/lit/ - Literature

Is there any better way for dealing with original sin than the Catechism? I think not.

>>1857190
That's what you get for listening to people who probably only read it part of the way to pass a test on it in high school. Besides your expectations were pretty much met were they not? I don't think Holden had a shit-ton of money, but the book was pretty much about him going about NYC, wasn't it? Are you really complaining that it was too nuanced?

>>1857072
It is a true story, but OP is probably not who he says he is, anyway. But yeah, there was already a Harry Potter.

Holden is not whiney, nor is he a parody of youth by Salinger. He is a valid representation of someone who has suffered a traumatic even in youth, and has become stunted by it. Holden is analogous to Humbert from Lolita, because both characters desire to relive a past trauma in the present..Holden relives the death of his brother symbolically by rejecting life in general and Humbert relives a frustrating sexual event from the past by having sex with a girl of the age at which his trauma occurred. Holden projects his desire to save his brother onto his sister, hence the "catcher'' metaphor. In the end, I think CITR captures this concept better than Lolita--mainly because CiTR does not rely on the convention of taboo to communicate its message.
/rant

>>1856616
Such as? I just wish the epilogue never happened..as far as the main characters go, it kind of wraps it all up. Of course, she could just build on the universe, but I think the only reason I read the last two books was my emotional attachment to the characters--I don't know if here system of magic would hold up. I would totally read something about the other magic schools though.

I really wanted her to kill of Harry Potter but with the epilogue in the last book I don't know where she could go.

I was basking in the sun today and listening to My Bloody Valentine and now I cannot think of a better artistic compliment to the feeling of summer sun.

Uh, just so everyone knows..Melville was very likely gay. It's not just a theme in Moby Dick, but in his other books as well. The funny thing is that, even though there is this idea that society has become progressively more accepting towards the sexual spectrum, it was in fact more accepting in Melville's day than it is today..people simply did not have the strong sense of dichotomy which exists today..Melville probably was bisexual at least.

I've only read Anthem and it was just lame..pure Misogyny really and not much else.

I'm pretty sure there was a well thought out John for /lit/ at some point..this one is just lame..if you knew a thing or two about books or even if you just lurked more you would know how to troll /lit/..like you didn't even mention analytic philosophy or call Nietzsche a Nazi or any of that stuff..plus the pic is just not what /lit/ gets riled up about..and your ''bitch'' could have been sasha grey for a nice touch

Hithchen's (and Dawkins') Atheism is the weak man's heresy. De Sade was a great atheist because he challenged god, rather than hide behind the comforting rhetoric of ''reason'' to assuage the fear of a god one supposedly doesn't believe in. A true atheist is like Ahab to his whale...

>>1856402
I might have to check it out..thanks for the suggestion. The cut-flower phrase kind of reminds me of haiku imagery.

Cormac McCarthy is an untalented hack with idealized notions of violence which are made hilarious considering how he's a pencil neck novelist--the typical macho fantasies of the physically and psychologically impotent--which is why he is so popular as well.

>>1856394
Hm, I didn't know that. I think Salinger is pretty fantastic..and he didn't write much so I never got burned out on him like I did with Mishima (after reading everything by him that is translated into English) Oh, and to all the people who are saying tl;dr for my posts, what the hell are you doing here? I swear, you must be teenagers or something--how short does your attention span have to be to think a paragraph is too long to read?

Yeah I've never thought that fantasy elements disqualify a book as literature. It's just that so much of the genre as it exists today (I guess, say, post-Tolkien) leans too heavily on the motifs that are already popular among the fan base..it's like by doing that, the writers of fantasy are sacrificing other key elements of good literature..they get away with it and since fantasy is one those genres that rewards the prolific, many of the authors seem to write a lot of books just for the money..I guess I have just been really unlucky with the genre, and would be open to suggestions for good fantasy...

>>1856365
Just because you are probably underexposed to women authors, does not mean you have a valid reason for asserting that women can't write. It's an absurd idea. The first novel was written by a woman. Women are regularly awarded for excellent literature. You are probably not well read enough to know of women writers who are great, because it takes a willingness to seek out literature that is not some reflection of your ego or the character that you aspire to. If you were able to read beyond what your ego hungers for, you would be more likely to appreciate the writing of women..and not only that, but holding on to a generalization like ''women can't write'' just suggests you are sexist, because you probably aren't dumb enough to think your knowledge of writing is so exhaustive that you could make any factual claim that is at the same time so general.

Catcher in the Rye: It is a really fantastic book, full of pathos but lacking pretense. The arguments made against it on /lit/ are the silliest kind, basically rephrasing the episode of South Park--mostly a personal attack on the fictional character Holden Caufield. People say Holden is whiney, etc. as though he were a real person which they find to be irritating. This kind of thinking is childish, because it exhibits an inability to distinguish works of fiction from real life..you can't seriously judge the character of a character, because a literary figure is a synthetic being--made to be observed and not to be judged as though it were alive..literature at its best opens us to a dramatized, exterior experience where we can examine life without the anomalous considerations which are obligatory when dealing with persons, who have a real effect on our lives as we live them. Besides that, to say Holden is ''whiney'' is simply to appraise his narration in a very shallow way.

Last Three:
Let the Right One In
The Black Arts (Cavendish)
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Current:
The Kingdom of God is Within You (Tolstoy)
The Diatesseron of Tatian
Living Zen by DT Suzuki
Next:
Wild Nights by Joyce Carol Oates
Primal Vision by Gottfried Benn
and whatever else strikes me as worth it. I usually don't plan it out 3 ahead.

>>1855248
I know what the social is but I just don't think Marx is a social critic that is kind of like saying Freud is a self-help >>1855238
nothing wrong with anything, ever

>>1855222
Marx is not really read as a social critic. Dickens, maybe, but not Marx.
Also
>people read Marx
Marx definitely created a legacy because of the impact of his work, but to read a writer from that time as a social critic today would be nothing but a waste of time..or rather just an unproductive use of your time.

>>1854949
I *never* drop my trip

>>1854930
Nationalist in the sense that Lord Byron was a Greek Nationalist.
Seriously /lit/ at what age do people stop thinking in strict dichotomies?

>>1854924
what a phoney

>Not embracing syncretic politics
I really hope you don't do this