/lit/ - Literature

>>4437611
Yes -- active existence, too.

>>4172162
>>4172138
And the ending of The Man Who Was Thursday is just bad. It doesn't do the plot justice at all. Fortunately, the rest of the novel totally makes up for it.

>>4172124
He's flunked out of school and dirt-poor, living in the middle of St. Petersburg, and gets news that his family (who he's been lying to about his predicaments) are coming to visit soon. And that's just the setup. It gets much worse.

>>4172138
No, nothing like either of those. Without giving too much away: the protagonist of the story starts out fairly confident about the world and how he wants to change it. But as he delves deeper into the situation he's investigating, he realizes that the other characters are much different from his initial impressions, that there are developments in motion that he did not know about and doesn't understand, and that everyone may be as powerless and vulnerable as he is.

The Man Who Was Thursday

It starts out as a charming detective story, and quickly becomes a whole cluster of shit.

Ending sucks. But it's a good novel overall.

>>4172017
>>4172022
>>4172030
>>4172058

People actually daydream about situations like these to rehearse and sharpen their interpersonal abilities.

You shouldn't suppress these fantasies, as doing so will make you socially awkward.

Oh, and talking to yourself is okay too. I like to conduct interviews with myself while driving.
Yesterday, I accidentally kept the interview going while fueling up at a Tops gas station.

Do you get the feeling that people outside of /lit/ and alt-lit tumblr communities care about Tao Lin?

At my uni, for example, everyone's still crazy about Denis Johnson, but no one's ever heard of Tao Lin.

>>4172027
Do you/have you ever felt like you were entering a pyramid scheme? I've heard that term used as a common criticism of the humanities in general.

Was it difficult finding a niche in the discipline to focus on for your thesis?

And are you really screwed if you get an MA in the humanities, in terms of entering a PhD program?

>>4171862
Ooh! Professor/teacher anon, I've got some questions to ask!

1) Why do you browse /lit/? You must have gone through some form of graduate school, so how can you put up with the shit posted on this board?

2) Do you ever listen/read one of your students' claims/perspectives and strongly suspect that they browse /lit/?

PhD or MA?

>>4170106
Victor Pelevin is pretty cool. Buddha's Little Finger is a good place to start with him.

Of course, it's always better if you speak Russian.

>>4169153
Even though it's b8, OP is actually right. As technology becomes available to low-income demographics, library-provided digital info like internet databases and ebooks are being used by individuals that would, otherwise, be unable to afford tablets, computers, or even books.

This is especially true among public school students in urban environments.

http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/12/27/e-book-reading-jumps-print-book-reading-declines/

http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2013/Oct/Technology-Adoption-by-Lower-Income-Populations.aspx

All of the above only pertains to the United States of Freedom, btw.

>>4169129
Happens when I draw or doodle. I feel like that guy in the /v/ comic, with the handheld, making the faces. You know the one.

>>4169135
But what I'm talking about actually IS pretty fascist. You're making the reader do most of the work for you. By giving enough detail, and thinking about the context the character is talking in, you greatly narrow the reader's interpretation of that character's dialogue. It's basically covert totalitarianism, AKA the NWO kind, AKA the best kind. Only /pol/ will read your dialogue wrong.

>>4168034
Ergh. The first just gives too much detail, and feels unnatural. The second is awkward -- pauses between words is a nice detail, but that dread shit makes it too heavy, and the addition of taste creates a dissonance of sensory detail that doesn't work at all.

The third is good, as it is something familiar to the reader. And that, I think, is the key: "natural" sounding dialogue is familiar to the reader. When writing dialogue, I tend to put the majority of responsibility in the reader's hands -- as in, I let them interpret the voice and tone what what's said on their own, with some occasional adjectives or details thrown in.

But is it good to have natural-sounding dialogue throughout the entire work? I find unfamiliar, unnatural, or otherwise uncanny dialogue demands the most attention, and really gives weight to whatever's being said.

>>4169072
Wow -- formalist actors? They're, like, allowed to exist? Sounds awful.

>>4169085
but blacks invented rock, dude

>>4169089
This post really does a great job illuminating why classics are read and re-read so often. They never cease to have a dialogue with the present.

>>4169077
Thanks for the additional recommendations!

First a sci-fi thread, and now a latin american lit thread. /lit/ is really great, sometimes.

>>4169074
Oh, sorry. I sometimes think I'm too cool for reading comprehension.

Well, if you ever get a chance, check it out. It does a similar thing to what you were talking about with White Noise. And if you're 'murrican, I'd consider it required reading.

So have you read Libra?

>>4169067

I've always thought that Shakespeare would resonate with minorities and marginalized communities, as his works often addressed segments and concerns of the population that, oftentimes, were never considered in the public light. 12th Night and Othello are particularly good examples of this.

>>4169035
I've always thought that bit of Poetics was funny. Maybe it's just my modernist bias, but keeping a plot to one day (1 evening in particular, if I remember correctly) just seems so arbitrary and restrictive.

>>4169027
>The atom bomb arcs over sacred banana breakfast.

>>4169008
That's true. As much as I'd like to pretend that I read literature for their "sublime" qualities, the development of the plot is something that keeps me reading and enjoying a work.

Have you read "Falling Man" by the way?

>>4167147
Because we are citizens. We enter one anothers' dreams and fantasies, and take from them ideals that we pair to the world around us, to contextualize reality in a new frame. This, in turn, leads to different perspectives on life, which we use to engage in dialogue. And this interconnectedness of inspiration and ideas promotes a collective desire for self-actualization, which drives us to create brighter futures.

But this assumes that reading and writing is a privillege. And that what's being read is TAR.

>>4168999
Just write, anon. A story, a scene, whatever -- just do it. And also, read. Be sure to do close reading. Start scrutinizing texts you encounter: what works? Why? What isn't working? What would you change? Then, look at your own work, and revise it. Gain confidence. Go places; take risks. Then, regret taking those risks, but stick with it anyway.

That's the gist of it. Write. Read. Criticize. Scrutinize. Learn.

Just started this.

I like pulpy stuff; although I gotta say, I'm digging Marathon's first-contact scenario.

>>4168913
>>4168915

These. A work of literature -- novels and tragedies/comedies especially -- are far more than what they're "about." And a good work of fiction doesn't rely on twists and turns in its plot to make itself worthwhile.

>>4168889
Yeah, but everyone says that.

>>4168893
I've spoken to a few contemporary authors and poets, in craft talks, readings, and such, and they kind of say a similar thing: they spend a lot of time planning, with intense bursts of writing. I find myself doing that in my writing as well: a whole lot of daydreaming about the story.