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/lit/ - Literature

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2968458 No.2968458 [Reply] [Original]

What literature best deals with themes of growing old, dying and being forgotten?

>> No.2968466

German literature

>> No.2968469

Erik Erikson

>> No.2968470

Old man and the sea

or, if you're a gay, The Giver

>> No.2968495

A poem by T.S. Eliot might hit the spot:

http://www.bartleby.com/199/13.html

>> No.2968506

>>2968466
Way to pidgeon-hole, dickmonger.

>> No.2968510

Just think about your great great grandfather and how no one cares or thinks about him.

>> No.2968518

>>2968510
I've been thinking about that quite a lot recently, which is why I'm curious as to what far more intelligent and world-weary writers have to say on the topic.

>> No.2968525

>>2968518

Don't taint your pure emotions with the purple prose of some pretentious writer.

>> No.2968552

Man in the Holocene by Max Firsch.

>> No.2968558

On Old Age by Cicero

It's an essay not literature but worth a read.

>> No.2968568

Read Little, Big by John Crowley as soon as humanly possible.

okay later

>> No.2968601

Greybeard, by Brian Aldiss

Aldiss is a fucking hilarious writer otherwise.

"Let those who will, object, to vivisection;
vivisection
has no objection
to them."
- the Eighty Minute Hour

>> No.2968618

terra amata - jgm le clezio.
pere goridot - balzac

>> No.2968695

The Death Of Ivan Illyich
Tolstoy

>> No.2968759

>>2968568
I didn't like that book. The author honestly sounded like he wanted to write for daytime soap-opera without compromising his literary street cred.

>> No.2969564

Old man and the sea would be the obvious.

>> No.2969587
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2969587

>> No.2969622

Briggflatts, by Basil Bunting

Good luck discussing it here though. No one's read it, apparently

>> No.2969627

>>2969622
>Briggflatts
I have! always good to find another reader of Bunting.

>> No.2969629

>>2969627

Yes! Awesome.

Part V, with all the winter stuff, is my favourite piece of writing ever.

>> No.2969633

Farewell, Gulsary by Chinghiz Aitmatov. Because it's not every day you read something by a Kyrgyz author

>> No.2969660

Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot) by Honore de Balzac might be a related a little.

>> No.2969802

The Picture of Dorian Gray

>> No.2969880

>>2968458
Better yet, OP. Write your own book exploring the issues and brag about how worldly you are because you didn't take any of these suggestions but instead asked your Facebook friends for opinions.

>> No.2969898

>>2968510
and?
he's out living in the afterlife with everybody else

>> No.2970612

The recent A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers dealt with this.

>> No.2970619

Find yourself a translation of 'Oíche Nollaig Na mBan' by Seán Ó Ríordáin

>> No.2970685

Where is the problem in growing old? It's natural.

>> No.2970704

"One Hundred Years of Solitude", Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Muh tears ;__;
All is forgotten, nobody gives a shit, and life goes on.

>> No.2970710

>>2970685
>naturalistic fallacy

>> No.2970736

I recently read Everyman by Philip Roth. Pretty explicitly about this.

>> No.2970791

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

>> No.2970854

Steppenwolfe

>> No.2970860
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2970860

"The Rum Diary"

>> No.2970873
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2970873

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

>> No.2970882

>>2968458

Stoner by John Williams.

Guy grows up in the midwest dirt poor. Likes books. Goes to college, stays out of WWI. Becomes an average professor as same college. Marries a woman that doesn't even like him. Nobody respects him. Nobody really thinks about him. Never gets promoted. Dies.

The death part is not a spoiler--it tells you he's dead on the first page. It's a good fucking book man. John Williams is the shit.

>> No.2970896
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2970896

>>2970882

here's the book's opening paragraph. if it doesn't make you depressed, i don't know what will.

>William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: “Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.

>> No.2970944

>>2970860
This. I'm working on it now and it's absolutely wonderful.