literary fiction
Juan Orbea and
literary fiction
A reading revolution is taking place on this notorious message board, most famous for alt-right memes, anything-goes chatter, and large-scale coordinated pranks (several hoax bomb threats organised by the site have led to arrests and mass evacuations). Users operate under total anonymity and are subject to bare-bones moderation. Most of the ideolog... See more
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts, as the academy has sought to “decolonise” and expand the curriculum over the past decade. And /lit/’s reaction is hardly unreasonable: there’s a difference between great books (well-written, perhaps undiscovered) and Great Books, which stay in the accepted canon because th... See more
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
It’s hard to talk about “masterpieces” because the concept trades on a theory of aesthetics that is controversial when spelled out (aesthetic value realism; maybe even a kind of Platonism about beauty) and difficult to defend, but which we all nevertheless subscribe to intuitively.
The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
Nightwood and the "Terror of Uncertain Signs” Laurentis
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes explores the ambiguity and uncertainty of signs and language through its stark and allusive narrative, challenging the reader's expectations and understanding of meaning.
LinkNightwood by Djuna Barnes
Mike Hobson • 4 cards
"We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality. We sleep in a long reproachful dust against ourselves. We are full to the gorge with our own names for misery. Life, the pastures in which the night feeds and prunes the cud that nourishes us to despair. Life, the permission to know death. We were created that the earth might b
... See more“Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the ‘findings’ in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves. In Nora’s heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her
... See more“The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a
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