>>54264
Possibly, Jjust try it.

That is such a funny picture! thanks for sharing it.

>>54267
thanks man i didn't know what picture it was at the time i posted it, i just went in my b folder and picked one i had saved as "funniest story ever"

after i posted i read it and had to hold a pillow over my face to not wake up my room mate :)

>>53874

Dune is a masterpiece. I don't understand how you can call Herbert's writing YA.

The best one in the series is Dune, but my favorite to read is God Emperor, just cause Leto II is a total fucking badass.

>>54325
Dune is a Masterpiece, in your opinion. Twilight is a masterpiece to my female friend, is she objectively right?

I tried to explain why i felt Dune was Young Adult writing. That's just how it seemed to me.

>>54330
You plebian, relativism is not valid.
And your fat female friend is dead wrong: art is that which conveys a message, regardless of aesthetic value. Dune conveys messages concerning the proliferation of religion, the impact of human intervention in the ecological sphere, etc. whereas Twilight is simply a Mary Sue-like piece of work through which the author channeled her fantasies.

Learn your philosophy and theory of knowledge, you dumb twat.

Currently I'm reading Fahrenheit 351.

im reading this thread

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. It's interesting. So far I'm only 8 chapters in and the editor's foreword says that the first 12 chapters are actually polished and completed.

It's a bit different than Infinite Jest in its tone. Like everything he writes, it's crammed with information, but it feels more like stream-of-consciousness rather than the constant digressions with footnotes of IJ. And as far as the themes go, it's not focused on addiction but more on quiet desperation in life, the humor and morbidity of mundane things, and disappointment. It has a very similar tone to one his best short stories IMO called Mister Squishy.

It's interesting reading it because you really get a sense that DFW was playing the same games as some of the Big Postmodern writers and Joyce. A few examples:

Silly Pynchonian name: Merril Lehrl (try saying it out loud)

Joycean wordplay: Look down your shirt and spell "attic". This is kind of an inverted trope that reminded me of Joyce's "See you in tea." (cunt)

Paul Auster meta-games: I'm about 80 pages in and DFW has written a character called "David Wallace" who insists that he's the author of the book and that even though the copyright page says all the characters are fictional including him, everything in the book is true on certain levels. He even goes as far as commenting on how cliche and annoying these exact meta-references are, which is itself a sort of meta-reference cubed.

Seeing stuff like this makes it seem obvious that DFW was trying to top IJ utilizing some established tricks of the great writers and still making it his own. I think when all is said and done, this book will feel like a complete novel in a sense. The plot and flow of IJ was originally supposed to be modeled after a fractal triangle called a Sierpenski Gasket (DFW's background is mathematics), and hundreds of pages of the novel were cut out so it ended up not following his original layout and it still worked. I think in a similar way that while The Pale King may not be perfectly polished and organized as originally planned, there's enough sweat-soaked bandanas, passion, intimacy, and material here to …

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>>54344

>>54341
Worth the read, op?

I'm reading, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Count of Monte Cristo. Both great so far, I'm around half way through with both, I really like Tom Sawyer.

>>54331
Yeah, I really connect with DFW's ideas and writing style, so obviously I enjoyed it. In fact, it may be my favorite book.

The only real downside to it was that, come the end, I really just wanted to read it again with knowledge of where the story was "going" because I feel like that would give me a more complete experience. But it's long as fuck and took me like three months to read, so I probably won't for a while.

But I'd say 10/10...great book. If you've read and enjoyed Wallace, you'll love it.

>>54334
So you think it would actually be better to read infinite jest, knowing the plot?

I tried reading the girl with curious hair, I got a hundred or so pages in and I was extremely bored so I gave it up. I got about 80 pages into the pale king and was extremely bored too. I really liked A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, especially the essay about David playing tennis, I think it's the first essay. Consider the lobster and other essays was pretty interesting too.

I'm really excited to read IJ, hopefully i don't get bored liked I did with his other novels.

>>54335
Uh, well, I think a re-read in the future will be necessary. Not "better," in fact, maybe not as good because a big part of the novel's appeal for me was unboxing his ideas, but just helpful because I think it can be easy to get wrapped up in the intricacies of the surface plot and miss a lot of the more interesting and nuanced aspects of the book. So, knowing the direction it's going to take and having an established idea about the ending will make reading it again more useful. Basically like re-watching/reading anything complex.

Yeah, I've only read A Supposedly Fun Thing and then IJ, but if you liked that book, I think you'll enjoy yourself.

>>54323
you german/austrian?
enjoy "morgenlandfahrt"! its one of the best books ive read!
hermann motherfucking hesse for live mang!

this is not my summer reading list, its just the list of books i have waiting for me on my shelf:

Caroll - Through The Looking Glass
Twain - The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer
Joyce - Dubliners
Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye
Vargas Llosa - Das böse Mädchen (dont know the translation)
Vargas Llosa - Das Paradies ist anderswo (dont know neither)
Calderon - La Vida Es Sueño (Spanish - German Reclam)
Camus - Der Fremde (The Stranger)
Foer - extrem laut und unglaublich nah (Extremly Close And Incredibly Near)
Hasek - Die Abenteuer des braven Soldaten Schwejk (The Adventures Of The Soldier Schwejk)
Proctor - Golden Holocaust
Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
Boyle - Stories (Only 1-2 more...)

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If you can't see how fantasy books relate to reality then either your imagination is awful or you're reading bad fantasy for superficial reasons.

Though I do think that of all genres, "pure" fantasy is the least relate-able. Even crime thrillers and romance attempt to have realistic characters.

Realism gets boring, do a bit of both. Reading about things that aren't possible is fun, dreams are
fucking fun as hell, lucid dreams are fucking fun as hell, because you get to do things you can't do in
waking life. I don't see why works have to be ultra relate-able and it depends on what aspects of the
works you want to be relate-able, everything is relate-able on certain levels. Do you get depressed because you wish certain aspects of the story were real?

It takes the reader to see meanings. How can you know what the author intended, unless he plainly
said it and even then, that wouldn't be accounting for his sub-conscious. I've read children's works and have realized all kinds of interesting meanings and other readers totally missed them.

The effects fantasy writing would have on a person depends on the person. I would think it makes
more open minded people. I would hope with these people becoming more open minded it would
also make them question things a'lot more. I don't see there being many different effects on the
reader. Non-fantasy is still fantasy, if you're referring to works like the stranger, the catcher in the rye
etc.

The reader goes into the world of the novel and accepts what's going on in the fantasy world, they imagine dragons and wizards and what not. Those things exist in their minds, while they read the work they believe the world exists(not totally of-course, just like how a dream feels like it existed and it did).

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>>54328
I covered that.
I dunno. Dune was good. I seem to remember Terry Pratchet being good when I read some of it decades ago. beyond that?

>>54329
You can get the same from fantasy that you can from real life, it's just that it's DIFFICULT in real life, rather than being like masturbation. (easy and extremely pleasurable)
I'm not talking about the exact same things (although I won't rule that out either), but the inequality of power (having power); challenge, flow, success, reward, discovery; being born or given advantage (power) that you didn't earn...
Maybe it's just the land of The American Dream that pushes the one, unlikely story over and over ad nauseum, where a poor (and maybe picked on) child eventually is rewarded with advantage for his inherent value (usually moral value, of course forgetting that morals are also passed on regardless of the individual with some variation, but I would suspect more in the more semantic passing of values rather than the soul of the values taught by example).
I try to be open-minded, but I keep finding myself trapped back in that mindset where the solution is to follow The American Dream. If only I were a good person, I would be granted power, and could triumph over my enemies. The story does not involve personal struggle. It only involves the training montage. The only real life analogy of the training montage (besides actual training) would be slaving away your whole life at a shitty job to put your children through school so they'll be in a better position than you were. (Ok, you could slave half your life and then create a successful and lucrative company with your savings, assuming you could make everything else line up.)

>>54332
Dune is science fiction, not fantasy. Try The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe books if you want fantasy with a message. Then compare them with His Dark Materials.

If you want "realism" you're really just looking at non-fantastical fantasy which is essentially historical-based drama.

>>54332
I know what you mean bro, the under-dog thing is getting really old. The american dream is a dream. You were saying about people born with powers they didn't earn, well a'lot of people are born with money etc they didn't earn, where as others are born in slums.

Don't have kids, then you don't need to slave away, you can work less and actually enjoy your self, climb mountains and all that fun stuff humans like to do.

Back to what you first said, it's only difficulty if you MAKE it difficult. For instance, the american dream. Lets say every single person in america strives for a double story house, with a nice lawn out the front, white picket fence, nice car in the double driveway, 2 kids and a job that pays well, a beautiful wife with big tits. No you're like man it's so fucking difficult to attain this dream, it's so easy in fantasy in novels. The key is to stop seeking the dream or severely downgrade the dream.

Putting your kids through school so they will be in a better position than you were is a really fucking dumb sought of life goal. As I said before, the goal isn't hard if you change the goal because the average goal most people strive for is fucking dumb.

>>54140
A point of criticism pops into my head:

(2. Rein in your ego a little bit. Potential is a potential value, not an actual one. Remember that.)

1. I think it might be good for you, specifically, to try to focus on the PRECISE connotative meanings of words. Or perhaps not even the connotations, but all of the other various tones and tendencies of usage that come with every word. They are subtle things, but very important. Remember, always, that it is what is not said, and also what is expected to be said, that is just as important as what is said.
   

What I speak of is logopoeia. (Read Pound's essay, "How to Read"; in the meantime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logopoeia )

Focus on that and your images will improve too. As it is, you seem to have some interesting little constructions like "peircing light wisps" that do not quite work. They're getting somewhere, but they don't quite make it.

>>54141
Thanks for the feedback, I'll certainly go read that as soon as possible. I've been writing for a while, but I'm still learning, and it's not very often that I get constructive criticsm.

Not OP but I'm contributing. Thoughts/etc?

Abstracted Empiricism

I painted the most beautiful painting in my head.
I looked and I saw that the light was dead.
The lights are gone momentarily
to only return with equal metonymy.
Dead silence, the absence of thought.
Thoughts in the shape of a cyclogram,
doubt throughout.
Wishing sweet nothings in my ear
from, none the less, nothings.
All the polysemic qualities of language
without the amnesic adage.

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Respect has been lost,
Thrown out the door,
broken on the steps,
bleeding on the floor.








Everything is perfect, can't you see?
The mountains, the birds, childrens laughter, death, peace, love, sun, cloud, wind, betrayal, trust, denial, tragic, ecstatic, erratic, moroose, mongoose, hang from the noose, you lose, divine, I'm feelin' fine, put it all on the line, not yours not mine, the smell of pine, still asinine...

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>>54300
How do you abstract empiricsm?

And it generally seems strikingly like a poem written for the sake of writing a poem.
(just like all these goddamn writers writing about books and literature in their fiction novels)

>>54313
What the fuck were you doing that you didn't understand the basic requirements of the assignment? That's like your primary job as a student.

There were two completely different assignment sheets, and apparently I must've been in the restroom or something when the second sheet was passed around. the course syllabus made no mention of it either, just about the page I received.

>>54315

High school? Sounds like high school.

everything is a comedy OP

it was a college course ran by an elementary school teacher.

The text is there and it tells you exaclty what it means.

If I were you I'd give your teacher a blank paper and when he asks you about it just smile and comment on the weather or the birds outside the window.

Or you can crumple the paper into a ball and throw it at him.

Those are typical Zen responses to questions about the metaphysical.

Basically Buddhism wants you to realize that there is noting to get, nothing to understand other than the fact that you are alive now. Act in the now and not with / in the mind. Words are just noises, communicate in the physical realm. Take deep breaths. Walk in rain. Just perceiving.

If he has understood Buddhism you'll get an A.

I love this >>53893 response.

If it helps with a more analytical approach, then my own understanding is that the Heart Sutra can be reduced to the simplicity of no independent existence - it's a complete reduction of reality to its essential nature. There is no essential nature other than the idea of essential nature. There is no such thing as a person other than the idea of a person. Though it claims that a person can be reduced to the five heaps of composite qualities, even here there is no refuge, because there is no such thing as the five heaps, independent of the experience of the five heaps.

Put more simply, the universe as you perceive it is just a perception inside your head. The "real" world is totally beyond your concepts or ideas or perceptions or words. It just is. In the final analysis, words just get in the way.

Hope this helps!

>>53914
I'm glad you liked it ; )

Well worded Johnny Trotson.

Heart sutra basically says this:

Do not attach to any meaning whatsoever. Nothing is real, but only a result of the mind attempting to grasp conditioned existence (arising from causes and giving rise to other things). But the mind itself is a conditioned existence. There is nothing to grasp and no one to grasp it. So what the fuck are you doing, running around chasing things?!

Look into the transient flux, the Now, the indescribable. This is the Void. It is impossible to grasp. Abiding in the Void without grasping, without distinction, is liberation, oneness, unity, completeness. This is the meaning of Nirvana. The Buddha had no interest in establishing a doctrine except pointing towards that experience.

So, instead of teaching anything he tried to establish a dialogue. His idea was "Everything is illusion. Do not hang onto it. My words are illusions. Don't hang onto them. Find out where I am pointing."

You could say the Heart sutra is a summary of the Buddha's uncompromising resolve to reveal the inconsistency of existance, the inconsistency of describing inconsistency, and only point to the experience of liberation itself, while making sure you don't suck the finger that is pointing for comfort.

On an intellectual level, Emptiness is twofold, because partly it describes the impossibility to grasp or describe the totality of the present, or experience when there are no thought distinctions, and the emptiness that pervades all things (All things, even when they are born, are inherently unborn). All things come out of the void and return to it. This is not a nihilist void but experiencing in itself when it is devoid of an ego grasping at it, thinking of "I" or "other".

On a practical Buddhist level, these two are the same. The difference between Samsara and Nirvana are differences of point of view from the very bottom of consciousness.

>>53893

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DICKS EVERYWHERE

>>54265
-The catcher in the Rye
-The martian chronicles
-Be Here Now
-Kurt cobains journals
-Nation by terry pratchett
-Animal Farm
-The adventures of huckelberry fin
-The adventures of tom sawyer
-Moby Dick
-One Hundred years of solitude
-Ficciones(borges)
-All italo calvinos works
-The wind up bird chronicle
-Midnight's children

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Honestly this book is gold.

>>54263
No problemo, my main man!

Thanks again guys. What do you recommend in terms of poetry?

>>54306
Les Fleurs Du Mal

>>54295
You're an idiot. Look at this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Adaptations_and_derived_works
There's no reason whatsoever to make a new version, except to popularise it and dance on Orwell's grave. Making a new one will only detract from the thing.

>>54308
Firstly I rarely use wikipedia due to it's downfalls, but it does seem there are a lot of adaptations so thank you for the link. Secondly nope nope and no! Making a new version is actually probably going to draw more attention to the source, the actual novel. Just as the post above yours explained, that person saw a movie from the 80-90s and wanted to read the actual novel. So stop clinging to something that will not yet be forever burnt from history and erased from memory, and live and let live. Even IF it were Hollywood to pick up the responsibility, so what. If them making a movie about a great novel really gets your goat that much, take a good look in the mirror pal. Orwell is dead but his stories far from it.

>>54309

>willful ignorance
>implying 1984 is in danger of being forgotten

>>54310
lol, so Orwell and his novel will live on in the memory of humanity throughout infinity? To think that does not require willful ignorance, just mere ignorance with a side order of stupidity.

>>54311
Stay in school.