JackKnight posted:

I agree, but lately I have just wanted to zone out. Reading books such as those mentioned isn't a relaxing experience (for me) because it takes a lot of conscious focus to follow the language constructs and terminologies I never use in real life. Were I to read Shakespeare now, I would miss half of the wit the first time around, so I would have to read it twice or more to fully understand it. I agree I should know these books, but I am a truck driver. If I started quoting shakespeare all the sudden, people would look at me funny. :-)

toanoradian posted:

If I read that, plus Philosophical Investigations, while on acid, while not knowing anything about philosophy at all beyond "Some guys before Plato thought fire are made of triangles", would this be a good way to spend my evening?

mango gay touchies posted:

Are you gonna read doctor faustus next

Smoking Crow posted:

Dr. Faustus is by Marlowe...

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I just learned the first draft of Goethe's Faust is published as Urfaust and thats amazing

corn in the bible posted:

I want a book I've never read so just suggest, like, a book that I've probably never heard of that I can get an ebook of pls

mallamp posted:

Is it Literature though? It's like ancient equivalent of self help books sold as giant bargain bundle on amazon
Which makes me wonder will there be religion based on Coelhos Alchemist one day? Is there already?

A human heart posted:

The bible is not remotely similar to a self help book, either in content, style or social function, which is what you said. Whether you think it's the word of god or not is irrelevant.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Everything before WWI is trash hth

CestMoi posted:

Maybe I'm thinking of WOrdsworth? I'm sure there's a big publishing house that literally just takes the old terrible translations of things and puts them in a book to sell

Four-Twenty posted:

really? i remember it from hi school as some bullshit typographical poetry that aged really badly

i though the go to flemish stuff to read is the dalkey published louis paul boons "the chappelekkes road" or however its translated into english

Shibawanko posted:

Here's something from Holland about literature.

Hantama posted:

I have a question: How would I go about reading Beowulf?
Is the original accessible enough or do I want a modern translation? For background: I am not a native English speaker but I am reading a lot, almost exclusively, in English.
I am a native German speaker though, which should help with old English? I guess?
Please enlighten me, I always wanted to read that thing but I´m afraid that half of it would fly over my head. Hope this is the right thread but you were talking about Beowulf...and Batman.

Shibawanko posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZlCJZEkAPk

Here's a fun lecture about Goethe.


What is it with Americans not pronouncing foreign names correctly?

Foul Fowl posted:

i like goethe's aesthetic criticism, while i don't like faust, because it's garbage.

Jesus Kristov posted:

Hi child loving thread. I made the mistake of buying a Thomas Ligotti book because I've seen him suggested on the forums, and the writing is almost punishingly terrible.

I'm looking for some good writing to compensate. What are some good suggestions for somewhat contemporary poetry for someone who normally reads prose? The only poetry I've ever read was either middle or renaissance English so something newer than, say, Milton would be good.

A Carcass posted:

A Carcass

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.

All this was descending and rising like a wave,
Or poured out with a crackling sound;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplication.

And this world gave forth singular music,
Like running water or the wind,
Or the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion
Shake in their winnowing baskets.

The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,
A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone.

Crouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog
Watched us with angry eye,
Waiting for the moment to take back from the carcass
The morsel he had left.

— And yet you will be like this corruption,
Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead.

Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

fridge corn posted:

Im still reading Mason & Dixon and still nothing has happened

quote:

According to the author, Chapel Road is the book about the childhood of Ondine [. . .] about her brother Valeer-Traleer with his monstrous head wobbling through life this way and that. But the book is about a lot more than that. It is also the story of Louis Paul Boon, an author working on a novel entitled Chapel Road, surrounded by his colorful group of friends. His readers and companions include the painter Tippetotje, who habitually works a naked woman into her paintings, and Johan Janssens, the journalist and poet who is fired from the paper for refusing to agree with the Capitalists, the Socialists or the Ultra-Marxists. Beyond that, Chapel Road includes a retelling of the myth of Reynard the fox and Isengrinus the wolf, a tale that underscores the greed, stupidity, hypocrisy, pride and lust motivating the other characters of the book. Chapel Road is a pool, a sea, a chaos: it is the book of all that can be heard and seen in Chapel Road, from the year 1800-and-something until today.

Burning Rain posted:

So i read viewegh's Bliss was it in bohemia, and it seems like a good book to give to your dad. Anybody tried giving their dad some viewegh?

End Of Worlds posted:

what could possibly have drawn dare's eye towards tbb

dk2m posted:

I finished David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature and my god it was a slog at some points. I'm pretty terrified to start Kant's Critique of Pure Reason because if Hume is easy to read in comparison, what the gently caress man. But I need the rebuttal!

On second thought, I may just re-read Kierkeegaard because the prose is actually beautiful compared to Hume. Phew.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

You will never learn it as well as a native speaker.

mdemone posted:

I resolved this after being introduced to Dante many years ago....


....but that didn't work out. The upside is that I have all the translations and comparing them can be pretty cool!

(Plus the Durling & Martinez volumes are all you really need, given the notes & essays. Although I actually think Clive James did an admirable job given the impossibility of his task.)

true.spoon posted:

I finished Gravity's Rainbow a while ago and you were right, it did become much more readable and once I had a frame of reference even the last act didn't annoy me nearly as much as the first. There are brilliant bits and pieces throughout and I can see why people would laud the book but for me it was too muddled. Pynchon is astonishingly creative but a little restraint could have done wonders. I still hate his style. All of the slapstick and most of the cinematic/musical scenes fell flat for me because every kind of kinematic energy was lost when I had to reread a sentence for comprehension (admittedly I am not a native speaker but rarely do I have that much trouble). The ending was fairly weak for all the work you had to invest to get there as well.
One of the reasons I started to read it, was because I'd heard about all the references and was interested in how that would work. I am sure I missed most of them and most which I got or googled were interesting (it's a bit difficult with the internet nowadays to appreciate the effort and skill displayed here). But similarly to how pop culture references alone don't make jokes, historical references alone don't give meaning. Just to be a nit-picky idiot: At least half of the German sentences contained wrong articles or cases. In itself this doesn't bother me but for the references to work you need to have the feeling that they are all correct, which was a bit undermined by this.
Despite what I wrote above, I got a lot out of it and am glad that I read it. However, I'm not sure if I'll read another Pynchon.

Also I've read Ferdydurke and it was brilliant (though the ending is also not that great).

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

They were marketing the Finnish edition of Pale Fire as a thriller and selling it in the thriller section.

Tim Burns Effect posted:

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

Pynchon is good, post about him

though really I'm interested in whether there's anything really worth discussing/analysing about the Sorrows of Young Werther or whether it's just respected because of Faust? I liked it but it's just a funny short story about an incel meeting an HB10 who knows a Chad, getting horny + nude and killing himself

Four-Twenty posted:

cool i finally found some bernhard in my native language, a dutch translaiton of amwas

also i bought like 10 willem brakman novels in a lucky thrift find and by now im thinking that hes probably my favorite author in the dutch language field???

pleasecallmechrist posted:

Jesus gently caress. Lurk for years. Get banned for a year and this thread has devolved. Where the gently caress is Mallamp in the past 50 pages? He didn't an hero did he?

the_homemaster posted:

Best (literary) books read in 2016

Neapolitan series - everyone should read them, if only for the writing.
Train Dreams - should have won the Pulitzer, wtf
Wolf Road
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Submission
Barkskins - Should have won the NBA
Moonglow
Cloud Atlas
All That Man Is - should have won the Booker
Blood Meridian

Best book I read that was released last year is Barkskins, but I think Submission was the most enjoyable book I read.

david crosby posted:

is that the one that's translated as "Whatever"? I've read all his novels, and that's definitely the worst one.

I think that The Elementary Particles and The Map and the Territory are both top-tier books, almost God-tier.

Heath posted:

What is the best Kafka translation? I have read none of him but I would like to.

Powaqoatse posted:

Btw did I brag about buying Kierkegaard's collected works in here yet???



Read 'em an weep, suckers!

(I will give reading it an honest try though, in freaking blackletter)