/lit/ - Literature

>>4247263
Is there actually some point to The Sot-Weed Factor besides just being incredibly pulpy and having the greatest amount of plot twists and tropes ever employed in any book ever?

It's probably the most entertaining book I've ever read.

Bumping thsi even though no one will care. My mom has a copy of the Sot Weed Factor sitting around that I thought I'd pick up. I've heard Barth is a good "postmodern" writer so I thought it give ti a try after Omensetter's Luck. Why does /lit/ pretend to like the hardest, densest literature but never really talk about Gaddis, Gass, Barthelme, or any of these great newer writers.

>>4247880
Because as a "great new writer" there are hundreds of hoops you have to go through to be recognized at large, and if you aren't a New Yorker darling or get a movie deal nobody will talk about you.

>>4247886
But the guys I mentioned I simply found out because of looking at info about Pynchon online. you'd think these writers that are a part of the same sort of style would get some play her, but yeah...

>>4247900
because by pure reference the audience pool shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, until you have a random /lit/ thread on a random book that will get 4 posts max and be shuffled off into oblivion

>>4247880
Barthelme is hardly dense if his 40 Stories are an indicator of his general style (I'm hoping this is the Barthelme you're talking about), but they are experimental.

Every once in a while someone tries to talk about Gaddis, but it's usually a failed discussion with the inevitable comment that he's obscure and no one on /lit/ talks about him.

The Sot-Weed Factor is super entertaining, you can read it just for the plot, it's really not that dense. Gass, you're right, no discussion on him.

>>4247908
So someone should just make a "contemporary" thread?

>>4247914
I put Gass into amazon and got "Gas-X Extra Strength Cherry Creme" for rectum discomfort

>>4247916
>>4247908
Think he means that just name-dropping an author isn't going to get anyone to read him. Some analysis or discussion of an author/their work, no matter how superficial, would probably make the book more appealing for more c/lit/s.

>>4247919
http://www.amazon.com/Omensetters-Luck-Classic-20th-Century-Penguin/dp/0141180102/ref=pd_sim_b_4


Definitely recommend this, one of my favorite books of all time.

>>4247927
Thank you kindly.

>>4247920
good point, unfortantely some one can mention Lin or Sasha Grey and get a 100+ post thread. So much for the smartest board. This shit is almost as bad as /mu/

>>4247935
I come here for the occasional good book recommendation - thanks again for the link - and the inane shit flinging between books

if you aren't on 4chan for shit flinging, why else are you here?

>>4247935
Yea man.

>>4247939
Yeah, I guess I have too much faith in people; but then again, I misspelled unfortunately.

But yeah, Omensetter's luck is great dude. It captures the mind of someone with a mental illness incredibly well.

>>4247263
Lost in the Funhouse is an incredible short story collection, it's a postmodernist microcosm; intertexuality, pastiche and metafiction all sit side by side. In some stories it does seem that the postmodern angle or device used succeeds in breaking down the disingenuous fabrication that is the story, allowing sincere communication between the reader and author (in the short story Lost in the Funhouse, itself, for instance), in others it just looks like intellectual masterbation (echo etc).

>>4247957
Intellectual masturbation is very underrated these days. Internet intellectual masturbation has short-changed the literary I think.

>>4247957
Have you read Barthelme? Are their short story styles in any way similar? Because that's the same way I feel about Barthelme, sometimes his methods work really well in creating a short story, and some of them seem almost too experimental.

institutionalized pomo academic garbage

>>4247969
From what I've read they certainly seem to have those similarities. I think the short story is a more natural medium for Barthelme than Barth, which to me seems to end up as much a strength as a weakness for him. Barth, perhaps because the short story isn't so intuitive a form for him, gets away with more radical experimentation, I think, feeling free to make a paragraph long story here and there, or to use recurring characters and narratives in his collections. All of Barthelme's short stories seemed to work as narratives (dampened or reinforced by postmodern devices), but, though I think some parts of Lost in the Funhouse are unreadable, it remains the only book that's ever brought me to x["if you have x, prepare to shed them now"].

>>4248025
Have you read Sot weed Factor? Is it a good starting point for Barth or should I start with his stories?

>>4248045
I don't want to pretend I'm an expert on either author. LitF or the Sot-weed factor are both good starting places. I'd say that if you like the early works of the late postmodern writers like Wallace or Eggers, you might try LitF first as some of their works are responses to it and works similar to it. If you prefer sprawling, postmodern black-humourist novels like Pynchon's early stuff, The Sot-weed Factor might be better for you.

>>4247880
When someone brings up Gaddis people make fun of it because Gaddis is apparently the go-to 'obscure' writer for people who don't know of many obscure writers.

>>4248011
that's not tao lin

>>4247603

No, there is no point beyond that. That is literally it's raisin denture.

>>4247957

for as well-worded as that response was i'm rather perturbed you misspelled "masturbation"

>>4247962

>in the old world scholars in the know exchanged verbose, intelligent letters regarding criticisms and points of view on the works of the day
>in the new world someone posts doge as a response on a message board

we truly are the poorest of people

>>4248077

OP here, I honestly think Barth is best read sequentially, because his style and complication builds in a very clearly tiered way if you start from the beginning.

The Floating Opera
The End of The Road
The Sot Weed Factor
Giles Goat Boy

He has novels after that, some of them good, but that's his canon right there.

>>4248985
>raisin denture

>mfw this entire time I thought Barth and Barthelme were the same person

>>4249014
>the shame when you realize you forgot your face

>>4249015
>the shame when that's not the face I wanted

christ, I"m all over the place.

>>4247263
Will I love this book as much as I loved Mason & Dixon?