/lit/ - Literature

>HE KILL HISSELF

Gets me every time

I read GR about ten years ago and thought it was fun. Might reread soon. I've tried to get into IJ twice only to get bored and drop it. I have no interest in Ulysses.

IJ twice.
GR once.
Ulysses, the first hundred pages, 5 years ago.

Liked Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow. Refuse to read anything Wallace has written

>>20605898
based

>>20605873
>Ulysses, the first hundred pages, 5 years ago.
:[

>>20605863
>I have no interest in Ulysses.
wtf why

>>20605705
Read Ulysses back in 2020, pretty damn great but I need to re-read it again. Recently re-read Infinite Jest back in November of last year, the wheelchair assassin sections are weak, the Hal and Gately sections are still excellent. Gravity's Rainbow is the only novel I've read three times, it somehow gets better with every reading. An absolute masterpiece in every conceivable way.

>>20606253
i forgot about the stupid smiley face assassins

>>20605705
All complete *licks lips*

>>20605873
Why IJ twice?

>>20606717
dumbest thing i've ever seen
once was too much

>Liked Infinite Jest. Thought it was challenging with at least some rewarding sections in between. Genuinely had something interesting to say.
>Fuck Ulysses. Le unfunny pretentious Irish faggot trying way too hard to be quirky. Finished the whole thing and it was such a waste of time.
>Gravity's Rainbow, couldn't finish it. Have no motivation to get back to it. Maybe in a year or so if I wish to torture myself.

>>20607019
>thought ij was challenging
lol
>filtered by the other two
expected
>can't into greentext format
lol

>>20607041
>filtered
Can you even explain what you liked about Ulysses because for the life of me I couldn't think of any redeeming qualities. Except references and obtuse writing.

>>20607061
It might help to understand Joyce's aim with his writing. It's meant to arrest you, not be a rollercoaster of wee-wee-zippy literally me but cooler or whatever. So more of a language + word museum at least at the very surface level.

But the book, the first half anyway, is a simulation of a day in dublin, seen through the mind of the whacked out artist Stephen and the deviant pervert nice guy Bloom.

You need to stuff your head with all the references before reading it for it to click, then you get the actual experience. Not something many people want to do—or think they should have to do to enjoy a book. But this is no ordinary book.

Anyway, I love the language, I love living inside these two weirdos, I love the quasi-psychedelic second half of the book, and I love the characters Bloom and Stephen deal with throughout the day, like Lenehan and Mulligan.

On a deeper level, I like the Shakespeare theory, and the sad beauty in chapters like Hades & the end of Circe.

>>20607061
its good if you're interested in psychological themes, characters, and intricately composed works of aesthetic merit with cool structures. It's boring if you're more interested in concepts, ideas, plot, weird settings etc.

>>20607185
>concepts
plenty
>ideas
tons
>plot
webs within webs of plots

>>20606717
There was a 10 year gap between the reads. For what it's worth I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. I still think The Pale King is the better DFW book. Maybe it's hard to claim that without immediately coming across as contrarian but I think it sincerely and I'm gutted that he never finished it and that he's gone.

>>20607353
>pale king is better
i don't think it was anywhere near finished m8
ij's plot is pretty tight, tpk really not so much of anything tying it together despite some fun pomo nonsense

as a 2x reader, what do you think about john wayne, gately and hal digging up himself?

>>20607368
TPK's looseness was its appeal for me, I think.

As for IJ's ending, I remember spending a lot of time trying to piece everything together but to get a real answer out of me I'd probably have to read it again. I remember reading this: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend and mostly agreeing with it.
Despite the 10 year gap the last time I read it was also about 5-6 years ago so sorry for the bad memory, I can picture the form of the novel but the details are gone.

>>20605705
Are any of them good?

>>20607528
>http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend
cool link
i can't buy into the toothbrush thing, is there evidence _in the text_ for this?

I remember ppl here speculating Peemulis poisoned it, which would fit the parallels to Ulysses, with Mulligan poisoning Stephen at the very end of Oxen. flip to the page, it's there

This blog post though picks up on the "It’s too late because someone got there first and took the anti-Entertainment cartridge (126) embedded in JOI’s head (31)." which is interesting, since I've talked to exactly no one who has picked this up. BUT: Remember JOI microwaved his head, that's why it's too late, and makes me wonder why they'd even go looking for it. Hal knows how his dad killed himself.

>Orin was mailing the tapes
What?

>>20607578
ij is part of the trilogy as a joke, it doesn't compare to the other two in depth

it's a fun read but more like junk food than high art ... though ol walrus did get some things right about entertainment and snapchat filters, so props for that

but for the most part his stuff is picrel cookie recipe (doesn't make it bad, but it doesn't have the true touch of the batshit that joyce and pynchawn squirt everywhere)

bump

>>20605705
i've read 70 pages of ulysses, 9% of infinite jest, and a few pages of gravity's rainbow

>>20607106
>the Shakespeare theory
Do elaborate.

>>20607963
it's the center of the book, stephen lays out his theory of shakespeare's life's influence on his most famous works including hamlet

anne hathaway cucking him with his brother, him being the ghost in hamlet (shakespeare's dead son was named hamnet)

if you're familiar with ulysses that should ring a bell

>>20607578
tf u think

>>20607578
>>20605705
Gravity's Rainbow has its moments but is just too flabby to hold my attention. There are a lot of cool vignettes but there's so much padding in between them that it was a struggle to finish.

For a book with similar flavor but much less fucking around, I recommend Zone of Interest

>>20609160
How do you think the pynchlord constructed GR? Curious what ppl think

https://youtu.be/GXJ_g-5A8ZQ?t=232

>>20605705
Ulysses should be swapped for The Recognitions. Then the list consists of the forerunner to Postmodernism, it’s zenith, and the book that presumes itself to be postpostmodern but is in fact just postmodern.

>>20610517
you mean for infinite jest, surely

weird you typed ulysses

you're not a moron are you?

>>20605705
I have no interest in reading gimmicky bullshit. If I had to read one, I'd probably go with Gravity's Rainbow, because it's i'd bet it's the funniest of the three. IJ seems like a slog between the occasionally clever ideas and Ulysses is empty-headed life affirming bullshit, pure style over substance with an obnoxious style.

>>20610624
Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow are about equally funny. GR is more slapsticky and ww2 movie humory. I don't remember finding IJ funny, but it's not a slog after the first 150ish pages. Just there's this stretch of Walrus using Black Vernacular English (Wardine be cry... etc) that's enough to drive people off, esp since you don't know how long you have to deal with that crap. Once you get past that, the rest of the 800 pages or so is written in consistent Wallace-style.

No idea where you picked up those ideas about Ulysses

In terms of capturing the lost and confused, nihilistic, pleasure-seeking psychological profile of the postmodern individual, bringing the horror of its condition into vivid focus, Less Than Zero did in 200 pages what IJ failed to do in 1000.

>>20610732
Do you think Walrus ever got over it? He tried mocking Ellis with Girl With Curious Hair (lol a psychopathic Young Republican character) and that failed utterly.

Infinite Jest depends on you NOT reading it.

>>20605705
Why should I care about any of this overwrought impractical garbage

finished infinite jest and gravity's rainbow last year and ulysses this year, and enjoyed all of them quiet a bit. gravity's rainbow and the most difficult of the three but i think a reread will help expand more the of text for me. when in comes to pomo/modernist door stoppers though
the recognitions is my favorite. i love that book and rank it above the trilogy.

>>20605705
Read Ulysses for the second time this year. First time around I just was no ready. Now it is probably my favorite of the three
GR I plan to read again. I don't remember where I read that Pynchon novels are like climbing a mountain, to say that it is more fun to feminist rather than actually doing it, but GR despite being a mixed bag while reading it I could not stop thinking about after finishing it, so I'm curious to see what I will get out of it after a second try
IJ is probably the most accessible of the bunch and the one I think I got the most. As such I am not super eager to dive into it again in the near future
Very good selection of book. Those who discard them have just been filtered and are coping, pain and simple

>>20610781
because they are fun :)

>>20610781
>impractical
that's your first mistake, zoomer

>>20610818
>gr more difficult than ulysses
wat

>>20610823
>to say that it is more fun to feminist
wat

>Very good selection of book
wat

>Those who discard them have just been filtered and are coping, pain and simple
preach

>>20610853
>feminist
Autocorrected from remember. Idk how

>>20610863
why do you type 'feminist' so much on your phone? you're not some for of kekistani patriot are you? fighting the cvltvre war? cuz sure looks like it, kid

caught red handed

>>20610853
ulysses had some painful and challenging chapters but the whole gestalt came together for me than GR. more puzzles left to crack on the second read in each

>>20610611
You do realise that DFW debunked joyce with his short story ‘the soul is not a smithy’, don’t you, anon?

>>20610642
>No idea where you picked up those ideas about Ulysses
One of the pretty notable for being uniquely optimistic among his peers. What I like about modernist art is how cynical and oftentimes hopeless it is. Ulysses sticks out like a sore, ugly sum.
I also can't imagine finding Ulysses funny since I don't find the Irish all that amusing.

>>20610932
lol trying to pass of having read secondary source crap as having read a book
bullshitters like you are gross

>>20610642
>No idea where you picked up those ideas about Ulysses
One of the pretty notable for being uniquely optimistic among his peers. What I like about modernist art is how cynical and oftentimes hopeless it is. Ulysses sticks out like a sore, ugly thumb among the great works of it's time.
I also can't imagine finding Ulysses funny since I don't find the Irish all that amusing.

>>20610911
I know that story well
How does it "debunk" joyce? i'm guessing you don't know what the story is about despite it being spelled out for you

>>20610944
I've never bothered with secondary. I've just talked to enough people about it to know it's something I'd hate.

>>20610990
>never used secondary
>i've talked to people
ok you are retarded

>>20610947
so you never read it wew

have any of you read pic rel yet? recently got a copy but am waiting a bit to start it so i can finish some other books. how does it compare in scope and aesthetics compared to the meme trilogy?

>>20611017
Attach the image, friend.

>>20611017
whoops forgot the image

>>20610949
It’s a direct challenge to a quote from Joyce’s Portrait? The story is about the weird ways the mind can and cannot process true horrors/horrible memories.

>>20611124
The title if just a useless reference to Portrait. If you can draw the parallels or perpendiculars between the two, I am interested.

The mind in the story DOES process true horrors. So not sure what you meme.

>>20611132
My interpretation is that the story is about how people cannot process true horror. For example (though I may not be remembering correctly):
The narrator daydreaming as the teacher has a psychotic break; the narrator misremembering the incident of the girl who lost her dog; the narrator not allowing himself to see his daydream of the dog getting killed or the man losing his arms; the narrator being seriously freaked out by his dads bureaucratic job despite never realising why; something weird about his dad that is never directly brought up; the narrator leaving the screening of the exorcist as it was too horrible for him but then being haunted by the not knowing. There’s more still, but the point is that the narrator cannot allow himself directly to confront his troubles.

This directly contrasts Joyce’s quote in Portrait where he suggests that his role as an artist is to process everything he can and produce art from it. DFW believes that the most important things simply cannot be processed properly.

>>20610847
How did being able to name 20 references in Ulyshit improve your life

>>20611231
name? what? what are you reading books for?

>>20607106
Not the same anon, but, can you do a recommended list reading of the references the reader should know beforehand reading Ulysses?

>>20611231
why are you even on a literature board

>>20611022
Never read it but I did read Hind’s Kidnap. I found it difficult enough so the idea of wading through Mcelroy’s labyrinthine text for over 1300 pages is terrifying to me. And yet the challenge of it only makes me more intrigued. I remember David Foster Wallace wasn’t a fan.

>>20611269
It's probably different from what you're expecting. You need Don Gifford's annotations and Jorn Barger's robotwisdom.com/jaj/ site (it's only available on archive.org at this point).

Just read the chapter annotation (from both sources) THEN read the chapter. Works like magic. The book will be almost completely clear. There are two pages at the end of Oxen of the Sun that remain a mystery. But it's ez street this way. Just a lot of looking at annotations. Not for everyone.

>>20611502
i'm currently reading actress in the house by him and it's a somewhat difficult but interesting read so far. i like all of the structures he sets up for the reader to wade through but 1300 pages of it will surly be a deep ocean. do you like hinds kidnap overall? i've been meaning to find a copy but have other mcelroy i own already that i should probably read first

>>20611269
Dubliners, Portrait of the artist, Odyssey (obviously), and hamlet (but really all of Shakespeare) are required readings. There is plenty more and you can probably find a comprehensive list somewhere
I personally recommend also aiding yourself with the Linati schema

>>20611572
It’s probably be worth getting anyway, simply because it was reprinted recently and so actually a normal price. I’m not sure how I feel about the book. You’ve read McElroy and so will probably know what I’m on about, but he seems to capture human thought in such a detailed and technical way it stops feeling human at all. It’s brilliant no doubt but makes it hard to actually enjoy the characters. Someone once described McElroy as the most unsentimental sentimental writer there is, and I feel there’s some truth in that.

On another note, Women and Men is getting reprinted by Dzanc, although they have not given a date yet.

>>20611239
To improve my life
>>20611482
To get recs on good books when it's not about memeshit like in OP

>>20611681
i was lucky to find a 2018 reprinting of women and men for 20 bucks in a bookshop. actress in the house feels exactly how you just described mcelroy and makes his work feel exhausting but brilliant to read. the only other one i've read by him is ancient history a paraphase which is found more genuinely human and also funnier than actress. it also reminded me of pale fire by nabokov which is my favorite book, and also there was some beckett influence in there. i have plus coming in the mail so hopefully that will be the next of his i read.

>>20611701
so you want esoteric self help
wrong board

>>20611753
same

>>20607317
Examples? Please don't bring up surface level shit.

>>20605705
I read Ulysses back in high school and didn't get it. My dad read Infinite Jest and told me it was funny so maybe I'll read it eventually. I bought all of Pynchon's books after enjoying Inherent Vice but haven't gotten around to Gravity's Rainbow yet.

>>20611754
>wrong board
For you, yes. /co/ is more your style

>>20605705
I have a question to those who read the books. Do any of these books contain deeper philosophical themes? I'm not talking about emotions, feeling, or run of the mill philosophy-like ideas (like your average themes of modernity or posmodernity).

>>20611971
Also, if yes than expand upon that, please.

>>20611971
>run of the mill philosophy-like ideas (like your average themes of modernity or posmodernity)
Like what?

>>20611894
i just spent the last hour pynchon posting on /co/ and i can say it's def not my style =\

>>20607019
Ulysses it’s fucking hilarious, IJ has its moments. I’ll compare them to IJ is friends series and Ulysses is Seinfeld

>>20611971
I only read Infinite Jest so far, and yeah, it deals a lot with how people are not capable of just living, but have to enslave themselves to something. Wallace thought it's either of two things; overachieving through hard work, or hedonistic way of giving in to pleasing your desires, like with drugs and entertainment. His message is that this is modern living (in 90s America, I'd say) and it is portraited as hellscape basically. I don't really think the book is worth reading, my summary gave you 90% of what this mammoth book has to offer honestly.

>>20611971
If you want philosophy, read philsophy? These are books, they're predominantly feeling, ideas, plot, and character. None approach the density or depth of philosophical text because none are trying to.

>>20612291
what's a good, deep, dense philosophical book?

>>20612307
man idk i dont read philosophy i read fiction

>>20610517
Can you rewrite your post, I don’t understand it. Are you saying Ulysses deserves to be recognised as a postpostmodern/metamodern book?
Because the ending of the book does point to that.

>>20611971
yeah they do but they're above your head

>>20612335
postmodernism was thoroughly done by sterne with tristram shandy already

>>20611269
To read it for the first time
Hamlet, The Dead by Joyce. You don’t have to read Homer or Dante.

>>20612339
It really wasn't, postmodernism is a post WWII phenomenon, birthed from the absolute disillusionment with grand narratives, power of the individual, and once sacred institutions like religion. To ascribe to this novel the quality of a movement designed to reject and move beyond it is beyond retarded.

>>20612408
why the dead? if anything it'd be all of dubliners + portrait

>>20607578
all of them are very good.

>>20611894
You are what’s wrong with /lit, go to /pol or /b.

>>20612307
Hegels books

>>20612424
"/lit" "/pol" "/b"
the jidf arent sending their best

>>20605705
ij then read gr then read ulysses then listened to the audiobook of ij (they say pehmulis instead of peemulis) then re-read ulysses then re-read gr

>>20612307
"Critique of Pure Reason" by Kant.

I've read all three. I started with Infinite Jest two years ago in downtown Denver, then read Ulysses in rural Arkansas and Oklahoma during Summer, and finished with Gravity's Rainbow in Montana. I find it strange that the environments I was in had a tangential relation to the books I was reading. God is good.

>>20613388
youre still gonna suck at chess after reading this book, it's not going to change anything about your midwit status

>>20613407
Alhamdulilah.

>>20605705

Read Gravity's Rainbow in 2012, and Infinite Jest this year. Infinite Jest was really good - its critique of utilitarian morality and dopamine-abusing electronic entertainment was ahead of its time. Gravity's Rainbow was boomer tripe, and the only thing I still remember of it ten years later is the shit eating scene. At least V featured something approaching actual human feeling, rather than le wacky pomo plot with puddle deep insights.

I still need to get around to Ulysses, but feel like I should actually read the Illiad and Odyssey first so the references don't fly over my head.

>>20613422
Reading books for status? Are you a teenage girl or something else equally vapid?

>>20613521
>so the references don't fly over my head.
LOL sweet summer child

>>20613563
Everyone reads for status. Just ask that one dead comedian from Texas.

>>20605857
Why did he kill himself?

>>20615342
He didn't lol

>>20615342
Masons deepsixed he ass

>>20615342
She couldn't live with the dysphoria anymore.

>>20605705
How to do spoiler again? The sticky doesn't have it, which is retarded.

>>20616488
i just accidentally found out there is a keyboard shortcut for spoiler tags but it was a type so idk which one it was

>>20615342
we don't know. he wrote a note but only his wife has seen it and she's not talking. his friend Jonathan Franzen said it's because he ran out of things to write, and since he was a writer and often found solace in it, he had lost a big part of himself and decided to end it rather than go on uninspired. I haven't read Pal King but if it's more of the same IJ stuff there's your answer

>>20616496
i think he lost money in the 2008 crash, he did it within a month of the stock market getting absolutely destroyed.

>>20616503
If only someone had posted the suicide hotline on /biz/ he would have been alive today :(

>>20616503
he would have loved nfts =\

>>20616496
what the fuck is wrong with franzen lol

>>20616496
>because he ran out of things to write
False, he still wrote a suicide note. We just don't know what it says.

>>20616610
thanks but im not johnathan frazen

>>20605705
Based OP. This is why we need more female and BIPOC authors, rather than a bunch of tiresome white men that you autists fetishize.

>>20616610
lol

>>20616645

>>20617039
and ... yet ...

>>20605705
I read Illuminatus! instead and so should you. Funnier than any of them. More interesting than any of them. Actually has an okay ending unlike any of them.

>>20619608
filtered