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/lit/ - Literature

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4288674 No.4288674[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

"Literature overall is a very flabby and slouchy art form in general, you need to sit on your ass like a useless piece of shit most of the time in order to do it. It's an artform of rest rather than war. Literature as an art or aesthetic experience is the province of the crippled, honestly to be fair. If you seriously prefer the most artfully and sophisticated description in the world about sex, eating, climbing a mountain, over actually doing any of those things you are probably crippled in the first place. Nothing wrong with that, and that's why literature is good for these people, but not all of us are like that." - deep & edgy

>> No.4288678
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4288678

Not all /lit/ types are fat fucks. It just depends on how much you eat.

>> No.4288682

>>4288674
He was abandoned to a life of literary pleasure because he couldn't do any of the things he mentions. His resentment stems from feeling empty of actual life experiences, so he lashes out at the one thing he could hold onto.

>> No.4288684

...and now he's dead. Check. Mate.

>> No.4288715

>>4288674

I liked that quote, it is very real, even if it hurts the pride of many writers and readers (and they deserve to have they're pride hurt, especially writers, many of whom seem to think that what they are doing is the most important thing in the world).

Nothing beats the sensation, the touch, color and smell of a bath at the sea, or the feeling of your genitals inside a girl, or the touch of warm and tender breasts on your chest, or the taste of a good barbecue, the icy flavor of a cold beer.

That's the reason why I like metaphors so much: they don't only describe something, they actually create things that did not exist before Let me explain:

Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

Here the abstraction that are virtues are transformed into angels, and the faculty of being able to be admired and respected by other are the "trumpet-tongue" that they posses; the most striking metaphor, however, is the transformation of another abstraction, pity, into a fragile and innocent new-born babe: this is not the description of a sunset, of a flower field, of a person - it is the creation of something that did not existed in the world till the time that Shakespeare wrote about it.

I don't think that OP's quote, however, is by Bloom. Bloom has a very immature and mystic vision of literature and writing (typical of the ones that dont write): he sees it more as some religious act than as the craft that it is, a craft that you can learn and that you must practice.

>> No.4288730

>>4288715
>That's the reason why I like metaphors so much: they don't only describe something, they actually create things that did not exist before.

Another example of the power of metaphor to create things that never existed before. Look at this:

>"The weasel of the eclipse grabbed the sun and, after piercing its magma shell, sucked the warm and tasty light, drinking the honey of this immense fiery egg yolk"

Have you ever seen the sun as an egg, darkness and the eclipse as an weasel? This is not mere description, this is the creation of new images in the universe, the forcing of the eyes to see things as they never have been seen before. Good metaphors have this strange quality of always shock the reader with novelty, with unheard images of the universe.

>> No.4288731

>>4288715
The passage you use as an example is basically the best passage you could have chosen. That thing is ethereal.

And OP is quoting some tripfag, not Bloom

>> No.4288771
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4288771

Isn't that true for any art form?


Let's try that

>"Painting overall is a very flabby and slouchy art form in general, you need to sit on your ass like a useless piece of shit most of the time in order to do it. It's an artform of rest rather than war. Painting as an art or aesthetic experience is the province of the crippled, honestly to be fair. If you seriously prefer the most artfully and sophisticated painting in the world about sex, eating, climbing a mountain, over actually doing any of those things you are probably crippled in the first place. Nothing wrong with that, and that's why paintings are good for these people, but not all of us are like that."

Yep....

Same goes for movies or any other form of visual or descriptive art.
The only artform that isn't all like that is music. And yet there are genres in music that again go very much with the scheme above.


Sounds like that guy is full'a'shit to me.

>> No.4289051

>>4288674
>Thinking deeply with the aid of literature is bad.

Do you not sit and look at art? Do you not look up its meaning? Do you not sit at a desk and solve equations?

All forms of art require sitting, long periods of time to think etc.

>> No.4289057

>>4288771

except that definitely isn't true of making a movie, acting, sculpting, dancing etc

>> No.4289118

>>4288674
is that written horribly on purpose?

>> No.4290492

could not agree more

>> No.4290530

>>4288715
Bloom says the very opposite of this.

>> No.4290534

I always hate how fat I feel when I sleep and read a book. It's the most physically passive art form save film/TV.

>> No.4290539

>>4288674
>Not supplementing your life with books

Why do weirdos like this fella think you either live your life or you read? Is this some sort of projection? Is this "trolling"? I'm confused because I enjoy sex, eating, mountain-climbing as well as reading artful descriptions of all of these things.

>> No.4290551

>>4290539
I'm pretty sure this was deep & edgy's way of telling us he was a cripple.

>> No.4290566

>>4288674
makes sense to me

if you really want to learn something, read nonfiction

>> No.4290570

>>4290530
Fuck Bloom and his right-wing agenda. Dinosaurs like him will be gone sone and if I recall he is pretty hated for being a sleaze bag irl towards his female students.

>> No.4290573

>>4288674
Also, I got kicked out of a Lit class once. We were discussing a passage in Dante's Inferno I believe where he is climbing a mountain. I suggested that we could better understand things by traveling the one hour drive to nearby Mt. Hood and actually climbing the mountain than by reading a pedantic description of it. Well, not kicked out, but the prof. went to the department chair and I was given a stern talking to later that week and during class was politely told to shut my piehole by the teacher,.

>> No.4290579

>>4288678

barely any are. avid gamers are probably the only entertainment demographic where a good portion are overweight.

>>4290570

>left wing
>insults him for being old

I thought we were all equal? check your age privilege

>> No.4290611

>>4290579
Dinosaur in the sense of his ideas being reactionary and outdated, not physically old.

>> No.4290643

>>4288674
Books are people talking to each other, and that is far above any bodily experience. Society and commingling, which books are the heart of, is the greatest experience of life, and the one which all the others serve, as they become topics of conversation and shared enthusiasm.
Someone who wants to share the joy of the experience they just had to another person, talks, or writes, in a way that attempts to express it.

>> No.4290648

>>4288715
The quote is jimmies rustling though because it presumes that the literary life and real life are mutually exclusive which is bloody horseshit. Hemmingway and the Beat Gen (which alot here probably don't like) knew how to live and combine it with their prose at the same time. Even DFW whose considered a high and mighty autist here still isn't a completely anti-social wreck; probably more social than the people here.

Dedication to an artform itself I consider worthy of respect. Not a lot of people are disciplined enough or broken enough to commit to a single activity and eliminate all else in life but that sole activity. I think a craft that you dedicate yourself is religious in a way so I don't see that as mutually exclusive either. There's moments in creation and writing that I feel completely alive but in a different way from social experiences and social events. I don't think any one experience is actually greater than the other but both hold equal sway in life.

>> No.4290735

I for one mostly prefer reading and writing over living. Most of my remarkable life experiences, like my first kiss, my first time with a girl, my first time doing drugs, my first time on the beach, were thoroughly disappointing. Reading and writing about such things felt much better.

Nothing really beats reading a good poem. It's a much deeper experience than actually living what is described, and much more beautiful. In this sense I am Platonic, in the sense that I believe nothing is as beautiful as the idea of beauty itself and, I quote, ''poetry is music that is made with ideas''.

>> No.4290754

>>4290735
Well I should say, actually writing a poem can beat reading one. Fantasising and creating are euphoric experiences, and I believe they're some of the best in life.

>> No.4290772

>>4290754
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God's blessing, but because I am enlightened by my own poetry.

>> No.4290773

>>4288674
Is it just nostalgia or have the tripfags around here really lost their class since D&E left.

>> No.4291172

>>4289057
>except that definitely isn't true of making a movie, acting, sculpting, dancing etc

Well it is true for writing a movie.
For making the story board.
Designing outfits etc.
Acting is just one part of the thing and even there the critique still holds since those actors aren't really experiencing those things.
Neither are you if you watch a movie.

Same goes for the other arts (>implying dancing is an art lel). For every artform there is a phase where you have to sit on your dumb ass and think what it's going to be.
Otherwise it will very likely become garbage.
You know... like almost fucking everything in the history of mankind that has been done without any planing.


So it still works out and the quote is still a heap of shit.

>> No.4291186

I disagree. I don't read to live viscerally through experiences, I read to gain insight into the human condition, be introduced to new ways of thinking, or reaffirm shit that's been intuitively stuck in my mind.

>> No.4291197

>>4290570
It's funny how those who speak loudest against antisemitism are very often misogynists themselves.

see: Harold Bloom, Levinas

>> No.4291201

>>4290735
so you're a bad kisser and therefore literature is more vital than life?

stop projecting your deficiencies onto the human condition, you'd love reading proust

>> No.4291206

>>4290773
No, you're absolutely right.

>> No.4291222

>>4290570
you realize that you are talking about allan bloom in half your post, right

>> No.4291662

>>4291222
I can't tell them apart because I am retarded.

>> No.4291695

>>4290573
You sound like a cunt.

>> No.4291696

Bloom hits the nail on the head just about everytime...sorry lit crit haters w small dicks and inferior art genes U JUST DONT "GET" THE CANON. it wasnt written for u :)

>> No.4291699

>>4288674

It's sort of like... I remember first understanding love, but I don't remember first feeling love. The understanding came from a book, the first time I felt it it was the "real" experience. But the memory of laying in a hammock in the summertime, being twelve and for the absolute first time in my fucking life understanding that love might not be as gross as my prepubescent brain had thought was fucking mindblowing.

Bloom, being a autistic anti-writer fuck like he is, probably doesn't fucking get that injecting heroin could potentially be disappointing, but a perfect verse about it is satisfying for ever.

>> No.4291702

>>4291695
Nah, just Jewish and angst and gay. Very Mencken-esque

>> No.4291717

>>4291201
your first kiss is hardly indicative of how good a kisser you are

>> No.4291813

> there are people in this thread who think Harold Bloom said OP's quote
> there are people in this thread who don't know who deep & edgy is

>> No.4292396

>>4288674
I'm 5'11", 135lbs and often fail to eat because I feel as if it is a waste of my time. How do I fit into all this?