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/lit/ - Literature

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2920814 No.2920814[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What are the strangest endings in all of literature /lit/?

My vote goes to Underworld by DeLillo. I still can't believe that Nick has his brain replaced by a computer chip at the end.

>> No.2920822

You're a douche.

>> No.2920823

10/10

>> No.2920829

lol

>> No.2920832

I Am Legend (the book) had a bizarre ending. Turns out that some of the vampires were sentient and had their own society or something. They capture Robert Neville and are about to execute him. One of the vampires takes pity on him and gives him a suicide pill.

His defiant laughter at the end is badass but the big reveal with the 'living vampires' just comes out of nowhere and is confusing.

>> No.2920830

As I Lay Dying

Who would have thought Faulkner would include aliens in one of his novels?

>> No.2920904

>>2920830
> Who would have thought Faulkner would include aliens in one of his novels?

Stop. Realize that Faulkner is literally the contemporary of Steinbeck, Tolkien, Hemmingway and Conan the Barbarian.

Just because Faulkner wrote overstylized purple prose doesn't mean he's an ancient classic writer.

>> No.2920909

>>2920904
Speaking of Tolkien, how about the fact that The Silmarillion ends with finding out that Middle Earth was actually a village right next to contemporary, industrialized society? That was quite a shock.

>> No.2920916
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2920916

>>2920909

>> No.2920980

>>2920904
I'm pretty sure you're the only person on /lit/ that keeps calling Faulkner's stuff purple prose.

>> No.2920999

>>2920980
Moreover, what Faulkner wrote can't really be called "purple prose." He wasn't Lovecraft nor Poe. Yes, a Faulknerian sentence takes up an entire page, but that doesn't make it "purple."

I'm sure this "purple prose" crusader tried to read one book of Faulkner's, found it inaccessible, and has been calling Faulky baby "purple" since.

>> No.2921010

lel

>> No.2921012

ITT: People exposing that they know nothing about literature and are easily trolled.

>Stop. Realize that Faulkner is literally the contemporary of Steinbeck, Tolkien, Hemmingway and Conan the Barbarian.

>Who would have thought Faulkner would include aliens in one of his novels?

You've got to be kidding me right bro? You honestly took this man at his word that a fucking Faulkner book had fucking aliens in it?

Jesus god, I just realized how stupid most of you are.

Anybody here ACTUALLY read literature?

>> No.2921047

>>2920980
> I'm pretty sure you're the only person on /lit/ that keeps calling Faulkner's stuff purple prose.

So? Having a personality is bad now?

>>2921012
> You've got to be kidding me right bro? You honestly took this man at his word that a fucking Faulkner book had fucking aliens in it?

Of course not. I just took a chance to badmouth Faulkner, whom I don't respect at all.

>>2920999
> I'm sure this "purple prose" crusader tried to read one book of Faulkner's, found it inaccessible, and has been calling Faulky baby "purple" since.

Faulkner used the word 'lugubrious' non-ironically three times in 'Absalom, Absalom'. 'Effluvium' appears seven times!

Yes, it is purple prose. Bad purple prose. Faulkner and Lovecraft are soul-buddies of bad prose in hell.

What adds insult to injury is the fact that Faulkner wrote at the same time as Steinbeck and Hemmingway. Steinbeck and Hemmingway!

'Lugubrious' and 'effluvium'!

>> No.2921052
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2921052

>>2921012
>Anybody here ACTUALLY read literature?

How vulgar. Reading is for plebians.

>> No.2921055

>>2921047
I don't think you know what purple prose is, dude.

>> No.2921057

>>2921047
Yeah, anti-Faulkner is such a cool gimmick to have. What an edgy teen.

>> No.2921071

>>2921055
> I don't think you know what purple prose is, dude.

No, I think _you_ don't know what purple prose is.

'Lugubrious' and 'effluvium' are words from an AD&D rulebook, used for providing dark-elfish flavor.

>>2921057
> Yeah, anti-Faulkner is such a cool gimmick to have. What an edgy teen.

Sure. Of course, anybody who doesn't agree with your opinions of your favorite overrated author must _obviously_ be a teenager and a troll.

By the way, lots of smart people with good literary taste had no patience for Faulkner.

>> No.2921081

>>2921047
>whom I don't respect at all.

who

>> No.2921082

>>2921047
That's purple prose? Exotic diction - well, two words? Correct me if I am wrong, but I had always thought purple prose was for the better part a syntactical category, most noticeable by its appropriation of the syntax of the Latin authors as transmitted to the English of, for example, Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, Horace Walpole, that pack of bastards; a style learned from that pedagogy which appreciably crammed into young schoolboys from the renaissance until the early twentieth century as many Latin authors (but especially, the main culprit, Cicero); the main feature of the whole 'purpose' moniker being periods that roll without semicolon, check, hindrance or stop for kilometres of page, something Proustian: hypotaxis, excessive subordination of clauses, and even, the concept connotes this a 'voice' (call it tone shall we?) that is not personal enough, a kind of pompous eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and diction that suits the time whence the syntax has been taken. The only problem I see with purple being over-identified with Latinity, is that it becomes a false category, because the very clipped, shall we call it clipped, shorter, more epigrammatic or concise modern style itself is very much BEQUETHED, gentlemen, by Thucydides via Sallust (admittedly an archaiser in diction, but in syntax 'modern': with viz. coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions, parataxis instead of hypotaxis, epigrammatic, concise, short, statements, with little adverbial go-between, 'clipped', slightly startling and impressive, precise syntax. Is this not so?

>> No.2921090

>>2921071
>By the way, lots of smart people with good literary taste had no patience for Faulkner.
>Implying you're one of those smart people.

>> No.2921091

>>2921081
Don't we still use the objective case in English? The old 'accusativus?' The big newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic still do, and that's the gutter of the language. Sure, perhaps Tao Lin doesn't, perhaps he says 'Me and a friend went to Disneyland', but that's his subliterate affectation, and it draws the alt and YA horde right to his doorpost.

>> No.2921099

After hearing all that talk about how great James Joyce and Ulysses are, I was pretty surprised when the whole thing ended up being Buck Mulligan's dream

>> No.2921102

>>2921082
Read: purple 4 purpose.

>> No.2921104

>>2921082
Yeah?

Well, here's a quote from 'Absalom, Absalom':

> ...Yes, they will have told you: who was young and had buried hopes only during that night which was four years long when beside a shuttered and unsleeping candle she embalmed the War and its heritage of suffering and injustice and sorrow on the backsides of the pages within an old account book, embalming blotting from the breathable air the poisonous secret effluvium of lusting and hating and killing—they will have told you: daughter of an embusque who had to turn to a demon, a villain: and therefore she had been right in hating her father since if he had not died in that attic she would not have had to go out there to find food and protection and shelter and if she had not had to depend on his food and clothing (even if she did help to grow and weave it) to keep her alive and warm, until simple justice demanded that she make what return for it he might require of her commensurate with honor...

You're right, however; this isn't quite purple prose, purple prose is more lucid.

>> No.2921108

>>2921090
>Implying you're one of those smart people.

Yes. Having an actual opinion formed by personal experience makes me smarter than blokes who simply parrot whatever their college professor told them, without even an attempt to rationalize their prejudices!

>> No.2921116

>>2921108


Ugh... Your argumentation is stupid and depressing.

>Lots of smart people think like me, thus I must be right
>Has no proof or source of said "smart" people

>Dislikes something
>Says disliking it gives him "personality"

>Gullibly believes there are aliens in Faulkner
>Tries to save his face by saying he was trying to badmouth him for no reason, but still doesn't disproves the previous point and admits to badmouth an author without any logical basis, only because of bias.


You are everything wrong with this board and the earth.

>> No.2921122

>>2921104
To be honest, taking stock of the literary movements in literature up to the time of Faulkner , I would be more inclined, for justice's sake, to call this rhythmically hypnotic other names, perhaps 'prose poem', for example:

Yes, they will have told you:
who was young and had buried hopes only during that night
which was four years long
when beside a shuttered and unsleeping candle
she embalmed the War
and its heritage of suffering
and injustice and sorrow
on the backsides of the pages
within an old account book,
embalming blotting from the breathable air
the poisonous secret effluvium
of lusting and hating and killing

—they will have told you:
daughter of an embusque
who had to turn to a demon,
a villain:
and therefore she had been right
in hating her father
since if he had not died in that attic
she would not
have had to go out there
to find food and protection and shelter
and if she had not had to depend on his food
and clothing
(even if she did help to grow and weave it)
to keep her alive and warm,
until simple justice demanded
that she make what return for it he might require of her commensurate with honor...

But there is more pleasure in running it all together, in becoming, and Faulkner uses the very word, 'breathless.' I think the passage's inexorable rhythm fits the sense perhaps. I've never read Faulkner, so I don't know what the passage is about, but I can understand how to do and under what aesthetic and preferential conditions one appreciates the poetry of that excerpt.

>> No.2921134

>>2921122
For some reason, I keep missing out words, mostly the nouns; some poetics say that ellipse occurs naturally when the passions are aroused, which poets imitate, which is true: I haven't had my dinner yet.

>> No.2921140

He uses the word breathable not breathless, but it's all the same, breath was obviously on the mind of the poet here, although he probably writes like this all the time and without using that word. Odd maybe that he should in the one excerpt you choose?

>> No.2921161

>>2921104
I don't know if purple prose is necessarily more lucid. I think it's a syntactical category, and I doubt any inherent stylistic qualities derive from a syntax as facilely as 'lucid' and 'obscure.' I suppose that depends on how clear, in the mind of the writer, what he is going to say is. My point's that I do not see why one could not write just as obscurely or just as lucidly in what we call purple prose. On account of purple's syntactical hypotaxis, it is very hieratic, and I think rhizomatic postmodern liberals may not like that sort of style - there are ideological reasons for opposing it on a superficial reading of course. Purple prose can be very funny because the sentences are generally periodic, the punchline and all the wham come at the end, and balanced precariously on many different clauses, the prose equivalent of Dr. Seuss balancing fish bowls and umbrellas, and so on, on the tip of his nose.

We tend to think it takes more time to write a short thing well, take the expression of Pascal 'Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.'
But that idea rests itself on an idea of language that presupposes purple prose is the norm, which it isn't, and wasn't, today or in Faulkner's day.

>> No.2921182

thread about a whore is a thread about a whore.

>> No.2921206

Here's something by Walpole:

The Duchess of Choiseul, the only young one of these heroines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes, and is a little model in waxwork, which not being allowed to speak for some time as incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which the Court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most elegant turn and propriety of expression.

Townshend's speeches, like the 'Satires' of Pope, had a thousand times more sense and meaning than the majestic blank verse of Pitt; and yet the latter, like Milton, stalked with a conscious dignity of pre-eminence, and fascinated his audience with that respect which always attends the pompous but often hollow idea of the sublime.

These don't quite fit my idea, and perhaps I am thinking of German 19C academic writing, which was not far off Kant, when I think of purple. I think most people make no distinction, and perhaps the term is really just descriptive of style, in its low sense, which comes down to prejudices and a kind of will to power of identification with the way an author writes...in short the responses are either 'Ew yuck' (the other) and 'That's nice' (it's me).

>> No.2921224

Note though, the coordinating conjunctions 'and' 'and' 'and' 'and', the temporal clauses 'when', participial phrases 'embalming', the abrupt dash, aposiopesis, the causative clause 'since.' There really are no relative clauses, the hallmark of the purple, except 'which was four years long', and its function is mostly adjectival, modifying 'night.' Look at that contrast in Walpole's first 'which', which modifies not the last word used but goes all the way back to the subject of the sentence, just as one would write Latin. It is also, and I omitted it, a common feature of latin prose to use past participles at the start of new clauses instead of relative clauses, and Walpole uses that extensively, - they are also part of the subordination of tense instead of sense, which is very purple in my mind.

>> No.2921227

So in conclusion, Faulker ain't purple.