/lit/ - Literature

Oh boy, a doorstop! :D

>>3648999
Your trips were more impressive.

Oh boy, a piece of shit :D

>>3649005
You should see the size of the text, this thing will take me at least a week

>>3649028
>at least a week

NEET/autist detected

>>3648999
Are you trying to impress us?

Does anyone know the difference between OP's version and my version? (pic related)

>>3649051

With Infinite Jest? He is trying to score pity points rather.

>>3649060

Yes, his is whitish and yours is blueish.

>>3648999
I just got my copy today too.
>>3649060
I got this same copy. The only difference, to my knowledge, is the cover.

>>3649060
You've hidden a decent author inside?

Books /lit/ trolled you into reading thread?

>>3649060
>2013
>not bookmarking a book with another book which is bookmarked by another book

>>3649072
I did actually only get it because /lit/

>>3649074
>needing a bookmark for The Old Man and the Sea

>>3649060
yours has Hemingway sandwiches in between

>>3649080
>sandwiched
fuck me

>>3649072
I recently got Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49. Did I get trolled?

>>3649086

No, you're just pleb.

>>3649072
Just because you haven't read it, doesn't mean you have to disapprove

>>3649072
>>3649077
Indeed

>>3649028
The footnotes will take you a week.

>>3648999
Congrats OP, enjoy it. It truly is a masterpiece. I see some people call it a troll book, they just haven't read it. Look at the reviews from legit sources, they praise it for a reason.

>>3649098
I picked up that book from my local half price books store, and I literally threw it out later that night. Fuck you, /lit/, for suggesting such a horrid piece of shit.

>>3649090
;_;

Yes, OP, read the reviews in Oprah Winfrey and Amazon and in the Saskatchewan Tribune.

>>3649098
>dem feet

More hipster feet please

>>3649112
B-but /lit/ doesn't like Tao Lin

>>3649135
how new?

>>3649135
That's all who /lit/ was talking about last summer.

>>3649135
Actually /lit/ does like Tao Lin, quite a bit actually.

The meme "go to bed, Tao" is because he came on here once or twice a while ago. His books are pretty great and I'd definately recommend pre-ordering his new novel Taipei

>>3649108
>>3649116
Thnx m8, it's got some on the back

>>3649146
Go to bed, Tao

>>3649112
Tao Lin is awful. Nobody in their right mind would have recommended it to you. You must have imagined it.

>>3649146
If you say so

>>3649146
>His books are pretty great and I'd definately recommend pre-ordering his new novel Taipei
I'd hate to think what you consider bad writing then.

"Dakota Fanning said when she was small she was friends with the man's daughter and she spent the night at their house and when everyone was asleep the man took her to the basement and punched her in the back of the head and in the morning she was in bed and her head hurt." -- Richard Yates, Tao Lin

>>3649154
>Tao Lin is awful

casual sperg-fi pleb detected

>>3649154
> Nobody in their right mind would have recommended it to you.
see >>3649146

>>3649176
That's a pretty moving scene if you appreciate the context

>>3649176
It's strangely reminiscent of The Curious Incident

>>3649185
I don't think you are Tao Lin
I think you're just a fan
Prove with a timestamp, >>>/b/ style

>>3649176
>>3649185
"After four days Haley Joel Osment said he had been mean recently and wanted to be nicer. Dakota Faning said she also thought he had been mean recently and had been thinking that if she just keep being nice to him he would eventually be nicer."

>>3649098
What I find most degrading is the fact that he used Richard Yates' name for his piece of shit book. He literally chose one of the greatest writers of the 20th century to help him sell this piece of shit.

>>3649211
>"After four days Haley Joel Osment said he had been mean recently and wanted to be nicer. Dakota Faning said she also thought he had been mean recently and had been thinking that if she just keep being nice to him he would eventually be nicer."
4th grade morning journal, general.

>>3649229
>The point
>your head.

>>3649251
Are you inferring that he was being ironic about his writing ability

>>3649251
I don't understand what you mean; please elaborate.

>>3649262
But don't you get it! If he says he's doing it ironically, then he can be as shit an author as he want, and it only makes him better! The worse he is at writing, the more ironic he's being.

Irony is truly a wonderful thing.

>>3649282
I'm So Meta, Even This Anagram

>>3649282
this truly rustles my jimmies to hell and back

>>3649295
The purpose of his writing is to anger those plebeians who fail to undersand the irony in it. The more it upsets you, the more it legitimises Tao Lin.

There is no way you can win.

>>3649270
wow nice improper use of the semicolon there champ

>>3649310
I did not write that; I don't see the problem

>>3649310
How old are you that you still think picking apart flaws in someone's English is a valid argument technique?

>>3649323
wait no it's right, sorry everyone

>>3649302
I think you attribute him too much complexity

>>3649295
You've completely missed the point of the latter works
They make you examine what we define as art and why we should apply a single, overreaching ideal
It's known as post-modernism and, in too large a portion, can be sickeningly pretentious
In small amounts, however, it can lead to interesting philosophical discussion

>>3649330

>>3649331
It's ok, we all have those days

>>3649332
I would argue his writing only appears to be post-modern, but is in reality nothing of the sort. Any post-modernist piece, to be truly post-modernist, requires intent. The creator must have the intent to question and subvert what is traditionally defines as art. However, in the case of Tao Lin, he simply sets out to write a book he thinks will be a good book. However, he cannot write, and has intense autism, and as a result his work is incoherent, poorly written, and just generally terrible. This was not an attempt to create something post-modernist, yet due to his debilitating mental illness resembles it in the end.

Perhaps the fact that Tao Lin has achieved any success at all is a greater comment on the nature of art than any other post-modernist creation.

>>3649351
>Perhaps the fact that Tao Lin has achieved any success at all is a greater comment on the nature of art than any other post-modernist creation

Yes
I'm going to use this in conversation

>>3649368
Th-thanks.

>>3649295
>plebs trying to understand art
How about you stop posting?

>>3649380
>actually defending contemporary art
I bet you only drink coffee from Starbucks too.

An ugly face that you hide with a bloated book?

>>3649331
It's all right, I still think you're a prick though.

“You know, I don’t want to be offensive. But ‘Infinite Jest’ is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.”

I love this book OP

Although at times I felt throwing it at a well, I have to say that the experience of having read it is about 1000 times better than actually reading this horrendous book itself.

Although some reviewers have decided to one up me and said that they went straight back to the beginning and started reading it again. Pure torture.

It stays with you for a long time, and the resulting research of DFW and his views and the books themes feel like a years worth of material for a liberal arts degree.

Definitely recommend finishing it if you are up to it, though I wouldn't recommend it outright to anyone, unless I felt like being a sadist.
A+++++

DFW is the king of trolls.

>>3650095
DFW sucks the high hard one

>>3650095
Nah, that'd be Joyce.

>>3650117

Nah, that'd be Tao Lin

>>3648999
http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Peace-Brayden-Summerfield/dp/1616674776

Is much much better.

>>3650118
go to bed, Tao...

>>3650134

JAHOOKIE!

>>3650152

Thank you for that Jahookie! John and Mary Duck would be proud.

>>3650052
As if

sounds interesting but looks too long,is there a film of it

>>3650402
I'm wondering this too.

Any news on a film being made?

I know the guy from the office with the annoyed smile recently maed a movie of Interviews with Hideous Men

>>3649295
>being escorted around Art Museum by qt hipster chick
>Stop in front of a blank canvas
>She explains to me how the 'piece' is a commentary on the futility of formulating traditional modes of aesthetics in a postmodern society
>I reach for my dick and start pissing on the blank canvas
>grinning to myself as I spell my name in piss everyone around me begins to stare
>loudly expound the cause of my actions as being expressive of the broadening connection between the artist and the art spectator in a postmodern setting
>there are varied mumbles of assent and dissent from the crowd
>the qt hipster chick starts shitting on my foot while simulatenously proposing marriage explicating her actions as being the breaking down of traditional forms of relationships between man and woman
>security arrives on the scene but instead of securing the situation they only exacerbate it in a display of postmodern irony
>the crowd goes beserk by forming an orderly circle and discussing Elizabethan poetry in a genial fashion, thus dissolving society's expectation on what an out of control mob looks like
>at that moment every person realizes instantenously the artistic masterpiece they are involved in, as all freeze in motion to preserve what is undoubtedly the postmodern tour de force in art
>spectators walk inside the room only to gasp and faint at the sublime beauty of the piece
>journalists are called in; photographic images of the scene are released to the public.
>the public is in an uproar and demand that they receive an art award for this masterpiece the executor of which is undoubtedly 'the public' itself
>the public wins the Turner Prize in art
>one night a nigger breaks in to the museum and carries off my qt hipster fiancé
>mfw she is pawned on the art black market and is being displayed in some rich capitalists mansion and I never see her again.

>>3650474
10/10, will pursue later works

>>3650474
>capitalists mansion
I -
I want to praise, but I -
I need to give a... 2/10.

>>3650474
Very nice.

>>3650474
saved, with slight edits

>>3650769
>with slight edits
>/lit/

>>3649098
Try someone like Trocchi first if you're having difficulty getting into Tao.

>>3650474
I love you

>>3649229
>still hasn't caught up with post-modernity

ITT: People who can't handle Infinite Jest

Do you guys even like and but so?

/lit/, all your shitty attempts at irony aside, what do you actually think of Infinite Jest?

Personally, I'm not done reading it yet. I like it quite a bit so far, though it's pretentious and repetitive at times. If he mentions The Ecstasy of St. Therese one more fucking time I swear to god I am going to throw this brick of a book through my computer monitor.

>>3651117
OP here, not that far into it and my enjoyment has varied a lot so far
Not liking having the footnotes all shunted to page 983

i liked better than pale king

>>3651127
I didn't like it at first, but now I find it kind of fun to have to switch back and forth between the footnotes. You'll definitely need at least two bookmarks, though.

>>3651117
it's worth sticking with, the don gately stuff at the end is pretty sweet

>>3649176
>can't into minimalism
>can't understand why someone would use a run-on sentence with flat prose to generate a certain affect

pleb detected

Okay guys, what does it mean when it says at the endnotes "see note 340 sub". I can't find a "note 340 sub", do I just read note 340?

>>3652062
Yeah

>>3652069
So I'm going to have to read it 3 times? It says "see note 340 sub" twice, and I'm sure there's also a reference in the main text.

I'll just make notes.

>>3648999
That edition always looks like a Princeton Review book to me.

>>3652305
It's not tho
It's the Abacus 2013 edition

Bumping for 100 posts before 404

bump for the 100. For Wallace and all his glibness

>>3652378
>Wallace and all his glibness
>Wallce
>glib

hardly

Stupid book for stupid people to invest hundreds of hours into so that afterwards they can say they are not stupid

>>3652824
Hunders of hours? no

>>3652895
Omg here's a smart 1

>>3652824

I read it in two days and thought it was enormous fun. Everyone should read it for pure entertainment value.

>>3652914
"A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do Again"