/lit/ - Literature

>>1748787
Do your graduate studies first, then ask again. Really man, do you believe the post-modern morons for one single minute? The present (in general) is pretty unconvincing, don't you think? The past and the future make a better case for themselves (ask Rob Brezny).

I mean: we all know that knowledge is by nature approximative, and tentative, and biased, and that it cannot exist as a cultural artifact without being told and listened to. Fine. Now concentrate on the important stuff, like being happy, and good, and fun.

>>1748763
I mean that self-awareness is meaningless unless it is concerned with morals.

>>1748746
St-Peter is self-reflecting on my account, so I'll skip Bolano.

>>1748742
Well, Mahler (Czech) demonstrated awesome taste when he picked the poems of Rückert (German) for his Kindertotenlieder. That says it all I think.

>>1748720
Janet Malcom: in the Freud archives. Hilarious

>>1748495
Sorry about that.

Listen: after years of reading, you just end up looking for pals. Assholes are everywhere (Gaddis, Styron, Tugeniev), their cooler elder brothers are legion (Joyce, Mann and their ilk), good friends need to be hand-picked and kept fondly for ever in your aspiring heart, and trusted, and reread, and listened to. Ford was one of them for me.

Academics are the impotent cousins of them all.

>>1748702
so-so. But I know some literary theory (fan of Empson the poet and of Empson the critic), lots of philosophy, minored in history. But nothing really compared to my love for fiction.

>>1748671
I would vote for American Psycho.

>>1748690
was replying to >>1748653

Sorry. Then, Jules Renard. Spontaneous and merely mnemonic translation of a one line poem of his:

"Butterfly: love-note looking for the address of its sweetheart"

Mag-ni-fi-cent.

>>1748659
Never read anything albanian, not even Kadare. Spent a week in Tirana years ago though, lovely place.

>>1748662
start with Kawabata and Ryunosuke (maybe some ogai for historical perspective), best western translations available.

>>1748647
Tender is the night

>>1748501
To be honest, not much, the Quran (Coran in French, En. spellin' dubious), the four chinese classics, some Hindu mindfuck, lots of japanese modernism.
But really, the western world is the only place small enough to drive brilliant minds away, and thus get to know the world, the stars, the cosmos, the light itself.

>>1748515
Well, my cv is somewhat peculiar. I spent some time in jail for minor offenses, worked as a vegetable salesman for a couple of years, was in the army for a few months, got a PhD from in Europe, did a post-doc in an Ivy-League, worked for a very famous film director, and so on and so forth. Audacity is key, as Danton would say, were he still alive. Not bullshit, audacity. Do what you love, love what you do.

>>1748623
Yes indeed. Thanks. Great author, great man.

>>1748448
Well it isn't for you because you obviously had a magnificent teacher, and took sides with the philistines. For everybody else, simply because it is superior to virtually all of the surviving Elizabethan literature (including Shakespeare), but is made practically unreadable by a critical tradition that tried to salvage second-rate authors from their deserved oblivion, and enforces esthetic paradigms that deaden our main sensory organ: the heart.

>>1748419
I was going to get to that. But instead I'll think of a list of great water depictions in world literature.

Another list: three books you should read if you don't want to die an idiot:

Victor Hugo: Les Misérables. Read it, period.

Fritz Zorn: Mars. THE classic about cancer, and the most powerful book since the end of WWII.

John Ford: 'Tis pity she's a whore. You'll understand something about literary history, and why you should start paying attention to your pleasure when reading.

>>1748019
A list: a few well-known books that convey an impression of LIFE, the only meaningful esthetic critical category in this post-theoretical age:

Henry James: Portrait of a Lady
Ezra Pound: ABC of reading
Henry Miller: The Rosy Crucifixion, especially Plexus
William Carlos Williams: The Doctor Stories
Jules Renard: Nature Stories
Edward Thomas: Collected Poems
Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz
Valery Larbaud: Barnabooth
Charles Peguy: the poetry
Plus a hilarious interview Dorothy Parker gave the Paris Review years ago, classic.
Guy Davenport: Geogrraphy of the Imagination

>>1748253
Yes I am gay, and that is just fine this way. I have had my share of women mnd you, so I hope I can partake to some measure in your literary tastes.
>>1748022
A bit of culture would point you towards Jean de La Fontaine, the great fabulist.

>>1747948
I started when I was a soldier, aged 18, because I was bored to death, and my boyfriend loved literature. I read what everybody reads when they start out: bukowski, kafka, flaubert, dante, and went from there. In school I hated books, but

>>1747927

I AM gay.

I remember when I started out as a reader. I was curious about what I did not yet know, and respectfully asked more literate friends about their tastes, their experiences as readers, about the classics they loved or loathed, about the hidden gems they stumbled upon. Fine, keep reading your second-rate Gaddis. Fuck, impressing girls with Lovecraft, that really is low.

Taste, friends. Taste. And humility. And passion.

And I know nothing about tripcodes, I don't use them, and don't give a fuck if somebody usurps my identity. Go ahead.

Shit, I mean: I am a foreigner (French native speaker, working in the US), nobody even notices I'm too articulate not to have read my share.