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/lit/ - Literature


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12299597 No.12299597 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: writers who are better than Tolstoy

>> No.12299607

somehow I doubt you read either

most likely you're your knowledge about their works is just lit memes

>> No.12299611
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12299611

Why is every single thread on this board a crude dick measuring contest. Fucking Grugs, I swear.
>What is best?
>This best.
>No! That bad! This best.
>No! You brainlet!
>Shut up! You is brainlet! I strawman you with greentext!

>> No.12299617

>>12299607
I’ve read the complete works of each multiple times. You would be hard pressed to name a book I haven’t read. I swim through libraries and bathe in the inventories of book stores.

>> No.12299624

>>12299617
What's the name of the story that ends with the protagonist working in a vineyard?

>> No.12299632

>>12299611
sounds like you have a small dick, or a manlet perhaps? surely not both...

>> No.12299636

>>12299624
Vineland. Easy.

>> No.12299638

>>12299624
I don’t retain specific memories of what I read, only impressions. I’m not a pleb.

>> No.12299652

>>12299624
I was just joking in my previous post anon, I haven't read a book in it's entirety in months. Last thing I remember reading was the first dozen or so pages of Stirner, before that a few pages of Evola, I also started reading Stoner

>> No.12299653

>>12299636
Wrong.
>>12299638
Charlatan. You have no idea what you're talking about and you have not read the complete works of both authors multiple times.

>> No.12299657

Just got a free (You) from this kid, lads.

>> No.12299671
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12299671

>>12299657

>> No.12299673

>>12299653
Yes I have. You want it to be a lie so it won’t disturb your safe little world. It terrifies you that people like me are running around and ranking literature based on pure sensations.

>> No.12299675

>>12299636
>>12299638
>>12299652
Reminder that most lit posters are dilettantes, repeating things they heard with no understanding, to fit into the "smart" crowd, at most spouting platitudes and getting upset about jews.

Always assume that people responding to you thread are morons, or worse, brown.

>> No.12299685

>>12299675
You're a stupid child, but at least you have your sincerity, right? RiiGhT?

>> No.12299686

This should be an empty thread

>> No.12299695

>>12299675
>responding to you thread
>you thread
Moron sighted

>> No.12299698

>>12299686
Dante, Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare are definitely competitive. Dostoevksy, Milton, Cervantes, and Melville might be competitive too.

>> No.12299703

>>12299698
empty thread

>> No.12299704

>>12299607
fpbp
pretty much this, this place have truly gone to shit

>> No.12299710

Yes, Pynchon is better than Tolstoy in the sense that a dark-humored cartoon is funnier than Bach's Chaconne. Is it prettier though? Not in a billion years.

>> No.12299712

>>12299686
we need nazi janitors who would embrace the principles of aggressive moderation, i.e. burn everything to the ground and ban as many posters as possible with the reason "start reading books before you post on the literature board faggot"

>> No.12299713

>>12299704
It’s been like this since 2016.

>> No.12299716

>>12299611
I agree 100%, every single thread is about "X is better than Y", and 95% os the posts are one line memes

did /lit/ used to be better? kind of, but right now is just another retarded board like /v/

>> No.12299726
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12299726

>>12299695

>> No.12299731

>>12299716
I've only been here 5 years but as far as I can say, it's always been like this at its heart.

>> No.12299732
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12299732

>>12299704
I posted a Bulgakov thread earlier with some questions about one of his novels. I got one response. Meanwhile these types of threads are guaranteed 100+ posts. Fuck this place.

>> No.12299733

>>12299716
you can still get more intelligent discussion here, when /v/ attempts to be smart I want to bash my head against the wall

>> No.12299735

>>12299710
Decent analogy, anon. I agree.

>> No.12299737

>>12299716
Lit was pretty good from about 2012 to early 2015. Check the archive. Most people on here were relatively well read and cordial back then from what I’ve seen. And I’ve had some life-changing recs by searching random phrases in the archive but never from current /lit/

>> No.12299739

>>12299732
maybe your thread was boring and a piece of garbage that would belong better on quora or reddit

>> No.12299740

>>12299712
yeah, I tour sometimes on /tv/ and with very few posts I already got a thread deleted and a warning due to off topic/empty threads, whereas here on /lit/ I have never received any warnings nor had any threads deleted in 4 years posting here, although I try to create meaningful threads and shitposted very little on /lit/

>> No.12299743

>>12299739
Not outside the realm of possibility. Undoubtedly better than this thread, however.

>> No.12299744

>>12299710
Pynchon's prose is way better though.

>> No.12299753

>>12299597
Imagine how jealous and butthurt Tolstoy would have been of the Pynchmeister. Fucking pathetic.

>> No.12299755

>>12299737
I assure you that these 2012-2015 posters didn't go anywhere, you're here forever

just learn to find good threads, most likely the ones that you can't easily make a one line meme reply for, ones with too intimidating a subject

>> No.12299768

>>12299755
I’m here all day. There is maybe one decent thread a month.

>> No.12299809

>>12299768
there are plenty of good shitposting opportunities, just because you aren't a naive child anymore who is finding out about the wonderous world of russian literature doesn't mean lit has gotten that much worse, you've just been already introduced to most popular "life changing " literature

>> No.12299822

>>12299737
I agree partially. I remember constant threads about the meme trilogy back then, for instance, and people really read them and had meaningful discussions, whereas today there is a great chance of being called a pretentious/pseud faggot if you try to have a good Ulysses discussion, and the rest of the posts are in its majority shitposts, but that doesn't mean there aren't good posts, they are just a bit rare.
And I have gotten very good suggestions here recently and also suggested books to other anons.

>> No.12299846

>>12299744
Post something of Pynchon's that is better than this

>Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say...

>> No.12299876

>>12299846
cringe, sounds like something any lit schizo would write, so pathetically emotional

>> No.12299877

>>12299638
Whatever you say plump buck mulligan

>> No.12299881

>>12299809
The life changing recs I mentioned are not popular works of Russian literature but obscure commentaries on elizabethan drama that you’ve likely never heard of. Don’t be condescending unless you have evidence for what you think.

>> No.12299883

>>12299876
Post a Pynchon passage and let's compare.

>> No.12299888

>>12299877
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

>> No.12299907
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12299907

>>12299881
>elizabethan drama
>Don’t be condescending unless you have evidence for what you think.

Looks like I've got all the evidence I need

>> No.12299912

>>12299907
Not an argument.

>> No.12299928
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12299928

>>12299912
>Not an argument.
>he actually got this rustled

>> No.12299934

>>12299928
Still not seeing an argument.

>> No.12301029

>>12299744
>implying you've read Tolstoy in his original language

>> No.12301226

>>12299883
Pynchon

>Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the colour of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which - though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off - the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations... so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. Is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all Chelsea? As a spell, against falling objects...

>> No.12301265

>>12299876

Tolstoy's major gift is not on poetic fireworks, but in the constant, infatigable and carefull - almost surgical - apreciation of details.

>>12299846

Your excerptis terrible. Choose a good moment from Tolstoy for Christ sake:

Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were even seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm,driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubbleland; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.

>> No.12301269

>>12301226
Beautiful. I don't think it tops this, however. From The Death of Ivan Ilyich:

>All his life the example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal" - had seemed to him to be true only in relation to Caius the man, man in general, and it was quite justified , but he wasn't Caius and he wasn't man in general, and he had always been something quite, quite special apart from all other beings; he was Vanya, with Mama, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with his toys and the coachman, with Nyanya, then with Katenka, with all the joys, sorrows, passions of childhood, boyhood, youth. Did Caius know the smell of the striped leather ball Vanya loved so much?: Did Caius kiss his mother's hand like that and did the silken folds of Caius's mother's dress rustle like that for him? Was Caius in love like that? Could Caius chair a session like that? And Caius is indeed mortal and it's right that he should die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my feelings and thoughts - for me it's quite different. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too horrible.

>> No.12301282

>>12301265
Yes, this is a better example of his prose. I picked a passage I was just sentimental over. Nice choice, anon.

>> No.12301317

>>12299597
Dostoevsky.

>> No.12301457

>>12299846
That's pretty ironic because Leo is pathologically incapable of feeling love.

>> No.12301543

>>12301029
I’ve read both Tolstoy and Pynchon in the original and I prefer Pynchon’s prose

t. pacceянeн

>> No.12301562

>>12299597
who the fuck is this cross-eyed rot-toothed basement dwelling incel in the picture and why are you comparing him to chad war veteran Tolstoy

>> No.12301563

>>12299755
The problem isn't that the older posters left; it's that newfags are flooding the board (and the site in general)

>> No.12301590

>>12299737
>And I’ve had some life-changing recs by searching random phrases in the archive but never from current /lit/

Examples?

>> No.12301629

>>12299732
>>12299743

Post it with a picture of Belle Delphine next time.

>> No.12301696

what page are the dancing mice in GR? someone pls respond

>> No.12301717

>>12299597
Pessoa

>> No.12302190

>>12299597
There's no better writer than Tolstoy, only equals.

It would be like asking who's better than Homer, Dante or Shakespeare. It doesn't make sense.

>> No.12302318

>>12299597
Is Joyce as better as Tolstoy? We could say that the irish writer lives up to the standards.

>> No.12302656

>>12301543
>pacceянeн
poccиянин