Well, I read this, Veeky Forums

Well, I read this, Veeky Forums.

Cozy little fuck it was.

Pretty boring and cliche, though. Almost vapidly so. There were some nice thoughts involved but why is this considered a great work of literature?

Because it's a cutesy little bridge between West and East.

even the buddha wasn't succinct enough in his words
the real progeny has been the direct transmission
the shallow approximation has been the scripture

as yet today, nobody really knows the buddha, nor christ, nor zoroaster

all we have are artifacts, relics of language
the reality is submerged, we can only hope to re-awaken it in ourselves through some crisis of personality which is beyond our control and yet our inevitable fate

it's meant for the likes of r*ddit population, what'd you expect

it has historical importance as one of the first feel-good type "just be yourself", "experience stuff", "do whatever you want", "travel", "do new things", "we all connected dude", "live in the moment" western misreadings of eastern philosophy that now are everywhere in our decadent society, basically proto-Paulo Coelho

this probably ices the matter

Wha's wrong with Infinite Jest, 1984 or Hitchhikers Guide?

>cliche
in what way

In this thread... semi-retarded Veeky Forums users judge classic literature from the /pol/tard perspective.

it's not a classic, it's a cult classic if anything, which basically means meme classic

Veeky Forums has 'ebook vs paper' arguments, frequently

>why is this considered a great work of literature?
Because it's not.

Few books illustrate what presence or consciousness is and the part played by stillness, silence, and meditation.
Siddhartha can think, fast, and meditate, but still gets trapped by the ego. Those are not what redeems him.
See also: Doors of Perception, The Power of Now.

Because the structure is perfect and it captures an entire life in its small page length. The entire story could be about Hitler's ascension instead of Siddhartha and still be powerful if it kept the same structure and poetic heft.

There was little communication between the cultures of East and West at the time he wrote this and so it was a novelty. It stayed because it's essentially a new-age fell-good with a free-living hippy-buddha figure that fucks whores, runs a business, gets rich, etc.

Welcome to Veeky Forums.

>Be the golden child. Perfect in every way. Everyone loves and adores you
>Leave home trying to figure yourself out practicing different philosomemes
>Meet a hoe and a merchant and take them on as mentors
>30 YEARS LATER
>"I'm rich but I fucking hate my life ;_;"
>Run away to go drown yourself
>Dude the river, it talks. Woah
>This ferry guy is a total bro
>Chill out. I'm sure my runaway kid will find someone to look after him.

I'm reading steppenwolf now. I'm finding the prose less than engaging but I like the idea of conceiving of a personality as a cpmposite of many different components. I can't tell if I'm supposed to identify with the steppenwolf because of my own isolation or mock him for having an unhealthy coping strategy

You're not supposed to read it until you're 50 years old.

What should I read for the next 23 years?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the essays of Loren Eiseley

the doctrine of awakening - julius evola

kek explain

please do not tarnish the count

This was me when I was about to read the book.

>shitting on Pratchett
>shitting on the Count
Go fuck yourself

Siddharta is a comfy book, but you should read Steppenwolf if you want a real pill.

>“He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.”

LSD

>Holden complains too much
The truest mark of a pleb

I recently ended up in the car of a young woman who had a copy of Steppenwolf in the back seat. I asked her what she thought of it, she said she liked it. I was about to ask if it wasn't an edgy fictitious exploration of trite Nietzscheanism, but before I could, she said, "Siddhartha is my favorite book."

I'm glad I did not spend very long there.

Mushrooms, you mean.

>The Power of Now
While that's a good intro to mindfulness and the like, I highly recommend going deeper.

It came out in 1922 faggot. muh cliche. I don't even like it that much but jeeez Christ mate.

My thoughts exactly desu.

How can I?

I hear 'The Book Of Not Knowing' is pretty good.

Wow, 1922? Books were invented in like, 1880 or something probably so that is a good point.