/lit/ - Literature

you mean stilistically?

Ligotti is the shit

Sounds like a request for things from an authors writing that really did it for you. A more personal kind of request, not what others hold up as the hight of artistic writing. I'm sure everyone has found a passage that stuck with them. I have a smattering from different authors I am assembling and will drop here. I find it interesting to look back over my list of favorite authors and ask myself what really stands out, what do I remember now?

I'm no expert on literature and there are many books I'm planning to read that I haven't started yet, but the best writing I've ever read so far is in James Joyce's Ulysses. There have been a lot of incredible passages I've read in there, but this one from the very beginning is exceptionally great:

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of winter whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song : I sang it above in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open : she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen : love's bitter mystery.

Where now?

Her secrets : old feather fans, tassled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomine of Turko the terrible and laughed with others when he sang :

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away : muskperfumed.

And no more turn aside and brood.

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament.. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet : iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.

Ghoul ! Chewer of corpses !

No, mother. Let me be and let me live.

>>8615

>>8619

I made the thread in response to the fanfiction fail thread, but do post anything if it's good.

(May as well get started with this beautifully rendered scene of echoing brutality as only he could write it. The Quiet American by Graham Greene.)

He said in English, "I'm so sorry I had to ask you to come."

"I wasn't asked, I was ordered."

"Oh, these native police - they don't understand." His eyes were on a page of Les Pensées as though he were still absorbed in those sad arguments. "I wanted to ask you a few questions - about Pyle."

"You had better ask him the questions."

He turned to Phuong and interrogated her sharply in French. "How long have you lived with Monsieur Pyle?"

"A month - I don't know," she said.

"How much has he paid you?"

"You've no right to ask her that," I said. "She's not for sale."

"She used to live with you, didn't she?" he asked abruptly. "For two years."

"I'm a correspondent who's supposed to report your war - when you let him. Don't ask me to contribute to your scandal sheet as well."

"What do you know about Pyle? Please answer my questions, M. Fowler. I don't want to ask them. But this is serious. Please believe me it is very serious."

"I'm not an informer. You know all I can tell you about Pyle. Age thirty-two, employed in the Economic Aid Mission, nationality American."

"You sound like a friend of his," Vigot said, looking past me at Phuong. A native policeman came in with three cups of black coffee. "Or would you rather have tea?" Vigot asked.

"I am a friend," I said. "Why not? I shall be going home one day, won't I? I can't take her with me. She'll be all right with him. It's a reasonable arrangement. And he's going to marry her, he says. He might, you know. He's a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American," I summed him precisely up as I might have said, 'a blue lizard,' 'a white elephant.'

Vigot said, "Yes." He seemed to be looking for words on his desk with which to convey his meaning as precisely as I had done. "A very quiet American." He sat there in the little hot office waiting for one of us to speak. A mosquito droned to the attack, and I watched Phuong. Opium makes you quick-witted - perhaps only because it calms the nerves and stills the emotions. Nothing, not even death, seems so important. Phuong, I thought, had not caught his tone, melancholy and final, and her English was very bad. While she sat there on the hard office-chair, she was still waiting patiently for Pyle. I had at that moment given up waiting, and I could see Vigot taking those two facts in.

(The "wave speech" or the "high water mark of the nineteen sixties" passage. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.)

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

(Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks.)

He saw a chair, and a ship that was not a ship; he saw a man with two shadows, and he saw that which cannot be seen; a concept; the adaptive, self-seeking urge to survive, to bend everything that can be reached to that end, and to remove and to add and to smash and to create so that one particular collection of cells can go on, can move onwards and decide, and keeping moving, and keeping deciding, knowing that - if nothing else - at least it lives.

And it had two shadows, it was two things; it was the need and it was the method. The need was obvious; to defeat what opposed its life. The method was that taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in the fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and the ability to handle those weapons, to find them and choose which one to aim and fire; that talent, that ability, that use of weapons.

(A simple, straightforward, and minimalistic character portrait sketched out magnificently. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.)

"An audience to Captain Han Pritcher of Information."

They stepped back with a ceremonious bow as the captain started forward. His escort stopped at the outer door, and he entered the inner alone.

On the other side of the doors, in a large room strangely simple, behind a large desk strangely angular, sat a small man, almost lost in the immensity.

Mayor Indbur – successively the third of that name – was the grandson of the first Indbur, who had been brutal and capable; and who had exhibited the first quality in spectacular fashion by his manner of seizing power, and the latter by the skill with which he put an end to the last farcical remnants of free election and the even greater skill with which he maintained a relatively peaceful rule.

Mayor Indbur was also the son of the second Indbur, who was the first Mayor of the Foundation to succeed to his post by right of birth – and who was only half his father, for he was merely brutal.

So Mayor Indbur was the third of the name and the second to succeed by right of birth, and he was the least of the three, for he was neither brutal nor capable – but merely an excellent bookkeeper born wrong.

Indbur the Third was a peculiar combination of ersatz characteristics to all but himself.

To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was "system," an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was "industry," indecision when right was "caution," and blind stubbornness when wrong, "determination."

And withal he wasted no money, killed no man needlessly, and meant extremely well.

(Hardly the hight of literary humor, but simple can do the deed. Especially when the build up makes you think the author is going to geek out some heavy religious philosophical point as he usually likes to do. The Comedians by Graham Greene.)

"I don't like ambassadors much either," I told the cashier.

"They are a necessary evil," he replied, counting out my dollar notes.

"You believe that evil is necessary? Then you're a Manichean like myself." Our theological discussion could go no further, for he had not been educated at the College of the Visitation, and in any case the girl's voice interrupted us.

"Husbands too."

"What about husbands?"

"A necessary evil," she said, putting down her tokens on the cashier's desk.

(Indulgent sidelong glances at regular people away from the high personages makes for a neat technique to fill things out a bit, and to add to the weight of events. This one simple exchange (together with the rest of the scene) always stuck with me. TL;DR modern translation: "Really? Nah. We're fucked…" Richard III by Shakespeare.)

First Citizen:

Come, come, we fear the worst; all shall be well.

Third Citizen:

When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand;

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.

All may be well; but, if God sort it so,

'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect.

(Power politics, always a nasty bit of work. Hobbes is the best translation, for dramatic impact. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War translated by Thomas Hobbes.)

Athenians: “As for us, though our dominion should cease, yet we fear not the sequel. For not they that command, as do the Lacedæmonians, are cruel to those that are vanquished by them; (yet we have nothing to do now with the Lacedæmonians); but such as having been in subjection, have assaulted those that commanded them and gotten the victory. But let the danger of that be to ourselves. In the meantime we tell you this: that we are here now both to enlarge our own dominion, and also to confer about the saving of your city. For we would have dominion over you without oppressing you, and preserve you to the profit of us both.”

Melians: “But how can it be profitable for us to serve; though it be so for you to command?”

Athenians: “Because you by obeying, shall save yourselves from extremity; and we not destroying you, shall reap profit by you.”

Melians: “But will you not accept, that we remain quiet and be your friends, (whereas before we were your enemies), and take part with neither?”

Athenians: “No. For your enmity doth not so much hurt us, as your friendship will be an argument of our weakness, and your hatred of our power, amongst those we have rule over.”

(A literary life of motorcycles, writing reimaged epics, and accidents. 'nuff said. Grendel by John Gardner.)

Again sight clears. I am slick with blood. I discover I no longer feel pain. Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die. I give them what I hope will appear a sheepish smile. My heart booms terror. Will the last of my life slide out if I let out breath? They watch with mindless, indifferent eyes, as calm and midnight black as the chasm below me. Is it joy I feel? They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction. "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."

>>8631

>Les Pensées

If that's supposed to be a reference to Pascal's Pensées, then that author added an unnecessary definite article before it and that is not acceptable.

>>8641

>Incorrect usage?

>RAEG!

Heh. Not unlikely, but I would suspect an inexact ebook reproduction of the original text first. I'd have to check my printed edition to be sure.

Last one I'd like to post is a bit of writing deviltry from Prokosch. Again though, it will have to wait for me to get my hands on a physical volume. No digital editions are known, and the BO's sitting on my copy.

Flatland, Edwin Abbott

In One Dimension, did not a moving Point produce a Line with two terminal points?

In Two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square with four terminal points?

In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce - did not this eye of mine behold it - that blessed Being, a Cube, with eight terminal points?

And in Four Dimensions shall not a moving Cube - alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progress of Truth, if it be not so - shall not, I say, the motion of a divine Cube result in a still more divine Organization with sixteen terminal points?

Behold the infallible confirmation of the Series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a Geometrical Progression? Is not this - if I might quote my Lord's own words - "strictly according to Analogy"?

Again, was I not taught by my Lord that as in a Line there are two bounding Points, and in a Square there are four bounding Lines, so in a Cube there must be six bounding Squares? Behold once more the confirming Series, 2, 4, 6: is not this an Arithmetical Progression? And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, "strictly according to Analogy"?

O, my Lord, my Lord, behold, I cast myself in faith upon conjecture, not knowing the facts; and I appeal to your Lordship to confirm or deny my logical anticipations. If I am wrong, I yield, and will no longer demand a fourth Dimension; but, if I am right, my Lord will listen to reason.

I ask therefore, is it, or is it not, the fact, that ere now your countrymen also have witnessed the descent of Beings of a higher order than their own, entering closed rooms, even as your Lordship entered mine, without the.opening of doors or windows, and appearing and vanishing at will? On the reply to this question I am ready to stake everything. Deny it, and I am henceforth silent. Only vouchsafe an answer.

Sphere. (after a pause). It is reported so. But men are divided in opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways. And in any case, however great may be the number of different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the theory of a Fourth Dimension. Therefore, pray have done with this trifling, and let us return to business.

I. I was certain of it. I was certain that my anticipations would be fulfilled. And now have patience with me and answer me yet one more question, best of Teachers! Those who have thus appeared - no one knows whence - and have returned - no one knows whither - have they also contracted their sections and vanished somehow into that more Spacious Space, whither I now entreat you to conduct me?

Sphere. (moodily). They have vanished, certainly - if they ever appeared. But most people say that these visions arose from the thought - you will not understand me - from the brain; from the perturbed angularity of the Seer.

>>8641

>>8643

After taking a look I found the ebook version is garbled, and my fix, "Les Pensées," is correct. It matches the printed text.

I'm not sure what Greene's language level in French was. I think he read Proust in the original. Still, his choice to write it that way was very likely intentional – being an excellent characterization of Fowler.

(De la Scaze has a visitor to his bedside, someone vulgar, inept, and indecently eager. Almost humorous, if he wasn't so damnably indirect. De la Scaze finally derives the visitor is implying his death is pending soon, and bluntly asked if this is so. It dawns on him that he is conversing not so much with someone as with some thing. The Seven Who Fled by Frederic Prokosch.)

“Ah, you put it rather bluntly!” The man’s hands fluttered in pretended confusion. Suddenly those fingers, those eyes, that voice, seemed to de la Scaze unspeakably evil. It was as if abruptly a lid had been removed and he had been allowed now to peer for an instant straight into the pit.

“But I see that you have grasped my point,” the intruder continued. His eyes narrowed and glittered like those of a ferret. “May I remind you, apropos of this—coming event—of one or two points?” He leaned back, suddenly pious and pontifical. “First of all. The problem of evil.” He cleared his throat and pressed his long fingers together professionally. “You have pondered on that before, I am aware. But may I make one or two suggestions? For example, love. What do you think of love? Think, for example, of that episode—last night was it? Doesn't it seem, after all, now that you look back on it, highly sordid? I don't mean merely post coitum tristis and all that. No. More than that. Consider . . .”

The vision of Hussein’s sister, exquisitely lovely, returned instantly to de la Scaze. He was amazed at the thrilling exactitude and sensual detail with which he was able so abruptly to conjure this scene into being; her hair, her lips, her closed eyes, the curve of the cheek bone, the warm apricot skin.

“Regarded quite rationally,” the man continued silkily, “hadn’t love best be regarded as a type of insanity? Doesn't it, after all, convert power into danger, desire into obsession, weakness into utter frustration, solitude into mania, and so on? Doesn't it lead one’s energies into unhealthy channels? Into a cul-de-sac, so to speak? Especially,” and he looked meaningly at de la Scaze, “in a case like yours? That is,” and he coughed, far too obviously, “in the case of a person so secluded and, shall we say, reflective?

“And then. As I was saying. This matter of evil. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps we have all been wrong, all these years? That perhaps those very things we prefer to hide, whose existence we most arduously strive to forget, called evil—the desire for blood, those nightly terrors half-recognized, the longing for pain and slavery and humiliation, scarcely remembered glimpses that defiled our earliest childhood, and so on: perhaps these things, called evil, when so enchained in darkness by general consent so-called propriety, gnaw at something in us that is far more important? That is, our soul? Perhaps they should be recognized, released into action, nourished even—" His voice faded away. He gazed absent-mindedly out of the window.

(Continued next post)

>>8654

(Continued.)

“And then this third matter," he said suddenly, glancing with great earnestness back at de la Scaze. Rather the glance of a reformer, thought de la Scaze, of a missionary; serious, sanctimonious, and a bit silly. “This third matter: Death. Well, a rather frightening word. And a frightening thought to most of us. One might as well admit it. But why? Quite plainly, why?” His voice assumed a sweet reasonableness. After all, thought de la Scaze, he spoke rather well, there was no denying it. All the proper nuances the sententiousness, the beguiling catchwords.

“Death. The end. We know it. Everything can be vulgarized, made unreal and pompous, except death. It will never change. Nothing can assault its profound dignity. Whatever happens to men, whatever collective degradetions they may endure, whatever self-forgetfulness more loathsome than any disease, this one thing will remain. We meet it alone. And when we meet it we become, even if only for a moment, truly ourselves. For a moment we attain an actual nobility. Do you see? Yes, death is a peak that rises high above this mortal wilderness! All life is an instinctive preparation for death, really. A process of strengthening one’s mind, of very slowly annihilating fear, of very gradually acquiring a dignity which will be summoned to our side at the moment of death.

“Do you really understand? Think about it. Oh,” and suddenly the voice changed, a greenish shadow crossed over the figure and made it seem larger than it actually was; “oh, salvation is a strange and merciful thing. At the very lowest moments we suddenly find it. It is in the deepest despair, quite unexpectedly, that we suddenly experience the lovely and familiar touch, the sweet security. Our hearts beat with happiness, we are at last saved. . . .

“Yes. Saved. You may think”—and his voice grew soft again; his face was, de la Scaze observed through the haziness of pain, now covered completely with shadow; only his eyes shone, his teeth gleamed, and his hair stood up rather eerily, on either side of his head—“you may think that I am hardly the man to go discoursing about salvation. But, call me whatever you wish, I know more about it than you might suppose. It is one of my hobbies, so to speak. . . .” He tittered. Then he rose; slim, noiseless, graceful; like an animal. Suddenly a peculiar acid smell filled the room, more intense than before. And this was followed by a quick surreptitious little sound, like a rat scurrying across the floor.

De la Scaze felt very dizzy, very feverish. He closed his eyes in a sudden spasm of pain. When he opened them again the stranger was gone. He had, thought de la Scaze with a terrifying irrelevance, forgotten even to ask his name.

But then he noticed that the visitor had left a card. It was lying on the chair where he had sat. He rose and crept across the room. He hesitated for a moment. Then he picked up the card and read the name: Paul de la Scaze, printed on vellum in fine italics; not engraved, not even in very good taste.

>>8644

Ah, Flatland.

This is one I'd recommend for study by someone trying to run a draw-quest. It's not just the geometric simplicity, although it shows the potential of telling a story through simple shapes. Abbott does a lot of other things right – characterization, descriptions, world building, etc.

Fan-fiction pops up in the strangest places. Look around for something called Flatterland by Ian Stewart. It's a worthy sequel.

>>8649

If it was an intentional mistake, then I will forgive it.

Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West, Volume II, "Conclusion":

And so the drama of a high Culture — that wondrous world of deities, arts, thoughts, battles, cities — closes with the return of the pristine facts of the blood eternal that is one and the same as the ever-circling cosmic flow. The bright imaginative Waking-Being submerges itself into the silent service of Being… Time triumphs over Space, and it is Time whose inexorable movement embeds the ephemeral incident of the Culture, on this planet, in the incident of Man — a form wherein the incident life flows on for a time, while behind it all the streaming horizons of geological and stellar histories pile up in the light-world of our eyes.

Poltarnees, Beholder Of Ocean

Lord Dunsany

"Than all these things," said the kings, "she is more lovely; but who can say whether she is lovelier than the Sea?"

Prone in a rhododendron thicket at the edge of the palace lawns a hunter had waited since the sun went down. Near to him was a deep pool where the hyacinths grew and strange flowers floated upon it with broad leaves; and there the great bull gariachs came down to drink by starlight; and, waiting there for the gariachs to come, he saw the white form of the Princess leaning on her balcony. Before the stars shone out or the bulls came down to drink he left his lurking-place and moved closer to the palace to see more nearly the Princess. The palace lawns were full of untrodden dew, and everything was still when he came across them, holding his great spear. In the farthest corner of the terraces the three old kings were discussing the beauty of Hilnaric and the destiny of the Inner Lands. Moving lightly, with a hunter's tread, the watcher by the pool came very near, even in the still evening, before the Princess saw him. When he saw her closely he exclaimed suddenly:

"She must be more beautiful than the Sea."

When the Princess turned and saw his garb and his great spear she knew that he was a hunter of gariachs.

When the three kings heard the young man exclaim they said softly to one another:

"This must be the man."

Then they revealed themselves to him, and spoke to him to try him. They said:

"Sir, you have spoken blasphemy against the Sea."

And the young man muttered:

"She is more beautiful than the Sea."

And the kings said:

"We are older than you and wiser, and know that nothing is more beautiful than the Sea."

And the young man took off the gear of his head, and became downcast, and he knew that he spake with kings, yet he answered:

"By this spear, she is more beautiful than the Sea."

And all the while the Princess stared at him, knowing him to be a hunter of gariachs.

Dante's Inferno canto 26 and purgatorio cantos 1-2