/lit/ - Literature

>>31

Depends on your religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia

in the zamonia books there is a race that feeds by eating.

>>63
*by READING

Just found out that in the english language the personal pronoun "i" must always be capitalised, are they out of their fucking mind? Who made this shitty rule? Capitalised letters are only allowed at the start of a new sentence and for proper nouns, all the other uses should be prohibited.

>>102
Skill issue.

There’s a show produced by NHK called Yokai narrated by Michael Dylan Foster which looks at various yokai stories and their origin. You might find it interesting.

If I can weigh in on this...
I view VNs as something that belongs more in /vnt/ than /lit/. The exception is novelizations, but even then they could probably fit in either board.
However this is just semantics - I'm not going to really care either way unless someone goes rouge and starts spamming threads (this is not an invitation to do so).
Perhaps we can restructure the boards so delineations are more clear.

>>94
Is Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Dancing Men literature? Is Alice in Wonderland literature? Are Dr. Seuss works literature? What degree of image is acceptable for it to be regarded as literature?

What about theater? Are Shakespeare's plays literature? Are Brecht's plays literature? Are Boal's plays literature? What degree of interactivity is acceptable for it to be regarded as literature?

>You don't need a cultural elite to understand what literature is and what isn't. One can simply see how racially different those mediums are.
Can one really?

>>94
If you can show me an advertisement that has a plot, themes, setting, point of view and conflict, then I will show you what is literature. Most advertisements do not do this. Not everything with words is literature. Everything with dynamics and story is literature.
>>96
Hey, Dr. Suess books can be pretty good. :P I think a comic with images alone could possibly be considered literature. There are stories out there with no dialogue, only descriptions. The case we are talking about is just that told through images. I think I would lean towards something like that being moreso the drawn or painted type of art, but one could make a solid enough argument for otherwise.
The point about scripts is fantastic. It is technically a visual medium, just the instructions for its execution. Every literature textbook I know that is trying to be comprehensive has a dedicated section to plays, so I suppose they are considered literature in the wider census, but I find it difficult to say that scripts are literature, even if on the face of it they meet the requirements.
>>95
As far as Wapchan goes, I think the posting etiquette is pretty obvious. Novels, short stories, and poems go in /lit/, plays go in /media/, Japanese comics go in /cel/ or /digi/, and visual novels go in /vnt/. Like you said, this is a semantics exercise. I guess if someone really couldn't stop themselves from posting Western comics here, that could go in /media/ or something. Will any of that matter once the site changes?

>>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.

I picked up M.M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions awhile ago. The only work I'd read by her previously was The Ordinary Princess, which I was re-reading when I noticed in the back it said she was actually famous for her historical novels. The local library had The Far Pavilions, so I grabbed it.

It's about a boy born to English parents in India in the mid-19th century, except thanks to events he's quickly orphaned and raised by his nurse as an Indian, and then a lot of stuff happens. It's one of those sweeping epics that just follows this guy through his life and gives you an extensive portrait of India and the people living in it during the time period.

I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. It's much more tell than show, but the author does it well, and all the characters feel real. I can't speak for the historical accuracy, but it feels like it was the product of a lot of research. So far it's worth a read if you have any interest in India during the time period.

I've almost Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor, not to be confused with a cannibalistic Liberian warlord. Its a short read and actually helps explain why our world is so messed up. The gist is that Western societies have experienced a revolution the way we understand ourselves and morality. We've become inward looking individualists that reject all unchosen obligations and responsibilities and we think the aim of life is to find our true authentic self and express it. People embracing extreme relativism and subjectivism where each person's lifestyle is valid no matter how harmful it is to others and personal relationships become fleeting utilitarian transactions in ways that reduce people to meat. This creates the three malaises of modernity: individualism that atomizes society, extreme relativism that leads to a loss of meaning, and extreme rationalism that turns everyone and everything into a resource with purely instrumental value. He says this culture of authenticity isn't totally bad per say but that the modern problems are just a debased form of it.

Despite these downsides, Taylor says that individualism and authenticity has helped us lead richer lives and encouraged us to be more responsible. He suggests a few things that can help remedy the problems of authenticity culture but none of these feel all that convincing and leaves the reader unsatisfied. Sure, we're more responsible now but the obsession with authentic identity drives a lot of the racism, phobia, and general tribalism online. Instead of being more responsible, we lock ourselves into warring tribes and identity politics. Its made us hate each other.

Good read 8/10

Damn I last posted 11 months ago huh? (>>27). Might as well update some books I've read.

I chose to listen to Roadside Picnic and the audiobook I chose was more like a middle ground between a dramatization and an audiobook which I actually really enjoyed. There was a constant droning ambiance in the background almost like the sounds of a wasteland and I felt it fit the story well. As a fan of the STALKER games this was actually a great read because I could truly visualize everything that was describes as anomalies and artifacts are common in the STALKER games. I do wish we got to see more of the exploration into the zone as it's obviously the most interesting part of the book. I also really enjoyed Red interacting with his daughter who was a lively and happy child in the earlier years until eventually becoming a mute like all children of people who enter the zone become. I found it very touching he tried his hardest to give her a normal childhood, even paying off the other people in the apartment block he lived in to treat her normally and it was a shame to see it all be for nothing. The ending did confuse me a bit but I understood it after a bit of searching here and there. I did enjoy it a lot though.

I took a long break from reading for several reasons and tried to get back into it with several books but each of them didn't really stick. I tried listening to Jeeves and Wooster as my mother said it was a funny comedy but I didn't really get it. I tried to read Catch 22 but found it somewhat boring as it went on. I tried to read Journey to the Center of the Earth but couldn't find an audiobook good enough, one I found would change readers every three chapters which was incredibly annoying. I did read The Idiot through a dramatization because I didn't want to really listen to the book and I really liked it, it skipped a few chapters but I just re-read chapter summaries on what I missed. The final section was harrowing.

The last book I did finish was Stoner. That was a really good book, like surprisingly so. I was hooked from the first chapter. I tried to find what to read next after The Idiot but couldn't find anything good before checking /lit/'s top 100 books and picking one that seemed cool which landed me on Stoner. I pretty much understood why it was a top 100 for /lit/ as it's basically about an r9k user's liPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

I've been going through Discworld lately. It's hardly high brow, but I'm having a good time. Recently I've finished Going Postal and Making Money, and I think Moist Von Lipwig is probably my favourite protagonist in the series. He's smart but also deeply flawed and it's always great watching him bullshit his way out of situations. I'm thinking of picking up Raising Steam as it's the last Von Lipwig book, but I also hear Pratchett was under the more severe effects of his illness around that time and it supposedly shows. Sounds depressing to me.

So I'm currently reading Guards! Guards! Instead. I've already read a few of The Watch series and it's odd seeing them as a disheveled group of four guys. Fun all the same though, it's like Hot Fuzz in Discworld.

>>68 I enjoyed Roadside picnic a good too, though I read after having watched Tarkovsky's movie version. Strugatskie also did a 'Snail on the slope' novel that's touches on similar ideas staged in a similar context. Pushing this a notch further away from the gloomy buzzing environment while still staying true to the core problem of order and chaos, human and nature I have another amazing rec, Frontier by Can Xue. I'd love to have all three physical books to sit together on the shelf, but have only the last one.

Obligatory reading.

INFOBLOB MEGA PACK
http://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13gNcyzC7QvfTbXcVSqorj1pZmFb-csP6
google drive easy to use interface
.
.
lots of reading material

Barefoot Gen.

>>73
>frogs
>/pol/ speak
>shitty academic publications
>eugenics
>negativity
Yeah no thanks. Trash reading list. Obvious bot post.

>>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.

>>60
The standard recording of Tannhauser is the Solti, there's not many good recordings of that one unfortunately. Tannhauser is definitely the best starting place for Wagner, very simple, a more traditional opera but still brilliant drama and music.

But before you get into the operas I would recommend listening to all the major excerpts from each, like the overtures, siegfried's funeral music, parsifal verwandlungsmusik, pilgrim's chorus, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COhLnFwGaT0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXh5JprKqiU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88hmJ_osjY

>>61
Thank you for your reply, I will start with Tannhäuser then. I own the recording by Konwitschny and a libretto, so I will likely listen to that one instead of Solti. Also because Fischer-Dieskau is one of the few singers I actually manage to understand.

I also remembered a funny Wagner-related anecdote from the circle around Stefan George: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBk002KDYEE&t=1724

>>62
A George related Wagner story! that's pretty rare. I'm surprised he didn't stay awake for it, since some of George's earlier poems (like Algabal and Litanei) are on Wagnerian topics, but I guess they must have been inspired more by general culture at the time than a specific interest in Wagner.

Thanks for the cool story.

>>59
Quick run down of Wagner? New to this subject.

>>66
Wagner was the greatest and most influential composer after Beethoven, wrote operas early on in his career but later rejected the idea for the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (total-artwork), in which all the arts join together in equal importance, which is something that has been unseen since the Greeks, hence it’s a return to both the culture and art of Ancient Greece, but with the advantage of the full development of the arts of music and painting, which Ancient Greece only had in a more primitive form. So Wagner was equally a dramatist and theorist as a composer, and his dramas and theories have had an enormous influence on literature and various important philosophers in modernity.

>>55
G.I. Joe

bom, bom, bom.

Làm ao vịt.

- Erwin "Cowpox" Franke III

>>55
*writer's blocks you*

His sunken eyes were fixed on the screen. Its incandescent glow was all that illuminated his room, engulfed in blackness like a monastic cell. He couldn't feel the wet clothes sticking to the flesh. He was elsewhere. The keyboard, slick with sweat, projected his soul through into an endless stream of content. He could feel it surging beneath his skin like heroin through an addict's veins. Bare breasts, orgies of flesh, hands caressing nude body parts decapitated by the lens, cute girls in idol dress copulating, moaning, penetrated by hordes of faceless men. Intensity increasing. And then it ended. Drenched in his own fluids, he fell back into his seat exhausted tearing the wires from the headphone jack. Suddenly he was back in the real world. Fallen like Adam from a cybernetic Garden of Eden he felt like reality had suddenly been pulled from beneath him. Yanked from the machine by the limits of the body's biochemistry he fell back to earth too mentally drained to move. Pure bliss overcome now by a deep inner feeling of longing and disgust and that icy cold shiver brought on by the familiar pangs of guilt. He longed for pain. He longed for pleasure. For something. Sprawled back in his seat like a corpse he glanced over to his S26 .. 03:12 AM. "Damn... 4 hours? fuck... work tomorrow...." Still breathing heavily he closed his eyes and tried vainly to sleep.

>>37
Then, out of no where, a massive Gondola came bursting into the room and murdered the main character in cold blood (he didn't like him). The creature, the Gondola, showered with brown fur, had no arms, was about seven feet tall, and bared the face of bear. It spoke in a fast paced Finnish prose; so as to confuse passer-bys. The Gondola then walked out of the room and into the kitchen and began to prepare...

>>38
... a continental breakfast: bacon and eggs, orange juice, breakfast sausages. Despite the otaku clutter in the bedroom, main character kept a well-stocked kitchen. Maybe he had wanted to become a cook. Maybe. The Gondola wiped its forehead. The steam from the bacon and eggs crept into its matted fur, twisted with mud dingleberries, and it made the Gondola feel soggy. But the Gondola soldiered on with the breakfast, whistling some Finnish folk song all the while. He had forgotten the lyrics. Something about a revenant. If it had stopped whistling, the Gondola might have noticed that in the bedroom ...

Gondola stopped. He begun to scan the room for information, anything that could piece together the worthless otaku he'd just relieved of existence. He started at the employee ID pulled from a cum drenched wallet "Kirito Wakamatsu. Age: 26. Technician" Employer? "Himazawa Corporation" Slowly begun to contort his face, painfully tearing flesh and sinew, reshaping his bones as his master had taught him until he bore the resemblance of the man he'd just killed. This is it. This is how he'd hide from THEM, by hijacking the otaku's identity he could lay low all while infiltrating the Himazawa clan to boot. The Gondola went back to whistling the folk song but decided to finish the JAV film still running on Wakamatsu's PC. Nudity was a good thing. He needed to shape the rest of his body to look like the otaku and the semen dripping from the seats was the perfect DNA sample. Gondola stood up, penis still erect, and begun to cry a heroic villainous laugh, even though he's the good guy in this story despite murdering a defenseless computer programmer and defiling his corpse. Whatever. You should be more worried about THEM.

Ham on Rye - Bukowski
legendary, not technically 'beat' but close enough

Dharma Bums - Kerouac
Enjoyed it a bit more than On the Road

https://www.beatdom.com/allen-ginsbergs-first-trip-africa/

Article about Ginsberg and his failed(ish) sex tour in Africa

Desolation Angels is Kerouac's best, the poetry of Gary Snyder is good if you feel like blowing your mushroom cap.

>>39
Live by 3 of Kerouacs old houses. Love lots of his writtings. Read a bit of Bill and Allen and Herbert and others too, but none of them hold a candle to Kerouac.

Naked Lunch... normies are forever filtered by it because it's actually meant to be read as a manual to deprogram your brain from MKUltra conditioning and other forms of external programming.

>>45
Read the 'Lunch, Mugwamp definitely is a filter. The book has many interesting concepts and ideas, but it ain't my favorite Beat book.