/lit/ - Literature

>>1962441
and it wasn't because it was weird. It was because it was obfuscatory and masturbatory and required a fucking reader's guide to make it through the first reading.

Ulysses

I stopped and never continued.

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron.

I think it's the scene where Tina tries to mate with Clay.

Certain parts of Misery did that to me.

> queen bee

what the fuck, Stephen?

and lo, the 'Efrit [a genie] appeared before us in a most hideous shape, with hands like winnowing-forks and legs like masts, and eyes like burning torches; so that we were terrified at him. The King's daughter exclaimed, No welcome to thee!--to which the 'Efrit, assuming the form of a lion, replied, Thou traitress, how is it that thou hast broken thine oath? Did we not swear that we would not oppose one another?--Thou wretch, said she, when didst thou receive an oath?--The 'Efrit, still in the form of a lion, then exclaimed, Take what awaiteth thee!--and, opening his mouth, rushed upon the lady; but she instantly plucked a hair from her head and muttered with her lips, whereupon the hair became converted into a piercing sword, with which she stuck the lion, and he was cleft in twain by the blow; but his head became changed into a scorpion. The lady immediately transformed herself into an enormous serpent, and crept after the execrable wretch in the shape of a scorpion...after which, the scorpion became an eagle, and the serpent, changing into a vulture, pursued the eagle for a length of time. The latter then transformed himself into a black cat, and the King's daughter became a wolf, and they fought together long and fiercely, till the cat, seeing himself overcome, changed himself into a large red pomegranate, which fell into a pool...

the handkerchief of clouds by tristan tzara
>mfw reading it

In the enjoyable sense - Investigations of a dog by Kafka

In the 'want to throw this book away' sense - Naked Lunch

>>1962452

AND THEN

AND THEN

AND THEN HE BECAME A SCORPION. NO AN EAGLE. LIKE AN EAGLE SCORPION.

Yeaaaaaah...

>>1962470
pretty much.

After he turns into a pomegranate she turns into...I don't know, a shark or something and battles the pomegranate until the pomegranate flies out of the pool somehow and splatters into the floor, casting its seeds everywhere, and then the princess turns into a rooster and starts madly pecking at every seed but she can't find the right one that contains his life force. She starts gesticulating wildly at the King and the narrator trying to ask them in rooster squacks where the fuck the final seed is but they dont understand what the hell she is doing, so she finds it herself and consumes it. Then somehow the genie turns into a pillar of flame and so does she and they battle as lightning flames, and the fire shoots out everywhere and singes off the king's beard and lower jaw and zaps out the narrator's eyeball.

Also, the narrator had been transformed into a monkey for 100 years and the princess aroused the genie's ire because she was trying to turn him back into a man. after the battle ends she transforms the narrator into a man again and then dies.

>>1962483
This is sooooo stolen from the Wizard Battle in Disney's the Sword in the Stone.

Now something, oh kind of funny happens here. Not that Slothrop is really aware of it now, while it's going on -- but later on, it will occur to him that he was -- his may sound odd, but he was somehow, actually, well, inside his own cock. If you can imagine such a thing. Yes, inside the metropolitan organ entirely, all other colonial tissue forgotten and left to fend for itself, his arms and legs it seems woven among vessels and ducts, his sperm roaring louder and louder, getting ready to erupt, somewhere below his feet... maroon and evening cuntlight reaches him in a single ray through the opening at the top, refracted through the clear juices flowing up around him. He is enclosed. Everything is about to come, come incredibly, and he's helpless here in this exploding emprise... red flesh echoing... an extraordinary sense of waiting to rise...

>>1962508
>>1962508

What is Pynchon even doing?

>>1962514
Drugs, men, women, little kids, animals, inanimate objects, etc...

>>1962514
Speaking of Pynchon, have you ever considered changing your trip to "Pointsman" as in the Doctor in GR?

>>1962492
>This is sooooo stolen from the Wizard Battle in Disney's the Sword in the Stone.

I just shamelessly stole that for something I'm writing as well. Seriously, the battle between Merlin and Mim may as well be one of the classics of our generation.

Remember kids, plagiarism is bad, but homage? Allusions? Extra points on the exam!

>>1962533
Merlin and Mim just need to fuck and get it over with.

I knew it even back when I was 8.

>>1962528
Nobody wants to be Pointsman, because he was an anal-retentive prick.

Everybody wants to be Slothrop, because he got to fuck Katje.

>>1962528
>>1962528

I have a long history with the name as an internet pseudonym.

Originally, when I was first introduced to gaming and what not, I indulged in shooters often. I was a bit of a lunatic when it came to cautiously exploring enemy territory, so early on I got deemed the "pointman" by one of my brother's older friends who was in the military.

I always found the role of a position scout to be an interesting title, both in the form that I would be considerably "courageous" while still being just a grunt. It's become a good reflection as a pseudonym on who I am as a person in general.

>>1962465
i couldn't understand Naked Lunch first time i read it.
seventeen years later, i get it all now. it took me twelve years to work out what "the outraged squawk of the displaced bullhead" was, but i'm not american and i've never been fishing.

>>1962541
Skippy, you little fool, you are off on another of your senseless and retrograde journeys. Come back, here, to the points. Here is where the paths divided. See the man back there. He is wearing a white hood. His shoes are brown. He has a nice smile, but nobody sees it. Nobody sees it because his face is always in the dark. But he is a nice man. He is the pointsman. He is called that because he throws the lever that changes the points. And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. Or “Der Leid-Stadt,” that’s what the Germans call it. There is a mean poem about the Leid-Stadt, by a German man named Mr. Rilke. But we will not read it, because we are going to Happyville. The pointsman has made sure we’ll go there. He hardly has to work at all. The lever is very smooth, and easy to push. Even you could push it, Skippy. If you knew where it was. But look what a lot of work he has done, with just one little push. He has sent us all the way to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. That is because he knows just where the points and the lever are. He is the only kind of man who puts in very little work and makes big things happen, all over the world.
- Pynchon, GR

>>1962539
>not wanting to be Prentice and be famous for making an incredible banana pancake breakfast
ISHYGDDT
>>1962541
Ah, ok. I find scouting pretty interesting as well. Before I decided that I was a lazy fuck, I was considering a career in the military as a Forward Observer.

>>1962549
heh.

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist ---"

- General John Sedgwick, Union commander in the Civil War, speaking his last words as he was watching enemy troops during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

>Seriously, the battle between Merlin and Mim may as well be one of the classics of our generation.

Uh, "The Sword in the Stone" was released before JFK was shot, you do know that, right?

And the TH White book was a best seller at the time?

And the musical version was on Broadway?

Hence people referring to the JFK era as "Camelot"?

Kafka on the Shore

"Now I imagine you've never heard a flute made out of cat's souls, have you?"

it was like a WTF but like a good WTF

The Castle by Kafka

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is fairly weird.

People are tricked/forced into colonizing Mars, only it's a miserable place so they take a drug which allows them to enter into a shared dream with nearby people in which they act out the lives of a Barbie doll like toy and her boyfriend. They use props much like the real world toys in order to enhance the experience and there's a huge industry in creating new items for the playsets.

Then Palmer Eldritch shows up with new, more powerful drug and the rest of the book makes even less sense.

>>1962430
Shobogenzo
Principia Discordia
Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow, got to one hundred pages and quit because I was truly mindfucked. I'll read again later, when I feel more prepared to deal with it.

Pic related, it was my face during the reading.

jg ballards 'the unlimited dream company'

guy crashes onto a place, then fantasizes about having sex with everyone, then turns into birds/fish/deer, then has sex with every man woman child and animal, and his semen turns the place into a tropical rain forest with lush vegetation

I once tried to read Finnegans Wake...

Breakfast of Champions

When there was a page of describing the exact size and width of every character's penises I seriously wtf'd.

I'm currently reading Gravity's Rainbow and am honestly less mindfucked. I think that my mind works likes Pynchon's because his stuff makes sense to me (parts are still a bit incomprehensible but even Pynchon admitted to not understanding some parts)

Only Revolutions was pretty damn weird.
Ulysses and Finnegans Wake had actual meanings and logic behind them, but this terrible piece of shit was just rambling about nothing to no end and mixing poetry and stream of conscious. I stopped after the ~6th time they apparently sold/lost their "leftwrist twists of gold" or whatever the fucking shit those were.

>>1964844
Was Only Revolutions as big a mindfuck as House of Leaves? Because that book definitely messed with my head a decent bit.

>>1964856
It... wasn't so much a mindfuck as it was an author trying to do something completely outside their realm of talent. His stream of conscious contained absolutely no content, and most of the time I had no idea what the fuck was going on. This is coming from someone who has read Finnegans Wake. I'll be back in a moment or two with some quotes to prove my point

>>1964863
Sam: Page 11-13
All I pass begging my stay. Lfting up heads for me. But I just keep rolling through And come upon
Two Boys,
Paddleballing on a hillside,
who yelp and reverse with her approach. Such is their abhorrence.
Their immediate disdain.
But Hailey's all over These Five Tenderfoots,
whinging for a little Mublety Peg.
-Get lost.
Their mugs charged with disgust over her rank impudicity & whealpocked filth.
Yet from These Nine Explorers
she till seeks some exchange.
All scatter, fleeing her fingernails
clawing after their distaste.
Cont.

I don't remember what it was called, but I just remember this one chapter where and girl and a boy were out trick or treating, then decided to tie down a mentally challenged kid, strap fireworks in his mouth then set them off.

Somehow the kid is still alive, instead of getting him to a hospital the boy proceeds to give the retard a blow job until he cums. Then they walk him home.

mfw

>>1964883
She's just too strange,
circling wide their Hoop & Stick,
trampled by snide hoots & quips,
have her quit. Their attention
evaporating. Every lust too.
Yet despite their retreat,
she officiously skips closer:
-Over here fellas!
And Eighteen Trappers all leap appalled with Whirligigs and Bilbo Catchers:
-Get lost.
Twenty Ranchers turn their backs on this mewling reprobate.
Whipping Tops for PickUp Sticks:
-Get lost now.
These ThirtySix Prospectors
Capturing The Flag by
holusbolus Tag & Roundabout:
-Get lost. Now.
These Ninenty Hard Rock Farmers...
You know what. I don't give a shit. Copying out of this book actually hurts me mentally. I'm sure you get how retarded this is, though.

>>1964890

Just read that last week!