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/lit/ - Literature

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18096941 No.18096941 [Reply] [Original]

Recommend me novels or short stories that feel like they're set in a weird parallel reality that is meant to satirize or serve as a metaphor for something in our own reality, but you never get to figure out exactly what.

>> No.18098257

>>18096941
read vonnegut

>> No.18098292

>>18096941
I Am Legend

>> No.18098301

>>18096941
>Recommend me novels or short stories that feel like they're set in a weird parallel reality that is meant to satirize or serve as a metaphor for something in our own reality
99% of sci-fi

>> No.18098487
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18098487

>> No.18098704

>>18096941
read borges

>> No.18100471

>>18096941
Almost every decent sci-fi / fantasy book does this.

Try R.A.Lafferty's short stories, or The Star Diaries by Stanislav Lem.

>> No.18100681

"A Farewell to Porridge". It's Goldilocks story if it were written by Hemingway. It's I think possibly a good metaphor for how seriously most people take their pleb lives.

>> No.18100742

>>18096941
Lot49

>> No.18100753
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18100753

>>18096941
finally, some good fucking thread

>> No.18100782
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18100782

>>18096941
this one

Literally no idea what's even being described most of the time, even though it seems to more or less be suburban families doing everyday shit. Just written from some sort of alien consciousness perspective

>> No.18100784

>>18096941
the oral biography of buster casey

>> No.18101193

>>18100471
Also lots of famous works were close satires of the time, but now the specifics they were mocking are forgotten, and they just remain as good books. For example, in Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, all the silly songs and verses are parodies of Victorian serious stuff, and most of the characters and places are parodies of contemporary figures, schools of thought, etc.
Same with Gulliver's Travels, Candide, etc (although they're more obviously satirical).

>> No.18101312
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18101312

>>18096941
Piranesi
Much of the book exists in a labyrinth world of flooded halls full of decaying marbled statuary. Gods, men, animals, entire scenes...extremely evocative and symbolic, but you never really get told what it all means, it just is.

>> No.18101583

not really like the others, but the one about burning children by DFW, it's in Oblivion short stories, and like 3 pages long. Not quite a parallel but still kind of surreal in its presentation.

>> No.18101597

>>18096941
The Unconsoled