should i even bother trying to read more complex literature if i'm too low IQ to understand it?>picrel
>>23317943I feel bad for ogre. Don't obsess over rationally understanding art, anon. Feel it first. Besides, truly stupid prople rarely think themselves stupid.
I never studied literature in school and so I never had to analyse it in a classroom settingAll I care about is feelingAfter I finish a book I think about how a certain part made me feel and I don't try to identify themes Reading is all about enjoyment for me
>>23317943I mean I didn't really get it either but I still like other complex books. A huge aspect of understanding something is being able to relate to it. I think a difference in character and background play a bigger role in my inability to access Joyce than my intelligence. I've thoroughly enjoyed Schoppy, Pessoa, Pynchon, Pascal, James (yes, especially his later works), among others. Finnegan's Wake to me is utter nonsense, and maybe that means I'm not smart or poetic enough to get it, but I really don't think so. I think it just isn't for me, simple as that. Fuck it, dude. Pick up something else.
>>23317943The thing about reading is that you cannot really brute force meaning out of text. Rather, meaning is recognized - you look at the text and it speaks to something already within you. That the text is not speaking to you right now is not necessarily about your IQ but might be just that you don't have the baggage yet for the text to speak to you. But if it is just a matter of baggage, you can and should spend time building it, and texts you found extremely challenging will soon become walks int he park.
>>23317943wtf that's literally me
I relate heavily, I used to be a really high iq kid then I developed a tumor in my head that gave me horrible brain fog for years and years until I finally got it removed recently and I’m afraid it will last permanently and leave me in my current low iq barely-conscious state. At least I can still understand some concepts in various fields, but reading, which I used to love and do religiously, has become a laborious chore to the point my brain barely processes the words I read
>>23318136feel better soon anon and hope your joy of reading will return
>>23318136Maybe you should go back to your books gradually, anon. Try starting some easier reads and move up.
>>23317968Based this is me, it’s what art is about. Apart from philosophy I’m constantly stuck in this cycle on reading to look for a meaning to this big nothing
>>23317943I felt the same, currently just getting back into reading since I wanna give my brain some exercise while also trying to stop being a fatty and it was going okay until I started Dickens. I dunno if it's because I'm retarded or if his works are just hard to read at first but I'm having a rough time understanding everything in Tale of Two Cities. It's still a nice book but I feel bad because I'm unsure if I'm giving it the attention it deserves.
>>23318141Nta but any tips on this? I’m trying to make my way through the lit top 100 and classics but I find catcher in the rye shit too plebian and Ulysses too complex. Need some midwit tier chart to work my way up?
>>23318220NTA but I can recommend something easy I read back in high school that isn't some YA dogshit. Look up Shot At Dawn, story about a Canadian WW1 soldier giving an interview before he's to be executed for abandoning his post due to shell shock.
>>23318220Negro if you wanna start in literature you can't avoid established classics because they're "too plebian". I recommend reading smaller Russian, Japanese and German works, the drier the better. Also short story collections, since you won't have to follow big plots and therefore are less demanding. Can't really make you a list because I'm not home at the moment, but maybe the other lit anons around can help out.
>>23318136Fuck anon, that's terrible, I hope you're doing better nowOther anons have mentioned short stories or simpler material and I agree, you should start with thatmy suggestions are The old man and the sea, any of Philip K. Dick's short stories, or Melville's Bartleby the scrivener or Billy Budd, SailorI enjoyed all of these and they're all relatively simple and short, hopefully they will get you to love reading again like you used toGod bless anon, and get back to health
>>23317943Yes you should anon, you can only go up the ladder by climbingThe effort is worth it, start simple and never lose faith
>>23318220Okay anon, here’s a step by step program:1) Remove this patrician/pleb dichotomy from your brain. There is no le based patrician obscure classics that wizards hide from normalfaggots, there’s just books with good writing you like and books with good writing you don’t like. Some are more well known than others. 2) Find a book out there that interests you. Don’t read something for clout, that’s retarded. If you aren’t interested in Ulysses and what you can get out of it, then there’s literally no reason to read it. 3) Do some research beforehand about the author, the work, why people think it’s good etc. Never go into a book blind. Some books from certain authors (James Joyce, Henry James, Thomas Mann, Thomas Pynchon, DFW, Lev Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy)4) Here’s some good books to start out with: The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio MishimaA Clockwork Orange by Anthony BurgessNotes From Underground by Fyodor DostoevskyThe Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo TolstoyStoner by John Williams The Stranger by Albert CamusLolita by Vladimir NabokovDubliners by James JoyceThe Loser by Thomas Bernhard Siddhartha by Herman HesseIf you want a big long one:Moby Dick by Herman MelvilleThe Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander DumasCrime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 5) Start with the Greeks6) The Bible 7) Profit
>>23317943Just what to hear about how “parallax” is used by Joyce
pro tip: "themes" are bogus. literature ought to be hungrily devoured like a wolf at a carcass, not daintily nibbled with knife and fork. if you aren't hungry for it, don't bother. it's not a matter of intelligence, it's really not...that's exclusionary bullshit peddled by insecure elitists. find what makes you hungry and scarf it down
>>23318243Thanks >>23318559Thanks good advice , only thing is I started Lolita and it’s filtering me pretty hard.
>>23318797Based themes for a play yes but novel I agree just break the rules and fuck shit up
>>23317958Fpbp.
