>>2100384
What the fuck am I reading.

>>2101071
I don't think being at the University of Illinois Urbana -Champaign is really something to brag about son.

>>2101113
last word incomprehensible, validation defined

>>2101118
Must be higher than I thought
And being in the top 100 at all is something to brag about

Great book OP, don't remember what the last 60 pages contained. Anyone on /lit/ read any other Tim O'Brien? I have Going After Cacciato on my shelf but I haven't gotten to it yet.

>>2101144
>2011
>receiving validation for your schooling based on arbitrary rankings of student retention, ACT/SAT scores, and admitted GPA

I seriously hope you go fuck yourself.

>>2101173
>implying rankings tell nothing about the quality of the school
You're a dipshit/hipster, of course they aren't exact but they aren't null & void either

good book op. my favorite chapter is the one about song tra bong and the girl who goes full-native. Does it remind anyone else of Avatar?

>>2101190

yeah when i think of hipsters the first thing that comes to mind is "doesn't appreciate college rankings"

>>2101866
THAT;S CODE FOR I'M A PEDOPHILE ARE THERE ANY OTHER PEDOPHILES OUT ThERE TO HELP ME RAPE LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS,,,,, LEAVE KRISTINA ALONE

any one know wher i can download free The Things They Carried"

>>2101869
"Rankings are, like, arbitrary values, like, they want to put me down for getting a degree in Polynesian music theory from a university you've probably never heard of, but like, they just see status, you know?"

College rankings are fucking idiotic. For real. They are Dumb and you don't have to be a hipster to think that. Deriving validation or self-worth because you go to a college that is Ranked X in the country is fucking stupid.

>>2102328

Community collegefag is butthurt.

>>2102352
top 10 university, b*tch. i know that because idiots like to brag about it. it's a worthless ranking and means nothing.

>>2102357
It's not worthless, because others buy into it.

>>2102361
certainly. i was incorrect. it has a definite worth, but it is fairly meaningless, it is not something on which one's self-worth should be based, and it's stupid to care about it unless one has a material interest in it.

is that more acceptable to you

>>2102357

I'm top 5 dumbslut. Have fun at your second-rate school.

>>2102367
you are an idiot for thinking that ranking matters or that i care about it. on the other hand, i am an idiot for posting on an internet message board and really we're all idiots just by virtue of belonging to the human race, all men are fools, we should all just die from inhaling massive weed farts (as a species). weed fart apocalypse. good night.