/lit/ - Literature

I've got a copy of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands or whatever the fuck it's called somewhere on the HD, but I haven't gotten around to it. Anybody here read it? What kind of style is it in?

>>3411134
That is not Saramago...

love those cheap Spanish editions translated by his wife or something.
20 'good' books that even if I never bother with them I could probably give away as presents.

I'm just curious about the lack of punctuation.

>>3411150
You should bother, it's actually really good. The lack of punctuation can be a little confusing some times, but you'll eventually get used to it.
I, in fact, love his style

Blindness is one of my favorite books. Incredibly powerful.

>>3411142
lol you're right. What was I thinking? Saramago's the Gospel According to JC guy. Never read him, but boy is there egg on my face.

>>3411154
Have you read Seeing? It's set about 6 years in the future on the same city as Blindness

never heard of this guy until this thread, he seems cool though. recommendations for the first novel I should read by him?

>>3411163
Yes! I enjoyed it quite a bit. Very interesting characters.

>>3411166
Blindness or All the Names.

>>3411128

he's fag.

>>3411166
Start with Blindness or The gospel according to JC I'd say. Probably the later because with names it's easier to understand his weird style, it also gives a different view on the Bible.
Yeah, that's right, Blindness has no named characters
>>3411171
I'm currently reading it. It's good so far, but still like Blindness better

Brilliant writer. One of the past from recent times.

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy i a must read for writers and artists. His insight is just absurd.

I read Blindness. I didn't like it that much. Deus ex machina too much. Also the "totalitarianism is so easy to fall into" theme has been done to death already.

a commie who write slightly above average novels that sometimes can't help but be preachy.

The last 40 pages of the The Cave were some of the best pages I've ever read but fuck did he make it hard to get there.

In the 12th grade of Portuguese school we had to read Baltasar and Blimunda (Memorial do Convento). It's the only book I've read from him. Reading that book was absolute hell for me at first and I didn't read all of it at the time I had my Portuguese exam. But later in the holidays I promised myself I would finish the book and I started liking it a lot. At the time I thought his style to be confusing and messy but at the same time it grew on me. It made me curious about his other works for sure.

>>3412823
To me it is a crime that people do this. I hear this for a bunch of different nationalities and authors: you are forced to read a complicated book from a great author at a young age. They assume you'll love it, afterall, "it's the best!", but then again it has nothing to do with the lives of these students, it reveals certain beauties and truths about certain things which these kids are not even familiar with. The result is a contrary reaction, they think the opposite, they grow up to think the author sucks. Not saying they should dumb it down or something of that kind, but be a little more sensible on how to approach literature, not believing that just hitting the kids with a good book will be of any help.

I know you are not the case and some kids really get going with it. But I'm speaking in general...

working class pseduo humanism though i did enjoy that massive blind girl rape scene

You should report whoever is making you read that just as you would report someone making you read the psychotic ramblings of a nazi.

Communism killed, and continues to kill, many more people than nazism.

Poortuguese(haha) reporting in
I loved 'Cain' and 'The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis' was also pretty decent.
Got 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ' and 'Death with Interruptions' in my "to read" list.

I started with 'Baltasar and Blimunda' just like the other anon (>>3412823) and it was a bit confusing at the start, but then I got used to it. It feels like he's on your mind talking straight to you.

>>3412898
Capitalism killed, and continues to kill, many more people than nazism.

>>3412898
If only nazi ramblings were this well-written, the world would be a different place...

Saramago is not propaganda. He has a political point of view, much like he has one for history, religion, art and all else. All of that gets translated perfectly into his books and never in the form of preaching. So it really doesn't matter, if an intelligent man like him was a nazi, capitalist or whatever, I would have read it with all the same pleasure and admiration. There is more to reading then being in an absolute accordance with what you previously believe.

Not to mention that's the sort of opinion people have when all they have read is Blindness, which is just his more famous work (along with Gospel) for its controversy in its theme.

Blindness is really good. The Double was ok, haven't read the other books but will.

>>3412927
The default no-system embraced by all of earth since time immemorial has a higher death toll than something that lived for 15 years in one nation? You don't say.

If you're really a communist or finding its theories intriguing, you need to check yourself into a mental hospital. The urge to keep doing the same shit that doesn't work is a very good definition of insanity, especially since this urge has also been proven to be sociopathic and highly dangerous.

The day he died I posted a thread about it on /lit/

No one replied.

>>3412946
Except you are glorifying a communist propagandist right now; you are performing hate speech. Logically you must be bigoted, ignorant, hateful, and possibly even racist like most of the communist leaders.

Why should I accept your ignorant, hateful ramblings? Do you not comprehend that most people strive to be good and decent?

And I wondered why he was so popular here at Greece.You can't find Borges or Spinoza anywhere but this guy's books are in every bookstore even in the mall.
I guess he is just ''communist-party'' approved.

>>3412968

I loved Blindness, haven't read anything else by him. I would (and I will someday) but I can't afford buying books and I don't like reading in a screen.

>>3413048
Ebook reader then?

So, reading Saramago is bad because of Communism?

>>3412899
'one should write as you speak'

Only ever read Ensaio sobre a Cegueira (Blindess for you non-Portuguese speakers).

Didn't much care for it, to be honest.

>>3411128

He's one of my favorite authors. "Death with Interruptions" is how I learned to love reading.

He's like Palahniuk. He relies on gimmicks to pull a book together and repeats them throughout all of his books. He doesn't give characters names, he doesn't use quotation marks, he hates periods. He's all gimmick.

I know that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but is he any good?

I don't care if he's a Communist or not, his prose is hackneyed. I can't believe /lit/ likes him.

Has anyone watched the film Jose y Pilar?

>>3413668
>Hackneyed
>Hack·neyed
>Adjective
>(Of a phrase or idea) Lacking significance through having been overused.
>Synonyms
>Trite - banal - commonplace - threadbare - platitudinous

>>3413605
No. But some people are to obsessed with his politics views and just can't get trough it

>>3413651
Yes.

Ricardo Reis is my favourite

epub requests

please

>>3413722
I have.