/lit/ - Literature

What are the best books on how to write?

>>23117027
>Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
uhh what did he mean by this?

>Whitman
>Hemingway
>Faulkner
>Steinbeck
>Twain
>Pynchon
>Melville
>Fitzgerald
>Stein
>Poe
>Dickinson
>Hawthorne
>James
All of these clowns suck, their books and poetry are TRASH. The only two good literary figures that America produced are T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, two men who HATED America and HATED being American. When will America start producing literary figures of note?

>Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
>Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

>>22903524

Herman Melville was a mystic

>>22597783
It's true. Why does everyone always forget about Hawthorne when Melville always loved him and couldn't stop comparing him to Shakespeare?
>Now it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so fixes and fascinates me. It may be, nevertheless, that it is too largely developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of his light for every shade of his dark. But however this may be, this blackness it is that furnishes the infinite obscure of his background,--that background, against which Shakespeare plays his grandest conceits, the things that have made for Shakespeare his loftiest, but most circumscribed renown, as the profoundest of thinkers. For by philosophers Shakespeare is not adored as the great man of tragedy and comedy.--"Off with his head! so much for Buckingham!" this sort of rant, interlined by another hand, brings down the house,--those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare as a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers. But it is those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality:--these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.
>In Shakespeare's tomb lies infinitely more than Shakespeare ever wrote. And if I magnify Shakespeare, it is not so much for what he did do, as for what he did not do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
>Some may start to read of Shakespeare and Hawthorne on the same page. They may say, that if an illustration were needed, a lesser light might have sufficed to elucidate this Hawthorne, this small man of yesterday. But I am not, willingly, one of those, who as touching Shakespeare at least, exemplify the maxim of Rochefoucauld, that "we exalt the reputation of some, in order to depress that of others";--who, to teach all noble-souled aspirants that there is no hope for them, pronounce Shakespeare absolutely unapproachable. But Shakespeare has been approached. There are minds that have gone as far as Shakespeare into the universe.

>>22587266
there are no good books in Dutch
however, Herman Melville was half Dutch ethnically

>>22259240
>If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. There is nothing surprising in this.
Still a masterpiece.

>>21782977
No Herman Smelville?

>>21758927
Because OP couldn't come up with a good example of what he is saying, here is a pic related of Herman Melville, the guy who wrote Moby Dick.
Also I'm guessing you never read Treasure Island?

"Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here. Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mysticocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Wickliff's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!"

literally perfect, where did he learn to write like this?

I have come to love this man. I find myself howling with laughter. God what a sperg he sometimes is hahahaha but absolutely incredible.

Anyone know where I can get some of his less known books (besides library of America). I enjoy all of them even if most are only pretty good instead of being as great as Moby-Dick or Clarel, they’re still comfy (except pierre). I finished reading Redburn last week so I want to try to find a copy of Mardi, white-jacket, and Israel potter, they’re the only ones I don’t have.

>>21326141
Without Calvin, there would be no Moby Dick. I'm glad Calvin existed, as he spooked one of the greatest American writers into creating a book that will last forever.

Does anyone get the feeling when reading Melville that he is totally separate from the literary world? I can't find any influences in his writing, and I feel as though it is not just another style or school under X curriculum. There is something that really sets it apart - by which I don't just mean how good it is etc. I mean I really feel like I am not reading the same product of a global literary umbrella as I do when I read almost anything else.

>>21268224

Queerbaiter lol

>writes one masterwork
>refuses to write anything good ever again
what was his problem?

*blocks ur path*

Writers who beat their wives? I feel like domestic violence is essential to the creative process.

>>20303010
Ruined by his masterpiece

>Already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New England roots into the hot soil of my southern soul.

Was Melville a fag?
Billy Budd is a gay book. You see some faggotry in the Moby Dick as well.
Was he a fag?