/lit/ - Literature

wow the internet has a lot of information
dude clickbait and fake news
too much stimulation bad

awesome do we really need 1000 pages about this?

>>17766341
Lucy shoulda named her book Goosey (instead of Ducks, Newburyport)

I read a bit of it in the bookstore and the style seemed turgid.

>>17766351
IT'S A CHARACTER STUDY

>>17766341
Post an excerpt. The core idea doesn't seem very groundbreaking. Maybe it's well written.

>>17766351
This. Literally not reading because it's gonna be a 1000 page regurgitation of what is plain and obvious and what I've been saying for years

>>17766381
lol its not

>>17766381
random page

>>17766416
Substitution of 'authentic' minutiae for style.

>>17766381
>>17766416
Showdown with the MAGApede at the end

>>17766416
its like a English-major freshman just finished reading Joyce, Faulkner, or Woolf, got drunk, and tried to imitate it

>>17766431
>writing a detailed character makes you a hack
Ah I see you just took your prescribed dose of copium. It's working anon; have no fear about that.

>>17766452
>using a semicolon in your 15 word 4chan post

>>17766465
Would you prefer an em dash — too Joycean for you I imagine — or does that make me an imitative talentless hack too?

>>17766441
>its like a English-major freshman just finished reading Joyce, Faulkner, or Woolf
More like Krasznahorkai

It's shit btw

How many of you will change your tune when 50 years from now this book is held in the same regard as Gaddis' J R?

>>17766481
I consider it a public service to attack people using semicolons

>>17766546
I haven't read J R but, really anon, making a list of "facts" to fill up 1000 pages isn't great literature.

>>17766452
Who are you quoting? I was talking purely about style, not character detail. It's like the worst bits of White Noise when Delillo thinks it's great critique of consumer society to bore you with lists. That's what that page is. She just lists things: brands, objects, movies, place-names, just piling them up pointlessly in a sentence that is actually mind-numbingly simple despite its length. When you read a long, Proustian sentence, the digressions and parentheticals are nested in long, complex thoughts that insinuate you into the mental process of the narrator. This is just a free-associative list of minutiae (presumably meant to convey how diffuse and neurotic contemporary life is, man). It's a substitute for style.

i read about 150 pages and it was good desu. but i didn't have the stamina.

>>17766593
It's not a substitute for style it is style. It's the style of this novel. It's a stylized version of the character's mind. I'm quoting your critique of the style. This is stream of consciousness done right. Deal with it. This captures the mind in the information just as well as Joyce's Finnegans Wake captures the shifting and phantasmagoric nature of dreams.

>>17766612
Joyce doesn't repeat one phrase a thousand times in a row like that, it's just pure autism.

>>17766612
I think you're just gobbling up the slop served to you by the capitalistic book industry that wants you to cease thinking so it provides a very long list of nothing (taken from the internet, to make sure it is more nihilistic than nothingness) and you feel pleasure because you get immediately convinced it's a book about >THE PRESENT. At that point just put your headphones on and listen to some vaporwave, it's the same thing but more rewarding.

>>17766612
>It's a stylized version of the character's mind.
Except, as I implied, it doesn't matter what the purpose is if it's ugly. When Delillo writes in a shallow, diffuse way, it's bad style, even as a 'critique' of shallow, diffuse consumerism. When this person writes in a rambling, free-associative list of 'facts' to convey the mental processes of a character who thinks in rambling, free-associative lists, it's likewise bad style. This is the 'pretending to be retarded' excuse of literature.

>>17766666
FUCk

>>17766416
Pathetic lmao

>>17766666
The thread is now about these quints.

>>17766666
Absolutely epic

>>17766656
>b-b-b-but when Faulkner did it with Benjy it was good!
>b-b-b-but when Joyce did it with Young Stephen it was good!
Sorry but you're so vehemently opposed to this that I doubt you are sincere at all. Read the book and figure it out for yourself. A one-page excerpt doesn't do anything. The style of this book is great. It serves its purpose and it serves it well. It enhanced the experience of this book. It's a great character study. There's more going on with this prose than you can understand from a one-page excerpt. Parts of the book made more sense as I read on. These so called "meaningless" phrases and "inauthentic" minutiæ you claim are so bad become laden with meaning as you learn more about the character and their life. Read the book. Don't be a pseud. Don't be a pleb.

>>17766666

>>17766666
Well this post proves /lit/ is wrong to seethe over Ducks, Newburyport and that is indeed the best novel of the 2010s. You can't disagree with those digits!

>>17766666
recursive posts scare me.

>>17766770
projecting faggot it doesn't prove that

>>17766341
The fact that you could read this entire book and learn nothing a five minute browse on wikipedia wouldn't tell you really ties into the fact that women can't write

>>17766465
What fucking relevance does the quantity of words have whether or not you can use a semicolon or not?

>>17766666
Jesus

>>17766416
>>17766433
is this one of those "/lit/ writes a book" challenges that somehow ended up in the mainstream?

>>17766832
I only accept semicolons in long sentences where you have to chop up the different sections and commas might cause confusion because they are being used already to divide phrases within said sections. If you use a semicolon in your faggotty little pithy faggot asshole snark meme sentence you are less than a worm

>>17766481
I'd prefer it if you'd stop posting

>>17766712
>provides excerpt
>no one likes it
>There's more going on with this prose than you can understand from a one-page excerpt
lol. You conflate me with multiple people—I mentioned neither of those authors. But I can't think of a single book I count among my favourites from which I couldn't excerpt an exceptional passage and comment closely and specifically on that excerpt, without recourse to the holistic experience of the entire work or justifying pedestrian prose as the deliberate instrument of a particular goal (usually some kind of realism or social commentary). It has little to do with its newness or the gender of its author; there are nineteenth century novelists who have this same fault expressed in a different fashion.

>>17766878
Your whole paragraph means nothing. You are saying an excerpt is self-contained and anytime you derive meaning from the word it must come from the words itself. So if the words reference previous events that means you can't use those previous events to give them meaning. Keeping pseuding it up.
Your issue seems to be with words and phrases taking on more meaning as the novel progresses. Sorry kiddo but that's how fucking writing works. The opening of the Sound and the Fury makes more sense once it becomes clear that Benjy is retarded. "That word" which is left unsaid at the beginning of the novel takes on meaning when you learn who Caddy is. It takes on more meaning when you realize the relationship Benjy had with Caddy. Like I said, keep pseuding it up because your whole post say this makes Faulkner's book bad.

>>17766666

>>17766666
Nice

Imagine trying to assign any deep level of intellect to a female

>>17767086
I'm repeating myself here but you continue to talk about Faulkner when I wasn't the one who brought him up. I don't care what you think about Faulkner because I didn't compare anything to Faulkner. I've only read one of Faulkner's novels and it wasn't the Sound and the Fury (it was Absalom, Absalom! and I read it nearly ten years ago). More importantly, you don't understand my 'issue'. My 'issue' is that style is king. Style is more important whether the words have a special meaning, whether it changes or stays the same. That excerpt was a free-associative list, which is not good style; rather than effortless beauty, it strains for mere effect, for the 'authentic' representation of phenomena.

>>17766666
What is this post digits shot calling devilry

>>17767086
I don't think Faulkner, even in Benjy's chapter, ever devolved to "What a bad sister I am, Sam I am"

>>17766416
>>17766433
It's interesting in a car crash voyuerism kind of way, but I've no idea why anyone would deliberately read through this trash.

>>17766666

>>17766416
eh, character study or not, the prose looks like itd be exhausting to read after a few pages, which might be the point to show the overflow of informatio that we are often buffeted with, but that doesnt make the prose enjoyable. maybe someday, when i go through my mile long back log, will i give this a shot. seems more like a curiosity than anything.

>>17767282
The point is you're saying Faulkner and Joyce are shit writers by virtue of what you're saying. Your """criticism""" of Ducks, Newburyport can be applied to Faulkner and Joyce and your """criticism""" would also find them as poor writers. Clearly your """criticism""" is wrong.

P S E U D

>>17767282
Your criticism about this text is objectively wrong. Try reading the book before calling this free association meaningless, styleless, or poor in style.

>>17767487
Neither Faulkner nor Joyce do anything comparable to 'the fact that'

Man these new aged pseuds are really choosing this hill to die on huh

>>17766416
>muh pop culture reference


leave that to the guy who wrote Ready Player One lmao

>>17766612
No one actually thinks in one run-on sentence like that though.

>>17767487
>>17767501
Neither Faulkner nor Joyce do it as tastelessly in their major works. Post a counterexample. This is nonsense horse shit.

If anything, the fact that even pseuds on /lit/ who like jerking off over Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Gaddis, Gass, Pynchon, Wallace, all the modernists and postmodernists with dense styles often employing the stream-of-consciousness technique, the fact that all these pseuds don’t like this book, even though they “should” like it since it’s in this tradition of experimental, dense, stream-of-consciousness works, goes to show that the author should be executed

>>17766341
We should write our own collaborative version called Frogs, Newburyport
we can use instead
>implying that

>>17767559
based?

>>17766712
>character study
You keep repeating this, almost trying to make yourself belief its true.

>>17767559
>goes to show that the author should be executed
Perhaps flayed alive would be more appropriate.

>>17767487
You continue to talk about writers I haven't mentioned despite my stating twice that I don't care how you feel about them. I have only referenced two authors as points of comparison or contrast: Proust and Delillo. I actually do my best not to engage in too much comparative criticism as I think good writing should stand on its own merits. Those excerpts do not.
>>17767501
>objectively wrong
Post an excerpt with beautiful style then.
>meaningless
As I have repeatedly stated, straining for meaning at the expense of style is precisely the problem with the excerpt. It's an issue that goes back to the nineteenth century.

>>17767505
>Joyce didn't do anything comparable
I guess you never read Chapter Two of Finnegans Wake.

>>17767718
What do you think is comparable in it

>>17767527
Your use of tasteless is objectively wrong.

>>17767685
I did. You just have bad taste.

>>17767559
but it is the stream of a mediocre consciousness

>>17767753
it doesn't even qualify as a stream, it's more like the OCD stutter of consciousness

>>17767724
HOLY SHIT YOU HAVENT READ FW

Chapter Two was Joyce LISTING FOR PAGE AFTER PAGE a shit ton of nicknames and descriptions of each of the main characters (HCE, ALP, Shem, and Shaun). It's literally just page after page after page after page of monikers for the character. Kind of like...the fact that...

>>17767730
You yourself admitted that the premise of the free-associative style was to convey this woman's 'character' through representation of mental phenomena, which seems to me as straightforward an admission of bad taste as I've ever heard from anyone. Style is not there to deliver character any more than it is there to deliver plot. Beauty is its own reward and justification.

>>17767779
How is that like repeating 'the fact that' over and over?

The fact that every time I see the fact that I can only think of scaruffi.

>>17767785
>Style is not there to deliver character any more than it is there to deliver plot. Beauty is its own reward and justification
James Joyce and A Portrait of the Artist disagree with you. I guess as a pseud you've also never heard of free indirect discourse or the Uncle Charles Principle.
It was nice knowing you pseud. Please keep replying and BTFOing yourself.

>>17767785
>which seems to me as straightforward an admission of bad taste
That's where you are objectively wrong. See any good writer. Try reading Melanctha by Gertrude Stein from her Three Lives.

>>17767798
>I fail to see how listing things through free association relates to Finnegans Wake
Really? Read the damn book.

>>17767829
Since you insist on talking about Joyce and extracting pointless digressions from me about irrelevant comparisons rather than focusing on the book under discussion: no, I don't agree with Joyce or the Uncle Charles Principle, though I think his was a great talent and it is impossible not to be impressed with the scope and ambition of his work. More to the point, I am not so impressed with the excerpts of the book you posted.
>free indirect discourse
You mean the same free indirect discourse used by Jane Austen, whose ironic, satirical style is self-evidently much better than those excerpts?
>>17767843
I remain perfectly comfortable in the knowledge that there have been plenty of great writers whose first principle was l'art pour l'art. As I have repeatedly stated, the issue with straining for meaning at the expense of style is an old one!

>>17767859
She is not listing through free association, she is autistically repeating one phrase over and over

>>17767954
Ok you're a fucking idiot. Goodbye.

>>17768244
Thanks for the concession.

>>17766341
Is that Tropicalia from Creature Comforts

>>17766666
WTF IS THIS

It's a very good book if you have the stamina. After a while its strangely comforting. And then when the end comes its beautiful.

>>17766666
singlehandely made this thread worthwhile

>>17766416
This is like ADHD on steroids in a book, might have to pick it up.

>>17766666

>>17766416
I like that her stream of consciousness is slow, perfect imitation of the author.

>>17766666
Yeah this is the post

>>17766416
This is beyond doubt, absolute garbage. Where are the full stops?

>>17767523
>so much reddit spacing
Stahp! You hurtin me.

>>17766341
I bet OP right now is rubbing his hands, getting more and more angry, saying to himself, this is a reason we need a leftwing totalitarian state, so no-one can expose my bad taste on a chinese fingerpainting board.

>>17766416
the diary of a savant

>>17766666

>>17766666

>>17766465
Semicolons are for semishitposts:

>>17766341
Ever read a passage from a book and just know that it was only published because a woman wrote it. Here's your participation trophy for trying to write something experimental. You were the only entry in the women category which means you win every award!!

>>17771888
!!!

>>17766666
feel the power

>>17766666
ebin post