/lit/ - Literature

>the formal start date for this thing I came up with yesterday at 8pmEST on a friday night will begin tomorrow
>this is a two month schedule
please report back how much of catastrophic failure this became in two weeks

>>14061092
Worst case scenario is that I get to read it and expostulate over it with an audience :)

>Mason & Dixon was one of the most acclaimed novels of the 1990s. According to Harold Bloom, "Pynchon always has been wildly inventive, and gorgeously funny when he surpasses himself: the marvels of this book are extravagant and unexpected." Bloom has also called the novel "Pynchon’s late masterpiece."[2] John Fowles wrote: "As a fellow-novelist I could only envy it and the culture that permits the creation and success of such intricate masterpieces." In his review for The New York Times Book Review, T. Coraghessan Boyle wrote, "This is the old Pynchon, the true Pynchon, the best Pynchon of all. Mason & Dixon is a groundbreaking book, a book of heart and fire and genius, and there is nothing quite like it in our literature..."[3] New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani said, "It is a book that testifies to [Pynchon's] remarkable powers of invention and his sheer power as a storyteller, a storyteller who this time demonstrates that he can write a novel that is as moving as it is cerebral, as poignant as it is daring."[4]

>During a conversation with Leonard Pierce of the A.V. Club, Harold Bloom said, "I don't know what I would choose if I had to select a single work of sublime fiction from the last century... it would probably be Mason & Dixon, if it were a full-scale book, or if it were a short novel it would probably be The Crying Of Lot 49. Pynchon has the same relation to fiction, I think, that my friend John Ashbery has to poetry: he is beyond compare."[5]

Old thread (muh "metatextuality"): >>14056648

>>14061092
seething

>>14061215
have sex

>>14061230
dilate

>>14061092
>>14061215
>>14061230
>>14061291
kys

https://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/essays/pynchon/mason.html

>>14061083
How hard would M&D be for an ESL? I can hardly read Nabokov in English, should I even bother trying this?

I'm in

>>14061103
>expostulate over it
>over it
>over
Don't use 10 dollar words if you don't know how to use 'em buddy

>>14062292
I'm happy to help. It might be tough at first but I feel like after at most a hundred pages your brain'll switch gears
>>14062337
I'm glad :)
>>14062346
>obsolete : DISCUSS, EXAMINE
Sorry, I don't keep up with what "moderns" think words mean

>>14062397
You are so embarrassing, the problem is with the use of the word 'over', you can 'talk over something' but you cannot expostulate OVER something, you can expostulate ON something, or expound on something, and you cannot discuss over or on something.
>we can discuss it
>we can go over it
>we can expostulate on it
Are all valid.
>we can discuss on it
>we can expostulate over it
Are both invalid.

>>14062466
>They debated over the subject
>He dithered over whether he should A or B
>He gesticulated over the semiotics of Magic: the Gathering
Sorry that you're unfamiliar with common use English pragmarics wherein "over" is commonly a stand-in for "with regards to" or "vis-á-vis" lmao

>>14061083
I may be in on this, M&D has been in my backlog for a good while, it depends on how much of a pain telegram is to compile and install on my linux system, it ain't in my distro's repo. Also, this being a live chat sort of discussion, what time was this weekly discussion supposed to happen?

>>14061083
> Telegram
into the trash it goes

go away, bookchemist

>>14062533
I've never seen a set time actually work in any of my past reading groups, what I've seen work is more like a loose due date and people discuss the section in the vicinity of that day. It's fine @ing old posts etc. It's partly that a lot of people have Tele on their phones
>>14062594
Who?

do these ever work out

>>14062637
Moby-Dick did, Ulysses didn't, and "Return to Nature Americana" got halfway through its booklist. I've seen a Gravity's Rainbow one work out.

>>14062616
Then assuming telegram does not take massive effort to compile and people stick too discussing just the weeks reading, I am in.

i'd join if it were on discord, never used telegram.

>>14061083
I just read this so I wont be joining but it seems a good thread to ask what is up with the duck. There are pages and pages on it and I cant find any explanation of why Pynchon spent so much writing on it

>>14062823
I assume you at least know the historical origin of the duck?

>>14062961
Just tell him you don't know you cringey faggot

>>14062961
ah fucking stinking jesuits again. now I see

>>14062978
>>14063123
bro I was busy
>>14062823
Basically the duck is based on Vaucanson's Digesting Duck. I haven't read the book in full yet but I was reading a chunk of The Multiple Worlds of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and there was an aside discussing Pynchon's interest in the mechanization of the biological, alluding to a woman who wants to become a machine in V. and something else in Gravity's Rainbow

>>14063264
I did some reading and here is my take. the duck is the soulless imitation of life that rationalism creates with its taxonomies and borders that vitally fail to describe and conform to the whole that more fundamentally composes life.

make a discord group, who the fuck uses telegram

>>14062786
>>14063546
>discord trannies

>>14063546
Its to filter out zoomers

lol you've already picked up a dedicated hater, I guess you can take that as an early mark of success

>>14063693
I'm a high impact person

>>14063835
>tfw not an autist magnet

>>14062637
Maybe if they used Discord

>>14061083
I've been looking for a reason to finally read this

>>14061083
seems fun, in the middle of Gravity's Rainbow right now though so will have to pass
do the next one on Discord as well

I’m on part 2, will join everyone else but I agree a discord would be nice.

>>14064738
>>14065385

On a side note, what’s the /lit/ discord? And why not just use it?

>>14061119

Bloom thought Ashbery was a good poet

A ton of stuff just started making sense

>>14061083
Hi Lucretius.

>>14066872
Hi Leopold

The chat now has 40 members.

Bump

>>14066226
if by "the /lit/ discord" you mean one of the groups that used to try to spam links here, they're bad