/QTDDTOT/ - QUESTIONS THAT DON'T DESERVE THEIR OWN THREAD

[Anonymous No.16190782]

You already know how it works

[Anonymous No.16190813]

>>16190782
Harold bloom was definitely lying about his reading speed wasn’t he? What he claimed came out to reading a page in less than 4 seconds

[Anonymous No.16190843]

>>16190813
u jelly?

[Anonymous No.16191007]

>>16190782
Is The Name of the Rose a good starting place for semiotics?

[Anonymous No.16191094]

Where should I start with Charles Bukowski?

[Anonymous No.16191411]

>>16191094
Just read one of his books. They’re pretty much all the same.

[Anonymous No.16191436]

>>16191094
Post Office or Ham on Rye. They're all the same.

[Anonymous No.16191503]

Where to post other than medium? Not getting any views. WordPress? Free and no hassle pls

[Anonymous No.16191674]

Anyone has a decently formatted Mobi or AZW3 for Kindle of "Industrial Society and its future"? I converted mine trough Calibre, but it looks like shit

[Anonymous No.16191729]

What are some good online stores to buy cheap used books?

[Anonymous No.16191801]

>>16190813
Nah he spedread Plotinus so fast he was still a Gnostic at the end of it

[Anonymous No.16191853]

>>16190813
it's just those Talmudic genes.

[Anonymous No.16191914]

What are some books that provide an opposing view to Peter Singer's ethical system

[Anonymous No.16192010]

Do you guys like to have background noise on when you are reading? Not necessarily music but like, rain and thunder noises, for example. I like a nice fireplace sound video myself.

[Anonymous No.16192159]

I’m writing anywhere between 1-10 pages a day with an average of 45 minutes to an hour per page for my rough draft of a piece of fiction. Working like this, is it normal to reach points in writing where you just can’t bring yourself to write more? Where you know what to write, but there’s just a straight up physical limitation keeping you from writing followed by a period of exhaustion half an hour or so later. Then you get back to it either the next day or later in the day

[Anonymous No.16192705]

What do Christian Mystics call their for of meditation/ mindfulness again?

[Anonymous No.16192757]

What's your impression of Underworld by Don DeLillo? Seems like a strange book to be considered one of the modern greats.

[Anonymous No.16192771]

>>16192159
For me, yes. I don't put pressure on myself to write x amount of pages anymore, because it comes when it wants to come. I set three hours to write everyday. Sometimes if I don't like how I'm feeling while I write, I type up what I do have -- gives me the opportunity to figure out what I need to add and how everything is panning out (I write scenes as they come, not chronologically)

[Anonymous No.16192786]

>>16192771
Typing up what I've written has been good because it gives me a birdseye view of what I have.

I have tried doing first draft stuff on the computer but I'm too fast at typing. Writing first draft stuff by hand gives it an emotive, personal touch in my opinion.

We all work differently, figure out what works for you. Consist practice is probably the only agreed upon rule to write fiction.

[Anonymous No.16192794]

What exactly was Bartleby's problem? Did he just snap or was he mental?

[Anonymous No.16192848]

>>16192771
>>16192786
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. It was kind of eye opening to see you weigh a few of these different approaches, and I’m grateful that you’ve taken the time to remind me of them. Writing by hand for the emotive touch is an attractive idea that I will apply when the ideas feel ripe for it.
Good luck with your writing!

[Anonymous No.16192855]

>>16192010
i live by the sea, so i can open up my window and listen to that, or just sit outside next to it. its nice with some noise.

[Anonymous No.16192873]

>>16192848
If you ever want to talk more, my discord is jonnyzeoblime#7616. It's refreshing to talk about this, as I don't talk about it with anyone else in my life.

[Anonymous No.16192941]

>>16190782
Christ, is that a tumor?

[Anonymous No.16192949]

What's a paranoic?
What's a pervert?
Why do these fuckers make so many distinctions just to let them go in the next sentence and then bring them up fifty pages later?

[Anonymous No.16193200]

>>16192159
I used to set aside a few hours a day to write, but these days I'm happy to get through maybe 200-300 words before I throw in the towel. When I feel like all I'm putting down is shit or doodling over the page I stand back and relent. Then some days I'll be at my desk at work or driving home and a series of words in just the right order will get me going and I hold on to that until I can get home and write it down. The best days are when things start going fast and I end up writing 500-1000 words in a few hours. On the days I don't get anything out, I usually just read or copy down poems or passages I like and I think that helps.
>>16192771
>(I write scenes as they come, not chronologically)
A lot of my best writing comes from a few witty remarks between characters or some ranting. I used to write short stories where the formula was basically "here is x, this is what they are doing, this is what happens" but for the past few years I've only written stuff where the characters just kind of live on the page and either talk or act weird. Nothing continuous, just have hundreds of pages of characters talking to eachother and kind of moving around in their enclosed spaces. Hell, I've had two guys walking in a field in upstate New York for the past 3 years, and a girl stranded in a Portuguese village for about that long too. I don't know how to get them out.

[Anonymous No.16193235]

What the best and most affordable audiobook subscription service? Is it audible?

[Anonymous No.16193327]

>>16193200
Thank you very much for also sharing your experience. Christ, both your upstate NY and stranded woman works sound incredible. Do you ever plan to release them? If not, are you treating them as exercises or something more?
Do you ever find “doodling on the page” to be something to implement at choice points in your writing?
I’m very grateful that you took the time to share all of this with me. I think it’s going to be incredibly helpful advice for me. It sounds like you’re experienced and that we share a similar goal of writing not as plot, but as something more — like, transporting the reader directly into an experience that’s both mundane and profound.

[Anonymous No.16193333]

>>16193235
public library's free subscription to overdrive

[Anonymous No.16193386]

what ereaders do you guys recommend?

[Anonymous No.16193907]

>>16192705
Theosis? I think its an Orthodox thing.

[Anonymous No.16194332]

>>16190813
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he lies alot. I really have become suspicious of him overall. He is a famous critic but he rarely champions any controversial writers and basically just affirms the canon that was already pre established. Interestingly, he also excludes people from the canon whose popularity has faded - Dos Passos, who was a big shot when he was alive is replaced now with Hemingway in the modern canon. I've also noticed he lowkey brags in interviews if you watch them on youtube - I learned Hebrew at a young age by myself, I own 30,000 books etc. Alot of his negative opinions are also brainlet tier - Stephen King and JK Rowling are bad (as if that is controversial) and he said DFW was a shitty writer (he is still a very controversial writer, so it's not like the opinion is very unique or brave.)

[Anonymous No.16194362]

>>16190813
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he lies alot. I really have become suspicious of him overall. He is a famous critic but he rarely champions any controversial writers and basically just affirms the canon that was already pre established. Interestingly, he also excludes people from the canon whose popularity has faded - Dos Passos, who was a big shot when he was alive is replaced now with Hemingway in the modern canon. I've also noticed he lowkey brags in interviews if you watch them on youtube - I learned Hebrew at a young age by myself, I own 30,000 books etc. Alot of his negative opinions are also brainlet tier - Stephen King and JK Rowling are bad (as if that is controversial) and he said DFW was a shitty writer (he is still a very controversial writer, so it's not like the opinion is very unique or brave.)

[Anonymous No.16194377]

>>16192159
Totally.

If I’m in the middle of something I’ll use these days to go through and compile notes, journal on some questions I have, etc.

Or, I’ll just free write and try and use some new words. I keep a running list.

Or, I just don’t do anything. Sometimes I feel like a sponge that’s been totally wrung out. If you push too hard when you feel like that I think you’ll end up hating the practice of it.

[Anonymous No.16195004]

What's a good dark and disturbing novel?

[Anonymous No.16195061]

>>16191503
I guess it would depend on what you are posting.

[Anonymous No.16195067]

>>16195004
I second this question.

Also, I would't mind owning that coat.

[Anonymous No.16195071]

did I actually understand neuromancer or am I just pretending?

[Anonymous No.16195083]

>>16195004
>>16195067
just read lovecraft and save the neet vampire cosplay for another time

[Anonymous No.16195092]

>>16194332
why do you value holding controversial opinions

[Anonymous No.16195094]

>>16195083
But I've read Lovecraft and I'm already dressed as a vampire

[Anonymous No.16195105]

>>16195094
then an hero or start biting people in lower manhattan and become a legend

[Anonymous No.16195138]

should i go to college

[Anonymous No.16195159]

>>16192705
contemplation

[Anonymous No.16195187]

>>16195004
The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littel
The intimate memoirs of a Nazi war criminal; it’s got enough degenerate incest to make sure it’s pretty fucked up even if you happen to hate jews.
It’s not just shock value though, it’s a really good novel.

[Anonymous No.16195586]

>>16193386
Kobo Clara or Kindle with a frontlight
>>16195004
The Maimed
>>16195071
What did you understand?

[Anonymous No.16195918]

>>16194377
Thank you!
By questions, do you mean about your story? Do you journal about your story, too?

[Anonymous No.16197003]

What should I read after "The Social Contract"?

[Anonymous No.16197015]

>>16194332
Idiot.

[Anonymous No.16197025]

>>16195092
I'm just saying that as a scholar he has pretty much the pb and j - generic, good but not great. In academia you have to distinguish yourself, sometimes thats through controversial opinions (not because they're controversial, but because they are new and different, and against the grain), or through really insightful stuff, and imo he didn't do that.

Pretty sure he was a mega pseud.

[Anonymous No.16197180]

>>16197025
You sound like you've actually never read any work of real scholarship by Bloom.

[Anonymous No.16197818]

I'm looking for something that will keep a book open so I can make notes. Is there a specific term for this product? I'd like it to work both on soft covers and larger school text books.

[Anonymous No.16197854]

>>16197818
Like they use for Sheet Music?

[Anonymous No.16197883]

>>16197854
Yeah! But maybe something that's easier to take in and out? I found these but it looks like it's something you need to put your thumb through. I'm wanting something that will keep the book and pages flat on a table so I can write notes on other paper. Almost like a piece of weighted plexiglass.

[Anonymous No.16197913]

>>16197883
Could always try a book weight.

[Anonymous No.16197948]

best book on german grammar w/ exercises? all in german

[Anonymous No.16198035]

>>16197913
I looked at those and wasn't sure about shelling out $20 for one. Have you used one before? Seems super simple and what I need but $20 seems steep for metal wrapped in leather.

[Anonymous No.16198065]

>>16198035
Just get a metal rule, or tape a stack of pennies together.

[Anonymous No.16198077]

>>16198065
Thanks Anon. Over to /diy/ I go. ;)

[Anonymous No.16198644]

I was listening to the 90s Alternative Essentials playlist on Apple Music and that Super Bon Bon song came on. Does anyone know if Soul Coughing had any other good songs?

[Anonymous No.16198854]

>>16198644
Yes. Ruby Vroom is a good album and there are several songs better than S.B.B on it.


Does it get any better?

[Anonymous No.16198867]

What’s a decent starting point for systems theory?
I’ve heard a lot about it and am interested in social sciences.

[Anonymous No.16198954]

Just finished Anti-Oedipus, should I read A Thousand Plateaus before I dive head first into Fanged Noumena?

[Anonymous No.16199043]

>>16195094
Read this: "Drink My Red Blood"

http://magicmonkeyboy.blogspot.com/2012/06/drink-my-red-blood-by-richard-matheson.html

[Anonymous No.16199067]

>>16197818
I use one of these https://www.amazon.com/Desktop-Book-Stands/

I would recommend reading reviews. I bought the cheapest plastic one I could find and the plastic holders were never very strong to begin with and broke after a few weeks. I wish I had paid $25 for one of these fancy lads.

[Anonymous No.16199117]

>>16190813
>>16194332
>>16194362
I admit I've never read Bloom in depth and my few encounters with him have been bad, like his introduction to the Grossman translation of Quixote. The reviews I read made it seem like he was a posturing blowhard out of his element. But I know people who respect him highly and I respect them highly so I've always put a "don't write him off completely" pin in him in the back of my mind.

However, to be honest I also assumed he had some kind of pathological lying/self-aggrandizing quirk from what I saw of him. He claims to know a lot of languages but I've seen a couple reviews hint that he may not know them. (One being Spanish, in the context of the Quixote review and certain things he didn't know.) The speed reading thing certainly seems like a joke but I've learned not to write off savantism like that either, so..

Also, wasn't he caught dead lying about Harry Potter? The "stretched legs" thing just isn't true.

I did like Anxiety of Influence a bit. Just remembering now that I read it. But I remember the premise more than the content.

[Anonymous No.16199201]

>>16197003
Use Strauss/Cropsey History of Political Philosophy as a general guide to the primary sources and what was in the mind of any political revolutionary or statemaker in the 18th late 18th and early 19th century. Read everyone and everything from Locke to Paine to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and so on.

Then read histories of the French, English, and American revolutions and the English civil war, like Gordon Wood, MacDonald's Novus Ordo Seclorum, Pocock's Machiavellian Moment, and so on, so you can see what it looked like in the real warp and woof of history to try to apply highfalutin ideals to real political exigencies and opportunities (or, as some argue, to pay lip service to them while being basically pragmatic, but this view is deeply flawed in my opinion).

Then read conservative critics of the social contract and the possibility of statemaking on the basis of ideals, like Burke and de Maistre, read about Metternich's attempt at a settlement with the Bourbon restoration and so on.

[Anonymous No.16199216]

>>16195071
Neuromancer is a great book, what did you like about it?

[Anonymous No.16199309]

>>16199117
>The "stretched legs" thing just isn't true.
It probably wasn't meant to be taken too literally. There is an awful lot of stretching of legs, arms and hands in the first book. Every author has common words they sprinkle perhaps without realizing, and stretching is not a particularly inventive expression. I've probably read 800 page books with some action where nobody stretches anything.
Similarly, every character in Harry Potter "beams" to express joy, instead of smiling or grinning.

[Anonymous No.16199911]

>>16199309
How come these kinds of repetitions aren’t cut in the editing process?

[Anonymous No.16200460]

>>16193386
I don't know best, but I have a Kobo Clara HD and wish it were bigger. I recommend getting a list of technically acceptable ones and looking at what is most like what you would actually want to hold in your hand to read for hours.

[Anonymous No.16200488]

>>16199117
Tbh, after I wrote my response I watched a few of his interviews and he does seem, at the very least, quite smart and well read. I think he probably started believing his own hype, or exaggerated to make himself look smarter.

[Anonymous No.16200552]

Why does Apple Music keep recommending me the Turkish Funk Essentials playlist?

[Anonymous No.16201547]

why

[Anonymous No.16201645]

all the unhinged right wingers that i read keep quoting nietzche. which nietzche do i read first, from that perspective?

[Anonymous No.16202509]

What makes a good writer? I'm not talking about being an author but as a uni student. I need pointers.

[Anonymous No.16202535]

>>16201645
Start with the Greeks. Read Aeschylus.

[Anonymous No.16202551]

>>16201645
All of his writings, but his aristocratic elitism gets much more common in his middle and late periods

Will to Power is a set of unpublished notes, vaguely organized and posthumously published by his sister, and is sometimes criticized for being more a work of her structuring than his pen (not sure how this makes much sense unless she actively distorted or edited the passages though), however Heidegger said it was Nietzsche's best work

>>16202509
Focus on clarity over using every ten dollar word you've learned in the past week, read your essays out loud to yourself and see if they flow naturally or have cumbersome sentences, read them with a fresh pair of eyes periodically and ask yourself whether your ideas and arguments connect to one another effortlessly or whether you are presuming personal knowledge that your reader won't have (this is also why not writing everything 5 minutes before it's due is a good idea)

One of the best pieces of advice I got was to find a writer whose style you admire and steal from it. Preferably not a famous big name author but some random essay, article or book chapter you read that really impresses you with how clear, painless yet elegant it is to read.

Ask your TA or professor to read your draft well before the deadline and give you more nuanced critique and pointers.

[Anonymous No.16202573]

>>16202551
Thanks. Any tips on researching shit?

[Anonymous No.16202631]

>>16202573
Different for every field I guess but try to find scholarly literature reviews, either real ones or informal ones at the beginnings of books. Instead of reading 20 books you can read about how 15 of them are derivative from the other 5 you really need to read.

Google Books can be abused for this because it uses keyword search and there are innumerable books on there that aren't very good but still have to hit all the standard notes reviewing the state of the field. If you know several of the major books on a topic sometimes searching their names or authors will turn up a page or chapter where they are discussed in close proximity in a synopsis of the state of the scholarship on that topic.

You can do the same thing by reading the first few pages of a couple dozen articles too. Eventually you'll get that one guy that charts the whole progress of the issue for the last 20 years in a footnote, and you can start putting together a reading list. When you write the essay you will know not just the sources you read, but why you read them as opposed to any others, how they fit into the scholarship and its overall development etc.

Don't try to cover everything though. Better a complete and compelling essay, but you missed some classic source you theoretically should have cited, than a half-baked essay with a massive bibliography. You're learning, so missing something "obvious" (to an expert) is often forgiveable, but a shit unclear essay whose parts don't hang together is painful to read.

When in doubt, ask your TAs and professors to read drafts beforehand and point out any massive holes again. They can often be a lot more honest there when they're grading your shit.

Also use the library. Learn to use subject and keyword searches. Get a sense for how many and what books/writers there are on some topic. Start learning whatever foreign languages you need for your research right now so that you can at least access the research in that language if necessary and it's not an impenetrable wall of gibberish.

[Anonymous No.16202640]

>>16202631
>They can often be a lot more honest there when they're grading your shit.
should be
>They can often be a lot more honest there than when they're grading your shit.

Another tip, use a better library's catalogue if yours is relatively small. Or worldcat.

[Anonymous No.16202970]

I could use some help with a line from P.B. Shelley's Ozymandias:
> The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
What the fuck is the heart that fed?

[Anonymous No.16203029]

Bit of a strange question but which would you say is the harder industry to break into, screenwriting or novel fiction? I just know that with screenwriting, it’s borderline impossible to get anywhere. You have to live in LA, you have to have connections and you’re in competition with millions while there are usually only maybe 20 scripts sold a year, those of which are usually written by established writers. Does this differ at all from the literary world?

[Anonymous No.16203040]

>>16203029
I don't think breaking into the novel industry is that difficult if you're willing to play the game, in other words get a MFA, write entertaining novels on popular topics (as opposed to obscure and artistic), pay lip service to the left with minorities and gay characters, etc.

[Anonymous No.16203579]

How do I get better at reading in between the lines? I feel so dumb. I don't understand Kafka.
Am I just stupid, stupid, stupid?

[Anonymous No.16205151]

>>16203029
Like that other anon said /lit/ gets a little hysterical over exactly how hard it actually is to get published.
The only easier thing about screenwriting I can think of, is just that there’s a lot more willing participants in the filmmaking process and especially of you’re young it’s a collaborative, community-driven process. So it’s probably easier to do a script for an independent, micro-budget film or short film then it is to do anything entry level in literature outside of University Quarterlies and Student Papers