/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11001874]

What's the gas on Gass? He wrote the intro to The Recognitions, and a lot of Anons here seem to regard him very highly.

>If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

[Anonymous No.11001900]

>>11001874
He's really good at writing sentences and likes to incorporate gimmicks in his book for my attention span. The Tunnel is achingly beautiful. I've read every work of fiction he's published.

[Anonymous No.11001916]

>>11001874
>I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
What the fuck I want to buy one of his books now

[Anonymous No.11001942]

>>11001900
please post a beautiful extract from the Tunnel

[Anonymous No.11002349]

>>11001874
I like his essays. The generally acknowledged living master of the form in English up until his death.

[Anonymous No.11004086]

>>11001942
>Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen — the expression of an ecstatic state — though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God

[Anonymous No.11004161]

>>11002349
Finding a Form is a book I use to keep my self in line. It's like some kind of credo I try to hold. A pledge.

[Anonymous No.11004310]

>>11004161
Great collection. The two Nature essays in one of the concluding batches comes first to mind. Then perhaps the Nietzsche essay. Bachelard in Air and Dreams has a similarly unorthodox yet as strong take on His Zarathustran Majesty.

[Anonymous No.11004358]

>>11001900
>I've read every work of fiction he's published.
Can you recommend something that isn't excruciatingly negative and obviously isn't the Tunnel, which, from what I've read of it, is just way too pessimistic and disturbing for my interests, and has caused me to have a general dislike for Gass.

[Anonymous No.11004430]

>>11004161
>>11004310
>Finding a Form
Just downloaded this and have been looking it over. Wasn't a fan of the present tense, I see :(

[Anonymous No.11004444]

>>11001874
Obligatory

[Anonymous No.11004465]

>>11004086
thank you. this was very impressive.

[Anonymous No.11004489]

>>11004430
read it, he didn't liked PS because it's overused among plebs and he considered it to be pollution caught from cinema.

[Anonymous No.11004573]

>>11001916
Not sure if you're being ironic but my desire to read Gass greatly increased with that sentence

[Anonymous No.11004580]

>https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/gass-prizes.html?

literary prizes BTFO

[Anonymous No.11004708]

I don't get that guy

I started reading Middle C and while there are some good parts I found it to be mostly a blob of ramblings from a guy who's pissed at globally everything, the prose is somehow sophisticated but not as musical as I thought it'd be when reading his interviews

I also dropped in the heart of hearts of the country and remember nothing about it

Are these two his weakest?

[Anonymous No.11005272]

>>11004580
>And ''experimental'' can so often be more frankly replaced by ''self-indulgent and inept'' as to cause one to despair of the word.

spot fucking on

[Anonymous No.11005899]

>>11004358
Middle C isn't pessimistic and disturbing. It does still contain misanthropy though.

>>11004708
In The Heart I didn't really get it either. The Tunnel is really bitter too but beautifully written. Omensetter's Luck has some nice writing in it but I don't find it too memorable. Try his second story collection Cartesian Sonata. I hope you enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.11006463]

>>11005899
thanks I'll check it out! The guy says real interesting things outside of his books

[Anonymous No.11007570]

>>11004580
> Because the Pulitzer Prize in fiction takes dead aim at mediocrity and almost never misses; the prize is simply not given to work of the first rank, rarely even to the second; and if you believed yourself to be a writer of that eminence, you are now assured of being over the hill - not a sturdy mountain flower but a little wilted lily of the valley.

wew lad

[Anonymous No.11007711]

>>11001874
I hate when someone uses periods to show dramatic pauses in speech. I hate it. A lot. It's. Fucking. Re. Tard. ED.
I always picture some insufferable political activist stating obvious talking points like they were secret insight, or a Mom, trying to be stern while lectureing a child, and hating life.

[Anonymous No.11009038]

>>11004489
PS?