File: illust_137072390_20251103_225206.png (643.8 KB)

643.8 KB PNG

I'll start, I guess.

An underrated poet that I really enjoy reading is Sandro Penna. Penna wrote a lot about shotas, youth and the quiet tragedy that comes with the ephemeral nature of such. His poems are typically very short (only a few lines long), but also very evocative. Some of them genuinely leave you stunned in ways you wouldn't expect. Very depressing at times, but generally nice. You can pretty easily find translated versions of his loveliest work in the collection "A Boy Asleep Under the Sun" online.

>Midsummer at night.
>You close your windows and bar the door
>to satisfy your desire for a comfortable, familiar life.
>My silence hides,
>seething in the dark foliage below.

File: 408c737fffeca13bab3828fdd772ade5.jpg (127.8 KB)

127.8 KB JPG

In a radically different vein, I'd like to bring up the novelist Hervé Guibert. He's another guy I really like.
His work is cute/male related insofar that it usually pertains to attractive young men and male homosexuality, but is notably more... Grotesque than that of the aforementioned poet. I mean, he's most famous for writing about dying of AIDS lmao. Which is to say - he wrote a lot about decay, decadence and rot. But I think his work, especially his later work (My Manservant and Me, The Compassion Protocol, The Man in the Red Hat, Paradise, etc), is really worthwhile.
His photography is also notably interesting, but I'm not going to post any of it here, as this is a 2D-only board.

File: aw-anqi-fleeting-dream-internet.jpg (200.6 KB)

200.6 KB JPG

I'll be basic and say The Song of Achilles

File: 1638693587940.jpg (421.9 KB)

421.9 KB JPG

>>3997110
>>3997119
Oh this is crazy OP. I just read Sandro Penna recently. I found out about him some time early in October and borrowed a collection of his poems the next day. Funnily enough even though I picked him up for the homoerotic angle I ended up being much more affected by his descriptions of twilit piazzas, streetlamps, trains passing through an empty countryside at dusk, etc. Really beautiful and under-rated poet, at least in the Anglosphere.

Hervé Guibert has been recommended to me a few times (particularly by anons who want me to add him to a gay /lit/ chart I made - maybe you were one of them...?), but I always put it off because I have a bit of an aversion to books about contemporary gay life, clubbing, AIDS and so on... I guess I prefer stuff that is either bourgeois-sentimental or really off-the-wall Sadean. I tried reading Larry Kramer's 'Faggots' and just found it unbearable... (I enjoyed the 'The Normal Heart' movie though). Maybe I should give him a go. Speaking of French homosexuality, have you read 'The Screwball Asses'? That's also published by MIT Press. Initially they thought it was written by Guy Hocquenghem but it looks like they've changed the attribution recently. I usually dislike anything to do with 'queer theory' - I find that stuff so anaemic and ideological and overwrought - but this text is pretty short and evocative, super-charged with a real sense of indignation, the kind of rich steaming invective borne of dashed utopianism:
>Leftism has passed through, and Leftism dries up whatever it touches.

>>3997130
Also I enjoyed this as a guilty pleasure. I liked how often she mentioned Achilles' cute feet...

>>3997110
This geenuinely makes me want to cry. Why cant youth last forever, I should rope before i hit 25 so i dont hit twink death

File: Sauron.png (1.3 MB)

1.3 MB PNG

The Silmarillion if filled to the brim with beautiful long haired men

File: free samples.jpg (3 MB)

3 MB JPG

>>3997181
>>3997181
>I just read Sandro Penna recently. ... Funnily enough even though I picked him up for the homoerotic angle I ended up being much more affected by his descriptions of twilit piazzas, streetlamps, trains passing through an empty countryside at dusk, etc. Really beautiful and under-rated poet, at least in the Anglosphere.
Wow, it's nice to see someone else who has read Penna - he is unfortunately very underrated. Call me Pasolini in how I'm constantly telling people to read him to no avail. I mentioned him in this thread primarily because of the homoerotic themes in his work, but yeah, a lot of his more landscape- descriptive work is beautiful as well.
Penna's poetry makes me really sad. It all feels incredibly nostalgic and mourning in an almost overwhelming way. My favorite poems of his are the ones where he connects his appreciation for youth with melancholic descriptions of his quiet hell - it's just so damn *tragic*. For example, I really like the one he wrote to Renzi Vepignani -
>The nights descended slowly upon the city
>and the world was blessed with peace.
>My youth was delicate
>like the gentle and unexpected joy of a soldier.
>
>Then came the war and in our life
>the nights were no longer patient and slow.
>The sunsets were dull because of all the dust and smoke.
>And the heavy malaise
>that overcame us when Spring returned, was without end.
Just... Holy shit. Stunning.

>>3997181
>>3997233

>Hervé Guibert has been recommended to me a few times (particularly by anons who want me to add him to a gay /lit/ chart I made - maybe you were one of them...?), but I always put it off because I have a bit of an aversion to books about contemporary gay life, clubbing, AIDS and so on...
Guibert's earlier work is definitely very tied to that sort of thing - but as his disease progressed, his writing definitely changed a lot. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely still follows themes of decadence and the such, but it all becomes far less directly autobiographical, and a lot more surreal - cynical - almost satirical at times. A lot of it is about the humiliation and isolation that comes from having a terminal illness.
If you want to read Guibert, I suggest you start with My Manservant and Me - it’s very short, but very interesting. In sum - it follows a dying elderly man (Guibert’s self insert) who gets cared for and abused by a cunning young man (also Guibert’s self insert). It’s all very brutal. Almost Sadean, in a way. (In a similar vein, Guibert also produced an equally-brutal movie called Modesty or Shame, but I’m not going to talk about it too much since this is a /lit/ thread).

>>3997181
>>3997233
>>3997234
>I guess I prefer stuff that is either bourgeois-sentimental or really off-the-wall Sadean.
I’m curious as to what you think of Henry de Montherlant (who was very /cm/core himself!)

>Speaking of French homosexuality, have you read 'The Screwball Asses'? That's also published by MIT Press. Initially they thought it was written by Guy Hocquenghem but it looks like they've changed the attribution recently. I usually dislike anything to do with 'queer theory' - I find that stuff so anaemic and ideological and overwrought - but this text is pretty short and evocative, super-charged with a real sense of indignation, the kind of rich steaming invective borne of dashed utopianism:
>>Leftism has passed through, and Leftism dries up whatever it touches.
I haven’t read it yet, but I downloaded a PDF of it a while ago and have been letting it sit in my drive for a few weeks now. I am going to read it later tonight, since you brought it up.

(had to make three separate posts since I kept hitting the character limit, sorry)

I must suggest More Than This, by Patrick Ness.

>>3997248
More Than This is great until it gets raped midway through by the stupid Matrix plot

>>3997268
Yeah. Gotta take the good with the bad.

>>3997130
I hated that book so fucking much. I don't understand how any of you can tolerate just how awful it is.

>>3997284
What didn't you like about it?

>>3997296
I don't know, but I personally discarded it entirely because it was written by a woman.

>>3997300
That put me off but I'm sticking with it and it's fine so far.

>>3997304
Upon reading further, there's a bit of feminist crap leaking it's way in, but it's more than outweighed by the rest.

File: 1760744898096755.png (349.3 KB)

349.3 KB PNG

>>3997233
>>3997234
>>3997235
Thank you for the recommendation anon! I downloaded 'My Manservant and Me' - it is indeed short lol. That's awesome. I'm trying to read a lot of shorter fiction at the moment due to how busy I am. I will let you know what I think of it soon. I also downloaded 'A Boy Asleep Under the Sun' as it seems to have a lot more of Sandro Penna's explicitly homoerotic poems than the collection I read. I quite liked this one:
>Good and evil coexist in the lure of your gaze.
I may also check out the Guibert movie you mentioned.

>Henry de Montherlant
He's been on my radar for a very long time but I keep putting off reading him. I've got a copy of 'Chaos and Night' and I downloaded a PDF of 'The Boys' - it's a shame that the latter seems to be out of print. I'd be very curious to read his correspondence with Roger Peyrefitte. I wonder if it will ever be translated into English. What have you read of his? Curious to hear your thoughts.

Let me know how you find 'The Screwball Asses'. I'm guessing you've read Andre Gide too?

Another book I would recommend is Forrest Reid's 'The Garden God'. It's very short but really beautiful. Highly idealistic portrait of a boyhood romance. Reminds me of my early crushes.

File: GqGv2KlaAAAgyua.jpg (207.8 KB)

207.8 KB JPG

>>3997109
yukio mishima wrote a cute short story called "cigarette" about his early adolescence feeling alienated from other kids, where he comes upon two boys who offer him a cigarette. it's like 10 pages long but it's very sweet, this is an excerpt from it
>Held in the custody of childhood is a locked chest; the adoles-
cent, by one means or another, tries to open it. The chest is
opened: inside, there is nothing. So he reaches a conclusion: the
treasure chest is always like this, empty. From this point on, he
gives priority to this assumption of his rather than to reality. In
other words, he is now a "grown-up." Yet was the chest really
empty? Wasn't there something vital, something invisible to the
eye, that got away at the very moment it was opened?
For me, at any rate, the process of becoming an adult refused
to feel like any kind of self-fulfillment, or graduation. Boyhood, I
believed, was something that should continue forever (and
doesn't it in fact continue?). Why, then, should one have to treat
it with contempt?...

File: Cigarette.png (1.7 MB)

1.7 MB PNG

>>3997506
Oh, great choice anon. That story is wonderful. Here's a copy of it for anyone interested.

'Martyrdom' from the same collection is also rather nice... I hope someone translates Kawabata's 'Shonen' sometime soon...

I thoroughly enjoyed Brideshead Revisited by Waugh. It's a novel detailing the relationship of an artist with an aristocrat, named Sebastian, and his family, beginning at their first term at Oxford. I have also been meaning to read a similar story titled Maurice by Forster. From what I understand the latter is more overtly homosexual, so much so that it took flak at the time of its publishing.

File: 594a6a495fb11f306636142edbe62251-790062327.jpg (66.4 KB)

66.4 KB JPG

I've been obsessed with Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock. He's one of the earliest examples of a dark fantasy anti-hero, and an early inspiration for the bishonen aesthetic, in short he's the first gothic pretty boy. I love his writing style and moody prose it's all such a vibe.

>>3997731
he mentions elric's slim waist and hips a lot in the books, that was always the biggest thing that stuck out to me.

>>3997300
>I HATE Song of Achilles!

Why?

>I dunno...

File: 1597182884336.jpg (168.4 KB)

168.4 KB JPG

>>3997109
My own novel.
It's a sci-fi novel, and at the center of it is a friendship between the prince of a dying empire and his knight and sworn protector - the two being the last meaningful remnant of the empire as it falls to a revolution.
Part of the story follows them as they go into hiding together and try to blend in and live a normal, domestic life

Strange deja vu. I almost think I might have made almost the same exact post in the last thread >>3997752
Even with the same pic of MM Zero.
At any rate, I am obviously still working on the novel. Writing is actually very hard.

>>3997752
What's the novel called anon? I'd read it when you're done with it, it sounds good.
>>3998143
>Writing is actually very hard.
It is. It took me the better part of a year to write my (web)novel. Just keep at it a little bit day after day and eventually you'll be done.

File: 1746500575796738.jpg (186.3 KB)

186.3 KB JPG

>>3997109
Recommending Hermann Hesse's (The godfather of BL) novels for intimate homosocial/homoerotic relations between males

>>4000626
Can you suggest one in specific?

File: 1744094524907.jpg (81.9 KB)

81.9 KB JPG

>>3997296
Applogies it took me so long to reply.

There were several things I did not enjoy about that book. A lot of it had to do with the bastardization of characters in the Iliad. The fact that she took one of the most badass characters in the story, Patroclus, and made him a simpering healer for Achilies is the biggest issue really. That and the relationship was simply not developed. We don't really go into an understanding of their bond and most of it is just Patroclus there with a hand fetish and just saying how amazing Achilies is. Why does he think this? Why does Achilies even like him? What bond or real moments do these two have together that truly bring and bond them. It simply says they spend time together, which great, but show that time, show the bond and moments they have. Their relationship, the center of the book and whole fucking point of the retelling, feels shallow and dull.

What is the point of telling the story if you are going to completely change who these people are? Why ruin the interesting things about them just to force them into traditional seme/uke naritive? I think anyone who reads the Iliad then goes and reads this will have the same issues.

I also have issues on how she handled the female characters in the book. That is a whole essay that won't happen here on a cute male board. There is surprisingly, I never see good things there, a very good and scathing review on the book on goodreads that really goes into more detail. I discovered it when I was looking around to surely see that I cannot be the only one who has issues with this book.

File: 1751484177809.jpg (42.1 KB)

42.1 KB JPG

>>4000909
Sorry, I forgot it was his feet Patroclus was obsessed not hands. I probably mixed them up due to remembering all the times Patroclus describes how much and how amazingly Achilies plays the lyre or whatever. I wish I liked this book and could look past all this shit so I could enjoy it with everyone but I just fucking can't.

File: 1000034847.jpg (25 KB)

25 KB JPG

>>3997109

Sandel by Angus Stewart is a fantastic work of art

>>4000914
>it was his feet Patroclus was obsessed not hands
This was based though. I'm glad she is introducing the beauty of boyfeet to a larger audience

The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge contains detailed (fictional) encounters between H.P. Lovecraft and teenage boys throughout his lifetime, in a supposed diary he left behind. I do not want to spoil too much, but it is a very interesting read, I would recommend it on the storytelling alone.

File: For a lost soldier.jpg (83.2 KB)

83.2 KB JPG

>>3997109
For a Lost Soldier, by Rudi van Dantzig

File: rodya.png (867.1 KB)

867.1 KB PNG

>>3997109
I had a thing for Raskolnikov while reading Crime and Punishment and coming across this fanart

I was also kinda into Ambrosio from The Monk at the beginning of the book

File: The Good Thief.jpg (27.4 KB)

27.4 KB JPG

I discovered The Good Thief the other day. I'm a little over a hundred pages in and it's very good so far.

File: e7dc9a6e-87d4-41f8-a14c-76b8f5583b3b_741x1000.jpg (133.9 KB)

133.9 KB JPG

>>4004682

File: sailoronseasoffate.jpg (130.9 KB)

130.9 KB JPG

>>4004683

File: aa0eae0949e8b35509fcb7ce0f69bfdb.jpg (165.1 KB)

165.1 KB JPG

>>4004685

>>4004687
I like this one cause it looks like he's cumming

File: whelton-elric.jpg (151 KB)

151 KB JPG

>>4004683
(Whoops I accidentally deleted my original post)
Anyone know of more characters similar to Elric of Melnibone? (I've already read the Silmarillion)

>>4004761
Hnnng I know...

>>4004761
Kind of lore accurate
>>4004856
I know Geralt of Rivia is directly inspired, but he's not attractive in the same way (at least, I don't think he's hot).
I don't remember any sources for this, but I'm pretty sure he inspired a bunch of anime and manga characters as well.

Dennis Cooper writes almost exclusively about the Cute Male! Some grate and beautiful boys in his oeuvre ;) Fair warning though that most of it is pretty extremely Sadean, so its probably not for everyone.

>>4004948
Sadean?

Sorry, i dont know how to respond directly since i dont use 4chan very often! But what i mean is that his writing tends to depict graphic/transgressive sexuality, similar to the Marquis de Sade. :)

>>4004953
Ooh thanks. In hindsight I could have googled that haha

File: images (2) (14).jpg (26.5 KB)

26.5 KB JPG

They're making a Magic Treehouse animated series...

File: EJym9RIUEAAxQZ-.png (522.5 KB)

522.5 KB PNG

>>4004946
>I know Geralt of Rivia is directly inspired, but he's not attractive in the same way (at least, I don't think he's hot).

A bit too rugged for what I'm looking for alas.

>I don't remember any sources for this, but I'm pretty sure he inspired a bunch of anime and manga characters as well.

Yoshikata Amano made some lovely art of him. I think I read somewhere he was an inspiration for Griffith.

It's interesting. One year ago I didn't know this character existed, but now I see his influence everywhere! The aforementioned characters, the Targaryens, Messmer the Impaler...

>>4004420
So I finished reading this one, and it was excellent!

>>4000626

Lol this is crazy. I know EXACTLY which rl shos image this drawing is based on. And it's pretty awesome I'm telling you.

File: gay lit canon.jpg (3.1 MB)

3.1 MB JPG

Obligatory.
This mightve been what >>3997181 was referring to.

>>4006261
Thanks for sharing that, it seems I have a lot of reading ahead of me.

>>4006219
Mind sharing your knowledge with the class?

>>4000736
A lot of them have homoerotic components although they are not the main focus of the works. You can find this sort of element in his major works like Demian, Siddhartha and Steppenswolf, even though it's not explicitly stated as homoerotic desire. But it's really good literature nonetheless so good to read anyway.

I am not a /lit/fag by any measure. Most of what I read is fanfiction, and when I do pick up a book it's usually popular sci-fi and fantasy, or danmei/fujo-adjacent MLM romance. But I've been curious about Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy for a while now and was wondering if anyone could vouch for it. Is it an accessible read for a casual reader? Is it best to start with Fire from Heaven, or just jump right in to The Persian Boy?

>>4008207
I'll read them and hen get back to you, give me a couple weeks.

>>4008207
I enjoyed Fire from Heaven more, but that may be because I seriously disliked Bagoas. He's a boring protagonist and his limited outsider POV ruins the interesting Macedonian court dynamics. The book also IMO doesn't have any characters as compelling as Hephaestion, Olympias, and Phillip in Fire. It's also not a love story, despite the popular impression - Bagoas is a simping, obsessive slave to Alexander, while Alexander is mostly just being polite and enjoying being taking care of. There's not much depth to their relationship.

>>4008238
*being taken care of

>>4008236
Godspeed anon.

>>4008238
Thanks, that is informative. With my limited knowledge of ancient Greek history, Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion does seem more interesting to me, but I always see The Persian Boy brought up more in recommendations and more explicitly described as a love story.

Do you have any thoughts on The Last of the Wine? I noticed that it's listed in >>4006261 while the Alexander trilogy is not.

>>4008527
Never read The Last of the Wine, so I can't comment. As for The Persian Boy, although I like it less, I can see why it's recommended more often than Fire. It's first person, a classically structured coming of age story, has a dramatic POV, Alexander is amazing and larger than life thanks to the biased POV, and the events and setting are still very interesting because it's Alexander's goddamn conquest of Persia. It's a good book overall, though the love story claim will forever puzzle me. Bagoas basically spends most of the book seething over Hephaestion (the person Alexander always goes to whenever he has to deal with serious emotions and whose death finally breaks him), and his relationship to Alexander is that of a grateful slave who has traded a bad master for a good one. He's a huge Alexander simp, sure, but Alexander never really reciprocates.

File: 28759.jpg (80.3 KB)

80.3 KB JPG

Fantasy book from the 80s about a gay emo twink.

Imagine being the captain of the ship that saves the boys in Lord of the flies...
Lots of correction required with those degenerated brats.

>>4015030
"We're saved! So long as we don't meet Captain Pedophile!"

"Hello" says Captain Pedophile. >.<

>>4015029
i read this series way, way back. it was pretty solidly good, and i remember it ages later and am glad i can. i feel i remember bad things kept happening to the two guys/couple, though, in a doomed narrative kind of way, that made you just want to reach in and give them a hug or something. i read it as a little kid and thought it was really dark, but now i’m not sure how much of that was just my inexperience. very glad i read it regardless. i might reread it sometime. (if i remember right, the characters really made you love them both deeply, which doesn’t happen too often.)

>>4015053
I went in blind and it hit me like a train lol.

>>4015058
oh wow, haha, you’re bringing it back. pretty sure i also felt like i’d been run over and still found myself floating to classes slightly dazed a week after i’d finished.

File: IMG_8886.png (2.7 MB)

2.7 MB PNG

>>4015059
>>4015029
here are the japanese translations’ covers, by the way.

>>4015062
These are really cool, and they actually get Van's age right.