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/lit/ - Literature

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10756019 No.10756019 [Reply] [Original]

I want to become smart, which means that I want to get rid of my postmodern "only my subjective experience" views, /lit/.
For a while I thought that "good" and "bad" are unproductive terms when evaluating the worth of a novel. Instead, I tried to get as much out of a book as I could. So even books that were badly written could help me atleast understand why this was the case, or make me endlessly speculate over the choices that lead the author to write something like that.
This got me a lot of mileage out of my books, but I want to become a true patrician who only reads objectively good books so that people will think of me as smart. So please, I implore you, present me with the objectively best book(s) ever written so I can improve my taste.

Hard mode: Actually explain why the book you're presenting is objectively good.

Thank you

>> No.10756067
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10756067

Please dont ignore me. I am making an honest effort to improve myself.

>> No.10756107
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10756107

Alright, i'm going to read a book about Foucault now (because I dont understand him enough to actually read his books). If this thread dies, i'll just make another one tomorrow.

>> No.10756125

Read this nigga
http://sonic.net/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>> No.10756133

>I want to become a true patrician who only reads objectively good books so that people will think of me as smart.
Probably a bait but seriously, m8, you are drastically deluded by /lit/.
You literally fell for a "patrician/pleb" meme-dichotomy.

>> No.10756141

>>10756019
Is this bait?

>> No.10756149

>>10756019
Yeah, Post modernism didn't invent your subjective experience I'm afraid, or even the focus on it.

>> No.10756160

>>10756019
Start with the Greeks
Anabasis (aka The Persian Expedition) by Xenophon is a good introduction point. You won't have to endlessly speculate because it's a historical account of a millitary expedition of high drama and marshal valour.

>> No.10756176

>>10756141
No, i'm being sincere

>>10756149
I guessed so, but people have been calling my views postmodernist so much, I just assume that everyone thinks subjectivity = postmodern, so i'm just perpetuating the meme to make communication easier

>>10756133
I do want to better myself and improve my taste, I just framed it in /lit/ terms so people are more likely to reply

>> No.10756205

>>10756176
>I just framed it in /lit/ terms so people are more likely to reply
More likely to count you as a retard.
Honestly, just start by perusing the Western Canon. It's a fail-safe method to form a decent taste in literature.

>> No.10756250

>>10756205
Even if you count me as a retard, it got you to reply, didnt it?

>Western Canon
Thats too vague for me, could you recommend a strong place to start?

>> No.10756261

>>10756250
> it got you to reply, didnt it?
Man I'm so bored I'm ready to reply to virtually anything.
>Thats too vague for me, could you recommend a strong place to start?
Google it. Also there is a book by Harold Bloom. Start with Shakespear or the Greeks. God knows how many memes I have unironically utilized in these three sentences.

>> No.10758124

Tom wolfe,hemighway,great gatsby as for the "western cannon"
then for ur times William T. Vollmann

>> No.10758385
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10758385

I probably started farther ahead than you OP, just start by reading something that personally relates to you. Like if you're American and male, read The Sun Also Rises and go from there. Then don't stop and keep reading more and more books from other perspectives. Don't listen to what most people say just start somewhere. Probably too many fags on here were like you read a book on Greek history, then got bored and decided a better use of their time was to shit on other people on /lit/.

>> No.10758423

>>10756019
>>10756176
If you want to get out of the nihilistic self-referential skepticism of postmodernism that questions the question mark itself, you really just have to read... anything at all. Works among any tradition at all. Through living and observing and recognizing other people who have lived and observed, you escape the pit of skepticism, because you inevitably build your own foundation for a personal tradition.