/lit/ - Literature

>>21461597
>cooking, reading, exercising
Those are more just maintenance than hobbies. A hobby is something you do in leisure time, generally it's creative in some form. Reading kind of is but it's passive. You should look for active hobbies imo.

I think you just need to practice conversation. It' hard. I'm no master at it by any means, like any skill thought, practice makes better.

>>21460315
Why do you think he wasn't willing to interject more into his narrative? If I had to guess I think it's because he reasoned it would weaken the texts longevity

>>21458884
It's kinda dry. Ngl. It's to express truth on events. Not for entertainment.

>>21458705
I didn't finish fall out of time but I remember it being quite dense. My favourite is probably decay. Decay and Born gives you a fine experience of him

>>21456561
The position of the argument seems to me to this:
An atheist can be just (allegedly).
A theist cannot be unjust and pious because being just is a condition of being pious.

I always thought it was obvious that God loves what is good because it is good, that is to say, because it is like himself.

>>8385249
Of course not.

American Psycho

>obligatory

>>4664215

>JF Powers - Wheat That Springeth Green [1988]
This wasn't as good as Morte D'Urban but it was still enjoyable. Powers is one of the miracle saves the NYRB managed to throw back into the mainstream discussion, I think he deserves it. It might be the studied midwestern backdrops he puts together... But it's really more of his ability to cut the extraneous out of his stories.

>Evelyn Waugh - A Handful of Dust [1934]
I thought it was garbage. It came pretty highly suggested from a friend of mine back in the day. (Brownbear), but it seems like a few cute ideas thrown together to make a novel. Regarding its ironic wit and deadpan humor: it hasn't aged particularly well.

>Arthur Schnitzler - Dream Story [1926]
Short and sweet one sitting novella that starts to get at that awkward sexual psychopathy that I enjoy in other authors, but ends too quickly. Good imagery.

Right now:

>John Updike - The Centaur [1963]
It's ambitious... But Updike is so horribly inconsistent and writes some jaw-droppingly bad prose when he's off point.

Coming up:

>Jean Stafford - The Catherine Wheel
>Paul Bowles - Collected Stories 1939 - 1976

I'm not sure about what'll come up after those two. I have some stuff on the shelf but nothing is drawing me at the moment. I could be going out to the library for something.

Truman stop being facetious. Or keep it to other, pre-existing threads.

I've started and put this novel down several times because I'm afraid in finishing it I'll have read the last book I've thoroughly anticipated reading- It was a grand entertainment both times and I want to save it because I don't if there's going to be another Gaddis in my lifetime.

On the topic the Dalkey release of his collected letters got pushed back to February 2013.

>>2901062
>>2901048
Read Omensetter's Luck. If you're thinking about reading The Tunnel read Omensetter's Luck first before investing in a near-700 page novel.

If you don't like Faulkner in his "difficult" writing this probably isn't for you. Just a warning.

OC

>>2868877
Regretting not having picked up Hopscotch the other day based on this.

>prior
Keith Waterhouse - Billy Liar [1959]
Misanthropic little jaunt ala Salinger cum British smugness. Very visually inclined, it's little surprise it went on to stage and screen. Overall it was fun but nothing more and certainly less than Amis Sr.'s Lucky Jim.

>present
Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon [1997]

>post
Honoré de Balzac - Eugénie Grandet [1833]

>>2855984
Endgame I enjoy more than Godot, but Not I, Play, and Krapp's Last Tape offer much more variety and challenge for players and anyone with any investment in method. I mean greatest might not work if his overall contribution to the canon is interpretive challenge.

>>2855498
Yeah it's /litx but we just died out about 4 minutes ago, sorry. Try 4 am pacific time or 9pm eastern time.

>>2855392

>>2855372
The Cantos are tied up into Pounds idiosyncratic reading of classical poetry and commentary on the times he lived in. Apart from being a reckonable stylist you have that approach going for their preservation.

Pound had the courage to live recklessly and outside of any kind of- even contemporaneous- boundaries, and for the volume that went into that he's remembered. Vollmann operates on the same axiom.

>>2855337
>>2855334
Outside of Agnes Dei's suicide note, which is lampoon and hardly a poignant sentiment regarding suicide, how is The Recognitions depressing or suicidal?

I mean if you wanted to keep that one on the list categorically because there's a (failed) suicide in it go right ahead but sentimentally it seems out of place. Maybe consider replacing it with Kafka's
The Fall'

What does "exit-level" mean. Leaving /lit/?

>>2855289

>>2851148
1997.

Deleting the thread in a few minutes.

Octet, Adult World I and II, or The Soul is Not a Smithy.