/lit/ - Literature

This must be a meme because Gass is an absolute genius of a writer.

Go back to your JK Rowling.

The worst part is how well this works to make me want to read this book. I feel like in two years McDonald's will be running commercials about how bad there food is just to motivate people to try eating the food. I bet if the gimmick were positioned correctly within a television show it'd work like a fucking charm.

>>9877808
That's the marketing tactic they used for the emoji movie. It works

>>9877758
I can't be bothered with hefting yet another Gass is shit thread. I'm tired. at least I am right at this moment. Feel free to browse the archives.

>>9877758
link old thread. i tried reading this book but there were to many cringey attempts at sounding SERIOUS and BADASS so i sold it

Based on the excerpts in the old thread, I get the impression that Gass spends years rearranging words and making sure they have just the right alliteration but the result just feels laboured and artificial instead of musical

>>9877891
>>9866658

one of the many.

>>9877815
Oh man, I'd love to see the marketing plan for this. All those pretentious neo-Victorian new parents finding difference in their contrarian attitudes are such a ripe market to be exploited. I'd be putting money in fast food stocks and any other shitty simulacrum product that adopts this perverse, schizo scheme.

>>9877758

I'm that guy who stages meme pictures for a bunch of autists on the internet

>>9877758
How much of the Gass hate comes from the fact that he is a feminine fat faggy-looking geezer? I don't disagree with the people expressing hate, but I must admit that it adds an extra level of faggotry to his work. Look at this fucking fat faggot, acting so serious about his BIG BOOK about farts and micropenises

I guess you could say, he's Bad Gass

Are people mistaking 'cringey' for just uncomfortable to read? Kohler is a pathetic dicklet fascist, one of the most deplorable characters ever.

Idk tho, the book is way too long imo.

>>9877984
no, it's cringey because it's obvious how hard Gass is trying to be a "serious, literary" writer. everything about the book reeks of artificiality. The fact he purposely made it a big book. The constant references he makes almost because it seems like Gass feels that that is what a "serious literary" writer would do. Not to mention his very style, which reeks of self-consciousness and artificial techniques, without any sense of original talent. He is a vain, stupid, talentless man, trying as hard as he can to come across as something he's not, projecting a terrible side of his personality onto a character and than distancing himself from it so as to construct a better public image of himself. He put an admirably amount of work into his books, but reached far beyond his level of fundamental talent to lead to an artificial dissonance between appearance and actual ability that we can only see to be cringy.

>>9877970
>people genuinely think this is difficult to understand and claim critics are just too stupid

>>9878035
well critics are stupid, but so is Gass

>>9877970

This reads like something written by a computer AI. Just random words strung together in grammatically correct sentences devoid of actual meaning.

Reminder he spent THREE DECADES writing this thing. Wtf.

I don't get the rise in Gass hate. I know he's become a bigger meme around here, but do people not realize that hating on him for being a meme is just as pathetic as reading him simply because he is a meme? You're memeing either way.

That said, The Tunnel is not his best work at all, despite the fact that he spent so long on it. I think his earlier stuff is better. He turned into a parody of himself.

>>9878234
all me btw

>>9877970
I have to sound pleb but this is what people mean by "over-written".

See:

>>9877910

>>9878234
Critics can't write novels.

Ahem...

This is a good example of the boomer mindset that has unraveled the west (even if Gass is technically from the prior generation): decadence, with criticism turned inward, but unable to determine the actual source of the problem. This is the mindset that fucked us.

I have read his rotten milk prose, tasted the sweating odor of the man through his pages, and escaped, reeking of foul disappointment.
This, and the first person thing, made the book a real disappointment. All that time he spent crafting this dark, depressing door stopper could have been used to create something beautiful and lasting. Just a real waste all around.

He's also perverted, and not in the jolly "let's look up her skirt and find a clown face popping out" sort of way, or even the "i'm observing, recounting, or creating instances of perversion which are to effect you in the ways i see fit", but rather in a "i'm a cellulite ridden imp of perversity, i am going to allude to my very own depraved crevices constantly and clumsily and unsuccessfully attempt to pass it off as a theme perpetrated by one with higher skill than mine". style of perversity.

I know he's a little too old to be a boomer, but he's still a boomer. As old as they get, they still push this degeneracy and perversion like they're rebelling against the 50s and their parents. It's pathetic.

>someone keeps spamming meme gass threads
>they're pretty funny for shitting on such a great work
>normies will inevitably visit /lit/ and take OP at face value, genuinely begin hating Gass because they're too stupid to know any better

>>9878288
>I have read his rotten milk prose, tasted the sweating odor of the man through his pages, and escaped, reeking of foul disappointment.
rooooofl

I really enjoyed the sections about Kohlers childhood desu. Very evocative.
It seems the original gassposter (a massive stan), actually succeeded in getting a number of people to attempt this book, me included. Personally I think it's mostly shit, like, I got the fucking point after 100 pages or so.
I get that Kohler himself would write and overlong, masterbatory piece of trash, but I don't need to waste time reading it all.

>>9878007
But what you just said describes the main character perfectly. Sounds like Gass did a bang up job. He's hilarious.

Nothing quite like a cup of joe and a good book eh lads?

>>9878397
At least take the sticker off

>>9878288
kek

Be serious now ya'll motherfuckers, I'm about 200 pages in and it seems like drivel so far and everything negative people are saying in this thread appears correct, does it get better why does everyone say it's great?

>>9878440
Hmmm. oh I don't know maybe because its a meme?

>>9878440
> does it get better

No. It's the same joke repeated over.

> why does everyone say it's great?

It has the aura of being "long and hard."

>>9878397
wheres your good book? is it under the tunnel?

Nice job on the psued containment thread OP!
>if I anonymously hate on a big book I've never read that makes me smart!
>I'll just allude vaguely to "prose" and "authenticity" and other buzzwords I couldn't define if my life depended on it
>I can't give one example of bad writing and explain why. I'll just post a page and grimace at it

fake it till you make it, guys. I've never seen people try this fucking hard to not read

>>9878288
>a cellulite ridden imp of perversity
lol

>>9877888
>my internet shtick is shitting on an unpopular writer who will still be more successful and relevant compared to anything I do
Noggin=Joggin

>>9878309
>>9878594
>tfw people think i'm funny
>>9878600
they're just memes, man. no need to get so uptight about it.

>>9878959
oops


by the way, i'm also the "tolstoy was a slave rapist" guy.

>>9878535
Have you ever seen someone formulate an argument as to why Gass has merit and discernible talent? It's literally, "Read him. You haven't read him. Just read him."

>>9878982
>by the way, i'm also the "tolstoy was a slave rapist" guy.

nice, that was a good meme

>>9879001
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/03/why-you-should-read-william-h-gass-eyes-novellas-and-stories

>>9879025
I rank the opinions of The Guardian below the worst of /lit/ shit posts. You're not helping you're cause here.

>>9879055
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/07/genius-of-william-gass/

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>>9879073
I typed up and submitted all of these posts.

>>9879091
nuh uh.

>>9879107
anyway, i'm no Otto, doesn't matter, i don't need The Recognitions

>>9879073
It's mostly behind a paywall, mothafucka. Did you even read what you linked?

>>9879107
Hey it's you again! You're a bigger joke than William Gass, and I actually read The Tunnel. Can you describe what you didn't like about the first sentence again?

>>9879001
>beautiful stylist
>fine delineator of unique and different characters
>moments of pathos
>humor
>philosophical sustenance
What's not to like

>>9879159
I'm Googling William Gass for you, retard. I just want to see how many articles you'll have to dismiss before it'll be painfully obvious even to yourself that you're just an illiterate pseud?

here:
https://www.thenation.com/article/till-knowing-ends-william-gass/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/books/review/middle-c-by-william-h-gass.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/15/william-h-gass-being-blue-brian-lists-dillon
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/books/review/william-h-gasss-eyes-and-john-barths-collected-stories.html

>>9879188
In all of those he excels in one-note. The philosophical sustenance is meaningless and you're probably gonna jerk off the fact that he took a half dozen lectures under Wittgenstein, so like "muh language games, mothafucka."

Why shouldn't I reread Joyce or Gaddis? And speaking of Gaddis. Gass wrote an intro to The Recognitions to do what literary critics do best: attach their mediocre name to a great one.

How dare he.

>>9879161
it's way to long and hard. like your mother's cock.

>>9879205
he also did an introduction to anatomy of melancholy.

>>9879201
> can't formulate why The Tunnel should be bought and read by others
> l-look at all these Gass Short Story reviews I found! Ha! I win!

Gassians...baka.

And that The Nation review is hardly the most positive of appraisals, it's basically "His literature is kinda complex innit?

>>9879227
"Hey, guys, like Burton and Gaddis? Hehe, yeah, me too! Buy my books."

>>9879237
that faggot ugly sonuvabitch. i'll lynch the fucker. i mean look at his gremlinvisaged entity, no wonder his books are about depraved microphallic adventures. he's lived the damn things.

>>9879247
nig look like Lobo ffs

>>9878440
it's all downhill after the 100 pages of microsoft paint drawings.

>>9878386
This. It's like the book is Shit, but it's supposed to be Shit, so therefore it's actually good.

>>9878535
There's legitimate discussion in this very thread you fucking mong. How about (YOU) read The Tunnel? And provide us a nice review afterwards.

>>9879302
so it's like rocky horror picture show but worse?

The Tunnel > The Recognitions
Stay mad pseuds

Started reading it because of this thread.
He's clearly a worshipper of /lit/core authors, but it's decent so far

>>9879833
He never shuts the fuck up about his fat wife does he

>>9879247
I would've had sex with young Gass. He probably had quite a bit of issues to get over.

>>9877793
>genius
He's stylish and observant at times, but he's mostly annoying.

>>9878035
Complexity has little to do with difficulty.

Why do pseuds always make this assumption?

>>9878959
>they're just memes
Imagine Gass reading all this stuff. Saying it's just memes is like looking at an obese kid and saying no offense but you're a fat cunt

The Tunnel reads like really bad Celine by someone who has lived a sheltered life (read: academic).

If that's the point, then why is that clever?