/lit/ - Literature

I suck so bad at writing it's not even funny. I wrote this last night and just reread it and it's worse than I thought it was.
https://pastebin.com/YK9JSSVc

>>18851552
The works of E Micheal Jones

>>18851625
Same, gonna be 24 tomorrow
Feel like a corpse

I've wasted it all, bros. I could have done so much more with my youth. I never fell in love. I never made a true friend. I have no stories to tell. But I'm not going to use this as an excuse. Things are going to get better. And they will for you, too. At least I hope so.
If there is a God, He is a mercyful one. Have a good night, everyone.

>>16884175
readin: worldly philosophers by Heilbroner
thinkin: bout killing myself over the holiday break because I am in a deep depression, burnt out, madly in love with a girl that lives across the country, and I'm not seeing a whole lot of employment options coming up for me after I graduate this spring
playin: nothing, unfortunately
doing: taking care of my friend's cat while she's out of town, currently a big reason of why I haven't offed myself already

>>16603830
Just finished reading the new DeLillo novel. I thought it was really ominous and beautiful, though far too short (mind you, the brevity definitely worked for the subject matter, I just selfishly wanted more). Felt like a strange form of sequel to Mao II, in some respects, which I very much enjoyed. Having it be released and read during the year of the plague is so surreal.

Other than that, I've kinda just been grazing off of a bunch of unrelated books, with no real thought or ordering in mind. Just finished my second collection of Millhauser shot stories — I will argue, enthusiastically, any day, that he is the greatest living short fiction author. Also been reading some Franzen essays from his new collection (they're simple yet good / enjoyable, however, all I can think while reading them is how much I wish Wallace were still alive and cataloguing his observations; this last decade would have been a treasure trove for his work, I'd imagine, had he not necked himself). Since the movie was released, I read the novel for I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but I thought Reid did a great job of exploring what's essentially a neet at the end of his life in a way that wasn't cringy, even making me somewhat care. I'm disappointed that neither the movie or the book really explored the autonomy (or lack thereof) of an ideal partner being thought up, only to disown her creator. Maybe that would have been too meta for the book (which is, like, unbelievably grounded, compared to the movie), but the movie could have easily explored it. A missed opportunity, I think. That being said, I read it in one setting, so clearly I was enjoying it. A word to the wise: whatever you do, read the book before the movie.

I've had the fitzcarraldo copy of Fosse's "The Other Name" sitting by my bedside for a week or two now. I think I'd like to start it pretty soon — I've heard really good things about it.

What is it that you see in women that makes you think they can't be intellectuals?

>Alice Munro — Too Much Happiness
>Margaret Atwood — Wilderness Tips
>Mark Leyner — Et Tu, Babe
>Esmé Weijun Wang — The Collected Schizophrenias
>David Foster Wallace — Infinite Jest
>Stephen King — Night Shift
>William Gaddis — The Recognitions
>Carmen Maria Machado — Her Body and Other Parties
>Stephen King — Nightmares & Dreamscapes
>Carmen Maria Machado — In The Dream House
>Adam Johnson — Fortune Smiles
>Hanya Yanagihara — A Little Life
>Steven Millhauser — Dangerous Laughter
>Susan Sontag — I, etcetera
>Lisa Robertson — The Baudelaire Fractal
>James Agee — A Death In The Family
>Hunter S. Thompson — The Great Shark Hunt
>Ronan Farrow — War on Peace
>Samanta Schweblin — Fever Dream
>Claudia Rankine — Citizen
>Rachel Cusk — Coventry
>Kate Briggs — This Little Art
>Ben Lerner — Leaving the Atocha Station
>Ben Lerner — 10:04
>Olga Tokarczuk — Flights
>Richard Powers — The Echo Maker
>Nico Walker — Cherry
>Arthur C. Clarke — Childhood's End
>Jonathan Franzen — The Twenty-Seventh City, The Corrections, & Freedom
>Vladimir Nabokov — Transparent Things
And the Collected Poems of Octavio Paz

Self Isolation is wonderful for reading desu.

ch. 4.1 - at the bottom of page 33 the book instructs me to re-read the ToC after bragging about overly-verbose he made it and comparing himself to Milton.

While re-reading the ToC a few chapters did stand out to me which did not beforehand. Notably, there is a section on reading practical books, which I would not have expected. I would "pigeonhole" (to use Adler's term) this very book into this "practical books" category. Before I embark in full on any full-book skim, I feel I should jump to and read this portion out of order.

I also notice that there is an appendix of recommended books which, judging by the page numbers, appears to be 14-16 pages long. I will have to clone that out before I've finished, as I collect these great book-ish lists.

>>14413121

Caveat being I primarily read fiction in the western canon and have a very rudimentary understanding of philosophy, so take that as you will.

Nothing, you just have to understand that it's a garish 2011 fad fueled by nostalgia that apes the things it's nostalgic for, producing at best pale imitations of products from a bygone era to grotesque mash-up abominations that are offensive to everyone with even a lick of taste

>>12607863
just open the door my brother.

>>12249127
About a month after I graduated from HS, I went to a comfy used bookstore with friends. One of the books I bought was the Prince. It was an enlightening read, and I found it more enjoyable than any of the brainlet-tier fiction I had to trudge through in school. After that, I branched out to econ, history, biology, math, etc. There's something weirdly enjoyable about encyclopedic prose that narrative fiction can never hope to match.

But just give it a shot. You don't need to take notes or solve problems. Just pick out a nonfic book that looks interesting and read it. If you're as autistic as the rest of us, you'll like it.

>>12170414
Because you don't put enough effort into your friendships. Give first. Then you will receive.

twelfth night

>>11807600
I unironically believe reading is the meaning of life. It's what separates people from animals, and what enables us to transcend and escape ourselves. Reading is the closest thing I've ever felt to a religious experience, and I can't say the same for any other activity, or any other medium of art. There's just something special about books.

>>11671687
>>11671738
Stoner and Driscoll both love literature; it's only through their mutual love of language that they can find love for one another. But their romance is short-lived, because even the lives of professors and students can't be oriented fully around the written word.

Lomax and his student are politicians, and don't have honest passion for literature. That's why they're so heavily paralleled and cartoonish.

Stoner's wife is essentially passionless, and spites him when he's engaged in his own passion. She prevents him from sharing the things that he finds meaningful with his daughter. It's telling that Stoner best relates to his daughter in the study — the only room in the house full of books.

The book isn't "telling nothing." It's portraying the world through the eyes of a character who's interested in the escape provided by books. Things become rapturous when he can share that escape with someone else, and things tense when his one grain of meaning is under threat.

It's pretty straightforward tbdesu.

>novel
Stoner, Invisible Man, Wuthering Heights, Return of the King, Big Sur

>Poem
The Tiger (unironically)

>Play by Francis Bacon
Gotta go with Macbeth

>Philosophers
Ted Bundy (Unironically)

>Political Theorists
The good anons over at /pol/

>Faith
I have no faith in anything

Is there any book about someone just being happy. like theres not major conflict, not drama, nothing crazy or drastic happening, just a book where the people live their lives and go to bed sure of themselves that everything will be okay tomorrow no matter what happens. Just a book of daily life and little bumps.

>>10708372
sweet jesus i had that lego set

oh god the nostalgia... ohhh... hhaphpfhfhmmfhhh

Let's break down the elements of a story

>Characters
>Events

Characters:
>history
>personality
>appearance
>motives
>desires

Events:
There really isn't really any expanding on this, is there?

Anything missing?

>Be me in 9th grade German class
>Teacher assigns us e-mail pen-pals
>Get a German girl named Annika
>Her introductory email talks about how she likes to "ride it" on the weekends
>She didn't know how to say horseback riding
>Gossip about hot celebrities and things in the best broken German/English we can
>Get a bit bored, stop responding to her right away
>Ignore e-mail for like two months, I was 14
>Finally check it and find the last few e-mails she ever sent me
>"Why not you write to me anymore?"
>Too ashamed to ever write back

>>10423551
Research. Talk to people who have done it, read about it, watch documentaries, etc. Get out and try it yourself if you think you can.

Once you have a reasonable knowledge-base to draw on, think about the particulars of a situation — concrete, sensory details at first, then more intellectual stuff. What does it remind you of? What thoughts would go through your head as it happened? Write it down from your perspective. This isn't a final, or even a first, draft, but it's important to the process.

Now that you have a sketch of how you would experience the thing, look at it through the lens of the character that's experiencing it in your work. How are you and that character the same? How do you differ? These things should change how he/she/they/it experiences that thing. Now, write it from your character's perspective. Again, this isn't a draft, it's background material.

Once you have this character's account of the experience, you can move back to your outline, integrate other elements of the plot, setting, etc. into that account, and the result will be something like a first draft.

Godspeed.