/lit/ - Literature

>is x worth the time?
You're posting on 4chan so yea, anything is worth your time. It's a great book

>>6972978
It is according to Franzen, but he also says he struggled to get through the whole thing.

>>6972992
He's such a fucking pleb. He couldn't make it through Mason & Dixon. He's dropped like half the big boy books he's started

Maybe the biggest joke in literature since Timothy Dexter

>>6972978
It's quite a slog and I believe the book should be shorter, but it's worth reading.

>>6972978
It's really dry and abstract at parts so I found it a slog at times, but it's also v witty and funny at parts. I enjoyed it but I also didn't really get half of it so it was not the most rewarding experience. idk maybe I should try it again in like 20 years

>>6973002
woah similar post and description of book :^)

yes, you dipshits

Great prose and characters, lots of thought-provoking passages and ideas, plot runs a bit slow and it's not exactly action-packed

Definitely worth a read if you have the time

It's one of those books that make writers get in a cab and say "TO THE EAST VILLAGE AND STEP ON IT" so they can tell all their writer friends about it. Markson always name-checked it.

Like when Mark Strand sent Gass the note that said, Read Invisible Cities.

>>6972996
That's LORD Dexter to you, chump.

It is worth reading but it's tough to make sense of, about as tough as Ulysses, I would say. Take notes and use the reader's guide which you can find online.

I've read it twice. AMA.

>>6973354
Is it good

>>6973354
Chuck Norris counted to infinity, twice.

>>6973364
yes

>>6973401
why

>>6973354
What's it about? How would you describe the style?

>>6973354
How would you rate it difficulty-wise?
Are you The Cats?
Have you read JR?

>>6972978
You need to read it in order to understand The Corrections, and you need to read that to understand post 9/11 American culture, which you need to understand to use 4chan. What are you doing here, OP?

>>6973406
its main theme is about the loss of positive contents and meanings of post modern world and the ways the pure personality of the person is alienated in order to exist among the cultural substance. The art backdrop is a pretty good device.

>>6973408
I think is easier than JR; that gaddis annotated website helps a lot. You have to do a lot of googling while reading it.

Bump

>>6972996
Or maybe he's just honest, unlike a lot of his contemporaries who lie about how much they have read

Idk why everyone says it's so difficult and such a slog. With the guide it's actually relatively easy (closer to IJ than GR in terms of difficulty) and actually p entertaining (tho the plot is a bit nebulous at times). I started last week and am already on page 600. Only a few times have I had to reread a sentence or two or try to sort through the cryptic dialogue of the protagonist but Gaddis really does great dialogue and has some killer prose. I also find him a good deal funnier than most of Pynchon (if a bit more sober and bitter)

>>6975346
Oh and to add to that: Jonathan Franzen is a retard for finding this so difficult (not to mention never finishing Moby Dick or Mason and Dixon)

>>6975346
>>6975362
>Idk
>p entertaining
>tho

You will forgive me for not believing you.

>>6975379
Well I'm terribly sorry that I chose to express myself so colloquially (especially concerning an author who revels in the fun of everyday speech so much)! Obviously this Vietnamese grammar telegram line is too prestigious for simple folk such as i

>>6975392
>not capitalizing "I"
>putting the exclamation point OUTSIDE the parenthesis

God damn, anon, you know just how to trigger me. That's two posts now.

>>6975379
>>6975392
Or would you rather: "--Listen, this is just another thread, like that followed by that other bull slayer. No, not Mithras. Who can appreciate the solids of Ucello or Chavenèt or the shades in a Van Eyck when they get swamped in these things? What's there to know and what's there to say? "What if we're fished for?" Who said that: Dreiser? What I mean is who gives a damn who said it? I've got to say something"

>>6975409
>>6975409
Dude, the whole sentiment was exclamatory otherwise there'd be some punctuation traffic jam! I managed the best I could. Besides that you didn't even point out that I ought've said "myself" instead of "I" anyways. So fuck you; the Recktognitions is gr8.

>>6973421
>The Corrections
ouch
I needed to read The Cat & The Hat to understand that one.

>>6975224
Why not both?

>>6975432
Don't feel bad, I just realized that I used the singular of "parentheses." I'm a faggot too.

But really, you never put the punctuation outside the brackets unless you're quoting an academic article. Then it would be like "this is an embedded quote" (Anon, 420).

>>6975455
Haha yeah you're probably right. Fuck, I remember now. Descriptivistically at least. Anyways read the Recognitions.

>>6975422
Who is Chavenèt?

>>6975455
Actually you were correct because "parenthesis" can be used to mean a parenthetical phrase

>>6973439
def easier than JR—The Recognitions is written (mostly) in conventional prose. JR's "only dialogue" style a)disorienting b) sui generis and c) can make the plot (such as it is) really hard to follow.

>>6975535
"--Chavenet. It really doesn’t mean anything, but it’s familiar to everybody if you say it quickly. They mention a painter’s style, you nod and say, Rather chavenet, or, He’s rather derivative of Chavenet wouldn’t you say?"

>>6973408
I thought The Recognitions was tougher than J R. It gets really abstract and there are some boring parts. J R is funny the whole way through and he differentiates the voices really well.

That said The Recognitions has some amazing paragraphs of insight.

>>6975346
Yeah I agree Gaddis' dry humor is fucking spot on. I still think Slothrop eating British candy is the funniest thing I've ever read, though.

is anything worth the time?