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>> No. 4296 Anonymous
17th March 2012
Saturday 5:37 am
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Could you please suggest authors who have approached the absurdity of the human condition?

I am really interested in questions like Why I Shouldn't Kill Myself? and Why I Shouldn't Kill Others.
Expand all images.
>> No. 4297 Anonymous
17th March 2012
Saturday 7:06 am
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>>4296
Camus is the most obvious response.
>> No. 4300 Anonymous
17th March 2012
Saturday 9:21 am
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Quite a few of Haruki Murakami's novels touch on those things.
>> No. 4302 Anonymous
17th March 2012
Saturday 11:45 am
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That picture freaks me out.

It's also the first time for me where Google's reverse image search has worked where TinEye didn't.
>> No. 4303 Anonymous
17th March 2012
Saturday 12:23 pm
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>>4296

Kurt Vonnegut.
>> No. 4318 Anonymous
22nd March 2012
Thursday 7:57 pm
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>>4297

Yes, go for Albert Camus (L'étranger, La Peste and Le Mythe de Sysiphe if you can handle philosophical speech - sorry for the titles being in French, but I'm Portuguese and I've studied them in French and I'm being far too lazy to google it for you in English).
However, you can also go for Jean-Paul Satre, Samuel Beckett and perhaps, if you like the absurd themes, Eugène Ionesco.
If you are looking for more philosophical than this, the Heidegger, Kierkkegaard among others will do for "is it worth, or not, living, if yes how can I see life, if not do I go for suicide?". It's rather interesting.
>> No. 4319 Anonymous
22nd March 2012
Thursday 7:58 pm
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>>4318
*Sartre. Sorry for the mistake.
>> No. 4321 Anonymous
22nd March 2012
Thursday 10:15 pm
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OP, why read books when you can talk to us?
>> No. 4487 Anonymous
2nd May 2012
Wednesday 1:31 am
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Good Almighty God in heaven above, I posted this thread weeks ago and it is still on the first page!

This board is slower than concentrated molases seeping through a prostitute's arse.

Ssssseeeellllllooooooooowwwwwwwwaaaaaaahhhh.
>> No. 4488 Anonymous
2nd May 2012
Wednesday 5:41 am
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>>4487
Welcome to /lit/.

If you want to talk about a book that doesn't involve posters making inane decisions in a fantasy universe, you're in for a long wait.
>> No. 4490 Anonymous
2nd May 2012
Wednesday 4:23 pm
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>>4296

Louis-Ferdinand Celine addresses the absurdity of the human condition throughout Journey To The End Of The Night. Death On Credit is also great.

The final words of Kathy Acker's Empire Of The Senseless are as follows: "And then I thought that, one day, maybe, there'ld be a human society in a world which is beautiful, a society which wasn't just disgust" - so you can guess the preoccupations behind that novel.

Religious texts: the Tao Te Ching, plus Job and Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament. Apostatelad may well be able to point you to good bits in the Koran too.

For Beckett, the trilogy of Molly, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable although it's debatable whether there is hope at the end.
>> No. 4491 Anonymous
2nd May 2012
Wednesday 6:52 pm
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Nothing to be done.
>> No. 4493 Anonymous
3rd May 2012
Thursday 4:56 am
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Camus, particularly The Palgue. Also Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara.
>> No. 4499 Anonymous
4th May 2012
Friday 6:03 am
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Ballard?
>> No. 4502 Anonymous
6th May 2012
Sunday 1:05 pm
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>>4499
Barlord?
>> No. 4503 Anonymous
6th May 2012
Sunday 1:08 pm
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>>4502
https://www.youtube.com/v/BIvka3SSv9Y
>> No. 4509 Anonymous
7th May 2012
Monday 12:27 am
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>>4502
While I appreciate your memetical jape, I do believe Ballard is parfait for OP's query

https://www.youtube.com/v/5YHfzNGPyww
>> No. 4520 Anonymous
8th May 2012
Tuesday 4:30 pm
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>>4296
infinite jest by David Foster Wallace. Really long but interesting book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5IDAnB_rns

long, but extremely interesting interview if you want to find out about what the author actually thinks before reading it
>> No. 4535 Anonymous
12th May 2012
Saturday 6:59 pm
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catch 22
>> No. 4609 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 1:17 am
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Tolstoy Tolstoy a thousand times Tolstoy.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is concerned exactly with absurdity of the human condition...and with death, as the title suggests.
>> No. 4610 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 1:49 am
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>>4520
Not OP but just to say thanks for this suggestion. I'd heard the name before but only got round to actually reading some of his stuff after watching that interview. About a quarter of the way through Infinite Jest and I'm really enjoying it, even the bloody footnotes.
>> No. 4611 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 10:01 am
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>>4610
Oh bloody hell. It's impossible to avoid people talking about that damn book this past year. I'm going to refuse to read it on principle.
That and fucking House of Leaves.
>> No. 4612 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 11:02 am
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>>4611
Man, house of leaves. What the hell. The other book he did, only revolutions, is even more bonkers. It's virtually unreadable, because you have to read one page from each end of the book at a time, and the page is usually split up as well. Insane.
>> No. 4613 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 3:04 pm
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>>4612
That sort of thing really pisses me off. It rarely works in poetry, it certainly doesn't work in prose. It wrecks both the immersion and flow of the text, leaving the book looking pretentious and gimmicky.
>> No. 4614 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 3:39 pm
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>>4611
>I'm going to refuse to read it on principle.

Because you've heard people talking about it? Seems a bit odd.
Also it was published in 1996, where have you heard people talking about it this year? Let alone been unable to avoid them?

I'm not having a dig or anything, obviously read or don't read whatever you like, it just seems like odd reasoning.
>> No. 4615 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 4:01 pm
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>>4614
I think maybe he/she confused it with the pale king.

That has been nattered about quite a bit by some teenage girls I know "Oh em gee he died too soon, like dis if u cry evry tiem." etc. It boils my piss but it still isn't enough to turn me off reading it.
>> No. 4616 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 4:03 pm
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>>4614
Almost every 10th thread on any given (popular) literature board mentions one of the two. I guess it just took a while to gain popularity.

I like avoiding reading popular things because reasons.

>>4615
I don't know what the pale king is.
>> No. 4617 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 4:13 pm
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>>4616
DFW's posthumously published last book. loads of hype surrounding it mostly because of his suicide. Nobody wants to give it a bad review.
>> No. 4618 Anonymous
1st June 2012
Friday 11:43 pm
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>>4616
So you've seen it mentioned on imageboards basically. Fair enough I guess, I just think you might miss out on some actually really good stuff if you ignore it because it's popular (people on chans talk about it). Each to their own and all that, I'm not trying to be a snarky cunt.

Anyways in an attempt to not derail the thread any further, I'd also recommend some Will Self OP. Definitely good at capturing the mind buggering absurdity of being a person.
>> No. 4707 Anonymous
6th July 2012
Friday 10:24 am
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>>4618

I've read it, and I think it is bad writing. Wilfully obscure, full of repeated descriptors, and that tired old whore the unreliable narrator figleafing the author's genuine ignorance.

I also think Wallace is a postmodern fake. That is, all style, no substance - and much of what he says makes no sense at all.

Here's a good piece on the why and the what about Wallace.

http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

At least Celine was frank about his contempt for mankind.
>> No. 4708 Anonymous
6th July 2012
Friday 2:25 pm
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>>4707
That's rather a fun review, thank you.
>> No. 4709 Anonymous
6th July 2012
Friday 2:48 pm
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>>4707

Alright, I admit, I laughed at the 'Wallacised' quotes.
>> No. 4809 Anonymous
14th September 2012
Friday 5:52 pm
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The Stranger has already been mentioned, so I will put my neck on the line and add this:

The American translation is far, far better than the British.
>> No. 4814 Anonymous
3rd October 2012
Wednesday 11:38 pm
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>>4707
Never read Wallace and he sounds shite but I dislike the sophomoric jibes at Selby's Christian-themed novels in that review - which he certainly never 'disguises' as 'avant-garde'. They are simultaneously powerful avant-garde writing and openly/explicitly rooted in Christian thought, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
>> No. 4815 Anonymous
4th October 2012
Thursday 12:50 am
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Finished Infinite Jest a couple of weeks ago and really fucking enjoyed it. I can understand why a lot of people don't, it's pretty hard going in a lot of places and it probably took me until about a third in to start really enjoying it but I honestly thought some of the prose was just beautiful. Haven't enjoyed reading a book that much for a while.

I get that people find him pretentious and whatnot but I liked it, the ending is I guess unsatisfying but that seems pretty intentional and it didn't personally take away from the book as a whole for me.

Have only skimmed the link in >>4707 but will read it properly at some point, all seemed a bit immature and personal on a first skim though.
Also I'd really disagree that he had contempt for mankind, I mean on one level I'm sure he does just as much as any reasonably intelligent person does, but to say that's all there is too him is just a bit blinkered I think. His writing strikes me as intensely humane, he seems to feel deeply for people and the general mess that humans are or can be and in my opinion articulates that really well. Even just hearing him in interviews he seems to genuinely give a shit about people and wants to try and communicate quite subtle and complex ideas about what it is to be a human being living on the planet Earth at this time.

Anyway it's obviously all pretty subjective, especially with a writer like Wallace. I get that he's going to alienate a lot of people with his style but I think if you enjoy that type of writing then he really is fucking great. If anyone is thinking about reading some and is a bit daunted by Infinite Jest then I'd recommend some of his collected essays, a lot easier to get into and just really well done.

Anyways sorry for the long rambling post, been meaning to write something about it here for ages and could only just now be arsed.
>> No. 4972 Anonymous
14th February 2013
Thursday 1:49 pm
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>>4318
knowing that you speak at least 3 fluent languages and studied philosophy in one which isn't your mother tounge makes me feel so shitty

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