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ulvir posted:it’s like when someone helps you out by whipping your back with birch in a communal sauna Thank you for translating it into our terms. After reading Catcher in the Rye I also want to whip a nude teen
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Aug 24, 2021 20:00
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That better not awaken anything in me.
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Aug 24, 2021 20:26
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ulvir posted:it’s like when someone helps you out by whipping your back with birch in a communal sauna Oh you fell for that? Lmao I bet you fell for lusikkatesti too.
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Aug 24, 2021 20:28
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Ceramic Shot posted:Yeah, the discussions of art are really brilliant. In the novel La-Bas Huysmans takes the "aristoporn" to a really dark place, sometimes borderline Marquis de Sade, in his descriptions of Gilles de Rais, pal of Joan of Arc and later confessed child killer. catholicism's power comes from being blatantly corrupt nonsense, the idea as i've always understood is that, if you can convince yourself to have faith in god despite all of the ways in which the church falsifies the original spirit of christ, then that's a more genuine faith than that of the protestant who narcissistically believes that they can have some kind of unmediated connection to the divine. the end of a rebours supports this idea, i think
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Aug 24, 2021 21:44
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Ceramic Shot posted:On the other hand, it is extremely French to convert to a religion because you love the craftsmanship, aesthetics, and rhythm of life surrounding it, I guess. That passage read like straight satire to me at first, but I feel like there must have been more than a kernel of sincerity there too. They don't surround the religion, they are it. The idea that there's a theological core in the form of faith, or the Word of God or whatever you want to call it, and everything else is helpful and/or distracting accessories is a very protestant one.
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Aug 25, 2021 08:15
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Shibawanko posted:catholicism's power comes from being blatantly corrupt nonsense, the idea as i've always understood is that, if you can convince yourself to have faith in god despite all of the ways in which the church falsifies the original spirit of christ, then that's a more genuine faith than that of the protestant who narcissistically believes that they can have some kind of unmediated connection to the divine. the end of a rebours supports this idea, i think I'm confused on whether you're saying the corruption is sort of a "feature, not a bug" in some sense, like a stable, baseline stupidity against which a person can measure their own spiritual growth or something. "And yet, spite of everything, it was still only among ecclesiastics that Des Esseintes could hope for relations congruent, up to a certain point, with his tastes. In the society of the clergy, generally learned and well educated men, he might have spent some affable and agreeable evenings; but then he must have shared their beliefs and not be a mere waverer between sceptical notions and spasms of conviction that came surging from time to time to the surface, buoyed up by the memories of childhood." (<-- From the last chapter, bolding mine.) I feel like Esseintes' final semi-surrender to religion hinges on letting himself hold onto his sense of the aristocratic. It's kind of similar to one of Lovecraft's paragraphs in the Silver Key, which was almost certainly inspired in part by Huysmans. "In the first days of his bondage he had turned to the gentle churchly faith endeared to him by the naive trust of his fathers, for thence stretched mystic avenues which seemed to promise escape from life. Only on closer view did he mark the starved fancy and beauty, the stale and prosy triteness, and the owlish gravity and grotesque claims of solid truth which reigned boresomely and overwhelmingly among most of its professors; or feel to the full the awkwardness with which it sought to keep alive as literal fact the outgrown fears and guesses of a primal race confronting the unknown. It wearied Carter to see how solemnly people tried to make earthly reality out of old myths which every step of their boasted science confuted, and this misplaced seriousness killed the attachment he might have kept for the ancient creeds had they been content to offer the sonorous rites and emotional outlets in their true guise of ethereal fantasy." Literalism and the "beliefs" aspect of religion always seem to bar these sensitive-intellectual types from entry. Sorry for quoting Lovecraft in the "real literature" thread. Anyway, I tend to let out a frustrated sigh when I see earnest seekers in literature dragged kicking and screaming off of their personal mountains, however self-destructive they are. I can't help but shake the feeling that often they've merely been beaten into submission rather than experiencing some kind of positive literary excursion-return transformation. The reversal near the end of C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces had a similar effect on me: giving up opposition to an inscrutable god, accepting that a being superior in power must necessarily have our best interests at heart. That's how I remember it at least . cebrail posted:They don't surround the religion, they are it. The idea that there's a theological core in the form of faith, or the Word of God or whatever you want to call it, and everything else is helpful and/or distracting accessories is a very protestant one. Surely most Catholics would describe their religion first in terms of beliefs though? I grew up around mostly protestants, but was really fascinated when I met people who'd cheerfully describe themselves as "lapsed" (not "ex") Catholics who seemed to respect neither the beliefs nor the customs. It seemed like weird bet-hedging against the possibility of damnation, or an idea like "I can be of the church without being in it."
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Aug 25, 2021 11:39
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Do you think when he wrote Godot, Beckett knew that the names Gogo and Didi are phonetically identical to the Mandarin Chinese for "older brother" and "younger brother"?
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Aug 25, 2021 18:18
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Ceramic Shot posted:Surely most Catholics would describe their religion first in terms of beliefs though? I grew up around mostly protestants, but was really fascinated when I met people who'd cheerfully describe themselves as "lapsed" (not "ex") Catholics who seemed to respect neither the beliefs nor the customs. It seemed like weird bet-hedging against the possibility of damnation, or an idea like "I can be of the church without being in it." when people use the term "lapsed catholic" it's short hand for a certain cultural background. we're all atheists that have been through confirmation or communion. it's a trans cultural thing too as i find i share a lot of assumptions etc. with italian even though i'm irish diaspora. i think this only applies to catholics living in majority protestant countries.
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Aug 26, 2021 13:59
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pepsicake posted:when people use the term "lapsed catholic" it's short hand for a certain cultural background. we're all atheists that have been through confirmation or communion. it's a trans cultural thing too as i find i share a lot of assumptions etc. with italian even though i'm irish diaspora. i think this only applies to catholics living in majority protestant countries. it's fascinating to me, as jewish diaspora, that my people share so many common characteristics with Catholic immigrants when it comes to faith. I really need to read some more explorations of catholic faith. curious if anyone has recommendations on a modern catholic centric novel that isn't focused on purely suffering. I think the extent that I've read has been that awful Wally Lamb novel She's Come Undone which, ugh. Felt like torture porn capped with a thin ending.
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Aug 26, 2021 14:52
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Famethrowa posted:it's fascinating to me, as jewish diaspora, that my people share so many common characteristics with Catholic immigrants when it comes to faith. hm interesting. maybe it’s a diaspora thing and not religiously specific? i don’t know but i could go either way. yeah, a lot of catholic novels tend that way. there’s a lot of trauma thanks to the actions of the church, let’s face it, it hasn’t been the best institution. my parents really liked john mcgahern. i like his novel “amongst women”. it’s not specifically about catholicism, it’s about a generation gap broadly but it does touch on the different attitudes to catholicism in said generations.
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Aug 26, 2021 15:58
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Famethrowa posted:it's fascinating to me, as jewish diaspora, that my people share so many common characteristics with Catholic immigrants when it comes to faith. I think you’d enjoy Wolf Hall.
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Aug 26, 2021 17:19
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Famethrowa posted:it's fascinating to me, as jewish diaspora, that my people share so many common characteristics with Catholic immigrants when it comes to faith. These aren't particularly modern, but I'd suggest Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Also, it's tangential to this, but The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic is a great novel about a young Methodist pastor who takes a post in upstate New York and becomes obsessed with what he sees as the exotic and sensual faith of the Catholics he meets.
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Aug 26, 2021 18:46
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Under Satan's Sun by Georges Bernanos is a cool catholic book about how a saint in modern times is regarded as a hosed up weirdo
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Aug 29, 2021 04:54
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Roberto Bolańo's The Return is great. Short stories. Can't get enough of Bolańo prose. The second story is a long joke setup whereby... a short Spanish man mistakenly sent to an SS encampment, gets tortured by Russians set on killing him. Mid-torture the Spaniard yells cońo (Spanish for oval office), but because they're pulling his tongue out or something, the Russians hear kunst (German for art). Being so emotionally moved that man would beseech Art, they spare his life.
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Aug 31, 2021 15:56
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Roberto Bolańo's The Return is great. Short stories. Can't get enough of Bolańo prose. Is this a good place to start with Bolańo? I keep meaning to read him, but I have plenty of huge books to read without adding 2666 and Savage Detectives to the pile.
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Aug 31, 2021 17:00
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Franchescanado posted:Is this a good place to start with Bolańo? I keep meaning to read him, but I have plenty of huge books to read without adding 2666 and Savage Detectives to the pile. La Pista de Hielo isn't long but it's also not anything special. If you've read 1960s "psychological" Romance crime novels, you've read it. At least it's well-written.
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Aug 31, 2021 18:17
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Franchescanado posted:Is this a good place to start with Bolańo? I keep meaning to read him, but I have plenty of huge books to read without adding 2666 and Savage Detectives to the pile. Yes. It's short stories and the whole collection barely crosses 100 pages. You don't get the awesome overarching novel themes or pages-long monologues, but it's got all of Bolańo's humor, characters and *waves hands*.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:07
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cebrail posted:They don't surround the religion, they are it. The idea that there's a theological core in the form of faith, or the Word of God or whatever you want to call it, and everything else is helpful and/or distracting accessories is a very protestant one. That's a pretty good encapsulation of French catholicism. I wouldn't say that the form-is-substance argument is ever as explicitly laid out as that until the beginning of the 20th century, but some philosophers and theologians come very close, like Pascal (who, after emphasizing the heuristic value of ritual, still ends up putting a premium on the subjective experience of faith; the jansénistes were not a million miles away from protestants).
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Sep 10, 2021 19:41
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i don’t have anymore proust to read, im a bit saddened by that 
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Sep 14, 2021 09:41
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ulvir posted:i don’t have anymore proust to read, im a bit saddened by that i hope he found all that lost time at the end of the book
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Sep 14, 2021 09:46
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I'm reading von Däniken. Either the translation is atrocious or he was a pretty bad writer. I remember as a kid looking at this book and thinking it was really spooky-looking.  e: Whoa I think this guy might be racist 
3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 09:48
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A human heart posted:i hope he found all that lost time at the end of the book yeah, he was super relieved
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Sep 14, 2021 13:04
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I'm reading von Däniken. Either the translation is atrocious or he was a pretty bad writer. Lol seeing EvD pop up in the lit thread made me guffaw
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Sep 14, 2021 14:27
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A human heart posted:i hope he found all that lost time at the end of the book considering that he died,
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Sep 14, 2021 14:37
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mdemone posted:Lol seeing EvD pop up in the lit thread made me guffaw  I legitimately thought I was in the BYOB literature thread, and I don't even know why (considering the posts preceding mine weren't particularly BYOB, and the colours are different). Mea culpa  I also started reading La Dame aux Camélias the same day. I guess that's real literature?
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Sep 14, 2021 14:57
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ulvir posted:i don’t have anymore proust to read, im a bit saddened by that Nonsense. There's still Jean Santeuil and Pleasures and Days!
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Sep 15, 2021 04:38
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Has anyone talked about how “real literature” is just another sub genre, and at this point hilariously outdated to the modern era of the world we live in, as we quickly accelerate towards the fall of modern civilization because of The cult obsession with capitalism and the individual and heroes journey? I’m not talking about the classics, but the new stuff.
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Sep 15, 2021 07:20
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no, but you're welcome to give it a go
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Sep 15, 2021 08:01
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Actually, we've been posting about nothing but.
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Sep 15, 2021 08:07
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LionArcher posted:Has anyone talked about how “real literature” is just another sub genre Yeah, idiots exist.
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Sep 15, 2021 12:26
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I'm reading the foundation pit again. it's so good
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Sep 15, 2021 14:55
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LionArcher posted:Has anyone talked about how “real literature” is just another sub genre, and at this point hilariously outdated to the modern era of the world we live in, as we quickly accelerate towards the fall of modern civilization because of The cult obsession with capitalism and the individual and heroes journey? you should post some examples
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Sep 15, 2021 16:15
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derp posted:you should post some examples yes please lets get this thread going
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Sep 15, 2021 19:34
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Im reading Lydia Millet’s How the Dead Dream on recommendation from Storygraph. Good prose, but not really interested in the story. It does feature a fetached, hyper internal weirdo, but he’s also extremely successful. A sudden heart problem death just happened and that always feels out of place in a book to me. Nice way to drive another character up a walk I suppose. Apparently this becomes absurd, harrowing and horrifying so I’m going to keep reading. I also checked out Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow and Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Kleeman’s novel holds a promising 1.5 stars on Barnes and Noble’s site.
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Sep 16, 2021 03:42
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. first i've heard of this one "Pretentious!!" "Nothing happens!!!" hmm... promising indeed...
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Sep 16, 2021 04:10
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derp posted:first i've heard of this one Mmm. Looks good. 
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Sep 16, 2021 04:33
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LionArcher posted:Has anyone talked about how “real literature” is just another sub genre, and at this point hilariously outdated to the modern era of the world we live in, as we quickly accelerate towards the fall of modern civilization because of The cult obsession with capitalism and the individual and heroes journey? 
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Sep 16, 2021 06:05
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LionArcher posted:Has anyone talked about how “real literature” is just another sub genre, and at this point hilariously outdated to the modern era of the world we live in, as we quickly accelerate towards the fall of modern civilization because of The cult obsession with capitalism and the individual and heroes journey? Yeah we talked about this but what are your thoughts.
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Sep 16, 2021 06:23
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Heath posted:Yeah we talked about this but what are your thoughts.
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Sep 16, 2021 12:32
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Heath posted:Yeah we talked about this but what are your thoughts. There’s a direct correlation in my life of white men who love this stuff and rapists men who abuse their power for gain (professors who sleep with their students and so on). I would also make the argument in a larger sense that often western literature is used as justification for the Capitalistic cult we all live in and justify people feeling about their own overly consumer ways without looking at the larger issues at play in modern society. Take the recent revelations about the CIA infiltrating writers workshops at an academic level to encourage certain styles and tropes of writing. Say what you will about a lot of YA and fantasy and sci-fi, but they are often more communistic nature, often in a non in your face manner where the greater good does indeed matter over the selfish needs for the individual. In fact it would be very easy to argue that the philosophical complexity of say the entirety of the wheel of time has a far more advanced and morally complex narrative than say a literary Darling’ like Finnigan’s Wake, or a modern example of a hyped up literally novel, the Goldfinch.
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Sep 16, 2021 20:06
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