/lit/ - Literature

I'm fond of Amy Hempel. She has flavours of Gerald Manley Hopkins.

>>4076573
>Bildungsroman with added Edginess
>Just about two years
>Going in for a rewrite, at about 195 pages
>Five times
>Wavering hope

>>4064983
They parted like the Red Sea, like a pair of black-suited and white-shirted legs. I found myself a comfortable corner with a decent view. The music pounded and she entered stage left, significantly less modestly dressed than before. Making pretty kissy faces at all the men in front. She stared into all our eyes, wearing an expression of impure ecstasy, an expression I had not yet known. That evening, she was dressed as a nun. Albeit one with a present libido, shorter skirts, no legs and a crozier dragging behind her. Centre stage, she sat on a stool and removed her habit, piece by piece. Unwrapping the coif, the shawl, she let it fall. It floated down like a rain of minnows, graceful, but urgent. Her gloves were long, and she placed a foot up on the font to remove them dramatically. Peeled them down to the wrist and allowed each finger to pop out of its hole. Licking the tip, sucking her carpel. Or was it tarsal? (My father thought it important that we knew the human body well.) Rubbing her body with her hand like droplets of rain. The other glove came off, and she shook her hair out, so her fringe flopped over her eyes. Men were silent as graves. She lifted her scapular from about her neck and guided it gently to the floor. I almost expected her to fold it. She spun around, her skirt jumping and flailing like epileptic dogs and her flesh-legs came down to her thigh, wrapped in white garters and a cute red bow, the sort of bow I'd wear to school. Her panties were pink and strawberried.
“Clarissa!” I yelled, “I thought you loved Jesus!”
As I was guided from the building, the guards only realising now that they'd let a twelve year old into a strip club without ID, just on the word of her father, she yelled after me, “I do, but I don't think he loves me!”
“But you said-”
“Then why am I doing-”
And the doors slammed.

>>4064977
The latter go to Church on the second and fourth of the month. Just how the more words describing how free a state is, Democratic Republic, People's Republic, Joyous Friends Republic, Free Republic of Cuddles- the less democratic it is. Mercy, apparently, was unmerciful. Same congregants. Same Jesus loving everyone for who they are- unless of course they're degenerate scum. Different pastor. People preferred their feet in ancient time, rather than in the Modern Era. Walking into Mercy was falling back a few centuries. Candles were illumination, whereas at AAC they brought up lamps from the crypt. We were told of the evils of sodomy, that the Pope knew best, and that that one of them was from Sowff Umerica was absolute heresy, that this liar of a pope was not deserving reverence nor capital letter. We were told that Jesus compelled the jets to collide with the World Trade Centre because of the tolerance in England of immigrants. As a girl, I lapped this up. Other girls from church would skip with a rope and sing, “Jesus loves me yes I know for the Bible tells me so, when the kikes come out to play, Jesus make them run away!” Not knowing what one was, never having seen one, as a girl I loved this.
I'd scream that the Lord was my shepherd. That I didn't want. That he'd lay me down to lie. That the only people going to Heaven came from God's Own country, who accepted Jesus as their saviour, and were whiter than the cream-coloured walls of the Church. Seeing as the pastor had married an almost black woman, I failed to see the importance. The wafer on my tongue was Christ, at Mercy. It tasted better than those at AAC. I asked Dad whether I was a cannonball, aged about eight, after my first Communion, where I got a shard of his wafer and a eye-droplet of the wine. He laughed and slapped me too hard on the back. He preferred Mercy to AAC. The previous were a bunch of weaklings, one of the Unsaved Believers that the pastor screamed about. It's always nice to have everything so clear-cut. That is, until you yourself become a degenerate.

I went to both Churches in my time. I wore a veil to the first and third Sundays. And a dress I'd only wear for the occasion. I'd never talk. Heeled but modest shoes, not to transform my walk into an erection sprouting shotgun-blast of movement, but a casual stroll. AAC wasn't real Christianity. They were mild heretics, too scared to say the things Mercy said, too cowardly to revoke their non-denomination, to face up and snarl at the political correctness of it all. The congregants weren't the same people, but just as well could have been.

I managed to find the legless girl onstage. Clarissa, her name was. Aged twelve, I pushed past the tall and dark guardians of the club with my father's word on my lips.
“I want to see the begenerate for what she is, father.”
“Of course, my dear, here's the word you have to know, the password, can you say-”

>>4064974
I wanted to hold her hands and tell her lovingly that she was a good person. “Now, now that I volunteer at the Sunday school, that I'm a Samaritan, answering phones for other lost people-” You feel better about yourself. “I feel better about myself.” Everyone would clap and she would sit down. My stomach did backflips into itself at the notion of talking to such a strange creature. Did her legs end at the knee? The calf? The thigh? Does she have robotic hips? There was a tickling feeling in my stomach, the same feeling that's got from looking at a massive seventy inch TV, the decision rolling in your mind whether to destroy it or not. The attraction to frailty. When people asked, red faced and sweating,
“Were you born with your...condition?” I wanted to ask about the state of her inside thigh, the spot where the leg joins the torso, the curve of flesh whose sweetness is immoral and disgusting. Whether she touched there. Whether she enjoyed it. Other people asked,
“Does your family know about your return into His embrace?” I wanted to ask about my embrace. She wasn't a crush, she was simply a collection of organs who danced onstage for the un-Hail-Marying audience, and then danced onstage for a more physical lot. I know the latter because Dad told me. Derisively grunting that she was a whore condemned to Hell, no matter what forgiveness she begged for.

There are two congregations that go to my church, but in both services, the congregants are the same. The first and third Sunday of the month is for Anderson Apostate Church. The second is the Love of Christ Whose Mercy Embraces Us All Gloriously Church. The former is a non-denomination “Charismatic” lot, closer to Protestantism than to Catholicism, who sit firmly in the consubstantiation camp, and spend most of their time singing from battered hymnals and inviting Loose Women and Damaged Men from Greater Anderson to talk about how Jesus solved their problems. Boys with facial scarring and legless girls say, “I was at my most vulnerable when I discovered Jesus, and now I'm on my way to a whole new life.” or “I was about to end it all, when I heard His Words, and I knew that I would be saved if I begged forgiveness.”

The legless girl was fascinating. She'd stand on industrial stumps, ending in brogues or high heels but not too high as to be sluttish, but high nonetheless. I wondered how far the mechanics went, because her skirt went down to her wired ball-and-socket shiny-metal knees. The sheer perversity of showing her not-legs like that, it excited me.
“I don't want to pretend that I've got two legs.” she said, “Jesus loves me all the same.”
“People stare at me, and I don't care,” she'd grin, “Now that the Lord looks over me.”
“I used to wonder whether I'd go to heaven, whether people like me would go as our bodies are-” she stopped, Are poisonous. Are ruined. Are not going to be accepted by St Peter. My father's words floating through my mind “-are imperfect. But after that moment, that moment when I had been almost run over, I knew,” she laughed something that could have been fake, or simply the laugh of someone so totally damaged that everything is fake, “I knew that I was loved.”

>>4055578
It was so cold that our feet felt like ice-boxes, our fingers were desiccated twigs. Nights were harsh here, full of swirling feathers of snow, but we stood on the verandah, and finished smoking. She opened the door and told us to come to bed. Her arms were like ovens.

>>4048345
The referral of the book as a material object, not a vessel for storytelling, the text as words on a page, and the author as a presence.

>Amy Hempel
Slow, but earnestly romantic sex. She feels confused as to whether she should continue with anything, though, and so is sometimes difficult to have a relationship with.

>>4041680
>Emily Bronte
You start off doing it on hard cobblestones. It's rough and dirty and you're a little afraid. You close your eyes and you're in a queen-size satin bed, still maintaining the same position. As you're coming closer, she punches you in the face a few times. She says to you, or is it to herself, that she is you. You close your eyes again and wake up back on the cobblestones, both of your bodies slamming together onto them. The orgasm is pitiful, but it stays with you. She gets up and cries.


>Palahniuk
It's always something new, and not necessarily something good. Why was he ever allowed to acquire his fetishism from /d/? You don't know, but the first couple times it's fun. There are brief flashes of sheer excellence, but they last only for a moment. The orgasms range from spectacular to awful. You're never sure, but still keep an eye on him when you're looking for a rebound after a long and painful relationship.

>Joyce Carol Oates
You're expecting something brutal, involving urethral sanding, something that Palahniuk couldn't dream to aspire to, but when you actually get down to it, it's akin to classy BDSM with an escort. The act itself is graceful but saddening, as you know it's not going to have a pleasant ending. When she chokes you while you both orgasm, you knew you were right.

>>4032172
Read Oscar Wao. It may not be /lit/approved, but it does the job of voice very fucking well.

>>4029126
Blood eagles are always fun, and underrated as well. So, oddly enough, are thumbscrews.

>>3998078
In terms of Lacan and Kristeva, the trains are at once human and engine; they are abject. While at one moment, they are little boys playing at trains, since the trains are sentient, which is an impossibility- the next they actually are forty ton engines encased in steel, hurtling along tracks on an imaginary island in the Irish Sea. This horror can be focussed through the sheer frailty of the world: in Duck and the Diesel Engine, Duck crashes into a barbershop and it's miraculous that no one is harmed, despite the enormous hole in the wall. The feminist philosopher, Judith Butler tells us of the idea of gender performativity, that all walks of gender are performed by the person. The engines are objects on which boys can relieve their castration anxiety- the “good” boy, or rather, engine, seeks approval and attention from the father, or rather, Controller, to avoid castration, or rather, scrapping whereas the “naughty” engine demands castration as he cannot destroy the father.

Okay, here's my first draft. It's shit, I know. What do I do to make it fractionally less shit?

Contrarily, in terms of the Railway Series, there is quite a lot to say about Father figures. The Fat Controller is the patriarch of Sodor, what he says, goes, he is the father of all the engines, both in a Christian sense and in a Lacanesque sense. As the Christian Father, it is he who doles out quick punishment upon those who are envious or scheming, and who blesses those who excel. Scrapping is an analogue for Hell; something each train fears more than anything else, a true non-existence. To be labelled a “Really Useful Engine” is an analogue for Heaven. Therefore, Sodor is a form of Purgatory for Engines, where their actions are judged: once they become “Really Useful”, they undergo theosis, and become favoured by the Fat Controller. On the other hand, if they are cruel or frequently rude, then they are sent away from Sodor to be scrapped, that is, going, quite literally, to Hell.

>>3998059
Quite.
I'll post what I've got once I've finished the first draft.

>>3998047
Yes, but I'm writing a mini-thesis. It as to be liegible and unrapy.

>>3998041
So, how to I turn this into something that doesn't read like the penis-rants of a madman?

>>3998034
And Fordist?

>>3998030
>Not talking about the most important literary body of the last two hundred years
>>3998031
How can you decastrate something?

>>3998023
So, essentially, when sinners aim for redemption, they are denied it?

>>3998015
Yes, so can you please explain the second sentence?

>>3998007
That doesn't help at all. I know that he's the father. I don't understand the second sentence at all.

>>3997998
So, to translate:
the engines are observer entities on which boys levy their castration anxiety. Their (which their, the boys or the trains?) bodies are very badly harmed but are remade by "The laws and restrictions that control both your desire and the rules of communication"?
W-w-w-what?

>>3997988
It was never mine in the first place, it was literally the first thing someone mentioned when I posted here asking about Thomas.