/lit/ - Literature

Gravitys Rainbow is the best book ever written.

>>1974210
> major in english

AHAHAHAHA, oh man. You better enjoy college, because your life will end when you graduate.

>>1974228
Hey man, screw you!

I'm an english major and I can tell you that the employee discount on coffee is life changing!

>>1974228
What an insightful observation you have made. Such wisdom needs to be published. Otherwise no one might possibly know that English is a difficult field to make a career in. You are surely the first person to come to this conclusion.

>>1974230

wow, you sound like a dickhead. You'll fit in fine at college English classes

>>1974234
>disregard OPs honest attempts to start a conversation
>make fun of his chosen path
>call someone else a dickhead
There is a word for this... I think

By the way, I'm not op.

>>1974210
/lit/ is not the place to actually discuss literature; it's reserved for book-related trolling.

This thread is all you ever needed to know about /lit/

I think Thomas Pynchon is amazing. I mean clearly the result of thousands of years of slow literary evolution should culminate and a complete and utter disregard for the most basic elements of a coherent plot. In fact the less a book makes sense the better you know it is. Because if it doesn't make any sense, no one can really criticize it, because then they're an idiot for not understanding it. Ahhhh literature.

Who?

ITT English graduates trying to delude themselves that they won't have to beg for food when they graduate.

>>1974238
Sure seems like it so far. Bummer, none of my friends are interested in books so I was hoping for good discussion. Guess I'll continue searching.

>>1974245
>English graduates
>when they graduate

cool story bro

>Spending time/effort to perpetuate the global worship of Money as the one, and only true, God
>Working your life away doing something you don't fully enjoy just so your Masters can acquire more wealth and assure the position of their lineage as superior to yours
>2011
I seriously, etc

>>1974247
I'd offer up my screenname to chat, but I've actually never read any Pynchon so I won't be of much help to you. :/ Good news is, you'll be able to start having great conversations about this stuff at college (especially but not only if you go to a liberal arts school).

Thomas Pynchon posts on /lit/. True story bro

>>1974259
Woah, for real? any evidence of this?

>>1974263

Of course not.

Okay, look. This dude I'm facebook friends with is roommates with Jackson Pynchon at Vassar. So, apparently Pynchon sends the manuscripts for what he's working on at the moment to his son, just to make sure that the story makes sense. Plus I guess it's a dad-son bonding thing, or who knows. Anyway, dude messages me on facebook, sez Jackson left the room and the manuscript is there, wanna peek? Okay, so. Pynchon's new novel is entitled "The Japanese Insurance Adjuster". It's set in 2004, and the main character is a middle-aged mild-mannered Japanese Insurance Adjuster (natch) whose problem is that he first achieved sexual climax in the back row of an Osaka cinema in 1971 during a screening of the Gene Wilder psychdelic musical "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", more specifically during the scene in which Violet Beauregard turns into a giant blueberry. So the plot (if you want to call it that) of the novel hinges on the fact that the Japanese Insurance Adjuster discovers that a remake of the film is coming out, and realizes that his entire erotic imagination is about to be demolished by Tim Burton. So he turns to the Internet----and there's A LOT of this book which is apparently just continuations of the dark ruminations about the surveillance possibilities of the Internet that began with the discussion of ARPAnet in "Inherent Vice"---and specifically turns to social media in the hopes of persuading someone to essentially create the erotic fantasy for him, in which a teenage Caucasian girl morphs into a vast and spherical Vaccinium Caesariense. Now I want you to just hang out on /lit/ for a week or two, and see if anybody posts a thread like that. Because guess what? THAT'S Thomas Pynchon. The problem is that because everyone's anonymous on here, no-one will ever believe you.

Fondly,
James Franco

>>1974252
>implying people aren't aware of wage slavery and wouldn't quit their jobs today if they had the financial knowhow

protip: a society full of investors and other people who don't actually do anything would get very dirty, very hungry, and very bored without janitors, cooks, and entertainers

do not be so quick to look down on the working class, even if you view them as ignorant, they are human beings AND valuable assets to our civilization, and they command as much respect as your faggoty adsense ass

>>1974252

Face the facts. The only reason why anyone would study English, is because he's too retarded to study something worthwhile.

>>1974276

But that guy has been making threads like that even since before /lit/.

>>1974276
delicious pasta, friend

8/10, will be saving just in case, and I lul'd slightly

>>1974279

That seems like a false dichotomy. There's some wiggle room between janitor and stock broker.

Honestly, OP, I'm not going to try and dissuade you from majoring in English. BUT I would highly recommend you double major, with English and something else. Unless, that is, you have a set career path. If you don't know what you want to do once you're done with college, definitely double major (with a subject that will help get you a job after school). If you do know what you want to do once you're done, never stop going towards that goal (make contacts, befriend professors, internships, etc). Trust me on this.

>>1974281

Yeah, but has he ever denied that he's Thomas Pynchon?

The Crying of Lot 49 was good as fuck

>>1974290
This dude is right as fuck, OP.
>>1974279
>implying that people who work for a living don'actually deserve MUCH MORE respect than people who think that's a crazy idea

Anyone else expect Pynchon to pull a Mark Twain and write an extensive autobiography that will only be released 100 years after his death?

>>1974329

You shouldn't romanticize the working class, though. They are largely drunken, willfully ignorant slobs.

>>1974290
Listen to this guy OP, he has some sound advice.

>>1974290

Good advice, but let me add some shit to that.

Just about anyone with a college degree is hireable, unless you want something really specific such as being a lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc. In fact, no one major can guarantee you a job or can even give you relevant work experience. You want to directly learn a trade? Go for a certificate program.

Now how to get a job, you need to keep in mind two things:

1. Your Contacts (and the school you attend has a lot to do with it, someone from Harvard would get better contacts than someone from their local community college)
2. HOW WELL YOU SELL YOURSELF (people forget about this. It doesn't matter how many PhDs in Engineering you have form MIT, if you're an insufferable asshole then no one will want to deal with you)

Hopefully this could be of some use. Every degree and job has their pros and cons, it's all about finding out which pros you like the best and with cons you can deal with.

>>1974279
You seem to have interpreted my statements in an interesting way.

Working-class/blue-collar individuals are not the problem and this was not meant to be indicated by my post.

It is the middle class that is the topic here. The college educated, specifically those who have knowledge of a very specific (non liberal arts) field are those whom are the most beneficial to the financial elite, and conversely this elite rather loses money on the working/blue-collar class.

By spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on education, (and if not this then) an overpriced mass-manufactured house, a cheaply made mass-manufactured car, etc AND only having knowledge of something that benefits your Masters primarily WITHOUT ability to question their socio-economic superiority and/or any idea of how to solve such a problem even if it is realized that Money is the God of the 21st century will permanently leave one in their debt.

If lucky, one who chooses to pursue this overpriced trade-school type education, may have at then end of their life a certain amount to pass on to their offspring. This will always be nothing, comparatively, of course. These scraps will only ensure that the hapless fool's offspring become accustomed to spending the scraps on yet another round of overpriced trade school (aka 21st Century University)--- perpetuating this continual position under the Masters ad nauseum.

(just so long as you aren't already nauseous)

Pynchon is one of my least favorite authors.

have fun in university OP.
ignore the haters.

Nutshell Pynchon Assessment

+ Technically brilliant prose writer. Loads of interesting ideas. Often very funny

- Completely incapable of putting together a coherent plot or creating sympathetic, believable characters.

(I've read V, Gravity's Rainbow & the first half of Mason & Dixon)

People will hate me for saying this, but I dislike Pynchon a lot. His prose is almost impossible to understand, if there's even anything to understand. The only thing I kind of like by him, is Against The Day. GR was a trainwreck, no matter how many times I reread sections, I still didn't know what was going on. Vineland was not too bad, but still below average. Didn't like V or 49 much.

I sometimes wonder who all these people who like him are.

>>1974549

> I sometimes wonder who all these people who like him are.

Mostly the kind of nerds who are into Philip K Dick and Robert Anton Wilson. (I plead guilty to belonging to that category)

I loved Vineland and GR, struggled through Mason&Dixon and Against the Day has been sitting on my bookshelf half-read since early 2008.

>>1974549
Spunkcock, you have horrible taste in literature. Just--stop having opinions. Or just stop voicing them. It really is quite embarrassing.

>>1974549
I don't hate you, I just respect your opinions on literature even less, which I don't think can stoop any lower.

>>1974549
>His prose is almost impossible to understand.

This implies there's something inherent in his prose that makes him hard to understand and not you that is the problem.

Pynchon is perfectly coherent. You're barely so.

>>1974719

Books are the only form of art where apparently intelligent people will say your opinions are 'right' or 'wrong'. It won't happen in music, games, or movies.

>>1974733
>he hasnt been to mu, tv or v.

Opinions can be wrong.

>>1974733

>It won't happen in music, games

...

>>1974729
Stop samefagging you tripfaggot piece of shit.

>>1974733
Sunhawk, you know as well as anyone that when you say stupid shit like, "Oh, Pynchon, get out of my way; Bret Easton Ellis's Glamorama is calling my name!" that people who know and understand literature can't really continue to take you seriously.

And, no, the same goes for music and games. Someone who went to /mu/ and said, "Oh, I don't really like Radiohead. But have you heard Westlife? Man, those guys can sing!" is going to be mocked for being such an annoying presence.

>>1974747
>Radiohead
lolol i went there

Say what you will about Thomas Pynchon, but his niece is hot.

>>1974729
>Pynchon is perfectly coherent

>>1974733
Congratulations! That's the stupidest thing Ive read today!

>>1974896