/lit/ - Literature

>>22988038
>What resources would I need to tackle this thing?
A copy of Gravity's Rainbow, time enough to read it a couple times and the wiliness to be as lost as Slothrop.

>>22988042
>A copy of Gravity's Rainbow, time enough to read it a couple times and the wiliness to be as lost as Slothrop.
You mean I have to read this more than ONCE to get it. Well there goes my 3 months I guess.

A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources & Contexts for Pynchon's Novel by Steven Weisenburger. Univ. of Georgia Press. Atlanta. 1988.

>>22988038
The Tunnel by Gass is harder, at least it was to me at that particular time

>>22988038
WASP nonsense. A good chunk of the plot is basically pic related. Pynch is so goofy about black people, I hope he got made fun of for the retarded black face plot twist at the end of V.

>>22988164
poltroon

>>22988074
You can get the general idea on a single read, just drive in and don't spoil that first read with autistism.
>>22988090
Almost completely trivia and will not help in understanding. Best saved for those who want to study it in depth and have already put in the time to understand.
>>22988099
I agree, GR takes most everything to such and extreme that we can not really relate to much of anything but The Tunnel is all to relatable, it is difficult not to look at your own life as brutally and honestly as Kohler looks at his own.

>>22988176
The Herero Messiah literally gets buttfucked by Blicero as part of his extended backstory. Malcom X tries to rape Slothrop.

>>22988199
>two paragraphs out of 700 pages proves me right!
He's right, poltroon.

>>22988217
>two paragraphs
Did you actually read this thing?

>>22988232
Multiple times. Do you take everything to the illogical extreme as a way to be "right?"

>>22988247
Are you straight up retarded or do you actually think I'm claiming a good chunk of the book is actually descriptions of gay interracial sex?

>>22988263
>do you actually think I'm claiming a good chunk of the book
>>22988164
>A good chunk of the plot

>>22988038
>Is this the hardest book to read alongside Ulysses?
No, the list of the "hardest" books to read begins here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Texts_in_Mathematics
And increases rapidly from there.

/lit/ isn't interested in reading these actually hard books because, if you read and understand a mathematics text, you can unambiguously demonstrate it, because they have actual and definite intellectual content. You can't just say "lol filtered" and pretend to have a galaxybrain take on Pynchon's (who failed out of undergrad physics lol) stoned racial paranoia or Joyce's pretentious fart sniffing, because it's not just an empty prop for pathetic status signalling on a web 1.0 anime image board.

>>22988273
Sorry if you don't think the seduction of the Black Man by a German Freak is relevant to a good chunk of the book's plot

>>22988282
And but yet here you are

>>22988038
Just read it. It's hard but I found it rewarding to read.
And don't let prideful idiots who only want to one-up anonymous strangers on the internet spoil your experience reading it.

>>22988314
I actually kind of like GR, and I don't even hate Ulysses, but the idea that reading them is some kind of peak intellectual achievement is utterly pathetic wordcel cope.

>>22988287
Contributes less to plot than to wordcount.

>>22988282
STEMfag can't read

Thanks everyone.

>>22988282
It’s just status signaling so you can get a job making products or some other shit that’s useful for capital. Then you pretend like you know anything about the world and spam your meaningless drivel on off topic boards in order to try to convince others that’s actually not the case. Then eventually you realize you’re just a huge tool who knows nothing about himself or the world, and so you stop wasting your time posting off topic shit.

>>22988038
Finished it a few weeks ago and reading Ulysses now (Around 150 pages deep). It's pretty hard. I like Weisenburger's companion to fill in some gaps and Reddit was really helpful for really confusing chapters. That's all you need though. Don't think about it too hard. Just get to reading it.

>>22988199
>Malcom X tries to rape Slothrop
lol what?

>>22988282
Math textbooks aren't that hard, because they are written to teach you.

>>22990453
Don't reply to bait

>>22988038
It isn't, it's just a fun book that's pretty good. Just enjoy it instead of jerking yourself off.

>>22990480
I can do both

Ulysses has like one really hard chapter and that's it. I'm not even baiting. Everything should be easily readable if you take your time, except Oxen of the Sun. If you're getting filtered by Telemachus or Calypso, that's not because it's super dense. Finnegan's Wake is much, much, much more difficult with references and phrases that people will literally never get because the people who would have understood such things are now dead.

>>22988325
>the idea that reading them is some kind of peak intellectual achievement
Mentally cooked. No one said this. They are works of peak intellectual achievement though (Ulysses much more so) in terms of actual penning them.

>>22990490
>except Oxen of the Sun
What about Proteus, Sirens, Circe, and Eumaeus?

>>22990446
When the give him the truth serum and he hallucinates he's back in college at a bar noodling in the toilet for his harmonica the shoeshine boy that tries to rape him is Malcolm X. I don't know why the other anons are downplaying the importance of the intersection of race and sexuality in this book. "They" in the book are elite WASPs like Slothrop and have the same paranoid fear over the otherness of Blacks that makes them want to exterminate the Hereros while also wanting to know them in a real Ahab kinda way. I didn't call it WASP nonsense to be dismissive of the book, it's just that a lot of what Pynchon writes is funny stuff about this topic (like when the psychologist says Whites are afraid of Blacks because they look like poop.) Also shit is pretty consistently used in connection with death (sex with a man doesn't result in the propagation of life but it does result in shit on your dick!)

>>22990514
I never found Proteus or Sirens all that difficult. A bit awkward to follow, but that's it. It's not the content that you struggle with. As for Circe I thought it was easy, I don't know where the reputation of it being the hardest chapter came from seeing how it follows from Oxen (which filtered me for a long, long time). As for Eumaeus I remember what happened, but I don't remember if I found it hard or not. I thought it was comfy though.

>"book filled with confused technobabble"
>wow this is so deep! you need to be a real intellectual to understand this!
>"math textbook"
>they are missing the point. i'm not even going to waste my time with this.

>>22990562
It's neither confused nor babble (except for when he wants), much of the obscure lingo is accurate jargon which makes sense with a little research part of why the book is so brilliant

>>22990600
anon you read science fiction for the fiction, not the science.

>>22990519
I need to give GR another shot. I got filtered by it in college, I was too young and not well read and didn't know what I was getting into, so I dropped it at the part when slothrop had assumed a new identity and was on top of a moving train talking to a nigger-kommando. I don't really remember anything, except there was a CIA trained octopus and something about reverse pavolovian casuality (whatever that is). I'll read it soon.

>>22988038
If you want a novel, Zetel's Traum and Finnegans Wake are arguably the two hardest you can read in English.

*zettels

>>22990616
Okay? Tommy wasn't gunning for no nebula

>>22990555
Fervently looking up a guide while reading eh?

In any case, those 3 right there are more difficult than anything in GR, and Joyce doesn't rely on just references for Sirens and Oxen, the very language makes them a difficult read. GR's difficulty stems more from contextlessness and obscure references dropped in the middle of passages.

>>22988038
It's just a book, nigger.
Just, like, read and re-read if you're too retard to understand.
This isn't a quantum mechanics book.

>>22991778
Honestly no. Not saying I understood to the deepest level absolutely everything Joyce wrote, but I was able to follow the narrative and understand what was happening. I've never read GR, but I just feel that in terms of difficulty, Ulysses isn't THAT hard of a read. Oxen is the hardest to actually read and probably the hardest thing I have ever read, and I'm referring just to references but the actual ability to read the chapter and follow it.

>>22992349
So you just skipped massive sections as trivia.
>Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver and the African Mission. Save China's 70millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a 65ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.
This passage won't make sense unless you are aware of what he is referencing. You can obviously skip it but then we aren't really talking about difficulty. You can skip anything that doesn't make sense.

>>22992389
Who said I skipped anything? I read thoroughly for my undergrad and then again for my MA lmao. I'm not a Joyce scholar, and I have no interest in getting to the root of absolutely every reference made. I wouldn't even mind, but the passage you posted isn't exactly the deepest thing ever written. Any normal person taking their time can work out what's going on, even out of context. This is all from Bloom's POV. This isn't even Stephen. This was written as a normal person reflecting like a normal person.
>Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross
Like, what exactly is hard to understand about Bloom comparing the depiction of Buddha to that Jesus?

>>22992414
What about conmee? Who he was. What do chopsticks there mean or their relation to St. Patrick etc. Yeah you can keep track of the narrative but you need to skip so much context to do that. People who aren't paying attention might not even know that Martha Clifford was mentioned first here and what's her role in the story.

>>22992432
>What about conmee? Who he was
Are you for real? Like genuinely? You're asking me who Fr. Conmee was? Are you trying to catch me out and see if I didn't read Portrait or something? Or are you wanting me to recite his biography or something?

>>22992453
What about the general populace who hasn't read Joyce's bibliography and isn't Irish? You are saying it's not a tough book while having done your masters on it.

>>22988038
Cocomelon for 4channers

>>22988199
Is that true? Ulysses has a scene where the main character goes to a whorehouse and fists some transgender in the ass.
It’s ironic that Ulysses, this piece of garbage, and Blood Meridian are the most read books in a board full of tradlarpers.
Is there equivalent degeneracy in Blood Meridian?

>>22992484
It wasn't tough when I read it in undergrad either, apart from two or three chapters. You're using that passage as a filter of sorts when it's anything but. There is literally no need for a person to understand what Bloom is referencing in order to read the book and pick up on the major themes. Fr. Conmee isn't important at all either in this passage. We find out all we need to know about him when Bloom talks about Molly trying to get into the choir. We end up meeting him a few chapters later anyway.
What exactly is it about reading that passage that you think is so difficult and vital that if you aren't able to understand every reference you're missing out? We still don't know what "smugging" was in Portrait exactly, but it doesn't mean anything to actually following the main thread of the book.

>>22992533
>What exactly is it about reading that passage that you think is so difficult and vital that if you aren't able to understand every reference you're missing out?
The fact that you don't yet know what will or will not be important down the line. There is so much digressive clutter with narrative seeds sprinkled in that you can't miss something and be sure that it is not going to matter. The passage I posted was just a random, reference-heavy one. I am not saying it's unreadable or anything.

>>22992553
>The fact that you don't yet know what will or will not be important down the line
That's a fucking insane way to read a book. That's literally what does freaks who underline every sentence and add their own annotations to every word do before posting it to instagram or tumblr. This isn't the enigma code.

>>22992572
Then what you did is not called reading. You looked at every word on every page.

>>22988282
no you

>>22992590
>Man who got a distinction in his MA with the thesis specifically on Ulysses didn't actually read it
If you say so.

>>22992389
>This passage won't make sense unless you are aware of what he is referencing.
I disagree. Sure, I had no idea what a "jossstick" was, or "patrick the shamrock", or a "65 ring"... but I still understood just fine what he was going for.

I would never bother looking up every obscure reference when reading a book like that. When it comes to pledditor schizos you just look at the overall message they're trying to convey, you don't get all hung up on every little tangent their schizo mind rambles along.

>>22992698
>no idea what a "jossstick" was, or "patrick the shamrock"
Yikes.
>"65 ring"
Page number. Ulysses has "in a ring".

>>22992719
>Page number.
Yep, that's what you get when you're a retard schizo that produces art for fart huffing pseudo intellectuals. People think the fire extinguisher is part of your "installation" of old trash arranged in a heap.

>>22992726
lmao I am so tired of all you dunning Kruger polfags, noone's impressed

>>22992780
No one is impressed by you having spent days looking up schizo blathering on wikipedia from the most sold normalfag poser book in existence either.

>>22992783
Cry more :)

>>22992783
Looks like someone got filtered.

>>22992814
Have you ever noticed how no one ever actually refer to any content of Joyce's books in any way?