/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20303723]

Anyone ever send an email to an author? I don't think people realize how easy it is to get into a conversation with a world famous person. I've had conversations with Chomsky and Charles Murray.

[Anonymous No.20303731]

Chomsky used to reply to all emails, dunno if he still does since he's ascending to crypt keeperhood

What did Charles Murray say

[Anonymous No.20303737]

>>20303723
>I don't think people realize how easy it is to get into a conversation with a world famous person.
that's literally twitter's entire value prop to end users

[Anonymous No.20303746]

>>20303723
I've shitposted with several authors in their discords.

[Anonymous No.20303748]

>>20303731
We had like a 11 email long chain about his book Human Accomplishment and the arguments against it. It was a long time ago and I was retarded teen and it makes me cringe to read it now

[Anonymous No.20303752]

Yeah, I am unironically the reason Death Grips has an album titled "Gmail and the Restraining Orders".

[Anonymous No.20303754]

>>20303737
Most of the people I've seen on twitter have their DM's blocked. Usually the only way is to find their email online

[Anonymous No.20303819]

>>20303746
>authors in their discords
None of those "authors" are real "authors" you tranny chud.

[Anonymous No.20303832]

>>20303723
No, but an author emailed me.

[Anonymous No.20303843]

>>20303723
I wrote to Junot Diaz asking about his experience in a MFA when I was feeling unsure to enroll in one. He never answered. I think I needed some answers at that moment, but I dont really care now.

[Anonymous No.20304418]

I've emailed Mike Ma asking for advice on what someone who feels directionless should do / what direction they should start heading in. The reply I got was quite satisfying, and I have been living my life through the advice he has given me since, honestly one of the best choices I've made.

[Anonymous No.20304425]

Yes. I sent the author of a random self published book a nice email telling him that I really liked his stuff. I feel a little bit guilty now because I tried reading his stuff again recently and it was fucking terrible

[Anonymous No.20304940]

>>20304418
What did he say anon

[Anonymous No.20304945]

>>20303723
ive sent one email, got a reply. also semt a dm on goodreads to the author of The Troop and he replied like a fren
there's another goodreads author i want to contact once i read his book

[Anonymous No.20304962]

I was translating lectures by Robert Sapolsky for youtube and asked for his approval on my idea to translate some wordplay. His response was short but encouraging. He is quite well known so I was surprised how easy that was.

[Anonymous No.20304972]

>>20303723
I sent an email to one and he never responded. I thought I asked some good questions about his process too.

[Anonymous No.20304993]

>>20303723
Yeah I emailed Tom Cheetham (author of quite a few books about Henry Corbin and James Hillmans work) and he was extremely prompt in his reply. Wrote to him a few times about various things.

[Anonymous No.20305002]

>>20303723
Not an email but I sent a typewritten (written on an actual typewriter) letter to Melanie Jackson in hopes that she will forward it to Pynchon himself. I haven't heard back but the letter hasn't been returned either, so we'll see what happens

[Anonymous No.20305009]

>>20303754
You aren’t supposed to dm them but @ them or however Twitter works.

[Anonymous No.20305041]

>>20303723
I got blocked by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[Anonymous No.20306769]

>>20304940

[Anonymous No.20306827]

>>20306769
But this guy is a miserable failure and a transexual, how can one take his advice

[Anonymous No.20306828]

>>20303748
Where can I email Charles Murray? I have questions about Coming Apart, and I tried to email him at the AEI but sadly never got a response.

[Anonymous No.20306842]

>>20306769
I don't know who he is but
>no shows, games, porn, masturbation; rewire your brain
are very good tips.
No psychiatrist is true as well.
Belief in God and ignoring women, sure.

Taking meds, fuck that, if you're sick just take your pills.
No tap water, drink milk instead -- idk, seems like a weird tip

[Anonymous No.20306852]

Tao Lin once replied to my comment on his post on twitter

[Anonymous No.20307066]

>Taking meds, fuck that, if you're sick just take your pills.
>No tap water, drink milk instead -- idk, seems like a weird tip

[Anonymous No.20307099]

>>20306769
All I’m getting from this is that Mike Ma likes to be thrown around like a rag doll

[Anonymous No.20307109]

>>20306769
The stuff about boredom is a really good point actually. I've never been happier since I gave up video games and made literature my only hobby. Passive consumption is the mind killer; boredom is a signal to grow.

[Anonymous No.20307155]

>>20307109
Reading books is passive consumption, you're literally reading someone else's thoughts. Also I feel like all these self-improvement tips that focus on switching from consumption to production and removing time-consuming destructive habits with productive ones, miss the point of why so many people are like that. The fundamental issue is that people move to these things because their primary functions of working, procreating and building homes are not being met. This advice only boils down to: "here is what you can do in a shitty society", it's not wrong but it's extremely Jordan Petersonian ie to get your "house in order" while ignoring that the entire street is being carpet bombed. The Zizekian part of the equation that sometimes you have to fix the society before individuals can get fixed is almost always ignored and for good reason: it's impossible to piss against the wind as an individual. But we *are* at the point where we do have to look at entire society instead of solving issues at an individual level and sooner than later we will be forced into that position, the pessimist in me thinks that unfortunately the solution that will be forced on us, will be even *more* negative than the present state. But nobody in the West today is willing to look at these issues and this is such a slow-boil massive structural issue that more than a generation could pass before anything concrete happens. I think people who are 20 and 30 today will sadly be reduced into trying to build a tolerable existence in a declining society.

[Anonymous No.20307158]

>>20306769
I'm surprised at how earnest and not-edgy he was here. This is all genuinely good advice.

[Anonymous No.20307715]

>>20307155
>Reading books is passive consumption
reading is an active activity
get out of here with your "le humans are like le animals, I must sleep and fuck and forage like my half-monkey ancestors" bullshit

[Anonymous No.20307820]

>>20304418
>I have been living my life through the advice he has given me since
>advice given literally a month ago
you won't last much longer

[Anonymous No.20307840]

>>20306769
>>20306842
THE MILK SHIT IS REAL
I DON'T KNOW HOW
I've thought to myself before "Heh, milk. Gonna drink milk. That's my creative juice." as a joke but it must be legit because EVERY other piece of advice he gives is 100% true

[Anonymous No.20307919]

>>20303723
>take time to read again
>really want to mail authors
>Le Carré
>dead
>Uncle Ted
>can't reply because busy + cancer, don't want to be in some watchlists
>Amor Towles
>A nice and comfy answer
Send a letter to your favorite living authors you will not regret it.

[Anonymous No.20308016]

I emailed Ogden Nesmer to get a copy of his book like three months ago. Seemed like a nice fellow.

[Anonymous No.20308034]

>>20307820
I mean, I've been happier because of it and see no reason to go back to my old ways. perhaps during the first and second week I was tempted to watch a movie or play some vidya, but as it stands those desires have faded almost entirely.

[Anonymous No.20308134]

>>20306769
Such an insecure faggot

[Anonymous No.20308287]

>>20303752
Care to elaborate anon?

[Anonymous No.20308297]

>>20304972
Dont take it personally maybe he was super busy. Be persitent, its polite and it shows him you really care. Write him the same email again. Or re-write it and trim all the fat. Write one version that brings your point across in 30s of read time. Put that at the beginning. Then write a version that takes 2 minutes to read. Send both.
If you get no answer, never take shit like that personally. Chances are it has absolutely nothing to do with you or what you wrote.
This guy sent me a link to his dj set because he looks up to me and I wanted to listen to it but then I just carried on living my life.

[Anonymous No.20308429]

>>20303723
Not /lit/ but I wrote emails to composer David Maslanka for a few months. He sent me a personal letter plus a spiral bound copy of some beginner Bach piano pieces to train my ear before I went to college.

[Anonymous No.20308943]

>>20307840
raw milk is literally an illegal product in Canada unless you have your own cow. if i had one, it would be illegal to even give anybody raw milk.

[Anonymous No.20309007]

No, I realize that I am a stupid faggot with nothing of value to contribute.

[Anonymous No.20309013]

>>20308287
No.

[Anonymous No.20309030]

>>20303723
I sent his fantasy author a DM on Twitter saying how much I enjoyed his series but he didn’t respond. Also have thought about writing a letter to Cormac McCarthy through the Santa Fe Institute, though, I doubt he’d get it.

[Anonymous No.20309043]

>>20303723
i remember when i was in like first or second grade we read some book in class near the end of the year, and i dictated an email that my mom typed to him about my suggestion foir a sequel or something. on the first day of the following year, i received a postcard in the school mail from him.

[Anonymous No.20309159]

>>20308429
What did you write about?

[Anonymous No.20309172]

>>20308943
Most laws like that are begging to be broken.
If you don't personally know a guy, you're out of luck though.

[Anonymous No.20309181]

>>20309159
I just asked him where he got his inspirations, how much he charged for custom pieces, how long it took. For his symphony 8 he traveled to Russia and spent a month there listening to folk music and learning everything he could first-hand. Dude has my respect as an artist.

[Anonymous No.20309198]

>>20303723
Yeah, I've asked for advanced copies of books citing various meme credentials and they always politely said no.

[Anonymous No.20309210]

>>20307109
I agree with the other anon reading is a form of passive consumption. I mean you're reading, right now, just reading stuff on this website. The only difference with a book is that it is someone's curated, proofread thoughts.
I don't think passive consumption is inherently bad, but there's an important distinction between passive consumption that is both enriching and relaxing and passive consumption that is just dumping garbage in your brain, i.e. this website.

[Anonymous No.20309214]

>>20306769
is mike ma being ironic or does he actually think like this? harassment architecture feels like its supposed to be a caricature of the average 4chan user, it feels mostly satirical, but at the same time it seems like he's 100% serious. very hydeian.

[Anonymous No.20309249]

I've emailed two somewhat famous /lit/ people: Harold Bloom and Dana Gioia. Gioia's somewhat more obscure because he's a poet and poets aren't well-known these days.

Bloom wrote me a three-sentence email thanking me for my note and plugging his most recent book. But at least he responded.

Gioia was super nice and sent me a ton of material and gave me encouragement as a poet and a creator. He later came and gave a talk at my grad school, so I got to meet him in person. We've kept up some correspondence, though it's been a while since I've written to him. This thread is reminding me I need to do it.

[Anonymous No.20309258]

>>20309210
Read harder books.

[Anonymous No.20309283]

>>20309172
it's really bonkers.
i can smoke tobacco and marijuana and drink myself to death and it's all legal, but raw milk is considered like actual poison or cocaine.
i remember there was a group of people in Ontario a couple of years ago, they had found some kind of loophole. basically they all "owned" a share of a cow some farmer had, like a cooperative, so they could get raw milk because they technically owned the cow. well they got taken to court and were forced to stop doing that.

[Anonymous No.20309305]

>>20309210
I think (at least with /lit/ and a few others) there's a somewhat healthy balance between receiving information that can further you or your life while simultaneously providing entertainment. As long as you're not overdoing it and spending more than an hour a day here, you should be fine.

[Anonymous No.20309310]

>>20304425
While it may feel intellectually dishonest looking back. at the same time you probably made their day. As long as it didn’t inflate their self worth, which is a real possibility due to the arrogance of many creatives, you did a good thing all writers would appreciate to read. Not the worst thing to cringe at in retrospect.

[Anonymous No.20309313]

>>20307066
As long as you aren’t lactose intolerant, which how could one be so intolerant in the current year, drinking milk is always a good tip. Whole milk not that 2 percent trash.

[Anonymous No.20309331]

>>20307715
Not that anon said. What he said was reading is passive, writing is not. And there is a nugget of truth in it despite me not fully agreeing with the passiveness of reading. Many people have thoughts and ideas worthy of consideration, to say nothing of prose worthy of enjoying, but it is true that writing important too.

[Anonymous No.20309336]

>>20307715
I don't know man, some really smart people don't read other people's work much. overindulging on other people's thoughts and not developing your own is not good. There not much reading that's a more constructive use of your time unless your reading guides to teach yourself how to do something.

[Anonymous No.20309494]

>>20309214
I think she might just be like that, anon

[Anonymous No.20309524]

>>20309494
mike ma's a pooner? the more you know

[Anonymous No.20309613]

When I was a kid I sent a letter to George Lucas. It was about some stupid shit like the number of characters in the Star Wars universe or something. My mom told me I wasn't likely to get a reply, but I did end up getting a reply addressing my question as well as a bunch of merch like a star wars patch and a light up lightsaber. Don't even care if it wasn't really from George, shit was cool

[Anonymous No.20309747]

>>20309494
Isn’t that at Milo’s mansion

[Anonymous No.20309760]

>>20308034
Scroolling 4chan is worse than both of those combined

[Anonymous No.20309983]

I'm friends with Jordaan Mason, Sean Kilpatrick and Charlie Kaufman. We usually talk about poetry and recommend each other stuff.

[Anonymous No.20309986]

>>20309983
I also used to talk to David Berman sporadically a few years back. I got real sad for quite a while when he took his life, since the last thing we'd talked about was him getting a second poetry release together.

[Anonymous No.20310135]

Only ever reached out to a couple authors, for different reasons, and both replied. One was a favorite author and he was incredibly gracious and communicative and the other was to inform an author that her work was ostensibly being plagiarized by a new television show that had been announced, and she was very appreciative on the heads-up. I once reached out to a director once about obtaining a poster from a film of theirs, like actually in the film and made specifically for being shown in the movie, and they gave me the file to go have my own printed up.
Ask and you shall receive.

[Anonymous No.20310177]

>>20306769
Wow, this is actually great advice. I thought Mike was just a meme edgelord.

The part with God and women is incelly and cringe though, but I get his point. He could have phrased it better I guess.

[Anonymous No.20310190]

>>20309760
what about i scrooll my dick into you're butthole

[Anonymous No.20310268]

>>20306827
They're all good advise. The person speaking is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.20310395]

I’ve asked Steven King if he was drinking and snorting blow again after he tweeted something stupid

I asked Margaret Atwood if she had blown through all her tv money already when she was bitching on Twitter about men refusing to read female authors.

[Anonymous No.20310504]

>>20306769
>tfw you know he's right but dropping vidya would result in losing your only best friends you ever had.

[Anonymous No.20310511]

I emailed some authors about mistakes in their textbooks. I never checked if they answered me and I don't care.

[Anonymous No.20311928]

>>20310177
Someone in another thread said Mike had the “incel gaze”

[Anonymous No.20313035]

>>20304418
How exactly did Mike Ma become a /lit/ meme? I only remember him being a pretty small Vine account that ended up in the background of a few Milo shots

[Anonymous No.20313261]

>>20313035
he write book, i read, i like
he write another book, i read, i like

[Anonymous No.20313297]

I'd just shitpost back and forth with Nick Land on Twitter. Idk if that counts.

[Anonymous No.20314214]

>>20303723
I sent an email to Quentin Scobie on buying Baby Alex because i had some difficulty trying to find it online. He replied back saying "Don't buy it".

[Anonymous No.20314251]

Can someone send me an email? I'm lonely and don't get emails.

[Anonymous No.20314295]

>>20304425
>>20309310
The thing I enjoy most about this board is being able to tell others that I like what they have written.

[Anonymous No.20314620]

>>20314251
whats your address I'll send you one

[Anonymous No.20314740]

>>20304962
>Robert Sapolsky
Dude is awesome, I've been putting on his lectures at Stanford while I play vidya lately.

I emailed a guy named Sasha Chapin because he wrote an article about DFW that I liked and his response was very nice.

[Anonymous No.20315868]

>>20304418
t. mike ma

[Anonymous No.20317461]

>>20313035
Writing a book calling for the execution of minorities/LGBT/Jews, while being Milo’s boy sex slave, and then turning into a troon will do that

[Anonymous No.20319384]

>>20314251
you probably use aol or hotmail that's why

[Anonymous No.20319395]

>>20303723
I’ve drunkenly sent several DM’s to BAP. Don’t know if I ever got a response to any though because I’ll end up glowposting or calling some hollyweird celebrity a faggot or kike and my account will get banned before morning.

[Anonymous No.20319409]

>>20307155
you’re right, we need a revolution.

[Anonymous No.20319437]

>>20314214
you can get in contact with q pretty easily when theres a discord dup every few months or so. he once made a tutorial to one of his songs just for little old me

[Anonymous No.20319489]

>>20307109
I'd bet money you were playing an mmorpg, gacha or ranked video game. I quit one of those recently and I feel like I've become more willing to focus on creating things instead.

[Anonymous No.20319516]

>>20307155
Correct, although it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Thinking getting yourself in shape or being less-consumerist as conditioning for the inevitable crises.
But you are definitely right, you can see it in the entire wave of “mental health” awareness that companies and government put out, it’s used like anti-virus, just to ween out any traits that might fuck up the system.
Things like male suicides get ignored until they hit a certain threshold because that might interfere with production and profit. No company cared when the news wasn’t so pervasive, and a head-office (pre-social media), could plausibly claim to be oblivious about their workers lives and assume for the best.
A death of any kind gets more exposure than ever, and they have to send out something as a concession, and that usually boils down to a “talk”, that treats society as static and you as the malleable element that needs to change his thinking.

Like I said, not necessarily mutually exclusive. I like to think that what I have learned from these kind of individual-blaming therapies and stuff has made
Me a stronger individual to oppose the system, not fall in line with it.

[Anonymous No.20319700]

[Anonymous No.20320153]

>>20303723
Tay Zonday sent me a friend request on YouTube back in the day.

[Anonymous No.20320165]

I sent a letter to Elon Musk begging for a job explaining that I'm an abject lover with no discernible talents and an average IQ. I'm not sure if he received it.

[Anonymous No.20320177]

>>20303723
I emailed Andy Weir when he released Project Hail Mary, and we talked extensively about Eridian culture and convergent evolution . I found it surprisingly humanizing that his email was "[e-mail]", and he made it when he was just writing shitty Sci-Fi fanfics before he was a respected author.

[Anonymous No.20320221]

>>20305041
I've been blocked by several famous people, one was a staff at Imperium Press I think, the other isn't as cool and it was fucking Razorfist when I tried explaining what third position was. For a bunch of people hopped up on freezepeach libertarians sure don't like their economic theories being challenged, even if your cultural views align

[Anonymous No.20320322]

>>20309305
>As long as you're not overdoing it and spending more than an hour a day here, you should be fine
Yeah, that's where I went wrong.

[Anonymous No.20320363]

>>20307155
>Reading books is passive consumption
You’re engaging literature wrong if that’s how you feel.

[Anonymous No.20321184]

>>20303723
I've had conversations with Chomsky (email), Stallman (email), Paul Graham (email), Werner Herzog (Reddit), Eric Idle (Twitter).

[Anonymous No.20321207]

>>20321184
Nassim Taleb, Steven Isserlis (famous cellist), and Tom Holland (historian) too. All on Twitter.

[Anonymous No.20321406]

>>20309983
>Jordaan Mason
They write?

[Anonymous No.20323043]

>>20303723
God no.

[Anonymous No.20323768]

>>20309249
im so glad to hear, Gioia always seemed like a nice guy. How did you get his email?

[Anonymous No.20323882]

Christopher Hitchens responded to me from his AOL address a few months before he died.

[Anonymous No.20324023]

>>20303723
Bakker.
He didn't answer.

[Anonymous No.20324616]

>>20321184
>Chomsky
About what?
What's he like?

[Anonymous No.20324674]

>>20303723
I wrote Khabib Nurmagomedov asking for his opinion on my manuscript and he punched me in the face

[Anonymous No.20326146]

>>20323882
This is interesting, what did he say

[Anonymous No.20326349]

I once posted on George RR Martin's Not a Blog, mentioning the publishing date of one of his lore books and he told me I was out of date. Thats it, thats how I interacted with a world famous author once.

[Anonymous No.20326428]

>>20309986
It is very sad to end up like Berman, i think drugs fried his brain completely. I dislike him as a person but American Water is a very good album.

[Anonymous No.20326800]

>>20303723
Chomsky ignores my emails and Murray blocked me on twitter

[Anonymous No.20327283]

>>20326146
He tried claiming the picture of my phallus was photoshopped so I hired hitmen to kill him

[Anonymous No.20327412]

>>20303723
dno what to talk about