Has anybody read it? From a glance, it seems to be essentially an entire goddamn encyclopedia, so much raw information I feel I won't know what make of all of it. It's on the exit-level chart. Are these 1400 pages worth powering through?
The Anatomy of Melancholy
I don’t think people read it straight through. I think most just a read a section, put it aside, pick it up again a few weeks or months later and read a little more. It’s not a narrative so it is manageable reading it this way
>exit level chart
post chart, I'm starting a collection of LULZ charts
>is it worth powering through?
it's worth reading but as said don't power through it. read a few pages a day alongside other books. no more than ten or so in a sitting. it should take around a year, roughly. it's a book you read for its prose and its general outlook and its philosophy and its anecdotes, not really its narrative (it has none) so you won't miss out with this approach.
Finnegans Wake should be on here
what does it mean by "exit level"?
sorry I'm not a native speaker
Ascended. Pre-mortem
like "once you've read/understood these books, you don't have to come back to LULZ again."
>like
opinion discarded
stoner? hmm?
Literally no one has ever read this book. No idea how it got published when no one has ever read it
I’ve got a nice old copy from the 30s, sometimes read a few pages in bed. I think it’s great, but it’s like if a Renaissance alien felt sorry for mankind and wanted to cheer them up but had never actually encountered or talked to a human being ever, which might be kind of the case with Burton
Also I should mention that fussing about understanding the sources he uses is a lost cause, he’s citing some really obscure stuff. Just let the info dump wash over you
What is it about?
It’s an extremely long systemization of all the things that might contribute to sadness, and the remedies that might be employed for such a condition
cool
I have a dozen copies including this vellum bound folio. It's pretty fun.
that is cool anon, any other cools ones you have
post moar
I'm jelly. Please take care of it anon.
I started reading the Love-Melancholy section and there was a ten or so page preface in which Burton tries to justify his right to talk about the topic of love, since apparently it was taboo at that time. This preface was added on in a later edition after I assume the public disapproved of the section. He quotes a bazillion ancient authors like Plato and basically says, "If these respected authors can talk about love, why can't I?". It's a pretty tiring read because of the sheer amount of quotations and Latin, so when I was done the preface I stopped, and I am still yet to read the actual Love Melancholy section. Despite this, I thought it was a very interesting read, unlike anything I have ever read. I doubt there are many other texts like it.
>And thus much I have thought good to say by way of preface, lest any man (which Godefridus feared in his book) should blame in me lightness, wantonness, rashness, in speaking of love's causes, enticements, symptoms, remedies, lawful and unlawful loves, and lust itself, I speak it only to tax and deter others from it, not to teach, but to show the vanities and fopperies of this heroical or Herculean love, and to apply remedies unto it. I will treat of this with like liberty as of the rest.
proto-psychology. he basically try to classify and compartmentalize human experience.
I read it. Have the same NYRB edition. But at the time I was also a depressed autist who had a chip on his shoulder. I'm still on the spectrum but no longer depressed. Anons please give it a shot. Democritus Jr. is legit hilarious. Like Ignatius J. Reilly meets Bolano meets the American maximalists. I'm honestly surprised his name isn't brought up more around here. He repeats himself a lot but Burton was one of us.