Hatethread General

[Anonymous No.3534323]

The problem with being a reader is the inability to find very many people to complain to about shit when we step in it with our eyeballs. What really burns you about the literary world today, anon? What makes you quit a book 15 pages in, or makes you lose faith in the publishing industry?

Rev up them chainsaws and start the fires. Time for harsh criticism!

[Anonymous No.3534328]

wen they use bigger wordz n ther r no vampires in it

[Anonymous No.3534329]

Realizing the book was written very childishly and sounds exactly like someone who had no real mind of any unique sort.
That is especially present when a woman writes a book.
I can't read woman literature. It literally always has the same writing style, it seems.

[Anonymous No.3534337]

>>3534329
God damn I'm glad someone else feels the same

[Anonymous No.3534338]

>>3534329
Read George Eliot then you faggot

[Anonymous No.3534347]

>>3534329

Purple prose, you mean? Descriptions up the ass?

[Anonymous No.3534384]

I hate reading Tolkien because he has shit grammar.

Every time he starts a sentence with "and", I want to chuck the book out the window.

[Anonymous No.3534389]

>>3534347
I recently began a Donna Leon book and just from the first two chapters I'm already SICK of every character 'adding' things on to what they just said.

>'Character says something.' Then, after a moment's reflection, added, 'Says something else.'
>Repeat x999

I stopped reading after the main character began a sentence with the word 'and' four times in a row.

Just one example but it gets across the point. Not that guy btw.

[Anonymous No.3534397]

When the female love interest just happens to be the prettiest girl in the world.

And I don't like overly explicit sex scenes, either. They just make me feel like I'm reading the author's masturbational fantasies.

[Anonymous No.3534412]

>>3534397
Most of the time you are. at least in my case

[Anonymous No.3534541]

Postmodern poetry--Lyn Hejinian and her write-alikes.

Fuck. Makes me want to burn libraries just to rid the world of this shit.

[Anonymous No.3534544]

>>3534384
You've internalized guidelines to the point where you can't even enjoy anything that doesn't follow them. I'm not a Tolkien fan, but that's a poor way to go about life.

[Anonymous No.3534545]

>>3534384
Why is starting a sentence with "and" wrong anyway?

[Anonymous No.3534574]

I'm not really pissed since all text I get is for free. What kinda bothers me is the trend of nonfiction literature becoming pop-nonfiction or even fiction-nonfiction. I don't even need to read fiction nowadays since there is much made up shit in muh nonfiction.

[Anonymous No.3534606]

>"His knees cracked like gun fire".

[Anonymous No.3534682]

http://www.rachelaaron.net/spiritsend-sample.php

So it goes.

[Anonymous No.3535012]

Formulas that chaps my ass:

1. The protagonist would have the same decent moral tendencies as a common person would, but would also have the skill set of the immoral deviant, e.g. the hero would stick up for the little guy, while at the same being a professional killer, or a ruthlessly effective brute.

2. The ubiquitous meritocracy given to very young characters, without any genuine justification. It usually suggest that because the young protagonists is clever enough, or tenacious enough the reality should follow them, or converge onto them as being the primary focus. e.g. It's when the drama of starring adolescent becomes the drama of the entire universe.

3. The intellectual conservatism of all serial novels, and nearly all fiction printed today. It's the motif behind the writing that strips any challenging to the reader and replaces it with pandering to get the reader to come back again for the next book. e.g. it's the contradictory implication of, 'If you like the this character and story, you'll like the other books they're in because they're the same things but different.

I see this with ever pop-novel that gets suggested towards me. I've become cynical to contemporary fiction because of its pervasiveness. I've become bitter with these things, bitter all together. I feel today, most books aren't worth the prices they print.

That's my rant, thank you.

[Anonymous No.3535030]

tao lin

[Anonymous No.3535062]

>>3535012
Good point, sir. I too am tired of reading things that sound like or rewrite of any other fiction novel published two years before. I want books to hit me in the guts, not to spoonfeed me bright-colored sugar.
Also, people who automatically assume success means literary quality or groundbreaking thinking, and who refuse to see that what sells is generally what is well marketed and cleverly directed toward a broad audience. That pisses me off. It is fair to read pop-fiction for pleasure, you can simply acknowledge that without pretending any new bestseller is the Iliad of our time.

[Anonymous No.3535072]

>>3535012
You must hate Harry Potter.

[Anonymous No.3535081]

>>3534545
Because "and" is a conjunction, and in cases where it's beginning the sentence, it isn't conjoining any parts of the sentence. It's being misused. I don't really have a problem with starting sentences with "and," as long as they work well or get the point across, but it's technically improper usage.

[Anonymous No.3535089]

Neil Gaiman was really under my level of acceptance. American Gods were torment of banal and pretentiousness for me.
Sorry.

[Anonymous No.3535101]

People who rip off Cormac McCarthy's minimal use of punctuation and think they're original or that they're creating some sort of subtle homage or wink to him, when in reality they're just co-opting his style for their own purposes.
Miranda July is one of the worst offenders when it comes to this. It's a shame, I really enjoy her films.

Constant use of similes to get a point across, especially when the point doesn't even need to be made.
>A did B, just like X does Y.
See >>3534606 for reference.

"Edgy" or "transgressive" lit that is neither of those things. Child of God is transgressive lit. Journey to the End of Night is transgressive lit. Fight Club is not.

[Anonymous No.3535114]

>>3535081
>[I]t's technically improper usage.
"There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as 'and', 'but', or 'so'. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice." -- Chicago Manual of Style

Stop parroting what your crony English teachers told you.

[Anonymous No.3535118]

I never quit a book once I begin, just so I have adequate ammunition when decrying its many faults to others.

As such, I have never read some books which I have been assured are terrible (and which LOOK terrible, from an outside perspective), while I have read other books to give them a chance and finished them so that I might explain exactly what I found so terrible about said book.

[Anonymous No.3535143]

Overuse of conditional tenses, and people having two reactions about everything.
It's my personal pet peeve. God I hate it.
"It was a house that under better upkeep might have looked beautiful..."

"She almost slapped him, but then she realized he was right."

It's weak writing. It's a cheap way for insecure writers and fanfictioneers to assert things without being assertive. And when you read enough you're able to recognize when the author is distancing himself from the narrative for effect, and when they're just too timid to write a damn sentence.

instead of. "The truck was blue."
They write. "The truck might have been mistaken for blue when it was clean."

and what pisses me off is that they think they're clever for it. "I wrote a complex sentence, I R a Writer!" When that shit slows down your pacing in the one place you don't want to slow it down. Description is already going to take a hit into your pacing you don't need the added burden of meandering prose.

The other is just as bad, same problem, voice. Everyone has two reactions to things, because the writer can't commit and because they keep jumping back and forth between the characters' voices and the narrators.

[Anonymous No.3535151]

Currently reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, every other pragraph is like ''They all stood there for at least a minute looking at each other, saying nothing'' just a ridiculous amount of times

[Anonymous No.3535157]

>>3535114
If it's a conjunction, and it is not conjoining fragments of sentences, it is being used improperly. As I previously stated, I have no problem with the misuse, on the condition that the misuse is necessary for flow or rhythm.

[Anonymous No.3535158]

>>3534323

When they have the driving action of the book be some obnoxious philosophical platitude. Such as the whole "I've got to learn how to be a man!" bullshit in "A Lesson Before Dying". Also, protagonists crying.

[Anonymous No.3535159]

>>3535072

I fucking loathe harry potter
I loathe twilight, hunger games, or any other fiction you think might get applauded on sites like boingboing.

They are all written to appease and pander to an adolescent mindset that is either uncomfortable with establishing adult relationships or are nostalgic about that.

[Anonymous No.3535170]

>>3534329
>Not reading Heian lit

[Anonymous No.3535177]

>>3534323

Louise Gluck and her asshole, droopy eyed, platitudinous poetry.

[Sun No.3535183]

>>3534606
I cringed.

[Anonymous No.3535184]

>>3535170
This.

[Anonymous No.3535186]

>>3535012
This is good.

I now hate these things too.

[Anonymous No.3535196]

>>3535101

As if Cormac McCarthy is not an offender of ripping off thousands of other writers who used minimalist punctuation. As if the entire genre of writing was not one person stealing for another and justifying it by allowing the literary critics to claim it as a "subtle wink" when praising their work.

[Anonymous No.3535198]

>>3535177
I notice that most of the woman writers I've read (some exceptions (Zadie Smith)) speak almost entirely in platitudes on par with high teenagers bitching about "the social dogma."

[Anonymous No.3535201]

>>3535196
Oh, god... my sides...

Do you always express yourself like a fifth-rate imitation of a Oscar Wilde caricature?

[Anonymous No.3535213]

>>3535196
People from the "everything-is-derivative" school need to quit getting their panties in knots every time originality is discussed.
Yes, we all know that nobody is free from influence. We get it. Calm down, it's still possible to have unique style.

[Anonymous No.3535219]

>>3535198

I've actually noticed this with all writers with something real to bitch about and not just the same old drivel about "the human spirit". They don't spend so much time on how artfully done their prose and poetry is done because they are so focused on WHAT they are saying and why it's so damn important. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we have to endure their shitty art because it bears a historical/ political significance without contributing positively to the greater lexicon of art.

[Anonymous No.3535222]

>>3535201
He's absolutely 100% right. See Shakespeare, see The Old Testament, etc.

[Anonymous No.3535227]

>>3535198
For the most part you should avoid US women writers. As the anons above mentioned, explore women's writing of Japan's Heian era. Theirs was really the only writing of the era worth remembering and they represent some of the very summits of literary achievement.

I would also suggest you give Clarice Lispector, Marguerite Youcenar, and Can Xue a try. All of them rank with the best of their male peers; have none of that cattiness that bogs down a lot of women's writing.

[Anonymous No.3535228]

>>3535213
Originality is overrated. The "everything must be fresh and new" angle is what aggressive marketing and capitalism have done to you.

[Anonymous No.3535233]

>>3535101

So if other people feel the same way McCarthy does about certain punctuation, they can't do anything about it?

[Anonymous No.3535232]

>>3535213
OK OK OK. Let's get something straight. I get what you're saying and I agree with you, it's ok to call someone's work original because the true determination of originality is one's work within the context of culture and history, as well as the composit of those borrowed component parts. However, the OP was commenting on something that was one of those component parts, and not a particularly unique one, just rarer in literature than more traditional punctuation, and then going off and complaining that somebody else stole it as if Cormac McCarthy invented it himself.

Cormac McCarthy has a unique style. Copying Cormac McCarthy's unique style is poor form. Minimalist punctuation is not unique style.

[Anonymous No.3535236]

>>3535232
Fair enough, I accept defeat.

[Anonymous No.3535239]

>>3535232
Oh, god.. my sides...

Do you always express yourself like a fifth-rate imitation of a Oscar Wilde caricature?

[Anonymous No.3535241]

>>3535232
>Copying Cormac McCarthy's unique style is poor form.

What does "poor form" mean?

[Anonymous No.3535243]

>>3535239

What? Wittily? (and when you say it in your head, you should pronounce the h's)

[Anonymous No.3535246]

>>3535241

Bad form. Bad. Not good. Less than desirable. Juvenile. Dumn. Fucking stupid.

[Anonymous No.3535247]

>>3535239
Oh, god.. my sides...

Do you always express yourself like a fifth-rate imitation of a Oscar Wilde caricature?

[Anonymous No.3535252]

>>3535030
Seconded. The literary segment of the Guardian lost almost all my respect when they reviewed Tao Lin.

[Anonymous No.3535257]

Oh, god.. my sides...

Do you always express yourself like a fifth-rate imitation of a Oscar Wilde caricature?

[Anonymous No.3535260]

>>3535243
>and when you say it in your head, you should pronounce the h's

Not if you're English.

"Oi, guvnor. Ahm 'oping to get an 'orse, so i can 'urry along to the 'otel."

-'Arry Potter

[Anonymous No.3535263]

>>3535260
or jamaican

[Anonymous No.3535266]

>>3535260
In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.

[Anonymous No.3535278]

>>3535266
>Hampshire

>mfw Britfags live in Shires.

[Anonymous No.3535291]

>>3535252
Not that I like Tao Lin. But why shouldn't The Guardian give serious consideration to a notable writer, no matter how annoying his work/public persona may be?

[Anonymous No.3535298]

>>3535278
>>mfw Britfags live in Shires.
Just look at all those Shires.

[Anonymous No.3535303]

>>3535219
Try reading Dante if you want a guy who loves to bitch and still knows how to write.

[Anonymous No.3535368]

>>3534682
>read a paragraph
holy crap this is the worst shit ever

>check amazon
4 and a half stars.

This is what I hate. shitty ass writing that gets praised by people that know nothing, cajoling the writer into producing more shit and boosting their ego.
The bad part is that good contemporary literature gets tossed out the door in lieu of this shit, leaving it completely forgotten, and then people start to conform to this idea of plot-centrism without focusing AT ALL on their prose. holy fuck I rage hard at that.

>inb4 stfu fag there's no such thing as contemporary literature everything anyone ever writes anymore is shit

[Anonymous No.3535375]

Nothing.

[Anonymous No.3535407]

>Being able to tell when a women is wrote the book

There's just that tone of self-righteousness. That fleshed-out personal fantasy.
Those ramblings about topics or conventions that barely relate or are simply unnecessary.

Eudora Welty was an exception for me; damn good writer.

[Anonymous No.3535437]

>>3535407
>There's just that tone of self-righteousness. That fleshed-out personal fantasy. Those ramblings about topics or conventions that barely relate or are simply unnecessary.

Man, if you want to read the fullest embodiment of the aforementioned, you need to read Save me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald. That rambling, score-settling mess is about the biggest pile of cow poo-poo you will ever come across—and this is considered a seminal tract of modern feminism! Had she not happened to sleep with and marry one of the greatest writers of the 20th century there would be not a single person, man or woman, who would give a fuck about her.

[Anonymous No.3535460]

>The problem with being a reader :
>the inability to find very many people to complain to about shit

[Anonymous No.3535484]

>>3534323
I try and only buy books highly rated. I read more classics too so I dont really have the problem of 15 pages in and i hate it. I've picked up a few on a whim and dont regret the time spent; to be honest i dont even know where to begin when buying books. good reads has been great for me. and i always read the first 3 pages or so before i buy so i can at least tell if i like the writing.
>>3534329
Virginia Woolf is good

comics are childish. batman year 100 and from hell exceptions.

[Anonymous No.3535652]

>>3535484
>comics are childish
that's kind of the point though

>not liking those artstyles

[Anonymous No.3535665]

>>3535484
try batman arkham asylum. Definitely not for kids.

[Anonymous No.3535670]

>>3535665
I'd disagree with you there but then again you'd probably think I was just being a contrarian. That piece in particular gives me the "look at me I'm so edgy and adult" vibe. I liked The Long Halloween a lot more but maybe I'm a weirdo.

[Anonymous No.3535671]

>>3535101
July has her own kind of wry, drryyyy humor though. I wouldn't say her style is wholly an appropriation of McCarthy's.

[Anonymous No.3535681]

>>3535170
Do you know where I can get The Pillow Book in decent to good quality epub? Nothing on #Bookz.

[Anonymous No.3535691]

>>3535227
>cattiness
>implying Ford Madox Ford and H.G. Wells weren't cattier than most female authors

[Anonymous No.3535692]

>>3535671
I really don't think July has much in common with McCarthy at all, a predilection for eccentric punctuation aside. As the anon earlier mentioned she's a fine film-maker. But as much as I like her film work, her prose fiction is shit-tier.

>>3535681
I recall seeing it a long time ago on AvaxHome, I think. The Ivan Morris translation. That was a few years ago, though. Would upload it somewhere for you if I could but I never downloaded it as I don't do the eBook thing. Sorry. ;(

[Anonymous No.3535697]

>>3535665
didnt like the artwork and it wasnt memorable
>>3535670
Long Halloween is a great example. Its highly praised but i didnt care for it. i much more enjoy character development and writing rather than plot so comics are just not for me.

[Anonymous No.3535700]

When authors speaks over their characters. Like I'm going to believe some hillbilly would describe his demeanor as "a constrained truculence." He wouldn't even say "demeanor," but I'm willing to concede that one.

[Anonymous No.3535704]

>>3535159
You mean they're written for adolescents? I don't think anyone's denying that. Do you hate children's lit as well?

[Anonymous No.3535705]

>>3535692
I really liked It Chooses You though.

[Anonymous No.3535708]

>>3535705
Also, she has great hair. And I liked her story in The New Yorker a while back, "Roy Spivey."

[Anonymous No.3535709]

I hate how most modern genre fiction is written in the same bare-bones style. No flair, no color. It works, yeah, but a little artistry here and there would be nice. Lovecraft wrote genre fiction, but he crafted his sentences as lovingly as he did his ideas, and that's why people still read his work.

[Anonymous No.3535711]

>>3534329
That's not criticism.

[Anonymous No.3535721]

>>3535368
>inb4 stfu fag there's no such thing as contemporary literature everything anyone ever writes anymore is shit
You're pretty new if you think people here actually believe that. Why don't you list some contemporary authors you feel aren't getting the attention they deserve.

[Anonymous No.3535732]

>>3535484
>>3535665
>comics are childish. batman year 100 and from hell exceptions.

Try Jim Woodring, Brian Chippendale, Charles Burns you stupid fucking faggot.

I hate people whose literary "taste" stays safely within the boundaries of Harvard Classics and think their opinion is worth a shit. Even worse is when they carry some malformed idea of literature as a "higher" art and so think the value of their juvenile opinions extends to other mediums, too.

[Anonymous No.3535739]

>>3535700
Reminds me of when I read William F. Buckley's The Rake back in 2008. Every character in this transparent critique of the Clintonite 1990s and its roots in flower power, from the backwater types at the novel's beginning to the top-level politicos that come later, all sound like WFB. It was impossible to not read this book and hear every character, male and female, speak in his own voice with that languid Mid-Atlantic accent. Bugged the hell out of me.

[Anonymous No.3535741]

I'm reading Hamlet and oh my God, that guy literally hates everything.

[Anonymous No.3535743]

>>3535732

[Anonymous No.3535747]

>"He saw his breath in the crisp autumn air."
>close book

[Anonymous No.3535755]

>>3535708
Miranda July always give me a "trending" feeling. Like, I hear her name dropped by people who are bigger fans of St. Vincent than David Byrne, in a conversation that would include casual mention of Haruki Murakami. I mean, if it had been Ryu and not Haruki, I wouldn't think their taste so suspect.

I'm not going anywhere with this, but I'm just watching you guys jump to declare your appreciation for her and it's pushing the fad feeling. You're square if you don't "get" it. I've only streamed a couple of her spoken word LPs on Youtube, which I remember enjoying, but I don't know if that's just my ego talking.

[Anonymous No.3535760]

I hate getting excited about reading an experimental novel then it being impossible to understand or enjoy. It drags on and I don't want to be one of the many that give up on it. The Dead Father - Bathelme was akin to torture.

[Anonymous No.3535765]

>>3535755

I'm not "jumping" to declare an appreciation for her. I just think her films are solid; highly entertaining. As I mentioned earlier, though, her prose fiction is just as solidly shit-tier.

>>3535760
I always thought Frederick Barthelme was the best Barthelme.

[Anonymous No.3535783]

>>3535743
I'm pretty sure my post reveals I believe taste can be measured on some level and the only reference I made to academia was warning against the respect one might place in a pop interpretation of it, which seem to disagree with the two major points your comic is mocking.

I'm not sure if I properly understood your comic, or if you do, or if you understood my post, or if I understood yours, but a mistake has been made! Somewhere!

[Anonymous No.3535788]

Books halfway through that get boring

[Anonymous No.3535789]

>>3535704
Childern's Lit, Young Adult, our anything marketed to a kind of age grouping is just that: a marketing term. It doesn't reflect on the actual literary quality of the work. Rather it speaks about the audience that should be buying it, There are, I think, really good 'children's book' that speak to a wide audience. My favorites are the classics: Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tale of Two Cities; some modern examples are: A Wrinkle in Time, A Pack of Lies, and The Wednesday Wars.

[Anonymous No.3535802]

>>3535670
Well, I was simply talking about it being not appropriate for kids. Seriously, if you read this to a child under 10, you're a child molester, no less. Aside from that, the anti-edgy mentality has to die already. It prevents us to enjoy anything that look any bit dark. The is no edgy rant in batman asylum. Not even a "adult" posture. The character are indeed quite childish and behave in a rather preposterous way. I see it as some kind of very dark expressionist reverie, so to speak. It is just about images and form swirling in your head (yeah I'm a bit of a weirdo too). But I give you that compared to Long Halloween it may have seemed a bit over-the-top.

[Anonymous No.3535814]

>>3535765
Well, I tried to look up Ron Spivey but I just got a lot of hip young bloggers sharing their "reviews" of it and the NYT page that you need to pay to see (though I spot Eggleston (recently interviewed by a certain lifelong fan Harmony (also from small town america!) Korine) in the thumbnail: you're very cultured, Miranda/The New York Times!)!

Very exploitative vibes being given off. I assume her liberal position is in the safely marketable but still cis-aware enough to be hip zone between Tina Fey and having a dick. Super artistic (genius?), mite b crazy.

I'm just taking the piss, she seems like an alright person and I'm interested in her stuff though I haven't gotten around to looking into it, but this sort of audience falling to this sort of social commercialization of this sort of marketable liberal minded stuff is something I dislike about the literary world today. It might be very imagined but I've enough reason to be a little suspicious.

[Anonymous No.3535820]

>>3535814
>It might be very imagined but I've enough reason to be a little suspicious.
It isn't and your suspicions are well-founded.

[Anonymous No.3535828]

>>3535789
I don't understand why people are so dead set on affirming the value of Alice in Wonderland. It's silly to the point of tediousness and the style is lacklustre at best.

Explain this bullshit.

[Anonymous No.3535838]

>>3535814
One blog was "lookihaveopinions.wordpress" and the tags for the post were
TAGS: celebrity culture : fiction as wish fulfillment : first-person narration : literary fiction publications : miranda july : podcast : the new yorker : the new yorker fiction podcast : unknown word count : word puzzles

lol
Apparently, the story "rings really true to [lookihaveopinions.wordpress.com]".

I clicked the header, the top post was a Chuck Palahniuk quote and the second was a link to a thoughtpiece on "why “it’s hard to dislike Dostoevsky”".

Anyways that's what I mean. I'm (?) the only teen in the WORLD keeping it "real"!?!

[Anonymous No.3535848]

>>3535721
I'm in no position to say; I haven't gotten into contemporary literature yet. I'm still focusing on older works. That being said, I always see threads that start something like "Name one good book written in the 21st century" or your basic, more general "Literature isn't what it used to be."

[Anonymous No.3535860]

>>3535732
Woodring and Burns have comics in top 100 of the century (comics journal). classics.

[Anonymous No.3535870]

>>3535151
I was struck by that when I read crime and punishment too, it would be so awkward in reality if you had 2-5 minute silences in the middle of conversations

[Anonymous No.3535889]

>>3535860
That was the point, faggot. Chippendale is also probably the most published and well known of that vein of comix, he should have been aware of all of them if he thinks he's in a position to comment on the medium.
He obviously doesn't know shit about what he's talking about but still thinks he can comment because he has undeniably great taste in literature and literature is like a top art yknow?

[Anonymous No.3535954]

>>3535828

Alice in Wonderland is unique and distinguishable by its underlining meaning with those silly, tedious, encounters through out: it's about a child struggling to find meaning in a world that seems crazy, but think itself sensible. It's an allegory about growing up into the craziness of the adult world. One of the most unique things about Alice in Wonderland is that the evil antagonist isn't embodied anywhere, there are no villains in the book, nobody is evil, BUT the world is antagonistic. It's the this double act of showing a fantastic world and also showing a strange world at the same time that forces the reader to find those deeper meanings. The reader is caught up with Alice in trying to find a sense of meaning with being tossed from one contradiction to the next. It's a fight we all go through growing up.

cont'd

[Anonymous No.3535980]

>>3535954
From Chapter 5; see if you can relate to it about having a change of personal conviction. There is an attractive, silly, dancing with the back and forth dialogue, but a bizarre conversation with a deeper meaning none the less.

"Who are *you*?" said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, Sir, just at present--at least I know who I *was* when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain yourself!"

"I ca'n't explain *myself*, I'm afraid, Sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."

"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.

'I'm afraid I ca'n't put it more clearly," Alice replied, very politely, "for I ca'n't understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing."

"It isn't," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet," said Alice; "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?"

"Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps *your* feelings may be different," said Alice; "all I know is, it would feel very queer to *me*."

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are *you*?"

[Anonymous No.3535982]

>>3535889
the public majority has great taste in literature; modern library's top 100, goodreads average ratings, time magazine list, etc. i love the great gatsby, just read it for the first time this week.

[Anonymous No.3536878]

>>3534397

Yeah, this. I mean I suppose I understand that you need to make the book feel vivid. But fuck when they go into any detail at all about sex really, I cannot help but imagine them sitting in their study writing this scene, and them slowly getting an erection.

[Anonymous No.3536890]

>>3535828
James Joyce trainging wheels