Tuned in to Literature!

>>118
>he thinks reading literature ends at high school

ngmi

>>113
It's something fails us. First we feel. Then we fall. And let her rain now if she likes. Gently or strongly as she likes. Anyway let her rain for my time is come. I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting onto meself always. And lilting on all the time.
…
For 'tis they are the stormies. Ho hang! Hang ho! And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free. Auravoles, they says, never heed of your name! But I'm loothing them that’s here and all I lothe. Loonely in me loneness. For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff!

Happy St. Paddy's. I hope you're well, anon.

When I was in sixth grade I tried to read this and i was so harsh on myself for not understanding any of it, i was like: "I can't read in a foreign language for shit, I bet english first graders can read this with no problem".
I was so stupid.

>>113
Reading it soon (with a v) this year.

steve donoghue told me not to waste my time with it

>>260
I'd contend that America has produced great authors, I will defend Cormac McCarthy in this regard. Australia is young, less populous, and great authors cannot be guaranteed by even the most favorable circumstances. Despite what our Rasta friend might assume as well, I don't hold it against cultures that do not produce great writers, they very well may have other virtues worthy of admiration.

>>260

Ozfren here. I tend to agree with >>255

There are a few reasons for it

- The country was made by bureaucratic agreement rather than the rifle; great writing often emenates from popular galvanization and pushback against authority. How does anyone achieve that in a society that formed by permission? It's often been said it's a mistake to think of Australia as having been built by convicts as opposed to prison officers.

- Climate. Great literary traditions often have a lot of indoors time by necessity.

- Bad incentives and top-down narratives. AU publishing only wants to print a few specific types of novel, and lots of attempts to subvert that or deliver it something outside the mold will be met with attempts to fit it back into the preferred molds. Being corporations, you've also got the state continually reinforcing the idea that the most noble 'intellectual' pursuit of our literature is addressing Le Reconciliation. That, or forcing WW2 memes like Kokoda

- Lack of imagination. This may well be the least exclusively applicable to Oz - most Anglophone industrial nations suffer this b/c their education systems simply prepare bodies for the university system - but it's still a contributing factor. Australian society is extremely materialist, and the best path to succes with values like that is conformity to rules, often for conformity's sake

I want to revisit local writers. I've read Malouf, White, Carey, etc in the past but it was 10+ years ago. But I go to bookshops in current year and nothing with an 'Australian-writer' coded cover piques my interest

>>283
Of course Australia has a shit literary culture. I don't disagree with most of your statements, although I do think you underrate the potential of the Anglo cultural heritage and its inevitable preservation among the talented individuals of the populace. Any country with such a heritage is going to produce a certain quality of literature just as a byproduct. I don't see much that is significantly holding down the literary potential of our country, other than the same problems faced globally, since elements like climate do little in shaping the cultural life of an advanced people. Certainly, there is quite a dearth of positive elements to INSPIRE literature, but little in the way of restraining it, other than, again, the global-modern elements everyone knows about. For our small population and short history there is no reason why we should be producing anything more than we have. Australians tend to be very neurotically self-critical of their own culture, but there's no reason for it. South Africans don't cry and shit their pants because South Africa isn't competing with German literature.

What I was criticising in that anon was the ridiculous claim that Nigeria, or any black-African country, has produced superior literature to Australia. It's just a matter of objectivity.

>>284
>What I was criticising in that anon was the ridiculous claim that Nigeria, or any black-African country, has produced superior literature to Australia. It's just a matter of objectivity.

I knew you were gonna bite!

>>284

i found a copy of Tsiolkas' book Barracuda. Gonna read and report back (this thread will still be alive by the time i do lel). It's 500 pages so my filler senses are tingling, but he's supposed to be a decent current writer

>>216
Two Hermann Hesse suggestions in one thread. Spicy.

>>188
There's definitely some connection.
Joe's writer was on some level of the same ideological line as Mishima, and the artist was a communist.
So you got a strong mix of the two where you have this sense that the only real end for greatness is death, but this death is itself a form of personal revolution. The greatest thing the working class can achieve is a good death.

>>222
Japanese new left and the ultra nationalists had a strange relationship. Mishima used to visit left wing student groups often. They both shared a hatred for the Japanese establishment and a romantic heroic attitude that idolized martyrdom hated the flabbyness of liberal democracy. For Mishima it was a personal individual thing, for the new left it was dying for the socialist cause or something.

>>145
The catcher in the rye.

>>200
I recommend the John Rain series by Barry Eisler. It's basically a darker and edgier version of City Hunter but with some more martial arts feeling (John Rain is a Judoka). The only thing missing is the humor, but John Rain is still a womanizer regardless, albeit a more psychopathic one. I only read the first book (Clean Kill in Tokyo, originally published as Rain Fall), but it reminded me of City Hunter in a few aspects.

As for me, I'd really want a /lit/ recommendation for Captain Harlock. I want the same kind of space adventure feel but with a lot of the similar themes and general atmosphere, especially something where the protag isn't really tied to any kind of military and is just fighting for his own values and freedom.

I started with King Lear a few weeks ago and haven't gotten around to anything else since then, but I plan on reading more. The only other play I've read was Hamlet and that was when I was 13.
Lear was great. Is there any character who gets treated more unfairly than Cordelia? I'm under the impression that most tragic characters more or less deserve what happens, but she was a total angel.

>…You have seen
>Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
>Were like a better day: those happy smilets
>That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know
>What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence
>As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. - In brief, sorrow
>Would be a rarity most belov'd if all
>Could so become it.

>>241
>Is there any character who gets treated more unfairly than Cordelia?
Maybe Desdemona from Othello? Although, in the case of Cordelia, it seems to me more that her suffering exists for the inevitable effect it will have on Lear, and the pity his character evokes, rather than for us to pity her fate. After the first scene we don't actually see her suffer, she dies off stage and we only see Lear's reaction. Meanwhile you actually see [spoiler][spoiler][spoiler]Desdemona strangled on stage.[spoiler][spoiler][spoiler].

This guy is gay.

Watch Shakespeare first (theatre or film) then enjoy the text. Education system gets this in the wrong order (text first) and it turns each generation off what should be their pride and joy as English speakers

I watched Titus (1999) recently. pretty good. Aaron is a good villain and his scaffold speech is memorable

>>276
The problem is more that most actors in Shakespeare are atrocious and that teachers suck. People have appreciated Shakespeare as a purely literary phenomenon for centuries, even if it's not the ideal, and he will continue to be appreciated as such for centuries to come. You can still see the drama in your mind's eye via reading.

Love me
I just want to be loved
I don't care who is
male or female

Whether he is the most virtuous of all beings on earth or the most cruel and vile human that gives him the title of hell of this world

As long as he fills me
I will accept him
As long as he loves me I will accept him
Therefore love me

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
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>>136
I accidentally hit the button while typing ;-;

Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear Mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
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>>55
A poem that perfectly encapsulates the modern world, approaching the spiritual idealism of a Schiller.

THERE is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear
Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall,
Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall:
'Tis his who walks about in the open air,
One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear
Their fetters in their souls. For who could be,
Who, even the best, in such condition, free
From self-reproach, reproach that he must share
With Human-nature? Never be it ours
To see the sun how brightly it will shine,
And know that noble feelings, manly powers,
Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine;
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THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION

When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
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>>74
It's an obvious bot post, but you clearly don't know how to read the thread. Why are you posting manga on a literature board?

Manga isn't lit? I-It has pages... FINE! Here's a book!

Foundation of the loli genre. Enjoy.

VIRGIN TERRITORY:
50 Years Without Sex. My Life As An Involuntary Virgin
By
Timothy Draper. its the bibliography of a loveshy user, he posted the pdf on the site, but I will upload here in case if anyone wants to. While I did enjoyed reading his book, there are many parts that made me feel depressed. I also got a bit frustated by the author stubborn behaviour, he would repeat the same mistake, again and again and he was too much of a beta

>>73
Oh boy, another reading list put together by someone who hasn't even read 99% of the stuff on it

>>246
Almost every big general reading list will have stuff the list's creator hasn't read, but I object to lists where it's obvious the creator just threw a bunch of shit together.

On Suicide Bombing by Talal Asad.
Its not about suicide bombers themselves, but a cultural analysis of Western liberals and how they react to what they call terrorism. The book presents some arguments that are disturbing and hard to swallow. Difficult read.

I've felt motivated to reread Democracy The God That Failed. It's still probably the best chud book ever made

>>209
IMO you should read "A Short History of Man" by the same author instead, if you haven't already; it's almost as good as "Democracy: the God that failed".

>>213
I like the Great Courses too my good sir, I'm listening (and watching) to How to Listen and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg. I don't like how he spergs out against certain germans and seems to excuse some fucked up Jewish individuals; but otherwise it's very good.
I'm also listening to Journey to the End of the Night by Céline. So far so good, it had its great moments but I have to keep reading. Hopefully it's better than War, it's the only other Céline book I read and I wasn't a fan.

>>86
>Does that make scribbles on a bathroom stall lit?
There are some theorists of literature who ask that question and some say we have no right to objectively say it isn't lit. Usually, gatekeepers decide what gets counted as lit and so bathroom stall scribbles get excluded. Gatekeeping isn't inherently a bad thing, its necessary to some extent, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if you started treating bathroom stall scribbles and shitposts as literature. In Japan there was a trend where people would type out short stories and poems on flip phones or write stories modeled on 2channel threads and there are some places where you have entire archived threads that detail some weird paranormal thing that happened to OP. Can you consider that lit?

>>94
>You don't need a cultural elite to understand what literature is and what isn't.
The sociologists aren't saying you need some Leninist vanguard to decide what lit is but that the definition of literature is arbitrary. Stuff only gets labelled as lit when enough people in literary circles begin slapping that label on it. Otaku related stuff only becomes otaku associated when enough people from that culture adopt it and it becomes a staple within their in group.

>Perhaps we can restructure the boards so delineations are more clear.
I don't think that's really necessary. I guess renaming /lit/ to /book/ might be better but its not like there's a real need to do this. I don't think most people even disagree on this question. Its just interesting to ask the perennial question of "what even is lit anyway?" which nobody will be able to definitively answer. I don't think that's such a bad thing though.

Personally, when I think lit I think of books and oral stories. VNs don't fit that. The user experience is more like a game. You get the software and run it on a machine. You don't do that with a book, unless your using a digital copy I guess. Because we think of physical books when we think lit, its different enough from reading a book that it can be considered distinct. Although, you could probably apply some literary critical methods to VNs. The real Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>82
Less is more
VNs are VNs, the vibe is different

The premise of this supposed dilemma is wrong and evil. If instead of letting a label (in this case "literature") define the purpose of a board, and then let everyone fight over their personal interpretation of that label, you directly define what things are and aren't supposed to be discussed in the board to begin with, the conflict simply evaporates.
This post is literature, btw.
The sticky clearly says that
>[besides certain exceptions for NSFW] you can discuss anything you want
So I think VNs are on-topic in this board.

some are moreso than others
you can have vns which have absolutely no reader interactability, no voicelines, just a wall of text that covers the screen with decorative borders, a background image, and some elevator music which are basically just a book with some extra bells and whistles like the original higurashi or seabed
or you have straight up point and click games that use text to drive the story and have countless routes like yu-no
they all really just fall on a spectrum and every vn does things differently