moby dick i think is evidence that you can highlight the profundity of human experience with literally any content the book is about fucking WHALES for christs sake WHALES and yet we've got takeaways about human experience psychopathy a life god etc.

edgar allan poe's short fiction i mean, dude basically invented mood / tone / voice in its contemporary sense moving away from didactic, authorial narration into unreliable narration finally, literature's starting to get entertaining...

just did a book review of gravity's rainbow ended up being like an hour and half fitting, i think, considering the endurance required to read the book anyway

imposing a contemporary perspective upon a historical context strikes me as unaesthetic which is why I've always found historical fiction rather dross in writing anything, you inevitably impose your own perspective

self-development is just thinly veiled psychopathy 48 laws of power? how to win friends and influence people? not to dismiss it, tho "i'd rather be a dick than a swallower" - yeezy

power of now by eckhart tolle is a worthwhile read a super consumable rendition of ancient eastern truths lacking the rigor of buddhism, which is cool, because not everyone's gonna robe up and sit in silence but everyone deserves happiness, certainly

alice munro is fiction for people with worldviews from like 1935

raymond carver being an alcoholic with a great body of literary accomplishment will never go out of style

a midsummer night's dream fucking astonishing in its vibe feels psychedelic, the language itself, not to mention the subject matter inevitably blown away by shakespeare's body of work you got depictions of psychopathy and empire alongside that of love and presence goat

nothing has so acutely captured the postmodern crisis of incessant failure to grab at an absolute moment of knowledge/enlightenment, than danielewski's House of Leaves the literal quintessence an aesthetic, consumable iconicization of derrida's philosophy

i'm on my third topo chico of the day

postmodernism I hope is dead like, aesthetically I mean hopefully no more self-reflective dogshit, meta-narration make that shit uncool, ASAP

the will to knowledge is the thing that recreates the illusion the illusion is just the composite of all your beliefs it's the seeking itself--attempts at enlightenment and omnipotence--which create the superstructure that we imprison ourselves in

george saunders with lincoln in the bardo-- I'm frankly blown away that someone could take an absurdly traditional and underwhelming story and make it an absolute aesthetic masterpiece b/c how many goddamn times have we talked about abe lincoln and his altruism

lincoln in the bardo by george saunders implicitly imposing contemporary egalitarianism with identity politics and diversity onto a historical context a presumably tasteless and unaesthetic task, from the get but saunders somehow manages to pull it off as in, great book

george saunders and his prioritization of how the writing makes you feel, rather than some overarching moral or technique-- this feels like it should be the standard for art / literature, the depth of experience it can lend you, and not its 'message' or w/e

denis johnson, somewhat of an overlooked dude aside from jesus's son but on inspecting his other stuff, it's kinda obvi why he's overlooked weird, that an author can have such extreme variety of accomplishment, where one book is literally transcendent, and the rest meh

typography is a much underappreciated design modality most people don't even recognize that most everything they read--advertisements, books, the description of something on netflix-- it's all been heavily, heavily considered as to appearance and consumability

not been on tw for a minute as it's a cesspool of human waste but started some super well-scripted, visually stunning youtube content kicking it off with a discussion on the link between insanity & art would be enamored if you checked it out 😇😇😇😇 youtu.be/w4L3Yj1oUxA

Just finished this beast of a video analyzing 2 major modernist works featuring ALCOHOL The Great Gatsby & Under the Volcano Entering some sketchy territory—to what degree does the author's self-destruction contribute to great art? youtu.be/NeQ48bFHj9E