/lit/ - Literature

>>19653216
They’re all good but I suppose the best way to stoke is to ask for contraries. GR is the best if you want a look at woman, and closest to Shakespeare in its variety of girls and women. One might argue that Joyce does this on a more controlled level, having Molly and Nausicca (forgot her name), and that being enough. This is certainly true, but those readers must admit that DFW holds his own with Avril Incandenza and Joelle Van Dyne. Who cannot in awe picture Avril Incandeza standing over young hot tennis stud Indian John Wayne—the football pads! Who does not want the PGOAT looking down at them POV in a cradle? But yes: Pynchon has tragic Margherita, love at first site Jessica fucking Swanlake, Scorpio Mossmoon, who was Pirate’s hirl, and who Pirate thinks about when he hope Roger fucking Mexico goes down the same path of life as him, who was betrayed (but not really—Pirate kindly catches himself). Pynchon like Nabokov knew his Shakespeare and how to fuse the best of himself with the bard who had Desdemona, Rosalind, Cordelia, Portia, and Portia. Women are the best entry point if you’re a horny little bugger like me.

Tips on learning to speak English? I’ve started with Old English instead of Middle—is that okay? I’ve also started drilling vocabulary while hanging my head upside down off the bed. Thoughts on the best entry period?

>>19461937
Coming of age literary fiction doorstopper blending Joyce and Pynchon for those between layman and erudite. There’s love (brotherly, little sister, fawning, longterm, lust), an author named Badger searching for truth, a few posers, and a random treatise against language.

>>19377350
A student asked him this once after class and N pointed to a tree outside and asked for its name. The student didn’t know and N said that was a problem (he said something snappier and wittier, but you get it). I think it was the preface to Bend Sinister where he says he used to spend ten hours a day in a library reading about butterflies. Find your butterfly and do this. Read, read, read, and read. Read what he liked: Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and the others. Read, think, read, and write, but know that your first writing will be shit, or, as N calls it, spudum (spit) [Strong Opinions]. Don’t think that your writing is bad however, but keep writing and keep reading and you will notice your style developing. You will look back at early writing and think, “Really? I thought that was good?” and this will happen a couple more times with some golden nuggets surviving but eventually you will get to a point where all your writing makes you proud, and the only source of humbling now comes from those great authors that have got you this far. Pic related

>Sometimes Leah Dodd will do this thing where she stares off frontly and to the side, most often when she is alone, but sometimes around Jake and the few friends around which she can become herself, and in her stare into nothing, anyone who is by proximity privileged enough to be near her then immediately sees the sadness in her eyes which Leah has inherited from her life, and her mother, and the history of sadness that has led up to her sitting on the couch, or lying in bed, because it happens in these to-be-relaxing moments, and when it happens, and you see the sadness, there’s next to nothing you can do, at least in the moment—at least a dozen loved ones have tried—and yet it makes one wonder what exactly Leah Dodd thinks, still-eyed, downcast, unblinking, and slightly frowning, as if death had already shown her the end, or as if on her own she has already thought and seen it through, as she on many intimate times has disclosed to Jake, repeating every couple months, asking to the space more so than him, asking in a way for space: “What’s the point?” Yet in this way Leah Dodd joins the thoughtful boys or girls going on man or woman, or maybe only woman, holds Jake, but nevertheless the person molded thereafter, who behind closed doors acts one way for those who have infiltrated their heart through sexual love or the not-so-different deepest of friendships, while in front of the rest of the world everything is completely different, and happy, or angry, or anything but hollow stillness unless it’s hidden, to the point where anyone who has seen either side of the inside-up must then turn the torchlight back upon themselves, as Jake has often done, only to see what they, outside of Leah, are really made of, these observers under Leah’s broken wings, and whether there’s any truth to this sadness in Leah Dodd’s eyes, and if you ask Jake, which not even the clearest, suspecting, spectating judges have done, but if you ask Jake, and he hears you out, and answers honestly, it will eventually become clear to both you and him, that nothing he could possibly reply to you or Leah will have been a better answer than her going on silent.

Isaiah
Aeschylus
Juvenal
LJT
Dante
Proust

>mfw I’ll never know what it’s like to take a girl in the bathroom while men of the world my age are outside promising wedding rings to multiple women who meanwhile weave themselves through the vying soul of a gay man.

>>18969483
If you don’t believe in a Zeitgeist you haven’t quite made it. Like my professor once said, at the end of the semester when he invited his quiet dozen to his home. We surrounded him in his library, and as he swished wine he squinted. “You know… I met Wheelock once. Summer of 78. There’s one for you. Strange guy, he is! He’s not like Ørberg, or those two fellows who wrote the Athenaze, no—grammarians are a different breed. Don’t get me wrong: praise grammar! But there’s a difference between a grammarian and say, although I don’t want to, a philologist. But to the point! Wheelock, he…smelled. He… wouldn’t stay quiet, and not in a good way. He had a thing for women with dogs, and he was always seen turning suddenly and sniffing. NOW, so I avoid being slanderous, I will say: what an amazing man Wheelock was! He was brilliant! Beautiful! Genius! I remember once he came to me and threw his arm around my shoulder like this, yeah, come here, and he said in my ear, ‘Listen buddy. In 2021 a book will be published called Taking Away From Tonight and not only will it indirectly better someone’s Latin, it will be a good time to. You watch!’ And I did. And it happened. And, kids, I didn’t want to tell you this, but my head is not on straight.”

>>18969666
I always think back to what my professor said. “BE…yourself?” He would always say it like that, no matter the context. In lecture he would speak of his favorites, Beowulf, Dostoevsky, Proust, and when it came time he’d say, “…and that’s why you need to BE…yourself?” It was such a strange quirk that I was entirely attracted to him. I saw him for his good and bad—he was a wealth of knowledge AND he cared, yet in his scholarly pursuits he had his shortcomings. He never read Virgil. He had only read a half a dozen Shakespeares. His favorite philosopher was Sartre. But I never disparaged him for this, at least openly. Once, towards the end of the semester, I lingered around class and, like Twain puts it sentimentalized a bit. “D’you like the class?” he said. I was kicking the soles of my feet and looking down. I knocked knuckle on the desk. “I did, professor. I did.” “I’m glad,” he said. “Me too. Me too.” “Well don’t be afraid to look me up afterwards!” he said. “I won’t. I mean I will. I will.” He smiled and so did I, and then when I finally met his gaze and held it, things were suddenly fiery and I leapt, and all I remember before a student broke in and pulled me off him and into custody, was my screaming: “How could you forget to put Taking Away From Tonight by Lucas Joel Thomas on the syllabus? How could you! How could you! HOW COULD YOU! BE…”

>>18969234
I asked my professor this once. We were at a café downtown the morning after our philosophy program’s monthly open disputation, and we each enjoyed a cool Coke. My professor, bless him, seemed to breathe the blue air, and I remember watching him in silence and wondering how lucky I was to be even in his presence. Before I asked him the question he sensed it and scoffed. He scoffed, lit! “What philosophy does the modern layman ascribe to? Well my boy,” he said as he brought up his orator’s hands to help illustrate, when suddenly he was caught still. My heart dropped. Had his dropped? What was wrong? There we were, under the parapluie, and he was frozen! I didn’t know what to do. I looked around but everyone seemed busy in conversation. People skated by wearing headphones. “Professor! Professor!” I shook his arm but he wouldn’t budge. And then I remembered! Quickly I reached over his lap and into his bag for his worn copy of Taking Away From Tonight by Lucas Joel Thomas and I lugged it up and hit him upside the head with it. He budged! He breathed! He smiled at me, and ah’d. How could I not gush when he then put on his sunglasses and said, “That, my boy, is modern philosophy.”

>>18966678
In university I asked my professor this same question. In front of the class he gave the standard answers: Kafka, Hesse, Mann if you’re stupid (as was his cheeky way), but then after class he stopped me at the door. Follow me to my office he said. Truth awaits. I smiled and went along because he was a good, charismatic guy, and soon enough we were in the cramped hallways of the language department and he was leading me around corners they seemed to get dimmer and yellower. Most of the offices were shut and the ones I could see through were…not normal. In one room a young girl looked up at me from behind her desk as the door closed. In another, two men in their forties sat on the same side of the desk and worked fervently at papers. The professor was cool though. He led me on and said don’t mind them. He seemed to know what I thought. Eventually we reached his office and sat down—how comfy! Books were all over, world literature in a room, and my professor took off his coat. “So you wanna better your German?” he said. I nodded. “Well there’s two books you need to read. First, the all-in-one, Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe, of course. Three readings of that along with vocabulary study will set you straight.” Of course! How could I forget. I nodded excitingly and told him of course, and then his face grew serious. The room darkened. The sun outside was gone. “And then,” he said, “there’s one more.” I must have gulped—I don’t remember much. I let out some kind of noise and he went on. “Taking Away From Tonight.” “H-huh?” I said. “Read that book. ASAP.” I said okay, and wanted to get out of there fast, and I did, but the hallways were a labyrinth, and the rooms sped up, and I collapsed and found myself in the lobby with my professor’s hand around my shoulder. It was the twilight zone and the end of Thriller, and he was asking me if I was okay. “Y-yeah,” I said. “Don’t be so weird!” he said. “Relax.” “O-okay.” After that I think my grade went down. I never did finish college. Once a week I dream I’m late for class. I am gay.

>>18899001
>Quite understandably enough, no one at the early-night party knows what Jake Valley thinks as he stands up, excuses himself to his girlfriend, and tells her he’s going to go outside for a minute.