(Part 2) Best cultural criticism books according to redditors

The rise of "literary fiction" as a genre and belief that it is the sole genre of literary merit can be described by a multi-stage process:

1. The Modernist idea that art should be difficult. The Modernists had contempt for the common man and thus set out to create art works that required education to understand. Joyce, Le Corbusier, abstract expressionism (read Clement Greenberg on art and kitsch) all fit in this category. See John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses for more on this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Intellectuals-And-Masses-Intelligensia/dp/0897335074
   
   
2. After WWII, the GI program resulted in tons and tons of money being poured into universities. MFA programs like the Iowa Writers' Workshop became popular during this time. The professors at Iowa and these other universities were schooled in Modernism. At the undergrad level, "arts appreciation" courses also taught the Modernist conception of cultural history. Look at the way 19th century Academic painting is still dismissed in favor of the Impressionists.
   
   
3. The rise of databases to track sales to bookstores. Bookstores began categorizing their inventory like never before. Science Fiction, Romance, Erotica, Westerns, Fantasy, Fiction, Classic Fiction, Literary Fiction, etc.
   
   
4. The impact of movies. In many ways, movies are a far more emotionally engaging storytelling medium than novels. Novels are pages and pages of black and white text. Movies offer story, photography, music, actors, production design, and editing to present an overwhelming sensory experience. Just as the impact of photography hit painting hard (and was a big influence on the rise of nonrepresentational art) so too movies hit novels hard. Instead of focusing on story and character, things that in many ways movies do just as well as novels, writers began to focus on language at the sentence level.
   
   All of these trends together created the genre of "literary fiction" as we know it.

Want to add a couple things:

1. It's worth noting that in this instance that Benjamin Lincoln's mercenary militia was funded by the Boston merchants after Gov. Bowdoin's attempt to rise the existing Massachusetts militia failed. Because the existing militia was largely comprised of the class of people rebelling to begin with, many of the units simply refused a call to bring up arms against their neighbors, family members, even themselves. The trials that followed charged many members of the normal militia as leaders in the rebellion. Bowdoin even tried to get militias from different states to help put down the rebels, but he was unsuccessful. (Why would New Hampshire want to send forces?) So, the merchants put it in their own hands.
   
   
2. Jefferson's reaction to Shays' is difficult to unpack and going to be different than some of the other founding fathers. Someone asked a slightly similar question a while ago that I unpacked here.
   
   My go-to suggestions for Shays readings are Szatmary's Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection and Leo Richards's Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle.

Here's "The Intellectuals and the Masses," which is just on the opinions of "the masses" by people in the literary world in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

I strongly recommend the William Buck translations for both the Ramayana and Mahabharata. They are retellings, but they encompass much more than other translations and the job is exquisitely done. I found the Penguin edition of the Ramayana to be dull in comparison.

I have a good book edited by Czesław Miłosz that is a collection of a shit ton of Polish Poetry (with some of Miłosz's poetry in it as well). I put an amazon link to it at the end of my post.

Also I really suggest Wisława Szymborska. She and Miłosz are the two most known in western culture - both received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Miłosz taught at UC Berkeley.

One other great one is Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.

Also Bruno Schulz if you're looking for some prose.

https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-Polish-Poetry-Czeslaw-Milosz/dp/0520044762/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499014974&sr=8-1&keywords=post-war+polish+poetry

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe.

&

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho

For criticism of HPL's works i would highly recommend:

Dissecting Cthulhu

A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe
or any volume in the Lovecraft Annual




For Biography on Lovecraft:

H.P. Lovecraft: A Life

...or the expanded version of the above I Am Providence




And Lovecraft's letters (edited and compiled by Joshi) are really the best way to get deep into Lovecraft, although I'll warn you, you really are reading HPL's conversations with his friends, so there is a tremendous amount of biographical detail, but not a terrible amount in the way of talk about his own work. Some of the best:

Letters to James F. Morton

A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard

O Fortunate Floridian: H.P. Lovecraft's Letters to R.H. Barlow

Hello. A lot of people are telling you to "read." If that seems like a no-brainer, here are some suggestions as to what you might want to read. if you're really really dedicated, you can self-study into a college-like education (based on my experience as a current student of English).

• Read from the canon. In university, I had to study Early and Later British Literature. Those two anthologies are fairly comprehensive, and Norton has more of course. They're pretty thick, I would look into Chaucer, Shakespeare Yeats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Blake. (All of those but Chaucer and Shakespeare are from the Later anthology.)
  
• To add to the above point, google university reading lists, or the western canon. Also, I believe all the authors mentioned above are in the public domain, meaning you can find all their work online for free. Once you've got a good grip on them, you can dive into more complicated works like Milton, TS Eliot, Tolstoy ect. Dostoevsky is also an amazing writer, if my ESL grandmother could read him, likely you can too.
  
• The greatest two books on fiction analysis I know of are Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Aristotle's Poetics. Both can be found online for free. Remember that critical examination is descriptive, not perspective. Don't let definitions limit you.
  
• When it comes to actually writing, you can get better to a certain extent just powering though it. I notice that people (everyone from those like myself, to published writers) tend to plateau. Once you feel you've hit a glass ceiling, read something difficult, or learn something new about writing/criticism. Education.
  
• Workshops. Not all colleges even offer workshop courses! However, if you're lucky enough that a nearby college, community college or community centre—if anyone near you offers creative writing workshops or courses, you should definitely consider them. Workshopping you work is great for feedback and seeing what works and what doesn't in real-time.
  
• Don't want to pay for a course, or spend money? YouTube has full courses worth of lectures. Search things like English Literature Lecture or Creative Writing Lecture and you'll find courses or single lectures from Harvard, Yale, Brigham Young Academy (idk) ect.
  
  I hope that helps. I think that's as solid and specific advice as I can give. Although, I didn't list any specific works. If you have any questions or would like suggestions, please ask.

I get glimpses of genius from the "Wake". which flatters me to thinking i am the genius, when actually it's Joyce.

the parts i don't understand were something i used to blame on Joyce, but came to realize it's me not being as smart as i thought i was (something everyone eventually learns to deal with).

THIS helped a great deal. it's one man's take on the Wake, and not definitive. but it sure makes a damn lot of sense.

Two different tenses. Ich wusste = imperfect, ich habe gewusst = perfect. The perfect is used more day to day (effectively, I have known, but also I knew...), the imperfect in more formal writing as well as the "was ...ing" continuous past sense.

If you're stuck on this, do some more reading on the different uses of the imperfect and perfect tenses. My favourite, the one I refer to all the time and the one I refer my students to, is Durrell's pretty much definitive Using German, which I've used for 20 years but looks quite pricey now sadly.

I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but At The Bench - A Laboratory Navigator has a 10-page chapter about keeping a lab notebook.

Here's a brief Google Books preview; unfortunately it does not cover the relevant chapter.

This presentation(PDF link) cites a book called Writing the Laboratory Notebook by Howard Kanare, which (based on the Amazon reviews) might be more geared towards industry labs but could still be pretty useful in a general sense. You can find out for yourself, since I managed to find a full text copy online(PDF link). I don't think I'm accessing this through any proxies, so it does seem like it's freely available.

For a more thorough investigation of what's out there, you should consult your institution's library; I'm sure someone will be happy to help track down the exact book you are thinking of, or something functionally equivalent.

edit - here's a PDF link to another presentation, just for fun

We used this in my class on Existentialism.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Kierkegaard-Anthology-Soren/dp/0691019789

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe - A more visceral take on alienation in Japanese society than you get from Murakami.

1. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism
   
   
2. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society
   
   
3. Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective
   
   
4. Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space, Gender, and Aesthetics
   
   
5. The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
   
   
6. How to Read the Quran
   
   

I haven't actually read it yet, but it's burning a hole on my bookshelf and looks really good - Psychogeography by Will Self and Ralph Steadman.

Ok well I tried harder and I found a few on amazon, I'll share links in case someone else has trouble and googles something like the name of this thread.

Egil's saga in monolingual old norse

A series of dual language sagas I have one of these, It's ok but I should mention that while it's dual-lingual, the languages are not parallel. the Norse version is in the back. Another thing is that some of them are actually modern Icelandic, though that shouldn't make a huge difference because the language used is still archaic, just with updated spellings (og vs ok, hestur vs hestr)

Here's a good one, The poetic Edda in parallel text old-Norse and English That's the version I have and I think it's a really nice, high quality volume, but one thing I should mention is it's a scan of an older edition. Personally I don't mind that, I actually think it's kind of cool, but if that idea bugs you maybe check out this version which I don't have so I can't speak for the quality of it but it seems to be newly printed instead of scanned.

these are from what i found. i haven't read them yet but i'm getting to them.


http://www.reddit.com/r/Norse/comments/29owe2/book_recommendations

http://www.amazon.com/The-Elder-Poetic-Edda-Illustrated/dp/0692200657

Amazon costs more, this is from publisher:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/eric-wodening/we-are-our-deeds/paperback/product-15978203.html

edit: The Edda saemund sigfusson olive bray, there is a free PDF you can find on google but i don't remember how i got to it.

HA!! i found it!
http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/The%20Elder%20or%20Poetic%20Edda.pdf

You can get a lot out of it without one. I think I mentioned I read it cover-to-cover twice in a row. The second time I had the pleasure of figuring out one or two of the puzzles on my own.

Later I picked up this by the world-renowned Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd.

But I recommend reading the book itself first a few times. Otherwise it's like seeing the answer key to a puzzle before you have even tried to solve it. You can go, "Oh yeah! That's clever!" but you miss the joy and satisfaction of discovery.

You should read Brian Boyd's analysis of Pale Fire, it really gave me an insight into some of the crazy depth of the book (plus fulfilled the tinfoil itch that /r/asoiaf has given me).

Here you go

Here's a good introduction:
https://www.amazon.com/Girards-Mimetic-Studies-Violence-Mimesis/dp/1611860776

Thank you for the recommendation. I also posted this question to /r/askphilosophy and ended up buying the book "Rene Girards Mimetic Theory" by Wolfgang Palavar. Thread and amazon link to the book are below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/6dk8dy/recommended_rene_girard_readings_on_mimetic_desire/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=frontpage

https://www.amazon.com/Girards-Mimetic-Studies-Violence-Mimesis/dp/1611860776

My personal favorite, somewhat obscure find: Post War Polish Poetry edited and compiled by Lithuania poet Czeslaw Milosz. This collection completely changed how I write poetry. The Poles have a rich history of punctual experimentation, mind-blowing personification, and plenty else. Here's a taste of some polish poesy: Anna Swir

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages would be my recommendation. It's the book I used when I took a class on Medieval Lit.

Here's a hard copy for $30:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Hel-Study-Conception-Literature/dp/110763234X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426279098&sr=8-1&keywords=the+road+to+hel

I found it on Amazon. I'll see if I can send you the link. I /think/ you can get it legally as a free pdf, but I am not 100%

Edit: Amazon Link

https://www.amazon.com/dp/110763234X/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1SUCGR33A18YX&colid=306UI30TPLGWI

If you do not want to commit to the full length Joshi biography this might be a good alternative. An earlier, more compact version of Joshi's biography.

How about this one: https://www.amazon.com/Old-Tea-Seller-Poetry-Century/dp/1582434824/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488207091&sr=8-1&keywords=baisao

aaahhhh but no audible version...

Check out Baisaô (1675–1763), “the Old Tea Seller”.

You can read about wuzhu in wendi adamek's book. https://www.amazon.com/Teachings-Master-Wuzhu-No-Religion-Translations/dp/0231150237

She's tite if you haven't read her. The book covers the text itself and encounters well questions of its 'legitimacy'

And yeah, part of the thing is his 'lineage' or student line or whatever didn't last. He was very clever, right along hueneng in changing around words to be more about mind and less about practice, and was certainly iconoclastic in speech (and practice, there is a funny passage about monks begging him to do normal stuff), but there was no predecessor clever enough to withhold the contradiction as well as he did.

A couple good books on the topic if you're further interested: Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection and Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle

Writing the Laboratory Notebook is a very good resource, though possibly in excess of what your class requires.

The ACS puts its name on it, for whatever that's worth.

http://www.bicycles.net.au is one I failed to mention, there's also the other bicycling subreddits - /r/bicycletouring and /r/fixedgearbicycle are my favourite. I'm more interested in the touring side of cycling, so I can recommend a few good touring nooks:

"Full Tilt: Ireland to India by Bicycle," by Dervla Murphy is a great read

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychogeography-Will-Self/dp/0747590338 <-- not quite a bicycle touring book, but I know that Will Self rides a brompton and this is a book about travelling

Also, a book called "The rider" by (I think) Tim krabbe. That's more of a racing book, but it is an excellent one.

Click through links, google and generally read around and you'll stumble on more resources. Happy hunting :)

Try this https://www.amazon.com/Using-German-Guide-Contemporary-Usage/dp/0521530008 (check for a newer edition)

No single letter in Russian alphabet has single sound correspondence and most sounds correspond to more than one letter.

Typical sounds corresponding to letters are described here. Phonemes are way more tricky since there are no dictionaries with adequate descriptions of Russian morphemics and real pronunciations.

Here is a tool which gives you rough transcriptions in IPA, but it is far from ideal. The most adequate book in English which describes Russian pronunciation is Jones and Ward.

> [–]Xilar 4 очка 6 часов назад
I think he is talking about voicedness, as in the difference between v and f or p and b or t and d. Voiceless sounds are still audible.

--
Xilar Might be right here.

I am using this book--

https://www.amazon.com/Phonetics-Russian-Daniel-Jones/dp/052115300X

which is excellent--but for every letter that I used to think didn't come in voiced and unvoiced pairs eg., Л/Р they mention that there is an unvoiced allophone, and even go to some length giving suggestions on how to pronounce it.

I've come to the conclusion that they just mean it is less voiced when it follows an unvoiced letter.

For example—

бинокль/ мысль are said to be soft and un(less)-voiced.

I've read parts of it in the past and am actually reading it right now in it's entirety for a class. This is the version I have. It's fairly easy to read - the thing to bear in mind is that this translation and the one you posted are in prose where obviously the original is in verse. The story itself is wonderful. When you start reading in the beginning take it slowly and try to get a handle on the genealogies. It'll make it easier down the road as there are so many characters and they all have unusual names. Think about the force of Dharma (Duty) as you read because this is a central concept. When a person acts against his Dharma it leads to chaos, death, and conflict. The Kurus are the antagonists because this is exactly what they do. Have fun!

Reed it at your leisure, bon voyage, avec les-yeux, sans visage.

O but mainly unterstand that what it is is what many say it isn't: a real and truly werked out story of the night.

It contrails many entrained trains of thought, but is ultrameantly a cohesive multi-storied single story comprising many ministories, each a storey of our Tower of Bauble.

Real-eyes that eachant effery word/wort/world May or mightn't half/have/halve/haft multi-tipple meanings/minings/linings/leanings, both in Anglish and in other languishes.

And read outside of it a little bit which's been writ about it, and it'll hint at the wit both in it, and the lit which other wits have written in their interpreting of it. viz: Book of the Dark and to wit: Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake

Pluck it up, and put it down, as required. Shelf it while you muddle or re-read other books. Go back into it from the front, or back into it from the rear.

Be open.

If you're interested in gender issues, I'm going through Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society

It's a bit dated, but faaaantastic.

Are you sourcing this from The Teachings of Master Wuzhu: Zen and Religion of No Religion ? I've put it on my wishlist.

"No merit whatsoever" is just as good as "void and nothing holy" in my book. What does either leave to cling to?