/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15835555]

why is obama such a pseud?
has there ever been a president with good taste?

[Anonymous No.15835559]

>>15835555
Yes, Donald Trump. He is the smartest man alive.

[Anonymous No.15835561]

>>15835555

[Anonymous No.15835567]

>>15835555
>Emerson, Melville, Shakespeare
wtf I love Obama now

[Anonymous No.15835568]

>>15835555
At least he reads, unlike Trump

[Anonymous No.15835569]

>>15835555
Great digits!

Whike I agree Obama is a big pseud, Melville, Shakespeare, Emerson, and the Bible are all unironically good.

[Anonymous No.15835574]

>>15835568
boomer lib

[Anonymous No.15835585]

>>15835574
Millenial fool

[Anonymous No.15835593]

>>15835555
The real question is how sincere he's being though.
>Melville
Good taste, if he read it. Despite its insanity, Moby is one of the few "Great American Novels" that don't seem "problematic" in a racial sense (perhaps Queequeg, but he isn't black). It's a lofty yet safe choice.
>Shakespeare's Tragedies
Generic and probably a half-truth. He probably meant the classic Hamlet/Macbeth/Caesar high-school special, which is reasonable, but he should have just named one of those.
>Bible
Presidents have to say this. I don't know if he read it, but even if he has, it's not one of his favorites.
>Race-baiting with Toni Morrison and MLK
Another one he probably felt he had to put. His wife might have made him put Toni.
>Gilead
Never read, no comment
>Lincoln, Emerson
Pretty much the only choices I think are sincere. He's compared himself to Lincoln before and clearly imagines himself to be of similar importance; a lot of Democratic Party principles he pushes have their seeds in the transcendentalists.

[Anonymous No.15835601]

>>15835555
nothing but dad history from bush

[Anonymous No.15835602]

>>15835593
shut the fuck up tranny

[Anonymous No.15835617]

>>15835602
?

[Anonymous No.15835637]

>>15835601
based non-fiction reader

[Anonymous No.15835660]

>>15835601
It humors me Bush read about Huey Long

[Anonymous No.15835661]

>>15835555
Nice quads

Also does "Shakespeare's Tragedies" annoy anyone else? You don't get to fucking group them all together, they're all very different between each other. Pick ONE of them as your favorite, don't grab them all at once, that just makes it look like you haven't actually read any of them and are just saying it to sound smarter than you actually are.

[Anonymous No.15835667]

>>15835601
George W was probably the best read president we've had since the first Roosevelt. But he hid it remarkably well and was content to let the media continue to depict him as a bumpkin because it led to his opponents constantly underestimating him.

He was entirely open about this too which makes it all the funnier. Consider: he was sincere when he said that people always misunderestimated him. Media lapped that up Bush being illiterate and making up words, when in truth he was right: people consistently underestimated him in the wrong ways.

[Anonymous No.15835669]

>>15835617
just ignore him I thought it was a good post

[Anonymous No.15835681]

>>15835667
It's funny how Dubya almost kind of seems like a badass these days. Cheney too. That whole era exudes a kind of powerful masculine energy.

[Anonymous No.15835690]

>>15835681
A true Renaissance man

[Anonymous No.15835702]

>>15835681
Bush was the worst president of all time

[Anonymous No.15835715]

>>15835702
No, that would be Woodrow Wilson, or Warren Harding, or James Buchanan.

[Anonymous No.15835734]

>>15835715
add FDR and Reagan to that list

[Anonymous No.15835749]

>>15835555
>The Bible
Why does he still pretend to be a Christian? And no I don’t think he’s a Muslim, he grew up in fucking Hawaii and learned politics in Chicago, he’s an atheist.

[Anonymous No.15835933]

>>15835555
Wow, we will never have a president as smart, classy, authentic, and wonderful as Obama ever again. He was a true gift.

[Anonymous No.15835949]

>>15835555
fake af list

[Anonymous No.15835950]

>>15835669
I posted that, but didn't post the question mark so the entire interaction was trippy to me. Thanks regardless, anon.

[Anonymous No.15835954]

Imagine being president and only having so much time to read and having to figure out what you devote that time towards. Those choices would be profound.

[Anonymous No.15835964]

>>15835715
These three make everyone I know seethe. Everyone wants to believe "Current President is the antichrist and worst ever. So unpresidential!" when there's so much worse shit in the past.

[Anonymous No.15835968]

Obama read at least 38 books in 2020. How many did you read, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.15835972]

>>15835954
and then look at our current president who probably can’t even read

[Anonymous No.15835985]

>>15835661
Yeah, I was saying above how it's almost definitely Hamlet/Macbeth/Caesar. No serious reader would say "the Tragedies" because there are some stinkers (comparatively). "The Histories" would be much more believable, even.

[Anonymous No.15835986]

>>15835968
I don't keep track.

Whatever happened to when Obama said he was going to read Naipul? Did he reneg on that?

[Anonymous No.15835990]

>>15835968
>shitload of contemporary shite
Something tells me that Obama may not be so cultured as he implies on his Facebook.

[Anonymous No.15835993]

>>15835968
>Age of Surveillance
Based troll

[Anonymous No.15836003]

>>15835986
>I don't keep track.
m-me either

[Anonymous No.15836006]

>>15835555
That’s literally PR, idiot. People in high politics don’t read fiction because all they can see is propaganda.

[Anonymous No.15836009]

>pandering to black audience, but still a great book
>greatest book of all time
>foundation of english literature
>who
>who
>transcendental wasp philosophy
>the safest bet ever
>illinois president and possibly the greatest president ever

nothing about this list is bad

[Anonymous No.15836015]

>>15835702
maybe not of all time but worse than trump

[Anonymous No.15836023]

>>15836009
If there's one author that I wish /lit/ could discuss without sperging out, it's probably Toni Morrison. I hate the superficial push for "diversity" as much as anyone but Morrison is legitimately a pretty good writer.

[Anonymous No.15836032]

>>15836023
I always get her confused with Maya Angelou, who is a big hack.

[Anonymous No.15836033]

>>15836009
It looks manufactured and generic

[Anonymous No.15836034]

>>15835555
John Quincy Adams is the only intellectual president America has had

>>15836003
>Augustus
>Warlock
5-star taste.

>>15836023
Either go back to the 2015 archive or abandon hope.

[Anonymous No.15836044]

>>15836023

anything written by a black author will be unfairly criticized, i don't bother posting them here

>>15836034

sure its generic and manufactured, but what else could it be? just like another guy said earlier, its all PR

[Anonymous No.15836059]

>>15836034
>John Quincy Adams is the only intellectual president America has had
thomas jefferson?

[Anonymous No.15836073]

>>15836034
based

[Anonymous No.15836075]

>>15835559
Carl Jung’s theories fascinate me and keep my mind open to my own—and the collective—unconscious.

Reading his books can also be a good form of self-defense.

There’s a lot we don’t know about ourselves. Likewise, there’s a lot we may not know about everyone else. Jung used the word psyche to refer to both the conscious and the unconscious processes. (That’s where the word psycho comes from, by the way.) I first became aware of Jung through an acquaintance who had endured some extreme ordeals, yet he remained calm. I couldn’t fathom where he got this sort of grace under fire demeanor, so I asked him, and he told me that Jung’s ideas kept him centered.

My friend put it like this: Donald, I’ve learned from my experiences. As a safety factor, I very often see other people as a revolver that could be pointed at me. They are the gun. I, however, am the trigger. So I speak and tread carefully. It’s an effective visual aid to avoid conflicts, as I was unwittingly among people who were actually psychos underneath their dignified personas. We never know what will trigger another person’s killer instinct. It can be something that happened when they were five years old. So avoid being the trigger, and the revolver will not be a threat.

This synopsis of his philosophy made such an impact on me that I immediately started reading about Carl Jung. I’m glad I did, because it helped me in my business as well as in my personal life. We are all evolving human beings, and being aware of this gave me a big boost toward maturity. It also made me less inclined to be surprised by so-called aberrant behavior. I have to stress that I am not cynical, but I am aware. I hate being in situations where I’m asking myself, How could this have happened? This reminds me of my favorite quote from Napoleon about being surprised: A good leader shouldn’t be.

You have to know yourself as well as know other people to be an effective leader. For me, reading the work of Carl Jung was a step in the right direction. If someone had told me in business school that studying psychology would be important for financial success, I would not have believed it. My friend’s story changed that, and I am grateful to him for such cogent advice. The relatively small number of hours I’ve spent reading Jung have been more than worth it. Start with his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and you will be in for a fascinating time while simultaneously fine-tuning your intuition and instincts. You will also gain a technique for seeing into—versus reading into—the people around you. Believe me, this will serve you well on many levels.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jung/comments/c6psl4/trump_on_jung_excerpt_from_book_how_to_get_rich/

[Anonymous No.15836124]

>the bible
doubt.jpg

[Anonymous No.15836126]

>>15836034
James Garfield was pretty based. The Howells in pic related is William Dean Howells, author of The Hazard of New Fortunes if you couldn't pick that up.

[Anonymous No.15836146]

>>15836124
more like the koran

[Anonymous No.15836147]

>>15836075
do you think Trump wrote that or was it ghost written?

[Anonymous No.15836158]

>>15836075
He hasn't written this, most probably he has told something more simple along the same lines to someone and that someone has organized his thoughts into this.
Trump is an intelligent and successful businessman with incredible acting and leadership skills that is slowly crumbling under the pressure of an entire country and an entire world's hate.

[Anonymous No.15836165]

>>15835555
Since when are Emerson, Shakespeare and Melville bad taste?

[Anonymous No.15836170]

>>15836075
>This is what the young Obama wrote to his friend, divided into paragraphs for easier reading on screen:

>I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time.

>Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak.

>Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.)

>And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?

[Anonymous No.15836180]

>>15835734
>FDR
Why? Roosevelt was Lincoln level “right man in the right place”

[Anonymous No.15836196]

>>15835715
>Wilson

Unironically one of the best of all time

[Anonymous No.15836221]

>>15835555
>doesn't like anything obscure
what a normie

[Anonymous No.15836242]

>>15836147
>do you think Trump wrote that?
>(That’s where the word psycho comes from, by the way.)
Buhlieve me, I do. It's very Trumpian.

[Sage No.15836248]

>>15835555
Politicians don't tell the truth about any of this shit retard, they have a team feeding them responses that will look good to the largest amount of people
This is the most designed by committee list you could come up with - Sad!

[Anonymous No.15836252]

>>15836242
lol any ghost writer can write in their subject's voice

[Anonymous No.15836260]

>You were one of the first writers to draw a parallel between America in the early twenty-first century and the final volume of Gibbon’s history of the Roman Empire. What events first set you thinking about George Bush’s America and the decline and fall of Rome? Has the arrival of Barack Obama in any way changed your view?

>There are so many parallels, too many — the two presidents Bush can be compared to many of the late emperors. But one of the most striking parallels is this: Rome went down using barbarians to fight its wars, dispensing with its institutions and traditions. And America, forsaking its tradition of citizen-soldiers, has been using contractors to fight its wars. Let’s not deceive ourselves, the government calls them “contractors,” Blackwater or whatnot, but they’re mercenaries, and they present the same problems the Romans faced with their barbarian armies.

>Obama is a great disappointment to me. I was taken in by him when he began his campaign. He is obviously a person of some intellect, and he has genuine rhetorical skill. He looked at one point like a Marcus Aurelius. But now we have to call him a pseudo-Aurelius, because as president he’s been mostly a continuation of his predecessor, fighting Bush’s wars and accepting his changes. With the campaign coming, the old Obama who worked such charm in the last presidential elections will reappear, but this time we shouldn’t be fooled. I probably should have voted for Hillary.

>I probably should have voted for Hillary.

What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.15836262]

>>15836147
ghost writer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_McIver

[Anonymous No.15836266]

>>15836170
What a wankfest. Probably wrote a letter about what type of harpsichord he prefers.

[Anonymous No.15836276]

>>15836252
Not authentically.

>>15836262
They just type and edit what is dictated into a recorder. Like a doctors secretary or scribe.

[Anonymous No.15836287]

>>15836260
that entire quote was based up until the last sentence.

[Anonymous No.15836294]

>>15836276
>They just type and edit what is dictated into a recorder. Like a doctors secretary or scribe.
can't tell if you're trolling or genuinely retarded

[Anonymous No.15836300]

>>15836196
not him, you're dumb

[Anonymous No.15836301]

>>15836294
Typesetting is women's work. Men speak.

[Anonymous No.15836330]

>>15836075
based president

[Anonymous No.15836391]

>>15836147
Ghost written, but probably based on something he's rambled on about.
>>15836158
Which is Lindy btw. Not physically writing books but dictating them to a slave. I'm sure Seneca and Cicero and Aristotle did that to one extent or another.

[Anonymous No.15836445]

>>15835681
Are you in the closet or out?

[Anonymous No.15836454]

>>15836044
>anything written by a black author will be unfairly criticized, i don't bother posting them here
Until James Baldwin stops unjustly receiving so much praise, I won't really feel bad for it.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15836470]

>>15836260
>>15836287
>What did he mean by this?
We’re left with nothing, no real choices, and he’s just as much a novice as most Americans. All he means is he’d like to see what she’d have done instead. We’d all be just as disappointed with her of course. Don’t be too hard on him.

[Anonymous No.15836506]

>>15835690

Art critics who constitutionally really really didn't want to give him any praise were forced to acknowledge that his work is interesting. Although naive, the bathroom portraits are a disarming and highly unusual look at a head of state, the type of candid, private subject matter that is catnip for moderns. For obvious reasons, the pictures remind me of Robert Gober (his fixation of bathroom drains) and to a lesser extent Kahlo (what the water gave me). Compositionally, George Tooker and Edward Hopper (eleven A.M.) come to mind.

Probably the closest reference to Bush's simple regions of color for the full-face portraits would be Alice Neel, though Marsden Hartley is also a useful comparision. Notwithstanding the apparent "tumblr nose", the piece at bottom right looks interesting, with its stark contrast of facial shading. I wonder who the subject is.

[Anonymous No.15836513]

>>15836506
Bush took up painting at the suggestion of a PR firm as he looked to rehabilitate his image after disastrous presidency.

[Anonymous No.15836545]

>>15835568
It's worse to be a pseud than unread. Indeed, it's worse being a pseud than illiterate.

[Anonymous No.15836549]

>>15836513
And yet he's still a more interesting artist than you'll ever be

[Anonymous No.15836564]

>>15835555
Checked; see >>15835569, but the Bible below the first three

[Anonymous No.15836565]

>>15835681
I hate that I can't contrast strong arming your country into war for fictitious reasons (and revenge) as exuding a kind of powerful masculine energy.

[Anonymous No.15836600]

>>15836287
Do you actually think lit professors who recite Whitman and Blake are not liberals to the very core? I assure you Trump hasn’t read a book since college.

[Anonymous No.15836606]

>>15836165
Plus the best Morrison that’s much less pander-y than her more popular Beloved etc

[Anonymous No.15836637]

>>15836600
>Start with his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and you will be in for a fascinating time.

[Anonymous No.15836643]

>>15836506
oil painting presidents just seem to have more of the personality factor

[Anonymous No.15836658]

>>15836637
murica

[Anonymous No.15837124]

>>15836637
Funny they all made sure to brag about it to everyone

[Anonymous No.15837198]

>>15836003
>years as fields

bad design desu

[Anonymous No.15837211]

>>15837198
Not him and of course it isn't.

[Anonymous No.15837534]

>>15835715
Woodrow Wilson was great

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!oI3er5KKetj No.15837552]

>>15836506
The little face, the back turned away
Always trying to get clean.
I see what it means probably before he did.

[Anonymous No.15837566]

>>15836170
based

[Anonymous No.15838359]

>>15835715
What did these people do wrong?

[Anonymous No.15838367]

>>15835681
Ti activated

[Anonymous No.15838760]

>>15835555
This list seems like committee approved for what people expect him to read. It's so bland, unoffensive and expected of a (black) American president.

Im pretty sure his real list would be something like this:
>Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (actually good book but the pedo themes would get him flak)
>Milestones by Qutb
>SIEGE by James Mason
>The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times by Rene Guenon
>The Kama Sutra
>Ulysses by James Joyce

[Anonymous No.15838786]

>>15835555
Yes. John Quincy Adams. He wasn't the best president but he was the most intelligent.

[Anonymous No.15838812]

>>15835555
>Melville, Shakespeare, Robinson, Emerson, Bible, Lincoln
All good. You're the puh-sood.