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/lit/ - Literature


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17782788 No.17782788 [Reply] [Original]

I enjoyed ASOIAF series more than Lord of the Rings.

>> No.17782792

>>17782788
Prose is better than the ideas

>> No.17782800

Poetry is inferior to prose.

>> No.17782801

>>17782788
I think that's pretty popular. LotR was really awful.

>> No.17782809 [DELETED] 

Call of the Crocodile is better than 90% of the books posted here.

>> No.17782822

>>17782788
The quality of discussions on /lit/ is substandard because most /lit/ users do not possess the analytic tools required to discuss literature at an advanced level.

>> No.17782823

burger lit > brit lit

>> No.17782834 [DELETED] 

>>17782809
This isn’t that far fetched. I haven’t read Crocodile but I have read Arcade. It’s an entertaining book. The problem with most of the books mentioned here are that they’re kind of boring.
Just look at any of the threads about classic literature. The only people that claim those are good do so as an affectation.

>> No.17782840

I think Butterfly wants my cock :3

>> No.17782846

>>17782788
Waldun is good and is only getting better.

>> No.17782856

Tripfags are good for the quality of discussion on this board. It holds posters accountable and builds context for why that poster has the opinions they do.

>> No.17782860

>>17782809
>>17782834
This is bait. There's a difference between bait and an unpopular opinion.
KYS trannies

>> No.17782863

>>17782856
I don't entirely agree but I do think that if any board should have trips, it would be this one. there's a reason were nicer to our trips than other boards, it works more

>> No.17782867 [DELETED] 

>>17782860
Fuck off, asshole. I liked the book. You realize this is an unpopular opinion thread don’t you?

>> No.17782870

>>17782840
based

>> No.17782892

Vonnegut is great

>> No.17782901

>>17782801
>>17782788
Agreed

>> No.17782909

>>17782863
/fit/ has trips for their powerlifting general, they are very nice, usually trips are cunts but some should be fine. I unironically enjoy butterflies posts from time to time and believe she brings some character to the board, even tho her taste in all these years is still shit

>> No.17782910

>>17782856
Just go to reddit or any other web forum you tard

>> No.17782917

>>17782867
Do you? It's not a post lazy bait thread.

>> No.17782920

>>17782910
So it was an unpopular opinion. Nice.

>> No.17782926 [DELETED] 

>>17782917
The one making lazy posts is you. I liked a book. You haven’t articulated why my claim is so outrageous.

>> No.17782937

>>17782926
There’s a difference between unpolular and something that can’t even be attempted to be believed

>> No.17782945 [DELETED] 

>>17782867
Ignore him. He’s the same dude who samfags in threads trying to discuss F. Gardner books.

>> No.17782951
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17782951

Frog posting ought to be bannable
Seriously they’ve always been on par with ponyfags. Blowjacks too of course.

>> No.17782954

>>17782822
substandard? what exactly is your standard and if it's so high, why be here?

>> No.17782956 [DELETED] 

>>17782937
Alright I’m convinced you’re just trolling now.

>> No.17782981 [DELETED] 

>>17782937
This is bait.

>> No.17783034

>>17782909
based, i like butterfly, she actually partakes in discussions instead of posting sneed

>> No.17783046

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the best books I've read and I think it's lame that the book doesn't get brought up more on this board.

>> No.17783051

the new king james bible is superior

>> No.17783064

I hate almost all poetry.

>> No.17783074

>>17782901
bait

>> No.17783080
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17783080

Fantasy has the highest potential of all forms of prose literature it’s just untapped due to the genre becoming incestual, if it stripped itself of the Tolkien and cliche trappings and became just a world of any particular authors imagination, and if the name fantasy didn’t dissuade serious authors from writing, it is only logical that fantasy could harness the most raw imagination and ideals possible.

Counting how much pages you read is terrible since it ruins the fun and makes reading a job.

Reading doesn’t necessarily mean self improvement. Literature is just another medium, no different from music, tv or the like.

Poetry has the highest mental/spiritual aspect of all arts which means it has both the highest potential for beauty but also one of the lowest floors possible. And in this regard the average poem is many times below the average song and average painting, while the greatest poems many times overwhelm the greats of the other mediums in terms of long lasting mental change and how much it sticks with you, also raw pleasure.

The highest level of prose is indistinguishable from poetry, the lowest level of poetry is indistinguishable with Prose.

>> No.17783803

>>17782788
>>17782801

The Lord of the Rings has to be the most misunderstood novel in existence. Thanks, Peter Jackson.

>> No.17783836

>>17783080
>Fantasy has the highest potential of all forms of prose literature it’s just untapped due to the genre becoming incestual, if it stripped itself of the Tolkien and cliche trappings and became just a world of any particular authors imagination, and if the name fantasy didn’t dissuade serious authors from writing, it is only logical that fantasy could harness the most raw imagination and ideals possible.
strongly agree

>The highest level of prose is indistinguishable from poetry, the lowest level of poetry is indistinguishable with Prose.
vehemently disagree

>> No.17783981
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17783981

It is a great book and only limp wristed nu-'Republicans' hate it

>> No.17784015

Translations are alright, as long as you choose a good one.

>> No.17784032

>>17783836
Imo, the best prose manipulates form and structure and is lyrical to the point that it’s just verse in disguise, the worst poetry is basically a kind of lazy free verse that’s just chopped up prose. But tell me where you disagree? For me the lines really do get blurry at the extremes.

>> No.17784065

>>17783981
I just don't think I understood it. From the point of view of a 19 year old guy, it seemed like a stylish chronicle of some road adventures. That doesn't make it a bad book, but it hasn't really stuck with me over the past 15 years. What am I missing?

>> No.17784097

Unpopular opinions are the first refuge of the psued.

>> No.17784113

>>17784097
MEEEEEEEEEEDS

>> No.17784126

>>17782792
Is that really unpopular? Mediocre ideas can be alright books with great prose, great ideas with mediocre prose are unreadable.

>> No.17784145
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17784145

Fantasy writers say too much and science fiction writers say too little. I'm not sure what's worse, 2 page meandering descriptions of a tree or a half-described futuristic gadget that I don't understand.

>> No.17784150

>>17784126
Case in point: The Kingkiller Chronicle. Decent prose, absolutely garbage ideas.

>> No.17784163

>>17783080
>Fantasy has the highest potential of all forms of prose literature it’s just untapped due to the genre becoming incestual, if it stripped itself of the Tolkien and cliche trappings and became just a world of any particular authors imagination, and if the name fantasy didn’t dissuade serious authors from writing, it is only logical that fantasy could harness the most raw imagination and ideals possible.

Completely disagree with this and think that what you've said applies to Sci-Fi instead.

>> No.17784183
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17784183

>>17782788
Plato, Zeno, Nietzsche, Hegel, Schoppenhauer, Camus, Deleuze, Derrida, Kant, Descartes, Stirner, Rousseau, Focault, Kierkegaard, Evola, Guénon were a bunch of schizophrenics are not worth being read

Political Theory > History > Economy > Philosophy > Literary Fiction > Poetry > Genre Fiction

Ayn Rand, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Hume, Aristotle and Aquinas are the only philosophers that you really need

In fact Aristotle and Aquinas are the only two philosophers that you ultimately need, showing that this retarded endeavor was over before it started all the way back in Ancient Greece

Poetry is insufferable and extremely overrated, just over-hyped prose that sentimental smooth brains like to pretend has some value over prose despite being basically prose with some rhymes on it (and sometimes not even that), and more in the way of allegory and metaphors, which can be obtained in a well-written novel, like Nabokov's stuff

Despite being known as a meathead country America has produced much superior literature to the UK or any other singular European country, fiction and non-fiction included

As vessels for communicating political and philosophical ideas through allegory and metaphor, most novels, including the beloved classics of the western canon only truly transmit one or two ideas.

A novel that is only entertaining is shit, but a novel that is informative, enlightening and erudite, but still not entertaining (in any way, not only in the form of fun and amusement), is also shit.

Goethe's Faust and Pope's The Rape of the Lock are better than most epics

Most respected authors, specially novelists, are blatantly one-trick ponies

Short-stories are extremely overrated, and mostly preferred by pseuds and ADHD art hoes over novels

>> No.17784207

>>17782788
100 years of solitude is bad

>> No.17784237

>>17784183

bait or edgelord who hasn't read any of these books, can't decide

>> No.17784251

>>17784163
Sci-fi and fantasy might as well be the same genre as far as I'm concerned. They're both equally "fantastical" in the general sense of the word, the only people who really think otherwise are "hard sci-fi" autists, and nobody actually reads their books.

>> No.17784252

>>17784183
>Plato, Zeno, Nietzsche, Hegel, Schoppenhauer, Camus, Deleuze, Derrida, Kant, Descartes, Stirner, Rousseau, Focault, Kierkegaard, Evola, Guénon were a bunch of schizophrenics are not worth being read

Incredible take either from a "muh logic" scientism autist or someone with a sub 100 IQ.

>> No.17784299

>>17784251

I see where you're coming from but I completely agree with Ted Chiang on this (see https://boingboing.net/2010/07/22/ted-chiang-interview.html).).

>You have very specific views on the difference between magic and science. Can you talk about that?
Sure. Science fiction and fantasy are very closely related genres, and a lot of people say that the genres are so close that there's actually no meaningful distinction to be made between the two. But I think that there does exist an useful distinction to be made between magic and science. One way to look at it is in terms of whether a given phenomenon can be mass-produced. If you posit some impossibility in a story, like turning lead into gold, I think it makes sense to ask how many people in the world of the story are able to do this. Is it just a few people or is it something available to everybody? If it's just a handful of special people who can turn lead into gold, that implies different things than a story in which there are giant factories churning out gold from lead, in which gold is so cheap it can be used for fishing weights or radiation shielding.
In either case there's the same basic phenomenon, but these two depictions point to different views of the universe. In a story where only a handful of characters are able to turn lead into gold, there's the implication that there's something special about those individuals. The laws of the universe take into account some special property that only certain individuals have. By contrast, if you have a story in which turning lead into gold is an industrial process, something that can be done on a mass scale and can be done cheaply, then you're implying that the laws of the universe apply equally to everybody; they work the same even for machines in unmanned factories. In one case I'd say the phenomenon is magic, while in the other I'd say it's science.


I haven't read any great books that would fit into his definition of a story about magic, whereas I have read many that are about what would fit his definition of science.

>> No.17784336

>>17782863
>>17782910
He's saying that having some trips, not that all posters should be trips.

>> No.17784357

>>17783080
Have you considered pre-Tolkien fantasy, like that Night Land book some anons say is good. I think that what you've said here is accurate and I agree for the most part and also that sci-fi as a genre is pretty much the same way.

>> No.17784530

>>17782809
"Call of the Crocodile" is the first installation in Gardner's breakout series of horror novels. The story follows its protagonist, a young boy named Faggot Gardner (no relation to F. Gardner, the author), as he searches the grimy streets of Chicago for "the Crocodile", a local leather daddy notorious for putting bad little boys like Gardner in their place.
Young Faggot Gardner searches high and low for the fabled dominant: in dilapidated crack dens, in public restrooms, in subterranean glory holes. Yet no matter how assiduously he searches, how quickly he moves from clue to clue, how many dirty men's toes he sucks (an activity constantly referred to in the novel as "pussing the boots"), Gardner seems always to be one step behind the object of his obsessive desire.
The twist comes near the end of the novel, during a scene reminiscent of Polanski's "Repulsion", where the beautiful Carole, played by a young Catherine Deneuve, finally descends into madness, and hallucinates human arms reaching out of the walls of her apartment and grabbing her, thereby externalizing her fear not only of sexual assault, but of any form of intimate contact whatsoever. F. Gardner (the author) parodies this scene, effectively turning its tone and implications upside down, by having his protagonist, the now cock-starved and desperate Faggot Gardner (again, no relation) crawl on his knees through a dark apartment, groping along the walls to find his way, only to feel, poking firmly out of the holes in the walls, not scary arms with grabby hands, but dozens of diamond-hard dicks. They poke him in the eyes. They shoot gobs of bitter gravy into his nose and ears. They wag reproachfully at him, like the index fingers of the stern private school teachers who buggered him in his earliest childhood memories, as he slowly makes his way to the end of the hall. The twist is this: when he finally reaches the end of the hall, and opens the door there, he finds himself staring into a blinding white light. He believes that when his eyes finally adjust to the glare, he will see there, waiting for him, horse-whip in hand, croc-skin chaps pulled snugly against his obese thighs, the man he has been seeking for so many days, seeking, in a way, for all of his life. But instead what he sees is a hospital room. He is lying in a hospital bed. The bright light is coming from the naked bulb above him. There is a nurse at his side, changing his IV fluids.
"Where am I?" he asks.
"Loretto Hospital," the nurse replies.
"I was eaten by a crocodile, wasn't I?" he asks.
"No," she says. "You were violently assaulted by hundreds of corpulent and diseased men, with disgusting rotten teeth and putrid breath. That's why you smell like corpses and semen."
"No," he says firmly. "I was eaten by a crocodile. It caused my family to go insane. I'm going to write a novel about it, and force people to read it."
"Whatever you say, Faggot," the nurse replies.

>> No.17784570

>>17784150
I can see that. I started reading the first one, some of the content seems stupid but I really love the prose, feels fresh compared to a lot of popular fantasy. I definitely find myself asking "Why would you do that? You've wasted a good opportunity to develop this idea," but I can't deny that the man is skilled at weaving the story and his prose flows well.

>> No.17784585

>>17784183
double digit iq post

>> No.17784593

>>17782788
I hate how this place is overrun by non-fiction book discussions. As someone who has no interest in philosophy or politics it’s grating.

>> No.17784594

>>17784183
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

>> No.17784602

>>17782788
Tom Waits deserves at least as much literary respect as Bob Dylan.

>> No.17784651

>>17784594
Yes, when anyone disagrees with a man, he must be a genius, because only a fool would disagree with some loser who posted on 4chan.

>> No.17784656 [DELETED] 

This is basically a blog but fuck I have nowhere else to share this shit.

I have this female friend who likes to write, and the past few months we've been sharing our writing with each other and hit it off super great. We kept growing closer to the point we even started sending each other straight up erotica, and it was fucking awesome because we're both passionate about writing and just have these awesome fucking interlocking styles and personalities where we just absolutely dig each other's stuff. We even joked about going on dates when the lockdown ended and seeing about writing some stuff together in person at my place.
And then today we found out we're actually fucking related. My grandmother's younger brother died in the 1970s, and he had a young daughter and she and her mother just ended up drifting away from my family and lost contact.
Turns out this girl I've been speaking to is his fucking granddaughter and neither of us knew until a relative pointed it out. Apparently we're fucking second cousins or whatever.

Fuck bros. It fucking sucks

>> No.17784666

I thing Kant's critique of pure reason is best Philosophical work.

>> No.17784678

>>17784651
The fact you take this shit literally and not as a shitpost is basically just stamping yourself to the forehead with "DUNCE"

>> No.17784687

>>17784678
>presents post literally
>person responds in kind
>OMG IT WAS JUST A SHITPOST HOW COULD YOU NOT SEE THAT

great job

>> No.17784704

>>17784357
I like pre-Tolkien fantasy and consider Dunsany one of my favorite authors period, though I still argue that the potential of fantasy is still largely untapped. I can see how scifi has a similar potential but I would argue fantasy and scifi have always been blurry and at the end of the day, fantasy since it can encapsulate scifi can still have a higher potential. Again though, mostly untapped.

>> No.17784706

>>17784687
>motherfucker is so autistic he keeps trying to justify himself
I need to stop coming to this fucking shithole

>> No.17784714

>>17784704
>fantasy hasn't catered to my personal fantasy
>therefore, genre untapped

>> No.17784728
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17784728

>>17784706

>> No.17784732

>>17784714
Are you telling me that the vast majority of fantasy isn’t just a recycling of Tolkien? It’s untapped because serious authors don’t go into it and when people do write fantasy it’s almost always the same few dungeon and dragons, Tolkien, medieval European world with only slight variations. You can create literally anything in fantasy and people stick to the formula that sells, again, limitless potential to write about anything as foreign and strange and odd and different as you want and it’s all a weaker imitation of Tolkien. I wouldn’t mind if they all imitated Tolkien and did the same study as him, studying world wide religion and the like, but even so what’s the point if its all just a color swap version of the same world? Why should I read any of these types and not just Tolkien or pre-Tolkien older fantasy?

>> No.17784736

>>17784252
Dude loves Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, clearly a Tradcath. Just look who he targets.

>> No.17784778

>>17784728
eh, groovy?

>> No.17785042

>>17783080
>Fantasy has the highest potential of all forms of prose literature it’s just untapped due to the genre becoming incestual, if it stripped itself of the Tolkien and cliche trappings and became just a world of any particular authors imagination, and if the name fantasy didn’t dissuade serious authors from writing, it is only logical that fantasy could harness the most raw imagination and ideals possible.

that's quite an invitation


Random question, if the bible were published this year by a random guy would it fit into your definition of a work of fantasy?

>> No.17785045

>>17782788
Discretion forbids it in this murky Hell engineered to inhibit any hint of confiding extravagance, though I must admit that people >>17784183 who, even as bait, shelve Old Witch Rand this near to Emerson deserve to hang separately and in bunches, wherever a forest of gibbets stands in for the Cross.

>> No.17785253

Commas are overrated

>> No.17785267

LOTR is a rare case where the movies are superior to the book. I can’t help but feel like much of the praise that comes the way of the book is misdirected. How can you avoid hearing Howard Shore between the pages?

>> No.17785277

>>17783051
Agreed

>> No.17785312

>>17785267
I think I agree. I read the books right before the movies came out, and while I loved them as a kid the movies really are such a fantastic take at the medium of adopting books to film. It basically becomes another layer away from the lore and background of the whole middle earth world, which is, really, when the material is good. The hobbit is so fantastic because it's a fun narrow scoped adventure written in a snarky fairy tale way, but you know that every word written has elaborate backstory. I've been rereading it and when bilbo finds the ring, he already mentioned sauron. Pretty fantastic stuff. But anyway, the movie strips away so much of the pretense of the books, which, were already stripped away versions of the whole thing in tolkins head. It basically like simmering something over the fire for so long that all the flavors become rich and dense.

>> No.17785316

>>17782792
Based and Flaubertpilled.

>>17782800
Not unpopular here given that /lit/ doesn't read poetry.

>>17782840
She does.

>> No.17785327

>>17784183
Ayn Rand isn't compatible with Aquinas you absolute retard.

>> No.17785351

>>17785327
An actual reader doesn't take the entirety of the opinions of anyone he reads, but he constructs his worldview based on the best bits and pieces of what others have written before him.

>> No.17785358

>>17785267
It's not rare at all. Jaws, the Godfather, and Jurassic Park were all superior movies.

>> No.17785372

>>17785351
It's incredibly retarded to do this with Rand and Aquinas. Almost all of their ideas are in direct contradiction with each other.

>> No.17785375

>>17785042
The problem with that question is that it requires a radical reordering of world history, world literature and the like. A better question would be, if someone wrote something akin to the Bible but of a land which has never existed and has no relation to anything but of the same type as the Bible? Then yes that would be a fantasy par excellence and we actually have examples of precisely this, in the fantasies of Dunsany which were more based on Dunsany’s study of world religion, folk lore; his own imagination, classic poets and a blending of the prose of the king James with Poe. He goes on to describe various kingdoms, cities, histories, deities, cults, prophesies and so forth, it doesn’t resemble modern fantasy really nor Tolkien, but it’s still firmly within the realm of pure imagination. And similarly we can consider someone like Carroll as another paragon, the fantasy genre can be as wildly strange as Carroll’s work is without having to copy from him, or we can consider the production of fairy tales if we want a lower end version where there isn’t that much artifice required, Goethe’s green serpent and beautiful lily is an excellent example.

Basically, I define fantasy as the production of an entire world based out of your imagination, this obviously has the highest level of author manipulation possible.

>> No.17785388

>>17783981
>It is a great book
read more

>> No.17785393

>>17785372
Rand herself said that the three philosophers you need are herself, Aristotle and Aquinas

>> No.17785396

>>17785393
Rand was admittedly really stupid so I wouldn't take anything she says seriously.

>> No.17785440

>>17784656
marry her

>> No.17785476

>>17784656
2nd cousins means nothing, marry her

>> No.17785478

>>17785358
I don’t think you appreciate how many movies are actually adaptations of novels. It’s a ton. The cases where the movies are better is indeed rare

>> No.17785511

>>17785267
I really do think watching the movies is an overall better experience. fellowhsip as a book has a leg up because it has turbo-comfy bits like farmer maggots and tom bombadil, but the two towers book is absolutely shit and the movie is SIGNIFICANTLY better, return once again has some significantly better bits in the books than in the movies though

hard to say, the best is watching the movies while keeping the books in mind lmao

>> No.17785532

>>17783981
Based

>> No.17785569

>>17785393
She means Aristotle basically alone, with props to Aquinas for embedding him into western thought irrevocably, and herself as refining and de-Platonizing him, somewhat like a Plotinus to his Plato. But really, for Rand, Aristotle is all there is.

>> No.17785589

>>17785393
She's wrong it's actually her, Locke and Aristotle.

>> No.17785615

There is indeed such a thing as really good fanfiction, and I enjoy reading it. There's a ton of crap out there, but that's true for original fanfiction too. A really good fanfic is worth the time.

>> No.17785616

>>17785589
That pseudo-cartesian can lick dirt. Modern philosophy was a mistake.

>> No.17785724

>>17782788
Mine is that the ASOIAF books are great books. Most here endlessly shit on it.

>> No.17785728

Judas sacrificed more than Jesus and should be considered the holiest apostle

>> No.17785736

>>17785728
https://southerncrossreview.org/49/borges-judas-eng.htm
Borges agrees with you.

>> No.17785763

Kierkegaard's leap to faith can more accurately described as capitulation to the reality that his philosophical works, his entire set of beliefs, were fundamentally vacant.

>> No.17785768

>>17785763
What a dogshit reading of Kierkegaard.

>> No.17785783

I like books, I like to read them, collect them, take care of them, I love when they are old and come with a signature or a dedication written decades ago. I love books.

>> No.17785797
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17785797

>>17785768
You know what they say, "truth is subjectivity."

>> No.17785820

>>17785797
Principles about the good life and how one ought to live are not proveable objectively. How can you critique Kierkegaard and not understand that basic point? What set of principles about living a meaningful life are adopted by reason alone instead of through either a mindless, conformist acceptance of them, or some kind of a leap of faith? (protip: none)

>> No.17785852
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17785852

>>17785763
Honestly I'm a practicing Catholic and the impression I always get from Fear & Trembling is that Kierkegaard massively overthinks the story of Abraham and Isaac. The story is that Abraham has faith in God so great that he believes God will not lead him astray, even with the seemingly wicked command to sacrifice Isaac. So he acts on that faith, and his faith is rewarded. That's all there is to the story. Or, at least, that's all there is to the story if you leave out the heavy foreshadowing of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. But I don't understand why Kierkegaard had such a meltdown over it.

>> No.17785894

>>17785852
He doesn't overthink it. The story is a perfect representation of the essence of faith. Not faith in the sense of a thoughtless agreement with the basic principles your priest preaches to you every Sunday for an hour. But a deep faith that colors the entirety of your subjectivity and actively informs your every thought and decision. As a Catholic your personal relationship with God/Jesus probably means less to you than K's did as a Lutheran. You guys have a massive institution, complex rituals and practices, and a very different set of theological premises. It's enough for you to go to Mass, eat the blessed bread and drink the blessed wine. Doing holy actions is sufficient for your salvation; for K, actions didn't mean shit. What mattered was a deep, intense, and terrifyingly overwhelming personal relationship with Original Sin and God. If you didn't have that, you didn't have true faith, and were not only hardly Christian, but hardly human.

>> No.17785915
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17785915

>>17782788
The writer of this must be endlessly handsome if his prose is this good.

>> No.17785935

>>17785915
>endlessly handsome
let's hope he's a better writer than you

>> No.17785950
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17785950

>>17785935
he's defintionally as good a writer as I am

>> No.17785959

>>17785950
"Very few of them are good" is better. Lose "particularly".

>> No.17785981
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17785981

>>17785959
taken under consideration.

>> No.17786018

>>17782822
It's simpler than that. /lit/ users don't read.

>> No.17786141

>>17782788
Literature is a conversation of a few overheard by many. Only great writers and philosophers opinions matter. Oh and reading loads doesn't mean shit only having your own vision and bringing it to fruition means you actually interesting. This board is full of people who will never contribute to a field but still think there intelligent, there as much a cancer as mid wit academics.

>> No.17786146

>>17786141
Oh yeah this means Gardner and Walden are better than you.

>> No.17786155

I think a truly great writer, a really great storyteller with really great writing skill, could still become very famous in the present day. Even with the current state of literature, the current state of the publishing industry, the current state of academic discourse, etc.. I think a real genius could break through it all and take the world by storm, just as so many great geniuses did before (Borges, Joyce, Proust, etc.).

The fact that we haven't really seen anything like that in a while indicates, to me, that the great genius of our time has not emerged yet. Or he's just in the early stages. But I think he's out there.

>> No.17786158

>>17782788
I loved ASOIAF too.

>> No.17786168

I fucking hate Zola.

>> No.17786181

>>17786141
they're*

>> No.17786297

>>17786155
Borges never took the world by storm, he is more famous now then he was living.

>> No.17786724

>>17782792
Based

>> No.17786998

>>17784732
Not him, but I think you raise some good points. At the same time though, I think it goes beyond fantasy authors just writing "what sells". It's probably a combination of that and the fact that these are the type of fantasy novels they themselves would like to read, so I can't really fault them. That being said, I too have thought it would be interesting to read fantasy that breaks the mold like you say. Unfortunately, in my experience a lot of those stories that are currently available go too far in trying to be "different" and wind up forcing a lot of random details in to try and set themselves apart as a story about gay time-traveling pirate gnomes or something.

>> No.17787009

>>17782840
I have a fantasy about making her cum from me eating out her pussy while listening to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on max volume

>> No.17787051

>>17782800
Poetry has greater potential as an art form than prose, yet it is an all but dead one

>> No.17787190

>>17784150
why are there so many tourists talking about this shit series these days

>> No.17787204

>>17785894
>It's enough for you to go to Mass, eat the blessed bread and drink the blessed wine. Doing holy actions is sufficient for your salvation
This isn't what Catholics believe at all by the way.

>> No.17787212

>>17783803
based

>> No.17787223

>>17785312
nah, Tolkien went back and editiided the hobbit, George Lucas style

>> No.17787231

>>17785267
ew

>> No.17787384

>>17782809
Now this, anon understands, a good read, when, he, sees, it,.

>> No.17788331

>>17782892
This. I cannot understand all the hate here.

>> No.17788547

>>17788331
his books are pleb shit for plebs? what do you not understand?

>> No.17788589

hitchikers guide to the galaxy is a masterpiece

butterflu is better than frater

the best poetry is 4chan poetry

>> No.17789223

>>17784530
someone save so we can bully that fag

>> No.17789510

>>17782792
I'd go as far as saying execution is key.

Since my job requires me to read a lot of shitty fiction and non-fiction, I tend to notice that most people will default to basic drama spice(Suicide for dramas sake, fights for dramas sake etc.) in order to drum up the quality of their story without any real work put into the execution of their ideas.

These stories always end up being shit regardless of how much action and tragedy they tack on haphazardly.

>> No.17789579

>>17784097
Based

>> No.17789653

I do not care for Henry James. Tried Portrait of a Lady; didn’t like it.

>> No.17789971

>>17789510
Do you work in the story department at a studio or something? If so, how do you like it?

>> No.17790015

>>17789653
With such use of semi colon, nothing more can be expected.

>> No.17790074

>>17790015
i hated it; too; it was very gay

would fuck young Isabel though

>> No.17790083

>>17782788
Pretty much every canonical work of literature written before 1960 is excellent.

>> No.17791136

>>17786155
Or she

>> No.17791626

harry potter is kino

>> No.17791842

>>17783803
Can someone explain. In what way is LOTR misunderstood?

>> No.17791905
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17791905

Believing that one knows the definitive truth in anything, especially in philosophy and politics, is the mark of the psued.

>> No.17791963

>>17789971
Nope. I'm one of the many people who moderates a large thing and am pretty much like a 4chan janitor, but with pay.

The thing I police just happens to have an insane amount of fiction and non-fiction story posts. Sadly not one story has been good, but this one person wrote a story about cucking Naruto and how Hinata had to explain to her children how and why she was leaving their father for her new lesbian Uchiha lover. It was pure ass, but I laughed my ass off.

>> No.17792163
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17792163

>>17785267

>> No.17792218

>>17782823
All the best Brit lit is in spirit American lit. Sadly America was dismantled during the war years and replaced with burger dystopia

>> No.17792242

>>17792218
We need another great war. This decadence needs to end. Our sons and daughters are both idiots and degenerates.

>> No.17792292

>>17792242
That won’t happen. A population of idiots is good for tptb because they’re easily controlled

>> No.17792484
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17792484

>>17784183
>He thinks ayn rand is a philosopher
I'm taking your bait because i just want to call you a pseud faggot, cheers.

>> No.17792617

>>17791842
idk about what he was saying but the book is basically 1000 pages of people backpacking and descriptions of mountains. its not really supposed to be epic outside of a few moments

>> No.17793187
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17793187

>>17791905

>> No.17794564

>>17782788
Characters > prose
Poetry > prose
Borges is overrated
Spanish lit as a whole is underrated
Don't care for Joyce, Nabokov, or Henry James
Dickens is good, despite his patent flaws
I prefer Gray or Young to Pope or Blake
Some genre fiction is excellent

>> No.17794615

>>17794564
Holy shit the thread is for unpopular opinions not for you to blog about the full extent of your FASD

>> No.17794623

>>17791905
and i know this definitively!

>> No.17794636

>>17784183
>putting philosophy over fiction (actual literature)
midwit fag

>> No.17794640

>>17782822
>>17786018
It's both of these for many unfortunately, for others it is one or the other. Not me thgouh

>> No.17794646
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17794646

>>17794615
Touch a nerve, son?

>> No.17794649

Soo-ren Key-rkuh-gayurd
is this how you pronounce Søren Kierkegaard?

>> No.17794663

>>17794646
"I don't like any of the best writers of the 20th century but Charles Dickens is great! Also, two of the most important poets in the language are not nearly as good as two forgettable, minor poets. Also, I love YA and Stephen King!"
bruh

>> No.17794969

>>17782788

/lit/ has turned into an actual outhouse filled to the brim with people who're subservient to pseudointellectualism while placing their entire self worth on identity politics as a way of avoiding personal responsibility.

here is a series of takes

- ted kaczynski ripped jacques ellul & offered nothing new. you are a faggot for shilling something you haven't read.
- all anprim literature is a scam
- the alt right doesn't exist
- lot 49 is dog shit
- infinite jest is alphabet soup
- everyone should be required to read the bible.
- follow up: if you have not read the bible yet read kierkegaard or anyone similar, I hope you catch incurable syphilis when you lose your virginity to the escort you're bound to buy.
- george orwell's entire bibliography is a bouquet of ass pimples.
- catch-22 is mediocre
- prose is better than poetry when done correctly (john williams stoner is a good example)
- haikus are the most based form of poetics
- no longer human is absolutely the mexican brick weed of literature
- if you write in your books with pen, there is a special place in purgatory for you.
- gatekeeping literature & academia is good
- I slept with your mother

and most importantly
- STOP BUYING BOOKS NEW. Literally either buy used or get a PDF. holy shit. I spaz out when I see a bitch buy Slaughterhouse Five brand new. he is dead. steal the fucking book.

no I will not reply
yes I am gay & homosexual

t. american

>> No.17795025

I can't get myself to learn about philosophy. Don't see the point if learning it in this age.

>> No.17795129

>>17782792
Based

>> No.17795135

>>17786155
None of these guys took the world by storm, they all had success after dying, as most writers do

>> No.17795167

>>17794969
>john williams prose
holy cringe, his prose is epitome of mediocre.

also kys, plenty of reason. bye

>> No.17795184

No one cares about poetry, but the thing is, that this is not a new phenomenon. Very few people have ever really cared about poetry. It's a very niche form of art. People act all condescending how our generation does not admire or even produce great poetry, but these very same people usually don't care about poetry at all.

>> No.17795272

>>17785312
>I've been rereading it and when bilbo finds the ring, he already mentioned sauron
that was retconned, added in the 2nd edition to fit LOTR

>> No.17795288

>>17782788
Accelerationism is cringe in theory and based in practice

>> No.17795299

I am an antinatalist

>> No.17795306

Even after listening to Anons argument for existence of God, I simply don't understand them. Maybe, I'm just a midwit but I can't bring myself to believe in God.

>> No.17795330

>>17787223
>>17795272
Doesn't change the fact that if you read the Hobbit today, you likely read the version that includes the mention of Sauron.

>> No.17795368

The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection is a nail in the coffin of Nietzsche/Schopenhauer metaphysics. There is no such thing as "will to power" and any author that borrows from that concept (e.g. Focault) should be promptly ignored.

>> No.17795434

I legit think /lit/ is full of well read and intelligent people that come across as retarded from the outside.

>> No.17795458

>>17795434
They’re vastly outnumbered by actual retards that have no interest in reading though.

>> No.17795470

>>17782788
Western canon is shit.

>> No.17795472

>>17795458
It’s easy to spot though, Hegel threads are sometimes full of really good takes and interpretations; I found Joyce threads decent for the most part as well but I try my best to shoo off the retards

>> No.17795508

>>17784530
Did this pasta cure Gardner posting for good?

>> No.17796253

>>17786155
>The fact that we haven't really seen anything like that in a while indicates, to me, that the great genius of our time has not emerged yet. Or he's just in the early stages. But I think he's out there.
It means you have shit taste and missed Alan Moore's two novels.

>> No.17796398

>>17782788
People only say they like most classics because they want to appear cultured. If you handed them a text written by Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky and they didn't know it was written by a canonized author they probably wouldn't like it all that much.

>> No.17796440

>>17788589
take that back!!!

>> No.17796536

>>17795472
Joyce threads have a lot of posers these past couple weeks.

>> No.17796672

>>17795025
>Don't see the point if learning it in this age.
what do you mean? this is the most important time for it because there is so much mental BLOAT. how will you sort through and understand the thousands of ideologues vying for your attention and support in things they've just made up? or to be able to criticise anything in general?

>> No.17796739

>>17796398
u r retarded

>> No.17796796

>>17796398
true but that doesn't mean the authors are bad, their engagement is.

>> No.17796887

>>17782822
>projecting this hard

>> No.17796893

>>17782788
I'm trans btw

>> No.17797403

>>17784706
You were literally "only pretending to be retarded" that has not and never has been a gotcha, accept the loss and move on

>> No.17797423

>>17786155
Why must every time have a great genius? Perhaps there isn't one because we cannot create one, or haven't for some cause or none

>> No.17797499

Literature is only an art form in so far as it serves an aesthetic. Most books don’t do this. Hence, why most books aren’t artful.

>> No.17797507

>>17782788
Fiction is useless

>> No.17797534

>>17797507
name one (1) thing that isn’t useless

>> No.17798254

>>17782788
I didn't care for blood meridian

>> No.17798622

>>17795330
that's not really a part of the hobbit though.

>> No.17798694

>>17794663
Sounds like you get your opinions from what others tell you to think. I do enjoy some of the highly rated writers of the 20th C, but I'm under no obligation to slavishly follow any preselected list. Dickens is a fine, albeit flawed, author and has no bearing on the prior statement… he is not necessarily my first choice for reading, yet some of his recognition is well-deserved. As for poets, Gray is quite important; even though his output was minor. Young is fairly obscure these days, but he was a true master of blank verse. Pope and Blake, whilst talented, have had their detractors in the past. Nowhere did I mention YA or Stephen King—I presume this is some hidden fantasy on your part! I would be curious to know if you have any unpopular opinions to contribute, or merely wish to echo perceived consensus with hollow criticisms and inane jabber…

>>17795184
Somewhat agree. However, the culture for nourishing great poetry has been sorely lacking for some time. That is not to say that it cannot be produced, only that what exists has become more fractured and occasionally difficult to find.

>>17798254
I'm still reading this, so I have no final verdict. The style restrains expressivity, but I don't mind the violence.

>> No.17798821

>>17794663
Are you people really so beta that you let some fat, old academic tell you which poetry and fiction is worth it and which isn't?

>> No.17798832
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17798832

>>17782788
Australian literature actually has its moments

>> No.17799082

>>17783803
I'm reading LOTR for the first time and I really hate it so far. It's 95% purple prose and 5% things happening. I'm not saying that it has to be an action-packed adventure or anything, but I'm 200 pages in and literally all that's happened is Frodo leaving the Shire with lengthy descriptions of the environment.

I can appreciate Tolkien's literal autism in building his world to the extent that he did though.

>> No.17799193

Overly relying on your intellect leads to dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

>> No.17799276
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17799276

>> No.17799307

I am publicly shaming the writer of post >>17782801 . I am calling on him to defend himself and his words. This board needs standards and I plan to uphold them. People can't be posting retarded shit like this. It's sad and makes us look like a joke. I also believe this poster to be the author of post >>17782788 . This post is less inflammatory but expresses the same sentiment. However it is a post which can be defended.
Shame on this poster. Everyone should take note.

>> No.17799542

>>17799307
you new here?

>> No.17799593

>>17799307
Lol this anonymous fucker talking like they have credibility. I think ASoIaF > LotR too, and I won't expand. Die mad.

>> No.17799605

>>17799307
You have no choice but to challenge him to a duel

>> No.17800040

>>17784736
>clearly a Tradcath
How do you explain Hume on his preferred list?

>> No.17800106

>>17785042
Not him, but the bible is a great take on fantasy, although I find the prose a bit lacking. May depend on the translation.

>> No.17800134

>>17800106
I’m telling ya lads, check out Dunsany he’s great.

>> No.17800328

>>17795368
No, because Jung exists. Transcendent structures are possible even within brains that evolved for a genetically driven purpose.

>> No.17800353

>>17784183
Why do christian conservatives love Ayn Rand so much? Literally all of her ethics are anti-christian.

>> No.17800365

>>17784183
>>17784207
>>17784666
>>17783080
These opinions belong in the >>>/trash/

>> No.17800403

>>17784145

Felt this

>> No.17800428

>>17782792
This.