>t. half-wit
In a way, this is the best rec for a midwit. It will make you more intelligent if you let it, OP.
5 months ago
Anonymous
all self-help books
5 months ago
Anonymous
1984
5 months ago
Anonymous
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Stoner
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Sherlock Holmes
beat me to it
5 months ago
Anonymous
it's a midwit filter, actually
5 months ago
Anonymous
I didn't notice most of the symbolism in the great gatsby, am I midwit or worse?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I didn't notice most of the symbolism in the great gatsby, am I midwit or worse?
Maybe but it's not guaranteed. The book isn't about "le death of the american dream" which is how most high school teachers teach it now.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I didn't notice most of the symbolism in the great gatsby, am I midwit or worse?
Maybe but it's not guaranteed. The book isn't about "le death of the american dream" which is how most high school teachers teach it now.
How do you even get good and recognizing symbolism and themes in books? Is there a book about that?
5 months ago
Anonymous
It's just a conceptual language, it builds up as you read more and make more connections and acquire more tools in your inventory.
5 months ago
Anonymous
There are many books that can help with that. One of the key things to understand is the aim of the author. Alexander Pope said a perfect reader would read a book in "the spirit it was writ"; if you read Homer, don't expect everything to be allegory (Kenneth Rexroth, one critic, treats the Iliad as political, for example, and Harold Bloom, another critic who was brilliant but often very misguided, treats the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V as if it's ironic; these are examples of misapplied analysis). Similarly, if you read Dante, don't expect everything to be literal. In Homer, the audience would genuinely have found the idea of a ten-foot-tall guy holding a fifteen-foot spear really cool and maybe even thought that added to his beauty, because the Iliad and Odyssey were by and for Bronze Age Greeks. Dante's work was summative of medieval Catholic thought, so The Divine Comedy is packed with extreme depth and detail.
This may sound daunting; you can't read much about every author before you read a given author, it'd take too much time. But as you become more aware of literary movements and their characteristics, it becomes more possible and easy. You come to realize that postmodernists are likely to play with perspective, and modernists are likely to consciously rebuild what they see as a decayed tradition. If you read a "classic" and it feels like you're missing something, there's a VERY good chance you are. Some, however, will probably just bounce off you and seem dull or bad; don't let that discourage you, especially if they're very culturally alien.
Often, the back of a book is enough to cue you in on how to read it, and the Introduction/Preface is if not. But if you want to go the extra mile, feel free to read books like How to Read and Why (Bloom), or How to Read a Book (Adler), or any basic literature textbook that goes over various literary devices and phenomena that crop up either frequently (comedy; alliteration; synecdoche) or infrequently (peripeteia; chiasm; stream of consciousness).
Enjoy your reads, and God bless.
5 months ago
Anonymous
TL;DR: Different authors use different amounts of symbolism and operate at different levels of complexity. There's no one-size-fits-all way to know which ones use what, but knowing literary devices and movements helps. Also, like
It's just a conceptual language, it builds up as you read more and make more connections and acquire more tools in your inventory.
said, you accumulate a library of references and symbols as you read, that help you understand further literature.
5 months ago
Anonymous
TL;DR: Different authors use different amounts of symbolism and operate at different levels of complexity. There's no one-size-fits-all way to know which ones use what, but knowing literary devices and movements helps. Also, like [...] said, you accumulate a library of references and symbols as you read, that help you understand further literature.
Thought I posted this earlier, but: great points, and I think it connects with my post you replied to about symbolic language, because what you're talking about could be framed as taking into account the author's own library of available symbols. A centrally important piece of advice imo, and one that will prevent a lot of otherwise easy-to-fall-into errors.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Kant - Critique of pure reason
5 months ago
Anonymous
Like, 100 IQ, room temp IQ, or what
5 months ago
Anonymous
I got 87/100
5 months ago
Anonymous
the selfish gene
5 months ago
Anonymous
Books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson
5 months ago
Anonymous
Brave New World
Guns, Germs and Steel
The War On The West
5 months ago
Anonymous
5 months ago
Barkon
Moron
5 months ago
Anonymous
literature is for midwits
5 months ago
Anonymous
Nietzsche
Kant
Hegel
Mishima
Anything left wing
Anything poetry
>t. half-wit
In a way, this is the best rec for a midwit. It will make you more intelligent if you let it, OP.
all self-help books
1984
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Stoner
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Sherlock Holmes
beat me to it
it's a midwit filter, actually
I didn't notice most of the symbolism in the great gatsby, am I midwit or worse?
>I didn't notice most of the symbolism in the great gatsby, am I midwit or worse?
Maybe but it's not guaranteed. The book isn't about "le death of the american dream" which is how most high school teachers teach it now.
How do you even get good and recognizing symbolism and themes in books? Is there a book about that?
It's just a conceptual language, it builds up as you read more and make more connections and acquire more tools in your inventory.
There are many books that can help with that. One of the key things to understand is the aim of the author. Alexander Pope said a perfect reader would read a book in "the spirit it was writ"; if you read Homer, don't expect everything to be allegory (Kenneth Rexroth, one critic, treats the Iliad as political, for example, and Harold Bloom, another critic who was brilliant but often very misguided, treats the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V as if it's ironic; these are examples of misapplied analysis). Similarly, if you read Dante, don't expect everything to be literal. In Homer, the audience would genuinely have found the idea of a ten-foot-tall guy holding a fifteen-foot spear really cool and maybe even thought that added to his beauty, because the Iliad and Odyssey were by and for Bronze Age Greeks. Dante's work was summative of medieval Catholic thought, so The Divine Comedy is packed with extreme depth and detail.
This may sound daunting; you can't read much about every author before you read a given author, it'd take too much time. But as you become more aware of literary movements and their characteristics, it becomes more possible and easy. You come to realize that postmodernists are likely to play with perspective, and modernists are likely to consciously rebuild what they see as a decayed tradition. If you read a "classic" and it feels like you're missing something, there's a VERY good chance you are. Some, however, will probably just bounce off you and seem dull or bad; don't let that discourage you, especially if they're very culturally alien.
Often, the back of a book is enough to cue you in on how to read it, and the Introduction/Preface is if not. But if you want to go the extra mile, feel free to read books like How to Read and Why (Bloom), or How to Read a Book (Adler), or any basic literature textbook that goes over various literary devices and phenomena that crop up either frequently (comedy; alliteration; synecdoche) or infrequently (peripeteia; chiasm; stream of consciousness).
Enjoy your reads, and God bless.
TL;DR: Different authors use different amounts of symbolism and operate at different levels of complexity. There's no one-size-fits-all way to know which ones use what, but knowing literary devices and movements helps. Also, like
said, you accumulate a library of references and symbols as you read, that help you understand further literature.
Thought I posted this earlier, but: great points, and I think it connects with my post you replied to about symbolic language, because what you're talking about could be framed as taking into account the author's own library of available symbols. A centrally important piece of advice imo, and one that will prevent a lot of otherwise easy-to-fall-into errors.
Kant - Critique of pure reason
Like, 100 IQ, room temp IQ, or what
I got 87/100
the selfish gene
Books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson
Brave New World
Guns, Germs and Steel
The War On The West
Moron
literature is for midwits
Nietzsche
Kant
Hegel
Mishima
Anything left wing
Anything poetry