yep.

The series goes downhill around the third book. Swann's Way is the best.

I could not care less what the message of the book is. Fiction writers are first and foremost crafters and artists of language, not social commentators. Anywho, Fitzgerald's prose flows quite nicely.

True artists like Proust, Joyce and Woolf perfected stream-of-consciousness a century ago. This book is boring and unimaginative (which naturally reflects the mind of its writer).

Mine too. So I try to mention him as much as possible.

I only see him mentioned very occasionally on this subreddit. Certainly a first-rate writer and better than Beckett.

Not unheard of but Witold Gombrowicz is underrated in the Anglo world.

It's overwhelming.

I understand the first principles of these fields. I then make sure I can follow the logic about what's being said from these first principles. Also, by reading different sources, one begins to abstract and see different themes and patterns.

East of Eden:

> Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

> You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

The God of Small Things: > It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

> That is their mystery and their magic.

Dostoevsky's writing style is very tedious and does not flow well at all.

It's not about anything. The point of the text is to push the boundaries of what one can do using language.

I read in images and think in images.

When I'm reading classics, no. Because they're most probably Nazis or colonizers or misogynists.

It's an overrated /r/im14andthisisdeep book with a poorly presented message. Authors like Kafka and Gogol did existentialism better. Its only saving grace is the iconic first line.

(By the way, why is this man always writing about Arabs?)

Upside down.

Storytelling is about heart and enchantment and capturing key aspects of the human condition. Which AI will never do.

Stringing together cliches does not make one a storyteller any more than recycling a funny story makes one a comedian.

I don't need Hatecraft indoctrinating me into fearing the unknown.

I don't read stories by racists.

I interpreted the novel to be in the modernist vein because I found it while searching these authors. But it appears that I am incorrect and it is a feminist novel.

Like The Metamorphosis, the main character feels alienated by the life around her. Which leads to her seeking out sexual relations with a bear. (as in this infamous passage)

It is intended to be a meditation on loneliness and companionship, I presume.

Holden Caulfield is the most iconic character in literature. He captures a universal feeling of angst and frustration — that is not limited to adolescence. I think about him a lot. He is not a forgettable cardboard cookiecutter character like so many others.

I read the first few pages. If the prose gives me a chill down the spine, I buy the book. Otherwise, no.

I also use Meet New Books.