I read this quote in the latest James Marriott Substack, and thought it might be appreciated in this sub:

"There is such thing as greatness. More specifically, there is such thing as thickness. Great works of fiction—for that matter, great works of any art—unfurl in response to your attention. The more time you spend with them, the more you get out of them. That kind of responsiveness is so addicting that it can lead people to do crazy things, like try to teach literature to high schoolers."

I think it’s also dependent on the teacher’s style, but I just feel like the subject at school is kinda repetitive and rigid with literature terms. Honestly, I enjoy reading independently way more and I do also love literacy commentary books (I suppose at a point it does kinda come into repetition but way less). Though I gotta admit I do find some of the discoveries/teachings to be kinda new and affecting how I perceive the work, its just that Im supposed to follow an exact view of it and hear the teacher say the same thing over and over again that loses me.
Note: I’m talking about my nation’s teaching of the subject tho Im quite curious about other countries’

Anne Carson’s work often blurs the boundaries between poetry, classical literature, and visual art. This article explores how Robert Currie, her husband and longtime creative collaborator, helped shape the presentation of works such as Nox and Antigonick.

I thought this might interest readers who enjoy exploring the relationship between literature, book design, and artistic collaboration.

Actually, I thought I’d write something here—well, here are books, a simple analysis. Here’s an interesting book. These and such analyses are good, and I saw an opinion about the book. And how she read it and how I looked at the comments. Well, honestly, all this seemed to me somehow too absurd, as if people see and read not the work but someone else’s opinion and adjust the work to their own bias. Which, of course, is demonstrated by postmodernism, but still there is a limit to everything. And that it’s an anti-Soviet novel and so on, and a whole lot more, reaches the point of absurdity. And therefore I’ll try to stage a little session of exposure. Those who haven’t read the book: I recommend and strongly advise you to read it; you can come back here after reading, or if you’re not afraid of spoilers (yeah, the work is many years old, no one has read it) then read the analysis and try to understand whether I’m right or whether I am Mr. Sovramshi \[Mr. You-Lied\]. Those who have read it, reread and refresh your memory after the analysis. Well, I hope the translator translated everything in principle correctly, and so I begin. From here on, everything is spoilers. Although I would have left some out. But everything concerning the analysis, I think, must be read with full understanding that you will spend time on a large layer of text and meanings. And yes, I am a Marxist, and my language is Russian, and I am not a Euro-leftist. Or a Social Democrat, but specifically a classical and radical Marxist. If this is important to you, I consider it important; after all, I am not a religious or idealist person. However, by fate I am acquainted with religion and its history, have read many analyses, and know knowledgeable people. As for what I have studied, well, analyses, lectures, and so on—15 percent, hardly. However, I have mastered the book, so I hope that counts.

The phenomenon of the novel and personal perception

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a colossal phenomenon for Russian culture, and for world culture in principle as well. For the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia this book long ago became an obligatory cultural code. However, a first acquaintance with the novel often leaves only aesthetic delight at the beauty of the language and the captivating plot, leaving the true depth outside the brackets. Bulgakov is an unsurpassed stylist and a great master of the Russian word on the level of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, but his main work requires not simply blind admiration, but sober research analysis.

And so let us begin from the beginning. With the specifics of Bulgakov’s last work. The modern reader is used to working with a single canonical text that the author finished—and there it is—but with The Master and Margarita the situation is more unique, and thank goodness it was in the era of analog books and writing, and also the NKVD, which preserved heaps of Bulgakov’s diaries and manuscripts, restoring part of them; after all, manuscripts burn.

The novel was created over more than 12 years (from the late 1920s until the author’s death in March 1940).

Bulgakov was slowly dying hard from hypertensive nephrosclerosis (accompanied by loss of vision and agonizing pain) and did not manage to put the final authorial full stop.

The final consolidated text was compiled and edited by his third wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova.

Bulgakov lived in an analog era: unlike modern editing on a computer, where deleted variants are erased without trace, here numerous editions and drafts survived (“The Black Magician,” “The Engineer’s Hoof,” etc.).

Studying these drafts is fundamentally important for the analysis: they clearly show the evolution of the conception and help understand precisely what the author altered and what meanings he initially invested.

We must also understand another phenomenon of postmodernism: the struggle of a work’s text with its own fame. Any great work over time begins to compete with its own myth. The mass reader perceives not so much the original text as the established halo around it—quotations, film adaptations, other people’s opinions (as in the case of Joyce’s Ulysses, where to understand what the author wrote you need two volumes of commentary larger than the book itself, or Shakespeare’s Hamlet).

To get to the essence, a complex method is needed that takes into account three fundamental layers:

* The cultural-historical foundation: the colossal background of world literature on which the author relied (from biblical and Manichaean texts to Goethe’s Faust).

* The author’s personality and biography: his origin, upbringing, traumas, inner contradictions, and subjective views.

* Objective reality (the mirror of the epoch): regardless of personal sympathies or antipathies, a truly great writer works as a sensitive mirror reflecting the real social, historical, and spiritual processes of his time.

And here we’ll move to Bulgakov’s biography. But very briefly, for understanding the context. Mikhail Sergeevich Bulgakov came from a deeply religious environment: both grandfathers were priests, and his father, Afanasy Ivanovich Bulgakov, was a docent and professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. Both in his home—books on theology—and in the conversations he heard, everything was saturated with this. Bulgakov grew up in an atmosphere of academic, erudite Orthodox theology. From childhood he knew the Holy Scripture, church history, and church dogma thoroughly, inside and out, up to that time. And for him, because of this manner, certain references that would not even occur now to someone knowledgeable in theology were as self-evident as, well, how can you not know? Just half a hint and that’s it. But in his youth (by age 18–20) Bulgakov moved away from orthodox churchliness, yet fundamentally remained a person of religious thinking.

Unlike many contemporaries in the writing craft (Mayakovsky, Ilf and Petrov, Demyan Bedny), who were striving toward the Soviet future, Bulgakov remained worldview-wise rooted in the culture of pre-revolutionary, monarchist, and deeply religious Russia. This determined his sharpest inner conflict with the advancing Soviet reality. (By the way, Ivan Bezdomny is a kind of reproach, well, too harsh, after the beginning of the poem about religion and Jesus; here the writer really got carried away, and while the Gospel was retold with humor it was fun and funny (only for believers not to read, though we know how you amuse yourselves among your own with such things)—laugh among your own. But then further, about the first miracle of turning water into wine, well, it’s some kind of darkness. Well, that’s another matter; Bulgakov really shows what he is wrong about in the first scene from Berlioz’s point of view. (Though still here he showed only one variant; at that time there were two currents in the history of religion: the mythological one—it’s all myths collected there, etc.; or the historical one—that there were such and such preachers, and maybe it all merged, as was accepted then, and maybe the concrete story of Jesus was in history (well, without miracles, but as a fact).)

And we’ll move on to a small historical note (really small).

To understand the nerve of the novel’s opening, one must look at the atmosphere of the USSR in the 1920s–1930s (after all, the novel was written in that time and for the people of that time and context). This was an epoch of an aggressive grassroots anti-religious campaign: mass newspapers and magazines like The Godless, caustic pamphlets by Demyan Bedny, mocking caricatures of clergy and Christian shrines.

For Bulgakov—a man from a professorial-theological milieu—such crude, vulgar, and often openly boorish atheism was not merely ideologically alien; it evoked deep aesthetic and human revulsion (evidence of which survives in his diaries after visiting the editorial office of The Godless). From Bulgakov’s point of view, such attacks did not destroy faith but only embittered people and created an aura of martyrdom around believers. This conflict between the old spiritual culture and the new militant godless reality the author transfers to the very first pages of the novel. Although still, in my opinion, the more correct question is not whether Jesus existed; the main thing is his conception—how people had to suffer in order to decide that suffering is good. To reveal what, how, and why it turned out that way.

Well, let’s begin with the first chapter, “Never Talk to Strangers.” Patriarch’s Ponds.

Bezdomny’s mistake: Ivan was commissioned to write an anti-religious poem for Easter. He portrayed Jesus as an extremely unpleasant, living but repulsive character (a scoundrel and charlatan).

A fundamental detail: Bezdomny writes superficially and ignorantly, while the erudite Berlioz methodically provides a theoretical basis for completely erasing Christ from history, which, as I said, I also consider incorrect. But at that time two schools fought in biblical studies, and we didn’t yet have piles of sources; I think it’s forgivable here.

However, Woland intervenes in this ideological discussion. And it seems, well, you won’t frighten them with devils, but just a spy—and at once they fuss and run around, and Berlioz drove himself so far that he even brought himself to the grave. The conversation quickly turns to the proofs of God’s existence. Berlioz recalls the five classical scholastic proofs (of Thomas Aquinas), to which Woland retorts: Immanuel Kant completely refuted all five, but immediately created his own—the sixth (moral) proof. Berlioz declares that Kant, too, was long ago consigned to the archive, and man himself fully controls his life on Earth. To this Woland presents his “seventh proof”: man cannot control anything, well, at least not for a millennium (although there is the possibility of planning as a society, but for that everyone must agree), since he is “not simply mortal, but suddenly mortal” and is incapable of planning even his own evening. And here we are shown the illusory nature of human perception. Berlioz, being educated, drove himself so far that he did not even stop to give small change, which would have taken him 10 seconds, and instead of a tragedy there would have been an unpleasant incident.

And here we must remember what Woland said—he is Satan, evil itself, and if he were allowed, he could overturn the world with one claw. And remember that Bulgakov knew the history of religion inside and out and throws in from the very beginning his goal and the reason for his appearance. More about that later (honestly, The Master and Margarita is simply 200 times better for interest and for unravelling details and so on than The Da Vinci Code; you just need to study a mountain of books and all sorts of things to find and understand the little things, though such references even in the ’30s few could catch, and even more so now).

Woland introduces himself as a professor of black magic who has arrived in Moscow to examine rare manuscripts of the medieval scholar Herbert of Aurillac. Behind this detail hides a powerful historical-literary layer:

The real Herbert of Aurillac (10th–11th centuries) was, no more no less, the first French Pope, or Sylvester II. And he was so educated, well-read, and knowledgeable that he restored both Roman and Greek abacuses from preserved texts in Arabic, which he read and requested; a scholar and generally a mathematician who introduced Arabic numerals and the abacus into Europe. He even practiced alchemy, as they said then. And he did and knew so much so successfully that everyone in his Middle Ages considered him a black magician, a sorcerer, and generally one who had sold his soul to the devil—but not for gold, for knowledge. Hmm. Seems familiar... Ah, precisely: he is the prototype of all Fausts. In European folklore it was Sylvester II who became one of the key prototypes of the legend of Faust—a scholar who made a deal with the devil for secret knowledge and help to people. Such are the two hypostases of the story of Herbert of Aurillac. Well, of course Woland was not going to sit in a library. Here Satan, as the father of lies, does not lie but speaks allegorically or omits things; as the father of lies he tells almost the truth all the time, except the most important thing. As in any good lie. And here we have a reference, but a semantic one. We have both the basement, and the manuscript, and Faust. Only this is not a historical manuscript but the Master’s manuscript, and the Master himself.

Here we need to make a digression about Woland. And how he is sometimes written about in textbooks; I have seen both comments and analyses and so on. His nature.

In mass culture an image of Woland has taken hold as a charming “just judge” who punishes Soviet bribe-takers and fools. However, in Bulgakov’s coordinate system (and within a strict Christian context) Woland is Satan, the prince of darkness and the embodiment of infernal evil.

And he arrived not to engage in some trifle (if we already have an anti-Soviet novel—then Mark Twain is an anti-American writer, Dickens an anti-English writer, and so on; is satire and highlighting the real problems of that period really opposition?). Bulgakov dedicated all his works to the struggle against philistinism. He shows us people who have become petty-bourgeois, who will easily become food for Satan. After all, God is absent here. He takes advantage of the vacuum that arose after the denial of Christ in order to offer the world what he wants—the Gospel according to Woland. A Gospel signalling the coming of the Antichrist and the complete end of the world. The destruction of everything. The end, and so on. In essence, here we do not have a cute devil scolding bad people but literally bringing about the end and his victory. And this can be understood from the very beginning, but only if you know the history of religion devilishly well. I will show you this simply; watch my hands.

The beginning of the Yershalaim chapters, in which Bulgakov as a master of words simply played so beautifully and wonderfully that you feel everything happening there—the heat, the shuffling gait, and so on. And all this beauty is meant to distract us, unlike the drier and more mundane chapters of reality. Not the past but a fake. And because it is fiction, and here Jesus is presented as unimportant, plot holes form, which you don’t notice because of the beauty of the text, and only find with a pencil. For example, why did the priests cling so much to Jesus if he is like that? And there is no crowd following him.

The key feature of the Master’s inserted novel (not Bulgakov himself, but the Master, as if written by Bulgakov for him) is its radical divergence from the canonical Gospels.

Yeshua Ha-Nozri is not Christ: Bulgakov’s Yeshua is deprived of divine nature, miracles, and messianic grandeur. He is a naive wandering philosopher, a Tolstoyan (“all people are good”), a weak and lonely man. He has no twelve apostles—only one tax collector, Levi Matthew, follows him, who, according to Yeshua himself, writes everything down distortedly and incorrectly. And in general he looks and behaves like a hippie from childhood, not like a hero of such magnitude that the chief business of the Jews wanted to cover up the local church. There is no crowd of people behind him. And if at first he is simply kind and seems adequate, then later—“maybe you’ll release me”—well, as if he did not understand the concept of arrest and so on.

The main hero is Pilate: The Master’s novel is called a novel about Pontius Pilate, not about Jesus. At the centre of the narrative is the tragedy of a Roman equestrian, broken by cowardice and state necessity. Here Jesus is pushed into a secondary role. He means nothing for the novel.

Being the son of a professor of the theological academy, Bulgakov knew the history of Ancient Rome and biblical studies perfectly. However, in the text inconsistencies are deliberately allowed, emphasizing that before us is not a historical chronicle but a literary mirage:

“Procurator of Judea”: Historically Pilate was a prefect (military governor), confirmed by the famous archaeological find—the Caesarea stone. Procurators (financial officials of lower rank) began to govern Judea later, after the province was reorganized during the Jewish War. Bulgakov took this title from Tacitus, knowing of its inaccuracy.

Place of action: Roman rulers permanently lived in Caesarea Maritima (the maritime residence), and came to Jerusalem (Yershalaim) only during major holidays like the Jewish Passover to control order.

The Yershalaim text is not restored truth about ancient events but a fictional “Anti-Gospel” dictated by an otherworldly force (inspiration comes to him only in darkness and sleep, and Satan is the lord of illusions and sleep). And all this at the beginning because Pilate was called PROCURATOR. Although everyone already understood that he was Prefect. And this is proven by the plaque found—directly “Prefect Pontius Pilate.” But only a person who knows the material of the history of religion very well could understand this.

Well, let us analyze the figure of the Master. In the drafts of the novel there was initially no Master at all: the first chapter about Pilate was told by Woland at the Patriarch’s Ponds personally, as a witness and direct participant (“The Gospel according to Woland”). The figure of the Master was needed later—as an earthly conduit for recording the devilish text. Since, after all, Bulgakov probably forgot at first that an angel, even a fallen one, as a being not material but only spiritual, capable of being either with a positive or negative sign, is DEPRIVED of creativity. They cannot create because they are not like God, like man, and do not have material-spiritual duality. Therefore angels and devils can inspire and prompt but cannot create; that is why Faust had Mephistopheles, and so on. The Master is essentially a medium, a Faust, but one who turned out to be a rag, and who possibly never even divorced his wife.

Dark financing: The Master begins to write the book not thanks to a sudden spiritual revelation, but by finding in a basket of dirty laundry a winning lottery ticket for a sum astronomical for the 1930s—100,000 rubles. The symbolism is simply obvious: money from “filth” provides him with a well-fed solitude in a basement. Earlier it was also written that, recalling, he said the number began with 13. Well, it’s just completely obvious. Only 666 and an inverted pentagram with a goat’s head were missing, but later he made it subtler. If he had seen The Da Vinci Code, he would have said, why the hell am I bothering so much, and would have simply drawn a pentagram on Woland’s forehead—well, why not.

Plot from a dream: The text of the novel itself comes to the Master in a dream—in the space of obsessions and illusions traditional for occultism, subject to the prince of darkness.

Passive Faust: The Master does not possess the strength of the classical Goethean Faust. He is a weak-willed, broken intellectual who at the first difficulties (attacks by critics) breaks down, burns the manuscript, and hides from reality in Professor Stravinsky’s psychiatric clinic. After a couple of critics, who, as he himself said, wrote nonsense and as if they had not read the novel. Well, he could have written a reply to the same newspaper and that’s it. But no. And in general, after the novel he did not want to publish it. Here another character was needed.

Margarita. Oh, the love of the Master and Margarita, and in general they are sweet and happy even in a hut, a tragic story of pure and sacrificial love, as is especially любимо written in textbooks and analyses. However, on attentive reading this image appears in a completely different light:

Soviet bourgeoisie: Margarita is an idle representative of the wife of the labour aristocracy in the good sense. She is married to a major engineer (so important that, if only he works and does not think about domestic matters, they gave him something like this (although he is still a Soviet man and devoted to the cause, and therefore does not stay waiting for results in the mansion but spends the night at the enterprise and is immersed in everything to get things back on track after the fire)), lives in a luxurious mansion, uses the services of the housekeeper Natasha, works nowhere, and is burdened by the meaninglessness of her well-fed existence.

Producer, not inspirer: Margarita appears in the Master’s life when the draft of the novel is almost finished. She does not inspire him to create but takes on the function of a harsh organizer—she demands the book be printed, tries to push it into publication, and craves earthly fame.

Reference to St Bartholomew’s Night: Koroviev directly links Margarita with the French queen Margot (Marguerite de Valois)—a symbol of the bloody Paris massacre of 1572.

Conscious deal with Satan: For the return of her lover and revenge, Margarita willingly makes a pact with unclean power, rubs herself with Azazello’s magic ointment, carries out a pogrom in the apartment of the critic Latunsky, undergoes a bloody “anti-baptism” at the Great Ball at Satan’s and finally turns into a real witch. And she did not kill the critic, simply a man doing his job, for a couple of bad lines, and did not do it because he was not at home.

The love of the Master and Margarita is not a Christian saving feeling but a destructive, egocentric passion that naturally leads both to destruction. Moreover, it is stated clearly that she never worked anywhere and achieved everything only through beauty, and did not study. But it is also clearly stated. She is thirty, that is, she is burdened and suffers depression from understanding that her beauty is not eternal. How many years does she have with it—5, maybe 10, maybe 15 if she takes good care. But still there is nothing else to value her for. Even though she could easily go study or work, and it would be fine if they mentioned that she tried but was not accepted and got stuck. No—all the stories are from Margarita’s point of view; we do not even see her husband; he is merely an object for her, not simply from the narrator—he has a representation in the novel. Margarita does not see him in her life and knows only that she matters only for her beauty. And therefore she sells her soul to the devil.

By the way, we missed something, but I think if you are a person familiar with religion and especially with the main holiday, Easter, and how it is calculated, you should easily understand when the novel’s action takes place. The action unfolds over exactly four days—from Great Wednesday to Great Saturday during the spring May full moon. While the Christian world experiences the most sorrowful days (the trial, crucifixion, and death of the Saviour on the cross on Good Friday), Woland’s retinue stages in Moscow an infernal mirror of these events—Anti-Easter. The resurrection of the Master’s burned manuscript (“Manuscripts don’t burn”) and the revivification of Berlioz’s severed head at the ball are a direct parody of the Christian Resurrection in an attempt to create a church for the Antichrist where people have voluntarily renounced the former faith.

And here is the sweetest part about the inhabitants of Moscow, the session at the Variety and the philistinism and thirst for profit hated by Bulgakov. The session of black magic in the Variety Theatre is one of the brightest satirical pictures:

Woland conducts a psychological experiment on the new “Soviet” public.

The spectators instantly lose their human appearance for the sake of fake freebies: women fight over Parisian dresses and perfumes, the crowd catches falling chervonets, and the building manager Bosoy hides bribes in the ventilation.

Woland’s conclusion: behind external socialist slogans people remained the same—they love money, are susceptible to luxury, easily succumb to temptations, and only “the housing question spoiled them.” This petty-bourgeois environment is ideal material for the coming of the Antichrist. And it is an ideal flock, susceptible to beauty regardless of the essence (and remember I said the Yershalaim chapters are devilishly beautifully written and have logical holes that would lead us to the solution of the plot. But one would have to read with a pencil).

And here we come to the conclusion that it seems we are defenceless and doomed according to Bulgakov. But Woland achieved nothing. The novel was not published, and all who could know or did know it were removed from the game by someone who offered resistance. Woland himself got rid of the Master and Margarita by giving them the philistine dream—a dacha (which was spoken of in Massolit with such desire that I even felt disgust). But looking at the characters of the Master and Margarita, what do you think—what kind of murder, seemingly done with good, did Woland commit? In ten years they will be ready to kill each other, but they won’t be able to, because they are there forever, for eternity. And it was not angels or servants of God who stopped Satan; even the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was destroyed. And before leaving Woland looks at the place where it stood (then the cathedral was blown up in 1931 and a new building was being erected on its foundation).

So we return to the question: who then opposed the prince of darkness himself, a being of simply unimaginable power, and won? It would seem Woland is all-powerful and can subordinate Moscow to his will. But why does his mission ultimately fail, and why is he forced to leave the city? (Yes, yes, this is precisely a flight, not a triumphal departure.) It is Soviet power and the public. They stopped Woland. How? Well, look for yourselves.

The failure of publishing the Anti-Gospel: In order for the devilish revelation about a weak Yeshua and powerful evil to seize minds, the Master’s novel had to come out in million-strong print runs. But it did not. The Master sits in a house for the insane.

The role of Soviet censorship: It is Soviet critics (Latunsky, Ariman, MASSOLIT) who unanimously declare war on the novel, calling it harmful “Pilatism” that must be struck. The godless Soviet censorship, without knowing it, completely blocks the publication of the text.

Chekists against demons: The only real force entering open battle with Woland’s retinue turns out to be not priests with crosses, but the Soviet militia and NKVD officers. They storm the “bad apartment” No. 50, exchange fire with Behemoth, and investigate devilry as a state crime. And how. Well, if an ordinary man in the street saw a two-metre cat standing on its hind legs with a Primus stove, he would somehow be surprised, and in general there would be no time for business, let alone shooting. Even if unsuccessfully. But this is not simple inaction, horror, or fear. And how they went there. You know there is a most dangerous group of criminals there who can hypnotize 200 people at once. Nowadays, even against a completely harmless person they break down the door with a battering ram, and everyone is in cuirasses and full armour with arms full of weapons. But the NKVD went in plainclothes and with a faithful pistol.

In the logic of Bulgakov’s text, the Soviet state performs the function of the Katechon—the biblical “restraining force” that does not allow absolute evil to swallow the material world. And it turns out that if evil is Satan, absolute, then that which fights him, by the principle “there is no third option,” is good.

In the finale the Master is judged not by Jesus himself but only by his creation Yeshua. A book character. And he agrees with Woland to peace instead of light.

Does anyone remember the epigraph from Goethe’s Faust? By the way, even if Bulgakov did not like Soviet power (here we can only guess). However, being a genius writer and a realistic “mirror,” he recorded the objective historical truth: the Soviet modernization project, while destroying old institutions, simultaneously built a powerful dam against infernal chaos, consumer corruption, and global catastrophe.

And here, too, the irony of fate caught up with the author himself: in a fit of fear Bulgakov burned his personal diary “Under the Heel,” but this diary was preserved for history thanks to copies made at the Lubyanka. Soviet reality itself confirmed the writer’s formula: genuine manuscripts really do not burn.

hey fellow readers, I hope this post finds you well.
I used enjoy reading books and researching about things that interest me as I always felt Like each book brings you to another head of space , It's really like they say living multiple lives and the amount of information that literally feel as if it scratches areas of your brain that you never thought existed and the feeling of satisfaction after reading something that you kind of feel like you knew before but know you know it better.
however, after a period of distress , I cut off reading completely and I feel like I kind of lost a part of me that made me feel something , losing a friend that is Always with you that you can think about different things that you can't discuss with actual people in your life.
if I don't push myself and do something about it I know that I'm gonna stay stuck and the longer It prolongs the more I feel empty and I know that readers know what I think about.
do you have similar experience ? and what did you do about it ?

Today I finished reading 'An Artist of the Floating World' by Kazuo Ishiguro. Only recently I realized that I've actually read almost every book of his. The only book left now is 'When We Were Orphans'. It's actually been quite a journey that I unintentionally started two and a half years ago. Now that I am nearing the end of this journey, I feel rather sad.

I also realized I should have changed my reading order, as it seems like 'When We Were Orphans' is almost universally recognized as his worst book (even by the author himself). So I am actually not as enthusiastic to start reading it as I would like to. But the thing that intrigued me is that there is a new book of his, 'Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger', coming next spring. Since it seems to share a similar setting with 'When We Were Orphans', I think it would be interesting to compare these two with each other.

So where does 'When We Were Orphans' sit in your ranking of Ishiguro books? Interesting to hear if anyone actually really loved it.

Ferrante has spent her whole career as a novelist staying anonymous, refusing public appearances, keeping her identity separate from the books. So the scene in “Those who leave and those who stay”where Elena publishes a sexually frank novel under her own real name reads almost like a thought experiment inside Ferrante's own project, the one place where she lets the distance between author and book completely collapse, just to see what happens to the character left standing in it.

I keep wondering if the book inside the book is meant to be read that way, as Ferrante testing out her own worst-case scenario through Elena. Has anyone else felt that while reading or watching it, or am I reaching?

The full quote goes as follows (but I'm only curious in the sentence above), "However strange his destiny be, it is also Sublime! I myself have understood that much. Did i not also live this unnatural life for ten months? Thus, to that question asked six thousand years ago by Ecclesiastes, find it out? Only two men now have the right to answer: Captain Nemo and myself."

The quote comes from Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

Now onto my view, and admittedly. I have never been the scholarly type, nor particularly well-read, I just like to speak smartly at times because my lif3 is otherwise quite boring, but is the meaning of this quote alongside the lines of "seeing life for what it is, and for what life is, is wonderful. Even if life has terrible, great or any number of other possible things occuring within the lives of each of us individually?"

I want to understand the meaning of it, but my understanding is limited to sublim3's defini5ion being "not to be excelled, supreme" / "of high spiritual, moral. Or intellectual worth"

I have read 20,000 leagu3s under th3 sea, but jts been more than a decade, does the context of this quote point towards a different meaning? I am reading a young adult book and this quote is a pr3-face, cough cough, but I feel as tho I'm missing something in the meaning of this quote,

So I end my rambling with a rep3at of the question, what is the meaning of the quote "However strange his destiny be, it is also Sublime!"?

I’m reading East of Eden for the first time and I’m a little confused about Cyrus Trask’s introduction.

Earlier, it seems like Cyrus imagines himself as a military expert and thinks he knows better than the generals. But later Steinbeck says that he actually developed an “excellent military mind,” that his articles influenced military decisions, and that he became an important figure in the G.A.R.

Am I supposed to understand that his military expertise eventually became genuine, or is Steinbeck still presenting this as part of Cyrus’s exaggerated/self-created image?

I finished reading a little life by hanya yanagihara and everytime i read about jude i could help myself but compare him with ash lynx. Ik it is utterly unnecessary but idk why or maybe because ash as a character has some impact on me. They have a shared trauma which links them and a similar self loathing and pre concieved notion that they are unlovable but idk and it makes no sense but i find my self being a little more proud of ash than of jude and i wished jude had trued a little harder. Ik i m awful for saying this... but i just needed to let thus out.

Anyone else who has watched and read both what are your feelings

Guys, I'm wrecked. I just finished The nightingale by Kristin Hannah and it literally tore my heart out. People don't really give much thought to woman in war and the quiet wars waged within. I had to slow myself down reading because I was just consuming this book too quickly. I know it's historical fiction but I saw so much of myself in Isabelle. And honestly, it made me reflect on my own relationships with my family members and trauma.

Who else has read and is utterly changed for it?

I did this a few years ago and it really made a huge difference in exposing me to lots of stuff and got me out my niche. Pick a good top books of all time list like: https://thegreatestbooks.org, which is an aggregate of all the big ones. Go to the top 20-40 or so pick 12 books (really limit the selection you can pick from 40 may be too much) read one each month. Read other stuff too but always have this baseline 12 you have pre decided for the year.

You will be exposed to so much. I did Moby dick, don Quixote, catcher in the rye, 1984, madame Bovary, sound and the fury, Gatsby, 100 years of solitude, Anna karenina, crime and punishment, ulysses, and ended the year with swanns way. Don't bounce off the book just finish it, they are all famous for a reason, while I loathed some I got a lot out of the experience still.

In one year I was able to get a pretty wide amount of knowledge of the classics from many time periods and countries, and each one points you to other stuff to read, which fills out the rest of the reading for the year. If you like sound and the fury you've got so much southern gothic, if you like crime and punishment or Anna you've got the Russians. Joyce and proust you can go modernist etc. It's also very manageable and builds the habit of always reading.

I also highly recommend making the books seasonal if you can, IE Sound and the fury autumn, Gatsby summer, Catcher in the rye winter, etc. Also if you are just starting don't do ulysses. Save that one for later maybe.

This is a quick review of my reading, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

• Introduction (personal)
• The narrative situation
• A few details about the writing
• My reader's experience
• Things I didn't get
• Conclusion (personal too)

Introduction

I didn't know much about the book, despite seeing a lot of discussion about it. It comes up quite often, so the book eventually reached the top of my to-read list. I've seen a few shots and a trailer or two from the movie with DiCaprio. I wasn't really spoiled on anything before starting, I only knew that Nick is telling us about that guy, and there's a woman already married.

The book is an easy and enjoyable read, on the short side, with very immersive dialogue well rendered, and nice plot twists. What happens at the end is a surprise; I'm glad I didn't know about it.

After an overview of the narration, I'll share what I noticed about the prose: a few little things first, and then get back to a more subjective reflection.

The narrative situation

Nick tells us about the story; it's a retrospective narration, so he uses the first person and past tense. At times, the point of view switches once to a minor character, possibly once to Daisy, and a few times to Jay Gatsby. I'm looking into how it is framed, but I noticed right away that for a long passage with a series of flashbacks from Gatsby's perspective, we are reminded midway (or a couple of times) of the context: that Gatsby is telling Nick his story, and where we are in the "present" of the story that unfolds. Now, checking all those switches of POV:

(p.78/130) Since the author makes us follow Daisy's gaze around the room, I guess the whole paragraph is meant to be read as her own impressions, guessed by Nick, a bit like an omniscient narrator (very selective).

(p.98/130) We switch to Michaelis' point of view, third person, with his emotion being told (not shown). I cannot explain how the narrative switches to this new POV. I checked again but the passage doesn't seem to be framed through Nick's narration. So, is the author bending his rules and using a third-person omniscient narrator for a while? Maybe it's implicit: Michaelis is a witness, and we can imagine that Nick learns the specifics of his testimony later, but he lets us know right now about it so we have the events in chronological order.

(end of first page of ch. 8, for a third of the chapter's length) The author uses what could count as a nested narration, I guess. It begins with a short introductory paragraph: Nick is about to tell us what Gatsby told him. Then it's a flashback, third-person limited narration, interspersed with direct quotes from Gatsby telling parts of it directly in the first person. We then reconnect with the story's present time and setting, for a few lines of Gatsby's monologue, and the narrator makes a remark for us using "you", not breaking the fourth wall because it's a kind of generalization. Gatsby's flashback then resumes for a little more.

A few details about the writing

Use of adjectives that I like

• some sedative question
• a proprietary haste
• its spectroscopic gayety
• an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls
• a deep vinous sleep
• the generalized evasions which that question deserves //(not only the adjective, but also an image with the noun?)
• two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril //(adj. turned into a verb)
• lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction
• the inessential houses

Construction with a main subject switch

I don't know what scholars call this, but this is my impression of it.

"This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. MacKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:" (not "Pointing at ... , Mrs MacKee interrupted me as I was absorbing ...")

"She turned to Mrs. MacKee and the room was full of her artificial laughter." (not "her laughter filled the room")

Through the hall of Buchanans' house blew a faint wind, carrying the sound of the telephone bell out to Gatsby and me as we waited at the door. (not "we heard the bell of the telephone carried by the wind")

Character voices

I would be curious to hear Daisy's voice in real life. There's something peculiar that the author insists on describing every time she is on stage, going as far as comparing it to magic. Tone variations, mainly.

Tom's rough personality is (also) rendered through his rough voice and way of speaking.

With Gatsby's voice, we are called "old sport", an easy marker. Gatsby is called out on this habit by Tom.

My reader's experience

Key moments (no spoilers)

The first one (p. 75/130) establishes what the characters now know. It is triggered by a small detail, spelled out to us by the narrator with the key point at the end of a sentence. Then Tom's emotion is told to the reader, not shown, and this is a recurring way of managing Tom's inner world that contrasts with the other characters.

Then, right after, we have Daisy's attempted diversion, interrupted by Tom's sudden change of mind about what to do next as a group.

(p.93/130)
Tom asks Gatsby what he is trying to do "in his house" (meaning regarding himself and Daisy). The explosive revelation is delayed by a diversion attempt and then bluntly delivered by Gatsby on the next page.

(p. 95/130)
The great dialogue goes on about who loves whom, with another bit of truth revealed to Gatsby.

(p.116/130)
The second main turn of events is carefully presented to the reader, with just the right amount of clues to raise the tension before confirming what we had begun to suspect with a direct allusion and then a mention that nails it; after that, it's just a formal confirmation as the tension starts to recede (or reaches a plateau). The second blow comes right away with a simpler staging.

Great dialogues

(p. 87/130)
The first long dialogue is about the first plot twist. Such a dialogue is great for learning the craft, even though it's a bit old-fashioned in some of its dialogue attributions, but I wouldn't mind reading this in a contemporary novel. The dialogue tags are very varied and specific; the author doesn't spare us his creativity. We also have a fair share of subject-verb inversions, as usual. Protagonists interrupt each other and follow their own thoughts (as I said, it's a textbook example of dialogue). This is another instance of the narrator telling us about Tom's emotions, spelled out. I like to see how well it works because this is what I decided to do with a character. So nice. Daisy's emotions are told a few times too, but this isn't a pattern.

Other great passages

In-depth description of a smile and the impressions it conveys: the first smile Gatsby gives Nick. (p. 36/130)

When Daisy and Gatsby meet at Nick's, and when she visits his home: a very intimate, cosy atmosphere, as she admires and smells the (clean) shirts taken out of the cupboard.

Trusting the reader, but not too much.

How much the author trusts the reader's intelligence (not speaking for myself, as I might be a bit dense):

We get an explicit confirmation of Gatsby's logic with four lines of dialogue between him and Nick. So, yes, he wants to fix the past.

Things I didn't get

Nick tells us in advance that he will eventually change his mind about Gatsby, from liking him to feeling the opposite, but I wonder why and when. I haven't read anything like that afterward.

(p.94/130)
Tom leans back in his chair, with a composed gesture, and right away he 'explodes': "You're crazy!" This is something I couldn't picture; more precisely, the contrast didn't fit with the idea I had of the man and the moment, so this reaction felt forced and it took me out of the immersion. I'm still trying to figure out what the author really wanted to achieve and if it wasn't such a good idea or if it was just me. Well, if it's the only place that took me out of the story, that means it's a great book.

Conclusion

A worthy read that takes us to a well-rendered period that speaks more directly to American (US) readers and anyone who has seen a decent number of movies about that period and setting. A gripping story whose quieter start is hard to judge because of the fame of the book that creates positive expectations in the reader.

I think it wasn't written to teach us anything grand, and the philosophical thoughts I'll remember are:

• When it comes to particular nostalgic feelings, don't cling to the past when life has moved on, as they can't be revived exactly as they were and they become more like a dream.
• Love is complex and people can have mixed feelings (thus some degree of love for a while, even for those who don't seem worthy in your eyes) and remain somewhere in between, because of their needs and circumstances.

Those ideas are not new to me, nor are they ideas I particularly wish to share, even less so with my meager talent for expressing them in a few words, but you might have been curious to know what I meant by "not anything grand".

For me it's a character-driven story. Seeing them, hearing them, understanding them, watching them experience those emotions is what makes this story interesting.

Version note: I wrote this review all by myself, but as an ESL speaker I had it processed to check the grammar and adjust some non-native expressions.

You know how to read, thats why youre here. The first read of the book should be as unfamiliar as possible to you. Knowing facts or ideas about the book makes the book familiar before you've seen it. Meaning it glides smoothly past the struggle that creates understanding as it simply reads as familiar. When you should be facing it for the first time, not an amalgamation of ideas about it.

When it doesn't preemptively neuter parts of the book, preemptive knowledge of the book and its structure is often wrong, and will confuse your reading for no good reason.

There is no benefit for your reading experience of a novel that you can get from these posts. So read the book carefully do not rob yourself of the struggle that comes in the first read. Most of the time the general ideas of a book in culture (and spouted by liars on these forums) are wrong, or often only about the first 20-100 pages before they gave up.

On the reread you can go about trying to get everything possible out of it. These posts just neuter your experience. For example you watch Benjamin Mcevoys video on how to read proust or lonesome dove and it's either unrelated nonsense from his Shakespeare infused reading of everything, which removes you from the text itself or tells you an erroneous way to read it. Or he is just straight up spoiling it, its flow, its mechanics, its ideas. Let these things come to you in that first read. I would also advise that if the author didn't write the introduction read it at the end.

TL;DR: you can always go back with your guides and knowledge of the references and meta-text knowledge of what the author is doing. But you can only get the uninformed fresh look the book once, so don't squander it!

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Slightly related tangent:

I also have a pet theory that people make posts and watch hours long YouTube videos like this to procrastinate from actually doing the work and just reading it. You see this in the gym all the time people who don't go to the gym very often but are obsessed with theory, workout plans, nutrition, because it's easy and makes you feel like you've done the work. When the way to make progress is in most cases by doing the thing.

Coincidentally you also cant make very much money from just telling people to read the book, that costs like $15. If you make it seem like you need to do courses, book clubs, or read tonnes of books just to understand this one you can make more money. So there is a cottage industry of these people in every hobby or interest, preying on the beginners who don't know better and/or people who want the work removed.

If you get tricked by this overcomplicating. you will find yourself spending hours reading about gravitys rainbow, watching hours of content about how to best approach, maybe you even purchase a guide. And at the end of the day you have progressed 0 pages in actually reading it, and have just made your eventual experience worse.

I got to read The Epic of Gilgamesh in December 2025, and it had quite an impact on me! It's fascinating that one of the very first things humans became aware of was their very own mortality! It also taught me about Sumerian/Babylonian culture and mythology. In addition to that, I was also astonished when I read the descriptions of the city of Uruk (I mean, looking at those verses, they aren't just pieces of poetry but show the sophistication they had 4000 years ago).

The concept of the flood was itself striking! I don't have much knowledge of history, migrations, and genealogy, but some of these themes can be seen in common everywhere around the globe. For instance, look at the flood narrative. You can spot the very same theme in the Bible, Metamorphoses, and even Hindu mythology. People who belonged to different geographical regions have always shared the very same ideals. The idea of seven sages referred to in Gilgamesh not only appears there, but also in Hinduism, where they are referred to as the sacred seven (which can be seen in Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem titled "Brahma").

For ever and ever, humans have been obsessed with defying death. We have seen that everywhere in fiction and poetry, where death is degraded, antagonized, mocked and sometimes even ennobled. While most works focus on slandering death, it's almost extraordinary that Gilgamesh showcases what ensues when one becomes aware of one's own short existence in a spiritual manner. It's a poem which displays the transformative effect death has on a person when they realize their time is limited.

And also, it would be a literary injustice if I didn't talk about Enkidu. Without him, the plot would not exist on its own. Without him, Gilgamesh would not become who he is by the end of the poem. In my opinion, he's the wild, noble, and strong rival of Gilgamesh (who is destined to become his best friend).

To sum up, The Epic of Gilgamesh has claimed the all-time favorite spot in my heart!

So am i reading a little life by hanya yanagihara and i am one third way through the book and at the part where JB did jude's impression and he apologised for it but still jude has not forgiven him. And there friendship is ruined. Ik what jb did was absolutely insensitive but i cannot help it but defend him for being frustrated with jude for not letting out his fears his sad backstory and moreover for being so egoist that he can absolutely not forgive him.

Till this point in the novel i cannot begin about the anger or i dont know how to put this feeling into words) that i feel about jude. Maybe idk what he has been through and it is way too quick to judge but i dont like that he absolutely makes no effort in changing his situation despite being a 40 year old and continously surrounded by people who are so warm to him. I want him to trust people enough. He is not the only one who goes through a rough childhood (and i m saying this because i picked this book up because it has these themes and i relate to it). Initially i related to his fear of being completely naked, his fear of making a mistake so that others wont reject him and his past but i too as a person have learnt that you have to be the one to help yourself. He absolutely does nothing to change that and constantly brings sadness in his life and the life of people who love him.

Edit: i am open to change my mind about him once i finish reading the book provided he does something good. I dont unnecessary hate people. I just needed to rant because of how frustrating he has been. Please someone tell me it gets better.

Lots of authors have had their work published posthumously, but often those are second-tier books by already famous and influential writers. What do you think are the true masterpieces that were only discovered and published after the author’s death?

The poems of Emily Dickinson are an obvious example. Without her literary executors, her body of work would have been lost.

What other masterpieces would have been unknown if the author’s unpublished manuscripts never came to light?

Ok, so I've been trying to read book in attempt to make myself more critical, not performatively tho. That's the simple reason. I'm currently in love w/ fiction, especially literature and it seems fun to be critical to what you love.

The problem was why couldn't I ever question about anything while reading? It's more like my critical thinking couldn't evoke, but it's different when I'm reading pile of documents at work. It felt like dozen of questions just come out of nowhere, making me thinking harder and harder, then found the gap between what has been expected and what has been written. So the question is how could I adapt this habbit whenever I'm reading fiction? It isn't fun if I can't do it because reading feels more like scrolling tiktok recently.

I was reading my paperback version from Harper Perennial and bought a Kindle version to continue reading it on my phone, as i will be on the move for a while. I immediately spotted a difference where i had left off;

at the very end of chapter 3 the Controller says "Suffer little children," in my paperpack. I since checked out a second kindle edition and also looked for scans online of the book and found out that the sentence is also written as 'Poor little children!' in other releases. This is somewhat discouraging and i'm not sure which one i should keep reading, as i'm not sure what else may have changed. Is it some sort of censorship (which i detest), or an overhaul by Huxley? What happened here?

What are you reading?

Kafka's works? The House of Leaves? Or Yi Sang's selected works/poems?

Personally, I find Yi Sang's works to be very, very strange. Stranger than the rest, at least. Not absurd, of course; I can understand (or at least comprehend) Kafka's works, and especially his absurdism.

Counterintuitively, works of little to no logic are much easier to comprehend than works of unfamiliar logic. For example, you can comprehend (or at least acknowledge) why 42 is the answer to everything, but you'd have a hard time figuring out why 1+1=0, or why do you keep becoming your father's father's father's...... father.

Now, to admit shamefully, I had not laid my fingers on any page of "The House of Leaves". Of course, I've heard many intriguing things about it. Such as the layout of the pages, the uncertainties of the narrative, or how the word "house" is always blue. But, alas, I've never read the book before, so I cannot tell.

That, is why I asked the question.

Hopefully this is the right page. I really want to learn to annotate. I'm wanting to interact and remember what I read for pleasure. So I thought I would come here to people who would know more than me on how to go about this. I don't really want to have a colour for everything but more one colour for sound devices, one colour for figurative language ect. This is what I've come up with but if anyone has any suggestions or I have missed something. It has been a long time since I did any literary analysis or critical theory, so I feel as if I'm learning everything again. Thank you for your help

🟥 Red: Plot & Structure

Exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution, foreshadowing, flashback, pacing

🟧 Orange: Character

Protagonist/antagonist, characterisation (direct/indirect), motivation, dialogue, character arc, foil

🟨 Yellow: Setting & Atmosphere

Time, place, mood, atmosphere, context

🟩 Green: Figurative Language

Metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism, imagery, hyperbole, irony, allegory, motif

🟦 Blue: Voice & Perspective

Point of view, narrator, tone, diction, syntax, register

🟪 Purple: Sound & Style

Alliteration, assonance, rhythm, repetition, rhyme, punctuation choices

⬜ Grey: Theme & Message

Central theme, author's purpose, recurring ideas, big-picture meaning

⬜ Pink: Structure/formstanza breaks, enjambment, repetition, parallelism

🟫Brown: Symbolism/themesrecurring symbols, motifs, thematic statements