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/lit/ - Literature

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10528366 No.10528366 [Reply] [Original]

Entry level here, anyone write a paper or essay for themselves after finishing a book? Hope doing this would help with deeper understanding of what I just read.

>> No.10528405
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10528405

>>10528366
I think that's a good idea if you have time, I tend to read essays about books I enjoy, but hardly write anything.

>> No.10528429

>>10528366
I have re-written parts of other people's books that I found failing in some respect. I was probably working towards the same goal as you are.

>> No.10528436

>>10528366
How do you know whether what you write will be correct? Even after you read dozens of scholary essays and notes on the work it still won't cover everything and you'll probably never know if you misinterpreted it.

>> No.10528448

>>10528436
>thinking there's one correct interpretation

>> No.10528460

>>10528366
It is a very good idea. I will write for long periods of time after reading non-fiction books. This sort of thing is obviously necessary with philosophy, math, and the like. I haven't written an essay about a fiction book, but I have analyzed fiction writing in a near essay format. The purpose was to understand the author's choices.

I might try this idea myself. I am currently reading the Reacher novels which aren't very good for this sort of thing. I don't think i will start with an essay. I think I will list out a few purposes of the book and see if the author contrasts everything to reduce to a single thesis.

>> No.10528473

>>10528460
>>10528405
What's the best way to approach this in a way that doesn't feel like a school essay?

>>10528436
Not trying to be correct on anything at all, it's just putting my thoughts somewhere physically after reading a book.

>> No.10528499

>>10528448
What if whatever you're saying is blatantly wrong though and you don't even realise it. I could just say the white whale is the devil and ahab is an avenging angel sent by god or how parsee is his conduit to god and he only fails because he allows parsee to die, this would be a wrong interpretation. I could say ahab stayed halfway out of the scuttle during the last chapters just because he didn't want pip to weaken his resolve against the white whale. How would I know any of this is correct?
I could say the novel is supposed to make you feel an appreciation for nature or is supposed to becalm you and all the characters are simply there to describe god to you through pantheism. This is all retarded and not entirely correct of course, so why would you do this?

>> No.10528501
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10528501

>from Anna Karenina’s visit to her son to everything that happens in the theater and immediately after it

>> No.10528523

so how essential is Oblomov exactly? I like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov but I don’t really feel like reading other russians

>> No.10528549
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10528549

>>10528473
>What's the best way to approach this in a way that doesn't feel like a school essay?
It depends. In a school/college essay, you are required to write using an academic jargon that does not necessarily help, but is you have to use as you need the grade to pass. In a non-academic essay, you can write your thoughts about the most relevant parts and associate them with other works of fiction for instance. Anyway, that's much more personal than a academic essay, so you can write whatever you want for good or bad. Another advantage is that you won't need to take a bunch of references, everyrhing can be more informal. You are also not limited, nor required to write a certain number of pages. They can be very short or much longer.
At the end of the day, you will be your own judge, so you need to create a form that shall help you the most.
It would be more helpful if could expalin how do you feel about school essays as one could be more specific on offering advices to you.

>> No.10528584

>>10528549
This was actually really good advice.

>> No.10528585
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>>10528499
It is very hard to say that something is wrong in literature. If you get a famous novel, you are likely to find a hundread different interpretations. The first time I read Quijote, my idea was similar to Unamuno's view of it, but I was convinced otherwise by reading other theorists.

>> No.10529536

>>10528523
very .

>> No.10529543

better question: what value is provided by writing large blocks of text in response to a written work? I've written short essays on individual chapters/arguments in philosophy, but only to delineate my views from the authors and outline new questions and topics of interest for future reference.

I don't understand what the endgoal of writing a treatise on a given book is.

>> No.10529555

>>10528499
If you lack confidence in your own faculties of judgment then book reports are the least of your problems anon.

>> No.10531137

>>10528366
I do this after every book. Definitely helps you flesh your ideas out, come to stronger conclusions, and you retain a lot more months later.

Also pretty interesting looking back at how you interpreted things a year ago compared to now.