How is this so good

no. NO. no no no no no no. I read that entire shitstain of a book, following a douchenugget of a character and that's how it ended? that's the big fucking ending? IT WAS THE FUCKING EQUIVALENT TO A FRENCH HAREM ANIME. it was a fucking rushed and incompetent end to a shitty, overrated, plebfed book.

You're the "douche-nugget". It's common courtesy around here to not spoil the endings.
Julian is a lot like Veeky Forums. Only he's got the talent and ambition.
And you seem to loath the romance portions. Comparing it to your anime, pff. Keep in mind the year it was written.
You are the worst person on the board right now.

its a meme u dipshits. a guy always does this at red and black threads

I always reckoned Argento was pushing it that people would get that mad about Stendhal in any form, but here we are.

Oh. I've only been coming Veeky Forums since year 2.
So you're just echoing some long gone autist and spoiling the book in the process.
It's a new, forced, shit meme.

you go, asia

I no go Asia. Never been. (Spend all my time on here)

nah, i'm the original autist.

book sucks. and i'm glad it's spoiled for you. you shouldn't even be here if you haven't read it anyway. what the fuck possible conversation could you have about it if you haven't read it, you insufferable pleb? fucking shitting the bed whining over a terrible c-class novel that has an ending that's as cohesive and sensible as a pollock painting. guess what, anna karenina tosses herself under a train.

>English is my second language: The post.

>Mentality of the Modern U.S.A. : The Post.

>I'm an unashamed pleb: The post.

Asia Argento is Dario Argento's daughter and starred in his movie Stendhal Syndrome

I actually loved the book but I agree with Autismo here that the ending was kind of underwhelming. I was surprised by the fact that I just did not give a fuck about Julien's death and the emotional impact his severed head should have had on me but didn't. In fact, Julien is a huge fucking asshole. He's so antihero he becomes, paradoxically, the villain of the book. Definitely ahead of its time, though, and a fucking wonderful reading experience.

>guess what, anna karenina tosses herself under a train.

kek, i love you man

oh, sure, the book itself wasn't horrible, but just the treatment of the characters was clumsy and irresponsible to the point that it made me despise the entire novel, i was numb to any of the flavors that had been coaxed out by stendhal to begin with due to that shit ending.

i mean, the guy even had a part that essentially said "and all the chicks in the courtroom wanted his big french cock". ffs.

I read the book. The rude spoiling you're doing goes to the OP

>Julien is a huge fucking asshole
Exactly why lit should read it. Of course he was an asshole. Veeky Forums is filled with assholes!. The original Napoleon complex, French existentialism, implicit sex, peeking at a Marxist critique of the liberal's materialist world. Three dimensional characters throughout, including the two female leads. and the media's superstardom effect.
"Oh, but I didn't care about Julien at the end." This is intentional! He's a cad with no real aim in life, about to die.

It out does Camus' Stranger.

I look forward to it.

>three dimensional characters throughout
>literally every female character in the book wants to ride on his french dong
>none of them have any volition other than "how will i manage to fuck the gloomy edgemeister?"

I actually ADMIRE how unlikable Julien is in that (as you say) it outdoes Camus by having an asshole as a hero --- the greatest antihero of literature, a very well-developed hero who isn't a hero at all and in fact a scoundrel. But the ending itself does leave something to be criticized in how cold it leaves the reader while trying at an almost melodramatic and pathos-filled excess. IDK man.

Life is cold. One day you're alive, all melodramatic, the next day you're dead.
It's a weird book and very daring for its day.

I'm sorry, really, but some people get more sex than you. Julien is handsome and ambitious. This turns some women on.

>he thinks a character is an alpha because the author wrote a self insert fantasy novel and made all the women want his dick

cmon pal, gonna have to try harder than that.

Did Stendhal really get that much sex, by that age, with that caliber of pussy?
Self-insert? Like all authors, you take a little bit of yourself and other parts from elsewhere. I have dozens of characters that I share slight aspects with but they're all very unlike me.
Novels are all fantasy. And this romantic tragedy left its MC dead for a reason.

well, considering the guy died of syphilis or its treatment, and was obsessed with his own sexual conquests, then it's not so hard to believe it's a self insert.
>i have dozens of characters
so you're not just a pleb but a pleb writer, eh? i imagine you're impotent because you can't even see through a clumsy author like stendhal.

Stendahl based as fuck

>Feigns superiority
>Reads contemporary clumsy authors like DFW

>Reads DFW
oh lord, do you not know me. I fucking shit all over DFW at every opportunity I get. I'm glad that fucker is dead, trying to usher in a new era of art, and how? by fucking writing a steaming pile of shit that exemplifies everything he criticized? oh, what's that? he was just being ironic? well, that's two strikes against him. fucking stoopsitting faggot.

Nah, I like Gaddis though, judge that as you will. Plus, Tolstoy is a hack.

Look, just because I criticize your favorite frenchy faggot, doesn't mean I hate literature from that era. (I assume you're the same person) I just worry that your analysis of me is so wrong that I wonder what your characters might develop into at the expense of your naivete. God bless!

Stendhal sucks

Y tho

y not

Cuz it's good.

no it int

Which takes us back to the original question, posed here You're just being a contrarian fuck.
If you're the guy from above, all you/he revealed was his snobbery. Which is surely fake or a disguise, this is Veeky Forums after all.

regardless of anything you say, it still sucks. fight it all you want, pleb.

did anyone else think charterhouse of parma was a total turd
i did look it up later though and it does seem like the translation might not have been good?
is the red and the black a lot better than charterhouse or about the same?

I read Burton Raffel's Red and the Black from Modern Library. Nice notes every once in a while. It felt so modern, but that couldn't have been just due to the translation.
Which CoP did you read? Been considering getting this

>pleb.
Royalists. Pff.

How come you guys hate Julien so much? I liked his autism

mm, i forget which edition

I've thought about this too -- the appeal of the book almost defies explanation. Everything Stendhal did was formally messy, with sort of a tossed-off quality, like he wasn't even trying, but still somehow his books are better than those that contemporary writers spend years and years laboring over -- Sad!

The Red And The Black is one of the most cliched novels I've ever read (anonymous letters, midnight trysts, forbidden love, this was old hat even in the 19th century) but also one of the best. This is because Stendhal had SPIRIT. What this means no one knows (he comes off like kind of a dick in his biographies) but the work speaks for itself.

>pff
>Pff.

fucking plebs, i gotta say, it's a god damn shame dealing with you fellers.

yeah, it speaks for itself as a pile of horse dung

these are the people who sustain the illusion that the platitude plenipotentiary that is Anna Karenina is worth a god damn. They even recognize that it's utterly drab bullshit without any redeeming qualities, empty and worthless, and still they claim it's a grand work of peerless art. It's incredible that these people are willing to profess these claims, and suffer to pretend such inane opinions, though i do give them the benefit of the doubt in that it's a pretended opinion to appease the naysayers of their intellectual stations. no, these books aren't good. they're utterly worthless representations of useless aristocratic frippery, books about people who are empty, who have never lived, and even own flat mirrors with more astounding depth than themselves.

I sure hope you guys don't do this, read this junk and think it's worth a damn.

>Entertaining novel
>It is horse dung for plebs!
>useless aristocratic frippery
What are you even?

>books about people who are empty
THAT I addressed above. It's critique of capitalism at such an early stage and it's Napoleonic character falling into an existential trap. It has a heart. It has meaning. Meaning that goes beyond it's sordid romances.

LOL yeah you're smarter than all the people who have kept Stendhal and Tolstoy in the canon all these years. Sounds like you're letting your aesthetic faculties get weighed down by

>muh formal theories of art
>muh theories of economics

as if wordy faggots like yourself can cast a spell (MAGIC MISSILE) to instantly negate a century or so of more or less universally-held opinions. As Pushkin once said to Gogol, the merit of a literary work lies not in its formal perfection but in the amount of humanity it contains.

But (taking a wild guess here) you don't believe in a vague and "romanticized" conception of humanity because you've no doubt figured it all out for yourself.

What is it with all this capitalism stuff? Are you all in (((college))) or something?

>the author is a manwhore
>i-it's supposed to have lifeless and sociopathic characters, i promise!

yuhuh. that first thing you said though, that really hit the nail on the head that you simply won't ever understand. "what are you even". you'll never know because you don't know people.
>i dint mean it lak dat
i know you didn't. it's called twisting your words and using them against you.

it's not about being smarter when you can call a pile of shit a pile of shit, it's just taking off the weight of opinion that has been thrust upon me by others. I have my own mind and can perceive things of my own volition, and so doing, i claim on high that at least these two authors are full of hot air and lack any discernible talent. funny though, you mention pushkin rebuking gogol, when gogol practically drips with it, as does pushkin. if only the francofag tolstoy and stendhal could have taken lessons from these two great authors, i wouldn't have to trouble myself with your ilk.

>A book discussion on Veeky Forums

Guys, this is not the place for that.

Capitalism is corrupting and killing us, user. All your whining can be traced back to it.

I'm personally well past college age.

>you'll never know because you don't know people.
I don't know YOU because you're anonymous and hiding from me/us, with all this other blather.

>ilk

>manwhore

Again, seems like you're now letting moral judgments get in the way of your aesthetic receptivity. Rather Tolstoyan tbqhwy.

>All your whining
I meant to say all of the whining from Veeky Forums froggers and pol types. sorry.

>conflating anons
another example of not knowing people, can't tell one from another.
>aesthetic receptivity
>and I'M the fedora here
if you had looked at the next statement, you would have understood the reason for using "manwhore". The author was a depthless manwhore and he wrote what he knew. If you're satisfied with that kind of dull shit, be my guest, but I'm still going to call it dull shit.

Word, you seem alright, unlike that fag who doesn't like Stendhal. What I'm trying to say is that for all Stendhal's raw talent I don't think he was that cerebral. If his novel was a critique of capitalism rather than just a revolt against authority in general he pretty much would have come out and said so.

>raw talent
you probably have worms now, user. shoulda cooked the books first.

pff.

Hey question, has anyone read this in the original French? How difficult is it? Everything I've read in French so far is somewhat contemporary and hasn't been too difficult so far. How big of a leap in difficulty would this be compared to something like Houellebecq?

This book sounds like it would throw me into a deep depression desu.

I report posts like these, just letting you know.

>tfw no gf who loves you enough to bury your severed head

Post your favourite writers

Nietzsche
Pynchon
Stirner
Orwell
Marx

Ebik meem

oh i dunno, Dante, Gogol, Dosty, Joyce, Gaddis, Bely, Melville,

and some lesser favorites, but still ones i like, Borges, Rabelais, Cervantes, Lesage. I guess those would be my favorites overall. I'm a slow reader, unfortunately.

What other contrarian opinions do you have?

Not much, really. I think those are the main ones I've developed overall. I don't really feel that way to be contrarian, I just don't always find myself falling into place with some of the common perceptions. I don't think my opinions are anything special anyway. Oh, I know one, I think Nabokov's criticisms were actually satire on literary critics themselves, and his essays were just another one of his silly stories. Also, Pnin sucked.

I was thinking about what that user was saying about aesthetics, and I do think I can appreciate a pretty picture, but if that picture doesn't depict something I find pleasurable, no matter how much I respect the technical ability of the creator, say, a gracious landscape containing varied mounds of dogshit, I'm still going to be really unhappy with it, since it's fucking dogshit. I find when the aesthetics find themselves mingling with a beautiful concept, that's when I can't help but enjoy a work of art.

It's not, and virtually everyone hates it. Ask any native French, they'll likely tell you they had to read it for school and detested it.

>Ask any native French, they'll likely tell you they had to read it for school and detested
...what are you doing?

You're a special kind of troll my friend—one who doesn't even realize he lives under a bridge and badgers passersby with a shit covered stick, incoherently slinging snaggletoothed slurs like a justifiably dismissed Alex Jones

if that is so, at least i am not a pleb such as yourself.

Read that back to yourself and tell me if it makes sense: 'if I am an unaware shitposting moron, then at least I'm not a pleb like you, user'

So basically you're either a self-aware shitposter who knows he's spouting garbage, which is fine I guess, or that you literally have no clue your opinions make gingivitis seem intelligent next to you and that that somehow makes you 'at least not a pleb'. Having more opinions than you can handle doesn't make you smart user, just like having more kids doesn't make you a better parent; usually it's quite the opposite

or it's possible that it's neither, and I am not an unaware shitposting moron, but someone with an opinion contrary to your own.

besides, if i'm such a dipshit without any sense behind his opinions, why bother wasting your time with me? I suppose it's fair though, I claim the people who are in love with that trash literature are either ignorant or willfully ignorant, and you merely echo my insult towards them. I don't particularly care what you think. That's part of having my own will, friend. I don't need you to accept what I say. You have a nice day!

Yeah I mean I wasn't trying to be mean or malign—I was just responding to what I perceived to be a profound case of "wut is he doing"

And like, I know unless the discussion concerns literal facts no one can objectively be 'wrong' about literature, but when it comes down to it I think the whole 'subjectivity of aesthetic value' thing can only be stretched so far before it becomes blatantly wrong—almost like Hooke's law for artistic opinion

>I claim the people who are in love with that trash literature are either ignorant or willfully ignorant

Said the total plebeian on ashitty anime board full of shit-poster, frog-posters, perverts, and other assorted folks who he deems below him.

>I don't particularly care what you think.
Then let the children have their candy in peace, you complete fool.

Well, I'm not sure what Hooke's law is, but taken from context, i think you misunderstood my position on aesthetics. I say that aesthetic value is all fine and dandy as a piece of the whole in the art, but if the subject of the work is something that I don't have any interest in or feel isn't sufficiently "deep" to match any depth within the aesthetic prowess, I feel a glaring unevenness throughout the work. hence the whole "if you take a picture of shit, no matter how technically brilliant the medium is, it's still a picture of shit" thing. likewise if there is an incredible depth to the subject, but the worksmanship is shoddy. I don't think it's such a horrible opinion to say that for this or that work there is an intolerable unevenness that rips me from the work. Obviously I've been melodramatic, but that's Veeky Forums sometimes. I'll even give you an example in terms of tolstoy. throughout the story, I felt that the subject matter was quite dull, and unsavory in that it directly follows the account of an aristocratic relationship, however, his writing and technical account of the relationship itself is brilliant. It never struck me so well as during Levin's scenes, namely the ode to turgenev's dog, and the grass mowing scene, not simply because of the contrast between aristocracy and peasantry, but rather the feeling of reality breaching the story itself, the unshakable feeling that it wasn't levin mowing, but tolstoy himself. That short portion was greater for its evenness, than the entirety of the rest of the novel, to the point that the rest was sour. For the red and the black, I just consider it an imperfect bildungsroman. not slipping in a technical feat within the writing itself (the man to be built is never built, but rather remains consistently incompetent), but also all around missing a fulfillment of an intriguing cast of characters or setting, and namely an utterly unconvincing "protagonist" gives an evenness of shit. something that i could have never read and never missed. Whether or not this is a well thought out or popular opinion, I won't say. It's mine though. I don't think it's a bad one, either.

>Then let the children have their candy in peace, you complete fool.

no.

I see. Weak troll, must have his candy. Taunting people with his false sense of superiority, brings him his jollies and perhaps his life's meaning.

Is this what the trixter is reduced to? Or am I mistaken again?

yep, you got me! good job.

Hooke's law states that the force needed to extend a spring is proportional to its distance...until a certain point, after that point the spring warps, stretches, breaks, and essentially decoheres, much like many people's opinions, of which yours seems to simply be 'I didn't like the book.' That's fine, but to say that the subject matter of Anna Karenina isn't 'sufficiently deep' isn't really a valid criticism, because then you're implying that the 'depth' of a book's subject matter directly correlates to your liking it. Which makes me wonder, what is deep subject matter for you? And if you didn't like the majority of the book, apart from the very far-in bucolic Levin scenes which in contrast somehow further spoil the rest of the book for you, then why keep reading it? 800 pages is a long time to be bored. And I haven't read The Red and the Black, but it being an 'imperfect bildungsroman' also isn't a real criticism either. You could literally say that about anything because nothing is a perfect anything. And again, you seem to praise the 'technical feat' of the writing but deride everything else still having wasted time to finish it? Honestly it just seems like you don't value—and I don't mean to sound like a douche—but that you don't value prose nearly as much as plot, character development, etc. which is fine, I just don't get why you seem to have spent so much time disliking something

well, depth is a hard thing to describe, i was trying to do so with the depiction of levin's mowing, but i don't think I managed, considering your response. Depth in my mind is the realistic nature of the characters, how well the motivations of the author are masked within the puppet of the character. For me, when the author is trying to hide himself, and failing at it, it breaks my immersion in the story, the themes, the plot, even the aesthetics. everything. When levin's mowing scene appeared, it was a breath of fresh air, not because it was a skillfully painted character, but because the author said fuck it and just let himself flood through without trying to use puppets. It was almost like reading a journal entry of the author in the middle of a soap opera of little relevance. It's interesting that you ask me why I spent so much time on these, I just didn't really want to form an opinion on these novels before I had given them their fair shake. Despite my railing against the popular opinion as evidenced in this thread, I do trust in people enough to take their word for it, that there was something of merit within this book or that, so i read it, not to be accepted by this person or that, but a desire to enjoy something the same way someone else does, to be able to appreciate it. You're right in essence that I prefer characters, plot, story and all that, yes, I prefer those things over aesthetics, but it goes back even to why I didn't like AK overall, hell, why I didn't even like AK herself, because she was a pretty, empty thing. I don't fault people too much for liking wordplay, but I can't help but be disappointed when it takes the place of genuine depictions of emotion, or when a moment is captured in its entirety. Prose has an essential part to play, but if it's just prose, it's worthless to me. If other people like that, It's fine.

yes, the red and the black was a waste of time, I don't regret it, but I would rather have never read it, but because I wanted to squeeze out that little nugget of pleasure that other people seemed to get, my envy drove me forth through the pages. If you want me to say that I should like a poor bildungsroman since none of them are perfect is hardly a good counter against the initial complaint.

If you want to break down what I value, that's fine too. I do it to others, and I expect them to at length as they desire. I'm not going to cry when the bees try to sting me after poking their hive a bit.

plus, sometimes it's nice to exercise dislike. not for the sheer contrarian nature of it all, but just to know that there's something that can influence you to feel that way. it helps me find more of myself to hear what i think in opposition to a book. who knows. yeah, in the end, it all boils down to "i didn't like the book". my opinion is mine, and it's not objectively true or anything like that. the only merit it has is that it's honest and it's my own.

Anna Karenina the character is the worst part of that book tbqh. Maybe try War and Peace? It's far superior in every way.

Still don't know what you're on about but respect for Dante, Rabelais, Gogol, etc.

I love this thread. This is what I come to Veeky Forums for. I don't even know who Stendhal is.

i've been warming up to the idea of reading w&p. i'm going through the russians again, filling up gaps, and rereading things, so i'll probably swing by tolstoy again. i doubt it'll be a waste of time if i do.

plebs, the lot of yous

Good stuff, user. Check it out.

And here comes the contrarian troll

no, he should check it out, you're right, so he can know the pain i have suffered at the hands of your plebby worship. to know for himself that i was right the whole time, he will wake up in a sweat after seeing pregnant women hobble their way up mountains and scenes of horrible zombies hugging children in a last embrace. no, he should suffer as i have suffered, it will be his rebirth, his eyes shall finally be opened.

>his language is a mish mash of whatever the fuck was used at the time and became the most talked language because
even a donkey ass could talk English if he had diarrhea

>i only find beauty in beauty
spoken like a true classicist, not that there is anything wrong with it

hee haw.

heh. i guess you're right. shouldn't have rushed that thought so much.