/lit/ - Literature

>>23011568
kek

>>23011568
A lot of his research was donated last year. I think he's dead, mate.

>>23011568
He knows his reddits fangays are insufferable losers. Some dude is posting his GR-focused Substack in TrueLit and he is genuinely plagiarizing an academic text as if he is the only one to discover that some professor analyzed chapter-by-chapter

>>23012383
art can't plagiarize, it's called inspiration

>>23012383
>implying literary criticism is art
Retard

>>23012383
What is the academic text? That sounds like something I’d be interested in.

>>23012405
The substack follows this to the T

>>23012422
Thanks

>>23012383
I am fairly certain he also posts here, has zero comprehension and just regurgitates trivia he learned through Weisenburger's book without even putting it in context of GR.

>>23012454
I noticed someone doing that as well in Pynchon threads. The trivia used as a gotcha in lieu of comprehension and understanding.

>>23012422
I made the mistake of reading this alongside GR, chapter by chapter; it ruined the experience, and I dropped both books at the halfway point. Fuck that companion book. I don't know how I got convinced that was a good idea.

>>23012387
>art can't plagiarize
There is a thin line between plagiarizing and inspiration. It's thin, but the line exists.

>>23011568
He's an old man. He's spending the time he has left with his family. If you don't see why that's a better use of one's final years than pandering to fans and media outlets, you're a fool.

>>23013282
why are you ignoring the rest of his life when he wasn't an old fuck and still never once has even shown his rat face? justify that moron

>>23012669
Companion books are for those who have already put in the time to understand and want to expand their analysis from the result to the creation. If you have not developed a decent understanding such guides will hinder more than help, cliff/spark notes are what you want if you just want something to guide you and help along the way, review the cliff/spark notes before or after reading.

>>23012383
>>23012454
I checked it out (the most recent one) and I don't understand what he's trying to accomplish. I admittedly skimmed it rather than reading in depth, but it seemed like he was giving a plot summary rather than any analysis.

>>23012383
r/truelit and r/literature are really just pynchon colonies on reddit.

He has a book coming out probably this year that will not be panned, but also not capstone his legacy in anything approaching McCarthy's passing with The Passenger/Stella Maris. He knows this in advance and will default to maudlin horseshit or flippant jestering typical of a godless Boomer on his way out at a world-historically fraught moment of conflict domestically and abroad. Fuck this bucktoothed hackneyed fetus faced literary nepo-abortion. If there were a button to press to siphon off his last years and reanimate the priapic whale cock of his Cornell chum Vonnegut I'd smash it in a second; we'd get something at least honestly dishonest then.

>>23013815
He wrote GR lol

>>23014155
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

>>23011568
I never read him, but isn’t that just part of his brand? Most of the time staying lowkey doesn’t payoff, but once it does and you create a brand off being „mysterious”, you get the best of two worlds. Money and privacy.

>>23013303
You are not entitled to his presence retard.

>>23014185
No its because he leaked state secrets and was hiding from the feds

privacy really infuriates bugmen, doesn't it? you can cope with being an absolute nothing as long as you're allowed to sniff famous people's underwear, but the moment they close their bedroom door you go insane with indignation. a woman's total emotional dependency on gossip.

>>23011568
>op makes an obviously sarcastic intro for a pynchon thread
>redditors swarm en masse to tell him that "askshually privacy is good!"

I'm here

>>23014270
/thread

I just had a realization reading l49

>>23014958
go on...

>>23011568
Have you tried looking in Chinatown? With those buck teeth he'd probably blend right in, nobody would notice.

Brief me about "V."

>how you imagine Thomas Pynchon to be
>"*unzips laptop* xD, another snorkleborkle day! What are my friends on /lit/ thinking, only they can look at books in an edgy way that doesn't bore me! Oops, my laptop is covered in cocaine and weed xD! Maybe I can get high as I type my next book about internet culture and pepe, that'll help me write :D But first I'll finish reading that medieval Pagan cookbook!111 *picks it up off the stack of other similar books* *camera pans out and twists, and you see his desk and seat is stuck to the wall and he is superglued to the chair, working sideways 6 feet off the ground*"

>what Thomas Pynchon is actually like, with a 99.9999 % accuracy
>"*reads the New York Times from front to back, like he does every day, along with the New Yorker and The Economist* Hmm... I'm glad Macron was elected, his sensible moderation and centre ground reforms will be a bastion of progress in our turbulent times. *has a nap* *Reads the latest Jonathan Franzen and then New York Times best seller books* I think I'll go to my study. *Skims Wikipedia to make notes for his new book, gets lazy, decides to make his current section more abstract and incoherent* *Writes exactly 1000 words* *Goes to sleep again*."

>>23014270
>t. op
The only thing that happened en masse itt is ignoring OP.
>>23015797
Its good but rough with some bits and random digressions to no where. From the prose standpoint it might be my favorite of his but overall it suffers from the same thing as most first novels, a good editor to point out that his digressions largely lack any purpose to the whole. But there are only a few of them and overall it is quite cohesive.
>>23015909
>uncooked pasta
You are going to start posting this in every Pynchon thread, aren't you?

>>23014270
for some reason Pynchon threads attract autists in high numbers

>>23015909
Kek

>>23015781
He wears disguises

>>23011568
1. His Simpson cameo proved that he's a crypto fame whore, and also unfunny, and smug / pompous. Just one line read showed what a sniveling tryhard jackass he is.

2. Why is he so celebrated? His writing is fine but it's not "all that." Way too voicey. Way too "cute" and "clever." Reminds me of bojack horseman. Normal words but a horse guy.

3. If you like him, your taste is shit and you're a tryhard pseudointellectual redditor.

4. No, this is not Reddit spacing. Look up the screen cap showing people on 4chan spacing out their posts for readability before Reddit was even a thing.

5. Pynchon is trying to be like Salinger by hiding from the public eye, yet trying to have his cake and eat it too by making his whereabouts a delightful mystery.

6. He's an ugly freak.

>>23016234
>His Simpson cameo proved that he's a crypto fame whore
>Pynchon is trying to be like Salinger by hiding from the public eye, yet trying to have his cake and eat it too by making his whereabouts a delightful mystery.
exactly. Precisely.

>>23015797
Bad novel.

>>23016073
V. is his worst prose. Or atleast it's somewhat better in GR and tcol49.

>>23016985
Howso?

>>23016234
Would you say he is still worth reading? I want to start reading him but don't know where to start.

>>23017138
Good question man. I don't know to be honest. I've only read the first few chapters of a few of his books. He's a good writer no doubt. But his prose just isn't for me. It "insists upon itself"-- what I mean by that is it is so full of wordplay that it becomes kinda exhausting to read. At least for me personally I like reading books where the writing makes me feel like I'm forgetting I'm reading because it's straightforward and clear. With Pynchon every sentence has to be like some joke or puzzle or metaphor or something. Some people really like it I guess but it just takes me out of it and keeps reminding me I'm reading a book instead of letting me slip into the story or whatever. I think that type of thing is subjective though so maybe start with inherent Vice because it supposedly has the most linear narrative. I'm just a random guy so I'd say see for yourself because you might love him

>>23013303
Why should he?
Some people simply value privacy.
It's only amerimutts with their African village mentality who seem to be unable to comprehend why some people might not want to be in the spotlight 24/7 and have their every move analysed by some nigger like you

>>23014270
>privacy is reddit
Do you know what kind of forum you're posting on right now retard?

>start V
>immediately have to lookup a Pynchon funny word and read an entire blogpost
What am I getting myself into here

What's the first Pynch I should start off with?

>>23017743
the crying of lot 49
then V
and if you liked those, move on to GR.
you can end with Mason & Dixon, or go ahead and finish them all at that point.

>>23017107
Hownotso?

>>23014263
look, if people were after my underpants I'd have the common decency to at least have an ebay store set up

>>23017887
You are the one who made the claim regarding the quality of the prose, not me. So why is it his worst?

Is it really so much to ask for one sit down interview? Being such a shy old man is embarrassing. It's cowardice. I want an interview like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IyJEFbBhXo

>>23016975
>>23016985
V. has a better score on Goodreads than the crying of lot 49. How so?

>>23018405
fucking idiot

>>23018413
How so?

>>23017720
what funnyword

>>23018445
>Dicaprio playing Zoyd in PTA's vineland

Lookism would prevent a man like him getting published these days.

>>23018439
goodreads

>>23018499
It's just statistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

>>23018523
statistics have no place in art, hence the 'fucking idiot'.

>>23018528
How so? It's just statistics of preferences. You say that CL49 is better than V, someone says "no".

>>23018544
stop asking stupid questions (how so how so how so?) and playing dumb. Anon said V. has shit prose and is bad, you conflated (retardedly) V.'s Goodreads score with its literary merit, hence the 'fucking idiot'. Kill yourself data obsessed bugman.

>>23018558
How so?

>>23016234
Yeah it is like Bojack

and, yes, that is indeed actually reddit spacing, oops!

>>23018405
probably because 49 is the shorter, more accessible work. it's most people's intro to pynchon and has thus been read more widely, plus it's taught in schools. such is the case with most popular (modern) classics on GR

>>23019381
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Lot49 is taught in schools.. Man, I wish we read good literature in school. But I think that’s more of a college course book anyway.

>>23018405
Lot 49 is widely disliked by those who want something more than plot, there really is not much there and it is difficult to read if you do not get caught up in the plot.
>>23018558
Goodreads score is better then "just trust me bro" but still fairly pathetic. Saying shit prose or calling something bad is useless if you can not back it up and he can't back it up.

There is not much difference between the prose of V. and GR, the latter primarily being just a refinement of what was already there and learning to do things like lettings the prose influence the structures. The stylistic differences between GR and V. are primarily in places other than the prose, such as narration and structure. Lot 49 mostly dumps everything he had learned down the drain and is fairly generic at the prose level.

>>23019660
So, this post happened.

>>23019660
>There is not much difference between the prose of V. and GR, the latter primarily being just a refinement of what was already there and learning to do things like lettings the prose influence the structures. The stylistic differences between GR and V. are primarily in places other than the prose, such as narration and structure.
Can you expand on that? It's actually rare to see anons actually discussing literature to this level.

> Lot 49 [...] is fairly generic at the prose level.
Well, that's depressing because if it's generic then I should give up because I'll never write anything as beautiful (imo) as passages like this:
>For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry.

>She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night.

>Somewhere beyond the battening, urged sweep of three-bedroom houses rushing by their thousands across all the dark beige hills, somehow implicit in an arrogance or bite to the smog the more inland somnolence of San Narciso did lack, lurked the sea, the unimaginable Pacific, the one to which all surfers, beach pads, sewage disposal schemes, tourist incursions, sunned homosexuality, chartered fishing are irrelevant, the hole left by the moon’s tearing-free and monument to her exile; you could not hear or even smell this but it was there, something tidal began to reach feelers in past eyes and eardrums, perhaps to arouse fractions of brain current your most gossamer microelectrode is yet too gross for finding

>>23011568
in some hole in the wall, eating cheese

>>23019728
Purple as fuck.

>>23019728
I hate reading this shit. It sounds horrible and try hard. How the fuck do you people enjoy this?

>>23012399
Nta, but per Post-modernism"things are whatever yo say they are" bullshit, not only can it be if you're retarded and say it is but given how much of it will be death of the author fanfiction by some projecting faggot it probably will be anyways.

>>23019849
It's really good

>>23019728
By generic I mean that the prose largely is just a function of the story and not used to build, explore and develop larger structures and ideas, it is used to tell the story in a very unPynchonian way. Your question is a rather big one so I will just give a general summary and hope discussion will provide a narrower path to elaborate on since the topic is really something that could easily fill a book.

In V. we have the idea of V. itself and Stencil's search for V. and we start seeing every word starting with the letter V as a possibility which brings in new contexts for that word, we see it as more than the word. He is connecting all these seemingly disparate things at the prose level and in ways more complex than just V., Stencil pulls everyone including the reader into his search for the meaning of that brief entry in his father's journal and uses that search to explore the same ideas as he is in the main story in other times and contexts by way of the clues and their stories. V. and the clues becomes more than what they literally are, they become symbols for very complex ideas which are all interrelated.

GR is mostly a rework/refinement of V. and he ties everything together more directly through idea and prose which gets rid of some of the awkwardness that V. suffers from, he brings in and develops the ideas early enough that he can effectively exploit them through the rest of the novel instead of just doing it as he goes. So we get the rocket which from the start he expands beyond the physical rocket by exploring the characters relationship to the rocket and he never stops expanding the idea which gives him loads of ways to tie into that idea as a whole on the prose level just like he did with V. but he also does the same with Pavlovian conditioning and conspiracy which gives him a great deal to play with and allows him to avoid making some of the weak plot level connections he did in V.. By The end of Part one we have a good idea of the concepts of the rocket, Pavlovian Conditioning and conspiracy and he can evoke those concepts at the prose level by referencing any aspect of them and not just them literally which allows great complexity at the prose level and the primary difference between V. and GR at the prose level which is mostly the defined concepts restricting/informing word choice.

>>23019985
That's all bullshit. Lot 49 is the most pynchonian book after GR and the improvement in prose over the amateur rambling of V. is immediately visible from page 1.

>>23020371
>just trust me bro

>>23020446
Just don't be an idiot bro. All this bullshit spam about structure as if most books aren't written with a structure in mind. Even bad books. V. reads like a college student getting off all his reserach for his first novel on the page and then publishing it. The prose is nothing special. There are few good passages like when Esther is in the clinic, or at the end of Mondaugen's story, but much else in between reads as if written by a green writer. The scattebrained lunacy of GR is more similar to Lot 49 than that of V. which isn't all that weird in its narration.

>>23020462
You have poor comprehension, can't even remember context when it is spelled out for you.
>Your question is a rather big one so I will just give a general summary and hope discussion will provide a narrower path to elaborate on
The comments on structure were just meant as a jumping off point for exploring how V. and GR differ in on the mechanical level and had nothing to do with quality or Lot 49. But you still only offer 'just trust me bro,' why post if that is all you have? might as well just post goodreads stats.
>The scattebrained lunacy of GR is more similar to Lot 49 than that of V. which isn't all that weird in its narration.
Who is talking about narration? GR is only 'scatterbrained lunacy' at the plot level and sort of requires ignoring the narrative structure. Lot 49 is pretty simple and direct, the narrative structure is plot.

>>23020583
>pseud talks about reading comprehension
You don't even understand what I meant by lunacy. Back to r/truelit, chihuahua.

>>23020614
You are why we can't have nice things. Chasing away everyone smarter than you will not make you smart, only insures you will remain stupid. At least reply to his actual points instead of your strawmen.

>>23019985
Thank you for answering in depth. I think some stuff flew over my head, maybe with examples I could comprehend better, but that’s probably too much to ask so I’ll just try to dig into the books mysef with this in mind. Thanks again.

>Da Conho would assemble his machine gun, camouflage it with iceberg lettuce, watercress and Belgian endive, and mock-strafe the guests assembled in the dining room.
>"Yibble, yibble, yibble," he would go, squinting malevolent along the sights, "got you dead center, Abdul Sayid. Yibble, yibble, Muslim pig."

>>23020747
Samefag lol.

>>23020446
>>23020614
>>23021281
You really don't have anything to say? Nothing? This is pathetic, why even bother posting

>>23021323
You post paragraphs and still essentially post nothing. That's worse than pathetic. Back to plagiarizing, chihuahua.

>>23021330
Do you even read? It's funny how you call others chihuahua when you're the one barking at people with a tiny voice with absolutely nothing to back it up. Nothing to say.

>>23020837
Ask away, like I said that was just meant to help find the direction to take with it all and I expected it to lead to questions or discussion.
>>23021281
Nope, nor were the following post me. Time for work, sure you will still be at it when I get back.

>>23021237
now this has my attention. I think I'll read it.