Thread #533362597
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Is it just me or are novels intellectual slop? I tried Hemmingway, Henry David Thoreau, Faulkner, Tolstoy, dostoevsky, salinger.. Did audiobooks and stopped at least half way through each guy, never finished one of them. They are all slop. Shit for fucking teenagers. Every lesson they try to teach u learn natrually by turning 30. Only writer i ever liked was hunter s thompson and he only has like 4 legit books. He was the only one who really had style, didnt try to preach a high school lesson onto you.
I do like philosophy books, those are a whole different ball game. Im a RF electrical engineer so I have years of studying and applying high level math's and physics. After thinking on that level these kiddie books dont really do anything for me.
Hemingway is beyond awful btw, complete and utter boring slop. He keeps trying to do that alcoholic shit were he goes into the details and nuances of shit that's not even remotely interesting. "We were at this bar on this street and she was wearing this and the taxi that picked us up was this color and and and and....". Fucking god awful.
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Im gonna give this book a try but I dont have high hopes. I could give a shot if the message resonates with me. If the writ9ng style is boring then I wont finish it.
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>>533362761
Oh and dont get me started on basedjack sci-fi
It has all the ingredients to be great, but the writing is for fucking middle schoolers. All asthetics, no substance. This book suck monkey balls. Dune sucks. Phillip k dick sucks. The plots are all kino, but its a shit and boring read.
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>>533362597
Oh and I forgot to mention that I started reading these assholes thinking they were the pinnacle of intelectualism and had intersing things to say, so I didnt come at it with a negative disposition or assumption. I didnt understand why I ddont enjoy the books for a while either, thought I was brain dead or just needed another author. Nope, they just fucking suck. 19th century writers objectively suck for a 21st centuey man of at least avergae intellegance if nothing else. I bet they were insightful in their time but all this shit has been played out in movies 10000 times, based on their books of course but im not a slopgoy alcoholic who obsesses over the origins of metas
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Philosophy books are thinkslop talking about hypotheticals that would never happen
>DUDE what if we are STAR DUST
>Simply manifest yourself not to be
>OK so then marcus arelius said FUCK NIGGERS
I get infinitely more out of novels (most of which aren't good but the good ones are), which are just the years of life lessons and experience said writers have from years of living their own life. it's more valuable that philosophy which is a midwit larp most of the time based on bullshit slave theories. A good novel will be written by some expert in the field with a lifetime of experience with a huge number of books already written on said subject.
But anyways I've moved on and I'm working on my second language so I'm reading kidslop like La Espada De Fuego, but it's interesting because I don't understand many of the words.
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>>533362597
You are so intelligent anon
You need a written version of BBC porn, you are too above of those novel slop retards, you are smart and intelligent you need to read something different, something that is not racist, total BBC porn
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>>533364327
I can walk my dog or gym it while I read, its great. But ye my attention span is too fuvked for reading. I need to fix that. Still wont make the novels any better
>>533364392
Then why do I like hunter s thompson so much? I dont even do drugs anymore and I loved rereading him. Maybe u telling me i dont have the mind for novels when I mentioned these goys is like me saying someone doesnt have the mind for movies cuz they dont like avengers endgame....
>>533364519
Now that I noticed it, ye me too
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Authors are a bunch of pseuds. They can tell great stories and have beautiful prose and whatnot but most of the morals and political themes they try to express are either extremely basic or flat out wrong. Lenin was right when he said "the intellectuals of a country are not its best but its shit". Authors always believe that just because they can write a nice story that they somehow understand fuck all about economics or policy
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>>533362597
>Is it just me or are novels intellectual slop?
You have correctly seen the literary problem.
Move on to a more lasting story.
https://youtu.be/PZ3hESj__M8
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>>533364546
I post from my computer and don't read manga because it's slop.
If you wouldn't a 13 year old you're not a philosopher, btw.
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>>533362597
>Every lesson they try to teach u
They're not trying to teach you anything, retard.
It's art and should only give you an aesthetic experience. If art is not for you, you could try to watch the sunsets or stg lol.
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>>533362597
you're just retarded
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>>533364772
I haven't posted any porn though?
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>>533362597
>be 30+ year mixed race mystery meat circumcised amerigolem mudblood unc
>engage high school level slop for the first time in your life
>don't even read it cus too mixed race and retarded, just listen to the audiobook
>don't even finish the audiobook cus too retarded
>think you figured out all the "lessons"
>there never were any lessons unc
>complain to fellow thirdes who have also never read a goddamn book in their locrs
>topkek
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>>533364694
no, i just like a good rugged sweater. for rugged men who have lots of sex with women, so they can wear them sometimes and talk about all the sex with women that they have.
also, OP is a trolling faggot autistic retard for not liking hemingway.
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>>533364644
> then why do I like a literal degenerate who wrote everything as a series of assertive, rambling musings about how society has failed in some fashion?
Probably because you're too retarded to understand the nuance of any of the literature you claimed to read?
> erm ackshully muh RF engineering
If you're going to claim an engineering field to back your intelligence and then try to parlay that into you being qualified to criticize some of the best authors of the modern era, you must not be that intelligent.
If you have any real competence, then your (hollow) critique can be filed away as a fit born of Nobel Laureate syndrome, but I doubt strongly that you do.
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>>533364071
you are american. catcher in the rye is the highlight of your literature. of course you're not going to get anything from the great british and russian authors
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>>533362597
Decently based post. “Intellectual slop” is a good term for a lot of novels. However, I am concerned that you did not see the value in Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. You are right to call out Hemingway, Faulkner, and Salinger.
The key difference is sloppa novels are designed to make (You), the reader, feel smart for reading them. If you’ve studied literature, you can tell when the author is patronizing you. Posers basically.
Good novels just are what they are and don’t care what (You) think.
Don’t give up reading. There are good works to be found.
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I hate to be a philistine, but I tried a lot of the ‘Great’ novels, and frankly I was left underwhelmed. Maybe I’m too stupid to pick up on all the subtext.
Some of the newer stuff is more compelling to me, but the overwhelming majority is complete dung. Dull and predictable at best, crude propaganda for women at worst.
You really have to be discerning with this stuff. Personally I’m so discerning, I don’t read anything much beyond pol posts these days.
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>>533364644
>Then why do I like hunter s thompson so much?
Because you're too young for Hemingway.
I saw Thompson live once, for an interview and audience questions. He was over 45 minutes late and absolutely shitfaced. He mumbles naturally and with the booze no one could understand what he was saying, including the interviewer. He ended the interview by throwing his half-empty glass of Chivas about thirty feet into the air over his head and walking off without taking questions.
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>>533362666
>>533364888
camp is a great book. in the first 11 pages a hippie gets his head blown off with a shotgun. hemmingway is a dogshit commie with dry prose and excruciatingly dull themes. try orwell (not 1984; keep the aspidistra flying, burmese days, down and out) and confederacy of dunces.
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>>533362597
never read hemingway, but from what i've learned about him he had great experiences in war and love. wasn't it hemingway who said those who are closest to death are the ones living life to the fullest?
"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places"
i haven't tried to read any of his work yet, although as an aspiring writer I probably should. But on some level i agree with you 19th and early 20th century writing doesn't hit our dopamine receptors like any of the modern brain rot we have these days, so when writers like Bukowski dribble on about some sexual escapade or some shitty apartment it doesn't seem like anything special.
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>>533362866
You aren't reading what aligns with your values are interests.
If you want interesting stuff either try philosophers more aligned with you, or try interesting books like the 40 laws of power.
I also enjoy history so I read history books.
On the fiction side pick stuff you like, I enjoy Litrpg slop personally, numbers must go up.
I don't find I have no mouth good because it's doomer AI glazing torture porn by a Jew.
It's really that simple read your interests.
Don't read stuff you dislike because someone said it's only for intellectuals.
Books are either a tool to learn with or an interesting pass time.
I wouldn't be caught dead reading most philosophers because I find dead guys questioning if they exist dumb.
I enjoyed reading religious philosophers like Al Ghazzali more because he aligned more with what I like.
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>>533365101
>Muh nuance
>muh in-between the lines
Fuck off seething non STEM manual laborer. Mathematics is objectively the pinnacle of intellectual achievement. Im smart than anyone who tried to make a living out of social studies subjects
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>>533365201
Thoreau, Tolstoy and dostoevsky weren't bad but nothing plspecial. In the 19th century I bet they were ground breaking but all their tropes have been played out. I bet avengers endgame would have been revolutionary in the 19th century also..
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>>533362597
>>533362866
I remember you from another thread. Sci-fi is gay and fiction is ass for the most part. History is my go to. Check out Empire of the Summer Moon. It's about the Comanche and the formation of the Texas rangers and shit. It doesn't pull any punches with the injuns either.
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>>533365753
Hunter s thompson did it WAY better
THE EDGE. The only people who truly know were it is are the ones who have gone over.
Not that its some ground breaking statement but its got style. Unlike hemmingway who has 0 prose as another anon summarized it..
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>>533365384
by the time of the 80s and 90s thompson was a burned out drug addict alcoholic
but hells angels, fear and loathing, and fear and loathing on the campaign trail are great books.
thompson has the ability for his dribbling to be entertaining
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>>533365945
You'd think The Sun Also Rises would have an audience here, since it's about a guy who had his dick shot off in the war so he can't consumate his love for the object of his desire, perpetually friend-zoned by the bullet of fate, a tragic stunted romance with an idealized female figure who goes on to have an affair with a jew, lots of unspoken anguish and cringe between the lines, oh what might have been, Brett, what might have been, if only my dick had not been shot off in the war.
You'd think all the incels here would find something in it.
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>>533362597
Novels were never meant to be some erudite club of mega intellectuals. They were stories written for entertainment for regular people before they forgot how to read more than 140 characters.
Only now is reading books seen as some “high intellectual” activity to read what is essentially pop culture fiction from previous eras.
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BTW, since it's semi-relevant there was an interview from the 60s in which Truman Capote complained that literary criticism in the US was nearly monopolized by like 15 Jews in NYC and they alone decided who "made it" and who didn't. He said the South had many wonderful authors but you never heard from them because they weren't part of that NYC crew.
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>>533366333
>Only now is reading books seen as some “high intellectual” activity to read what is essentially pop culture fiction from previous eras.
well said, hemingway for example is history pop culture for the lost generation (an interesting time period if you ask me). i'm sure reading uncle tom's cabin will take you back to pre-civil war america. they are pretty much time pieces in that respect.
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>>533362761
Its not that. The books are good, but they're as good as any other entertainment medium. There is this expectation when you get super into literature that you'll find some groundbreaking intellectual value from it. Its no different than watching a movie or passively consuming media. Playing an instrument is a better use of your time if you want some intellectual stimulation.
The worst offender on /lit/ is Blood Meridian. I can call it nothing else but "unnerving-slop". The book constantly pressures you and it gives the feeling that the author is watching you with a faggy smirk going "eh, are you unnerved yet? Huh, pretty UNNERVING huh?!" As the kids say, its cringe.
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>>533362597
Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, and Tom Robbin’s are good, imo off the top of my head
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>>533365384
What else did you expect or want from him? That’s all sounds about right.
If Bukowski showed up sober, wouldn’t you be disappointed?
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>>533362597
I like Steinbeck
Your just jaded , when these books were written there were no personal phone , internet, movies and tv were tame , most people lived boring work a day lives.
Most of the great literary works we read I school I found boring , catcher in the rye , boring , on the road boring. Brave new world and 1984 were interesting.
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>>533362597
Literature isn’t for everyone. It doesn’t compare to video games, getting high, /pol/, porn, superhero movies, political podcasts and all the other modern distractions. It’s okay, because literature doesn’t need you. Hemingway, for example, will still be studied a hundred years from now, whether you like him or not. So, ignore literature, focus on things that are on your level of understanding.
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>>533366752
That's a good observation. Just like the nigger brain can't handle "What if you didn't eat breakfast this morning", the autistic brain cannot handle emotional appeals. I forget the exact test phrases but for diagnosis they are asked something similar to "A person keeps listening to a voicemail from someone who died. What are they holding onto?" and they answer voicemail/message nearly every time.
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>>533366943
>while these goys make me feel nothing?
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Until Mark Twain literature and intellectual culture in the US was mostly monopolized by New England and their very effete, pompous writers. Like Shakespeare Twain gave the vernacular a lot of phrases like "whitewashing", "roughing it", and "The Gilded Age."
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>>533366943
thompson is always hooking you in. dostoevsky is not trying to hook you in. thompson is very jocular, very confrontational. he is engaging with the reader in a way hemmingway is not.
you would like celine (journey to the end of the night), or james ellroy (underworld USA trilogy).
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>>533367013
Too old for vidya, quit weed(fucking with my sleep), /pol/ got invaded by shitskins dumber than me, just watched pirates of the carbean 5 and now there's nothing left so im watching count of Monte Christo and its not bad and I bet its better than the book and I will throw up if I see another political feed on my YouTube even if I agree with it wholeheartedly. So I started listening to audio books 2 months ago. Its still slop but I feel better about myself, plus its not a strain on the eyes
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>>533364644
>while I read
You're not reading. You're listening. You literally haven't read any of the books you said you've read. That means, you haven't consumed the media the way they are supposed to be consumed and as such you're opinions on them are irrelevant.
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>>533367480
While you read you think about the media you read, while when you listen you don't do it because the story just moves on. Reading activates different parts of your brain. Listening to someone reading is equivalent to reading a movie script instead of watching the movie. You might know the story but you lose everything else.
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>>533362597
Try generic world classic short stories collection. But go straight to greek writings - Plato, illiad, Epicurus(only one book exists - De Rerum Natura) etc. They’re mostly fables, not nonfiction - why? Hemingghey was a CIA - nothing different from astroturfed podcaster.
Most greek writings are lost that goes against Plato cult - why? it’s obvious. Various tyrants in history destroyed it as time passed. Why novel? - because they tend to not get destroyed so often the better if these writers were subtle about it.
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>>533367742
+) You inshort, if they were a really fucking well-informed wise man at any given time period in history, they would be “publishing” that in fictional form rather than directly expressing yout thoughts - humanity has very poor history retention rate otherwise it wouldn’t be so inconsistent and so much plotholes in it
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>>533367883
The translations butchered those stories and I dont have time to learn green. I read the oddesy and its not much deeper than the 90s TV series.. The republic was great but I wonder how much of that was added on through time
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>>533362597
Mark Lawrence "Prince of Thorns" was the last book I read, well, all three of them, and it was a good style that held me there.
I liked "Judas Pig" as well, but if I'm reading a book I don't want it to be a grind and have an inevitable drop halfway through.
>I've got mates that sit in coffee shops with three books on the table just to look like a ponce and can't wait for people to ask them about it.
Bellends.
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>every lesson you learn by the time you turn 30
These books are made not for normal humans. They’re books made for people who are unable to come to these morals by sheer exposure to the world, so they need storybooks in the same way a child does. That’s why so many millennials will relate fucking EVERYTHING to Harry Potter and shit “oh my god class division, just like in Harry Potter” “oh my god corrupt governments, just like in 1984!”
They’re literally storybooks made for adults who are not aware of the world around them and need fiction to develop a moral compass. And yes this method can and has been weaponized heavily
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>>533362761
It’s cause they fell for the Epstein psyop (this is an psyop board) of fiction being a waste of time and the only things worth reading are philosophy (only for the sake of glorified self-help, see also the modern self proclaimed “stoics”) and the Bible (to virtue signal about how conservative you are, you don’t actually read it). Everything you do must be work because your life only exists for work, embrace that Protestant work ethic and work yourself to death, art is a distraction. It’s all preparation for 16 hour 7 day workweeks in Peter Thiels cobalt mines.
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>>533362597
It's pseudointellectual slop rather. Good for kids, yep.
I do enjoy Wodehouse, his prose is absolutely unmatched. Not exactly deep but witty and entertaining it is. You may try his Wooster and Jeeves series first.
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>>533368793
This is what Scott's Blackrunner metaphor was for "Replicants"
>Deckard:- "You gave them memories."
A buffer for their underdeveloped emotional state.
Books, t.v serise, movies, all these works of fiction are for those with zero internal monologue of independent thought. They can't process the world around them and only follow crowds.
Sports games to t.v shows reveal the world to them with no concept of the fact that this isn't how it's done.
When ylu tell them something they'll say...
"Where did you hear that?"
"Who told you that?"
"Stop watching whatever it is."
They can't conceive of observation and developing an independent thought from it.
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>>533370442
Hemmy's so fucking deep man.....
You couldn't come up with anything like picrel on your own....
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>>533362597
I'd start with a translation of Candide by Volitare. Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Mallory, Anderson, or Tolkien if that's not working for you. I'm only posting because you're responding to the thread, but I'm probably off.
>>533362761
Agreed.
>>533364111
I didn't see it last time, faggot.
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>>533364685
Cyril Kornbluth was a genius you should understand then. If you can read Russian then Kir Bulychev will give you worlds of joy (mind you that he's written about the most anti-totalitarian book ever as well - The Naked People. He isn't being translated to English though)