/lit/ - Literature

You boys are the only ones who could answer this, you neurotic fucks. Why is Slothrop in The Zone? Is he tracking down parts for Shell? I get that he's a part of several IG Farben related conspiracies, but what is British Intelligence's gain in letting him run around Germany?

when's his next book lads?
i can't just keep rereading him (i can)

I'm reading Jack Kerouac and can see some similarities of style with that of Pynchon's GR (I only previewed the first ~20pgs of GR). Is beat the way to go when easing into GR?

Everyone here seems to love Gravity's Rainbow, and although I would like to read it, I hear it has Infinite Jest level complexity and patience. I honestly would like something a bit lighter to cycle off class textbooks that take up a lot of my reading. How good is his other work? Should I just go chronological?

post your favourite author and others will recommend music based on your choice

yes we're doing this again

>>7782411
That the book will not make it "easy" for you to understand it: it won't obscure anything, but will also not illuminate anything. It just sort of leaves itself in the open, kinda like life. That's not to say that it isn't fun(ny), but you will get out of it as much as you put yourself.

>>7445167
I see where you're coming from, but I think you're equating reading to other arts a bit too much. Reading has a lot of exercise to it, it's not like an audial or visual medium which can be followed more passively, it often requires the reader to be active; written language needs to be consciously aprehended, while oral language is learned through osmosis and audial/visual language are pretty much instinctual. Not to say that other artforms never require effort to be interpreted, but the same applies to literature. It's simply people playing with language, with its structure and form; at times the the message you speak of might be conveyed through the form itself. If you're confused and frustrated by the way someone writes, well, what's telling you they don't want you to be confused and frustrated? There's more to writing that the meaning of the words.