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Uzique wrote:

stop trying to be condescending in a thread about fucking LITERATURE

Condescending, lol. Its a thread about books, not literature alone.

How many years at university and your reading comprehension fails....?

Maybe you should re-read the OP and have another try?

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2011-02-17 14:45:50)

I mis-spelled one word? Wow. Maybe you should calm down and stop ridiculing anything which doesn't reach the standard of classic fiction as defined by you?

Sentences typically begin with a capital letter.

I stopped studying 'literature' at 15 because it was a pointless waste of life.

No, I'm simply explaining why I didn't continue studying 'literature' beyond 'O' level.

Applying a narrow academic standard in a thread which is specifically "open to all genres" is your choice I guess, as is ridiculing books you haven't read.

spent 15 minutes on goodreads earlier today... first time i've ever decided to look at it. pretty good site. will update when and if i get time... i.e. very sparingly. i left a little book that some people may find interesting to read in respects to most D&ST discussions and the themes/issues that crop up here again and again. the reason i especially recommended it is because i feel it's by an author/poet/philosopher that not many western-english readers will be familiar with, yet who presents a philosophic viewpoint and approach that many here may empathise with. check it out if you get time.

Uzique wrote:

what's academic about the standard i apply to glenn beck? anyone could possess such a standard... you don't need a degree to disparage trash, empty, braindead, didactic fiction. is kmar a prof at colombia now or something?

Gaaah.... Maybe through the red mist you might have noticed my original post was as much of a dig at the dreary technical twaddle my life consists of as it was at the tosh which is yours?

Burnzz wrote:

from my nose to my knuckles i'm dependent on glasses, and half the time i don't know where i left them.

it's because i fervently wish that i didn't need glasses, instead of wishing i could see better, or would win the lottery . . .

Welcome to my world, glasses for distance and different glasses for close work now.

I had hoped myopia and ageing would have cancelled out at some point but noooooo.....

I don't mind wearing glasses, I wear them for safety purposes a lot of the time and have had so many things ping off them when I probably wouldn't have been wearing them if not for eyesight that its not funny.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2011-02-17 23:13:38)

i love how the 'aren't you a literature student?' jibe comes up, as if it's my lifelong occupation to read every single book that is ever published, or to read and re-read every single user's post 4/5 times for coherence and lucidity. no. if i'm judging the prose-style and the 'proficiency' of a book, what is there that i can't get from the first 5-10 pages? is beck writing a post-modern meta-fiction here? does he suddenly do a joycean u-turn and start writing in complex stream-of-consciousness technique from chapter 3 onwards, to reflect the fracturing disjunctions in the common psyche of the 21st century conservative man? oh no - he doesn't? guess the first 10 pages are as good a judge of his style as the whole fucking 300, then.

yes, i'm a literature student. yes, i do like to read. a large part of that 'skillset' is knowing what to actually read and where to spend your fucking time. if i can make a pretty reasonable judgement on beck's prose in the first 10 pages, i'm not going to spend 2 days reading the whole thing to get a confirmation. too busy spending the other 1 and a half days reading prose that actually IS illuminating, exciting and well-paced, e.g. proust.

bloomist

ordered the mahabharata and the ramayana in really nice hardback editions for this summer

have always had a curiosity in the classic/epic traditions of the east/orient... ever since western modernists seized upon it as a newly revitalising spiritual influence towards the ends of the 19th century. very interesting. look forward to having the time to read this! i always turn to epic narratives during my summer breaks... something something about reading homer in the sun

99% of sci fi is junk

my personal tutor writes it... cannot stand it.

Last edited by Uzique (2011-02-23 07:06:41)

he's one of those 'i'm funny!' profs... having a personal meeting with him is a nightmare

Uzique wrote:

i love how the 'aren't you a literature student?' jibe comes up, as if it's my lifelong occupation to read every single book that is ever published, or to read and re-read every single user's post 4/5 times for coherence and lucidity. no. if i'm judging the prose-style and the 'proficiency' of a book, what is there that i can't get from the first 5-10 pages? is beck writing a post-modern meta-fiction here? does he suddenly do a joycean u-turn and start writing in complex stream-of-consciousness technique from chapter 3 onwards, to reflect the fracturing disjunctions in the common psyche of the 21st century conservative man? oh no - he doesn't? guess the first 10 pages are as good a judge of his style as the whole fucking 300, then.

yes, i'm a literature student. yes, i do like to read. a large part of that 'skillset' is knowing what to actually read and where to spend your fucking time. if i can make a pretty reasonable judgement on beck's prose in the first 10 pages, i'm not going to spend 2 days reading the whole thing to get a confirmation. too busy spending the other 1 and a half days reading prose that actually IS illuminating, exciting and well-paced, e.g. proust.

No. You can't. There's this whole point to the book, and you can't get it from the first 10 pages, nor does the writing I'm talking about occur in that part of the book. It takes him a bit to get going. It's not awesome throughout--never said it was, nor did I say it was awesome to begin with.

How about we do this: Anoint Uzique High Commissar of D&ST Book Club. Before anyone can post anything here, it must be submitted to Uzique for approval first. Clearly the rest of us neanderthals aren't worthy of having any opinion on anything involving reading without clearing it through 'Zique first. He can tell just by reading ten random pages of any given book whether it will be any good or not--he's got crazy skillz, yo. Doesn't matter what any of us have read in the past, or are reading today, what grades we may have received in our own literature classes...all of that is utterly irrelevant to the High Commissar of D&ST Book Club. Only his opinion is relevant here. Submit to his knowledge of comparative fiction before it destroys you!

He's clearly the only one who is qualified to have an opinion on books...just ask him. Oh, never mind. You don't need to ask him. He'll tell you. Because that's what he's spending mommy and daddy's money on: a degree in telling other people what fiction to read and why. Which is kind of like telling other people what candy to buy and why.

[snobbery]"Oh you MUST buy licorice instead of gummy bears. Gummy bears are SO pedestrian! Licorice is CLASSIC!"[/snobbery]

Protip: It's still just FUCKING CANDY.

The "skillset" you speak of is purely subjective. People have varying tastes (hence the candy analogy). Just because you think something sucks doesn't mean it sucks. It just means YOU don't like it (and likely that your professors don't, either...wooptyfreakindoo). And it's the height of fucking hubris to think that just because YOU don't like it, it's not worth other people reading. On top of that, you twist off on something you haven't even fucking read just because you don't care for the politics of the author. Pretty fucking enlightened of you. Oh, I forgot. You read ten whole pages, so you can tell the nature of the entire book because you've got this mad skillset in "lit'rahtoor".

Excuse me if I say, "Fuck. That."

Back to the book: There was also something done with the Overton Window concept in the book that was actually quite interesting. You won't get that from reading the first ten pages, either. It's also why the character interaction is somewhat irrelevant--that (the interaction) isn't the point of the book. All of the things typically seen in a novel are merely vehicles for the main thrust of the book (which is not a political message, btw). I'm not going to go any more into it, because I don't want to spoil it any more than I have for anyone who wants to read it themselves.

tl;dr

my debts are my own

literature and art has to have a good and a bad, and a necessary elite that preserve and judge those opinions

art doesn't progress without distinction

read a real fucking book and stop spending your life crying for 5 paragraphs about why you read toilet fiction

where did i say i was in that elite? i'm merely putting forward the argument for a distinction in art between the good and the bad.

i never said i was kant himself.

rofl lol omg teehee lmao lolz!!!!!