#existentialist lit

[darlinngninawrites]

When you're a child, you very easily resign yourself to being regarded as of little account, but at seventeen things change. You begin to want to have a definite existence, and since you still feel the same inside yourself, you foolishly have recourse to external guarantees.... You seek the approbation of others, you write down your thoughts, you compare yourself with accepted models.

-Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay

[darlinngninawrites]

January 25th, 2018.

As my health slowly returns to my body like a lover returning at port after an extensive stay abroad, I think about the people we become without choosing to. The selves that develop from the impositions, the indoctrination, the teachings, the traditions, the hand-me-down morals, the punishments, the bending of the will into the tightened fissures of respectability. Sometimes I feel exhausted with pressure. I do not wish to remain so vigilant; forever standing on the tips of my feet. I did not choose to be so political, to be so opinionated and yet I can not imagine a a life of non-involvement. I created this space for myself as escapism, looking to explore the selves outside the one-dimensional casket the world and society set up for me. There are days when I feel so uncertain of my path, like I'm walking in the dark, like a misguided child in a giant department store. I don't have a point to this, I just hope you stay long enough to see me through it.

[tremendousmawdilemma]

Glare and Glimmer | litrature

[darlinngninawrites]

Finally finished reading this book. With a little over 400 pages, I felt it was a story that should have ended after five chapters. I read The Second Sex sometime almost three years ago and found myself entrapped in the majestic delivery of Beauvoir, her engorged, powerful analyses of society, gender, sex and class, her deep existential queries (at times resolved, at times left unanswered; drifting in ambiguity, left for the reader to ponder at), and her masterful philosophical conceptualizations. I felt compelled to venture into her fictional novels and this one as she defined it a “metaphysical” one. While I felt like the plot didn't offer much outside the already trite threesome trope, I couldn't put it down. The language is vibrantly elegant and the story progresses in a dynamic pace full of existential reflections about life, relationships, society and the self. Each character is explored deeply but objectively allowing the reader to formulate opinions on each one all on their own, especially towards whoever speaks louder to them. Even when they are caught in the mundanity of their day to day lives, Beauvoir manages to liven the otherwise prosaic narratives. I was to be honest, mostly drawn to this novel because I had read how it peaks into her relationship with Jean P. Sartre and I was not disappointed. There are instances within the story where we are treated to dialogues, physical descriptions and mannerisms that sound particularly distinct of them both. It is also a very political book as it is dated during a prefatory era of World War II in France. This event engenders interesting and philosophical conversations amongst the protagonists that are delightful to delve into. I read so many passages of this book to my boyfriend, he actually ended up asking me every week how the story was progressing as if referring to a television show. Conclusively, I had fun reading it so I am hoping to read more of Beauvoir's fiction in the future.

[darlinngninawrites]

It is no life to say to yourself everyday that its going to happen tomorrow.

Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay

[haroldlethe]

From The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

When I consider, with all the clarity I can muster, what my life has apparently been, I imagine it as some brightly coloured scrap of litter - a chocolate wrapper or a cigar ring - that the eavesdropping waitress brushes lightly from the soiled tablecloth into the dustpan, amongst the crumbs and crusts of reality itself. It stands out from those things whose fate it shares by virtue of a privilege that is also destined for the dustpan. The gods continue their conversations above the sweeping, indifferent to these incidents in the world below.

[essence-form]

I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human Being

[mrkindakooky]

i like double entendre

s

idk

remember the phrase, 'comic novel,' in the description of lucky jim i sent you

?

i was going to say that the comic novel is a genre that most of the english literature i read falls under

this genre satirically plays upon whatever rank it's about

and that's what i don't really see a lot of in alt lit

i mean it's still funny

it's not that i don't like it

it's just that the character's ambitions are different due to this lack of rank

/place in society

they don't have one

and it's hard to root for a protagonist when the protagonist doesn't know what he/she wants for his/herself because w/out that knowledge it's hard to say what you want for your protagonist

therefore you're not really pulling for them

you can't

i mean the characters i read about are going for rank

as a teacher

student

realtor

public figure

while the characters most ppl read about today are still looking for reasons to wake up

i think another word for the comic novel is a coming of age novel

the character has an assignment

something coming up

to get ready for

look forward to

i mean existentialist lit finds an ambition somewhere in the narrative

eventually

but it takes a while

it's character driven

character driven ambitions take a lot longer to develop

but once they do they're usually unusually hilarious

i mean in a story i read by either out of lorrie moore/joy williams a friend dies at the beginning

so the will leaves a bunch of things to the deceased one's friends

the protagonist gets a dog

while everyone else gets random shit

but no one knew that this person had a dog

and now it's the protagonists

most of the protagonists friends end up losing what they got from the will

but all the while she has this dog and i think she is going through something herself

i think it's a bad example

it's been so long since i've read any of those stories

but the story is started by a random event in the characters life that is completely outside of itself

his/herself

then the rest of it is about how that character deals w whatever has happened

babbitt is sort of turning into a story about nothingness

ever since paul went to jail he doesn't care about anything