/lit/ - Literature

>>2106820
That's what BitTorrent is for. Just download the books you can't get or won't pay for, covert to .mobi with calibre, and read.

ITT: We post screenshots of our Kindle's main page.

Yes, you can see my first name. Big whoop.

>>1551959
Well... I think they could do an adaptation of The Crying of Lot 49 too, but I'd say Inherent Vice is a bit easier.

>>1551928
Have you read Inherent Vice? It's probably the most straightforward, easily understood, and adaptable thing he's ever written.

Here's mine!

>>1408287
>So what if the animal and human survived by cooperating out of compassion for the other?

A very strange and rare animal it would be.

>>1408263
I would claim that killing for survival is not an act of wrath, but an act of necessity. Emotion does not/need not enter into it.

>>1408267
Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does not. However, the animal would do the same to a human if it needed to survive and the human was a source of food.

>>1408231
Let's use that killing an animal to survive example, then.

One person, stranded, in the wilderness, kills an animal for food so that they may survive until rescue/return to civilization. How is this action evil?

>>1408209
Why do you hold that door? Does it please you to not let doors slam on people? Do you crave the recognition of your effort? Do you just like holding doors because they're heavy and feel good in your hand? No matter what your motivation, there is a motivation to the self that comes from holding a door open for someone, right?

>>1408201
>self-serving is evil. evil is self-serving
That's debatable. If, for example, to survive, one must kill an animal for food, that is self-serving, but few would say it's evil.

One can serve one's self in ways that are "Good" or "Evil", applying the modern, Western cultural meanings to "Good" and "Evil".

Slothrop is a Nazi Double-Agent.

Humans are innately self-serving. Good and Evil are societal constructs that arise in groups in order to foster improved chances of survival.

>LAST READ
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union
>CURRENTLY READING.
Fiction: John Updike - Rabbit, Run
Non-Fiction: Finding Flow - Miahly Cszkjkdkajhsifhwhateverthefck
>NEXT READ:
Fiction: Jonathan Littel - The Kindly Ones
Non-Fiction: Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential

If I had to live in any dystopia, I'd pick Brave New World. Free sex, drugs, and the possibility of either being too dumb to care or being able to live among other outcasts.

Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery ;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee !
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.
Full nakedness ! All joys are due to thee ;
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's ball cast in men's views ;
That, when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul might court that, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are only mystic books, which we
—Whom their imputed grace will dignify—
Must see reveal'd. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to thy midwife show
Thyself ; cast all, yea, this white linen hence ;
There is no penance due to innocence :
To teach thee, I am naked first ; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?

COME, madam, come, all rest my powers defy ;
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopp'd there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with your wiry coronet, and show
The hairy diadems which on you do grow.
Off with your hose and shoes ; then softly tread
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven's angels used to be
Revealed to men ; thou, angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven-like Mahomet's paradise ; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite ;
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore's glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover's fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling's cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

JIM

To NORA
Dublin 8 December 1909
My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

Ayn Rand fans love her because she justifies their egotistic, self-centered world view.

People with brains hate her because her philosophy is vain, shallow, and worthless—and because her prose is simply horrible.

http://thomaspynchonfakebook.org/

A bunch of people set music to the songs from "Gravity's Rainbow"

Bonus: It's good.

I was quite happy to finally hear Osbie's Banana Song being sung.

John Hodgman signed copy of "More Information than you Require"

>>1167304
True, very true, which is why I dislike most 18th and 19th Century literature.

I don't like Dickens because he overwrote his fiction (paid by the word or not), has characters that are so fucking black and white that it's comical, and lays down such heavy-handed moralizing that it might as well be replaced with a fucking treatise instead of a novel.