/lit/ - Literature

meatloaf. and maybe that guy from soul asylum

>>3600799

Runaway train never coming back...

>>3600799

>Soul Asylum

Related.

http://likeobscurevainefforts.com/dwightvshellboy.html

Nobody ever came close. Whether it's the Catcher or his later work, nobody. Perhaps early Hemingway, In Our Time, but other than that, I can't think of anyone.

A totally out of fashion depression era writer named James T. Farrell. He wrote a novel called Studs Lonigan that was very influential on me aesthetically, religiously and politically.

>>3600816

You piqued my interest, sir.

>>3600814

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER BY JEROME DAVID SALINGER?

MY FAVORITE CHARACTER BY HIM IS "ESMÉ" FROM "FOR ESMÉ: WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR".

I love Jesus and I cannot lie, so Saint John the Evangelist.

>>3600825

I remember Esmé fondly, and her brother "tshalz".

I like that smart kid on the cruiser, but I forget his name. Timmy? Tom?

>>3600834

"TEDDY".

HE DIED.

>>3600822

Tim Burton's wife or...

... Anal Rand?

>>3600822

>>3600838

Ahhh, Teddy.

Beckett is the writer I'd always been looking for, and I only discovered him recently. I've never read prose like his before, and I doubt I ever will. I love how poetic his language is, and I also dig the stream-of-consciousness wizardry he pulls off.

I'm gonna need some 'whys' on these authors.
Why the fuck is hemmingway so important to you, op?
The two books I read by him were just 'went to war, saw some shit, fell in love, some other minor things happened'
I really enjoyed the books, but shit, I wouldn't put them on a pedastool over everything else.

DFW. I acknowledge that he is a flawed writer (and human) in many respects, but his moral and aesthetic vision has profoundly affected me. No one else has written anything as directly relevant to me as he did---partly, no doubt, due to his cultural proximity to me, but also partly because of his almost superhuman sensitivity. And he's funny as fuck too.

[Bracing for hate]

>>3600817
It might have just been the right book for the right person at the right time, but for me the book was an eye opener. He isn't a pretty writer. Very plain prose. And he writes about very unpleasant characters, but I recognized them. Even though the book came out in the 1930s

>>3600805
I recognise some of these but not all. Names, please?

>>3600858

pleb.

>>3600807

can't say I saw any of that coming at all.
kudos

>>3600843

Interesting, considering he wrote it all in French and had it translated later (though he worked on the translation).

What do you read, the original work or the translation?

>>3600844

I'm OP and I hated Farewell to Arms.

I love him because I had a great class on him at uni. I'm pretty sure it would have flown past me without this class.

I love him for his short stories mostly.

"Soldier's Home"

If you have to read only one.

Pic related.

Also, non-fiction, I'd recommend Death in the Afternoon.

>>3600861

>the cancer that is killing /lit/

>>3600863

Thanks.

le edgy 13 year old face

>>3600878

I read the translations. I'd be curious to know how much of the translation was Beckett vs. Bowles, but only just. I would imagine he did most of the translating; Bloom called him one of the best prose writers of them twentieth century (the others being Kafka, Joyce, and Proust), and the collection I have is so goddamn good it's almost frightening.

>>3600916
He really said that Kafka was a great stylist? Does he actually speak German?

>>3600926

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGu11GL9qw

Great writer, not stylist. Quote is at 5:06. He doesn't talk about it in this interview, but he's stated elsewhere he appreciates Kafka for the breadth of his imagination/uniqueness.

>>3600916
I intrigued good sir. Would you perchance be referring to, Molloy (The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett) by Beckett and Bowles 1955

The king of bop, the reinventor of americana. Totally changed my perception of writing when I first got into the beats

>>3600882
Shit, I guess i'll read that later.
thanks for reminding me i have all his short stories but haven't read them yet for whatever reason.

>>3600962

Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (Grove Press). I posted a picture of it earlier in this thread.

R.A. Montgomery taught me the possibilities that exist within a story.

Roald Dahl

>>3600967

I'd recommend reading In Our Time as a single piece, with a definite Garden of Eden finale.

I especially love:

"Cat in the Rain"
"Soldier's Home"
"Big Two-Hearted River"

And the vignettes in between are priceless. It's all rather subtle, and more about the experience than the style per se; Hemingway never tried to impress with his style, he tried to create good stories. Think haikus and such: just because it looks simple doesn't mean it is, and even less that it's dumb or lacking in spirit or intellect.

>>3600982

Who's that?

>>3601018
well, him and this guy, Edward Packard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

Is this thread for people who actually write stuff? If it is Im sorry for posting. Im not one of those people but the most important writer in my life was Tolkien because lord of the rings got me into reading books. I think J.K Rowling is important to me too because the Harry Potter series was something too that made me love books. I kinda got bored with the Harry Potter books when the last one was coming out because I realized I had grown out of them. I still read the last one but the magic wasnt there anymore that I felt when I read the first one. LOTR is still something I read almost every year because I how it makes me feel at the end.

Here is my favorite part of LOTR:

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

Thomas Wolfe's worth ethic and outlook inspired me a lot at one point and he still does now but to a lesser degree

As much influence as Asimov, Clarke, and rest of the big 4 may have had, I honestly think Philip K. Dick's body of work completely blows them out of the water. I haven't yet seen any other author that can so seamlessly blend advanced philosophical concepts with an engaging and addictive writing style that perfectly fleshes out just how fucking crazy our world really is.

>>3600843
>>3600878

Would it be better to read it in french or in english?

>>3601070

Well, Beckett's praised as an English stylist, so I'd go with that.

>>3600785
I read Space Viking when I was 11 and, for the first time, realized that books could have a lot more going on than just the obvious narrative.

Honestly? Probably J.K. Rowling.
Harry Potter was what really got me into reading, as far as I can remember.

Julio Cortazar

Ken Kesey
one flew over the cuckoos nest
he's a favorite still, but very shortly after came philip K dickk

>>3601041

Everyone welcome, writer or not. I didn't mean it for writers, though I do write.

>>3601108

Who's that?

If the most important writer of your life isn't Nietzsche then you will NEVER be the Ubermensch.

>>3601149

>>3601196
didn't mean to quote, sorry

>>3601149
>listening to some delusional virgin beta faggot

>>3601149

I'm sorry your idol was the king of betas, and you, his faithful subject.

>>3601222
>king of betas

All people are beta by default, so if Nietzsche is the king of betas, he is the ubermensch.

>>3601228
>All people are beta by default
>this is what betas believe

Only read Madame Bovary, and not even in French. Still had to think that this man knew how to write prose better than anyone else at that time

>>3601233

I've been told that, and I've read the book in French, and I don't see the awesome. It was very plain, very boring, and nothing amazing was anywhere.

Plínio Salgado. Eat shit.

>>3601238
yeah, flaubert kind of sux

The first writer who made me truly understand the intellectual and emotional power in literature. Crime & Punishment was the first book to ever leave me truly stunned by the end. The Grand Inquisitor (and all of TBK in general) convinced me of Christianity as the most natural and satisfying answer to the pains of this world. While his flaws became more apparent the more I read him, he still remains the most important in my life.

>>3600843

Also this negro.

>>3601196

I'm happy to see Ikkyu on /lit/ from time to time

>>3601149
It's gay science that he aboard Ubermensch?

Tolstoy, no doubt.

Nothing gives me more pleasure, moves me more, and inspires me to be a better person than Tolstoy's novels and short stories. I even love his crazy religious/aesthetic rants.

Wittgenstein felt the same way.

He's not THE best, but definitely up there.

The guy on the pic, by far.

Tolstoy in second place, like this guy:

>>3601627

My nigga

kant vonnegoethe

>>3600926
Bloom speaks and reads a bunch of languages. All the books in his Western Canon he's read in their original languages.

>>3601734
tossup between Shakespeare and James Joyce
Shakespeare because he's just so endlessly fascinating and incredibly talented, and Joyce because Dubliners got me into reading.

>>3601781
This has the highest confusion/words ratio I've ever seen

Blaise Pascal.

>>3601268

I fucking love you. Everything you said I would say too. Dostoyevsky was influential in making me interested in Christianity.

5-star post.

>>3601734

Funny how Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare.

"I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: “King Lear,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless."

- Leo Tolstoy

>>3601788

Even The Odyssey?

>>3601792

Reading Dubliners made me wonder why anyone liked Joyce. I realised that 90% of the symbolism was not intended by him, but added later by critics. Once you get that, you don't really enjoy it too much.

I think I enjoyed a few stories but have little recollection of them. "The Dead" was amongst them. Maybe I should give that book another try.

>>3601810

Approved. With Dostoyevsky, another author who was influential in making a Christian out of me.

>>3601788
uhhhh, citation needed, dog

He may have read the authors he FEATURES in the Western Canon, but there's no way this fat jew can read Norwegian.

German (pratically Yiddish), French and Spanish (once you know Spanish you know Italian), I believe he would know.

>>3600882
Death in the Afternoon is the name of one of Hemingway's homemade cocktails as well.

>>3603035
Tolstoyfag here

He makes a good argument. King Lear is depressing as fuck but also probably the most affecting piece of literature there is. Seriously, what the fuck is that emotion you feel after reading King Lear? It's like your entire body is convulsing.

I still love Shakespeare and wouldn't want to take the crazy russian out of Tolstoy.

There's a cool read by the experimental director Stan Brakhage about how he screened a lot of his films for Tarkovsky and he just started raging so hard, and his translator was telling Brakhage how his films were shitty, degenerate art. And Brakhage kept playing him more films hoping Tarkovsky would finally approve of one, but he never did.

Must be the Russian climate.

Before I get assaulted, let me explain.
Stephen King is not my favorite author. Stephen King is not a great author. Stephen King today isn't even a good writer a lot of the time. The thing is, though, if it wasn't for Stephen King I probably never would've started reading. No one in my family reads, and I probably would have ended up just like them had it not been for Cujo, which was the first book I ever read in second grade. So even if I can't pretend that Mr. King is good anymore, I still owe him everything for showing me that books were worthwhile.

He shaped my world view in way i've yet to discover.

Shortly after reading "Fight Club" for the first time in my life, I went out and bought a prostate massager from the local porn store. It was a cheap model, a 15 dollar number that I've since traded for a wide array of variously shaped objects.

Bukowski. Not at all my favorite anymore, I can barely stand reading him. He is nowhere near the best. At his best, he's a mediocre read. But I can't think of many other writers who so sharply satirized American "winner" culture and its lopsided, demented faith in things like hard work and individual integrity when its winners are clearly those who have nothing to do with either quality. I always felt that, I still feel it today, and Bukowski was my gateway to a whole subsection of lesser-known literature expressing similar sentiments, on the beauty of losers, the inevitability of regret, and the simple hatred in most people that comes out most in their efforts to ignore it.
He did have good taste, he just didn't know how to pass it on.

>>3603067
The internet introduced me to reading. I now hate the internet and I wish I could rid myself of it.

>>3603067
Stephen King is a great author.

>>3603089
hahahaha... wut?

>>3603159
This.

>>3600785
Walter M. Miller Jr.

He is far from my favorite author, at least aesthetically--and he certainly is not the best--but, if I hadn't stumbled across A Canticle for Leibowitz as a child, I probably would never have developed the interest in literature I have today.

>>3603056

I didn't know that, lul. It's an amazing book about bullfighting (and about writing, actually).

>>3603067

Relax, bro, Stephen King has excellent works, and bad ones.

"The Last Rung on the Ladder"

That's great literature, period. He's an excellent man and an excellent author with different objectives.

>I only read one of his novels and didn't like it (Carrie)
>I like his short stories
>I like his nonfiction

Marcus Aurelius.

Stoicism got me through some rough stuff, even if I don't agree completely with it.
Pretty sure my life would've gone to shit if I hadn't read the meditations at the turning point.

>>3600785
Hurrminggay

Michael Critchton

>>3603266
Sorry forgot pic

>>3600816

after seeing your post, and reading a bit more about the trilogy, i ordered it off amazon.

sounds like it'll be awesome

The only reason I got into reading as a kid.

My Dad. Playwright.

Buko got me into literature. He was the first writer to get me excited about reading and writing. He made me realize that literature doesn't have to be boring (all I had read before Buko was Russian classics that bored me to death because I couldn't understand them at all). Although I don't think he's the greatest writer ever anymore, I still love him, probably out of nostalgia.

No Steinbeck love?
Of Mice and Men was really the first novella I enjoyed, Grapes of Wrath showed me the beatific nature of language, East of Eden taught me myth, and Winter of Our Discontent taught me to be a good person 2 years before Breaking Bad did.

>>3603042
The guy you're responding to here. I haven't read Dubliners since the first time I did (when I was 14), but it made a huge impression on me when I did. Araby and The Dead, in particular. No work of fiction has made me shed as many tears as The Dead. I need to read it again, also.

>>3603042
>I realised that 90% of the symbolism was not intended by him, but added later by critics

...this is the worst thing I've seen said non-sarcastically on this board. Do you really think that Joyce wasn't aware of symbolism? Yeah, critics tend to over-analyze... but still.

I grew up reading George Orwell. Burmese Days is by far the best book I've ever read. I was 17, but nothing has affected the same since.

Coming Up For Air is also one of the best books I've read as well. I can remember it all in my head still. All the little scenarios, the shop-owners and the fishing (both at home in England and the one near no-man's land).

J.K. Rowling got me reading as a kid.

George Orwell was the first "real literature" that I decided to read. 1984, obviously.

Wilfred Owen made me realise how beautiful poetry can be.

T.S. Eliot made me realise how complex it can be.

There's many more, but the work of this lot is what started my love for literature.

>>3603327

I love Steinbeck too. Mice and Men was great, and Grapes of Wrath had me a nervous wreck by the end, also fapping by the end, shamefully.

>>3603330

I'll reread the Dead, just for you.

>>3603349

Even my edition of the book confirms this, which is where I got it from.

>seeing three characts
>father, son, holy ghost
>Joyce never even thought of it, admitted by himself

>>3603398
subconscious tho

>>3603398
Ok, there's an example of critics perhaps over-analyzing or offering an interpretation. That doesn't mean that there isn't important symbolism in the work. His work isn't 90% in the hands of critics, it's there and should be judged by what is there, which I find powerful and emotional, and if you disagree with that that's fine but please don't say that Joyce didn't mean what meant.

>>3603412
he meant*

>>3603409

>psychoanalysis

If you resort to that to save anything or anyone, you're not convincing anyone.

>>3603432
rightbrain thinking

>>3603443

I don't see how that's right-brained. But I know that psychoanalysis was given to the humanities like the trash it was. And it only came here to die.

>>3603452
I'm saying the right brain does things the left isn't aware of. How is this hard to grasp?

I never brought up psychoanalysis. You did.

>>3603495

Saying something is right-brained doesn't mean "the left isn't aware of it"; it pertains to the right/left brain theory, which has nothing to do with "subsconscious".

>I never brought up psychoanalysis

You did, and you did it again by saying "the left brain isn't aware of it", which obviously is your understanding of the "subconscious", which has all to do with psychoanalysis.

You don't cut it with the big boys, sonny. Lurk more.

>>3603548
>You did, and you did it again by saying "the left brain isn't aware of it", which obviously is your understanding of the "subconscious", which has all to do with psychoanalysis.
> implying different people are the same person
> implying the subconscious isn't an intuitive concept accepted outside of psychology classrooms

>>3600896
This. He was the supreme common sense destroyer. I've been thinking ever since. Not sure if that's a good thing.

>>3601734
Tolstoy hated Shakespeare and everyone that liked him, used to insult writers by comparing them to Shakespeare. He is not your nigga and if he met you he would think you were a retard.

>>3603566
>Tolstoy hated Shakespeare and everyone that liked him, used to insult writers by comparing them to Shakespeare. He is not your nigga
Lel'd.

Albert Camus

Well, it's really a toss up between Borges and Murakami . Each of them redefined the boundaries of literature in my mind. Borges for showing me how wild some non-linear concepts can get, and Murakami for showing me that I don't have to understand every facet of a story to get something out of it.

>>3601238
Do you know French ? Not all sentences in English language sound like Flaubert's ones, though I give you that Madame Bovary is not really his more entrancing novel, prose-wise.

>>3603035
Don't forget that the works he quotes are plays. Reading it and seeing it onstage aren't the same things.

>>3603217
Is that one the story about a law student who speaks about his sister ? I won't spoil the end but
>dem feels

It was five years ago and I still remember it.

>>3604591
Camus is simply amazing.

>>3604702

>>3604591
right there with ya man. beautiful writing (even though i've only had the privilege of reading the translations) and absurdism is what got me into philosophy in the first place. it still holds a special place in my heart.

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow

Still my favorite novel. I don't know why but I've read it at least once each of the last four years.

I felt many things when I turned over the last page, read the final verses, and slapped the back cover. I never thought I'd go through the book again. But then I started seeing connections between reason and rhetoric. All the pieces came together. And I was proud of myself for putting down one of the hardest texts ever put into the English language. It helped me take on larger and more challenging texts. I guess I mean that Gravity's Rainbow changed my whole hermeneutic outlook on literature and life. I consider myself a proper paranoid.

Hermann Hesse

not my favorite but I relate to his works

honestly, Stephen Chbosky. I read Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was very young and in a weird place and that book has shaped who I am for the better. I wouldn't consider him my favorite writer, and if I read the book at any other point in my life I probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much (especially now there's a hype around it) but I still think it is a profound and honest expression of teen life from the point of view of someone I can truly understand.

Young Hemingway looks very similar to Tom Cruise.

I hope Tom Cruise never plays him in a biopic about the big H.

Ernest Hemingway has had a profound impact on my life, particularly on my development as a man.

>>3604831
Tom Cruise is too much of a manlet. He's like 5'3".

vonnegut

read an excerpt from cat's cradle at my father's funeral

>>3604853
He's played a bunch of tall people. They do fancy shit with the camera.

>>3604805
I had a similar experience with Mason and Dixon. I'm yet to read Gravity's Rainbow, mostly out of fear. The knowledge that it will almost definitely be superior to Mason and Dixon is too much for me to handle.

>>3604859
Yeah, actually filming tall people and making them look good is a real bitch apparently. Have you ever seen how awkward Liam Neeson looks in almost every scene he's ever shot with a woman?

>>3604884
Wait, how tall is Liam Neeson?

Also, I'm sure most people who go and see films have no idea how tall the main character was in real life, so they could just pretend Hemingway was a midget.

>>3604890
6'4"

>>3604884
Daniel Day-Lewis is the same. He's quite imposing in person, but on screen he often looks vaguely gangly.

>>3604870

It really isn't. Mason & Dixon is the shit.

>>3604903
I was really surprised to find out he was so tall. He doesn't look like it.

As far as disappointments go, I can't look past Javier Bardem. I thought that dude was like 6'3" and it turns out he's like 5'8".

>>3603566
I called the guy who also likes tolstoy my nigga, and not tolstoy.

Tolstoy was a great writer, but generaly a terrible human being. I read a lot of books on him, and also his dyaries: he was one of the most egotistical human beings ever to have walked on earth. I love his books, but not him. I would not like to be his friend or something like that.

And the reason for tolstoy's hate with shakespeare was simple: envy. He knew that shakespeare was probably the only writer who could dispute with him the title of greatest of all writers. Also, toltoy was a realist, and nothing in shakespeare is very real: his characters speak a language that no human on earth has ever speak; the plots of the plays are also unrealistic. Tolstoy did not paied attention to that wich is the most wonderful gift of shakespeare: his poetry. This limitetaed perception, together with the artistic envy, was the reason for tolstoy's hate.

Sorry for my english: i am at the cell phone, and with no dictionary or google to correct my mystakes. I can read very well in english, but writing is a diferent story.

>>3604905
Which did you read first? Out of interest.

>>3604922

Excluding Vineland, which I just read, and Against the Day, which I haven't yet read, I read his novels in the order they were published. So, Gravity's Rainbow was the third book I read by Pynchon, in case you were curious. I read Mason & Dixon immediately after. It's my favorite of his books that I've read, and the only one of his books I've been compelled to read twice.

>>3604921
Envy? I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but Tolstoy was not envious of Shakespeare - they lived over 200 years apart. How envious would you say you were of anyone that was famous for anything 200 years ago?

Tolstoy hated Shakespeare because he felt it detracted from the value of the craft. Shakespeare was an entertainer, all hollywood, flipping scripts out left and right, killing off characters with very little fucks being given. This did not compute for Tolstoy, a guy who's best short story is a 150 pager about the slow, painful death of an irrespective lawyer. His ideology was that literature was the highest medium, capable of encapsulating political revolution and shifting cultural landscapes. And he hated that Shakespeare was just out to make people laugh and cry.

Tolstoy authentically thought he was a hack, and with good reason, from his perspective.

>>3604670

French is my first language. I assume Bovary is the sort of novel that made sense when it was published but lost all its reason to be nowadays. Unless you get massively butthurt by cuckholdery, it's nothing much. Flaubert himself said of the writing of that novel that it was like "dosing shit".

>>3604697

Sounds like the one yes.

Dem feels indeed, dem fucking feels.

If stories with children was a genre, Stephen would be the King of it.

>>3604805
>And I was proud of myself for putting down one of the hardest texts ever put into the English language

And that is the only reason why people "like" Gravity's Rainbow: the assumption that literature is all about proving things to yourself and others, the way insecure pussies climb mountains alone to prove to themselves and the world that baby is a grown up now and can survive in hostile environments.

If there was a medal for people who finished GR and understood it, I'm sure most of you would actually buy and wear it.

Pic related

Faulkner. Stylistically, after I started reading him, I felt that I finally began to grasp the depth I had always felt was missing from my prose. His characters are usually tragic and flawed in the most human of fashions, and I find myself connecting to them on one or many levels. I feel like Faulkner was conflicted about his Southern roots, and I know that feel. I may not be Southern, but still.

Ayn Rand. I seriously believe that the theories of objectivism are left far too unconsidered by lesser minds. If people were truly to stop and consider the idea that the future is shaping us towards a motif of selfishness, they would realize the truth of her understanding of human nature.

Nobody mentioned him so I'm going to, one of my top 5 favorites, I agree with literally everything he wrote.

>>3605632

Scrolled through the whole thread looking for this answer.

This. Always this.

>>3606052

>the future is shaping us towards a motif of selfishness

Please elaborate on this incredibly vague statement.

>>3606052
Except selfishness and individualism are 20th century curiosities. We're becoming increasingly more connected in every way and we can hide increasingly less. The only response to this is to become more saintly, not more selfish.

>>3606177
How? He is contradictory and admits this. Not even Cioran believes everything he wrote.

This creepy son of a bitch right here.

The most important writer for me is Bob Dylan. He had a profound influence on my life and my character - he introduced me to reading in general and some authors in particular, he was my main motivation for learning English (I am German) and shaped my outlook on life and art. I know that /lit/ doesn't really care for him but I still believe that he is an outstanding poet.
Every one of his words rang true and glowed like burnin' coal.

As for fiction writing I would consider Thomas Bernhard the most important writer of my life. I found everything I was looking for in his prose and he convinced me that nowadays one can still write honest and personal without seeming pretentious.

>>3606404
lol

Camus is a close second.

>>3606475

Kameron?

>>3605632

One more reason to get to my copy of the Sound and the Fury, which has been under wrap for years.

>>3606505
My name's Evan.

Who the fuck is Kameron? And why doesn't he spell it with a "C" like a normal human being?

>>3606052

Rand states that all humans only act selfishly and that doing otherwise is impossible; but then she also says that we shouldn't act in altruistic manners. How's that possible?

I think Rand found out what other atheists are too scared to see: there's no actual reason not to be a selfish asshole except for the fact that God is real and you know His law in your heart and can't help but act on them.

>most atheists act nice to people
>can't come to terms with why
>dem God laws in your heart

>>3606404

Only morons would look down on you for liking Bob Dylan.

Be sure that 90% of the haters here are edgy teens who try to feel good by reading the way others do by lifting weight.

>>3606535
My 1 rep max is Ulysses, what about you brah? Do you even read?

>>3606528
Haven't read Rand but just out of curiosity how would a proponent of her views respond to the assertion that humans are rational enough to realize that a value system based on mutually respecting the rights of others is the most beneficial course for humanity and even for their individual person overall.

I assume their is some rebuttal to this but I'm not well read enough to have time to fuck with Rand yet.

>>3606528
>>3606528

Are you genuinely psychotic?

I was typing a response to the first line, but then I read the rest.

>>3604805
I read The Crying of Lot 49 recently as I heard it was a good precursor to reading GR in so much as if you can't get through that there is no way you'll enjoy GR. Do you think that accurate?

Also I was fairly certain I understood a decent amount of the things he was getting at but I wonder if I would be able to maintain such a level of comprehension in a book as long and complex as Gravity's Rainbow.

>>3606588
>>3606588

>Haven't read Rand but just out of curiosity how would a proponent of her views respond to the assertion that humans are rational enough to realize that a value system based on mutually respecting the rights of others is the most beneficial course for humanity and even for their individual person overall.

Same boat here, but I have read stirner.

If altruism were defined as "serving others instead of oneself" it would be somewhat similar to Stirner's "spooks".

An ideological spook would be a manifestation of altruism.

What I can't brush off is how altruism cannot exist if humans are axiomatically self interested. This is where her consistency ends.

I think "misguided self interest" is a more logical term than "altruism". I am not sure if that's what she had intended.

>>3606528
>>most atheists act nice to people
>>can't come to terms with why
>>dem God laws in your heart

>>3606528
You obviously don't know Rand.

She never states that people always act selfishly, the whole point of her philosophy is to convince people that they should always act selfishly and to show them how it would work.

>>3606225
Mah nigga. I first read "Barn Burning" in college, and didn't pick up The Sound and The Fury until the semester before I graduated. I was fucking hooked after that. The best part is he was a really prolific writer, so there's so much to read of his.
>>3606514
Do it. It's a difficult read, but it's worth the time to pour over it to understand it. Definitely too deep of a book to just quick read it

>>3606588
Meh, she comes up with a reason why we should respect other people's rights, even if it isn't the exact one you're saying.

She wasn't saying that we should only care about ourselves or that only "I" have rights, if that's what you are thinking.

>>3606528
>dem God laws in your heart

Stephen Fry I suppose, I haven't read much of his actual novels, but plenty of his interviews and talks have increased my love for literature and curiosity.

>>3606553

Got an MA in literature, I guess that should do the trick, brah.

>>3606596

Please finish that response to the first line and ignore the rest.

>>3601772
My 友人

Kurt Vonnegut

Kind of formed a bridge between sci-fi and fantasy I read at a child to more serious literature.

I wonder how lit ranks him. I assume there would be some backlash as every high school kid reads slaughterhouse so he is probably seen as too low level.