π I've said this before, because the trial scene in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is excellent for describing the whims of the crowd, but hot dog: Dostoevsky had social media *down pat* long before our current tech.
I first read NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND as a teen, when the self-loathing protag best sings out to self-loathing youth, but I've always loved this chapter, and its description of how even educated humans will sometimes make a public spectacle of pain just to regain some agency over suffering.
Yeah, and he would have had a bit of trouble with the character limit. π It would have been an endless thread...
I'm also dead certain that many of the great novels would never have been written if those writers had had access to social media instead. π
George Saunders' 1st novel! Famed writer of short stories that often have atypical structures. It's 1/3 excerpts from old news reports (some fictionalized, some real), 1/3 stage play, 1/3 prose.
He wasn't part of the "twit-lit" scene, but I can definitely see how his experimental novel wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.
I'd known nothing of Lincoln's long bereavement for his son, though, so the whole "returning to the tomb to hold his body" bit was an affecting bit of history.
It's a pretty moving tale, of ghosts trying to help Lincoln's dead son move through the bardo so that his father can turn his attention back to the war - and it was based on how absolutely devastated Lincoln was by the death of his son Willie in 1862 - but I am emphatically NOT the kind of person to tell someone else that they "must" give something a try if it's not to their taste.
TOO MANY GOOD BOOKS.
NOT ENOUGH TIME!
(You, too, lurking @CanisPundit . You can hurl digital objects at me any time. π)
@q00w2 @LiseL
(That, and the idea of a ghost caught with a dingleberry in the afterlife, are what stick with me from that book. So, uh, points for range? π)