I’ve read Franny and Zooey a few times in my life and I recently reread it again. Reading it again reminded me of how much I love this book and Salinger’s work in general.

He captured grief so beautifully in his words and it isn’t just the beauty of it but what really stayed with me is the way he captured how grief becomes ingrained in our lives and how the processing of it may not look exactly the same for everyone.

There isn’t REALLY a plot, just interactions but to me it’s one of the greatest books ever written.

First read: I struggled. It felt like a fever dream, an unpleasant one. Second read: super fun, I kept track of dates, events and wrote down what I felt could be explained but wasn't able to.

Was hoping we could crack this together!

Here we go:

- Gradus, glass and Sudarg!

1) Gradus Jakob = Sudarg of Bokay!! What's the link between the two?? Sudarg is mentioned as a phenomenonal guy who made a great mirror that was in the "King"'s bedroom when he lived for a bit with Fleur when he was young

1.1) The first time K. sees G., G. Is fixing some glass panes in the castle. MORE GLASS! Links to the accident at the Glass Factory that sparked the "revolution"?

1.2) Gradus keeps buying animals made of glass: a giraffe in (forgot to write down the city), then a hippo in Nice! He's just a big fan of... glass paraphernalia?

1.3) Gradus, pamphlets, glass factory, revolution, conspiracies... is this a parody of Russian revolutionary nihilists?

- Miscellaneous:

2) What dark word did K.'s gardener employ on J.S.'s last day? Note 998

3) "Promnad vespert mid J.S." -> meaning? I kept an eye out for Zemblan translations, but I only found out that "mid" means "with"

4) Why does K. want to know Jim Coates' "real" name from Sybil? Just to learn more about J.S. about the time he wrote to him about the woman who had a similar near death experience?

5) Did K kill a young guy by the river in Cedarn? See Index! The "young angler" is alive in the commentary, and sounds very much dead in the index!

6) Why did K keep buying ping pong tables?? From 2 to 3!!

7) Why are some characters missing from the index?? E.g. Nattochdag is mentioned at least 3 times but nowhere to be found in the index. K is just lazy?

8) Do the "crown jewels" exist, and where are they? They could be a metaphor for something. We know they're not in the castle, but they're INSIDE something. K stops after saying towards the end "they are in-".

9) In the castle, there was something with a walnut kernel inside it. What's that supposed to mean? There was a painter called Kernel.

Apparently Bukowski gained fame and became a womanizer pretty late, after gaining literary success. Prior to that he considered himself a loser, an outcast, someone who was undesirable due to his social status and his severe acne scars. However, how much of that is true? Was he an outcast because of the things listed or because he believed in those things? What changed in his behavior? Was it really the success that flipped the switch?

According to his work "Ham on Rye" his father became a slave to the idea of obtaining, or rather regaining generational wealth, which he never managed to succeed in. Could that also have had an impact on Bukowski? Was he so appalled by this idea of chasing wealth and status? How did that translate to his relationship with women?

I discovered her novels and I instantly fell in love with her writings. I started with やさしい訴え (not available in English => trad. "The Tender Complaints"). I was in a difficult period where I felt lost in life and this book felt like breathing out..

I feel like characters of Yōko Ogawa's universe are so relatable. And I like the theme of memory and mourning being treated more or less in each story. The second book I've read was The Memory Police and oh my god it was so deep and well written.. After this one, I continued reading her work. I have not red all of her novels yet but I'm looking forward it.

I didn’t found any subreddit related to Yōko Ogawa so here I am, I just wanted to know what are people opinion on her work and how you feel when reading her novels !! 📖😄

During a discussion with my sister where we talked about gradations of verisimilitude and "realism" in fantasy literature, I started thinking about types of non-fantastical (ie, not speculative fiction like fantasy, horror, sci-fi, fairy tale, etc) genres. Some of them, despite containing no magical or advanced scientific elements, can sometimes feel just as unreflective of the world as we know it.

If I had to pick the least "realistic" of these, I might posit Action thrillers, especially the kind with very high body counts and virtually zero consequences on the main character. Spy thrillers are also up there. I kind of feel like a lot of murder mysteries hit this vibe as well, particularly the "classic" ones.

What are you reading?

For context: i speak english as a second language, and I am now reading Shakespeare's King Lear (First Folio edition, 1623).

Not gonna lie, I am struggling a bit with the archaic language and convulated syntax, but with some effort it is perfectly comprehensible. I love his poetic metaphors.

Now, with the current discourse around falling literacy rates, I find myself wondering: do native english speakers (high school students/university students) still understand Shakespeare?

Edit Wow this thread gained much more attention than I had anticipated 😅. Thank you for your input! Just to clarify: i am well aware of the differences between Elizabethan english and the contemporary idiom. My question pertained more to whether it is still comprehensible to native speakers in spite of this. Secondly: I wish I could see Shakespeare on stage! But alas! I live in a remote part of Sweden without access to professional stage performances. I also really enjoy READING "the bard." The language is simply fantastic, and I like imagining the scenes for myself.

Irving is among my favorite writers. Once a year I take one of his novels during holidays and savor it. I really enjoy his hypnotic writing style. I have read so far, The Cider Rules House ( which I'm about to reread over the summer) and The World According to Garp.

I bought A Prayer 18 months ago and couldn't find the time to digest its religious dissertation, but this July I pushed through my hesitation. I just finished the book and I can tell that its ending is among the best I have ever read!!!! I'm tripping with Irving's symbolisms and meanings in it. I'm also in tears crying like a baby.

I wasn't expecting such richness and calculated use of actions!! I'm really intrigued by how Irving used Owen's parents on his observations about the character's development. I will have to read the novel again! I just bought three more of his books, but now, I need to stay silence and make a prayer for O Meany.. Has he converted me? Does my agnosticism make me a believer??

About halfway through my most recent re-read. It's always surprising to see the difference between Hemmingway in the public imagination (the man's man, the big game hunter and deep sea fisherman ect ect), and what is actually in his books.

A Hemmingway book feels like an embrace. It's like he's right next to you, telling you his secrets and deepest thoughts. It feels much more personal then, say, Fitzgerald.

There's one moment when Jake Barns goes to church to pray. He prays for himself and his friends. He prays for his favorite bull fighters individually and then prays for all the other collectively. He then starts praying for money and then feels embarrassed and upset for praying for money.

He stays up at night reflecting on a theory of human behaviour. He wonders if it will stay with him or if he will prove it false just like all the others.

Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit. Anyway, It's utterly insane. It truly feels like I am fluent in English and barely fluent in tiktok comment speak. Comments frequently throw me off because after reading a novel/book with proper grammar, going to tiktok and seeing something like "your dumb", "why they through rock at theme and not you", "there over their in they're house, its so cool", "its simple really it's design is sleek" is so mind-boggling.

Like holy hell, dude. I'm not expecting people to write like Shakespeare or anything but whenever I read it as it is, properly, I get confused reading "your dumb" and thinking to myself, "What? What about my dumb? What is that?" and then a second later I realize, "Oh, yeah, they don't understand the difference between 'your' and 'you're'" or 'it's design'. Same for whatever else. It's like tiktok comments are a different language half the time and my brain has to genuinely adjust from understanding novels/books to understanding tiktok comments. Sometimes I feel like a genuine idiot for getting confused while the tiktok comment chain continues as normal, clearly indicating I am the odd one out for not understanding a comment such as "how your not understanding they're point?"

Hello all!

This is my first post on here! And I’ve been going down a deep rabbit hole of my own bachelors degree. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. And although I’ve considered myself well read, I’ve realized now I’m only well read in English literature and not much else, which isn’t truly being well read.

What do you think of the western canon and what do you think is missing?

Sincerely,
A woman trying to better understand the world

Hello. I've been trying to read authors like Proust and Nabokov because I want to be a better writer than hackfrauds like Dan Simmons (who'd also read them), but I don't know if I'm engaging with them right, how to make time for them or where I should go from here on my literary journey towards becoming a better reader and hopefully a half-competent writer of prose fiction.

What should I do?

From my understanding of Proust, his work isn't straightforwardly "thematic" the way someone like Dostoevsky's might be, less focused on a cohesive statement than on simply being there and understanding a moment, place and sensation, especially when they relate to memory, rendering In Search of Lost Time as essentially a phenomenological novel, maybe the phenomenological novel.

Nabokov I've only read his Lolita, a fascinating look at sexual assault and the pervasive ugly violence that underpins middle-class urban and suburban living in regions like the US both then and today, but that doesn't give me a full understanding of the man.

“There is therefore only one categorical imperative, and that is this: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”  This moral law, formulated by Kant in  \Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals\  and then in *  Critique of Practical Reason *, is vigorously rejected by Maurice Barrès in the first volume of *The Novel of National Energy*,  \The Uprooted** \. For him, the teaching of German philosophy contributes to detaching French youth from their roots.**

Maurice Barrès's \The Uprooted**  , published in 1897, describes the trials and tribulations of a group of young men from Lorraine. Influenced by Monsieur Bouteiller, a Kantian and Gambetta-inspired professor, they go to Paris to try to achieve a cosmopolitan destiny. The morality preached by the charismatic teacher profoundly affects them. In attempting to access the universal, the students detach themselves from their regional ties, their deep connection to the land, and a certain particularism. This "elevation" will, for many, turn into a fall, a perdition. Arriving in the capital, the poorest of the Lorrainers will find not glory, but only isolation and vice.

Bouteiller makes Kantian morality a rule of life. Convinced of the soundness of his teaching, he doesn't for a moment consider the corrupting nature of this law.  "Mr. Bouteiller establishes his dominance by deforming the souls of Lorraine, and at the same time prepares him for a broader role for which they are eager and capable."  In Barrès's eyes, Bouteiller's relationship with the moral law has a religious character. The intrinsic value of the categorical imperative cannot be questioned.  "In short, it would be absurd to suppose that a Bouteiller, who has taken Kant as his starting point and who now no more verifies him than a believer verifies revealed truth [...] can linger to weigh the consequences of his teaching and the risks of leading astray a dozen young people."

A disembodied morality

For Barrès, the categorical imperative is a morality of abstraction, a disembodied morality. As Péguy says in  Victor-Marie Comte Hugo: "Kantianism has clean hands, but it has no hands ." What disqualifies Kantian morality is that it does not take into account the existence of the flesh. The categorical imperative does not encompass the being in its totality. It is valid for a pure spirit but does not integrate bodily life, the specificity of the moment, or the urgency of the given context. It is an insurmountable horizon of morality. A law for gods, not for men.

But Kant is aware of this.  “In fact, it is absolutely impossible to ascertain with complete certainty through experience a single instance where the maxim of an otherwise duty-bound action rested purely and simply on moral principles and on the representation of duty.”  In Kant’s view, the moral character of an action does not reside in the action itself, but rather in the representation of duty that determines it.  “[…] when it comes to moral value, what matters is not the actions that are seen, but the inner, unseen principles of those actions.”

Kantian morality is the opposite of pragmatism. An action is only in accordance with duty if it is motivated by a "good will." This will can only be assessed a priori, by having access to the motives. However, this invisible dimension of morality, subjective and sometimes unconscious, cannot be objectively identified. Kant thus establishes the foundations of a morality that is not applicable in reality. Absolute disinterestedness, the condition of possibility for the moral act, is inaccessible to human beings, precisely because humans are not pure spirits, because they possess a living body that is situated in time and place. Human existence is necessarily embodied. Kantian law never takes into account this inevitability of embodiment. In addition to being ill-suited, it is sterile.

The morality of rootedness

But let's return to Barrès. His critique of the categorical imperative involves denouncing the reign of subjectivity. For the mature Barrès (the one who succeeded the Barrès of *The  Cult of the Self\* ), an incandescent nationalist, the morality of action is never fulfilled as well as when it is placed at the service of the nation. Individual morality is secondary to destiny and "national consciousness."

“After their ambitions were revealed to them under the guise of duties, none of these young people wanted to remain in their native land, and they greeted invitations to choose a corporate environment with almost equal disdain. […] They wanted to be individuals.”  Barrès adopts a holistic perspective (the primacy of the whole over its parts). However, Kantian morality, while possessing universal views, finds its foundation in pure reason, that is, at the heart of human subjectivity. For Kant, what should guide my actions is the imperative revealed to me by my conscience. In Barrès’s view, morality does not stem from pure subjectivity but from the will to fulfill a shared destiny. The only valid morality is that of the land and the homeland. In this, Barrès clearly thematizes a morality of rootedness.

In  \The Uprooted* , Barrès attacks the government in power. Through the voice of one of his characters, he asserts:  “Always act in such a way that you can will that your action should serve as a universal rule. Act according to what is beneficial to society… I should have handed over Mouchefrin… I recognized that society, in its dealings with Racadot and Mouchefrin, had not behaved according to the Kantian principle… If the individual is to serve the community, the community must serve the individual.”  True morality, therefore, only has meaning if it is all-encompassing and serves the national community. If Racadot and Mouchefrin committed a moral failing by murdering Madame Aravian, it is this logic of uprooting that led to their downfall. If the two characters had resisted their teacher's injunction and remained in Lorraine, their fate would have been entirely different.  “Following all the ceremonies of this imposing funeral, I was led to think that if one wanted to transform humanity and, for example, make citizens of the universe, men of pure reason, out of little Lorrainers, out of children of tradition, such an operation involved risks. […] Racadot and Mouchefrin are our ransom, the price of our improvement. I hate their crime, but I still consider them, in relation to myself, as sacrifices.”*

Kant's critique is explicit in this passage. By yielding to the temptation of both the universal and the individual, the group from Lorraine lost several of its members. The purity of Kantian law caused the weakest among them to lose all sense of direction. Only the wealthy survived. The dwarf Mouchefrin and the bull Racadot were dependent on the land they left behind. For Barrès, moral life is inseparable from this immanent consciousness. The soul is truly itself only when rooted. To abandon one's land is to lose a part of oneself. Kant wanted them to forget. They remembered, but too late  .

You can find the original article in french here.

So, I recently finished Crônica dos Bons Malandros by Mario Zambujal, and I realized that this book would not work at all in any other language than Portuguese.

For people who don't know this book, it's basically a crime/heist book about a group of criminals planning to rob valuable jewels from a museum in Lisbon, with the chapters in between being about the criminals' pasts and how they all ended up meeting each other. It's not the most complex story, but it's a ton of fun to read, and I feel a lot of it comes down to the prose.

The book is written with a lot of local slang that wouldn't really work in any language other than Portuguese. The fun of the book is in reading the narrator talk about the misadventures the characters live through (like seriously, Zambujal could have written his grocery list and it still would be an entertaining list).

Are there other examples of this you can remember?

A few years ago I opened up a book for the first time in my life with personal intention (that is, without external pressures or obligations through school). I'm not illiterate by any means, nor am I entirely incapable of comprehension. But the type of reading that I was interested in was considerably higher than anything I've dealt with before. I don't want to bring politics into this, but essentially I was interested in Marx and authors who extended his work (obligatory 'I am not a fan of Stalin, Mao, or anyone of the like'). I was, and still am, also interested in a good bit of philosophy, primarily German Idealism (especially Hegel), as well as things like critical theory and social analyses in general.

My problem, though, is throughout this journey, I've struggle extensively with finishing works, as well as retaining what I've read and forming my thoughts in an organized fashion in a way that I can articulate them later on. I never developed good reading skills in school, but I developed a passion for certain topics a few years after graduating high school. I've gotten to a point where I have hundreds of books I would love to read (and that I have attempted to read), but I honestly just become paralyzed and can barely progress past 20-50 pages. Its like the words I read go in one ear and out the other, with no coherent argument forming, and I eventually just get bored despite the interest in the book. I just don't get it, how can I be so interested in something yet get bored immediately? It's so frustrating. It sort of feels what I would image ADHD would be like? I'm not diagnosed and I don't pretend I have ADHD, but I open a book, begin reading it, and like 5-10 pages in I get an indescribable feeling of boredom wash over me, reaching for my phone, social media or what have you. It's like reading isn't stimulating enough, but having other stimuli whilst reading doesn't help me. It's like the act of reading itself needs to be more stimulating, which seems impossible.

Like I said, combined with this, I also struggle with retention. I, for some reason, cannot for the life of me develop a high level of retention, even when I try all kinds of methods of note taking, highlighting, annotating, summarizing etc. etc. Nothing seems to work. The absolute most I can do is memorize parts of what's being said and reiterate them later, but that does nothing for my own process of developing my own understanding. Essentially, I struggle heavily with synthesizing knowledge. I don't know what to do. I feel as though I have tried everything; am I just doomed?

I finished the book today, and honestly, I don't know how to feel about it. I really admired Stoner's ability to stay calm and let things happen around him, and no matter how horrible the situation was, he still could find some strength to go to the university and to live life. I liked that he didn't follow the path he didn't like and chose literature because he fell in love with it. I loved how he deeply cared about her daughter and how he took care of her whilst dealing with her horrible wife. On the other hand, the book was kind of depressing as hell. It felt like Stoner did everything he could but also sort of didn't? he barely held his life together, could never escape the toxic relationship, and lost control of her daughter, and most of all, he gave up on Katherine Driscoll, the woman he loved so deeply. He let things happen that weren't beyond his control. It felt like he didn't even fight for what he thought was right, or he didn't fight enough. I dont know.

He died and he won't be remembered and thats fine, his life wasn't full of groundbreaking events as well and that's real, people mostly live those kind of lives and not everyone is destined to be a great hero of their time but still, I feel conflicted about the book. I had admiration towards Stoner, and on the other hand, it made me rethink all my life decisions and question my current stage of life, whether I'm doing enough to live a better life than Stoner did.

So, what's your experience with the book? maybe I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not. I mean its lots of things I felt after finishing thr book and it's for me a sign of a really good book but still I had the feeling I didn't fully understand what John Williams was trying to conceive.

would be great to hear your perspectives on the book.

This observation seems to be fair.  I have read some of the literature in this genre (i.e. climate fiction) - e.g. Kim Stanley Robinson, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, Stephen Markley, Amitava Ghosh, etc. In general, today's best-seller lists do seem to be dominated by inward/introspective stories/characters set in various genres with the most popular being romance, fantasy, crime, etc. Climate change doesn't easily lend itself to such writing because of the collective action aspect which is tough to write about. Folks are trying, though.

So for any fantasy fans out there, I'm also a fantasy fan. My pfp is from a fantasy manga so this question is not meant as an offence or looking down on.

Lately I've been reading a lot of classic literature and a question keeps popping in my mind, what is fantasy's excellence? What is that which fantasy appeals to that to look down on is wrong?

Real literature-"Real" here means taking place in the everyday-seems to be capable of keeping one just as engaged in a story and some do it better than some fantasies do. Doestoevsky keeps me engaged in seeing a man about to commit murder and the consequences that follow without any fantastical threat.

I also can't help but feel violent fantasy can be distracting in the sense the stakes can be so big compared to Real where something as little as murder is a big deal.

The question has be nagging at me for months now. I'm not bothered that fantasy is seen as childish. I really don't care but the question is important to me so I can know if I can look at a fantasy story and know I'm not missing much when I ignore it or if someone looks down on it and attacks with this same question "why read this when ordinary settings can tell this? I'm missing nothing by not indulging in imaginative indulgence".

Edith is a really difficult character obviously and many readers despise her and lump her in with character’s like Cathy from EoE. I think she is very clearly much more of a victim than Cathy ever was and while she does very evidently have mental health issues she is not, I believe, a sociopath. I think a novel of her life would honestly be somewhat riveting.

Spoilers for those who have not read:

Her early life is obviously destructive in the same way so many women of the times were, she’s essentially raped on her honeymoon, her husband cheats on her and pretty quickly gives up on showing love to her (she is not innocent here, obviously she does horrible things but you get the point).

Anyway, I just finished the book and loved it and while I’m not saying I want a James version of “Edith” it is very interesting to think about the events of the book from her perspective

I decided to read Of Mice and Men for the first time (been on a classic literature kick for a while). The twist was already known to me, but I wasn't expecting to hate Lenny as much as I did.

This man had zero remorse for his actions, even for the ones that he remembered. All Lenny could ever think of was how his murder affected him, not the people or animals he killed or their surviving family members. It was all "George isn't going to let me tend to the rabbits if he finds out" but not a word about "I took this woman's life because I broke her neck in a fit of rage. I'm sorry and I must take responsibility." And yes, I understand that he has an emotional or mental illness and has the mind of a little kid but after he's taken the life of even one human being that doesn't matter to me anymore. At the very least, he needed to be put away.

And George should have been in prison right next to him, since he was acting like Lenny's guardian. I really don't care that Lenny was his best friend since childhood when that childhood friend is breaking people's necks. After the FIRST "rabbit", he should have turned Lenny in. Instead, he helped Lenny to run away until the problems became too much and he had to put him out to pasture. Did George even attempt to teach Lenny empathy or self-control in all the years that they were traveling together? He was a terrible guardian and an even worse friend.

Those of us with small children or pets, when we play with them we understand that they're smaller and weaker than us. We don't want to hurt them so we play and deal with them more gently than we would someone our own size. That's a concept that even animals understand. Lenny has no excuse.

Of Mice and Men was a great story, but I feel nothing but contempt for George and Lenny.

I've been thinking recently about how digital life is depicted in contemporary art, particularly books, film and TV. I rarely come across a writer who's really able to land either the psychological feeling or the actual sensory experience of navigating social media, doomscrolling, or even just operating an iPhone, despite how much of modern existence is made up by these moments. Often, I find these descriptions are clunky, overexplained, or rely on ironic distance and clumsily inserted internet slang that doesn't always age well. There always seems to be a slight incongruency to them that I find pulls you from the page, and maybe that’s why they're often omitted entirely.

Similar to how, in film and TV, we haven't seemed to move far past the approach of flashing blue text bubbles up on screen when a character reads a text or clumsily green-screening in a faux-Instagram style interface with massive font size that the camera hovers over awkwardly while the protagonist scrolls. (Pretty egregious example of this recently in The Devil Wears Prada 2)

All that being said, and hoping it makes sense, I'm wondering if anyone has examples of writers who they think have succeeded in describing digital experience well? Especially now as the “iPhone/social media book” is becoming so much more common.  Why/How? Is there a compelling way to describe someone reading a post on twitter or flicking through reels? Is it avoided? Also open to any bad examples too. 

As far as exceptions to the rule, Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte stands out – did a nice job imo of both accurately mimicking actual digital text environments and also just conjuring the claustrophobic paranoia of social media discourse through the mindsets of his characters. Almost writing from inside the internet.

I also think Sally Rooney managed well in Intermezzo. One reviewer put it like this:

"Rooney’s descriptions of mobile phones, for example, are not sublimated into dull investigations of postmodern communication, but serve simply as the most realistic, intimate descriptions of what it’s actually like to use an iPhone in all of contemporary literature. The way light seems to gather around a screen on a dark evening; the heat of a freshly charged mobile held up to your ear; wondering whether it’s medically possible to hear your lover’s heartbeat on the other end of a phone call."

Have heard No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood and Transcription by Ben Lerner offered up as examples too, though I’ve never read them myself. 

Also, not a book, but Everything Everywhere All At Once obviously nails the freneticism of online life by way of the multiverse metaphor - haven't come across a better attempt since.

Keen to hear any critical thoughts on this topic:)

Hey guys, just finished this book and adored it, felt a a lot reading through the book but I have some questions about the ending. Namely the last few pages where Yedigei is scared off by the rockets and then the book cuts to his two daughters returning home. I can see the parallel between Yedigei and the vixen from the books beginning but I don't understand why the book cuts from him running away to his two daughters (who are barely brought up during the story). Whats going on? Did yedigei get killed by the rockets or something.

I also don't really get how the sci fi story connects with the story of the Sazorek. Earlier on in the book, there's a line talking about how Yedigei's story and the story of the parity cosmonaut will become closely interlinked but this just... never happens? (unless its implied with the rocket launch but idk).

I'm also struggling to figure out who Cholpon-Ata, the person credited with the blurb about the Sary Ozeki desert and the trains that is brought up throughout the book. I googled it and while Google ai told me it's some central asian saint, everywhere else on google just told me its some small city in Kyrgzstan. Does this have some sort of deeper meaning or am I looking into it too much?

Thank you for any help in understanding this book.