/lit/ - Literature

Are you kidding me.

Burn this bread.

Wow OP that's superficial, simple-minded, and completely wrong, had you bothered to actually read the book. Burn your bread.

>>8766845
>>8766845
He enjoyed at the least Karadzic, but that was without much deep knowledge of Serbian literature. In fact, Europe is still only slowly discovering Balkan literature that isn't Greek. While Goethe was ahead of his time in terms of appreciation of the global and nonexclusive tradition of poetry, it's almost pseudy how Goethe stated how much he enjoyed reading his era's equivalent of the Wikipedia notes on Serbian poetry. A year later he turned against Serbian song in general, comparing it to crudeness of medieval German literature (which the pathetic Nibelungenlied belongs with).

>>8712277
Wanna make things interesting for at least me?

"The Master remains
serene in the midst of anxiety.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical."

What does this even mean?

>>8712232
>>8712238
>>8712241
Yes, me too. This is wise. Also, we should keep remarking on the problem without actually doing something about it.

>>8711207
You answered your own question. Baudolino.

How do you people go through life knocking down 1,200 pages of excruciatingly dense literature, then still bump into walls asking for others' opinions? Whatever, it doesn't matter.

Baudolino has really weird subject matter, much weirder than the hallucinations in Rose, or the Lovecraftian scene in FP. Medieval creatures like cynecephali (dog-headed people), or acephali (torso-faced people with eyes for nipples) seem to take their strangeness for granted, pity they didn't care enough to consider what normies thought about them.

If you've already read writers who relish in the strange, particularly Gene Wolfe, or have an interest in his works, this is your bridge with him.

Enjoy your reading.

>>8711827
>criticizes "going through a laundry list"
>recommends the Norton Anthology

Nigga...

>>8481470
And the ascii symbols didn't register through. Thanks, Obama.

>>8481277
It would help in some regards, but to better preserve his legacy, I reckon that he's right. There are plenty of worthwhile people here on /lit/ who have read Lovecraft substantially, as well as other great weird and horror writers. Recruiting is the least of the worries.

A good selection of any five of Lovecraft's shorter works, including his critical essays, is barely 100 pages. People who can do the work for themselves will figure it out, and plow through them in no time. Avoid spoon feeding "others".


But if I had to spoon feed, newcomers should start with (with happy face bullet points to offset the bleakness of his narratives):

"Dagon" is basically a shorter outline of The Call of Cthulhu, and is recommended to be read prior to CoC, as CoC is abstruse and wanders into the occasional rambling, multi-page digression.
"The Color Out of Space". This is his masterpiece of science fiction, that lurks outside of his better known mythos. If there were no Cthulhu Mythos, this story alone would cement his legacy.
"The Picture in the House" is an early work by him, and its theme of wandering and horrific discovery parallels that of the new-coming reader. It's a flawless soft intro, and is mainly directed at people grounded in realistic fiction.

"The Dreams in the Witch House", for people into maths and science (though it plays loosely with physical law).
"Pickman's Model", for people into visual art.
"The Music of Eric Zann", for those into music.

>>8469186

I admire Eco. He can come across as pedantic to likewise pedantic readers, but I'm not as much angered by people who insult him, than I pity them.

Umberto Eco, Gene Wolfe, Charles Stross, and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz are the same sly person.

>>8468927
Maybe you should try reading either and more.

>>8467044
Goethe himself admitted, paraphrasing, that Part II was self indulgent, and required revision and concision. One could say that he went GRRM on his old-age success.

Part II is very much worthwhile to read in entirety. Almost no other literature approaches certain of its themes as far ranging as Goethe does, and it remains a lofty testament to the man's abilities and imagination. It's a product of its time, and Goethe's age was more than ordinary. But because of its large cast (a cast of some 50), its metaphysically episodic character (though these have a logical progression), an abridged version, like Kauffman's translation, is fine as an ad hoc read.

Kauffman's abridgement is hermetically self-contained, but leaves enough continuity gaps that an astute reader will develop a thirst for the full version.

>>8464938
So you're denigrating a classic work of literature that dynamically expands on themes of the intellectual and philosophical spheres, merely because an institution made you feel stultified? Oh man, this is potentially as bad as Americans rejecting Shakespeare.

>>8464899
I hope that Frosch, Brander, Siebel, Altmayer, Tom, Bert, and Bill, take you behind a tavern and have their way with you, OP.

It's 900 pages (the English translation is abridged), but it reads pretty fast, so it'll feel like 500 pages. Classical Chinese novels are some 2000 pages. Stop worrying about this novel.

Just read it, it's not like it's a high bar to pass through. You'll gain plenty from reading it.

I too am lazy. I am responding because of shared traits, and ~kawaii~ Kiniro Mosaic posting.


I avoid print dictionaries because they are cumulatively time consuming to derive information from. If electronics are inconvenient (rarely), I usually hamfistedly rip a page from a notebook and quarterfold it. This creates eight sections, and the sheet doubles as a bookmark. Generally, one-fourth of the sections will be reserved for a glossary, if a book deigns for one. Most of the other space is reserved for noting page numbers of notable sections, to copy fragments of those sections, or for other details.

Most of the vocabulary I leave in a shell state, sometimes to be filled in later, by sequentially using the internet for definitions. I'll only extract some 5-20 words.

Striking words will receive a rating from 1-5, based on utility, like centrality to the story, or potential application for fubsy, moustache-twiddling posturing, to chat with other pseuds. These ratings I mark in the left margin, with 1 being most important. 5 would be for horrendous, ineffable words that need to be deleted from existence. As an example, I will utter one of the least evil among them—frigabob—avoid this word, or cats will react to you in a way that doesn't suggest invitation to adoption.

For novels like Foucault's Pendulum, and if you feel like going full autism, vocabulary and encyclopedic data alone will require at least 500-700 lines. Hence, in such a case, it would be in many ways more efficient to use densely packed graph paper. However, only about 20% of those lexemes would be considered vital for understanding, or even remotely interesting. Most of the words you encounter in such byzantine tomes won't matter to pedestrians, or for scholars either. Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, and me myself's diary desu, are guilty of this sort of tedium.

It would probably be easier for most readers to underline a word, and dog ear tab the page's corner, though this is an enormous sin among autists.

In short, just be /lit/ and just read the wikipedia article.

I'm a big fan of the part where the citizens being saved form a global calculator.

Anyone else here read The Hill of Dreams by Machen? It's basically my diary desu by a lover of the ancient Welsh ruins and forests of his upbringing.

The main character is a knobhead named Lucian, and it's hilarious how little regard he has for fellow people. And it's precisely those normies who would think that such an awkward, detached guy would have nothing going on in his head, much less a 60,000 word narrative. It almost reads like a parody of itself, and doubles as an ersatz Lovecraft psych case.

Anyone else here read The Hill of Dreams by Machen? It's basically my diary desu by a lover of the ancient Welsh ruins and forests of his upbringing.

The main character is a knobhead named Lucian, and it's hilarious how little regard he has for fellow people. And it's precisely those normies who would think that such an awkward, detached guy writer would have nothing going on in his head, much less a 60,000 word narrative. It almost reads like a parody of itself, and doubles as an ersatz Lovecraft psych case.

A distinct hit. Thank you my man you've saved me from panhandling at reddit.

>>8423053
>t. Baldanders

nice try guy

Anyone here read this? What are some books like it and The Magic Mountain? Redundant candidates and troll recommendations are acceptable.

>>8423800
Not much wrong with his output. He writes anime slash not very deep entertainment. His books could use a stricter editor to trim some verbiage.

It doesn't hurt to read him if one likes fantasy. Randomly insightful information like theses from The Wealth of Nations shows up in his work. Again, for the general open minded reader, it shouldn't hurt to read a little.