/lit/ is for the discussion of literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.Check the wiki, the catalog, and the archive before asking for advice or recommendations, and please refrain from starting new threads for questions that can be answered by a search engine./lit/ is a slow board! Please take the time to read what others have written, and try to make thoughtful, well-written posts of your own. Bump replies are not necessary.Looking for books online? Check here:Guide to #bookzhttps://www.geocities.ws/prissy_90/Media/Texts/BookzHelp19kb.htmBookzzhttp://b-ok.cc/http://libgen.rs/Recommended Literaturehttp://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading
Are you incapable of making decisions without the guidance of anonymous internet strangers? Open this thread for some recommendations.
Books for someone who's scared of intimacy?
>>23329410In order to coddle yourself or grow out of it? Be more specific.
>>23329416Grow out preferably
Thirst for Love by Mishima ;)
White Nights, by Dostoevsky.
His book is dropping in 1 year. Who tf ready?
>>23327708Homo-fascism
>>23327927No, Keith doesn't think Russia can save the west. I believe he has posted about Russia's degeneracy etc before.
>>23328199Yes, it's called being a grifter.
>>23329527see >>23330126
>>23327935>but thinks niche traditionalist evolian politics and metaphysics will enact change beyond a few discord serversHe used to be like that before when his yt channel was growing. His theorycel phase if you will. Now he's doing online-activism by posting about typical rw talking points about anti-immigration and noticing Jewish power. He's been retweeted by Elon Musk.
Take a passage you wrote and post it as it was when you finished writing it by hand. Post the polished result after you used Chat GTP to polish it.Ideally you do this naturally but if you have nerver done try it and post results. Or explain why you dont write with Chat GTP.I just started writing this is the first 1000 words of fiction I have ever writen. As soon as GTP touch it it became so much better. I got really demoralised. I always knew I was trash but this is so much.
>>23328644Yes I never wanted to write as much a when I finished the 7 chapter of My Dudgeon life. This books are amazing. Yes, my writing is shit.
>>23328799"snaked their way" while "kicking up dust" is plain retarded.
>>23328716I dint know how I feel about this one. I read a lot but my linguistic prowess is not that great specially in english, my secund language. I analise things by reading paing attention to what I like or don't like. I have some bery rudimentary knowladge of bad writing practices from schoold.First passage used "and" a bit to much and I think that is basic mistake writers make when they are learning and want to talk about someting diferent and don't yet have a clear grasp of diferent sentence structures and good pontuation and that makes the writing bad and then they ware happly ever after...The secund as the standard GTP mistake of using complex/exocti words as adjectives just for the sake of it like: > dwelling nestled within a quaint village.> shimmering with a serene blue hue> dusty veneerI'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. While I love reading, my language skills, especially in English (which is my second language), aren't as strong. I tend to analyze things based on what I enjoy or dislike. My understanding of writing techniques is fairly basic, mostly learned from school.******************** AFTER CHAT GTP********Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>23328799I think option 2 is my favorite as its the simplest and again english is my secund language. After while all thouse texts just blend together in my head I'm strugling to notice the diferece. I guess its like when you lissen to the same song to much.
>>23330075true
Roald Dahl is a fucking moron
>>23322709Based
>ITT: Ugly people exemplify their ugliness by expressing their thoughtsPottery.
>>23325441True. The thing with Rowling though is that her class views are implicit and tacticly show through the way she wrights 'sufficiently magical' races, vs variations of humans.For example, she's very clear that discriminating against 'mudbloods' is a very bad thing that only evil, arrogant and disreputable people do, and this is the kind of view she wants to present herself as having and promoting.On the other hand, she has no issue whatsoever creating magical made up races, which have clearly innate characteristics that are undeniably distinct from normal humans, and actively mocks characters who refuse to respect these obvious distinctions as being completely natural and moreover justifying the most blatant discrimination and class divisions thought this (of course House Elves are born natural slaves silly).For most of her life she seems to have been easily swayed by the 'vibe' of the environment she lived as as so what felt right or wrong, but recently seems to have gained a backbone and developed a much more deliberate worldview that she actively defends and I respect her for seemingly developing out of her previous unreflective naivety.
>>23325441>>23329418>when pseudy libtards get BTFO by children's literature
>>23325419chad hominem
Trevor was six foot three. He was clean and fit and confident. I’d choose him a million times over the hipster nerds I’d see around town and at the gallery. In college, the art history department had been rife with that specific brand of young male. An “alternative” to the mainstream frat boys and premed straight and narrow guys, these scholarly, charmless, intellectual brats dominated the more creative departments. As an art history major, I couldn’t escape them. “Dudes” reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattooed across a flabby bicep. They rolled their own cigarettes, didn’t brush their teeth enough, spent a hundred dollars a week on coffee. They would come into Ducat, the gallery I ended up working at, with their younger—usually Asian—girlfriends. “An Asian girlfriend means the guy has a small dick,” Reva once said. I’d hear them talk shit about the art. They lamented the success of others. They thought that they wanted to be adored, to be influential, celebrated for their genius, that they deserved to be worshipped. But they could barely look at themselves in the mirror. They were all on Klonopin, was my guess. They lived mostly in Brooklyn, another reaoson I was glad to live on the Upper East Side. Nobody up there listened to the Moldy Peaches. Nobody up there gave a shit about “irony” or Dogme 95 or Klaus Kinski. “The worst was that those guys tried to pass off their insecurity as “sensitivity,” and it worked. They would be the ones running museums and magazines, and they’d only hire me if they thought I might fuck them. But when I’d been at parties with them, or out at bars, they’d ignored me. They were so self-serious and distracted by their conversation with their look-alike companions that you’d think they were wrestling with a decision of such high stakes, the world might explode. They wouldn’t be distracted by “pussy,” they would have me believe. The truth was probably that they were just afraid of vaginas, afraid that they’d fail to understand one as pretty and pink as mine, and they were ashamed of their own sensual inadequacies, afraid of their own dicks, afraid of themselves. So they focused on “abstract ideas” and developed drinking problems to blot out the self-loathing they preferred to call “existential ennui.”"
>>23330061not every strong man is a chad
>>23326028>they were just afraid of vaginas, afraid that they’d fail to understand one as pretty and pink as mine>pretty and pink
>>23330073I want someone to challenge my ideas, but not attempt to emasculate me because she feels intimidated like most "strong" women act when they are faced with someone that doesn't share a similar sentiment on every single passing thought. People who enjoy this are no better than intellectual and emotional masochists. Bothering with most women is a fucking mistake, so wanting a submissive retard can be preferable if you can mold her to your tastes. If you can truly find a woman who is level-headed enough to have a rational discussion on various topics without finding a passive aggressive way of speaking with you or worshipping the ground you walk on because they're attracted to you, you've either found a unicorn or a tranny.
>>23330099Both men and women with that kind of character are rare.
>>23330082> why would somebody say they like "smaller" if they had no comparison?Women are logical like that. But yeah I don't know. I would assume she said something along the lines of "I'm perfectly satisfied with my bf's average dick" and got proven wrong later.>People hold on to their feelingsOh yeah absolutely. She told me that even though she's married and expecting a child soon, she sometimes daydreams about how later in her life she'll cross paths with that ex again and be with him.What I meant was it's not her ex that gave her those preferences. Her husband right now is the opposite personality-wise (still a huge chad though, but the outgoing type rather than the dark and brooding type) and she's happy with him too.>before she had sexBadly worded, I meant that from what she told me she's always felt attracted to that specific kind of guy even as a teen when she experimented and so on. It was never ambiguous and her tastes didn't change.>queen bees conform to some extentYes. She's not a huge nonconformist or outlier, but she does word her preferences openly even though they are sometimes unpopular or not the "cool" thing, which is more than you can say for the overwhelming majority of women (or people, even). That's the thing though, being a turbostacy she can socially afford to be a dork and it's cute or even reinforces that charisma.
How we dreamed of all the great things we would do? Where did it all go so wrong bros?
>>23326331I regret nothing
"Your worst sin is that you've destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing"
>>23326331We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
>>23326331I like to view the challenge of lost time simply and with metaphor. Are you actually, now, ready to be a hero?It's like you were lost and wondering on the wrong trails, maybe you got stuck in a swamp and the sun is going down. This is part of your heroism to take heart now and persevere. It'll take all your strength and cunning to reach your destination now. What kind of a story would it be if you had just waltzed along an easy path the whole time.
>>23327814I didn’t start writing until five years ago and I’m 41
so... what was the deal with this thing?
>>23329994something about how desiring something attracts that thing into your life or something. sounds like /x/
>>23329994Midwits will never stop congratulating themselves for having been able to avoid this retard magnet. Congrats you graduated from "baby's first critical thinking playground" -- now stop talking about "The Secret" because everybody who has an appropriately equipped mental faculty is not vulnerable to falling for it and regarding those who are: you can not reason with them in the first place.
>>23330058Not entirely untrue. I see a lot of gen z kids claim they have no free will and dive further into dopamine addiction. It’s self inflicted.
>>23329994The promise of free stuff by low effort>dude just write down what you want on a piece of paper and have it around with you and you'll eventually get what you wish forIt is /x/ but unlike >>23330065I believe it works to a certain extent (autosuggestion, wiring your mind towards one thing) but that you're entering a bargain with the devil when you do it.
>>23330116>you're entering a bargain with the devil when you do it.spooky shit
I just marathoned this in 6 days. I enjoyed it. What are your thoughts on The Corrections by Johnathon Franzen?
>>23328159That is a big question and difficult to answer beyond saying read and study, especially difficult when the question is asked generically and not about a single book. The number of ways a writer can go about developing theme is infinite and there is no single answer. Pick a few books and go over and over them and pull them apart until you understand each and every nuance, once you have done it a few times it will become automatic and you will just do it as you read. Or go to school. Some criticism can be helpful (primarily the comparative sort, avoid interpretation/analysis of single works) but criticism is written for people who have a good understanding of how literature works and in retrospect I realize I gave myself an illusion of understanding by reading criticism before I could understand on my own. Gass was the one exception for me and the one who made me realize that I did not actually understand and gave me the desire to put in the time and effort to understand but I can't say he helped much beyond giving me that desire. One way or another you need to put in the time and the effort to see all the complexity and nuance which goes into just one book. If you have read Freedom I can go into some depth on that one, The Corrections would not be very useful here. But that would be after work, time to go.
>>23328349>One way or another you need to put in the time and the effort to see all the complexity and nuance which goes into just one book. If you have read Freedom I can go into some depth on that one, The Corrections would not be very useful here. But that would be after work, time to go.Haven't read Franzen. I was just reading this thread because he's on my tbr. Could you do Gravity's Rainbow? That's a book I really struggled with.
>>23329570GR is a tricky one when it comes to theme since important contexts required to resolve theme are in AtD with M&D and probably Vineland adding in some nuance but we can still understand GR in isolation, we just always end up with a few irritating loose ends which we can never quite tie up. First we have the rocket and some chaos caused by the rocket, then we have Pirate observing the rocket and contemplating the rocket landing dead square center of his head. Right there Pynchon lays out the basic mode of the novel, he repeated the same thing twice each with a different perspective and through it we get some important information about the sort of person Pirate is, death is something he long ago accepted and now just find a curiosity. Then we have bananas. Enter Slothrop and again with the rocket and through the rocket we learn some important stuff about the sort of person who Slothrop is. Then Slothrop and the rocket and Pirate. More bananas in the form of a camera cushioning sandwich and again the rocket and Slothrop via his map. And we have a new repetition, Slothrop and we start learning about by people by way of their relation to Slothrop as the other repetition goes on and we find out about fun loving Blicero and so on. Slothrop repetition fractures and we get the dog Vanya and the various similar experiments. And down the toilet we go to the most important of the repetitions, Slothrop losing touch with reality which we get to write off as that sodium amytal for the time being. But then questions are raised, during those intimate moments like sex things get a little weird, not quite a complete loss of reality but something is off. And this increases as we go along until we eventually get back to the bananas. The trick with GR is we have to find all these repetitions which span the entire book often only happening a few time at opposite ends of the book like those bananas, once we do that we can start making sense of Slothrop and what he is going through beyond literal plot level and start making sense of it all. How about them banaas?But Pynchon and most authors give us some big clues right at the start like the simple repetition of the rocket which is just a literary way to say pay attention, this is a literary device I am going to employ throughout the novel!
>>23329910I did not quite explain how the repetitions work towards the whole, just sort of implied, got caught up in showing how to identify the structure and forgot to show how to interpret it. The repetitions are all things which can not be understood in isolation, you have to add them all up to see the larger picture. So, that repetition of the rocket which he opens the novel with; in isolation each repetition gives us a bit of information about a character through their relation to the rocket but when we put them all together we get something more, we get a view of society, it is not just rocket bad, it is this is a very nuanced and complicated thing that has ramifications far beyond the momentary chaos of when it goes boom. Slothrop attempts to understand this through understanding the rocket, people try and understand the rocket through Slothrop's magic penis and so on. Each thread of repetition adds up to give us something more and when we combine those threads we get the whole.
>>23326417>I can't really say that Underworld, for example, is meaningfully different from the corrections.DeLillo and Franzen are on very different levels in terms of the prose they write. If you didn't notice that, you are still in beginner's stage of reading.
>Plato, and all other ancient authors, supposedly had opinions not in line with liberal democracy.>BUT this is only because they would've been persecuted if they stated their true opinions, and we can tell what their true opinions were by esoteric reading.>Now how do we do this? I'll just invent whatever I want them to be saying and you'll listen to me. So yes, Plato was a liberal democrat.lmfao how did this dude convince anyone
>>23328519No! You have to give me a specific line that totally encapsulates what you've said. You can't just discuss ideas, you can only pass quotes around! Now give me the quote!
>>23328519>>23328524>i can't prove muh feelz so i'll just lie by false generalization, then if you call me on it, i'll bitch about you being a pedant
>>23328524But he's right though. Strauss literally made philosophy as a Jewish cult in which every philosopher has a boner for "free society" but remains silence like a crypto-jew.
>>23328283If that’s not the case then where did it begin? Liberal democracy had to begin somewhere. I’m definitely not saying it began with Plato at but someone had to secretly think, “gee, having slaves might be a bad idea”
Honestly, I don't get the idea that Strauss is a big fan of liberal democracy. I don't think there's another "mainstream" academic who gets closer to straddling the line between approved thought and entertaining extremism than him. I can't think of a bigger 20th century pipeline for conservative to far right metapolitics than him.
Post your favorite art edition
>>23328220Wun Wun
>>23329027or so he says
>>23326376Nope. Still believe that the only way we get TWOW is after GRRM's death.
>>23327024>People can make all the jokes they want but it's clear he is working on Winds and he's got another 10-15 years before he's probably too old to work on Spring.Lol cope
some of you have deluded yourselves into forgetting that dying in your 70s is like the most normal thing ever
/wwoym/ write what's on your mindhigh trust editionprevious >>23324263
>>23327712Maybe that's the purpose of the general sexual shame in Christian culture. If just vanilla sex is kind of shameful then when you want to be a naughty boy and indulge in shame you'd just have cute sex with a farm girl. Instead of getting your ass licked by a drag queen or something.Maybe sex is inherently shameful and shouldn't be accepted, it's like a secret thing. And when you do accept as a culture you'll just move the desire to be disgusting to grosser things.
>>23328678Cause conquest means civilians are being targeted, women are kidnapped killed and raped, thousands of children for the new generation are dying. The deliberation of it all makes it a cleansing and something deeper than war, though im sure you know that already
>>23329945I get what you mean, but would rather always be something rather similar. By contemporary planetary standards I live extraordinarily well. My paternal grandfather lived to 98, and whether or not I live that long in chronological terms, I've already done better in terms of pleasant experience.
>>23329947Fuck me, but I can't get by on less than a quarter pound of meat, red or white, per day. Not much of a fan of ice cream cream or milk, but when it comes to chocolates and cheese, I'd almost rather be dead than do without.
>>23330093*still a skinny bastard, who knows why that is.
Have you ever recorded an audiobook? I am looking into getting into the industry and would like the advise of anyone who has experience. I at the very least would like to make some audiobooks for books that don't have one yet.
>>23329610Also, is there any money to be made by someone independent?
Are there any YouTube videos or free online college courses that go through the entirety of a literary fiction novel and discuss how it works? Like going over its structure, narrative and creative decisions, character progression, etc etcI realize I don't know how a novel "works". The few times I've attempted a solo concentrated study of a novel, I just forget to pay attention to the mechanics of it all and just enjoy it.The only reason I can write poetry and short fiction with some non-zero degree of confidence is because I've taken uni electives on it and have had profs teach the rules and mechanics behind shorter prose and poetry. So I wanna do the same thing with novels
>>23329928Yale has some lectures on books like Blood Meridian but they're all fucking awful and don't deepen your knowledge of the text at all.
>>23330031you have to go back, buddy. im here asking for ways to improve my writing. you're here to be a fag.
>>23330032Not OP but thanks for the non-retarded reply.
>>23330032you are unfathomable based, anonthis is exactly what I was looking for>>23330042that's a shame
>>23330048>>23330055You're welcome. OP, ignore the guy, saying the Yale lectures are awful. They're not useful for learning how to make literature in a traditional sense, but they do provide a lot of worthwhile information. Just like any good book/video on a theory or a criticism, it inadverntly teaches how to add depth in your literary work and what not to do
Honest thoughts?
>>23329707riddles in the dark comes off a lot different, and the ring is simply a magic ring, not a world ending macguffin. i like it better this way. most of the other differences are nothing huge
Honestly I enjoyed it. it is a well-told story.
>>23329081Well fundies are important. or else you will end up writing an encyclopedia or a 100k page poem that doesnt rhyme like everything /lit/ makes
>>23329992lol I was sleepy when I posted that. I meant to quote:>Probably the best guide for beginner writers.
>>23329998its just an easy book to read that has every element that makes a compelling story
