/lit/ - Literature

>>11045185

We discussed this the past two days. It's bullshit clickbait and terrible criticism. GQ is a joke.

>>11045185
You don't have to read anything, man. That said, of this list, you definitely do not have to read Gravity's Rainbow.

>>11045185
GQ is shit.

>>11045185
>look mom, I posted it again!

>12. The Bible
>Instead: The Notebook by Agota Kristof
>The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it. Those who have read it know there are some good parts, but overall it is certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced. It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned. If the thing you heard was good about the Bible was the nasty bits, then I propose Agota Kristof's The Notebook, a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough. The subtlety and cruelty of this story is like that famous sword stroke (from below the boat) that plunged upward through the bowels, the lungs, and the throat and into the brain of the rower.

just a bullshit article to fill up space when they have nothing else to write about

>>11045320
Yeah that entry in particular makes me wish for the downfall of America.

>GQ

>>11045185
>I'm convinced that the cowboy mythos, with its rigid masculine emotional landscape, glorification of guns and destruction, and misogynistic gender roles, is a major factor in the degradation of America
I didn't even make it past the first one
10/10, I'm fucking angry

if you decided to read GQ, you already decided not to read most of those books OR are old enough that you were forced to read those books before sparknotes existed

>>11045203
that book is fucking cool. Would read again. fucking average joe can't get through it

>>11045518
to be fair M&D is better

>>11045522
reddit

>>11045185
>>11045478
this so much.

if you actually sit down and read GQ outside of the barber's or doctor's office you deserve this abortion of an article.

>>11045530
me too, ha!

>When young Thomas Pynchon was writing Gravity's Rainbow, he was fixated on the Big Things (punishingly boring and confusing things) of a Big World War II Novel that would announce him as a Big American Writer in 1973. Fortunately for us, nearly four decades later he brought us his recollections of everything else that was swirling around him back then. The world Pynchon conjures in Inherent Vice (published in 2009) is the world he himself was living in while writing Gravity's Rainbow, when he was shacked up in a small apartment in the real-life Gordita Beach. Inherent Vice is where you should start if you want to dine on a small plate of Pynchon's stuff instead of a potluck platter. —Daniel Riley, GQ features editor

What the FUCK did he mean by this?

>>11045518
you are the average joe

>>11045670
prolix blowhard, but the author didn't understand it, either.

>>11045185
Doesn't GQ just exist to sell bourgeois manchildren overpriced watches and 1000 slightly different versions of the same sports car?

>>11045670
>Daniel Riley, GQ features editor

Pic fucking related BAHAHAHAHAHA

>>11045714
have you ever seen the "gq selects" curation on mr porter? i was hoping they would spill the beans and give me chad's shopping list, but its just overpriced gucci shit and /fa/ memes like those stupid "common projects" sneakers that cost $400 a pop, wow i cant even find it on the site anymore, maybe they cancelled it cuz it fuckin sucked

>>11045734
>https://www.mrporter.com/mens/list/gq_selects_

oh it looks like they're down to one (god awful) outfit now lol gq is shit

>>11045185
>David McCullough is "too boring"
>Tristram Shandy isn't

GQ's audience is too dumb to find out whether this bullshit is true or not, and the authors fucking know it.

>Mark Twain was a racist. Just read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was a man of his time, so let's leave him there. We don't need him.

Ughhhhh

>Goodbye to All That, the autobiographical account of Graves's time in the trenches during World War I, is entertaining and enlightening. It's also incredibly racist.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

>women can't into Salinger

shocking

>>11045778
>incredibly racist
Are there even different races in it? I just remember a lot of
>this trench is cold
>the Germans keep shooting mortars
>I'd rather be writing poetry
>my feet hurt

>>11045185
I'll never understand why The Catcher in the Rye has the reputation of being a book for teenager when so many people who read it in school seem to completely misunderstand it.

>lol don't read the classics, read this inferior version written by a girl instead!
such obvious agenda pushing

>don't read Dracula
>instead read this random novel that isn't in anyway similar to Dracula
>don't read The Bible
>instead read this random novel that isn't in anyway similar to The Bible
>don't read Blood Meridian
>instead read this random Western novel that no one has heard of
>don't read Mark Twin
>instead read Fredrick Douglass because FUCK RACISM
This list is pure clickbait bullshit.

>>11045185
> I never could get into Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It fails to capture the absurdities and impossible conflicts of war.

Hold me anon, I'm fucking dying.

>>11045320
Everything they said about the Bible is true, but you should still read it.

Unironically right about Blood Meridian though.

>>11045185
>ignore the classics that are classics for a reason because they offend my annoyingly coastal liberal sensibilities!
>have you looked at this modern book that is vaguely similar to that book?
If they wrote it as "Something you might want to read after finishing the classic" it wouldn't be as terrible, but this reeks of contrarianism and offending people who would flock to this to be angry at it.

>When men on dating apps list a book, they invariably list Slaughterhouse-Five. I'd rather not get a drink with a person who's taking his cues from Vonnegut.

Vonnegut fans btfo and confirmed as creepers

>>11048105

>Listing a book about PTSD as a favorite

>>11048105
I just looked up the neo-liberal whore who wrote that. Her name is Nadja Spiegelman and she co-wrote this garbage.

>Catch-22
>Catcher in the Rye
>Huckleberry Finn
>The fucking Bible
Sheesh. Sister Brothers looks funny. Is it any good?

>>11047951
Right by your side anon.

>>11045951

Exactly. Hemingway and Samuel Beckett both loved it, it's a wonderfully complex book that's not just about "being a teenager" but having an existential crisis

he rapes his sister, Phoebe

Huckleberry Finn
>Mark Twain was a racist. Just read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
>suffused with his sweaty imitation of a slave talking.

I thought GQ was better than hiring triggered SJWs to blog

>>11045320
>>11045333
that was the only entry that i felt was ironically self-aware and that actually offered an appropriate 'substitution'. cheeky lad.

>>11045185
5 is not wrong. Coelho is for plebs, Clarice Lispector is better. Also anything is better than Franzen

>>11048918
too loud a solitude is a delightful book, full of little treasures you can find digging through on a second, third, or fourth reading
franzen is a skilled writer, but he is also a pompous dickhead and this comes roaring through in all his work. he and wallace were completely of a piece.

>>11045185
>The bible
>Fiction
This is BuzzFeed level clickbait

>>11048313
Art's daughter.

>>11045185
>GQ
More like JQ

>>11045443
>Assumed this blurb was about blood meridian
>It's about lonesome Dove, possibly the most wholesale Western book written
There's no hope for Western Civilization and giving women any form of agency was a mistake

>>11047912
>>don't read Blood Meridian
>>instead read this random Western novel that no one has heard of
Iv'e read that western actually, for deWitt is a canadian writer and i try to stay up-to-date. Long story short : deWitt is shit, and DeLillo is still great.

>>11049149
>deWitt is shit, and DeLillo is still great.
b-but blood meridian is a mccarthy novel, how is delillo related?

>>11045185
>I'm convinced that the cowboy mythos, with its rigid masculine emotional landscape, glorification of guns and destruction, and misogynistic gender roles, is a major factor in the degradation of America.
Have these people never considered that America started decaying when they started considering these kind of things?

>>11049186
The 19th amendment was a mistake. Prove me wrong

>>11048948
it actually is owned by Jews through Advanced Publications and Conde Nast, though Nast is chaired by a gentile, but the Newhouse family are Jews and they own Advanced Pubs

RACIST RACISM EVERYONE! RACISM IS RACIST!

>>11045185
This stupid dichotomy of like, "Ugh there are so many books you're expected to read but some of them aren't so good you know, so you should read this instead it doesn't have as many uncomfortable words" is so stupid and I've seen it in other articles.
You don't have to read anything, but classics are classics for a reason, they are to be called upon first; you will be the better for reading them.

>>11045333
Sometimes reading things like this (and it happened just now) gives me a brief feeling of absolute uspeakable horror that lasts only for a moment. Is there a word for that?

>>11045670
>thinks IV can compare to GR in terms of scope and depth

this is the common English major kid, from an affluent home, little beady eyes, and superfluous glasses that do nothing to help the punchability of said face... he had dreams of being some half-way Hemmingway, but his heart was never truly in it, so now he writes this Buzzfeed-tier slop.

>>11045778
>>11045823
The section in Goodbye to all That he's decrying is not even 20 pages long, and details Graves' satirical descriptions of a rising bourgeois in Egypt who were taking literature courses not out of result of passion, but as status sygnifiers. He decries Islamic cant, celebrates intelligent locals and friends etc., and makes fun of the Royals. I wish I could punch the red pen-wielding cunt who wrote this, because now I just know that if I bring up one of these books, there's a new threat of being decried as racist by some sub-literate retard who gets all of his/her's cultural opinions from pieces such as this. It probably won't be the last piece of its kind either; there's inevitably going to be a hundred think-pieces written in reply to this, like so many seemingly superfluous cancers that eventually metastasise and take over the internet.