/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11323634]

What am I in for?

[Anonymous No.11323638]

One of, if not THE, most difficult and rewarding Books of the 90s

[Anonymous No.11324855]

>>11323638
it really isn't difficult, it's just dense and rhymes a lot it's a great book but it's not about plot.

[Anonymous No.11324863]

>>11323634
phat wife, small cock

[Anonymous No.11325027]

>>11324855
>Hurr its not difficult.

If this isn't a hard book, then what is?

[Anonymous No.11325291]

>>11323638
What's difficult about it?

[Anonymous No.11325297]

Purple prose.

[Anonymous No.11325321]

>>11325027
gravity's rainbow, ulysses & The Bible come to mind. There are not many characters in The Tunnel it's just really dense at parts.

[Anonymous No.11326723]

Truly one of the greatest books of all time. It's funnier than Gaddis at his funniest, the wordplay is beyond Stein and Finnegans Wake, the plot is like Stoner if Stoner was a fat, small-dicked fan of Hitler.

[Anonymous No.11326736]

>>11326723
Ok you have me excited

[Anonymous No.11326742]

>>11324855
Since there’s no plot the book has a weird affect on memory for me. Since the narrative isn’t really connective I just remember random scenes, forget them for a long time, then I just seem to recall them out of nowhere

[Anonymous No.11326805]

>>11326736
Gass' prose is so beautifully haunting that it's easy to connect with Kohler. Sometimes he just rambles on about something mundane as how he learned to use the toilet alone and his personal Tunnel up his ass, other times he just manages to write up to 20 pages on how much he hates his wife, coworkers, and his son Adolf. Please take care of yourself and don't get dragged down into the darkness while reading.

[Anonymous No.11327101]

I read you shouldn’t read this book if prone to depression. Is that overblown?

[Anonymous No.11327104]

>>11326805
He also indulges in unwelcome disturbing thoughts that we all have. The one I remember best is where he imagines a community of Jews being forced to strip naked before being shot by machine guns and he imagines that a young Jew is finally able to see naked women for the first time and finds it arousing before he’s killed.

When we learnt about the Holocaust in HS I always imagined something like that happening but felt kind of ashamed for thinking it. Grass doesn’t filter it he explores thoughts like this

[Anonymous No.11327252]

>>11327101
It might be a stretch, but it's probably wise to engage with caution if depression is something you've experienced. It's 650 pages of constant blabbering of one who does not have an ounce of energy to spend on understanding someone else. Therefore it feels solipsistic and down-dragging. It's an unfiltered monologue by someone who has so much hatred in his heart that he has to dig a tunnel.

[Anonymous No.11327480]

Gass is a product of his generation, one that spit in the face of a civilization, their own, that is currently, to no surprise, collapsing; he's the worst of these postmodern boomer writers though. There's nothing redeeming in The Tunnel, it's a disgrace to literature and emblematic of the selfish and destructive boomer.

He squandered his talent. He could have spend those years creating something beautiful and inspiring, but instead, in typical transgressive boomer fashion, he wrote something that is depressing and angry and ultimately forgettable. Squandered time and talent.

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.

[Anonymous No.11327599]

>>11327480
>something beautiful and inspiring
>depressing and angry and ultimately forgettable.

>that 23 year old memerson reading boomer