It is NOT a literary masterpiece. It is, in basically just an overdressed YA novel. Let me, someone who has actually understood the text, break this down for you:>The core plotA brooding, special teenager, Hal Incandenza, with parent issues lives in a rigid, hierarchical system, namely the Enfield Tennis Academy. A mysterious, charismatic rebel figure, be it His ghost or the Entertainment itself, threatens the order. A ragtag group of teens, Hal, Orin, Pemulis, must navigate a corrupt adult world to uncover a dark secret that could destroy society. This is essentially Divergent, no?>Ham fisted Allegory"O.N.A.N.," "The Concavity/Convexity," "Subsidized Time." These are not subtle political commentaries. They are the same heavy handed, brand name dystopian devices as "Panem" or "The Capitol." It is a cartoony, exaggerated backdrop for teen angst, not a serious philosophical inquiry. DFW merely replaced the Hunger Games with a tennis tournament and a lethal film cartridge.>The teen protaganistHal is the archetypal YA hero. He is unnaturally gifted, emotionally stunted, misunderstood by every adult, and on a quest for identity in a world he did not make. His internal torment is just advanced teen angst. His inability to communicate is peak adolescent alienation dressed up in pseudo intellectual jargon. He is a Holden Caulfield who can quote Wittgenstein.>The threatThe samizdat is a MacGuffin of pure destruction. "It is so pleasurable it kills you." This is a YA villain: a single, addictive, monolithic Evil that the adults cannot handle, so the youth must. It is the same as a magic system or a corrupt government, a simple problem with a fantastical, technological cause.Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24945268>copy chatgpt >delete all hyphensWoah
All fiction is YA
>YA...LE BAD!!!!
>>24945045Everything is being fucking YA-fied, I hate it!
>>24946860All the masters grads i talked to were raised on hunger games, what do you expect
What magazines are /lit/?
Revista de Occidente
18(eighteen)PeachesNational ReviewSamizdat xeroxes of Black Cat ScansCatholic World News
I learned a lot about /lit/ by buying a stack of Evergreen Reviews at a flea market when I was 15 or so. They're probably on archive.org
I like harpers. Am I a midwit?
>>24946453Not this IDF drivel
reading his essays are usually enjoyable for me, though some are a bit long winded. he has similar thoughts and feelings that i have towards life, so it's cool that i can connect with someone that lived 2000 years ago. he's writing these essays to help his friends with their struggles in life (even though they're likely fake people), so it's kind of like he's my friend, and giving me direct life advice. yet i don't think i've seen any posts on him. what's the deal? are you going to tell me i'm a retard midwit for consuming his books?
>>24946568I'm unsubscribing from your newsletter
>>24946568Love the letters, feels like listening to a wise grandpa that is well aware that he is far from perfect, my favorite quote of him is: "What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things"
Seneca? More like Schizophreneca
>>24946568They're a bit midwit because they deal more with fairly practical, unabstracted matters rather than engaging with more demanding fundmental philosophical concepts, and that tends to attract the grindset self-improvement types that dont think too much, but honestly who cares? theyre great meaningful works.
What is there even left to read after him?? Why is his prose so good?
>>24946550I would think this way if I only had access to Lolita. At least I wouldn't want to occupy the mind of a pedophile, and anyway the performance isn't convincing, its just some kind of game. This is surely not a great character--that's also the problem, in sense the opposite of what I just said in not wanting to occupy the mind of a pedophile, because its so obvious Nabokov playing a pedophile, the pedophilia is unconvincing and just at that point you have to wonder what the point of it is? Being into prepubescent girls is not exciting or interesting. Genuine disorder could be--I'd rather not find out.However the persona of Pale Fire is more delightful and comic, because it is Nabokov just being a more crazy version of himself, and the book is also a lot more brilliant than Lolita. People should just forget Lolita exists and judge him on Pale Fire. Pale Fire--what American book is better that this?I also read Glory and thought it was very moving, the way Tolstoy's works are, but this might as well be written by a different man. The problem a "cleverness" is problem in modern novel writing, which has to do with a lack of ability to find a genuine narrative pulse at a stage of advanced culture. Homer, the Old Testament are at the beginning of time, it seems. Adorno said this is more than just naivety but "stupidity"--he called this problem of cleverness fungibility, why should the elements be arranged as they are? Modern writers solved this by refining the style and being as clever as possible--a good but unsatisfying solution.
>the pedophilia is unconvincing and just at that point you have to wonder what the point of it is? Being into prepubescent girls is not exciting or interesting
>>24946400What a fancy way to describe getting hard from a tween. You need to have a pedophilic desire to write like this, though. You can't exert so much mental power on a rather banal action if the action itself doesn't excite you. Try to write like this about two men fucking while being straight.
>>24946646>Try to write like this about two men fucking while being straight.This is not as a brilliant argument as you think it is
>>24946550the other anon isn't me and i don't have a clue what he is talking about.i can understand where you're coming from, although honesty and desperation is still vague to me, and maybe there's some confusion of intent on your part that comes with a lack of familiarity with his stuff. but i'll just go on a bit more about how i view him. Lolita (narrated by a sappy psychopath) really is not a great place to start to get a feel for Nabokov's own soul (Pessoa is a terrible comparison). i don't find him to be a pseudo intellectual, although his narrators frequently are, and part of the fun is seeing the things that the protagonist is not seeing (like Quilty's name in a letter hidden from Humbert but visible to the reader). their lack of self awareness is not only a theme but a source of humor and horror and pathos to me. it is true that the puns and puzzles can seem clever for the sake of it, but i not only find most of them actually clever, but fun and in service of a unique tone and construction filled with hidden intentionality from the sentence level to larger levels.is he cold? yes. is he spontaneous? no. but there really is genuine emotion beneath the surface, a childlike fascination with patterns and details as well as the usual pity and spirit that comes with the plight of characters, and its all the more valuable for not being in the surface. in music there are sentimental progressions, in movies you can draw a smiley on a pebble and throw it into the ocean. these are known to get a response. i just think nabokov usually does something different, and its strangeness alone (as with his later works where you might feel less for the characters) is very valuable.having said all of that, the best place to start to see the range, the understatement, the emotions he is capable of would be the following short stories:>First Love>Details of a Sunset>A Russian Beauty>Signs and Symbolsi also do think someone who hasn't read Speak Memory or Pale Fire is missing out, even if they'd end up hating it.
What’s the male version of this? I’m tired as fuck
>>24946277Femcels and incels should just fuck each other, why haven't they?
>>24946444Incels hatred of women comes from not getting sexFemcels hatred of men make them not want sexthey don't have too much of an overlap
>>24944030i finished this the other week, I don't really get how it's a femcel novel. The main character describes herself as being super hot, she's also inherited enough wealth to live alone in nyc without working. Aren't femcels poor and ugly? I'd imagine this would be more relatable to drug addicts than femcels, although I used to be a drug addict and the doses that she takes would surely kill a person lol
>>24946644>incels want high quality women that they can't get>femcels want commitment from high quality men they can get Both are low quality but want high quality. They would NEVER settle for each other.
>>24946838her previous novel, eileen, is about a femcel i.e. a smelly ugly weird antisocial girl and somehow that got attached to this one for some reason even as you say it makes no fucking sensebut then again incel is used for any misogynistic guy these days regardless of their sex-having status so i guess maybe it counts as the equivalentthe word they're really reaching for is "misanthrope"
>he's literally me
>>24945634Gaslighting isn't going to change the fact you were wrong. My suggestion is that you match the strength of your opinion to your knowledge level so the next time you run into someone smarter than yourself (which is a LOT of people) you won't end up so embarrassed.
>>24945605>People forget that Mary was the daughter of one of the only serious female philosophers in history>female philosopherNot important enough to remember, lol.
>>24944825Cool and t his just supports what I said above:>He's literally any human. For we can imagine that just like Frankenstein has abandoned his Monster after he created it and realized what he has done, so too God has abandoned humanity.
>>24945924Any human just wants a human friend or mate?
>>24946166Not wants, but needs. And that's what the main conflict is about.
How do you learn to philosophize? I read philosophy books but i never learn to philosophize. I never learn to use those fancy words like epistomoleogoogy; i only learn what they kinda mean but i never have a sure feeling of it and have to look it up all the time. Is philosophy only for high iq people? I feel utterly lost so much so i don't even bother to talk about it with other people.
>>24946750So? He used math to formally describe and prove his hypothesis, not to come up with the hypothesis itself. Like I said, it’s a tool.
>>24946020By asking questions. Some are answered by practical sciences, others by thought alone. If you can read a passage and disagree, you're philosophizing
I cant do anything but metaphysics and no matter how robust or where I started I always ended back at soul slavery. I moved to a different subject.
>>24946202Explain Godel's theorems like im five
>>24946020The anons saying it's about inquiring and asking questions are on the mark, or, at least, that's how philosophizing starts. The two main approaches amount to 1) theorizing from the start, or 2) taking account of the predominant or highest opinions related to your questions, investigating them, and theorizing from there. The end sought is wisdom or knowledge of the matters your questions are about, either fully as that wisdom seemed to amount to at the start, or a wisdom qualified by what's achievable as wisdom. Whether there are methods philosophy uses is a bit more of an open question, to the extent that satisfying oneself that it uses formal logic or experiment may be an opinion that itself requires becoming more clear about (that's not to say it's wrong, but it's taking as given what may need to be reasoned about for oneself). If you can take the first step of both becoming clear about the questions, and what you believe right now about those subjects and why, you'll at least be on the way to beginning to philosophize.
I willingly didnt return my library books after the library near me is suddenly going through unexpected renovations and its been sitting on my shelf for close to a year since i was too lazy to drive across town to another library.I was planning on returning the books when the library opens again in a couple months but at this point i'm tempted to just keep em since I've just been buying my books instead for the first time in my life instead of using the library and i'm liking my growing collection.The library books are the illiad, the odyssey, the aeneid and mythology.I wanted to have this certain set of books anyways and at this point i dont wanna pay for it.Is this wrong of me ? Who else is gonna read these old books in my crappy bumfuck town in the middle of nowhere?they probably have multiple copies anyways.
I've been in a similar situation once in third grade. At the end of the school year I brought back a book I had forgotten home months before. The teacher didn't remember I had it either, yet instead of being happy she'd gotten her book back she ruthlessly tore me apart in front of the class. Since that day I've never tried to be proactive again. If I'm on time it's fine but if it's late and no one reminds me it's on them.
I still have a copy of This Spake Zarathustra from a decade ago. They sent me to collections for it and it dinged my credit. I refused to pay. I refuse to return. I will not subject the people of my town to Nietzsche.
>>24945852As a librarian, keep them, no one cares. You're the only one with negative consequences from this, because when a Core Collection book is missing for more than a month or two, we buy it almost immediately. That said, you're screwing your future self by tossing away access to free books at your library. If you return them the fines are usually greatly reduced, usually to a maximum of $5 per item instead of list price + processing fee. I don't know why you would deny yourself access to library books though, if you're a reader. Even if you are retarded and prefer ebooks, those are offered for free at a majority of libraries as well with convenient sync features between devices.
>>24946619Not OP, but my city's libraries abolished late fees long ago
>>24946775There's a library system nearby that got rid of late fees and everyone comes to ours instead because:>new book comes out>buy two copies>both get checked out>both patrons take a month or two or three>get charged for the book if you don't bring it back>but charge fully waived if item is returned>people keep the books for however long it takes them to read it at whatever pace they want even if there is a wait list of 50+ peoplePeople actually pay the non-resident fee for our library system (which is not cheap) so they actually get books in a reasonable time-frame, and most of them directly blame them needing to come to us and pay yearly on their system's change to fine free. One of the librarians is pushing to turn us fine free because she's constantly whining about imaginary low income families who can't afford fees and we're being racist by blocking those families access. Our director thankfully is standing pretty firm and asks for evidence, of which she has none, but I feel like it's only a matter of time because the world is creeping endlessly towards zero individual responsibility and people like her always get their way, usually by being insidious.
Is this actually poorly written, or is that just the thing where they try to bash him any way they can (small dick, missing testicle, secretly gay, etc.)
>>24942860Its poorly written in the sense that its not written. Its ranted to the typographist while Hitler was walking back and fourth in his cell while gesticulating furiously
>>24942860>small dick, missing testicle, secretly gaythis is basically just how women argue with men
thoughts on the ford translation compared to other translations?
>>24945490the ferrari translation is a faster read
Think of it less like a book and more like a podcast with one guy. Hitler didnt "write" it and simply orated it to someone else who copied it down
I'm interested in a reading group focused on art books. Most you can get through your library if you can't afford them, or as PDF's from Anna'a Archive.To start with I'd like to go with Umberto Eco's On Beauty, and then On Ugliness, but I open to alternative suggestions for our starting book.The reading for the week will be posted Sunday if there are enough takersIf you want, although it's not necessary for participation, there will be linked to threads and so forth on the Criterion Club server under the visual-arts channel https://discord.gg/XhFGx57VKm
>>24946510>His books are much richer in illustrationsI doubt. Those university level textbooks are pretty colourful nowadays.
>>24946514Do have any in particular you would participate for?
>>24946545Nah. I read Gardner's Art Through the Ages a decade ago and now I'm reading Janson's History of Art (the second edition in Norwegian for language practice) at my own pace.
From On Beauty
I would join probably, although I have never read any Eco, because I already think him to be a turbo midwit. I also want to throw in Roger Scruton as a suggestion
Why did humanity suddenly discover a sense of humor in the 1600s?Don Q, Sammy Ps diary, confusiones de la confusiones... all have a LOL witty passage or four in there. Prior to this, just about nothing. Where did this come from all across yurop? When the modern offices bros humor is a collection of Will Ferrell movie references, you have to think there is some comic progenitor or Q source in the 1550s that taught them how to make a witty joke.
>>24946207Christianity caused us to lose our sense of humor. The pagans knew how to be goofy.
>>24946573Okay, I’ve cited specific examples, what’s a work from before the 1600s with humor that doesn’t boil down to a pun mister literate?
>>24946720No wonder abrahamic bvlls crushed this shit. Now it seems Irony and white self hate is a thing especially in Europe and needs to be crushed by Islam
>>24946720Maybe this thing was funnier on stage cause ...
>>24946770NTA, but Canterbury tales has plenty of comedic bits.
Is this a good book to start studying informal logic? What exactly should I expect?
>>24946784https://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Ockham/Summa_Logicae/Book_Ihttps://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Ockham/Summa_Logicae/Book_III-4
>>24946799>Give me an x-ray of a kangaroo with three legs.>Yesterday I saw an eagle looking out of my bedroom window.>Let's eat, grandma.https://youtu.be/-OuEZSDus5g
>>24946807https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/516200433/#516205882
https://archive.ph/ZR5g0>This process of analyses and conceptual definition and reconfiguration has been going on for centuries, with each generation building on the work done by the generations that had come before it. It is based on sound and logical principles or as my rabbi friend has it “We study rational principles. It is the logic that is godly. No argument is accepted without absolute proof. When the conclusion is reached, the logic is compelling, unassailable and demanding. The principles are absolute.” This is in fact not too dissimilar from what theoretical physicists do, when they conceptualize particles and processes in order to explain the underlying workings of the universe based on observation. The difference, of course, is what observations are being analyzed and studied: While theoretical physicists may be using the data gleaned from experiments in the Large Hadron Collider, yeshiva students are observing the Talmud, which they believe is a message from the creator of the universe.https://cross-currents.com/2018/11/23/what-do-they-study-at-yeshivas/
https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/503426619
ToT UOHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
Victor was a pussy for not inserting a hot lesbian sex scene with Eponine and Cosette.
>>24945314Why the fuck did you think it was? Fantine? Eponine?
>>24945423ever watch one of those nature shows where they have bugs cage fighting each other to the death?
>>24944962Hugo really didn't do her justice. She's basically not even a character anymore after the convent timeskip. If Dumas wrote Les Mis, we would've had 600 pages of comfy kid Cosette and JVJ adventures
>>2494600319th century Pragmata. Hugo didn't want to write her anymore because he had a thing for poor and destitute women. It's part of why he describes Fantine and Eponine a lot. It's genuinely his fetish.
Have anyone else read Sex, France & Arab men here?
>>24946111Sounds horribly uninteresting
>>24946116For you
>>24946102>>24946111But Algerians aren't Arab
>>24946150They are but they're also mixed with negros
>>24946102That title sounds like your personal fantasy
>completely dismantles leftism in your path
>>24946071SAAAAR
>>24944150>From psychotic-sexual control freak aristocratic >and state-authoritarian socialist>to corporatist ethnostatist>and another state-authoritarian socialistThere are no leftists in this book, OP.
>>24946755meant to say "psycho-sexual control freak aristocrat" and "ethnostatist", but you get the gist.
>>24946541Ok big man, Im sticking to the slop they serve as takeout, you keep sticking to the slop they serve on pornhub
>>24946828Whats that supposed to mean, ranjesh?
