/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18446743]

examples of books that require a high (130+) IQ to understand in a non-trivial way?

I mean, any dummy can read word by word and understand basic plot points but it takes a brain capable to advanced abstraction to understand the "point"

Hyperion and Infinite Jest come to mind (not just because they're really long)

[Anonymous No.18446780]

This book.

[Anonymous No.18446793]

>>18446780
> high IQ
so this is just a spam thread
got it

[Anonymous No.18446800]

Fuck off pseud

[Anonymous No.18446864]

Phenomenology of Spirit, Critique of Pure Reason

[Anonymous No.18446880]

>>18446743
Literally any philosophical work. 90% of people would have zero understanding of any of it if they even attempted to read it

[Anonymous No.18446900]

>>18446793
>>18446800
brainlets.

[Anonymous No.18447059]

>>18446743
I have not read House of Leaves but from what I have seen it looks to be The Tunnel for normies, it uses many of the same techniques and outright uses much of the same formatting, it externalizes the horror to make it more palatable for the average reader. Anyone who has read bother care to comment?

[Anonymous No.18447172]

>>18446743
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari ~ Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ~ Phenomenology of Spirit

Immanuel Kant ~ Critique of Pure Reason

Martin Heidegger ~ Being & Time

Arno Schmidt ~ Bottom's Dream

Plato ~ Complete Works

Aristotle ~ Complete Works

Jean-Paul Sartre ~ Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology

Arthur Schopenhauer ~ The World as Will and Representation

Carl Gustav Jung ~ Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, The Red Book

Jacques Derrida ~ Of Grammatology, Glas, Writing And Difference

Jacques Lacan ~ Écrits: A Selection

Manuel DeLanda - A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

Brian Massumi - Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation

Crap like this.

[Anonymous No.18448673]

>>18446743
>high
>130+
ngmi

[Anonymous No.18448701]

>>18446743
Just finished reading this. Drifts into the realm of gimmicky using the layout etc., taking you out of it here and there. Overall not awful tho.

[Anonymous No.18448706]

>>18446743
The unbearable lightness of being - Milan Kundera

[Anonymous No.18448715]

>>18447059
Haven't read The Tunnel but I really like how the formatting in HoL is used. The distinguishing feature for me is that the physical reality of the formatting is far less important than its symbolic connotations and the use of it as another layer in the overall (meta)fictional structure.

[Anonymous No.18448724]

>>18448715
Did you prefer the sections on the house exploration or the Johnny Truant stuff?

[Anonymous No.18448737]

>>18448724
I like both though I think the House sections are both easier to enjoy and more to my taste overall, my favorite thing though is the end where you start to realize your role in the structure as a reader of the book

[Anonymous No.18448750]

>>18447172
So all philosophy is crap to you?

[Anonymous No.18448756]

>>18448737
I get the impression that most people prefer the house stuff, but I found it to be a bit cliché in the vain of 'some unknowable eldrich horror'. If you read the whalestoe letters, what did you think?

[Anonymous No.18448777]

>>18448756
So good, HoL kinda sucks all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to MZD's other works so when you read anything else by him and realize that he can also just punch you in the stomach through the page and not just play with his characters having a hard life.

I understand where the idea of the House being "eldritch" comes from but I also really like how you can read it as either a much more personal horror, attacking the explorers through their inadequacies; a reflection of the ability of the explorers to love and the consequences thereof; or as just being something so much more real than the rest of existence that entering it makes us start to come apart at the seams. That kind of ambiguity and symbolic potency isn't something I tend to associate with cosmic horror.

[Anonymous No.18448800]

>>18448706
Fuck no. Kundera is my favorite author precisely because he does not engage in word games. He presents his ideas first as an image or a scene then he provides commentary about the context of the scene. It should be impossible to not grasp the point he is making as there is always a mini lecture addressing the essence of the point directly alongside a grounded living example of the point in action.

[Anonymous No.18448801]

>>18448750
No, not what I meant. Could have been better off without that comment.

[Anonymous No.18448807]

>>18446780
Based

[Anonymous No.18448815]

>>18448801
My bad, I guess you just don't like continental philosophy then.

[Anonymous No.18448906]

>>18446793
>so this is just a spam thread

No

[Anonymous No.18448959]

>>18446743

I picked up this book because the librarian recommended it to me when I was 13. I got about halfway through it, thought the concept was interesting but that it was a little pretentious. Anyway I have the book sitting on the table at home one day and my dad pucks it up and asks "What's this you're reading son"? He flips open to a page at random and starts reading aloud. He just so happens to open the page where the main character nuts on a black girls face. He stopped halfway through dictating the scene and says "What the fuck son?" and I try tepidly explaining that it's actually a horror book. He was afraid I was into black girls ever since.

[Anonymous No.18448971]

>>18448959
Are you into them?

[Anonymous No.18448982]

>>18447172
Philosophers average 130 and they take this shit seriously, which just goes to show you how low 130 really is.

[Anonymous No.18449049]

>>18446743
>the "point"
any book that can be reduced to a point isnt worth it
>>18447059
honestly ive found parts of it awful and parts dissapointing. the mixture of all the things it is doesnt work and none of the pieces work that well on their own. it is very similar in concept to lots of other stuff though
>>18448756
>he whalestoe letters
the only good part

[Anonymous No.18449056]

>>18448982
Why aren't (You) taking bodies without organs, hyperreality, simulacra and nomadic war machines seriously?

[Anonymous No.18449107]

>>18448959
>What the fuck son?" and I try tepidly explaining that it's actually a horror book. He was afraid I was into black girls ever since.
kek he thought you were retarded for not getting the point.

[Anonymous No.18449190]

>>18447172
The Phenomenology is a meme. You wouldn‘t suggest if you‘d read it.

For Hegel read the Encyclopedia and then Science of Logic, then Nature, the. Law, then see why the Phenomenology is not the be all and end all—or even the beginning—of Hegel.

>>18446743

In terms of smart books it really depends on reference. If you‘ve never read psychology, at least starting with Freud, you won’t have a clue on what Jung is about, really, and absolutely nothing Lacan has to say; not to speak of understanding any of them without having read at least major philosophy. You‘ll get it, you‘ll get it fast, you‘ll read fast of course and see the necessity lr genius of these ideas, but you won’t be able to really do anything with them wirhout reference, without significance. Hell, half of these books mention this exactly: how you think and how thinking cannot he done without what I‘ve here broadly called reference—books without history are nothing. You‘ll not be as confused as someone who‘s a midwit or someone average, but you‘re not going to be able to study these works, throughly understand them, if at all.
Being intelligent and knowledgeable don’t relate to each other; similarly, a books content snd what you take from it do only in part, and the basing to this is only in part reliant or determined by intelligence.

It’s really all just about history and language. When you get that, you can read most any book and understand it fine enough.

[Anonymous No.18449401]

>>18446743
You don't need a high IQ to read a book.
You have to be able to read.
If an idea can't be expressed simply, it is not worth anything.