/lit/ - Literature

>tfw you never learn at the depths where disparate fields of knowledge begin to unify structurally under parallel architectures

>tfw your multiple esoteric interests will never all trail backwards to the point of deep convergence

>tfw even if they did you will never possess a command of the English language necessary for expressing the insights, let alone forming them as works of poetic art

>tfw when you will never wield a cynical oversight which subsumes thousands of historians, politicians, scientists, artists and authors within its scope, and all the while secretly remain a goof-troop pot-head

>>7030015
>A thread in which the /lit/erary masters give suggestions of books for younger people

you can just fuck right off and die scrub

>>7034907
Dude, man, this is the book.

Whatever you've heard, whatever you've read, whatever you think literature is, whatever you've read or been told to read by people who've been mistakenly put in a position to tell you what to read. It's all only been an attempt to prepare you for this book,

Gravity's Rainbow is what reading as a serious hobby in the 21st century is about. This book is why there is an active /lit/ board on 4chan. No one is here because of Hemingway or Dickens or Fitzgerald or Kerouac or any other forgettable stepping stone of an author, Anyone who is anyone is here is here because GR is their favorite book or because GR is a book that they are trying to digest and contextualize because it is not their favorite book,

>>7034796
ugh I can't wait till we get our of middle school "ap english"

then I can go to the rich high school to study actual literature and you can go to wherever it is people who live in bungalows above two car garages go to study whatever it is that they study

>>7034732
*troubles ironic fedora slightly, nor quite sure if if he can give a full tipping without accidentally loosing his status as ironic fedora tipper to genuine fedora tipper

looks up what metaphysical symbolizes in the dictionary again*

>>7034576
>post hoc

I'm literally using a phrase in a language I don't understand as a word to symbolize the concept of a position in a sequence

language is nothing to me other than a short hand for expressing learned physical realities, ooga booga bring me more asensual quantifying and positional signals to parse so I may structure my dead dumb world into some meager semblance of reality

this guy no doubt fucks

>>7034246
of course they did, it's about whether words become symbols to you, or whether words become phonic entities always torn between meanings, blurring a great number of referents through a etymological spectrum of onomatopoetic adaptations and mutations

Joyce is so linguistically stunning because he worked hard to divorce himself from the "Static Word = Static Symbol" that was imposed upon him in Ireland in 1890. It's why he can use words in seemingly irregular context and aggressive syntactical formations that allow for deep etymological and linguistic caverns to become apparent to quality readers, while the 'speed readers" either have no symbol to splash for the textual referents, or can only sense a vague mash of things that "don't quite fit or make sense together"

>>7034142
There are people on lit right now who don't read literature out loud when they can, and take care to crystallize the aural and lingo-muscular sonics internally when they can't.

They don't fondle the language, they don't hold words in their mouth and ear as well as in their mind. For them reading is nothing but a slideshow of images informed by their base visual awareness.

>>6981571
That look of detached triumph on his face

:'^)

>>6945182
It displays the crux of Brigadier Pudding's psychology, his incompetence in the leadership role and his desire to be relieved from power, a desire which has become so fetishized by him it has become a sexual compulsion. The whole passage is basically drawn from the psychological underpinnings of Venus in Furs, and Pynchon makes frequent reference though out the scene to the book and Masoch.

Plotwise it expands upon Dr. Pointsman's psychology and explains realistically how he was able to seize control of The White Visitation's agenda and funds during the close of the war.

Honestly the racial undertones make me far more uncomfortable than the coprophilia itself, but that was drawn straight from Masoch as well.

>>6942271
Only if the front guard is leading the army off a cliff. Things that stick around usually shed their edge but remain avant garde in their sensibilities. There is lots of blind stumbling that falls to the way side once the shock has worn away.

>>6945198
>not caring about covers
>not striving to surround yourself with the aesthetically sublime in every sensual form

>>6908895
Cause it is a bitterness you know, that you have lovingly cultivated all your life. You witness yourself as naked and bestial cause you are ashamed of your love for the uniqueness of your dread and fear and hatred and neglect, the only existential cultivation any man has undertaken with enough intensity to be considered unique.

>>6906244
no one cares, we're talking hypothetically here

>>6906201
Oh I've seen it and that sort of b-game McCarthy works well for the Coen bros because it possesses all of MCarthy's style and story but barely any of his genius. The Coen brothers are no where near equipped, visually or dialogically, to film a novel like Blood Meridian. They just can't do it; they are too flip, to corny, too reliant on 'their' trademark cinematographic ethos for it ever to work.

Confederacy of Dunces on the other hand is the literary work of genius basically made for them to adapt. Jesus 1960s/70s New Orleans, Ignatius and the way he gives himself over to monologue, the detective voice-over. I've no doubt they could do something amazing with that work, no matter who they got to star.

>>6904540
>Coen brothers are a bad choice in my opinion.

Most def. Their directorial "style" is going to fight for presence with Blood Meridian, and it is going to loose, but they are not going to not make it cause of that. It will just be a nasty flop and embarrassment to all.

What they were born to direct however is A Confederacy of Dunces.

I never had anything more than a casual interest in Rilke until this translation was released, http://www.amazon.com/The-Poetry-Rilke-German-Edition/dp/0374235317..

A lot of the changes/exclusions between these and other translations of his poems are very subtle, but in many instances they make the difference between poetic stoogery and high art. I'm sure Rilke, in German, suffers very little of what he seems to innately suffer in translation to English, but god damn if Edward Snow doesn't know just what the traditional stumbling blocks are and how to deftly remove them.

Even then I'd say Snow's genius is in the depth of his appreciation for Rilke, a genius which only makes itself exceptionally apparent through circumstance.

>>6880987
not by you, I really don't care what you have to say about anything

>>6880980
kk, haha whatever, truce man. I def do not read poetry beyond what I am forced to for my line of study

If you really don't think The Wasteland is the cultural orgasm after a century and a half of romantic/realist build up then I don't know what to say other than read it again.

>>6880907
and Wordsworth is the biggest joke in literature. Really just an awful awful writer in every respect.

>>6880907
Four Quartets is turgid, after the fact, philosophy dissertation material choked into a poem-like form.

It doesn't even begin to compare to The Wasteland.

>>6880708
I feel bad for you if you really feel that way about Eliot.

But yeah, I think Wordsworth is a joke, Blake is awful and tend to hate most poetry. Really I don't like poetry, I like Eliot.