/lit/ - Literature

>>15131282
PLATO ITS FUCKING PLATO YOU FUCKING MORON AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS IS YOU

>>14531328
>Roger Phaedo had not spoken to anyone for ten years. He confined himself to his Brooklyn apartment, obsessively translating and retranslating the same short passage from Rousseau’s “Confessions.” A decade earlier, a mobster named Charlie Dark had attacked Phaedo and his wife. Phaedo was beaten to within an inch of his life; Mary was set on fire, and survived just five days in the I.C.U. By day, Phaedo translated; at night, he worked on a novel about Charlie Dark, who was never convicted. Then Phaedo drank himself senseless with Scotch. He drank to drown his sorrows, to dull his senses, to forget himself. The phone rang, but he never answered it. Sometimes, Holly Steiner, an attractive woman across the hall, would silently enter his bedroom, and expertly rouse him from his stupor. At other times, he made use of the services of Aleesha, a local hooker. Aleesha’s eyes were too hard, too cynical, and they bore the look of someone who had already seen too much. Despite that, Aleesha had an uncanny resemblance to Holly, as if she were Holly’s double. And it was Aleesha who brought Roger Phaedo back from the darkness. One afternoon, wandering naked through Phaedo’s apartment, she came upon two enormous manuscripts, neatly stacked. One was the Rousseau translation, each page covered with almost identical words; the other, the novel about Charlie Dark. She started leafing through the novel. “Charlie Dark!” she exclaimed. “I knew Charlie Dark! He was one tough cookie. That bastard was in the Paul Auster gang. I’d love to read this book, baby, but I’m always too lazy to read long books. Why don’t you read it to me?” And that is how the ten-year silence was broken. Phaedo decided to please Aleesha. He sat down, and started reading the opening paragraph of his novel, the novel you have just read.

>That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent

someone explain why this is genius to me. of course if you can't speak about it you're going to be silent. this sentence is meaningless.

>>14354091
>>14354587
It's a lifetime achievement award but that still means it's the books that win because it's about recognizing their work and their work is the books.

>the plot must move forward in every chapter
>the prose must be clear and concise
>the themes must be consistent and not obscure

>>13979361

>mfw getting better at pretending to have read philosophy when all I do is skim wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles

>>13787756
>Some of us are suited to more noble aims
Do you have a degree in social studies by any chance? Pay doesn't have to be the only thing you base your choice on, but you would be foolish not to look at graduate earnings before making your choice

>>13764867
>reading books on your phone

>>13611744

>wasting your time reading non-fiction books when you can just watch youtube and browse wikipedia to learn things

>I POOT DA JAR ON DA GROUN IS SO BOETIC HAHAHA

>>13333804
>This book examines the writing of David Foster Wallace, hailed as the voice of a generation on his death. Critics have identified horror of solipsism, obsession with sincerity and a corresponding ambivalence regarding postmodern irony, and detailed attention to contemporary culture as the central elements of Wallace's writing. Clare Hayes-Brady draws on the evolving discourses of Wallace studies, focusing on the unifying anti-teleology of his writing, arguing that that position is a fundamentally political response to the condition of neo-liberal America.

>She argues that Wallace's work is most unified by its resistance to closure, which pervades the structural, narrative and stylistic elements of his writing. Taking a broadly thematic approach to the numerous types of 'failure', or lack of completion, visible throughout his work, the book offers a framework within which to read Wallace's work as a coherent whole, rather than split along the lines of fiction versus non-fiction, or pre- and post-Infinite Jest, two critical positions that have become dominant over the last five years. While demonstrating the centrality of 'failure', the book also explores Wallace's approach to sincere communication as a recurring response to what he saw as the inane, self-absorbed commodification of language and society, along with less explored themes such as gender, naming and heroism.

>Situating Wallace as both a product of his time and an artist sui generis, Hayes-Brady details his abiding interest in philosophy, language and the struggle for an authentic self in late-twentieth-century America.


so can anyone tell me what the fuck this means?

>>13049385

>wasting time reading the books when you can just watch the show

>Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Well duh. If you can't speak about it anyway of course you're gonna be silent. Why do people keep quoting this?

>>12289612

>falling for the "enlightened centrist" meme

>>11573362

it's less popular so you don't look like a pleb

>if we evolved from monkeys then how come there are still monkeys today?

>>11379683

>Shakespeare isn't that great because he stole all his plots like the story of Hamlet existed before it y'know also he didn't even write his plays

>>11344645
>>11344652

>thesis antithesis synthesis

>>10826536

>people trying to find deep philosophical reasons for his death when he was just the victim of mental illness

Me on top.

>>10249939