/lit/ Approved Readings

[Anonymous No.4516062]

I'd like to get into reading a bit more than I have been these past few years. I've seen a few names lurking around /lit/ and thought I'd ask which are worth the time of buying:

>The Prince

>The Count of Monte Cristo

>Dante's Inferno

>American Psycho

>Lolita

[Anonymous No.4516064]

The Prince isn't particularly good, mostly just rambling and outdated ideas (some, not all). I like Machiavelli though he seemed like a cool guy.

[CalleBorjesson !4qjq0nOdXk No.4516067]

[Anonymous No.4516068]

Monte Cristo, Psycho, and Lolita are all worth it.

Haven't read Prince, and I have negative 0000000 interest in Dante personally

[Anonymous No.4516069]

>>4516062
I'm currently studying Dante in original Italian. I'd say it's worth it. A pillar of Italian literature. Pretty enjoyable and fun to read.

[Anonymous No.4516070]

I wouldn't buy the Prince. It's really short, you can find it on wikibooks, whatever you buy will be bound to have tons of padding.

>>4516069
You mean Tuscan

[Anonymous No.4516075]

>>4516068
I'm reading Monte Cristo now, about halfway through it. It's good, but I'm not sure if it's Three Musketeers good.

[Anonymous No.4516080]

The Prince is cool, just be prepared to read it with a certain openness of mind, to read it analytically. Might not be worth buying as someone said. Count of Monte Cristo is fun and worth reading. Dante is a genius but be sure to get a good edition, one with a parallel Italian text and ideally some kind of critical material. Don't care for American Psycho or Lolita personally.

[Anonymous No.4516081]

>>4516067
lol

[Anonymous No.4516094]

>>4516075
Really? I found Monte Cristo to be decidedly better, though it does lull a bit around 65-75% of the way through

I liked Three Musketeers too, but felt it was no contest. I also read Monte Cristo first, which might be why

[Anonymous No.4516116]

Don't just read the Inferno, read the whole Divine Comedy, all three canticles. You'll appreciate the whole project more, and they're really meant to be all one work.

Also, the Purgatorio is better than the Inferno.

[Anonymous No.4516119]

>>4516064

not op, but can you elaborate on what and why it is outdated?

[Anonymous No.4516130]

>>4516067
haven't we made fun of this enough? Why perpetuate this?

[Anonymous No.4516132]

>>4516075
By the end, you will love it. It's a fantastic story.

[Anonymous No.4516137]

>>4516119
It's basically Machiavelli's ramblinds on what make a great leader, considering how our society is vastly different than Renaissance Italy obviously we value different things.

There are things that still apply, and things that apply in different parts of the world, but in North America and Western Europe a lot of what Machiavelli said just doesn't hold up in modern times.

[Anonymous No.4516166]

>>4516137
You don't read The Prince for his specific pieces of advice, you read it for the principles underlying that advice - Machiavelli's general ideas on human behavior, on power, on the nature of politics and the conduct of politics in general terms, which are still powerful and insightful even if we don't have to worry about castles anymore.

Also, it's not really rambling - it's short, and well-structured.

[Anonymous No.4516172]

>>4516166
I just think a lot of his ideas are outdated is all, but yeah I suppose your right.

[Anonymous No.4516175]

>>4516172
What, specifically, is outdated, and how is it outdated? What's made his general style of analysis obsolete?

[Anonymous No.4516181]

>>4516175
Mostly just his descriptions of successful leadership and what that entails (ie. the qualities that a person should have). Some of them obviously still stand out (I remember him talking about having the cunning of a fox but the strength of a lion or some such), however methods like using fear to force your society into behaving (which is an apt description of powerful rulers at the time) simply aren't analogous to modern society.

[Anonymous No.4516221]

>>4516181
But (to take that instance) I don't think Machiavelli is simply advocating using fear to keep a society in line. He's talking about what kind of appearance you maintain, and he's also making a point about how people act in political society - that men are essentially short-sighted and selfish, "thankless, fickle, false studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain." And that's a general observation about society. And at the same time, he's also making a case for how one in general ought to approach political affairs; namely, that it is necessary to approach things as they are, not as you wish them to be. It's not sufficient to wish that people were different than they are, or act in ways that follow an arbitrary code of morality; you have to be clear-headed and fundamentally realistic about the nature of political affairs. And what's remarkable about Machiavelli is that he's incredibly good at doing that.

So even in an example like this - it's not the methods of action that he outlines, necessarily, so much as the means he uses to get to them.

[Anonymous No.4516380]

>>4516070

here is a person who doesn't understand the importance of scholars commenting on works and why those "paddings" are useful

[Anonymous No.4516393]

>>4516221


he wasn't advocating shit in that book.

He was simply stating how one WOULD/SHOULD do it if that was the desired government. . He never said it was good.

[Anonymous No.4516398]

candide is pretty hilarious

[Anonymous No.4516439]

>>4516064
>>4516119
>>4516137

I heard Machiavelli wrote it as a semi-joke, because some foolish rich man payed him to.

[Anonymous No.4516442]

>>4516439

his state was just conquered, so he he was like "well fuck..if yall are going to go against our traditions, this is how you should "

[Anonymous No.4516448]

>>4516380
and then they go and take something like The Prince literally and think it suxxxx

[Anonymous No.4516451]

>>4516442
that's pretty cool then

[Anonymous No.4516455]

>>4516439
Nah, not exactly. it was dedicated to one of the Medici rulers; the Medici had just taken over Florence, his native city, from a republican government that he had supported. The standard assumption is that he did so in an attempt, basically, to get a job from the Medici. This does run into the slight problem that he was a vociferous republican and would therefore be opposed to the Medici.

There is an argument, made by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that he wrote it as a satire on monarchy as an institution - a guide to monarchy showing how it requires you to do a bunch of evil shit. But I don't think it's really tenable (and I'm not even sure, on balance, if Rousseau believed it; Rousseau was a fucking weird dude). I think he was a republican but I think there's still at least a sense in which he was being sincere.