How the frick is this guy not more renowned?
Obviously being a gay and seeing if anyone can identify what book it is before naming it. But holy shit bros this is promising to be easily top 10 best books I’ve ever read in my life.
Holy fuck this book is good
Sorry I’m a phonegay because I fricking hate computers
>being this much of a zoomer you act like a boomer
for fricks same
Fowles is plenty renowned you dumb homosexual. Every college girl I know has read both this and the magus by the time they were seventeen.
This is the magus you moron. Also girls don’t read.
I got my copy 10 years ago from my hs girlfriend, so my memory is a little fuzzy when you post one sideways page. Its a shitty book by the way, I doubt youve even read 10 books in your life.
Its a great book so far and ive read a lot of classic literature.
What do you like about it?
It’s just very intense. The narration is astounding because it is complex in a modern way but not encyclopedic like other postmodern books where they just throw out a bunch of shit from all categories, since the imagery and artistic references mostly deal with the setting/ theme of greece. So it basically is intellectually stunning while also knowing its place so that the story feels like a niche. Also the narrator simply feels like himself, direct and honest and very relatable. Then contrasted to the, antagonist?, who is just an extremely well developed and interesting and mysterious character. Idk thats my best effort to explain with some distractions around me right now. But its amazing in my opinion.
Tell me what books you like then since youre such an expert. Last time someone on here told me I had bad taste their favorite book was kafka on the shore, which I then read and it was one of the worst books Ive ever read in my life.
Kek. You always come out of the woodwork when certain words or phrases are used. Get a life
Kek. I stopped reading 200 pages in. I like the MC and relate a lot to his narcissism and isolation but once that wizard guy started doing his trickery and it was supposed to be spooky but just got super tryhard I kind of started rolling my eyes. Plus I don't really get/care for the philosophical meditations. To me the book seems somewhat contrived
Reminds me of Lawrence in the clausal structures, develops that same rhythm but without Lawrence's hyper focus tunnel vision, quite nice. Might finally get around to reading Fowles.
I love Lawrence too, so maybe there is something there.
I see a fair amount of Lawrence there but Fowles breaks the intimacy of the moment, forces the reader out of it and take a removed view he teases you with it instead of trying to draw you in until you lose yourself in the moment with the characters. That page is not enough to go off of to say there is a Lawrence influence but it is probably a safe bet to say Fowles read Lawrence at some point in his life and bits and pieces of who one has read in the past will always bubble up in their writing even if there is not a direct influence. Who knows.
I see it primarily in that first paragraph but possible hints in the second.
Man I really wish I understood the mechanics of writing better, but I think I get what you’re saying. Omg as a matter of fact I totally forgot. In the opening chapter he literally says that at this time Lawrence was his hero. You hit the nail on the head holy shit. How can I understand this kind of stylistic breakdown better?
It is mostly about identifying the function which the clauses/sentences serve—how their meaning applies to the whole—and paying attention to the syntax and structure. Mostly you need to develop your descriptive grammar and put in the time to autistically diagram clauses and sentences, do it for entire paragraphs and identify the function each clause serves to the sentence and the function each sentence serves to the paragraph. What is the meaning of this clause, how does that serve the sentence and how does it alter the meaning of the sentence, etc. It is slow going at first but once you get it down it just becomes a part of the reading process and happens automatically somewhere in the background without you even being aware of it.
I sort of implied a part which is fairly important and would be lost on most asking such a question, the why. Why does this exact syntax/wording yield this result? Part of the whole meaning thing and best learned by taking a sentence and reworking a dozen times each with a slight change, observe how that alters the meaning and the effect.
And get a good dictionary (a historical and a modern usage would be good), when you are first starting out diagramming sentences look up every word in those sentences and make sure you understand every nuance of every word. Picrel is also great for studying, removes most of the overhead caused by the greater structures and allows you to focus on something more digestible.
Shit man Im sort of drunk now unfortunately but I read and screenshotted your advice, I’ll have to study it over some more, as well as picrel. All I can really say is I appreciate the insight, I really do have a lot of work to do.
It is something that tends to seem incredibly abstract and like black magic when first studying it and you can spend a good amount of time beating your head against the wall trying to understand but keep at it and don't give up, you will get there. Exercises in Style really makes things easier, he reduces it down to just effect at first and we can not really call it a stylistic change in the sense of a writers prose style (it is still his style) but he builds it to the extreme and takes it into the abstract. It is a book every reader should put some time into studying and probably put in the time to do their own exercise in style and study their exercises, add a new entry for every author you read.
I will absolutely do this, big thanks. I simply have to study this, as well as planning to get a book of nature of my state, because Im really realizing though I am good at comprehension and appreciation of great literature, and have some talent in expressing abstract thoughts into word, I really don’t know anything about the art of writing. And its starting to really bum me out.
>as well as planning to get a book of nature of my state
This is an interesting one to study in context of your posts, are you talking about a book on the flora and fauna of the state in which you reside or something more ontological? The former seems more likely but given the context the later makes more sense despite it being rather unlikely that you will find a book about your own personal sense of being. A fair amount of getting good at prose is learning to cease falling back on the obvious and being aware of what was really said. I (probably) know what you meant but I also know what you said, they both have worth and that little drunken oversight adds interesting depth and nuance to the whole even if it was unintended. It gave me a chuckle.
read this at the start of this year and loved it. The ending went right over my head lmao but all the bullshit that happened on phraxos had me hooked.
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