/lit/ - Literature

>>19113341
are you implying that there will be multiple 22nd centuries?

>>16153671
I'm leftist but Yukio Mishima is fucking good

>>16146823
Fiction:
>Because it can be very beautiful. It's just good art
>It's a good way to spend your time rather then rotting yourself with virtual over-stimulating crap
>Just makes me very happy in a way that a lot of other things don't
Philosophy
>To view the world in different ways
>To discover concepts that can help me in life
>To learn how to approach life

thread is shit... so much insecure angst.

here you might relate to this

>>11910769
I wanna suck your dick OP

I don't remember much form when I read TKAM a few months back, but I do remember that Atticus was an older man and didn't enjoy going outside very often, such as denying his children's requests to playing in the snow or refusing to play football. He also refuses to go back to his past life of excitement and interest, such as being a sharpshooter. Rather, he enjoys peacefully reading the newspaper in from of the radio and reading bedtime stories to Scout. He's obviously mature. This is very unorganized, so pick through and use what you can. Good Luck! Also he's a recluse, his wife died

Oughtn’t he to be doing something... get on to the operations room at Stanmore, they must have it on the Channel radars—no: no time, really. Less than five minutes Hague to here (the time it takes to walk down to the teashop on the corner... for light from the sun to reach the planet of love... no time at all). Run out in the street? Warn the others?
Pick bananas. He trudges through black compost in to the hothouse. He feels he’s about to shit. The missile, sixty miles high, must be coming up on the peak of its trajectory by now... beginning its fall... now....
Trusswork is pierced by daylight, milky panes beam beneficently down. How could there be a winter—even this one—gray enough to age this iron that can sing in the wind, or cloud these windows that open into another season, however falsely preserved?
Pirate looks at his watch. Nothing registers. The pores of his face are prickling. Emptying his mind—a Commando trick—he steps into the wet heat of his bananery, sets about picking the ripest and the best, holding up the skirt of his robe to drop them in. Allowing himself to count only bananas, moving barelegged among the pendulous bunches, among these yellow chandeliers, this tropical twilight....
Out into the winter again. The contrail is gone entirely from the sky. Pirate’s sweat lies on his skin almost as cold as ice.
He takes some time lighting a cigarette. He won’t hear the thing come in. It travels faster than the speed of sound. The first news you get of it is the blast. Then, if you’re still around, you hear the sound of it coming in.
What if it should hit exactly—ahh, no—for a split second you’d have to feel the very point, with the terrible mass above, strike the top of the skull....
Pirate hunches his shoulders, bearing his bananas down the corkscrew ladder.

Pirate in the lavatory stands pissing, without a thought in his head. Then he threads himself into a wool robe he wears inside out so as to keep his cigarette pocket hidden, not that this works too well, and circling the warm bodies of friends makes his way to French windows, slides outside into the cold, groans as it hits the fillings in his teeth, climbs a spiral ladder ringing to the roof garden and stands for a bit, watching the river. The sun is still below the horizon. The day feels like rain, but for now the air is uncommonly clear. The great power station, and the gasworks beyond, stand precisely: crystals grown in morning’s beaker, stacks, vents, towers, plumbing, gnarled emissions of steam and smoke....
“Hhahh,” Pirate in a voiceless roar watching his breath slip away over the parapets, “hhaahhh!” Rooftops dance in the morning. His giant bananas cluster, radiant yellow, humid green. His companions below dream drooling of a Banana Breakfast. This well-scrubbed day ought to be no worse than any—
Will it? Far to the east, down in the pink sky, something has just sparked, very brightly. A new star, nothing less noticeable. He leans on the parapet to watch. The brilliant point has already become a short vertical white line. It must be somewhere out over the North Sea... at least that far... icefields below and a cold smear of sun....
What is it? Nothing like this ever happens. But Pirate knows it, after all. He has seen it in a film, just in the last fortnight... it’s a vapor trail. Already a finger’s width higher now. But not from an airplane. Airplanes are not launched vertically. This is the new, and still Most Secret, German rocket bomb.
“Incoming mail.” Did he whisper that, or only think it? He tightens the ragged belt of his robe. Well, the range of these things is supposed to be over 200 miles. You can’t see a vapor trail 200 miles, now, can you.
Oh. Oh, yes: around the curve of the Earth, farther east, the sun over there, just risen over in Holland, is striking the rocket’s exhaust, drops and crystals, making them blaze clear across the sea....
The white line, abruptly, has stopped its climb. That would be fuel cutoff, end of burning, what’s their word... Brennschluss. We don’t have one. Or else it’s classified. The bottom of the line, the original star, has already begun to vanish in red daybreak. But the rocket will be here before Pirate sees the sun rise.
The trail, smudged, slightly torn in two or three directions, hangs in the sky. Already the rocket, gone pure ballistic, has risen higher. But invisible now.

His name is Capt. Geoffrey (“Pirate”) Prentice. He is wrapped in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. His skull feels made of metal.
Just above him, twelve feet overhead, Teddy Bloat is about to fall out of the minstrels’ gallery, having chosen to collapse just at the spot where somebody in a grandiose fit, weeks before, had kicked out two of the ebony balusters. Now, in his stupor, Bloat has been inching through the opening, head, arms, and torso, until all that’s keeping him up there is an empty champagne split in his hip pocket, that’s got hooked somehow—
By now Pirate has managed to sit up on his narrow bachelor bed, and blink about. How awful. How bloody awful... above him, he hears cloth rip. The Special Operations Executive has trained him to fast responses. He leaps off of the cot and kicks it rolling on its casters in Bloat’s direction. Bloat, plummeting, hits square amidships with a great strum of bedsprings. One of the legs collapses. “Good morning,” notes Pirate. Bloat smiles briefly and goes back to sleep, snuggling well into Pirate’s blanket.
Bloat is one of the co-tenants of the place, a maisonette erected last century, not far from the Chelsea Embankment, by Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis’ who wore hair smocks and liked to cultivate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof (a tradition young Osbie Feel has lately revived), a few of them hardy enough to survive fogs and frosts, but most returning, as fragments of peculiar alkaloids, to rooftop earth, along with manure from a trio of prize Wessex Saddleback sows quartered there by Throsp’s successor, and dead leaves off many decorative trees transplanted to the roof by later tenants, and the odd unstomachable meal thrown or vomited there by this or that sensitive epicurean—all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which anything could grow, not the least being bananas. Pirate, driven to despair by the wartime banana shortage, decided to build a glass hothouse on the roof, and persuade a friend who flew the Rio-to-Ascension-to-Fort-Lamy run to pinch him a sapling banana tree or two, in exchange for a German camera, should Pirate happen across one on his next mission by parachute.
Pirate has become famous for his Banana Breakfasts. Messmates throng here from all over England, even some who are allergic or outright hostile to bananas, just to watch—for the politics of bacteria, the soil’s stringing of rings and chains in nets only God can tell the meshes of, have seen the fruit thrive often to lengths of a foot and a half, yes amazing but true.

The caravan has halted. It is the end of the line. All the evacuees are ordered out. They move slowly, but without resistance. Those marshaling them wear cockades the color of lead, and do not speak. It is some vast, very old and dark hotel, an iron extension of the track and switchery by which they have come here. . . . Globular lights, painted a dark green, hang from under the fancy iron eaves, unlit for centuries . . . the crowd moves without murmurs or coughing down corridors straight and functional as warehouse aisles . . . velvet black surfaces contain the movement: the smell is of old wood, of remote wings empty all this time just reopened to accommodate the rush of souls, of cold plaster where all the rats have died, only their ghosts, still as cave-painting, fixed stubborn and luminous in the walls . . . the evacuees are taken in lots, by elevator—a moving wood scaffold open on all sides, hoisted by old tarry ropes and cast-iron pulleys whose spokes are shaped like Ss. At each brown floor, passengers move on and off . . . thousands of these hushed rooms without light. . . .
Some wait alone, some share their invisible rooms with others. Invisible, yes, what do the furnishings matter, at this stage of things? Underfoot crunches the oldest of city dirt, last crystallizations of all the city had denied, threatened, lied to its children. Each has been hearing a voice, one he thought was talking only to him, say, “You didn’t really believe you’d be saved. Come, we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to save you, old fellow. . . .”
There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?
But it is already light. How long has it been light? All this while, light has come percolating in, along with the cold morning air flowing now across his nipples: it has begun to reveal an assortment of drunken wastrels, some in uniform and some not, clutching empty or near-empty bottles, here draped over a chair, there huddled into a cold fireplace, or sprawled on various divans, un-Hoovered rugs and chaise longues down the different levels of the enormous room, snoring and wheezing at many rhythms, in self-renewing chorus, as London light, winter and elastic light, grows between the faces of the mullioned windows, grows among the strata of last night’s smoke still hung, fading, from the waxed beams of the ceiling. All these horizontal here, these comrades in arms, look just as rosy as a bunch of Dutch peasants dreaming of their certain resurrection in the next few minutes.

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall—soon—it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.
Inside the carriage, which is built on several levels, he sits in velveteen darkness, with nothing to smoke, feeling metal nearer and farther rub and connect, steam escaping in puffs, a vibration in the carriage’s frame, a poising, an uneasiness, all the others pressed in around, feeble ones, second sheep, all out of luck and time: drunks, old veterans still in shock from ordnance 20 years obsolete, hustlers in city clothes, derelicts, exhausted women with more children than it seems could belong to anyone, stacked about among the rest of the things to be carried out to salvation. Only the nearer faces are visible at all, and at that only as half-silvered images in a view finder, green-stained VIP faces remembered behind bulletproof windows speeding through the city....
They have begun to move. They pass in line, out of the main station, out of downtown, and begin pushing into older and more desolate parts of the city. Is this the way out? Faces turn to the windows, but no one dares ask, not out loud. Rain comes down. No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into—they go in under archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that only looked like loops of an underpass... certain trestles of blackened wood have moved slowly by overhead, and the smells begun of coal from days far to the past, smells of naphtha winters, of Sundays when no traffic came through, of the coral-like and mysteriously vital growth, around the blind curves and out the lonely spurs, a sour smell of rolling-stock absence, of maturing rust, developing through those emptying days brilliant and deep, especially at dawn, with blue shadows to seal its passage, to try to bring events to Absolute Zero... and it is poorer the deeper they go... ruinous secret cities of poor, places whose names he has never heard... the walls break down, the roofs get fewer and so do the chances for light. The road, which ought to be opening out into a broader highway, instead has been getting narrower, more broken, cornering tighter and tighter until all at once, much too soon, they are under the final arch: brakes grab and spring terribly. It is a judgment from which there is no appeal.

>>7874015

>>7363927
The transition from academia to high school may not be easy. Just because you enjoy the material, doesn't mean thing it is going to be fun.

I'm a high school English teacher and I'm jonesing to get back into academia. Hs is definitely fun, but a lot less English and a lot more management, breaking things down, curriculum design, dealing with admin, etc etc etc

Might work out for you, though. Just don't go into hs English hoping to actually teach English, because it'll be at a relatively rudimentary level

>>5374435
damn i haven't thought about cutting pink with knives for years

I found this thread because I do a Google search on my name everyday (searching for stuff posted in the last 24 hours). That way I can find new reviews or any illegal downloads of my work. To answer your various questions: 1) I've loved horror in every form since I was a kid, so lots of stuff influenced me. I started reading Stephen King when I was in junior high (back when he was stuff was new) and he was a big influence. Piers Anthony was too. I admired the manic invention of his Xanth books. Right now I really admire Laird Barron's work. I think he's a genius. I don't have a favorite book, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with an anthology I had as a kid called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum. It had a lot of cool stories in it, including Bradbury's classic "Homecoming." 2) I'm happy to sign a book if you send it. Email me at twaggon1@msn.com and I give you an address to send it to. Make sure to include return postage. 3) The question about getting laid was probably a joke, but just in case it wasn't -- That sort of thing has never happened to me (or else I was just too clueless to pick up on the signs women were giving me). It does happen to some writers. Even a tiny bit of fame in a limited area can be attractive to some people. I do encounter people who sometimes are intimidated to talk to me. It's weird, but like I said, even a tiny bit of fame -- something as simple as having your name on a book -- can seem impressive and sometimes intimidating to people.

And as for works of min to start with . . . Nekropolis is good if you like light urban fantasy with a horror setting. My story collection Broken Shadows is a good sampling of my short work. Like Death or The Harmony Society are good examples of more intense, surreal horror novels. I have a tie-in novel based on the Supernatural TV show titled Carved in Flesh which is due out in a couple weeks if you'd like to see how I write in someone else's universe.

I guess the advice I'd give in today's world -- with so many publishing options available -- is to choose a publishing path that allows for the most growth for you as a writer. I'm 49, and if electronic self-publishing had been an option when I started seriously writing at 18, I wonder if I'd have chosen to self-publish my first stories. If so, I'm afraid I might have stunted my own growth as a writer. Why work hard to improve when you can get the instant gratification of self-publishing? I'm not running down self-publishing at all. I'm just saying that in my case, it might not have been the best path for me to start on.

I divorced six years ago. And this IS me posting! Check out my Facebook page where I post how the "nonfamous horror writer" quote is my new T-shirt slogan!

This doesn't bum me out. My former in-laws weren't into horror, but they wanted a copy of the book, so I gave them one. Since my divorce six years ago, they probably sold the book to Half Price Books or something. I'm just glad the book found a home with someone who will read it!

Been wanting something to write for a while now, come on number 2.

Bitches ain't shit,
But hoes and tricks.
Lick on these nuts,
And suck, the dick.

Bitches ai'nt shit,
But hoes and tricks.
Lick on these nuts,
And suck, the dick.

>>3153444
>>3153444
>>3153444

>Undergraduate? Grad? PHD?
Post-bac
>Major?
English. Currently in a Teaching Credential program (LEL~)
>Current Year of Study?
Technically fifth?
>Long-term Goal?
Teach the littluns for a few years, save up, eventually go for a masters or higher in literature, just for personal satisfaction
School?
UC Davis. Berkeley for undergrad