do you really understand what you read, at a deep level, specially philosophy? or is it just mostly posturing and repeating stuff like a human-LLM?i feel like i never really learned anything in my whole education, i can read "complicated" books and get something from them but i don't really have the environment to discuss it and become really cultivated. can we save anything from the dead civilization that came before our time, or is everything lost?
>>24237571>things... things... things,... things... things,... things... things,.... sorry, you're not as intelligent as you fancy yourself to be.
>>24238054More or less. Basically just read stuff serially and did practice tests. Was enough to regurgitate info in the short term (sometimes even long term) but no real understanding.>>24238033>>24237618It's nothing special. Basically just having an awareness of the limits of my own working memory and operating within that. A lot of self-explanation and gradual build up.
I may not understand what I read fully, but i definitely enjoy it :) some works definitely make me feel remorse of consciousness, though
>>24238112>>24238070this is why closeted homosexuals are the only ones that can truly understand literature
>>24238683is that why they have to wear diapers?
>female protagonistI shan't be reading.
Poor Undine. She deserved better. But trapped in a German book, what chance did she have?
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COUNT + 2 Does anyone have the /lit/tle girls chart?
>>24238594Medea sort of bridges the gap between "female protags we like" and "female protags we'd rather keep away from". I have a lot of sympathy for her I must say, but still, steady on, Medea.Anyway, no worries of that kind with <pic attached>. Heidi is a solid citizen who will make some lucky Swiss fellow very happy in a few years' time.
>>24238605
>>24237842this, simple as.
What is Lit's opinion of Stephen King?
>>24238030That's a big fucking head
>>24232087He's good at what he does.
>>24232120what the hell does this mean?
>>24238405Rent free.
>>24232087The only thing I've read of his was On Writing, and somewhere in the middle I thought "maybe I should read some of his novels after all" and by the end I thought "I'm not going to enjoy his novels." On Writing was an interesting read, though, particularly in the practical advice he gives for the publishing side, plus his personal experience. Most of the actual writing advice in it is the same shit you'll hear everywhere else, but he does seem to understand that you can only learn writing by reading and writing, and his aim is just to point you away from early writer pitfalls.
>They rode through regions of particolored stone upthrust in ragged kerfs and shelves of traprock reared in faults and anticlines curved back upon themselves and broken off like stumps of great stone treeboles and stones the lightning had clove open, seeps exploding in steam in some old storm. They rode past trapdykes of brown rock running down the narrow chines of the ridges and onto the plain like the ruin of old walls, such auguries everywhere of the hand of man before man was or any living thing.What did you just say?
This reminds me of "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It felt like at least a third of the book consisted of him describing (for the most part imaginary) geological features of Mars. That book was such a fucking slog to get through. The various time jumps didnt help either.
>>24234253He’s describing a cruel landscape where you are nothing.
>>24238304I will give that guy credit since Mars is (in this context, obviously not in reality) fictional and thus you'd need someone to painstakingly paint that image for you. Corncob would enter a McDonalds bathroom and take 5000 words conveying it.
>>24235774>trapdykes of brown cock
>>24238293I had that experience with the closing paragraph of The Road. He says "On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming" about brook trouts. Me, having never seen a brook trout in my life, had no idea what he meant by equating the patterns on their skin to "maps of the world in its becoming" so I looked up pictures of brook trouts and was instantly like oh, that makes perfect sense now.
Coming up to a big chunk of French literature on my reading list. I’m wondering whether it’s worth taking a couple of months to learn to read French or whether I should just read translations?
>>24237904I would advise against this. It takes years to get a feeling on the language, and you're no better than a translator going back and forth from the dictionary to the text.
>>24237904better get to work and find out. you can learn a lot of a language in a year... look into Alice ayel. I'm using her site now to learn French. it's based on an acquisitional approach to language learning.
>all these monolinguals who think learning a romance language is massive undertakingnothing makes the online language learning 'community' look sillier than learning japanese, russian, etc...>>24237873he could do it in 2 months if he actually dedicated any significant amount of his free time to it. >Mr et Mrs Dursley, qui habitaient au 4, Privet Drive, avaient toujours affirmé avec la plus grande fierté qu’ils étaient parfaitement normaux, merci pour eux. Jamais quiconque n’aurait imaginé qu’ils puissent se trouver impliqués dans quoi que ce soit d’étrange ou de mystérieux. Ils n’avaient pas de temps à perdre avec des sornettes.Mr Dursley dirigeait la Grunnings, une entreprise qui fabriquait des perceuses. C’était un homme grand et massif, qui n’avait pratiquement pas de cou, mais possédait en revanche une moustache de belle taille. Mrs Dursley, quant à elle, était mince et blonde et disposait d’un cou deux fois plus long que la moyenne, ce qui lui était fort utile pour espionner ses voisins en regardant par-dessus les clôtures des jardins. Les Dursley avaient un petit garçon prénommé Dudley et c’était à leurs yeux le plus bel enfant du monde.>>24237856If you end up going down the learning route, get yourself copies of French for Reading by Karl Sandberg, Assimil French with Ease, volumes 1-3 of Les Desastreuses Aventures Des Orphelins Baudelaire, and Le Petit Prince. Le Petit Prince will essentially serve as your graduation from the very introductory levels of French. While you're making your way through those books, make sure to read a news article a day, even if it's way above your current level. I recommend RFI, since it's very easy to download audio files from them; and since they come with an article, you've got a ready transcript.
>>24238226I know French, Middle French, and Old French. I think you're misguided on what understanding actually is and what being able to read well in a foreign language looks like. I'm thoroughly convinced the best OP could do after two months is read 3-5 pages in an hour, with heavy use of a dictionary and needing to reread sentences multiple times. This would be for a book OP has never read. Sure, reading HP is "easy" because literally every English speaker is extremely familiar with the story, so you can fill in gaps easier and the sentences are really basic. But if OP were to read Proust as he is implying. I imagine it would take him close to 2-3 months of daily dedicated reading just to get through Swann's Way.
>>24238429I didn't say anything about him being able to read Proust (and actually understand) after just two months. I did, however, give him all the tools he needs in order to get the ball rolling.
>Gandhi admitted in an interview that he had no real followers, no disciplesHow common is this, to have people who profess your philosophy but do not live by it? How can this be fixed?
>>24236830>that's dismissing every effort of everyone who follows his teachingsgood. that's how you exorcise a demon
>>24236474>Most humble man in history is humbleSTOP THE PRESSES
>>24236474gandhi was a faggot anyway. if no one follows your teachings that's because your teachings are anti-reality.
>>24236474Very common, since ancient times even, to greater or lesser extents. But I think Gandhi also gives the right answer. Once you set something forth for the public, it's out of your hands, so you set it forth having considered as clearly as possible what your aim is, and you judge what you understandings or misunderstandings you can live with with respect to that aim being met. There won't be any simple fix, since you can't be everyone's parent or superego looking over their shoulders to correct them. That might require seeing what the lowest standards you can stomach are and drawing a clear line to separate these things off.
>>24238587technically not a fag just a paedo
If you're not a woman do you have no chance to get published?
With the level at which you write probably.
You can always troon out.You don't even have to groom yourself. Inject estrogen and cut your genitals off.Just come to the agent, say your name is Vulvaria, and that your pronouns are she/her and if anyone misgenders you you'll throw a fit. This should work, I think. It's weird that grifting trannies didn't break publishing the same way as they did with female bathrooms, jobs, and sports.
Is this French pixie-turned-goblin worth it? He's popping up everywhere now because of the subject matter but I don't care about that or the plot. I only care about his prose, themes, and the emotional or intellectual aftertaste. To be clear, I already dislike his general aesthetic, but as a younger man, though not my personal taste, he was okay.
>>24235326>>24235353You fucking faggot pseud
>here's your reactionary right-wing author, bro
I bet he's anti-police. The real solution to the West's problems is a massive surveillance state policed by law enforcement androids. You bet there would be no crime or immigration.
Also, is he gay?
>>24235326Houellebecq is for class A or class S incels only.I'm not sure you qualify. You'll have to prove it to me.
Hello everyone!I have a book signing event at the Flintridge Bookstore in Los Angeles county!If anyone is in the area, feel free to stop by this Sunday at 4 PM!I will be talking with another author about identity and apocalypses!
>>24235642Congrats!I would never associate myself irl with this website tho
>>24236608Is this meant to make me feel sympathy for the author? Why would I feel sympathetic toward a coomer who wrote a book about his masturbation?
>>24236982Dumbass...it's mean to warn OP of what they're about to encounter. And if you think Joe Matt just wrote about masturbation, your intellect is more shallow than a splashpad. He's in the "confessional" genre, like much of modern literature.
Lol I live for the 4chan comments. I know that not associating with it is what most authors would do, but my story is a story about all kinds of people. I wouldn’t back away from any specific audience, especially if stories are supposed to bring people together.And poor Joe Matt. Dude’s work is profoundly misunderstood. I could only wish to have half of his genius.
>>24237496calm down
Everyone talks about Moby Dick and his stories, but what about his other novels?
>>24238053White Jacket is 9/10 Don't care for Typee or OmooBilly Budd is 8/10I haven't read much of his poetry so can't comment on that
>>24238053I read Bartleby in University and found it an excellent take on loafing/NEETing.
Pierre and Confidence-Man were fantastic, though not quite as good as Moby-Dick.
>Your favourite Jane Austen novel>Why
>>24236240I've never heard of that one. Is it a sequel?
>>24236246Northanger Abbey is comfy kino. All of Jane's novels are, but NA is prime comf...
>>24236227Every library is a great library that contains no volume of Jane Austen, even if it contains no other book
>>24238464>>24237154>>24236232Fags
>>24238464Calm down Twain.
man lit was cookin during this time period
>>24238351The 19th Century was the greatest century in history. God, I want to go there. Take me back.
>>24238365I think OP is focusing on a 100 year period, not 350 years
>>24238365ahem
>>24238351>Tolstoy>Dostoevsky>Melville>Whitman>Baudelaire>Rimbaud>Verlaine>Mallarme>Hugo>Dumas>Dickens>Gogol>Pushkin>TurgenevComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24238420Dozens. Just those writing in English, there’sWalter ScottRobert Louis StevensonThomas HardyRobert BrowningTennysonEmily DickinsonEdgar Allan PoeThe first half of Arthur Conan DoyleThe first half of KiplingThe first two-thirds of Henry JamesMost of Mark TwainComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
Why did this series never catch on the way Harry Potter did? Was it the ugly cover?
>>24238020I do not live in Afghanistan, the thought did not even occur to me.
>>24233746They should have gotten a furry artist to draw her. Works every time.
>>24237934The Dragon Codexes were pretty great. Dragonlance in general, really. As the name suggest, you can generally presume dragons are involved about 70% of the time.
>>24233746It simply was not charming and had less widespread appeal. If you're not furry/scaly you probably just don't care about weird anthro dragons. I know I didn't.
I always thought it was very impressive he was able to get published with a big hit at 18, but this additional backstory I just learned about may have dampened my enthusiasm a little bit.
>Predicts and lays out all the problems with socialism, almost prophetically >40 years after he dies a bunch of dumb retarded niggers still fall for it>In doing so, they merely reinforce all of his points, especially the one about the irrationality of manImagine having a worldview so based it only gets even more reinforced after you die.
>>24233715>>24233743I don't think reducing it down to just "capitalism" or "socialism" really helps a lot. Most nations these days are pretty firm mixed-model economies, and it's really moreso about recognizing where involving the state becomes more efficient than relying on private agents to carry out some economic deed. Such a thing isn't really inherent to whether an economy is declared "capitalist" or "socialist", it has more to do with whether people are tangibly taking action or if they're just fannying around.Like for example, in the Soviet Union there was an overreliance on the state to provide basic consumer goods and services to the citizenry, such as automotive retail (waiting lists up to a decade), mechanic work (waiting lists in the range of months), and even hairdresser appointments (also potentially in the several-weeks to months range), and this ended up resulting in a situation where if anyone actually wanted to get anything done, they'd have to pay extra (under the table) to those working in these services which effectively amounted to a return to private exchange of captial anyway. This experience of having to deal with an extremely inefficient consumer products economy (to the point of smuggling fucking jeans) was one of the contributing factors to the downfall of the Soviet political system. Meanwhile, you have places like the United States, and particularly a place like California, where the creation of necessary public infrastructure such as large-scale housing projects and rail transport is repeatedly hamstrung by private landowner interests and small-scale municipal governments, resulting in a delay of projects across multiple years if not decades, which in turn exacerbates problems like homelessness and economic downturn, the latter especially if people can't afford the fuel necessary to get to work the next city over. That which does exist is also often neglected due to a lack of funding (often from overextension) which results in things like reduced police presence on say, BART (which usually requires you drive to a station to begin with, negating the damn point of a rail system), which in turn leads to homeless guys schizing out and pissing in the cabins.tldr; it's just about efficiency. do whatever gets shit done on time and tends to the present needs of the populace or suffer the natural consequences. economies are just a means of managing (supposedly) limited resources, societies thrive off of everyone getting the resources they need so things don't devolve to barbarism or revolution, basic social contract theory. instead of socialism or capitalism, just focus on pragmatism and practicality. actually determining what is necessary is a different, tangentially related topic.p.s. the commies definitely have a point about the whole infinite growth-finite resources thing though
>>24237561That's basically what I was saying. Why this autistic crusade to "defeat capitalism" or "find another system", when it's blatantly obvious that what you need is capitalism in the right quantities?That's the problem with leftists, on the whole. They're retarded little purity spiraling virtue warriors, who don't care about making things better in any tangible way. As long as we have "beaten capitalism" and "installed socialism", job done, except everything is shit now.
>>24235740I fundamentally disagree. I'd rather take a mild hit to my ego, and have nicer things + less persecution. You'd get that if you weren't a faggot sheltered rich kid too.
>>24237588Honestly, I think it's just a side effect of natural propensities to sort things into neat categories. Same reason why you get other forms of political tribalism, people are allergic to nuance. Not to get all Aristotelian or anything, but I don't think most people were made for politics.
>>24233306If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
What could be finer?
>>24236655i finished it a week or so ago; it's such an enchanting, charming book. the complaining about the essay-ish chapters / parts on whaling, white, etc. are exaggerated here -- melville takes just enough space to elucidate on each concept without it becoming boring or dry. it's the first melville i've read, but the ambiguities, the confidence-man, and clarel look to be his most interesting besides the whale.
>>24236655Poor man's blood meridian
>>24236655There is no way this book should have been as long. Just pure autism. It's ridiculous people call it the best novel ever just because of its flowery prose. Fucking Master and Margarita is better. Now I'm not saying it's shit but c'mon if you seriously think this is the best literature has to offer I feel sorry for you.
I loved these lil niggas
