What are some books that you think would become /lit/ staples if they were more read? Benjamin Constant's Adolphe is about a young man who, feeling alienated from society, falls in love with an older woman. The woman reciprocates and they both get into an illicit relationship. However, the relationship comes at the cost of further isolating themselves from everyone they know. The book is quite famous for eschewing conventional descriptions of aspects such as exteriors for more detailed looks into emotions and state of mind. I personally really enjoyed it and it's one of the best of the romantic/byronic hero books that were popular during the 19th century. /lit/ would certainly get a kick out of it for its subject matter, themes, and prose.

>>21949743 (OP)

Thanks anon I’ll check it out. I wish more anons knew about Restif. He was a contemporary (and enemy) of the Marquis de Sade who was obsessed with pretty girls feet. His autobiography is hilarious and touching. There are lots of amusing incidents. As a boy he is so sensitive that being tickled by the older girls in his village causes him to faint, and everyone assumes they beat him. He also apparently keeps fucking older women as a shota and, by his estimation, was already a father at 10 years old. He ends up going to be educated in a Jansenist monastery, but gets kicked out when they discover a long poem he’d written in Latin about all the village girls being part of a harem for his personal enjoyment. He has a crush on one girl his entire life but never speaks to her. He gets seasick on a boat but is calmed by the sight of a young girl’s pretty shoes. He blushes when he sees rows of women’s shoes in shop windows, etc. His boyhood recollections of the countryside, and the animals, and the innocent friendships of the village children, which he has to leave behind, are extremely moving.



The Ancient Greek poet Theognis is under-rated here. Extreme, curmudgeonly, rancorous rants about the evils of democracy and progress and the masses, combined with poems about being in love with pretty boys and seething when he gets rejected by them. A man of extreme and petty emotions who is nonetheless very charming and likeable precisely because of the intensity of his feelings, and the skill and beauty with which he communicates them. Like a character in Dostoevsky, or Bloy

I will never stop shilling this book. It's amazing.

Adolphe, Werther, René, Obermann, the list goes on

Me,

Alexis Zorbas and Christ Recrucified. Both masterpieces that deal with themes /lit/ usually talks over and over about in other novels. But I'm too lazy to shill them.

Schlock.

>René

Will you tell me the whole title? I'm always glad to check out books I'm unfamiliar with when recommended here, but I'm not sure what it is.

>Will you tell me the whole title?

That's literally the whole title. Author is Chateaubriand

I've been really impressed with this book...
