/lit/ - Literature

>>3194533
Provably false.
>>3193013

Was this supposed to be funny? Depressing? Interesting? It was none of these things.

>>3193242
There's nothing about intelligence that necessarily excludes absent-mindedness, you know.

>The Most Dangerous Game.
>The Haunting of Hill House.
>Rage.
>The Count of Monte Cristo.
>The Gormenghast Trilogy.
>Oryx & Crake.
>Torture Garden.
>Apt Pupil.

What I could think of now. I've just woken.

>>3193214
It isn't? I'm sure a lot of their associated sellers sell secondhand books. Am I wrong? Am I thinking of Amazon?

>>3193207
>>3193208
Fuck, *bookdepository.

There's bookboon, if you don't mind secondhand.

>>3193189
What about it?

>>3191225
Casual racism. Because it's charming!

>>3193134
You just carry on writing, even if it is crap. You can recycle the crap into something better in redrafts. Or at least you can cannibalize something that's truly irreparable for other stories. Just write.

>>3193127
That's possible, too. But I've always gotten above 90% for English, so I don't know ...

Bump. Anyone have any comment about the extracts, at least?

>>3193104
My writing's always been pretty good. I'm proud of even my high school essays and stories.

>>3193065
>I've actually been making good progress, but whenever you're in a situation where you're buying two or three for every one you read you're going to get them piling up.

I've got the same problem. 71 books are waiting for me. And that's just the physical copies.

>>3189867
>forgetting about the beatniks

How could you.
Also Hitler.

>>3193061
And I fucked it up.

>>3193064
*its

>>3193061

>I have three mistresses. The hair of the third is plaited, and rolled about her head. And never has known the sweetness of perfumed oils. That face which mirrors passion is deformed, her body is like a pig's. You'd say she was always angry. She always scolds and complains. Her breasts and belly exhale a fishy odor. She is ill−favored in her entire person. She eats everything and drinks to excess. And her wan eyes are always bleary. And her bed is more repugnant than a lapwing's nest. And she is the one I love. And I love her because there is something more mysteriously attractive than beauty: it is corruption. Corruption in which the eternal heat of life resides, in which the eternal renewal of metamorphoses unfolds!
>I have three mistresses.

Of course, that's thanks to the translator. I wonder now how the original French compares.

>>3193018
If it makes you sad, I'll abandon it soon. ;_;

>>3193022
What?

Chan and it's fucking fields. Sorry for the cut and editing for fit.

Just to give you an idea of some of the writing:

>Great lights skimmed over the sea. You'd have
thought the fairies were rising from the sea, trailing long fiery mantles on the surface, and shaking and hurling great handfuls of golden pearls into the water.

And this is a poem:

>I have three mistresses. The first has a spirit mobile as a bamboo leaf. Her light and playful spirit is like the feathery blossom of the eulalia. Her eye is like the lotus. And her breast is as firm as the lemon. Her hair, twisted in a single braid, falls over her golden shoulder like a black serpent. Her voice has the sweetness of mountain honey. Her loins are slender and lithe. Her thighs are round as the supple trunk of the banana−tree. Her gait is that of a young and playful elephant. She loves passion, knows how to give it birth and vary it!
>I have three mistresses. The second has abundant hair which gleams and flows in long silky garlands. Her glance would disturb the God of Love and make the wagtail blush. The body of that graceful woman flows like a golden vine. Her earrings are encrusted with precious stones Like a flower jeweled with frost on a cold and sunny morning. Her clothes are summer gardens and temples on festival−days. And her firm, full breasts shine like a pair of golden vases filled with intoxicating liquors and perfumes.

Let's discuss Mirbeau's Torture Garden. Has anybody here read it?

My most pressing question:

This idea of love and death being the same. I know of "the little death", but that seems a bit of a tenuous connection. Mirbeau never really adequately explains how the two are one and the same. He proceeds with the story as if we're willing to agree with him. Did I miss something, or is this indeed the case, and if so is it just laziness or something else? He wrote this in 1899, so maybe I'm missing something that should be self-evident from the zeitgeist?

By the way, for something written in 1899, it is really grotesque. I don't think I've ever read anything more disturbing.

I don't have favourites. Lawyer.

>>3192182
I feel like everyone else is going to do the Tolstoys and Dostoevskis and McCarthys and Dumases, so let's go for something a little different, eh?

1. Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass. (Technically two books, but they're often sold as a unit today.) No explanation does them justice. Just read them.
2. The Gormenghast Trilogy. (I've cheated again: you can only get this as a trilogy.) Contains literally some of the best English writing ever. Orgasmic.
3. Dune. This is the bar for all good sci-fi literature.
4. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This one deserves more than a blurb. Just get it and read it.
5. Gone with the Wind. One of the very few romances that are decent. Expand your horizons.

Uh, yeah.

>>3192756
What he said. Especially the Asian bitches part. But think of them as women.

>>3192757
>uses a "j' for "Tolstoy"

What are you doing?

I become really depressed. I think back on what I could have done differently to be more like them. I literally go through all of my life that I can remember on that day, thinking, If only I'd ... If only they'd ... Maybe if ... Or if I'd ...
Those people who are very obviously my betters stay with me a long time. I still think of Martin, and Aisling, and Gavin. I've yet to encounter any more.
They're rarely the very educated, and are often simply upper class individuals that (I imagine?) see through all the bullshit lesser persons swallow. Something in their life has caused them to develop ruthlessness and ruthless honesty with themselves. I don't think many of us experience that catalyst.