#lit tag

[libraryfag]

Is that a valid argument in your pants or is it just a phallacy?

[tobermoriansass]

every single conversation abt ip on here devolves into a bunch of people being really anxious that someone is going to take away their hypothetical income from them for their creativity and like, that is already happening. that is literally happening. how do you think publishers like penguin, harper collins, macmillan et al got big and stay big? how do you think publishers like elsevier et al maintain such a stranglehold and charge such amounts? do you even know how individual IP rights operate these days, especially when you're licensing them to a company? have you read a contract ever in your life? have you had to work on preparing a contract ever in your life? do you think your much vaunted, precious authors have the rights to reprint their books whenever if they realise their publishers are fucking them over? don't make me fucking laugh. at the very least please pull your heads out of your asses and read helen dewitt's extensive chronicling of her run-ins with the publishing industry as is. god knows you can pick up the biography or collected/published letters of almost any author* across time and encounter a section with their run-ins and struggles with their publishers, either because they're not being given enough royalties, or because they're writing to contract and need to give their publishers a book by a specific deadline, or a specific kind of book, even when circumstances & health issues are conspiring against them. do you think copyright gives them any control over their lives, or any sort of creative control? don't be so naive - and nevermind the fact that it is basically impossible to have a career in writing these days and that the rare few who do are writing extremely formulaic genre fiction written to, again, insane deadlines that are punishing for any sort of creative work. stop being naive!!!! take an actual look and reckon at what the actual circumstances and conditions are for producing art! it is not good! copyright is not going to save you! it is panacea at best! you will literally do better campaigning for universal basic income over championing the cause of copyright!

*off the top of my head just based on the biographies & other primary sources i've read: agatha christie, aldous huxley, jrr tolkien, georgette heyer

[theserlingbucket]

Nirvana's music being the OP song for a the green yuri anime... It got me fucked up in the best way possible

In the interview with Dave Grohl, he says "Kurt would've loved this" and that currently has me on the floor

Kurt was a huge fan of queer artistry, specifically queer stories told through literature. One of his idols was William S Burroughs, a huge pioneer in postmodern writing with his queer avant-garde work. A reflection of his experiences with queer identity throughout his life. Cobains favorite piece from his catalogue was Queer, a semi-autobiographical depiction of Burroughs addiction told through a queer lense

We have no idea how far Cobain explored queer literature, but given his friendship with Burroughs he was definitely aware of the cultural push and pull regarding queer sexual and gender identities depicted in the art we consume. Though even outside his interactions with the arts, he was still a huge queer advocate. Extending as far back as his formative years- He was physically targeted in his youth for defending his gay peers and very notoriously told homophobes to fuck off and not buy their records.

Bottom line, dude was a huge advocate for queer rights and the stories that come with them. He was taking, at the time, such a huge shot in the dark in his public allyship considering how homophobic this era of music was.

Kurt Cobain always made sure queer people were protected and heard, quite literally taking the heat in their place. His advocacy echoes even decades later

There is something so extremely poetic and beautiful that Cobain's voice is now being used front and center in a queer work of art. He was defending gay people when doing so would get you beat in the street, he was reading literature considered 'odd' for the time period simply because of a gay author or gay story.

Now his music is being used in a very internationally beloved queer story- Written by two queer women, no less! Grohl is right, he would've loved this, and loved to see it- Would've loved to see how far queer art and appreciation for it has come since the 80s

He is definitely looking down smiling today as his name is once again being associated with queer advocacy and celebration

[pasdetrois]

Viktor Britvin's illustrations for Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

[mclassnostromo]

I’m at my wits fucking end

[lyuricheva]

☕️+ hello! i wanted to ask for recommendations and opinions on some gritty depressed vibe books for this upcoming winter season.. for those of us who are partial to patho and other such stories.. beautiful gloomy writing is also a slay<3 as is the Gays<3 maybe even other formats too, not just books ….thank you! loved your new fic :-)

Hello! This is a brilliant question, thank you. Absolutely great question. I love this question. 

[Cracks my cold fingers like a pianist] Here we go! MrCogito’s winter doomer vibe cultivation list.

I’ve made another list in the past, on main, of literature that reminds me of David Lynch specifically (💔), and I’m going to link back to that, because I do believe there is some significant overlap, as well as a specific shoutout to one very strange and compelling thing I read this year.

Here, I've included existential dread (horror-adjacent) and existential dread (sociopolitical).

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant.

Never Let Me Go: In some ways nobody does gritty depression like Ishiguro. The most obvious choice would probably be Never Let Me Go, which is excellent, and possibly one of the most depressing things I’ve read in my life (and I willingly read it twice). It ties very seamlessly with Pathologic through the underlying discussions of free-will, effects of war and industrialisation on society, othering, eugenics and community vs individualism. It’s a wretched read, genuinely. But it’s been tremendously impactful to me.

The Buried Giant: this book is also gloomy and depressing, but in a much more whimsical way. And I mean whimsy in an eerie, uncanny, fluctuating fable sort of way, parallel to Pathologic from a different angle. Fundamentally, this is an anti-war narrative, but it plays with myth and legend (mainly arthurian legend), distorted memories, propaganda, symbolism and so on. I really loved it; only read it recently but will happily reread it.

Quote: 

Yōko Ogawa , The Memory Police

If you like the Powers-that-Be noose-tightening desolation of Pathologic + as well as its more abstract forces such as the players in the sandbox moving puppets, and narratives within narratives, you might like this novel. It’s very melancholy and poignant, and the author’s use of magical realism is understated and integrated into the world it paints in a very compelling way. I’ve been thinking about this novel a lot since I’ve read it last summer. Some key words: community, invigilation, oppression, memory. 

Quote: 

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

I actually made this text post, as shown, 8 months ago, and it really resonated with way more people than I expected:

When you start TLHOD, it does not seem either gritty or depressed and more like a very sociopolitically relevant thriller dressed up in a science-fiction costume. That being said, I read the last 20 or so with tears streaming down my face. I don’t really tend to sob as I read things, but god, this gets you. It’s a beautiful story, it’s horribly depressing, and I still can’t believe this was written in 1960s with how nuanced and insightful it is irt gender, gender roles and the entire political commentary surrounding the concept of “patriotism” and themes of Otherness and exile. 

Quote (which made me feel choked up reading it, damn it):

Djuna Barnes, I Am Alien to Life + Nightwood

If you’re in the mood for a collection of poignant, haunting and deeply unnerving short stories, this is it. The stories are a good entry point, and they’ve very recently published in this collection; but if you’re curious, I do also recommend Barnes’s Nightwood, a Lynchian nightmare of a tormented lesbian modernist novel. It has … a lot going on. T.S. Eliot of the Waste Land fame wrote a raving introduction for it. As most modernist writing, bear in mind there’s a lot of tws for this, but even keeping that in mind, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read. Gender nonconformity (the character of the Doctor, in particular, stands out to me), desolation, toxicity, oppression, striking use of symbolism.

Quote: 

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room + Another Country

Another favourite of mine. Few people on earth could write so beautifully about despair as Baldwin did. I love his writing. I think he was genuinely one of a kind and in many ways nothing compares. Giovanni’s Room is short, succinct, beautiful and horrible. Another Country is dynamic and sprawling, and entirely haunted. Baldwin is the sort of writer that just stays with you forever, so beware, but also, you’re welcome. 

Joseph Broderick, The Pilgrimage

This is a recent discovery! If you enjoy the repressed-small-town aspect of Pathologic, this might be the thing. Broderick describes, with all the relish due to someone shunned by his own country, the small-mindedness and hypocrisy of a little Catholic Irish town, and everything that goes on underneath its surface. It’s queer and repressed, and everything is toxic, awful and stifling. This was the tagline that enticed me to pick it up, and it did not disappoint: 

The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk

Again a favourite author, and this time I’m going for thematic/atmospheric relevance to Pathologic. The Empusium is a strange novel, definitely less structurally “normative” than, say, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead or Flights (another favourite of mine): it meanders and at times seems to abandon the plot for the sake of its atmosphere (to match the narrator’s whimsical mind). And its eerie whimsy is really unique and delicious: you visit a German resort town by the border of Poland where the main character goes to convalesce from tuberculosis, circa 1913. And something odd is happening there. Again, themes of gender, gender nonconformity, Otherness, medical malpractice, folk horror. I read it in Polish (it was only translated very recently!) so I don’t have a good quote on me, other than what I found online. 

What sets this one apart is that it’s actually not gritty or depressing to read, in my opinion. But Mieczysław, our “final girl” so to speak, is a delightful character and this story really goes well with Pathologic/Dankovsky, so I thought I’d include it anyway. 

Dostoyevski. Yeah.

This feels like stating the obvious, because of course Pathologic enjoyers would find something compelling in Dostoyevski. That being said, finally biting through Crime & Punishment really did enrich my experience of Patho, and it was indeed a miserable time start to finish, and well worth the read!

Honourable (unread) mention:

I’m stuck reading Ulysses for the foreseeable future, but José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of the Night is the next thing I want to get my hands on, and I believe it might just fit this list.

Blurb: This haunting jungle of a novel has been hailed as “a masterpiece” by Luis Buñuel and “one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time” by Carlos Fuentes. The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader’s mind.

Also: “It would be a crass understatement to say that this book is a challenging read; it's totally and unapologetically psychotic. It's also insanely gothic, brilliantly engaging, exquisitely written, filthy, sick, terrifying, supremely perplexing, and somehow connives to make the brave reader feel like a tiny, sleeping gnat being sucked down a fabulously kaleidoscopic dream plughole.”

Film: 

I’m going to have to be very brief here, because we would be in this post for hours. That being said: 

Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky - this is the closest thing thematically and tonally to Pathologic that exists, imo. An adaptation of Strugatski brothers' Roadside Picnic, in addition to the tone, themes, setting, language (I can go on), also has a pretty visceral history: almost everyone who worked on this project, including Tarkovsky himself, died horribly after exposure to the toxic environment of the location they chose for the Zone.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but from the beginning, while watching, you’ll be struck by how much the imagery of Pathologic is visibly influenced by Tarkovsky’s cinematography: a girl moves a glass with her eyes looking uncannily like Clara. Scientists idly roam a stark-looking laboratory. Rails lead us away from the City into wilderness.

TV:

The Terror: I do believe a lot of Patho enjoyers already know of The Terror but it truly IS thee gritty depressed show of all time. Underlying themes? Match. We have colonialism, polar exploration, the Other, 19th century, naval, haunting. It made me frantically drink orange juice for week after watching it because I was so afraid of magically acquiring scurvy.

Netflix Dark: There was a brief window of time when not everything Netflix produced was slop. Dark belongs to that era. Much like Pathologic is firmly steeped in Russian literature, theatre and culture, Dark is firmly steeped in German literary canon. It’s a very intricately woven and executed narrative: as hard to believe as it is, all the increasingly convoluted plotlines are resolved logically. It’s also unbelievably harrowing to watch, at times, taking the “doomed world” to a new meaning. But if you enjoy a philosophical approach to time travel and morality of it, with a dash of nihilism, that’s the place. It’s one of my favourite shows, even if I’ve only been able to stomach watching it with someone else, but I’m just really impressed with the storytelling.

Anyway. Thank you for this question!

[aloneholy]

tried to put in words what i found underwhelming about between two fires, which i really enjoyed for the most part, and got tangled trying to express smth along the lines of “you know i love literature that puts a twist on religion / the judeochristian tradition in general but this one, in the end, simply did not subvert anything. the girl was holy. her holiness defeated evil. she went to heaven. there was no moral conflict or any dialogue with the doctrine. it was … fine” and my girlfriend was like “so this medieval christianity horror wasn’t agnostic enough for you” well… yes

[handofhistory]

while it's unlikely this nominal semantic field was intentional, it's still interesting to note that the thick of it's leading men, the most powerful spin doctors, all share their names with kings: malcolm and james of scotland, stephen of england, and to a lesser extent julius of rome. this connection can firstly be seen as a continuation of the show's theme of political power being held by the unelected, subverting the democratic order. this is seen most vividly in the meaningful absence of the prime ministers from the show, which forms part of a late 2000s critique of spin doctors and spads. here the crown itself rests with he who controls the narrative. furthermore, the cyclical nature of power in the thick of it - the job of spin doctor is the ultimate narrative authority and is depicted as a "parasite" that burns through one host at a time - makes even more sense through the lens of kingship. monarchs inherit a title, command a court, and (in the earlier historical periods these specific names stem from) may be deposed if deemed unfit for office. "drop malcolm?".