/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23219964]

>I finally get around to reading this after hearing this board rave about it for years
>it's a second person Borges fan fiction
what the fuck is wrong with you?

[Anonymous No.23219975]

>>23219964
lol

[Anonymous No.23220044]

If you are going to compare Calvino to Borges than Calvino is Borges with a soul. But they are not much alike unless you are the sort who goes around saying things like "good prose, you know it when you see it."

[Anonymous No.23220335]

>>23220044
>bro it's meta analysis of a book that doesn't exist and a country that doesn't exist and a professor that studies a non-existent language bro it's like commentary on fiction inside fiction
we all read Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertiusin high school anon, this isn't impressive

[Anonymous No.23220386]

>>23220335
>plot elements
>can't into meta
The book in If on A Winter's Night; A Traveler absolutely exists, you (supposedly) read it. Are you sure you didn't just read summaries? They use the meta for different ends and achieve it in different ways with Calvino taking everything much further than Borgues ever did.

[Anonymous No.23220492]

>>23220044
The difference for me is that Calvino is funny while Borges is amusing. The former is harder to do well, as dry as he is with it.

[Anonymous No.23220911]

>>23220492
The soul comment was mostly tongue in cheek, I find them to be very different writers with only a superficial likeness. By OPs standards Borges is just Gide fan fiction.

[Anonymous No.23222056]

>>23220386
of course he took things further, it's a book. Borges stories and essays were short for a reason. they said what they needed to say. it's like rewriting a Shakespeare sonnet into an epic poem then jerking off about how much farther you went than Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.23222059]

I recently started reading this to get a break from politics. I failed. The book had humanities people assuming the truth of a theory just because of the fact that it fit in with their leftist feminist progressive ideological agenda. They did not care for the fact that the theory had serious political implications for people far away.

I fucking hate the West. Just get a young girl to pose with an AK-47 in the combat uniform of your choice and post it on social media. You'll instantly have millions of retards taking sides in any conflict anywhere in the world.

[Anonymous No.23222297]

He's literally talking to me literally me. How does he know exactly how I feel about books?

[Anonymous No.23222490]

>>23222297
jokes on him, I pirated the book to my kindle just because my fave e-celeb recommended it
also, you could just read the wiki page and still pretend that you have read a book

[Anonymous No.23222566]

Or perhaps you, dear Reader, downloaded Italo Calvino's new novel /If on a winter's night, a traveler/ onto your electronic reader, more likely pirating it, which is okay too; either way you found yourself adjusting the font and margins to your liking, turning justification off and back on to see if it makes a difference (those pirated copies never quite play nice), lowering your brightness to match the room or veranda or beachside hammock you're reading from. Or perhaps you are a homosexual and are reading it on your phone. No matter, after careful consideration of the font and margins, the brightness and line leading, you turn everything back to the default settings and throw your electronic device on the ground and read the internet encyclopedia article and online foræ, in order to pretend you read it.

[Anonymous No.23222596]

>>23220911
I was serious about the humor, Calvino is funny as fuck whenever he wants to be, where Borges isn't and comes off as more of a trickster, where it's more of an insight and a gasp than a joke. Otherwise he's so intentionally dry and academic that Calvino seems like Wodehouse or Tom Robbins in comparison.

I find that they have a very direct likeness as contemporaries and scholars and lovers of literature. Both were pulling from the same sources, their own native folklore, and have a kind of cross influence. They'd be very amenable interviewing together on Cavett or Charlie Rose or the spic equivalent.

[Anonymous No.23222606]

this book was cringe as fuck.
>writes himself into cucking some japanese dude
read as if it were a reddit fan fiction

[Anonymous No.23222752]

>>23222056
It being a book has little to do with how far the meta (or anything) is taken and developed, it being a book does not mean it will go further. The main draw to metafiction is that it is and incredibly efficient method of adding in new perspectives without all those pages generally required to provide all the required contexts for the new perspectives.
>>23222059
You are terminal,
>>23222596
I agree about the humor, I was just clarifying my post.

Borges and Calvino where not strangers to each other and I believe they did do an interview or two together. While they draw from like sources and exploit many of the same techniques I find them very different writers, about as close as any two modernists or any two realists, etc; they approached writing and literature so very differently and it shows in the result. The big difference for me is that Calvino experimented with reading, Borges experimented with writing.

[Anonymous No.23222795]

You did read it in the original Italian, right, Anon?

[Anonymous No.23222809]

I read a lot. I had heard about this and saw it at a library book sale, a fill the bag for 5 dollar kinda thing, and thought it was a good time to buy it. From the sale, my girlfriend and I took off directly for a road trip, and because why not, I asked her to read the opening page.

The prose was so bad that my gf, who hasn't read a tenth what I have, was laughing so hard she couldn't read full sentences. It was that awful. I can't imagine anyone reading that prose and thinking it profound. It was the most milquetoast, bland, college-sophomore level meta writing. I will never read more than she read to me and I will always hold negative opinions toward it.

Good on OP for trudging theough5

[Anonymous No.23222834]

>>23222752
>Calvino experimented with reading, Borges experimented with writing.
They went in different directions with it, and yet I still see something I like. I think they both split into the story like a nut, something ornery like a chestnut or plain difficult line a nigger toe, with a hammer or some strange instrument, and made something from the whole nut vehicle and experience involved in cracking the nut. If we're going to be honest, I don't think Borges had a novel in him or the onus to write one and that's what yields the difference. I don't think Borges was human or half human. It's a different register of work but they were mostly doing the same things.

I have who I go for one thing and who I go to for another. I like how Calvino writes more, I like what Borges writes about more. It's rare someone speaks to you either way.

[Anonymous No.23222836]

>>23222834
I have no idea how that gif ended up there lel.