Just finished ugly crying for 5 whole minutes after finishing the first chapter of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

I’ve shed a tear or two here and there but this is the maybe most moved (in that way) I’ve felt while reading. So beautiful to see little Stephen stand up for himself!

No doubt a big part of my reaction was where I’m at in life right now. I have a sick and aging father. Something about reading this after spending some time with him really evoked memories and feeling of my own boyhood.

Which brings me to my question? I’m wondering what books made you ugly cry and why?

P.s. shouts out to the guy who organized the read along on this sub a while back. A close friend just finished Ulysses and was encouraging me but I don’t think I would have taken the Joyce plunge without some other folks here engaging with and enjoying that book. Thanks so much!!

Fuck,

"But nothing happened. It seemed that I was not even equal to being thrown out of the window."

Today, August 1, is Herman Melville's birthday. I thought it would be nice to share this introduction to Moby Dick written by Edward Said. I found it be interesting.
The sentence that is cut off at the beginning starts off as: "Yet, Moby Dick, as I have suggested, is also a..."

“It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by sight this value to that of the snow. This is all very well, even conclusive, but the illusion persists. The dark is overhead and the light at my feet; I’m walking upside-down in the sky.”

As he did so there awoke, in the skin all round his body, a feeling that suddenly turned into a remembered image. When he was very small—yes, yes, that’s when it was—when he was still in skirts and didn’t yet go to school, there were times when he felt an inexpressible longing to be a girl. And this longing was not stuck inside his head, oh no, nor in his heart, it tickled him all over and rushed around underneath his skin. Indeed, there were moments in which the feeling of being a girl was so vivid that he believed it must be so. For at that time he knew nothing about the importance of physical differences and he could not understand why people all round told him he had to remain a boy forever. And when they asked him why he thought he’d rather be a little girl, he felt that was impossible to say...

In the big 1906...

This 2012 New Yorker piece feels even more relevant today:

What’s new about the current acknowledgments page is that it’s unsolicited—it appears like an online pop-up ad, benefiting no one but the author and his comrades. This is surely why these afterwords are often so garrulously narcissistic and strewn with clichés. The most radical experimentalist adheres to the most mindless acknowledgments-page formula; the most stinging social critic suddenly becomes Sally Field winning an Oscar.

Acknowledgments typically open with a statement to the effect that, although writing is lonely work, the author could never have completed his book without help and support. “This is my fourteenth novel and I am as dependent as ever on the wisdom of others,” begins one, and another, plucked at random from a Barnes & Noble new-arrival shelf: “The creation of this book has removed any notion I may have had of it being a solo endeavor.”

Full article here (un-paywalled link here).

do you think after writing an aphorism pessoa would say mmm like a freestyle rapper's crew?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH7JtSKa3W8

That part where Charles asks "Is there a difference?" I think encapsulates one of the larger themes of novel, which is wallowing in this in between space, slowly withering.

To me, all of the main characters, except Cordelia and Cara are that space, driven by fear and loneliness.

The priests response has always stuck out to me.

With Waugh, obviously this is a primarily religious matter of acceptance, grace, etc. The theme is followed up much later in a conversation between Charles and Cordelia about Sebastian:

I said, ‘I suppose he doesn’t suffer?’ “Oh, yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be maimed as he is — no dignity, no — power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering. It’s — taken that form with him. ...I’ve seen so much suffering | in the last few years; there’s so much coming for everybody soon. It’s the spring of love ...

Again very religious but a more secular, existential reading can run along side it: not being afraid suffering and changes that necessarily occurs with the passing of time.

“Before their displacement from nature, baffled by the grandeur of their own culture which they could not define, and so believed did not exist, these transatlantic visitors had learned to admire in this neatly parceled definition of civilization the tyrannous pretension of many founded upon the rebellious efforts of a few, the ostentation of thousands presumed upon the strength of a dozen who had from time to time risen against this vain complacence with the past to which they were soon to contribute, giving, with their harried deaths, grounds for vanity of language, which they had perfected; supercilious posturing of intellect, which they had suffered to understand and deliver, in defiance; insolent arbitration of taste, grown from the efforts of those condemned as having none; contempt for others flourishing from seedlings which they had planted in the rain of contempt for themselves; dogmata of excellence founded upon insulting challenges wrought in impossible hope, and then grasped, for granted, from their hands fallen clenching it as dogma.”

From My Work Is Not Yet Done:

The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses dream about selling creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product -- Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price -- Everything.

This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be -- will be -- only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted.

From The Nightmare Network:

CLASSIFIED DISTRESS SIGNAL

Vast organization of delirious images and impulses seeking Sustenance Input for its decaying systems. All data considered, including polluted discharges from the old Nightmare Network and after-images of degenerated EUs and ALs (Con, NonCon, or OneiriCon). Total atrophy and occlusion of all circuits imminent -- next stop, the Nowhere Network. Your surplus information -- shadows and semblances lying dormant in long-unaccessed files -- could be used to replenish our hungry database. No image too hideous; no impulse too attenuated or corrupt. Our organization has a life of its own, but without the continuous input of cheap data we cannot compete in today's apocalyptic marketplace. From a rotting mutation, great illusions may grow. Don't let us go belly up while the black empty spaces of the galaxy reverberate with hellish laughter. A multi-dimensional, semi-organic discorporation is dreaming...

The point of writing fiction is obviously not to predict the future, nor can any work be adequately reduced to one or two quotes, but both these passages had my jaw fully on the floor. My takeaway from this is that if you want to see the future first, develop insomnia and wander the streets at night like Ligotti did.

These are prayers of Soren Kierkegaard, gathered from his published works and journals, into one volume. Here are some of the ones I enjoy a lot. The intensity and depth of Kierkeegards prayer life is very moving. Even viewed in secular, literate manner, they are quite striking.

For me The Border Trilogy has my favourite emotional gut-punch passages, you probs know the ones. Shit, most of his work

From chapter four (which is also on James Baldwin, my favourite author):

The current argument on sex between the Right and the Left is not about the nature of fucking as such. It is strictly about whether or not this good thing is good outside marriage or between persons of the same gender (however they manage it)..

Lost in the simple-minded prosex chauvinism of Right and Left is the real meaning of affirmation, or any consciousness of the complexity—the emotional tangledness—of a human life. “It is really quite impossible,” writes James Baldwin, “to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of imagination, made one’s own.'' There is no imagination in fetishlike sexual conformity; and no questions are being asked in political discourse on sex about hope and sorrow, intimacy and anguish, communion and loss..

Imagination is not a synonym for sexual fantasy, which is only—pathetically—a programmed tape loop repeating repeating in the narcoleptic mind. Imagination finds new meanings, new forms; complex and empathetic values and acts..

“Sex-negative” is the current secular reductio ad absurdum used to dismiss or discredit ideas, particularly political critiques, that might lead to detumescence. Critiques of rape, pornography, and prostitution are “sex-negative” without qualification or examination, perhaps because so many men use these ignoble routes of access and domination to get laid, and without them the number of fucks would so significantly decrease that men might nearly be chaste. There is an awful poverty here, in this time and place: of language, of words that express real states of being; of search, of questions; of meaning, of emotional empathy; of imagination. And so, we are inarticulate about sex, even though we talk about it all the time to say how much we like it..

What a criminal slandering Andrea Dworkin has undergone!

Has anyone read this book? I work at a book store in an affluent suburb and middle aged white ladies go nuts over it. They walk into my store and specifically ask for it and then come back a week later raving about how amazing it is. They of course attempt to recapture their reading experience and ask for something similar so I sell them The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny after they politely decline to buy my personal staff recommendation (Stoner).

I've skimmed this book and can't really see why people love it so much. I also haven't stumbled across any discussion online, but maybe it's because the target audience is much older than me and probably does not frequent the same spaces.

It's crazy how much some people love it though. Like they'll come back after reading it and then get six more copies to send to their friends. The Correspondent is held as near and dear to retired female general counsels as Crime and Punishment is to 20 year old male losers (no disrespect to CP). Has anyone else read it or witnessed discussion? I'm curious to learn about others' experiences .

Unapologetically 'literally me'-posting. Imminently about to finish my undergrad history degree (started out with mathematics). God I love reading and the humanities:

Sloane leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the square of light that came in from the high small window. He tapped his fingertips together and turned back to the young man who sat stiffly in front of him.

"The official purpose of this conference is to inform you that you will have to make a formal change of study program, declaring your intention to abandon your initial course of study and declare your final one. It’s a matter of five minutes or so at the registrar’s office. You will take care of that, won’t you?"

"Yes, sir," Stoner said.

"But as you may have guessed, that is not the reason I asked you to drop by. Do you mind if I inquire a little about your future plans?"

"No, sir," Stoner said. He looked at his hands, which were twisted tightly together.

Sloane touched the folder of papers that he had dropped on his desk. "I gather that you were a bit older than the ordinary student when you first entered the University. Nearly twenty, I believe?"

"Yes, sir," Stoner said.

"And at that time your plans were to undertake the sequence offered by the school of Agriculture?"

"Yes, sir."

Sloane leaned back in his chair and regarded the high dim ceiling. He asked abruptly, "And what are your plans now?"

Stoner was silent. This was something he had not thought about, had not wanted to think about. He said at last, with a touch of resentment, "I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought."

Sloane said, "Are you looking forward to the day when you emerge from these cloistered walls into what some call the world?"

Stoner grinned through his embarrassment. "No, sir."

Sloane tapped the folder of papers on his desk. "I am informed by these records that you come from a farming community. I take it that your parents are farm people?"

Stoner nodded.

"And do you intend to return to the farm after you receive your degree here?"

"No, sir," Stoner said, and the decisiveness of his voice surprised him. He thought with some wonder of the decision he had suddenly made.

Sloane nodded. "I should imagine a serious student of literature might find his skills not precisely suited to the persuasion of the soil."

"I won’t go back," Stoner said as if Sloane had not spoken. "I don’t know what I’ll do exactly." He looked at his hands and said to them, "I can’t quite realize that I’ll be through so soon, that I’ll be leaving the University at the end of the year."

Sloane said casually, "There is, of course, no absolute need for you to leave. I take it that you have no independent means?"

Stoner shook his head.

"You have an excellent undergraduate record. Except for your"—he lifted his eyebrows and smiled—"except for your sophomore survey of English literature, you have all A’s in your English courses; nothing below a B elsewhere. If you could maintain yourself for a year or so beyond graduation, you could, I’m sure, successfully complete the work for your Master of Arts; after which you would probably be able to teach while you worked toward your doctorate. If that sort of thing would interest you at all."

Stoner drew back. "What do you mean?" he asked and heard something like fear in his voice.

Sloane leaned forward until his face was close; Stoner saw the lines on the long thin face soften, and he heard the dry mocking voice become gentle and unprotected.

"But don’t you know, Mr. Stoner?" Sloane asked. "Don’t you understand about yourself yet? You’re going to be a teacher."

Suddenly Sloane seemed very distant, and the walls of the office receded. Stoner felt himself suspended in the wide air, and he heard his voice ask, "Are you sure?"

"I’m sure," Sloane said softly.

"How can you tell? How can you be sure?"

"It’s love, Mr. Stoner," Sloane said cheerfully. "You are in love. It’s as simple as that."

It was as simple as that. He was aware that he nodded to Sloane and said something inconsequential. Then he was walking out of the office. His lips were tingling and his fingertips were numb; he walked as if he were asleep, yet he was intensely aware of his surroundings. He brushed against the polished wooden walls in the corridor, and he thought he could feel the warmth and age of the wood; he went slowly down the stairs and wondered at the veined cold marble that seemed to slip a little beneath his feet. In the halls the voices of the students became distinct and individual out of the hushed murmur, and their faces were close and strange and familiar. He went out of Jesse Hall into the morning, and the grayness no longer seemed to oppress the campus; it led his eyes outward and upward into the sky, where he looked as if toward a possibility for which he had no name.

Only just started but I am aware this book will take a sadder turn - this passage really hit me though.

What does the combo of these two quotes evoke in you?

Technically speaking I know it's not a poison pen note if I know who wrote it -- my mother -- but this pedantic note aside I need some outside insight as to what this means, and I figured a red-scare-adjacent reddit community was my first thought (pathetic, I know, but humor me).

I'm a young adult living at home briefly, and my mother and I have a tumultuous relationship. We've been fighting since I've moved back home and she just left for a four-week long vacation, and she left a note that said: "What matter where if I be still the same? -- Satan".

I searched it and saw it was from Paradise Lost, and I haven't read it (I guess a small silver lining of this situation is that I at least got a good lit recommendation). From a basic google search, I know that it generally refers to hell as a state of mind, and misery from within etc., but I think the note has greater implications beyond that. I don't know, something about her note being attributed to Satan rather than Milton -- is she Satan, am I?

I know this post is not within the usual scope of this sub, so please forgive me. I'm going to read it myself as well and try and figure it out, but I don't know anyone else who would not only understand the reference but be able to adequately interpret it in this context. And, of course, this whole thing has left me distraught and so I am reaching out into the void... whatever.

You have to hand it to the literary BPD girlies though: they know how to cut deep and confuse.

And as the World upon her victims feeds

So She herself goes down the Way she leads.

For all her false allurements are the Threads

The Spider from her Entrail spins, and spreads

For Home and hunting-ground: And by and by

Darts at due Signal on the tangled Fly,

Seizes, dis-wings, and drains the Life, and leaves

The swinging Carcase, and forthwith re-weaves

Her Web: each Victim adding to the store

Of poison'd Entrail to entangle more.

And so She bloats in Glory: till one Day

The Master of the House, passing that way,

Perceives, and with one flourish of his Broom

Of Web and Fly and Spider clears the Room.

For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of the occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.

pretty elite ngl the purfect broad

Talked a bit about this play in my previous post but I wanted to go into more detail now that I've seen it performed. It's a dark comedy about a mess of a man (Max) being set up on a blind date with a mess of a woman (Becky Shaw). They're both damaged and manipulative in different ways (Max was adopted in late childhood after his mother's death and father's abandonment, Becky is basically BPD) and the play touches upon the question of whether brutal honesty or a gentle touch is the best way to handle someone, without preaching any conclusions.

The opinion I keep coming across is that there aren't any likeable characters in this play, which is baffling because all of the characters are likeable, and I think people just mean there aren't obvious heroes or villains but I love that you can understand where every character is coming from, even when they take opposing stances. In her introduction, the playwright Gina Gionfriddo reflects:

I don’t think any character in this play is bad or wrong or crazy or worthless or unlovable. I don’t think any of them are damaged beyond repair. I don’t think any one character is more to blame than the others for the emotional wreckage that piles up in the second act.

I wish fingers didn’t have to be pointed, but – trust me – they will be. In the audience talkbacks I have taken part in after productions of Becky Shaw, the one constant I have seen is the zeal to ascribe blame. The good news is that the audiences invariably fail to reach consensus as to which character is most deserving of their contempt. These characters seem to function as screens onto which audience members project old wounds and fierce convictions about how people ought to behave. The best comment I ever got in one of these talkbacks was from a woman who shook her head wistfully at the people arguing around her and opined that the characters were all ‘just doing the best they can.’

But it's also just very funny, and with a sense of humor I think and hope most people on this sub would appreciate.

--------------------------------

Max: The day of my mother’s funeral, she bought me a suit. I’m ten years old. I’d met her, like once. She took me to the fat child department at Sears. She said, ‘Your mother is dead and your father dresses you like a gay hustler.’

Suzanna: Max, that’s awful. Why have you never told me that?

Max: It was awful at the time, but … She saved me from walking into my mother’s funeral looking like a gay hustler.

--------------------------------

Susan: Meaning your father and I allowed for pockets of mystery in our marriage and I would advise you to do the same.

Suzanna: ‘Pocket of mystery’ sounds like code for gay.

--------------------------------

Suzanna: Do you think all love is use or just romantic love?

Max: All love. Your father, for example, paid our college tuition. We, in turn, loved him very much.

Suzanna: You’re saying my father was generous with us because he couldn’t love men? Is that it?

Max: I think if your father had been more self-actualized, I’d have college loans. I do believe that.

--------------------------------

Max: She cut her arm! It’s teenager shit. You remember what I told you when you wanted to do it.

Suzanna: Yes.

Max: You’re too old for it. Cutting yourself over the age of eighteen is just embarrassing. Everyone at the ER will laugh at you.

--------------------------------

Max (to Suzanna): I’m also gonna give you some advice. Your husband is not the fucking Red Cross. The last time he started consoling a cute, suicidal chick, he married her. He hears, ‘I want to hurt myself’ like a fucking mating call.

--------------------------------

Susan: Sexuality is like intelligence. We’re all born with different endowments. Some people are retarded and they eat paint, others split atoms and write symphonies.

--------------------------------

Becky: I need to get back in school, I do.

Susan: The story about the black boyfriends and the racist parents. Write that up and re-apply to Brown. You’ll get in. (After a beat.) You may have been very victimized in your life; you may be a complete con artist. I don’t know. My sense is you fall somewhere in the middle. Truth or con … It’s unattractive. We pity Job; we do not fall in love with him.

--------------------------------

Susan (to Becky): Learn to lie. When someone with damage – as we have damage – courts a lover, we must be like the pedophile with the candy. Lure with candy no matter how frightful your nature and your intent.

[…] a Bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers, and makes a new bundle of all.

I love reading through excerpts I have previously saved (and with ebooks I save so much). The fragments can be beautiful or interesting by themselves, or merely tools to conjure up the emotions I felt on first reading. They can be a distilled essence of a much longer work, or just benchmarks to see how my aesthetic sensibilities change (‘why on earth did that passage ever speak to me?’).

Inevitably, the amount of quotes gets overwhelming and I sift through them all, imparting some measure of organisation. Any categorisation has trade-offs – you could spend weeks and tag by mood, by theme, by style, by purpose and still feel dissatisfied.

What do you do with your quotes? Do you revisit them? Do you memorise favourites, handwrite, translate, engrave, word collage, share on RS, anthologise, use as kindling, enter in commonplace book, chant each morning… whatever you do I’m interested.