/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3618516]

>tfw literary life

[Anonymous No.3618534]

>tfw unemployed white-trash

[Anonymous No.3618552]

This is literary life.

[Anonymous No.3618556]

>>3618534
You should cultivate style, taste and a liking for books.

[Anonymous No.3618557]

And this is literary life.

[Anonymous No.3618558]

This

[Anonymous No.3618562]

And this

[Anonymous No.3618572]

>that feel when sitting on the balcony drinking beer and reading books watching your soul crushed neighbors come home from work

[Anonymous No.3618575]

Here: Beethoven working.

Not /lit/, but this is a real artist life.

[Anonymous No.3618576]

Thinly veiled NEET thread.

>>>/jp/

[Anonymous No.3618577]

Here

[Anonymous No.3618582]

It is also much research and careful reading.

[Anonymous No.3618592]

>>3618572
Why does everybody think worl is soul crushing? Coming back from work with a spring in your step, or going out to work with a spring in your step is not that uncommon.

I remember running out to jump on the back of the wagon to ride up to the fields on the flats when iwas a kid, even though I knew i'd be fighting sweetbees in the cane patch all morning, and I still go out to the office with that same relish, even though I'll be editing somebody's dismal attempts at coherent journalism all day.

There's a lot of us that like work, pretty much any kind of work, and writing is work too. If you don't like work you'll probably never be much of a writer.

[Anonymous No.3618593]

>tfw low culture life

[Anonymous No.3618607]

>>3618592
>There's a lot of us that like work, pretty much any kind of work, and writing is work too. If you don't like work you'll probably never be much of a writer.

Bravo. I am the guy who was posting the pics of all that artists working and striving. This is the real life of an artist: a lot of work.

[Anonymous No.3618608]

>>3618572
>tfw you go to bed at 06:30 at hearing other people scramble to their cars and you sigh and crawl even deeper under your covers

[Anonymous No.3618613]

>>3618592

[Anonymous No.3618614]

>>3618592
protip: always assume whoever you're talking to on 4chan is clinically depressed

[Anonymous No.3618618]

>>3618592
>>3618607
Writing is only work in the sense of doing something that requires effort. You can't simply throw any dedicated effort in the same basket as mandatory wage slavery.

[Anonymous No.3618651]

>>3618608
>>3618618


guys? unless you're lazy or your boss and co workers are assholes, most work is fun. I get up at five to go to work, which is fine. I get home around seven, which is cool. What I do all day is in no sense mandatory, and in no sense slavery. I long ago had enough saved to retire and work a couple days a week if i felt like it.

and guys?

most people like to work.

thats why people write books in their spare time that they know will never make them a wage that will pay for their time and effort. They like the process.

it's like saying: why have so much sex? you know kids are terrible.

sometimes it's the process, not the outcome, that motivates you.

[Anonymous No.3618653]

>>3618651
i get the point, but did you have to write like you're writing a fucking commercial for pepsi or something. it's so "motivational" that it makes one sceptical.

[Anonymous No.3618687]

>>3618651
I'm fine with you and most people working and enjoying working, friend. I just utterly despise any form of forced and planned activity. Especially if it's horrible activity. And work, to me, is the most horrible thing there is. The fact that you can't just not show up whenever you feel like it makes it an obligation. All employment is obedience is slavery and all self-employment is business is sycophancy. it's one great theatre of cruelty. In my experience the life of leisure is the only life that can be lived with any true dignity.

[Anonymous No.3618691]

>>3618653


ha!

Try the New, Improved, EMPLOYMENT!

Now with sixty percent less security, thirteen percent more taxes and totally benefit free!!!

Why sit around your house playing games when you could be WORKING? Do it now before a machine starts doing it for you!

(warning: may contain moronic management, unrealistic scheduling and limited advancement opportunities)

Still with NO SATISFACTION or SENSE OF ACCOMPLISMENT!!!!

sorry, I'm the guy that likes working, but I couldn't resist the joke.

[Anonymous No.3618710]

>>3618691
That's a more apt view than your former one.

[Anonymous No.3618711]

>>3618687
But assuming you aren't independently wealthy your life of pleasure exists off of the charity of others, can one truly enjoy leisure with the ever present sword of Damocles over one's head?

[Anonymous No.3618730]

Do you have to be poor to lead a literary life?

[Anonymous No.3618736]

>try getting a menial job
>become alienated from the means of production
>try getting a career job
>it's just hucksterism and economically exploiting the working class
>give up and start living the literary life

[Anonymous No.3618741]

>>3618711
Yes. In fact I probably feel more secure in my little government allowance than most people do in their jobs.

[Anonymous No.3618743]

>>3618730
Either poor or rich.

[Anonymous No.3618744]

>>3618730
No, but you have to be unhappy.

[Anonymous No.3618746]

>>3618736

[Anonymous No.3618747]

>>3618743
>>3618744
Oh good, I qualify. I'm going to write a poem now -- it better be good.

[Anonymous No.3618759]

>>3618592
>There's a lot of us that like work, pretty much any kind of work,

Not all things which can be considered 'work' are 'work' in the mind of those who do it.

Stacking supermarket shelves may be 'work' but how can one be satisfied carrying out such repetitive menial labour tasks? It's soul crushing.

Farming, or growing your own vegetable patch may be considered 'work' as well but it's satisfaction and the joy one gets from doing it nulls the concept that it was difficult.

You do know the saying: ''give a man a job he loves and he will never work and he will never work a day in his life'', it's the same thing. All perspective.

[Anonymous No.3618762]

>>3618691

[Anonymous No.3618773]

>>3618759
The problem with that "just find a job you like" attitude is the implied belief that there is a likable job out there for everyone. It falls in the same category as the strange belief that there is a fitting partner out there for everyone, or even 'the one'. It's all a sort of optimistic faith based worldview that never gets consciously adhered to as such but nevertheless functions as a belief. Another good example of this is successful people's advice on success, some of them saying that everyone has the potential to make it if they blablabla. It's a dumb generalisation. What works for one person doesn't work for others, and for some people no job at all works best.

[Anonymous No.3618793]

>>3618759
therein , in your first example, is where we completely disagree.

When i was in kindergarten and they satred playing prtend jobs in the little play area, I thought the best job to have would be the guy that refills the bakery shelves when they're emptied. i wanted to be the one that took the loaves out and arranged them so there were no gaps and put the fresh ones on the back and the older ones on the front. It seemed to me an ideal job. possibly because it didn;'t involve anything a kindergartner couldn't do.

Never got that specific job, but i've had jobs like it.

Nothing soul crushing about them.

I'm not saying that evverybody stocking grocery shelves wouldn't be doing something else if he could. probably lots of people would rather be fishing or hiking or practicing skateboard tricks, but it doesn't destroy their soul to do it a few hours a day. and it makes them the money to buy lures and hiling boots and kneepads or whatever.

also, it sort of seems like the perfect job for the "literary life" since you get all your exercise at work and don't have to waste time at the gymn. you can just read and write and such with all the rest of your day.

[Anonymous No.3618812]

>>3618793
glass is half full, eh?

FUCK OFF.

[Anonymous No.3618831]

How do you guys finance the 'literary life'. Do you go on the dole? Parents? Inheritance?

[Anonymous No.3618837]

>>3618812
>>3618812
angry tumblr kid is angry.

[Anonymous No.3618892]

>>3618831
yup

[Kekkafuza !IDCVJudge6 No.3618914]

>>3618793
I agree. For example, being a shelver at a local library seems like a nice little job. Nothing soul crushing about that.

[Anonymous No.3618936]

>>3618831
Inheritance. That feel when a milli a milli a milli a milli a milli

[Anonymous No.3618945]

>>3618812
oh, come on. it's not about optimism or pessimism or looking on the bright side. having a job does a lot for you, even if you don't get paid:

it keeps you on a regular schedule, which improves your health, your mood and your mental acuity.

it gives you exercise, human contact and experience.

it teaches you skills, and how to interact with people casually and professionally. it teaches self-discipline, restraint, courtesy, patients and conistency, all of which should be very usueful to someone trying to do something as strenuous, time consuming, focussed and long term as writing

[Anonymous No.3618955]

>>3618759
My job actually involves stacking supermarket shelves and I prefer it to NEETdom. 14 hours of 4chan does soul-crushing as well as any menial job. Also, evening sky depresses me, so I like to avoid looking at it if possible.

[Anonymous No.3618961]

>mfw NEETs sit around in their parent's basement all day, occasionally read a book and call it the 'literary life'

[Anonymous No.3618960]

>>3618831
Nobody here lives a literary life. Just a bunch of middle-class people day dreaming about being an intellectual.

[Anonymous No.3618967]

>>3618831
You read and write, ya wanker.

[Anonymous No.3618980]

Menial tasks aren't soul crushing, sitting around all day and thinking about how unhappy and bored and lonely you are is soul crushing. Making small talk with customers and pretending to be charismatic and interesting is soul crushing.

[Anonymous No.3618982]

I get having a job. I don't need one now, still being in education, but after I get out of it I'll get one - if just for something to do. What I don't want is a career. When I was growing up, my mum worked at a school 8-6 every day, and then spent all evening every evening doing work for it. My dad worked high up at a hospital in london, hundreds of miles away from his family and what he enjoyed doing (hill running).

That's not life.

[Anonymous No.3618989]

>>3618516
What do you believe that term means OP?

[Anonymous No.3618990]

I don't think I could ever live the NEETerary life. I can't stand on principle anything I task myself to do. If I dedicated myself to just reading and writing, I'd tire of it fast. Better to make it the rare luxury I don't always get to enjoy, in that way I'll always be seeking it out and being enthusiastic about it.

[Anonymous No.3619004]

>>3618960

I have been ousted.

[Anonymous No.3619012]

>>3618687
and you measured your skull to make sure, right?

[Anonymous No.3619034]

>>3618955
same boat dog, I am liquor and wine manager at a safeway and while I wouldn't consider the work itself rewarding, the balance it has given to my life is a godsend.

I was never more depressed then when I did not have a schedule. seems to be a lot of the /lit/ezens problems.

[Anonymous No.3619045]

>>3618687
but don't you get bored being a parasite?

[Anonymous No.3619066]

>>3618955
>and I prefer it to NEETdom

What you chose to spend your time on when you were a NEET was your own business. Those 14 hours daily browsing 4chan could have just as easily been devoted to cultivating skills and hobbies, reading, exercising and so forth.

[Anonymous No.3619067]

>>3618961

It's a good life.

[Anonymous No.3619069]

What type of facial hair do you have /lit/? Having facial hair is an important part of the literary life. Right now mine is pretty much like Gendo from Evangelion but I'm gonna shave off the part that's not the sideburns because I remember liking how my sideburns used to look.

[Anonymous No.3619072]

>>3619045

>implying being NEET is mutually inclusive with being a parasite

[Anonymous No.3619134]

>>3618575
That is such an awesome painting. Do you know who it is by? My google-fu has failed me.

[Anonymous No.3619151]

>>3618572
>soul crushed neighbors come home from work
>Implying soul-crushing labor isn't choice artistic conflict
>Implying one of your neighbors isn't, right now, crafting masterful short-stories based on his own experiences and insecurities while you sit on your balcony and get drunk

[Anonymous No.3619167]

>>3619069
>implying i can grow decent facial hair
>implying i'll still be in my prime when i can

The best writing is done at 14, bitches!

[Anonymous No.3619168]

>>3619069

>Gendo beard

right on. most people need a mustache also to pull that off though

[Anonymous No.3619172]

>>3619066
That is true. But I have no self-control. Since I'd end up sucked into 4chan 9 times out of 10, I thought I'd break the monotony and get money doing so. Also, I get to practise my Chinese with shoppers.

[Anonymous No.3619181]

storytime. about the best "literary life" period I've had so far.

I was just turned twenty three, my ex girlfriend and her new girlfriend had bought an old farm and needed somebody to turn the barn into a house for them.

I volunteered since i had a semester of independant study in grad school and a summer off, and they would pay me a little and keep me in supplies while I lived on site and did the work.
I set up a tent in the barnyard, hooked up an old stove to a propane bottle, put a potbelly stove in the stripping room for cold or rainy days and had a futon and chair, lamps and a big box of books in the loft, with two power outlets from a hookup off he power pole.

routine was: get up, clean up, eat a granola bar and work on siding and structural stuff all morning, then break in the heat of the day, read and eat lunch, then start something cooking and work on wiring and plumbing in the evenings till dark, then read and write. had audiobooks for when i worked and got NPR on the radio.

I would simmer chili or make soup or bake bread and stuff that takes a long time but doesn't need to be watched constantly and just work.

i had about six hours a day of physical work, six or eight reading and writing and lots of exercise and good food. also made friends with stray cats and the Lowes delivery driver who was a cute little dyke. On Saturday i went into town (Berea, Ky) and there was usually a band or something going on at the college or the coffee houses and I could bring friends back to the site and have bonfires and swim in the pond and cookout. Got a lot of reading and writing done. It was a great summer. You guys should consider that when you decide whether to work or not: there are some jobs that actually make it easier to be creative.

[Anonymous No.3619183]

>>3619151
This. Most of these pictures or writers living the "literary life" are older men who've gained lots of experience in life through war, work, travel etc.

None of these writers wrote anything great while just staying at home as young men not experiencing life. You want the "literary life"? Go out and find things to write about first so when you're at the age of these men you'll be paid to just write.

Being 20 something with no life experiences, just staying home, means you have nothing worthwhile to write about. Don't compare yourselves to Tolstoy, Shakepeare and Hemingway.

[Anonymous No.3619196]

>>3619181
Oh god, this sounds like the most perfect time ;-; I wish I can experience something like it one day.

[Anonymous No.3619200]

>>3619183
Bullshit. If you are born with the writer's eye there is nothing stopping you. You just need to read, and write. Read and write. Do enough of those two things and you will succeed.

Living an actual life is something that is good for the soul and something a writer probably needs to be happy outside of his or her work but it is not essential to the work.

[Anonymous No.3619234]

>>3618651
>unless you're lazy or your co-workers and boss are assholes, most work is fun

You sound like someone who's never had to be employed at a shit job, and your first employment was some internship in college.

[Anonymous No.3619426]

>>3619200
>he thinks a pupa in a cocoon has interesting things to say about life

[Anonymous No.3619459]

>>3619426
A preoccupation with anything other than learning your craft is the mark of a procrastinator. Keep telling yourself you are learning "vital life experience" while you toil in a shitty job, safe in the knowledge that one day, totally, you are so gonna make a novel about all of this.

Or, you know, you could stop putting it off and LEARN THE CRAFT.

[Saucey !!rCUKADYmg0+ No.3619490]

>>3618773
Quoted that, ty anon.

[Anonymous No.3619497]

>>3619459
>>3619459
>>3619459
ah, see people like you are killing lit.

the craft. like i want to read a perfectly edited, fucking revised to shit story.

I wanna read about some weird sexy violent shit that makes me think about life. the writers who have experience weird sexy violent shit are the ones who are going to be able to tell those stories.

[Anonymous No.3619525]

>>3619490
For what purposes?

[Anonymous No.3619585]

>>3618793
I just take a two hour walk in the morning. No need to engage in menial labour for eight hours a day to not to have to go to the gym or any of that nonsensical reasoning. Working for eight hours a day also kills all my creativity. It's nothing but detrimental.

>>3618982
>if just for something to do.
You must be a miserable person if you need employment to fill your life.

>>3618989
A life of leisure with a dedication towards the literary arts. Often entailing both reading and writing. Bookish bohemianism.

>>3619012
Is this a craniology joke to refer to my ideas as antiquated? Otherwise I don't understand.

>>3619045
The only difference is that I have less money and more time. I like time more than money generally, so I'm doing just fine. I rarely get bored, in fact often I'm very interested in and excited about things.

>>3619497
Pretty sure proper lumpenproles and aristocrats know more about weird sexy violence than office clerks, friend.

[Saucey !!rCUKADYmg0+ No.3619591]

>>3619525
For when whenever someone says "Just go to school on what you love to do and it would be like if it is not working"

[Anonymous No.3619619]

>>3619183
This is such a tiresome notion. One does not need a job to experience life, and most who have a job experience less of life because of it. You seem to think that not having a job means watching TV in the suburbs forever without ever realising it could mean living in the attic of a repurposed asylum down town and walk the streets at 4 am on a monday when the deranged come out to play.

Most jobs offer nothing except for wages and keep people so grounded to a schedule and so tired and weary that there is no proper life to be had apart from it.

[Anonymous No.3619653]

>>3619234
my first job was housing tobacco

[Anonymous No.3619669]

>>3619619
I agree, but I'd also say that most people can't survive comfortably without a job, which is presumably why they work

[Anonymous No.3619681]

>>3619653
Was there a rotund gentle hearted Cuban matron reading you classic literature?

[Anonymous No.3619686]

>Work for the army reserves, officer. Only there a few days of the week.
>OCD habits and obsessive fixation on a number of projects I have going on.
>Papers, notes, crumpled torn pages and coffee stains.
>Cigar smoke, empty whiskey bottles, the same bowl/plate and cutlery with leftovers of a different meal tonight.
>6am and the new sun peeking through the blinds, time for coffee and breakfast over the news.
>Don't pay for cable, rentals, fast cars or technological toys for adults.
>Still go to the pub with some friends every week and have a drink.
>Sometimes there's a woman, sometimes not.

I love my life, self-actualization is the pinnacle of the human experience.

[Anonymous No.3619706]

>>3619686
Doing it right.

[Anonymous No.3619712]

>>3619585
You aren't a leech?

[Anonymous No.3619730]

>>3619712
I am. Why would you think I'm not?

[Anonymous No.3619732]

>>3619730
You seem very pleased with yourself, that's why.

[Anonymous No.3619736]

>>3619686

that sounds really nice, keep it up anon!

[Anonymous No.3619738]

just shooting off into the internet inbetween masturbation sessions, thinking about writing, typing maybe 0.00001% of what i think of writing.

[Anonymous No.3619747]

>>3619732
I am pleased with myself precisely because I don't work. To be honest, I would prefer a big fat inheritance or something, but the dole works just fine.

[Anonymous No.3619750]

>>3619706
>>3619736
Funny thing is people will call that pathetic and lonely. In the end your own happiness is what matters.

[Anonymous No.3619752]

>>3619747
I wish you didn't find all work so disgusting. I wish you felt some sort of shame from leeching other people's money.

[Anonymous No.3619760]

>>3619752
Why do you wish that? Tell me about your protestant work ethic and/or utilitarianism.

[Anonymous No.3619778]

>>3619760
I don't like the idea that it is okay to leech off money taken unwillingly from other people, unless you have no other option.
It's not the protestant work ethic or utilitarianism. Just take care of yourself instead of forcing other people to do it.

I even get the feeling that you might hold similar feelings, except towards people who do work to support themselves.

[Anonymous No.3619799]

>>3619585
but what do you do all day, bro

and what is your long term plan, bro

[Anonymous No.3619827]

>>3619778
But it's not unwillingly. I live in a country with representative democracy and the allowance I collect is sanctioned by the populace via a system their representatives instated. I don't commit fraud or anything, I receive benefits according to the book. I'm completely legit. Also, modern society needs a certain percentage of unemployed people to function. Not giving them money merely leads to crime and riots.

You could of course not be into the whole representative democracy thing, but if that is the problem a few people on welfare are the least of your problems. In fact, a few people on welfare should probably be the least of your problems anyway. Your concept of "taking care of yourself" is also questionable since it supposes some sort of way of legitimately carrying your weight without being a burden to others which a lot of people would argue is per definition impossible under current circumstances. If you are concerned with welfare collectors in terms of justice or fairness, you could better aim your arrows at the general system of exploitation our global economics function under. If you are taking the ethical approach, welfare collectors, even welfare frauds, aren't such a big deal. In fact I would say that my idle life on a little allowance is less ethically problematic than the lives of people who earn decent livings, if I were inclined to do so.

[Anonymous No.3619859]

>>3619799
Wake up, shower, cook and eat a few times a day, manage household, buy groceries, read, write, enjoy coffee and tea and occasional booze, spend time with amiable people, listen to beautiful music, watch good films and tv shows, meditate, sleep. sit in the sun, smoke, engage in conversation with people, appreciate urban and natural surroundings, get my flaneur on in general.

I plan to keep on doing some variation of this. What else is there to do?

[Anonymous No.3619871]

>>3619234
TIPS FOR GETTING LESS STRESSED AT A SHIT JOB

>Keep your head down and be quiet most of the time like the Mexican workers do.
>Say yes sir/ma'am to any orders you're given.
>If you get contradictory orders, follow the one given by the superior.
>If the orders of of equal rank, follow the one you received last.
>Never blame your coworkers for anything, even if you have to redo someone else's poor work.
>Never talk about anyone behind their back.
>Don't take it personally when customers are angry with you or don't remember past encounters, realize that you're not an individual to them while you're in uniform.
>When teaching someone something, don't just tell them, have them do it. Then the trainees won't fuck up quite as much.

Lastly, realize that whatever you're doing at this job, it's of absolutely no consequence, and at the end of the week you get paid and can spend your money on furthering yourself.

[Anonymous No.3619884]

>tfw /lit/ is filled with hopeless romantics who write not because they enjoy it or because they want to create or change something artistic, but because they're obsessed with the delusion of a certain lifestyle made up by dandies and failed artists in Paris

[Anonymous No.3619887]

>>3619859

>What else is there to do?
cultivate a passion
build a family
volunteer / charity work

[Anonymous No.3619895]

>>3619827
I'm fine with you as long as you don't consider yourself superior on the grounds that they work and you don't.
Looks like you do though.

[Anonymous No.3619901]

>>3619887
But I am already passionate about being a flaneur, enjoying the arts and maybe contributing to it a bit. The latter I can take or leave. Building a family is perhaps the one thing I would hate more than work, and volunteer or charity work is, well, work. I have no desire to be useful, I'm too content being useless to be so inclined.

A bit of travel or moving location can be somewhat interesting to do all the things I mentioned against a different back drop, but that's about it.

[Anonymous No.3619906]

>>3619034
>ignoring the magnificent human drama occurring inside of your skull at any given time in favor of putting bottles on shelves

[Anonymous No.3619913]

>>3619183
>None of these writers wrote anything great while just staying at home as young men not experiencing life.

[Anonymous No.3619920]

>>3619895
I guess everyone feels his own way of life is the superior one, otherwise he wouldn't pursue it. Of course, different things might suit different people. If someone requires work to maximise happiness than by all means be my guest.

[Anonymous No.3619925]

When did /lit/ pick up the phrase NEET, I swear it wasn't used here a week ago

NEET NEET NEET NEET

Every fuckin thread

[Anonymous No.3619933]

>>3619925
It's apt.

[Anonymous No.3619937]

>>3619925
It's some Japanese term from an anime and you know how these things spread.

[Anonymous No.3619941]

>>3619937
It's not a Japanese term from an anime.
and fuck you that anime is great

[Anonymous No.3619944]

>>3619937
7/10

[Anonymous No.3619950]

>>3619134

Sorry, but I dont know. I once used it as wallpaper. Search Google Images for the words "Beethoven working" or "Beethoven composing." I also find this wonderful image: it shows the true essence of a great artist - a fanatical focus in his work, even late at night.

Interesting thing is researching the creative process of Beethoven: he made many, many drafts, wore a lot notebooks and reshaped his musical ideas hundreds of times - composition was not instantaneous and miraculous for him, it was a time consuming and laborious process. If you want to learn more, read "Beethoven and the Creative Process" by Barry Cooper. It's a great read.

[Anonymous No.3619961]

>>3619736
>>3619706
>>3619686

That sounds awful. I'd probably kill myself.

[Anonymous No.3619962]

>>3619937
It isn't a japanese term. You're thinking of Hikkimori.

[Anonymous No.3619966]

>>3619901
>passionate ... maybe ... a bit
your reality is belied by your own word choice. You are not passionate; any attempt to construe otherwise is a grave abuse of the word "passion." Saying you are passionate about being a flaneur is like saying you are passionate about being a glutton. You are essentially a bohemian. That does not mean you cannot be passionate about things, as many are, but you are not cultivating a passion. Many famous bohemians were also artists, poets, etc., because that is what bohemianism was about. You are merely a loafer, don't delude yourself.

[Anonymous No.3619969]

>>3619884

stop ;_;

[Anonymous No.3619972]

>>3619962
It didn't exist until Welcome to the NHK.

[Anonymous No.3619984]

>>3619134

I found out: it is the work "Beethoven at dawn in his study", by Rudolf Eichstaedt.

[Anonymous No.3619986]

>>3619966
Fair enough, I'm not really cultivating much of anything in the way you mean. Instead of further abuse I'll concede passion to you and take the bohemian and loafer you offered instead.

[Anonymous No.3619989]

>>3619151
>work more than half your waking hours on a soul-crushing job in a soul-crushing world
>write about the anxiety, paranoia, and insanity that job and world drives you toward
>well-received by fellow soul-crushed employed citizenry
>everybody goes back to work the next day

[Anonymous No.3619990]

>>3619972
A NEET or neet is a young person who is not in education, employment, or training. The acronym NEET was first used in the United Kingdom but its use has spread to other countries including Japan, China, and South Korea.

Knowledge of the word spread after it was used in a 1999 report by the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

No one doles like the Brits, m8

[Anonymous No.3620163]

>>3619681
Nothing like that. There is a barn, and a truck and seven or eight men and boys. The barn is unlit, except the light that come in through the cracks between the vertical slabs of unsanded white oak of which the barn was built of as much as a hundred years before, and the two doors. The sides of the barn are silver-grey from weather and the splinters have become as soft as wool. The roof is rusted sheet steel.
A typical barn pattern is cut to be four rails high. the highest rail is sixty feet from the dirt floor. Upon these rails the men stand. They are narrow rails, and round in cross section. the largest with the girth of a stovepipe. the frailest would fit in the end of a soup can. Some are nailed, some are not.

the sticks of tobacco are also rough-cut, handsplit oak. they are four feet long and bluntly tapered on each end. When the tobacco was cut, a conical metal spearhead as sharp as a knife was placed over on end and the other was thrust into the ground. Then the tobacco was chopped off at the ground with square bladed corn knives and the stalks, each about five feet or more tall and weighing ten pounds wet were raised and skillfully impaled onto these sticks until the stick was full, then the spear was removed and carried to the next stick and the process repeated.

these sticks were left to sun dry for a day or a week or as long as the weather held, then loaded onto the flat bed truck and driven to the barn.
this is the truck that the bottom man, the hander, stands on as he lofts the sticks upward. the man on the truck has the hardest job, but the safest. he must handle every stick, which even after drying can weigh as much as fifty pounds, over his head to the next man, who takes the end and lofts it onward, through the four rails to the very pinnacle of the barn roof.

there, in the dark and terrible heat, sixty feet above the floor, is the man with the simplest, and most dangerous job.

[Anonymous No.3620167]

>>3620163
He must place the sticks between the different levels of four foot wide rails to dry evenly. he must move back and forth walking on rails as narrow as his arm that often he cannot even see for the obscuring foliage and the darkness, and adjust, space, canter and fix the sticks in order. If he misses his step, or the rails tumble and drop him, he falls sixty feet through the air to the hard dirt floor. ...


um, sorry, got carried away. What interesting things do you NEET people do when you're not out working?

[Anonymous No.3620179]

>>3620167
Smoking.

[Anonymous No.3620206]

>>3620179
the guys in the barn mostly chew. smoking isnt that safe, normally, but occasionally if you stood on the truck and squinted up through the hanging leaves you.d catch a glimpse of the cherry on the tip of a hand-rolled OCB with a stuffing of Bull Durham.

[Anonymous No.3620225]

>>3620206
This elaborate description of being a 19th century proletarian isn't really enticing as you'd want it to be though.

[Anonymous No.3620256]

>>3620225
It's not niineteenth century. I'm not quite that old. and peasant is more accurate. The point is that i have something to write about, something that not everybody already knows and that involves people and events that would be hard to replicate or even learn about these days. Stuff like that is happening all the time, and it's fading away as things change faster and faster. You can stay in your room and experience the same environment everybody else does, and make the same observations on it. or you can go out and do shit and learn things. Then, you can write about them.

[Anonymous No.3620300]

>>3619990

I fucking know a guy who had a baby, unemployed and all, grew up in a council house. What happens? The council give him a house within two god damn weeks, paid for and everything. This cunt drives a land rover and gets high all the time and I'm working 40 hours a week and paying for this shit and likely countless others like him.

[Anonymous No.3620342]

I enjoy a good book but to cancel out the other experiences life has to offer for nothing but that would seem like a terrible waste to me. I switch careers every few years or so. I've been a bartender, a film director, a newspaper editor, a teacher and now I am content with a menial job the majority of you seem to despise stocking shelves. I like working because I like the system of honing and implementing my talents to help people around me, and using my earnings to do the things I like. I sail, go mountaineering, experiment with drugs, and love to travel. I've been to 14 countries so far and I hope yet to go to many more and try many new things.

Your literary life would be too mundane for me, rather I would incorporate it into my life into doses less than the entirety of the day. I've found keeping everything in moderation is the key to a happy life.

[Anonymous No.3620350]

>>3620206
Nice

[Anonymous No.3620372]

>>3620300

I live in the council flats, it's true,
but i wish i was just like the lot of you.
working and slaving each day for my bread,
with a cold stale pillow the rest my tired head.
It's true that I live pretty well off the dole,
but you know i'd wish for my life and soul
to be carrying timbers or turning the sod,
and doing what's right by man and god.

but alas! I lack the strength of limb.
the fleshly vigor and mortal vim,
to grunt and sweat and bear burdens betimes,
why I barely can carry a tune that rhymes!
I'm weak of wit, and I'm ailing in health,
so i must depend on the commonwealth.
to see to my needs and make sure of my keep,
though at times i'm sure it does cause me to weep,
as I wash my car, or watch my TV,
that the good folk round hear are so thoughful of me!
You can trust that you're all in my prayers every night!
Now before you go, kindly switch out the light,
and pass me a pint from the fridge jus there,
you can put it down by the easy chair.
Pass me the remote, I can manage the rest.
I've got thirty bob on the Ashes Test.

[Anonymous No.3620391]

>>3620342
I guess what it all comes down to is one's basic character. The life you describe seems tremendously tiresome to me. I'd rather go straight to the mad house.

Except for the walks in the mountains, I do like those.

[Anonymous No.3620402]

>>3620372

Poor guy all leechy and shit. Sucks to be him.

[Anonymous No.3620415]

How about your handwriting, /lit/? Do you use it?
Is it ugly or mediocre, and you wish to improve it, or is it already beautiful?

[Anonymous No.3620423]

>>3620415
>making new threads in threads

[Anonymous No.3620425]

>>3620415

Mine's like a cancer leaking out of me. I type with fire fingers though. I have no flow so editing stops my flow. You see the predicament?

[Anonymous No.3620482]

Literary life =/= NEET status.

Anyone worth their salt in the literary world has worked incredibly hard. Plato and Chaucer and Shakespeare and whomever you please were all dudes who got tired, went to the bathroom, etc. They just worked really, really hard. So the literary work consists in working hard. Even a dandy (probably the source of the general impression in this thread that the literary life is indulgence and caprice) like Oscar Wilde still worked very hard.

TL;DR -- The literary life is a life of hard work.

[Anonymous No.3620494]

>>3619459
>he thinks were suggesting to go work in an office as an accountant to gain life experience
>he thinks you can't hone your writing while living a proper full life

What's wrong with you?

[Anonymous No.3620501]

>>3619859

You're just some dude who smokes cigarettes and lurks /lit/ in his apartment. You aren't living a literary life. You're rotting away.

[Anonymous No.3620511]

what book should I read next?
options are:
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain
Murakami - IQ84
Rudyard Kipling - Kim
Michael Crichton - Lost World

disregard possible pleb levels, these are my only options

[Anonymous No.3620538]

>>3619937

NEET is actually a British acronym used to describe those Not in Employment, Education, or Training.

It caught on and spread as a term now used in other countries.

[Anonymous No.3620542]

>>3620482
Sing ho! for the life of the literary man.
who sits at his desk with a red bull can
and his laptop open and his fly undone.
beating fiercely at his craft till the long day's done!
Sing hi for the life of the scholar, true,
with his muscles soft as the morning dew,
and his eyes blood shot and his beard untrimmed,
there is no petty labor for the likes of him!
no he'll think great thoughts, like the bards of ages past.
while his neck-whiskers flourish and his doughy ass,
swells beyond the bounds of his easy chair
and he takes to his couch till they find him there,
with his final words on his cheeto stained lips
and his tattered sweat pants stretching round his hips,
and the first three pages of his efforts on the floor,
(in another twenty years we might have had three more.)
But alas, all we get in this unforgiving age,
is a short obit on his facebook page,
and a grave and a stone and an obituary note,
about twice as long as anything he ever wrote.

[Anonymous No.3620549]

>>3620300

Kill him and write a story about it. Should make for good source material as well as being an experience to gain from.

You could be like Dostoevsky killing the landlady and within your mind you contemplate the abuse of social welfare and its place in contemporary society.

[Anonymous No.3620578]

>>3620549

Sounds like a great idea bud!

Only he's the son of a women I work with and they're soppy as hell. She needs him.

Second of all, I'm on page 14 and you're a bastard even if it isn't necessarily plot driven.

[Anonymous No.3620611]

>>3620482
>rimbaud in charge of hard work

[Anonymous No.3621194]

>>3619738
Hey, we have similar writing habits!

[Anonymous No.3622241]

>>3620372
>>3620542

okay, i'd be interested in knowing if the guys who wrote these are living the "literary life" lounging around all day, or if they have regular jobs or are in school. These are the best things in the thread and I would think their author(s) would have the best perspective on the advantages or disadvantages of NEETness, literary wise.

[Anonymous No.3622528]

>>3618961
I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[Anonymous No.3622724]

William Burroughs lived a textbook example of the literary life.

[Anonymous No.3622904]

>>3619925
what

[RomanianRichard No.3622953]

Photo's from about a month back, but this is more or less my day-to-day.
Work about 3-4 days a week and spend any and all free time reading and writing. Still don't see myself as living the literary life.

[Anonymous No.3622975]

>read through thread
>'hey guys work is fun :)'
Congratulations, you're a perfect worker-ant.
Some of us are not.

[Anonymous No.3622998]

psh I work in a bookstore and get free books everyday in addition to wages

[Anonymous No.3623002]

>fetishise books
>lelelel the literary life

[RomanianRichard No.3623003]

>>3622975
You rack disciprine.

I don't think anyone is saying it's easy to develop working habits, it took me close to two years to get into the groove of writing everyday. Ultimately it's taking your naturally addictive qualities of being a human being and turning them towards productive endeavors.

[Anonymous No.3623009]

>>3622975
You'll get there with a little application, and the self-control and discipline it will add to your routine will greatly enhance the quality and volume of your writing.
Just set a schedule, stick to it and make it part of your lfe. It doesn't matter if it pays or not. working a regular shedule on something will do wonders for you.

[Anonymous No.3623051]

>>3619913
obviously you've never read a biography of proust. or probably anything he himself wrote.

[Anonymous No.3623107]

himmelhoch jauchzend und zum Tode betrubt

[Anonymous No.3623137]

How does one achieve literary life, /lit/? Taken from the perspective of a young adult who has no ties in anything yet, college or otherwise