Any books about single, childless men growing old alone?Looking ideally for something which doesn't make this type of man into too much of a caricature. I'd like to read about what it's like to be this kind of person.
Pessoa was a total loser and an incel but a great writer. Trully, a great artist must suffer to creat great art.
>>23821557He wasn't a loser: he had friends, a job, even admirers later on life. Ophelia would probably have married him.
>>23821568he was also friends with fucking Aleister Crowleyle loner incel great sigma write trope doesn't exist anywhere. every great artists had friends and had a life.
>>23821528The Old Man and the Sea
>>23821528my diary desu
>>23821568>>23821677He didn't have friends or family. He had acquaintances.
>>23821695He had several friends in the Lisbon arts scene. One of his best friends committed suicide in Germany or something at a young age, but he had other friends who published in certain magazines. He launched his own publishing house, Ibis, where some of them were published. He had no wife or kids, but he had a girlfriend for a while and was close to his aunts, and his step-sister (iirc) and her family. He even lived with his aunts for much of his adult life.
>>23821734A social butterfly compared to some of us. At some point in your growth as a writer, you realise you're being seriously hampered by lack of social and mental stimulation if you're truly alone. All the talent in the world can't save you if you don't have something worth writing about, and humans aren't really wired to pull worlds out of their ass ex nihilo. That's when you realise this trope of the solitary writer does not actually exist.
>>23822844I agree, though I've only learned this rather embarrassingly late in life. Even Lovecraft, who most think of as some kind of hermit, was quite sociable - and many of his stories were borne of experiences he had during social outings to certain towns and places.
>>23822844You don’t need friends but you do need to talk to strangers a lot and ask them questions and get them yapping, as well as do a lot of people watching with the attentiveness of Sherlock
>>23821568THANK YOU!Sick and tired of this friendless Pessoa meme
>>23821528Not a book but I watched picrel recently and it was gave me this vibe>Perfect Days
>>23821528Good writers don't write about loners because they know they're boring to read about.
The Tartar Steppe. Really hit me hard reading it in my early 30s.
>>23823244>>23823244Not really. I can tell you still have an autistic romantic media-induced view of things. You probably don’t understand anything about creating the interiority of characters. Disinterested small talk with people you barely know like co-workers is like a cardboard cutout compared to actual relationships, but at least a bit of your ego is at stake here so it’s better than nothing. Yapping with strangers about nothing is even more worthless in this regard. It doesn’t work in gaining you much lasting wisdom and isn’t that much better than consuming information off a screen. If you don’t have skin in the game your ability to individuate kind of just withers away. An artist needs to be deeply involved, at least in himself, at least at some level; simultaneously he needs to be standing behind paring his fingernails. He needs some emotional base to work off or he only ever understands feelings as something out of a textbook. Imagine a blind man trying to describe a sunset and all that. Try falling in mutual love or something then compare that to shallow relationships or talking to strangers on the bus. Besides people talk in public anywhere as much as they used to. The modern screen neet doesn’t even have that.
>>23823244>>23824275Flannery O'Conner said >""Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."
>>23824335Crippled racist
>>23824337arguably the best short story writer of all time
>>23824335Well she’s wrong and her shit’s all retarded.
>>23824384rilke said the same thing
>>23824125Came in to recommend this as well. The Tartar Steppe perfectly encapsulates the never ending passage of time and how it’s often wasted. My heart sank during my read through and several times, I had to put the book down and reflect on my own life and my own Fort Basianti.
>>23824431isn't that end inevitable anon?
Gayest thread I’ve ever seen lmao. Stop whining, weirdos
>>23824446you have no empathy or imagination
>>23824452This is why you have no bitches, you’re too self-defeating and up your own sensitive ass. Stop reading gay shit like Pessoa or Dostoevsky or Kafka and read real men’s books
>>23824452>why you have no bitchesif every action you take depends on whether or not it results in pussy, you are pathetic
>>23824437Yes, but once you’re aware of it you can work to mitigate the effects of it. If Drogo had taken the opportunity to transfer early or pursued it more aggressively after his initial denial, he would have been able to move onto something better. He chose to remain at the Fort due to his own complacency and his quest for glory that never came. The men he initially admired were those who stayed and those men were the most conquered by life. The best among them overcame the fear of change and moved on. The Tartar Steppe is a cautionary tale or a parable surrounding man’s inability to enact change despite well knowing that it would benefit him.
>>23821528What about Schopenhauer? I know it’s possible that he had children, but still it seems he lived a solitary life.
>>23824497>it would benefit him.i am really doubtful of this notion. fort is eternal
>>23824520no he studied in uk, traveled europe, received private lessons, went to uni, in his mid twenties he became friends with goethe in his mother's literary parlor
Please give me one example of a writer who actually lived in solitude for most of their lives, or I’m going to kill myself. The only person I can think of is Emily Dickinson.
>>23824574Emily BronteMarcel ProustHerman Hesse
why are most intellectuals and artists such fucking losers irl
I started reading some of his poetry and I'm already very intrigued from the introduction. This guy was quite the character, 40 different personas, it's a lot even by modern standards.
>>23821528Skylark. It's about a woman approaching middle age, but the despair is palpable. If you're own despair can't cross gender lines then you're just a poser.
>>23824558we either cope or we don’t, and not coping is also coping
>>23824589Proust:>Proust was involved in writing and publishing from an early age.>As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber>one of the models for Madame Verdurin, and mother of his friend Gaston Arman de Caillavet, with whose fiancée (Jeanne Pouquet) he was in love. It is through Mme Arman de Caillavet, he made the acquaintance of Anatole France, her lover.>Proust set out to translate two of Ruskin's works into French, but was hampered by an imperfect command of English. To compensate for this he made his translations a group affair: sketched out by his mother, the drafts were first revised by Proust, then by Marie Nordlinger, the English cousin of his friend and sometime lover[22] Reynaldo Hahn, then finally polished by Proust.>many of Proust's friends and contemporaries, including his fellow writer André Gide[18] as well as his valet Ernest A. Forssgren.>Proust was one of the men identified by police in a raid on a male brothel run by Albert Le Cuziat.[24] Proust's friend, the poet Paul Morand, openly teased Proust about his visits to male prostitutes. In his journal, Morand refers to Proust, as well as Gide, as "constantly hunting, never satiated by their adventures ... eternal prowlers, tireless sexual adventurers."Hesse:>From late 1899, Hesse worked in a distinguished antique bookshop in Basel>In 1901, Hesse undertook to fulfill a long-held dream and travelled for the first time to Italy. In the same year, Hesse changed jobs and began working at the antiquarium Wattenwyl in Basel. Hesse had more opportunities to release poems and small literary texts to journals.>The couple settled down in Gaienhofen on Lake Constance, and began a family, eventually having three sons.>In 1911, Hesse visited India, where he became acquainted with Indian mysticism. His experiences in India—combined his involvement with Jungian analysis—affected his literary work>At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial Army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front.>On 11 May, he moved to the town Montagnola and rented four small rooms in a castle-like building, the Casa Camuzzi. Here, he explored his writing projects further; he began to paint, an activity reflected in his next major story>In 1923, Hesse was granted Swiss citizenship.Like I said, these people had lives vastly more eventful than we like to imagine.
>>23824692Even the biggest NEET hermits had moments of being social in their lives. Are you only looking for people that literally lived in a cave their entire life?
>>23824701You're delusional mate. Talking about people who lived in castles, had children, travelled exotic colonies, caused political scandals, socialised with aristocrats, and were household names in their national literary scenes. There's just no comparison between a modern sad neet (or even a normal relatively "successful" person) and fucking Proust or Hesse.
>>23824716That's why you should read the Desert Fathers. Assume that every one whose name has been recorded, there are a hundred who spent their days meditating and praying in a hole in the ground.
>>23824716>and fucking Proust or Hesse.yea the difference was powerful family connections to Jewish publishers
>>23821528MolloyMalone Dies
>>23824792Even the dead average normalfag of a hundred years ago lived an unquantifiably more vitalistic life.
>>23822844What if you used to have friends and a life and you lost them all because you’re a bad person. Can you still be a writer the ?
>>23824812I could argue the average neet has seen more of the world and had more conversations and information thrown at them, through the internet, than those people
>>23824833Why are you asking me about yourself nigger. You tell me if you feel like you can write or not. Personally, I wouldn't allow you to write if you were my thrall, but alas.
>>23824840>had more conversations and information thrown at themsee: >>23824275
>>23824848>you must experience life! or your writing will suck!Just more wish-washy spiritual art talk that I hear all the time but it can never really be proven. Likely thought up by procrastinators as an excuse to not start writing their book. >ill start writing after i travel the world, go fight in ww3, and get married with 3 kids
>>23824885>>you must experience life! or your writing will suck!Not what I said. Nuance isn't your strong suit.
>>23824897>Not what I said.heavily implied
>>23824724kek desert father all interacted with each other, how do you think their teachings got here? all of their lessons are conversations. and before joining the movement they were all normalfags
>>23821528>single, childless men growing old alonePhilip Larkin is the boy you want. He talks about little else. And it’s poetry, so you get the same emotional gutpunch as a novel in about 1% of the time.Here are the most obvious titles. (But as I said, almost everything he wrote is relevant, so simplest is just to get his Collected Poems and read it.)THE NORTH SHIP (1945)— ‘I see a girl dragged by the wrists’“Look at Chad and Stacy there. I’ll never be like them. Just have to plod along, I guess, and hope something good comes of it.”THE LESS DECEIVED (1955)— Toads“Here I am wageslaving. Why can’t I become a PIRATE? Because I’m a LOSER with NO BALLS, that’s why.”— Skin“As I age my skin will get all wrinkled and baggy, so I should be having lots of sex now, and I’m not. Dammit.”THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS (1964)— Mr. Bleaney“I live alone in a cheap rented room. What a loser.”— Toads Revisited“Here I am, still wageslaving. I guess I’d rather be a wageslave than anything else. In the rut until I die.”— Dockery and Son“A guy younger than me has a son who’s going to university. Dammit.”— Send No Money“I’m basically the guy standing in the corner in that party meme. Dammit.”HIGH WINDOWS (1974)— Sympathy in White Major“What have I done with my life? I certainly haven’t lived very much. I’ve written a few poems. Marvellous.”— The Old Fools“Getting senile is really going to suck.”— Sad Steps“Philip Sydney wrote a famous poem about love and the moon. Good for him.”— Money“I have plenty of money. Why don’t I use it to have fun? I could pay a prostitute to dress up as Sailor Moon. Naa, I’m too old. Dammit.”UNCOLLECTED— Strangers“Here I am, locked away in myself. All my interactions with other people are absolutely impersonal. Dammit.”— On Being Twenty-six“Here I am, the typical 4chan anon age. What am I left with, as the enthusiasm of youth dies away? Not much, it seems.”— Best Society“Solitude isn’t perfect but it sure beats being around other people.”— ‘At thirty-one, when some are rich’“I wageslave and then waste every evening on 4chan. I mean, writing letters. It would be 4chan if I’d been born eighty years later.”— Love Again“The bloke in the flat above is having sex and I’m just sitting here wanking to it. How did I sink so low?“— The Winter Palace“Hmm, my memory is going. Maybe senility isn’t so bad. At least the pain is dulled.”— Aubade“I’m going to die. Dammit.”
>>23821568How about that letter of his in which he relates a story about how when he was renting a room in Lisbon from his aunt, she, undermost to him, hired some workers to do repairs in the house. Pessoa dropped spaghetti so hard that he literally hid in the closet for the whole day until workers finished and left. LmaoYes he had some drinking buddies and even some early admirers that recognised his genius but he was an incel autist through and through.
>>23827002That quote is made up. I know because I made it up, for humorous effect. Before the Zenith biography was published I had vague plans of writing a fictional biography of Pessoa, peppered with quotes like that, again partly for humorous effect but also as a tribute to Pessoa's own legacy of producing heteronyms etc.
>>23826044I didn't word my post correctly. For every one you've heard about, there were a hundred who lived and died in a hole in the ground, unrecorded and unremembered.
>>23826821Lol absolute kino post
>>23821568The man literally dedicated the first part of his most famous work to fawning over his imaginary waifu. If he wasn't a complete incel autist loser in today's sense, it was only because the times didn't allow for it.
>>23827967That isn't true though?He doesn't mention romantic longing in TBOD.
>>23826821My favourite poster.
>>23827969What’s going on here then? Does this not sound like romantic longing for an imaginary woman to you?
>>23828028Fair enough, but that's an abstract longing for a non-material femanon. And it doesn't last half a book; at best it's a couple of random passages.
>>23826821Larkin would have loved /lit/. He was a pervert, racist, misogynist, weird. He would have fit right in.
>>23827947then there is no point in reading the remaining. we must feel long spiritual connections with them. we can only talk to them through silence.
>>23826821based
bumpa
>>23826821he is overrated
