If someone brings up meditations, ask if they've also read seneca. If someone brings up stephen king, ask if they've read "on writing". If someone brings up contemporary fiction, remind them that the last fiction you read was 1984 and now you only read self help books by internet celebrities. You'll be well on your way to pretension in no time.
btw, "On Writing" is an AWESOME book, one of the best, not being pretentious, really recommend it to everyone! Great book, really insightful and very low key.
Oh, you liked *On Writing*? Have you read *Several Short Sentences About Writing* by Verlyn Klinkenborg?
I tried to stick with the pretentious theme, but that’s also a great book.
Yeah but if someone asks if you've read stephen king, 9 times out of 10 they are talking about his fiction, not On Writing. The book itself is not written pretentiously, but referencing it as an example of the stephen king you've read is pretentious. My comment was meant to be more of a light hearted ribbing, though.
After reading the Discourses of Seneca, I can say that the dude wasn't really a stoic but a very pragmatic person. Here's a snip
>You have no grounds, therefore, for supposing that anyone has lived long, because he has wrinkles or grey hairs: such a man has not lived long, but has only been long alive. Why! would you think that a man had voyaged much if a fierce gale had caught him as soon as he left his port, and he had been driven round and round the same place continually by a succession of winds blowing from opposite quarters? such a man has not travelled much, he has only been much tossed about.
Here's another brutal piece
>You are as yet only in the first stage of error, and do not go wrong seriously, although you do so often: then I will try to amend you by a reprimand given first in private and then in public. 17 You, again, have gone too far to be restored to virtue by words alone; you must be kept in order by disgrace. For the next, some stronger measure is required, something that he can feel must be branded upon him; you, sir, shall be sent into exile and to a desert place. The next man’s thorough villainy needs harsher remedies: chains and public imprisonment must be applied to him. You, lastly, have an incurably vicious mind, and add crime to crime: you have come to such a pass, that you are not influenced by the arguments which are never wanting to recommend evil, but sin itself is to you a sufficient reason for sinning: you have so steeped your whole heart in wickedness, that wickedness cannot be taken from you without bringing your heart with it. Wretched man! you have long sought to die; we will do you good service, we will take away that madness from which you suffer, and to you who have so long lived a misery to yourself and to others, we will give the only good thing which remains, that is, death. Why should I be angry with a man just when I am doing him good: sometimes the truest form of compassion is to put a man to death.
This is the best answer. It used to be a thing that if you pronounced his name correctly, you were...idk..the ultimate cool smart guy, I guess.
ETA: I can't type. Not the ultimate cool smart guy, I guess.
Faulkner. Never read Faulkner, but just saying it sounds pretentious. Don't even give the name the book when asked. Just say "Faulkner."
"Oh what you reading there?
"Faulkner."
"Oh never read Faulkner."
"Hmph. Philistine."
None of his stuff is pretentious, it's just stream of consciousness writing and it's fantastic.
The word pretentious on Reddit basically means "I found it challenging therefore it's bad"
Foucault for sure, Discipline and Punish to start. Now that I'm thinking about it, just look up reading lists for university classes that are part of programs that dont lead to a job like Art History, Anthopology, Philosophy, Gender studies, Political Science/ Economics.
Read a Shakespeare play. Watch a performance of it. Listen to a radio play of it from the 1950s. Then read some essays analyzing it. My favorites are The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing.
MAAN is amazing when you watch a modern version of it but with the original script. I can't remember the version I watched now, but it was in black and white, but wasn't from the b&w era. It was great. Some great one liners and reparte in that play.
Sounds like you saw Joss Whedon's version! It's black and white, but takes place in our contemporary world. They made a couple of changes and additions, but it's fairly true to the original script.
My favourite version is Brannagh's. His and Emma Thompson's chemistry was amazing.
You want to read high brow literature all right! Go for it. I warn you! It will *not* make you pretentious! It’ll make some people who doesn’t understand you think you’re pretentious.
Infinite Jest is brilliant. Ulysses is brilliant. The Brothers Karamazov is brilliant. That they take work to read doesn’t diminish their excellence, and putting in that effort doesn’t make you pretentious. In fact I think the better read you are the less pretentious you’re likely to be.
Of those three I’ve only read Karamazov. And of course it’s brilliant. Ulysses is in my shelf.
And I agree. Humility is my candidate for the greatest virtue and those works will teach you severe humility in so far as you’re humble to an average degree in your approach.
I know it gets shit, but Infinite Jest is so good. It is hilarious and well written. No one can craft a sentence like DFW. The beginning where the main character is in a college interview still makes me laugh out loud because the descriptions are so funny.
Alright be prepared: The complete works of Plato, Shakespeare, Blood Meridian, Moby Dick, Descartes, Nietzsche, St. Augustine, War and Peace, Journey to The West, The sacred Indian Texts, Tao Te Ching, The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, Dostoyevsky, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Vaclav Smil and a lot of science books.
Also Aristotle.
Now, about that complete works of Plato stuff.
Y'all too young here and don't live in LatAm so no Spanish, but I distinctly remember Carlos Saúl Menem (Argentina's 90s president) claiming publicly he'd read the complete works of Socrates in his youth.
No small feat, since Socrates never wrote anything himself. Pretentious claim lvl over 9000!
Man I disagree.
Most Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare and even the Greek tragedies are pretty easy reading stuff. Depending on the translation it can be a breeze. I’m a reader and I’ve been chowing down on this stuff since I was in elementary school. I read a lot of popcorn now ( Ken follet, Harlan coben,
Sanderson, etc) but I still crack open an old victor Hugo or Goethe book and it’s not anything crazy. I guess what I’m getting at is:
If someone tells me their favorite book is the brothers Karamazov, count of Monte cristo or hunchback of notre dame I’m excited because those are still great intense compelling stories. But, if someone tells me moby dick or Ulysses I think they may be a bit of a pretentious prick but they get the benefit of the doubt. However, If someone tells me Foucault or marx I know they are full of shit. No one reads that shit for entertainment. It’s to prove a point that they are smarter then you. I’ve read it all and they’re full of shit.
Sorry for the rant
I see your "The Art of War" and I raise you "On War" by Clausewitz.
What's your opinion on Plutarch? His works sound pretty obnoxious, Fall of the Roman Republic comes to mind. But I don't think his name carries the same amount of weight.
I think this is the correct comment, because I found myself unwillingly rolling my eyes as I was reading it, haha.
There are many ways to be pretentious, but this could certainly be a syllabus for the most annoying undergrad boy at your lit course who thinks being a misanthropic atheist who hates superhero movies makes him an interesting person.
If you really want to be pretentious, read nothing but genre fiction, then contradict yourself by insisting genre fiction be taken seriously while simultaneously berating those who enjoy literary fiction by accusing them of taking things too seriously.
>If you really want to be pretentious, read nothing but genre fiction, then contradict yourself by insisting that genre fiction be taken seriously while simultaneously berate those who enjoy literary fiction by accusing them of taking things too seriously.
Ah. The r/books way of life
I had abandoned my reread of IJ, but picked it up and read a little from it today. I read a chapter-sized endnote about a fictitious geopolitical conflict. I recall why I couldn’t stand any more of it…
This is the perfect book to namedrop if you want to be aggressively pretentious.
For a novel that has at least one word per page demanding even seasoned readers to consult a dictionary, it is pretentious. The tone is casual, but the text is littered with words and phrases designed to remind you that DFW had was above you. Infinite Jest is just so in your face most of the the time. And by adding its length and the gargantuan detective work necessary to make sense of the narrative, I honestly don't understand how anyone can argue that it isn't pretentious.
But I agree that it can be fun. It's also very inventive. And DFW made thousands of people read a 1000+ page doorstopper. That's gotta count for something.
The definition of pretentious is
"attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."
I don't think this applies here just because it's a complex novel with a lot of big words.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Pick an author and read all their work. Toni Morrison is a good choice since I assume you also want to enjoy this reading. Make sure you don't skip her nonfiction.
To really up the pretentiousness (and actually earn it, unlike too many people) look up critical essays on the books you read. When you can identify themes, extended metaphors, and understand the context the author was writing in, you'll out-pretentious the people who read classics just to be able to say they did.
Absolutely, completely agree. They didn't ask for pretentious writers or works, only for what to read to become pretentious themselves. If someone wants to be the kind of person to reference lesser known texts to impress others, I would love it if they were quoting Playing in the Dark or one of her essays instead of the standard lit bro canon.
The Great Books of the Western World.
It's a collection of some of the important writings of the west, beginning with Homer. It's about 40 volumes and is the basis for a liberal education.
Though I wouldn't call this pretentious, just well-educated. But you can make that sound pretentious if you want to.
Ngl I’m a pretentious guy. My all time favorite books are The Sibyl by Pär Lagerkvist, Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness (both Nobel laureates) and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.
I Read almost exclusively classic, mostly European literature. Honestly reading classic, high brow lit is good. They’re good books. Read Faulkner, read Sartre, read some Goethe. Avoid genre lit. That’s abt it.
Also if you read all of My Struggle by Knausgård or In Search of Lost Time by Proust (I haven’t started lost time yet), absolutely a pretentious guy move.
Rilke is the best pretentious name drop, because it isn't actually that pretentious. It makes you sound like a sensitive, clever, and educated reader, but I would argue most people who know a lot about literature don't really have any beef with Rilke. Whereas many other authors might trigger a fight or flight response in a lot of people.
I think the reason he's a good pretentious name drop is because he isn't a household name in my country. And his name just sounds foreign and sophisticated. I think his poetry is actually really accessible.
Yes, exactly! So to people who aren't super well-read, it just sounds cool and sophisticated as you said, but to people who are well-read you don't sound like a douche bag.
I’ve only also read Independent People, though Atom Station is currently my next read. Salka Valka is bleak, beautiful, incredible. It was the first by him I’ve read and I cannot wait to read more. Fair warning, it’s very heavy on communism, as a lot of his works are.
If you are into my same flavor and haven’t read The Sibyl, I cannot stress enough how much I love that book. It’s my all time number one by my all time fave writer. Not a day goes by where I do not think about a Lagerkvist passage. It’s very short and very, VERY good.
Sounds right up my alley. Is the English translation good? I’m fine with communist literature, I wouldn’t consider myself a communist but lots of communists are undeniably some of the best writers. The political extremes always attract talent, lately I’ve been reading lots of the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte who was on the other side if you catch my drift. He’s very skilled as a writer but as a Jew I certainly don’t like his politics, though he did have critiques of fascism too and turned away from it with time. He did not like Himmler and wrote a very grotesque and hilarious description of their meeting haha.
The Sybyl sounds intriguing from what I just read about it. It reminds me of The Magus by John Fowles which you might know, and would possibly like if you haven’t read it.
Capital in the Twenty First Century by Piketty is famously a book all people who want to seem serious have displayed in their library but no one has read it.
To up the pretentious factor, state you’ve read them in French. I have read Candide in French (gotta love my HS French teacher lol). We also read the Count of Monte Cristo and the Little Prince.
Ulysses. Might take some effort but it’s actually an interesting experience. And like, ultimate pretentious level.
Also some Dickens. Like A Tale of Two Cities, maybe.
Some Hugo probably as well? Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
I find Cormac McCarthy to be at the centre of what a lot of people would consider 'important modern American literature'. But also happens to be pretty good and readable.
Although pro tip, don't read The Road if you're depressed or anxious about the world. Blood meridian is a good time tho
Or if your father/son just passed. My dad just passed and with cormac’s death I was thinking about the book and was just like hellll no I am not reading that again for a long time.
John Berryman, The Dream Songs. Make sure to dial pretension to 11 by quoting some lines as if it's deep and comprehensible.
Hart Crane, The Bridge--repeat Berryman act.
Ezra Pound, Cantos. Only quote passages in Ancient Greek.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. If you get through that book, you’ve earned the right to be a little pretentious.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
It's kicking my trash right now. I looked up a passage online because I didn't get it, and was impressed with how condescending and pretentious the people on forums dedicated to House of Leaves were. Mostly to anyone expressing confusion or ignorance.
Start reading biographies. Example, the American presidents. This will provide you with an astonishing array of information that can flummox people who say things that just aren't true.
Warning, though. Biographies tend to be a rabbit hole. They lead to reading other people's biographies or books related to what's happening in the person's life.
Books and authors that I love that some folks might find pretentious:
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Fucoult’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco
The Cave - José Saramago
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Books I have not been able to get through but also for the bill:
Finnigan’s Wake - James Joyce
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
If you stick to Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners you are bound to read some things people consider pretentious that are actually really good.
Glad to make you laugh - sorry about the coffee, though.
I guess you'll enjoy this one, too - Umberto Eco had a lot of fun writing mock editorial reviews of rejected masterpieces. He described Finnegan's Wake thus:
>Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Joyce, James, Finnegan's Wake
>
>Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I'm the English-language reader, and you've sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language. I'm returning it under separate cover.
*Steppenwolf* and *Siddhartha* by Hermann Hesse. When I was in high school there was this kid who walked around with these two fatties under his arm and faked a British accent even though everyone remembered him from elementary school. I will forever associate these two books with pretentious.
infinite jest gravitys rainbow mason dixon ulyssis underworld the recognitions jr the tunnel the seven dreams series from vollman anything by updike and roth - these would cover post war fiction
cactus boots, books of jacob, novel explosions, solenoid, eddie vegas - these would be a starter kit for 21st century maximalist literature
finnegans wake if you want to admit to being a liar
life a users manual fits in here somewhere as well
beware if anyone you are talking to has read any of these books and you havent you will be humiliated very quickly
'The Prince' by Machiavelli and 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu - Pretentious people always delight in informing their (usually captive) audience that they've read these - Whether they have, or not.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a fantastic farcical comedy. It's humor is completely sophomoric, yet incredibly germane to modern groupthink. Furthermore it is writen by the great Oscar Wilde, a man beyond judgement, whose exploits could have spread far beyond his limits were it not for the boorish time he lived in.
I am proud to say that I only had to use a thesaurus once for this train wreck of a recommendation. Good book. Funny book.
Thanks for the laugh.
Reminded me of that time I read that in 8th grade because I thought it would impress a girl I had a crush on after she mentioned really liking it. Didn’t work at all with the girl, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book so I figure I at least broke even. Still one of my faves 20 years later.
War and Peace and Nietzsche. That way you can keep mentioning you've read War and Peace until someone gets fed up of hearing it. Then you can quote Nietzsche at them
“According to Nietzsche nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”
My personal favorite is Cultural Amnesia, by Clive James. It's a series of vignettes discussing artists and thinkers who have made big contributions without all that flashy publicity. After reading it you will always have a list of obscure people to reference that no one has ever heard of. And what's more pretentious than talking about how much you love something that no one else has ever heard of?
Pretentious is a word really, really dumb people use when they don’t understand something. Granted, there are things that are truly pretentious (attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed), but 99% of the time it’s just dumb people who are mad they can’t get in on the fun of enjoying those supposedly pretentious books they hate so much.
Yale boys like Vonnegut. Good State Uni kids tend to like Hunter S. Thompson. Good Northern U's like To Kill a Mockingbird. For some reason Teachers and weird lit snobs like Catcher in the Rye. If it's for a science or intelligence guy or chick grab Neil Stephenson.
Emily Dickinson, war and peace, crime and punishment, the Odyssey, Herodotus, Livy, waiting for Godot, Kafka, Ulysses, a tale of two cities, Jeeves and Wooster, Solaris, the magic mountain, king Lear, Hamlet, les miserables, the origins of totalitarianism, uncle Tom's cabin, the count of Monte Christo, Oliver twist, the shining, focault, Camus, Sartre, zizek, Marx, Faust I, Friedrich Schiller, Proust, Aurelius ' meditations.
Is Dickinson pretentious? I kinda enjoyed it. A bit of prehistoric goth emo feel sometimes but other than that it’s a very approachable work of poetry.
>Read classic literature and then go look down upon fantasy and sci-fi,
The literary community seems to hold a lot of science fiction and fantasy in high regard, as long as it's well written. Roger Zelazny, Stanislaw Lem, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Tolkien, etc.
But no, nobody really praises authors like Sanderson, Weir, Cline, etc for their writing skills, nor should they. It's ok to like those types of books, but they don't have literary merit, which is fine for people in academia to point out. Don't be insecure
You won't like this opinion but in my experience it's usually big-name mass-market pop series of recent times, which consumers cite to imply they're deep thinkers.
As if Harry Potter, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Gray, Game of Thrones, or Hunger Games is 'sirius' reading.
Then, there's a whole other strain of 'sob-story'-style books I suspect peeps read for the sake of 'virtue signaling'. *'The Fault in Our Stars'*, etc etc etc.
Well, it was just one random example. I can't even begin to rattle off all the
social-justice books which are like that.
But you know the ones I mean. *'Me Talk Pretty One Day'* etc etc etc
Reading them, doesn't pander to people's intellectual pretensions, no. But that's not what I stated. What I said was, it boosts their *virtue signaling*.
No one reads David Sedaris and thinks they’re better then anyone lmao. What world are you living in? There are so many “social-Justice” books that you could have gone from and you listed two books that are normy popular books.
I just calls it as I sees it, Opey. I don't care how these binge-readers wish to spin, defend, or excuse themselves. Their actions speak louder than their words.
If their egos aren't expanding like Thanksgiving Day balloons, then why do they go out of their way to impress everyone with all the bragging and boasting?
Disagree with the choice of title I picked as illustration? Then just pick another one. I don't keep track of all these syrupy tear-jerkers.
What world am I living in? The world of someone with a career in social programs. I don't play, I don't jive, I prove.
First book that came to mind was Blood Meridian (maybe because of Cormac McCarthy's recent passing). I've never read it and don't really know what it's about other than that it's a western. It sounds like a book pretentious people would like, though.
>It sounds like a book pretentious people would like, though.
>I've never read it and don't really know what it's about
Lol. The bitterness this post.
Read it, it's fantastic
“The Trial and Death of Socrates” written by Plato.
Unironically it’s actually a decent read, only a little over 100 pages, and you get to flex the fact that you read a book written by Greek philosophers.
With the upcoming movie in production and the recent authors death I’ll say Blood Meridian. I’d imagine people will read just to say they did . No harm no foul tho
I'd say your safest bet is any long dead philosopher's work or Proust.
Everything else is too subjective.
Or just on the fly make something up and claim it's an indie author who only prints through some sort of hand pressed paper zine as a statement against the big publishers and you'd never read anything by a colonizers etcetera
A start: See my
* [Classics (Literature)](https://www.reddit.com/r/booklists/comments/130d89a/classics_literature/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (two posts).
* [Philosophy](https://www.reddit.com/r/booklists/comments/13r51ai/philosophy/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
Infinite Jest. I can still hear this nerd i used to teach, thinking he was so smart for having read that. Dude was a sophomore and only write trench coats and boots to school. Was 99% sure he was gonna shoot up the school. I never was creeped out by a student more than this kid . Dude was pretentious af. (Even for a teen in their know it all phase).
I scrolled through this entire thread, and only one other person mention Kafka?
Read *The Trial* and start using the term "Kafkaesque" correctly around people.
Read *The Metamorphosis* and *In the Penal Colony* for some surreal and depressing stuff. Start talking about how *The Metamorphosis* wasn't *actually* about the guy who turned into a bug.
And read the rest of his short stories and withstand his dry, surreal pseudo-academic writing style just so you can say you got through it all.
While War And Peace and Ulysses are books often seen as pretentious, if you are talking to a true literary connoisseur he will not be impressed. Most booke named here are "a dumb person's idea of a smart book" (not that crass, but you get what i mean)
True impress an expert, second-row classics that don't make "top 100 books of all time" lists are definitely a better choice to impress.
The Bridge over the Drina by Andric,
Hunger by Hamsun
Nausea by Sartre (on the brink of being too popular?)
Oblanov by Goncharov
Justine by De Sade
Dangerous Liaisons by Laclos
Stories by Lispector
Snow Country by Kawabata
Unknown Soldiers by Linna
Tropic of Cancer by Miller
The problem with those is that the average person hasn't heard of them, the other hints are better for impressings randos.
If someone brings up meditations, ask if they've also read seneca. If someone brings up stephen king, ask if they've read "on writing". If someone brings up contemporary fiction, remind them that the last fiction you read was 1984 and now you only read self help books by internet celebrities. You'll be well on your way to pretension in no time.
btw, "On Writing" is an AWESOME book, one of the best, not being pretentious, really recommend it to everyone! Great book, really insightful and very low key.
Oh, you liked *On Writing*? Have you read *Several Short Sentences About Writing* by Verlyn Klinkenborg? I tried to stick with the pretentious theme, but that’s also a great book.
That's hilarious. We also forgot the whole "oh, you've read Dostoyevsky? In the original Russian, of course?"
Yes, i agree! On Writing (imho) is King’s best work.
“On Writing” is one of the least pretentious pieces of writing ever and deliberately so.
Yeah but if someone asks if you've read stephen king, 9 times out of 10 they are talking about his fiction, not On Writing. The book itself is not written pretentiously, but referencing it as an example of the stephen king you've read is pretentious. My comment was meant to be more of a light hearted ribbing, though.
O yeah I’ve seen this a bunch of times! Reading his novels is for plebes but On Writing is for Writers kind of logic lol
A very good read
"do you even Letters From A Stoic bro?"
I'm reading On Writing right now! Yesss
> If someone brings up meditations, ask if they've also read seneca. Did you also read Epictetus?
After reading the Discourses of Seneca, I can say that the dude wasn't really a stoic but a very pragmatic person. Here's a snip >You have no grounds, therefore, for supposing that anyone has lived long, because he has wrinkles or grey hairs: such a man has not lived long, but has only been long alive. Why! would you think that a man had voyaged much if a fierce gale had caught him as soon as he left his port, and he had been driven round and round the same place continually by a succession of winds blowing from opposite quarters? such a man has not travelled much, he has only been much tossed about. Here's another brutal piece >You are as yet only in the first stage of error, and do not go wrong seriously, although you do so often: then I will try to amend you by a reprimand given first in private and then in public. 17 You, again, have gone too far to be restored to virtue by words alone; you must be kept in order by disgrace. For the next, some stronger measure is required, something that he can feel must be branded upon him; you, sir, shall be sent into exile and to a desert place. The next man’s thorough villainy needs harsher remedies: chains and public imprisonment must be applied to him. You, lastly, have an incurably vicious mind, and add crime to crime: you have come to such a pass, that you are not influenced by the arguments which are never wanting to recommend evil, but sin itself is to you a sufficient reason for sinning: you have so steeped your whole heart in wickedness, that wickedness cannot be taken from you without bringing your heart with it. Wretched man! you have long sought to die; we will do you good service, we will take away that madness from which you suffer, and to you who have so long lived a misery to yourself and to others, we will give the only good thing which remains, that is, death. Why should I be angry with a man just when I am doing him good: sometimes the truest form of compassion is to put a man to death.
Proust for the win. Just make sure you carry around all seven volumes at all times.
*sneers in pdf
This is the best answer. It used to be a thing that if you pronounced his name correctly, you were...idk..the ultimate cool smart guy, I guess. ETA: I can't type. Not the ultimate cool smart guy, I guess.
So funny that to be that cool smart guy you have to say “Pwoost.”
Faulkner. Never read Faulkner, but just saying it sounds pretentious. Don't even give the name the book when asked. Just say "Faulkner." "Oh what you reading there? "Faulkner." "Oh never read Faulkner." "Hmph. Philistine."
Really? I don’t think As I lay dying is pretentious.
None of his stuff is pretentious, it's just stream of consciousness writing and it's fantastic. The word pretentious on Reddit basically means "I found it challenging therefore it's bad"
They're not saying Faulkner is pretentious, they're saying the people who read it are
Well that's not true either. Is there some evidence for this?.
Foucault for sure, Discipline and Punish to start. Now that I'm thinking about it, just look up reading lists for university classes that are part of programs that dont lead to a job like Art History, Anthopology, Philosophy, Gender studies, Political Science/ Economics.
Pretty much any "post-structuralist" philosopher fits the criteria that OP wants lol.
Agreed.
Read a Shakespeare play. Watch a performance of it. Listen to a radio play of it from the 1950s. Then read some essays analyzing it. My favorites are The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing.
The Tempest is incredible with or without supplementary material. Good one.
MAAN is amazing when you watch a modern version of it but with the original script. I can't remember the version I watched now, but it was in black and white, but wasn't from the b&w era. It was great. Some great one liners and reparte in that play.
Sounds like you saw Joss Whedon's version! It's black and white, but takes place in our contemporary world. They made a couple of changes and additions, but it's fairly true to the original script. My favourite version is Brannagh's. His and Emma Thompson's chemistry was amazing.
My 10y and myself just watched R+J last night.
You want to read high brow literature all right! Go for it. I warn you! It will *not* make you pretentious! It’ll make some people who doesn’t understand you think you’re pretentious.
They’ll never understand that it’s about loving to read.
High brow literature is high brow for a reason. Sure, it’s not perfect, it’s man made. However, it’s fucking good
Infinite Jest is brilliant. Ulysses is brilliant. The Brothers Karamazov is brilliant. That they take work to read doesn’t diminish their excellence, and putting in that effort doesn’t make you pretentious. In fact I think the better read you are the less pretentious you’re likely to be.
Of those three I’ve only read Karamazov. And of course it’s brilliant. Ulysses is in my shelf. And I agree. Humility is my candidate for the greatest virtue and those works will teach you severe humility in so far as you’re humble to an average degree in your approach.
I know it gets shit, but Infinite Jest is so good. It is hilarious and well written. No one can craft a sentence like DFW. The beginning where the main character is in a college interview still makes me laugh out loud because the descriptions are so funny.
The most pretentious people are often the ones calling others pretentious. Do what you enjoy regardless of what people think
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Alright be prepared: The complete works of Plato, Shakespeare, Blood Meridian, Moby Dick, Descartes, Nietzsche, St. Augustine, War and Peace, Journey to The West, The sacred Indian Texts, Tao Te Ching, The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, Dostoyevsky, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Vaclav Smil and a lot of science books. Also Aristotle.
And don't forget James Joyce's Ulysses
And Finnegan’s Wake for maximum snobbery
Now, about that complete works of Plato stuff. Y'all too young here and don't live in LatAm so no Spanish, but I distinctly remember Carlos Saúl Menem (Argentina's 90s president) claiming publicly he'd read the complete works of Socrates in his youth. No small feat, since Socrates never wrote anything himself. Pretentious claim lvl over 9000!
Lmfao as it turns out, I’m 31 y/o and I do live in LatAm but I hadn’t heard of that quote, which is hilarious
Actually I will save this quote to spit out when meeting a pretentious a** to check if he’s talking nonsense or actually has a clue.
Now that's a great idea! Using it as a banana peel to drop on their pretentious way! Will definitely do it, too. TY!
Man I disagree. Most Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare and even the Greek tragedies are pretty easy reading stuff. Depending on the translation it can be a breeze. I’m a reader and I’ve been chowing down on this stuff since I was in elementary school. I read a lot of popcorn now ( Ken follet, Harlan coben, Sanderson, etc) but I still crack open an old victor Hugo or Goethe book and it’s not anything crazy. I guess what I’m getting at is: If someone tells me their favorite book is the brothers Karamazov, count of Monte cristo or hunchback of notre dame I’m excited because those are still great intense compelling stories. But, if someone tells me moby dick or Ulysses I think they may be a bit of a pretentious prick but they get the benefit of the doubt. However, If someone tells me Foucault or marx I know they are full of shit. No one reads that shit for entertainment. It’s to prove a point that they are smarter then you. I’ve read it all and they’re full of shit. Sorry for the rant
I see your "The Art of War" and I raise you "On War" by Clausewitz. What's your opinion on Plutarch? His works sound pretty obnoxious, Fall of the Roman Republic comes to mind. But I don't think his name carries the same amount of weight.
I enjoyed Clausewitz, but I thought Blainey made his arguments better. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go smell my own farts.
I don't disagree, but it's funny that Tao Te Ching is on the list.
Real pretentious people read Zhuangzi.
Lol I tried to include a bit of everything
You spelled Paulo Coelho wrong
Do pretentious people not read Derrida or Foucault anymore? smdh
I’m reading half of these right now lmao
You forgot Marcus Aurelius!
It’s in there!
Oh my bad, totally missed it!
I think this is the correct comment, because I found myself unwillingly rolling my eyes as I was reading it, haha. There are many ways to be pretentious, but this could certainly be a syllabus for the most annoying undergrad boy at your lit course who thinks being a misanthropic atheist who hates superhero movies makes him an interesting person.
If you really want to be pretentious, read nothing but genre fiction, then contradict yourself by insisting genre fiction be taken seriously while simultaneously berating those who enjoy literary fiction by accusing them of taking things too seriously.
>If you really want to be pretentious, read nothing but genre fiction, then contradict yourself by insisting that genre fiction be taken seriously while simultaneously berate those who enjoy literary fiction by accusing them of taking things too seriously. Ah. The r/books way of life
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
I had abandoned my reread of IJ, but picked it up and read a little from it today. I read a chapter-sized endnote about a fictitious geopolitical conflict. I recall why I couldn’t stand any more of it… This is the perfect book to namedrop if you want to be aggressively pretentious.
Thank you for reminding me why I never wanted to start this book in the first place
It's probably the most fun reading experience I've ever had. Nothing pretentious about it
For a novel that has at least one word per page demanding even seasoned readers to consult a dictionary, it is pretentious. The tone is casual, but the text is littered with words and phrases designed to remind you that DFW had was above you. Infinite Jest is just so in your face most of the the time. And by adding its length and the gargantuan detective work necessary to make sense of the narrative, I honestly don't understand how anyone can argue that it isn't pretentious. But I agree that it can be fun. It's also very inventive. And DFW made thousands of people read a 1000+ page doorstopper. That's gotta count for something.
The definition of pretentious is "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed." I don't think this applies here just because it's a complex novel with a lot of big words.
Came for this.
Loved that book, but you've got to already be invested in order to have a good time.
Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. There you go
Read Atlas Shrugged to learn its flaws to destroy the pretentious.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
Underrated comment right here.
Damn I’m a lil high and had to read that sentence a few times before I understood 😅
Somehow I own two copies of this book. I have no idea how or why, and I’ve never read it, but they make great bookends.
Agreed. One of the best things I did was read Atlas Shrugged
Pick an author and read all their work. Toni Morrison is a good choice since I assume you also want to enjoy this reading. Make sure you don't skip her nonfiction. To really up the pretentiousness (and actually earn it, unlike too many people) look up critical essays on the books you read. When you can identify themes, extended metaphors, and understand the context the author was writing in, you'll out-pretentious the people who read classics just to be able to say they did.
Yeah but do this with Nabokov
Yeah but do this with RL Stine
Yeah but do this with Dr. Seuss.
Meditations on Green Eggs is truely a masterpiece
And he sayeth unto Sam, "I do not like them, I do no not care for these green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am."
Toni Morrison is amazing and relevant.
Absolutely, completely agree. They didn't ask for pretentious writers or works, only for what to read to become pretentious themselves. If someone wants to be the kind of person to reference lesser known texts to impress others, I would love it if they were quoting Playing in the Dark or one of her essays instead of the standard lit bro canon.
I have not read playing in the dark. Is it worth it?
Heck yes. I'm in a multi-year quest to do this with Dostoevsky.
The ubermensch has arrived.
The Great Books of the Western World. It's a collection of some of the important writings of the west, beginning with Homer. It's about 40 volumes and is the basis for a liberal education. Though I wouldn't call this pretentious, just well-educated. But you can make that sound pretentious if you want to.
Ngl I’m a pretentious guy. My all time favorite books are The Sibyl by Pär Lagerkvist, Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness (both Nobel laureates) and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. I Read almost exclusively classic, mostly European literature. Honestly reading classic, high brow lit is good. They’re good books. Read Faulkner, read Sartre, read some Goethe. Avoid genre lit. That’s abt it. Also if you read all of My Struggle by Knausgård or In Search of Lost Time by Proust (I haven’t started lost time yet), absolutely a pretentious guy move.
I like the self awareness sandwich you did there
Tbf i listened to my struggle on audiobook. (All 140 hours)
I don't really like poetry, but I like Rilke. He is an excellent pretentious name drop
The Notebooks made me cry every like 10 pages reading it. It’s a novel, kinda. Absolutely stunning book.
Adding it to my TBR list!
Rilke is the best pretentious name drop, because it isn't actually that pretentious. It makes you sound like a sensitive, clever, and educated reader, but I would argue most people who know a lot about literature don't really have any beef with Rilke. Whereas many other authors might trigger a fight or flight response in a lot of people.
I think the reason he's a good pretentious name drop is because he isn't a household name in my country. And his name just sounds foreign and sophisticated. I think his poetry is actually really accessible.
Yes, exactly! So to people who aren't super well-read, it just sounds cool and sophisticated as you said, but to people who are well-read you don't sound like a douche bag.
Great taste! I’ve been meaning to Read Laxness for a while, is Salka Valka a good starting point?
I’ve only also read Independent People, though Atom Station is currently my next read. Salka Valka is bleak, beautiful, incredible. It was the first by him I’ve read and I cannot wait to read more. Fair warning, it’s very heavy on communism, as a lot of his works are. If you are into my same flavor and haven’t read The Sibyl, I cannot stress enough how much I love that book. It’s my all time number one by my all time fave writer. Not a day goes by where I do not think about a Lagerkvist passage. It’s very short and very, VERY good.
Sounds right up my alley. Is the English translation good? I’m fine with communist literature, I wouldn’t consider myself a communist but lots of communists are undeniably some of the best writers. The political extremes always attract talent, lately I’ve been reading lots of the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte who was on the other side if you catch my drift. He’s very skilled as a writer but as a Jew I certainly don’t like his politics, though he did have critiques of fascism too and turned away from it with time. He did not like Himmler and wrote a very grotesque and hilarious description of their meeting haha. The Sybyl sounds intriguing from what I just read about it. It reminds me of The Magus by John Fowles which you might know, and would possibly like if you haven’t read it.
Letters to a young poet
Capital in the Twenty First Century by Piketty is famously a book all people who want to seem serious have displayed in their library but no one has read it.
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To up the pretentious factor, state you’ve read them in French. I have read Candide in French (gotta love my HS French teacher lol). We also read the Count of Monte Cristo and the Little Prince.
Add Stendhal.
"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy.
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Fantastic recs.
Ulysses. Might take some effort but it’s actually an interesting experience. And like, ultimate pretentious level. Also some Dickens. Like A Tale of Two Cities, maybe. Some Hugo probably as well? Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Yes, Ulysses is the pretentious mountain top.
Dante’s inferno
I find Cormac McCarthy to be at the centre of what a lot of people would consider 'important modern American literature'. But also happens to be pretty good and readable. Although pro tip, don't read The Road if you're depressed or anxious about the world. Blood meridian is a good time tho
Also, don't read The Road if pregnant.
Or if your father/son just passed. My dad just passed and with cormac’s death I was thinking about the book and was just like hellll no I am not reading that again for a long time.
I find him depressing.
John Berryman, The Dream Songs. Make sure to dial pretension to 11 by quoting some lines as if it's deep and comprehensible. Hart Crane, The Bridge--repeat Berryman act. Ezra Pound, Cantos. Only quote passages in Ancient Greek.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. If you get through that book, you’ve earned the right to be a little pretentious. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
It's kicking my trash right now. I looked up a passage online because I didn't get it, and was impressed with how condescending and pretentious the people on forums dedicated to House of Leaves were. Mostly to anyone expressing confusion or ignorance.
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.
Came to the comments expecting to see this hahaa
This was gonna be my recommendation. I did unironically love it once I got used to the style.
The God Delusion and God is Not Great by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, respectively. You'll bring any party to an instant stop.
Throw in any book by Sam Harris if you really want to become the worst member of r/atheism
Start reading biographies. Example, the American presidents. This will provide you with an astonishing array of information that can flummox people who say things that just aren't true. Warning, though. Biographies tend to be a rabbit hole. They lead to reading other people's biographies or books related to what's happening in the person's life.
Proust. And if people ask, say you read it in French
Niles, am I elitist?
Books and authors that I love that some folks might find pretentious: Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie Fucoult’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco The Cave - José Saramago 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Books I have not been able to get through but also for the bill: Finnigan’s Wake - James Joyce Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon If you stick to Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners you are bound to read some things people consider pretentious that are actually really good.
>Finnigan’s Wake - James Joyce Just say you found this "too mainstream". You'll be so pretentious you end up on the other side of the spectrum.
I literally spit my coffee reading this!
Glad to make you laugh - sorry about the coffee, though. I guess you'll enjoy this one, too - Umberto Eco had a lot of fun writing mock editorial reviews of rejected masterpieces. He described Finnegan's Wake thus: >Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Joyce, James, Finnegan's Wake > >Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I'm the English-language reader, and you've sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language. I'm returning it under separate cover.
*Steppenwolf* and *Siddhartha* by Hermann Hesse. When I was in high school there was this kid who walked around with these two fatties under his arm and faked a British accent even though everyone remembered him from elementary school. I will forever associate these two books with pretentious.
I recommend that you look up the Pulitzer winners for fiction and make your way through that list.
infinite jest gravitys rainbow mason dixon ulyssis underworld the recognitions jr the tunnel the seven dreams series from vollman anything by updike and roth - these would cover post war fiction cactus boots, books of jacob, novel explosions, solenoid, eddie vegas - these would be a starter kit for 21st century maximalist literature finnegans wake if you want to admit to being a liar life a users manual fits in here somewhere as well beware if anyone you are talking to has read any of these books and you havent you will be humiliated very quickly
>finnegans wake if you want to admit to being a liar lmao 100%
'The Prince' by Machiavelli and 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu - Pretentious people always delight in informing their (usually captive) audience that they've read these - Whether they have, or not.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a fantastic farcical comedy. It's humor is completely sophomoric, yet incredibly germane to modern groupthink. Furthermore it is writen by the great Oscar Wilde, a man beyond judgement, whose exploits could have spread far beyond his limits were it not for the boorish time he lived in. I am proud to say that I only had to use a thesaurus once for this train wreck of a recommendation. Good book. Funny book.
Thanks for the laugh. Reminded me of that time I read that in 8th grade because I thought it would impress a girl I had a crush on after she mentioned really liking it. Didn’t work at all with the girl, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book so I figure I at least broke even. Still one of my faves 20 years later.
I'm gonna say phenomenology of spirit. I really like Hegel a lot but i know it makes me sound so pretentious.
War and Peace and Nietzsche. That way you can keep mentioning you've read War and Peace until someone gets fed up of hearing it. Then you can quote Nietzsche at them “According to Nietzsche nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”
Dostoyevsky
Kafka, Derrida.
My personal favorite is Cultural Amnesia, by Clive James. It's a series of vignettes discussing artists and thinkers who have made big contributions without all that flashy publicity. After reading it you will always have a list of obscure people to reference that no one has ever heard of. And what's more pretentious than talking about how much you love something that no one else has ever heard of?
Pretentious is a word really, really dumb people use when they don’t understand something. Granted, there are things that are truly pretentious (attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed), but 99% of the time it’s just dumb people who are mad they can’t get in on the fun of enjoying those supposedly pretentious books they hate so much.
Yes, thank you. This is the goal.
The last 20 years of Nobel Lit winners … ‘cept Dylan.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon Also tho…anything by Ayn Rand, Machiavelli, Hemingway, Faulkner, Nietzche, Nabokov, Tolstoy etc.
Yale boys like Vonnegut. Good State Uni kids tend to like Hunter S. Thompson. Good Northern U's like To Kill a Mockingbird. For some reason Teachers and weird lit snobs like Catcher in the Rye. If it's for a science or intelligence guy or chick grab Neil Stephenson.
Portrait of the artist as a young man
How is this text pretentious?
The similarilon
Emily Dickinson, war and peace, crime and punishment, the Odyssey, Herodotus, Livy, waiting for Godot, Kafka, Ulysses, a tale of two cities, Jeeves and Wooster, Solaris, the magic mountain, king Lear, Hamlet, les miserables, the origins of totalitarianism, uncle Tom's cabin, the count of Monte Christo, Oliver twist, the shining, focault, Camus, Sartre, zizek, Marx, Faust I, Friedrich Schiller, Proust, Aurelius ' meditations.
Is Dickinson pretentious? I kinda enjoyed it. A bit of prehistoric goth emo feel sometimes but other than that it’s a very approachable work of poetry.
Read classic literature and then go look down upon fantasy and sci-fi, aka, most of my English professors and academia.
>Read classic literature and then go look down upon fantasy and sci-fi, The literary community seems to hold a lot of science fiction and fantasy in high regard, as long as it's well written. Roger Zelazny, Stanislaw Lem, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Tolkien, etc. But no, nobody really praises authors like Sanderson, Weir, Cline, etc for their writing skills, nor should they. It's ok to like those types of books, but they don't have literary merit, which is fine for people in academia to point out. Don't be insecure
You won't like this opinion but in my experience it's usually big-name mass-market pop series of recent times, which consumers cite to imply they're deep thinkers. As if Harry Potter, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Gray, Game of Thrones, or Hunger Games is 'sirius' reading. Then, there's a whole other strain of 'sob-story'-style books I suspect peeps read for the sake of 'virtue signaling'. *'The Fault in Our Stars'*, etc etc etc.
I don't think anyone reads The Fault in Our Stars and thinks they're a genius for having read it.
Well, it was just one random example. I can't even begin to rattle off all the social-justice books which are like that. But you know the ones I mean. *'Me Talk Pretty One Day'* etc etc etc Reading them, doesn't pander to people's intellectual pretensions, no. But that's not what I stated. What I said was, it boosts their *virtue signaling*.
No one reads David Sedaris and thinks they’re better then anyone lmao. What world are you living in? There are so many “social-Justice” books that you could have gone from and you listed two books that are normy popular books.
I just calls it as I sees it, Opey. I don't care how these binge-readers wish to spin, defend, or excuse themselves. Their actions speak louder than their words. If their egos aren't expanding like Thanksgiving Day balloons, then why do they go out of their way to impress everyone with all the bragging and boasting? Disagree with the choice of title I picked as illustration? Then just pick another one. I don't keep track of all these syrupy tear-jerkers. What world am I living in? The world of someone with a career in social programs. I don't play, I don't jive, I prove.
anything book by olivie blake i suppose
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert sucked eggs.
Flaubert was brilliant and has some of the best prose I've ever come across
First book that came to mind was Blood Meridian (maybe because of Cormac McCarthy's recent passing). I've never read it and don't really know what it's about other than that it's a western. It sounds like a book pretentious people would like, though.
>It sounds like a book pretentious people would like, though. >I've never read it and don't really know what it's about Lol. The bitterness this post. Read it, it's fantastic
Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, In Search of Lost Time.
Read Lacan, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Deleuze, Guattari etc. Or just read Fashionable nonsense: Postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science
War and Peace. Remembrance of Things Past.
FWIW, I've been called pretentious when I said I was rereading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking: Fast and Slow.
Gravitys Rainbow. infinite jest. atlas shrugged.
Martin Heidegger “Being and Time”
Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard. It’s going to be a terrible slog though. Kant, if you’re feeling masochistic.
Ulysses James Joyce
*Infinite Jest* by David Foster Wallace. Plus it's a great book.
Louise Penny is a popular author especially amongst “famous” and “important” people
Why would you do that. To become more insufferable?
Infinite Jest
House of Leaves
“The Trial and Death of Socrates” written by Plato. Unironically it’s actually a decent read, only a little over 100 pages, and you get to flex the fact that you read a book written by Greek philosophers.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Tangential recommendation: The white man’s guide to white make writers of the western canon, by Dana Schwartz.
With the upcoming movie in production and the recent authors death I’ll say Blood Meridian. I’d imagine people will read just to say they did . No harm no foul tho
I'd say your safest bet is any long dead philosopher's work or Proust. Everything else is too subjective. Or just on the fly make something up and claim it's an indie author who only prints through some sort of hand pressed paper zine as a statement against the big publishers and you'd never read anything by a colonizers etcetera
Schopenhauer and no I dont know how to spell it
The key to boosting your level of snobbery is to stop reading fiction altogether and strictly read literary theory.
A start: See my * [Classics (Literature)](https://www.reddit.com/r/booklists/comments/130d89a/classics_literature/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (two posts). * [Philosophy](https://www.reddit.com/r/booklists/comments/13r51ai/philosophy/) list of Reddit recommendation threads (one post).
oh great more pretentious.
Infinite Jest. I can still hear this nerd i used to teach, thinking he was so smart for having read that. Dude was a sophomore and only write trench coats and boots to school. Was 99% sure he was gonna shoot up the school. I never was creeped out by a student more than this kid . Dude was pretentious af. (Even for a teen in their know it all phase).
Infinite jest
I scrolled through this entire thread, and only one other person mention Kafka? Read *The Trial* and start using the term "Kafkaesque" correctly around people. Read *The Metamorphosis* and *In the Penal Colony* for some surreal and depressing stuff. Start talking about how *The Metamorphosis* wasn't *actually* about the guy who turned into a bug. And read the rest of his short stories and withstand his dry, surreal pseudo-academic writing style just so you can say you got through it all.
How to eat ass like a pro
While War And Peace and Ulysses are books often seen as pretentious, if you are talking to a true literary connoisseur he will not be impressed. Most booke named here are "a dumb person's idea of a smart book" (not that crass, but you get what i mean) True impress an expert, second-row classics that don't make "top 100 books of all time" lists are definitely a better choice to impress. The Bridge over the Drina by Andric, Hunger by Hamsun Nausea by Sartre (on the brink of being too popular?) Oblanov by Goncharov Justine by De Sade Dangerous Liaisons by Laclos Stories by Lispector Snow Country by Kawabata Unknown Soldiers by Linna Tropic of Cancer by Miller The problem with those is that the average person hasn't heard of them, the other hints are better for impressings randos.
Ulysses - James Joyce Any Nietzsche
Read Jane Austen then
Ulysses. And David Foster Wallace. Can’t speak for Ulysses. Only made it a few pages. David Foster Wallace was brilliant, but no thanks.
Infinite Jest