/lit/ - Literature

Why do you still adhere to a notion of progress?

Please refrain from associating /lit/ with /mu/ /tv/ and the idea of eliteism so prevalent on both boards
>requiem for a dream
l

>>3068700
Requiem for a dream was a terrible book, but an okay film.

>>3068699
I can't wait until we have time machines to send you back to an early agrarian society.

>>3068701
I disagree. It's basically a Puritan sunday school parable about enjoying yourself too much couched in platitudes about the sociology of addiction.

>>3068701
"Requiem for a Dream: a sadistic 280-page Chick tract disguised as an avant-garde heroin novel. In his ‘99 preface, Selby attacks what he calls “the Great American Dream,” the evil, illusory pursuit of pleasure and possessions that “ultimately… destroys everything and everyone involved with it.” This is the novel’s Puritan core – all ‘worldly’ pleasures are false and drugs always lead to the worst fate imaginable. Requiem has an Evangelical stink right from the schmaltzy dedication page: “This book is dedicated, with love, to Bobby, who has found the only pound of pure – Faith in a Loving God.” Selby also plucks an epigraph from the book of Psalms (“Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it…”) just to drive home the (Calvinist) point that human beings can’t do anything for themselves without a Higher Power.

Darren Aronofsky, who directed the film version, calls this “a very traditional heroin story.” No, Darren, it’s a fucking depressing heroin story! What kind of sick fuck would write a novel about a one-armed junkie? An Evangelical, that’s who. To Aronofsky, though, this pap was “so violently honest and arresting” that he couldn’t finish it in one go and absolutely had to film it. And he got off so much on filming anti-drug propaganda that he went on to make four Montana Meth Project scare ads, or mini-Requiems, as I like to call them."

-Ramon Glazov

Why do we even need those charts?
Just go to the wiki and check out the recommanded reading...

>>3068765
They've taken the first chart from the wiki and stuck it in there

>>3068765

>needing recommendations

Is this what you wanted to see op?

everyone who participates in this thread is cancer.

>>3068892
Anyone who uses the term cancer is a fucking idiot

>>3068916

agreed. show some respect to lance in his hour of need

Homogenized Mediocrity: The Thread.

>>3068916
there are actually people on 4chan who are offended by colloquial use of the word "cancer" now? jeez this place has changed.

>>3068695
>The Social Network
Horrid, horrid cinema.

I actually do keep "read" versions of some of the recommendations charts, where I'll have made a little x over the ones I've read. Don't do it for the general classics ones, since I'm not interested in that, but I do it for several others.

this thread makes me feel like I'm a bad person

>>3068936
I watched it because of the OST. I was disappointed.

>mainstream essentials
>Drive

This is why /tv/ pisses me off, constantly. That movie is so much lesser than the majority of movies listed; yet, they wank over it incessantly.

Rather than recommendation charts I wanna see /lit/'s equivalent to the iceberg-deep sea chart.

I saw it around /mu/ with the iceberg at the top having mainstream pop and at the bottom Tuvan throat singing.

>>3069006
I think /lit/'s equivalent of the bottom of that chart would be Romanian surrealism. It seems the default genre for obscure and strange works.

I'm guessing it's about how deep you have to delve into that certain medium to get to that point?

>>3069006
Here's the original 'deep' chart.

I have read, listened and watch virtually everything on that list by sophomore year of college except beloved and problem child 2.

>>3069022
>he hasn't seen problem child 2

>>3069023
>>3069023
looks fucking awful, same reason why I would never watch the room.

>>3069016
We could go by publishers.

3280ft - Penguin Classics, Oxford Classics Dover Thrift Editions, Wordsworth Classics, general "classics" publishers; a lot of Vintage imprint books

5280ft - Grove Press, some New Directions, more respectable ones from Vintage, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press, publishers who sometimes go for works less known but still by well known authors, decent contemporary literature, most university presses, Telegram Books, Peirene Press

13120ft - the more obscure New Directions, Featherproof Books, Archipelago Press, certain university press series, concentrate on lesser known classics, great contemporary literature and good experimental works, Ugly Duckling Press

20,000ft - NYRB Classics, Dalkey Archive, Exact Change, Dedalus Books, excellent works from around the world, rediscovered classics, successful experimental works, excellent contemporary literature

31,000ft - the least known and best in the catalogs of above publishers, highly experimental publishers, Twisted Spoon Press, Calamari Press, Atlas Press, the lesser knowns from Green Integer and Sun & Moon Press, Black Widow Press, Wakefield Press

that's all I got

>>3069022
Sophmore's second year right? I'm in the British equivalent of that and also through most of the list
>/tv/'s attempts at elitism

bump

>>3069049

Damn you seem pretty initiated in Publishing knowledge.

>31,000ft

Think you'd be able to recommend some books from these final publishers?

>>3071136
Sure - all ten from Wakefield, see what you can even find of Atlas, since most were limited print runs, Gellu Naum and Nishiwaki Junzaburo off Green Integer, Gherasim Luca, Nezval, Paul Leppin, Hermann Ungar and most from TSP, and remember the best from the publishers at 20,000ft - Carrington, Chirico, Jarry, Aragon, Nerval, Huysmans, Meyrink, blagh.

Most of those last ones have rather small catalogs, so you could comb through them for works you find most interesting.

>>3071146

I'll be checking these out, thanks for the help.

Guess I'm just a big pleb then (Or, Where's Pynchon?)

these lists are cancerous as fuck.
its hard enough to get original recommendations on /lit/

/mu/ pls go

You want people to read, "Pride and Prejudice" and "Moby Dick"? This list looks like what teachers tried to shove down your throat in high school just because it had some literary merit.

What are you trying to do? Scare people away from books?

Pride and Prejudice was a book all about really boring white people problems in the 1800's. Holy shit was that as waste of my time. Don't even get me started on Moby Dick. No one gives a damn about your lost ship or you dumbass leg Captain Ahab, let it go, it's just a fucking sperm whale. Fuck this list I could go on forever. I really do love "The Great Gatsby" though. Fuck yea, fast cars, big parties and sexy women.

terrible lists for people who are too lazy to refine their tastes

be ashamed if you ever use these things for anything

>>3068924
lel, look at me ma, we da mona lisa naow.

>>3071237
I actually agree with you about Pride and Predjudice
for that you get a 6/10

This is the only /lit/ list that is okay.

>>3071237

Fuck you.

'Moby Dick' is cool. It's an interesting read and a precursor to modern fantasy and AD&D.

>>3071316
Dragons are cooler than whales.

>>3071329
>dragons
I bet the quantity of 'fight scenes' is something you consider when deciding whether to read a book too

>>3071360
Yeah bro, fight scenes are awesome, hopefully some pictures too. No but seriously, Moby Dick is just horrid.

>>3071365
>Moby Dick is just horrid.

go away

>>3071371
>GO AWAY I HATE YOUR OPINION! IM COVERING MY EARS! LALALALALA!

lel

>>3071312
>Wallace
Fuck off

>>3068847
Listen to Joanna Newsom - Ys
Read Ulysses and Life With Jeeves

>>3068985
This.
And fucking Inception. But they don't wank over it that much anymore, I guess

>>3071312

No Orbital under electronic?
Ashiggitydiggitydoo