/lit/ - Literature

>>3660571
I was correct. This totally became copy-pasta.

>>3660575

Wat do you mean?

It is curious how there are readers who think Joyce is a superior master of language, when in fact Joyce himself loved Shakespeare and was constantly quoting and recreating the playwright's work.

>>3660946
If you don't have a decent knowledge of Hamlet than Ulysess is going to be a hell of a lot more difficult for you.

Who is your favourite author?
>Homer

Which of their works have you read?
>Odyssey
>Iliad
>Hymns

Why do you love them so?
>Dat ineffable heroic virtue
>Dat time of masculine values
>Dat greek-mythology atmosphere
>Dat classical importance
>Dat first western piece of extended fiction

Whom would you reccomend them to?
>Nobody, literary protectionism as fuck

>>3660963

>Dat Greek physique.

Who is your favorite author?
>F. Scott Fitzgerald

Which of their works have you read?
>All of his novels except for Love of the Last Tycoon. A good deal of his short fiction. The Crack-Up

Why do you love them so?
>stunningly lyrical prose
>wrote some of the best short fiction ever conceived
>striking imagery and an ear for beautiful language
>potent blend of wit and social insight
>melancholic, bittersweet stories that are effectively tragic without coming across as saccharine
>was handsome as fuck (no homo)

Whom would you recommend them to?
>pretty much anybody with an interest in fiction

>>3660946
y cant /lit/ in2 intertextuality

cmon guys it aint gotta be like that

>>3660966
That movie really sucked but damn they really pulled off Achilles as a golden god-like man.

>You old sack of wine!
>mfw a lot of the quotes were directly taking from the book

>>3661056

When the film was released many people criticized the choice of Brad Pitt for the role, saing that a warrior as Achilles would be scarred, ugly, a super strong and muscular brute (I remember a film version of the Iliad where Achilles was a huge and bald bad-faced ogre), and not a boy with angel face.

But that shows how these critics had not read the Iliad. Homer describes Achilles as the most beautiful among the Achaeans, with blond hair, blue eyes and golden tresses. Is problabe that Homer would have enjoyed the selection of Pitt for the role.

>>3661056
their portrayal of Achilles was shit. Brad Pitt's Achilles is a mild-mannered village vicar compared to the Achilles in Homer's epic who is pride personified.

>>3661143
> Is problabe that Homer would have enjoyed the selection of Pitt for the role.

No he wouldn't, because Pitt's jaw is too masculine. Achilles should have had a boyish chin.

That film is awful on so many levels. It isn't Homeric AT ALL.

>>3660571
Did you read Shakespeare's plays and poems in English or did you picked up a Portuguese translation?

>>3661207

In both languages. I read him in the original (with some difficulty), but also in various translations in Portuguese (I like seeing the different solutions that translators had for the text); there are few good translations into Portuguese, but most are horrible.

Two of the best translations into Portuguese are on the translation of the following books: "The language of Shakespeare" by Frank kermode, and "Shakespeare's Imagery," Caroline Spurgeon. The verses quoted in this books are translated seamlessly, without an attempt to keep the 10 metrical syllables and without the inferior-solution of transform verse into prose.

But most books of literary criticism on Shakespeare I read in English: the critical literature translated into Portuguese is scarce.

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of internet, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

>>3661248
How did you seriously get into shakespeare ? I mean, I have been reading him episodically since midschool, but first I'm a frenchfag so I started reading translations, and second, I never saw one of his plays onstage (I did saw one on TV tough).
Now, I think it is time to man up and start reading the original. But I still have (understandably so) trouble enjoying thoroughly his mastery over language you just described.

How does one get to taste Shakespeare's English, aside from reading ?

>>3661272

OP here.

One of the best ways to understand the greatness of Shakespeare's verbal power is by reading good books of literary criticism. For good books I mean those who do not care about the meaning of the plays, with the study of the psychology of the characters or the philosophy of each of Shakespeare's works (books such as Harold Bloom’s “Shakespeare”). Good books are criticism are those who analyze the techniques of a particular writer: his use of language, his construction of metaphors and similes, his versification, his use of sources, and other technical aspects. It was by reading such works that I started to really admire Shakespeare.

I suggest works as:

>The language of Shakespeare, by Frank Kermode;
>Shakespeares Imagery, Caroline Spurgeon;
>Shakespeare's Uses of Shakespeare's The Arts of Language, by Sistier Mirian Joseph;
>The language of Shakespeare's plays, by B. Ifor Evans;
>The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery, by Wolfgang Clemen;
>The Poetry of Shakespeare's Plays, by F. E. Halliday;
>Shakespeare's Metrical Art, by George T. Wright

And finally, if you want a kind of critical book like the one of Bloom (but one that is a good book, not a piece of crap like Bloom’s work) I suggest "Shakespeare" by Mark Van Doren, one of the most beautiful books of literary criticism I've ever read.

>>3661323
Very much thank you, I will be looking for them.

>>3661347

OK bro. You will love Van Dore's book.

>>3660571
As having studied in a lit class full of Shakespeare loathers---his language is too hard/irrelevant to today waaah---this post made my day. Thanks OP.

>>3660571
King Kong was an ape, not a monkey.

Who is your favourite author?
>Fyodor Doestovsky

Which of their works have you read?
>Crime and Punishment
>The Brothers Karamazov
>Notes From the Underground
>The Idiiot

Why do you love them so?
"There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky"
― Kurt Vonnegut

Whom would you reccomend them to?
>Everyone should read Doestovsky

>>3660571
Do you read all of that poetry in the original language?

Who is your favourite author?
>Ernest Hemingway

Which of their works have you read?
>A Farewell to Arms
>The Sun Also Rises
>To Have and Have Not
>For Whom the Bell Tolls
>The Old Man and the Sea
>True at First Light
>Complete Short Stories
>Bimini

Why do you love them so?
>The modernist/Lost Generation literature speaks to me like nothing else. The loose morals, sense of place, the boozing, the beauty of his words, etc. Ernest Hemingway is truly one of the greatest American writers

>>3662203

>>3662244
This man speaks the truth.

>>3662232

No; a pity, but not. I wish I had this supernatural power for learning languages, but in reality I face problems and difficulties even with English. I know I should read all this poets and poems in the original before I could judge them with justice, but Shakespeare, even in translation, presents an extraordinary beauty (even in translation he is superior by far to the Portuguese poets – that I read in the original), and for that reason I believe he is truly the greatest poet of all time.

>>3662171


And I won my day by knowing that there are still people like you, who care about language, and who are happy to read an random exaltation about the verbal virtues of a poet. Once I read somewhere a famous author talking about young writers (I don’t remember who it was, nor I remember the exact phrase): he said that whenever he heard a young man saying he wanted to write because he felt he had something to say about the world, that he had to reveal truths that live inside him, he (the old author) knew that the young man would not going to far; however, when a young writer told him he liked to play with words, to test combinations, inventing different languages for the characters, he thought that this embryo-writer could still have a future. I don’t agree entirely with this vison, but one thing its true: the first characteristic of a writer is the love for language, the lust for the words: those who do not love the language probably will not thrive as authors. Those that do not love language will find only platitudes in Shakespeare – language is the flesh, blood, veins, arteries, and sinews of his work; plot and characters are important, but they are merely the bones.

Who is your favourite author?
>Chuck Palahniuk
Which of their works have you read?
>Invisible Monsters (Favorite)
>Lullaby (second favorite)
>Diary
>Pygmy (this one was meh)
>Damned
>Choke (not yet finished)
>Haunted (not yet finished)
>tfw when I've never read Fight Club
Why do you love them so?
>I'm a sucker for the crass, cynical observations of society. I also appreciate the way he takes a good deal of influence from Vonnegut without trying to completely copy his writing style.
Whom would you recommend them to?
Anybody, really. I've had people who don't even read as a hobby read Invisible Monsters or Lullaby and they loved it.

Who is your favourite author?
>J. R. R. Tolkien

Which of their works have you read?
>The Hobbit
>The Lord of the Rings
>The Silmarillion
>Farmer Giles of Ham
>Smith of Wootton Major
>Leaf by Niggle
>The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
>The Book of Lost Tales

Why do you love them so?
>For the ineffable sense of melancholy hope that his works evoke in me. Reading Tolkien brings me into contact with a visceral sense of both the bitterness and the sweetness of this mortal life.

Whom would you recommend them to?
>Anybody who is not already poisoned by the unreasonable prejudices of university English professors.

>>3662244
Best intro to Hemingway? Are his short stories worth checking out(can you go into detail)?

>>3662371
>The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

OP here.

This character is a creation of genius. It is one of the greatest wonders of Tolkien's work, in my opinion. It is like a personification in flesh and blood of the woods: an entity that carries the immemorial knowledge of oaks, fungus, moss, mushrooms, snails, frogs and squirrels; the knowledge whispered by the dry leaves of Autumn and the blossoms of spring. I always feel a special energy when I read the passages dedicated to Tom Bombadil in Tolkien's work.

Hope that they picture him in some of the Hobbit movies.

>>3662366
Anthony Hecht is the man you're referencing. He was an old friend of mine, in fact.

>>3662381
>>3662371
I feel with you, I also love Tom Bombadil (and I have the strong feeling he influenced my mom to give me my name) but he won't appear in the Hobbit movies, because he only appears in LotR if I remember correctly. I love Tolkien for never stating what the meaning of Tom Bombadil is...

>>3660571
How do you rate Pessoa, your greatest national poet, compared to Shakespeare? I hear he can talk with several voices, just like Shakespeare.
Also, do you know Lautréamont? He is not as versatile as Shakespeare, but he may overtake him in terms of raw power. Lautréamont also crushes anyone you named when it comes to originality. Overall, I would say Shakespeare is the most pleasing and stirring of all poets, while Lautréamont is the most breathtaking and groundbreaking. Both have godlike charm.

>>3662366
I just hope you keep in mind that translations of certain works don't really do it justice, and that many poets put extreme care into crafting their words. Vergil tried so hard it killed him.

OP from the first thread here. This shall become pasta.

Who is your favourite author?
>Leo Tolstoy

Which of their works have you read?
>The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Cossacks and War & Peace

Why do you love them so?
>His language is the most inventive, beautiful and awe-inspiring in the world. Hi is, by far, the greatest author of all time. I have read almost all of the Russian authors, and of the authors of my native language (Orcadian), as well as Norwegian authors. I have read the Italians (Leopardi, Dante), the French (I’m a Rimbaud fan), the Germans (Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Hölderin), the Greeks (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Alcman, Pindar), the Latin (Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid), the South Africans…hell, I have even read the Japanese (Ono no Komachi, Basho, Hitomaro, the folk songs of the kojiki and Man’yoshu), the Chinese (Li Bai and Du Fu) and the Indian (Kalidasa, Tagore, the ancient epics), always searching for the same metaphorical feast and imagistic orgy of Tolstoy’s work, but in vain: nobody has ever done the same with words. Babel is right when he says that “If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” and Ballard: “In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance than all the pages in War and Peace.” This guys is the greatest master of language of all human history.

Whom would you recommend them to?
>Anybody who... nope. Just anybody.

OP here.

>>3663346

Actually the author that I most admire and appreciate after Shakespeare is Tolstoy. They are the two authors that I love the most. Actually I think that the representation of humans by Tolstoy is truer to reality than that of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's characters seem more artificial (much because of the language): no one ever spoke like the people in his plays. However, the variety of situations, human beings and atmospheres in Shakespeare is amazing (and about his language there is nothing to talk about - the more extraordinary that exists).

>>3662951

I like Pessoa a lot: he is, in fact, the greatest Portuguese poet (better than Camões, no doubt). However what Pessoa’s poetry miss is in the metaphorical capacity of Shakespeare: the language of Pessoa never shows that densely metaphorical texture, full of bold verbs, personifications, the mixing of the concrete world with the world of abstract language; hes language does not have that urgency and crowded quality in which an image has no time to be fully developed and presented before another is already stepping on its heels.

>>3663339

Yes, I have this notion. I try to make the most of justice to all poets, but I know that translation takes of many of them large part of their greatness. Virgil, according to legend, wrote only 3 verses per day, is not it? (of course, is a legend, but says a lot about the character of the Latin master)

>>3660571
>Who is your favourite author?
Having only one favorite author is for plebs and people who don't read.

>>3662369
Question for you: Why do you think Palahniuk has had so much mainstream success? I'm always baffled by this whenever I read him because he's so often criticizing the exact people who claim to love him so much.

>>3663494

>Why do you think Palahniuk has had so much mainstream success?
>he's so often criticizing the exact people who claim to love him so much

remember that these are the kind of people who think fight club is about bros fighting other bros and totally broing out hard and doing awesome bro terrorist anarchy shit. that is where the analysis of the work ends for them.

they aren't exactly the sharpest lot around

>>3663346
Have you read Shakespeare's essay on Tolstoy?

>>3661056
>>3661143
>>3661205

The cool thing about the film for me was that it was actually set in the fucking Bronze Age, not the classical "Golden Age" shit that a lot of other versions seem to go for.
So it got points for that.

The rest I can take or leave though.

Who is your favourite author?
>Thomas Hardy

Which of their works have you read?
>Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure, The Woodlanders, Far From the Madding Crowd

Why do you love them so?
>I don't know any other writer who has such mastery of narrative. He is able to weave characters, stories and themes together perfectly to create poignant and emotional stories. Similarly he is able to create fantastic characters who are well-rounded. There are few if no villains or heroes. Even the worst individuals are victims of circumstance and not completely diabolical. My father described Hardy as 'figures in a landscape' - characters who are defined by their circumstances and location. Not only does this describe Hardy's writing but also what he likes to write about.

Whom would you recommend them to?
>I'd say fans of either Steinbeck or DH Lawrence would enjoy Hardy for obvious reasons. However, I believe he should be up there with Dickens and Shakespeare as the great British writers.

>oh cool a thread about authors and why people like them
>_____ Is a master of _____ with such lyrical and beautiful prose

really?

>>3663653
what?

>>3663653

You mean the other way round.

>>3660959
>than
>than
>than
>than

</3

>>3663436
I think this was more of a comment on his meticulousness rather than his laziness, but hey, I could be wrong.

>>3663779
Oops, yeah. Total derp moment there. Tolstoy's essay on Shakespeare.

>>3660959
unless you just use an annotated guide

and who the fuck who reads Ulysses hasn't read Hamlet?

>>3664226

(1/2)

Yes, I read.

The problem with Tolstoy and Shakespeare is the huge difference between these two writers. Shakespeare excelled in language, and did not mind sacrificing the verisimilitude and reality in favor of the verbal beauty. No one ever spoke like Shakespeare's characters: the human race that he modeled is artificial in this respect: they are as human beings who had took steroids for the mind, who had the brain areas related to language and verbal thinking augmented by some divine touch. Shakespeare makes all humans (even mediocre ones) speak as Gods, as D. H. Lawrence said:

“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.”

Moreover, Shakespeare accepted any plots, no matter how fantastical and bizarre, provided they were interesting. He did not care to kill important characters without any scruple, and sure he did not bother to set his stories anywhere in the world and at any time in history, without even analyzing the customs of other peoples or epochs: the important thing was to captivate the attention of public (and finding nice opportunities to forge brilliant metaphors and similes)

Tolstoy, however, was a fanatic for realism. He fought hard to make his characters speak realistically, not with an bookish breath and rhetorical exhalation. He also studied deeply the history of the periods and places depicted in his works; in reality, most of the things he portrayed were taken from his own life-experience. It is common to see Tolstoy, when he praises the art of someone, using the words: "very true, very real" - to be close to truth was one of the greatest virtues of an artist in his view.

>>3664226

(2/2)

Moreover, Shakespeare did not have any particular philosophy or religion: he changed his views and beliefs according to the play he was writing. Tolstoy, however, as he grew older, started to increasingly assert his doctrines, even in his art.

And finally, we cannot forget the literary envy o. Tolstoy was a very proud and egocentric men, and listen praises to Shakespeare all the time by everyone was something that irritated him deeply.

(Ah! I forgot to say that its OP here)

>Who is your favourite author?

JEROME DAVID SALINGER, AND AYN RAND.

>Which of their works have you read?

ALL "WORKS" BY JEROME DAVID SALINGER, ALL FICTION "WORKS" BY AYN RAND.

>Why do you love them so?

THEIR "WORKS"?

I LIKE JEROME DAVID SALINGER'S "WORKS" BECAUSE OF THE THEMES, CHARACTERS, AND TEMPERAMENT.

I LIKE AYN RAND'S "WORKS" BECAUSE OF THE CONCISE PROSE AND "CEREBRAL" STYLE, AND I CONCUR WITH MOST OF HER "PHILOSOPHY".

>Whom would you recommend them to?

IT IS SENSELESS TO "RECOMMEND" ANYTHING TO ANYONE; THERE IS NO "POINT".

>>3661034
Oh god yes. Just read Babylon Revisited. Yesssss.

>>3664750
laffd so fucking hard

>>3664750
hey rei have you read carnap?

>>3662369
>>3663494
>>3663514

I think the best way to read Palahniuk is to see him as Vonnegut without the goofiness.

I've read Fight Club, Invisible Monsters and Rant and quite liked them in parts. On the other hand I found Snuff almost unreadable after the 1st couple of chapters. I think his biggest problem is that he doesn't seem to have a clue who he is writing for and so often takes a great idea (Rant, Haunted and to some extent Snuff) and by the end of the novel seems to have forgotten where it started. I think that probably accounts partly for his popularity in that his novels sound great when you're reading the blurb on the back cover. He is an ideas man who unfortunately never seems be able to develop or sustain these ideas over the course of a novel (Invisible Monsters and Fight Club the exceptions as they do go interesting places.)

I'd like to know what people make of the Invisible Monsters Remix. Anybody read it?