/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11912456]

The Recognitions >>>>>>>> The Brothers Karamazov

[Anonymous No.11912504]

>>11912456
huh

[Anonymous No.11912514]

>>11912504
I've read both, The recognitions is the superior book.

[Anonymous No.11912527]

>>11912504
you heard the man

[Anonymous No.11912528]

>>11912456
Anglo: the post

[Anonymous No.11912544]

>>11912528
care to argue against my point or contribute to the discussion?

[Anonymous No.11912571]

I’m like 3/4 of the way through Recognitions. It’s pretty good but taking me forever to finish. I haven’t read Karamazov but I imagine I’d probably like it better.

[Anonymous No.11912589]

>>11912544
TBK > The Recognitions

there

[Anonymous No.11912607]

>>11912456
whoa I've never seen this cover. It's amazing.

[Anonymous No.11912654]

>>11912589

[Anonymous No.11912665]

>>11912456

Started reading this recently and loved it.

Then around page 200 it started to suck.

When does it get good again. These motherfuckers writing godlike prose for 200 pages only to start not giving a fuck really grinds my gears.

[Anonymous No.11912695]

>>11912544
I don't need to as anglos usually have a horrible understanding of Dostoevsky (and Orthodoxy in general). Your opinion is irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.11912699]

>>11912665
uhm, 20% of any novel is very little. Just because you reached a part you didn't like is not indicative of the novel as a whole. Sometimes it takes time for things to come together.

There is much, much more godlike prose in that wonderful novel. It's a masterpiece and worth finishing.

[Anonymous No.11912708]

>>11912695
yep the majority of pseuds on here only ended up reading dosto because daddy peterson told them to

[Anonymous No.11912742]

>>11912695
hop off my cock bro and maybe actually put some opinions relevant to the discussion of the books here. I think TR also had a very good showing of religion in it.

[Anonymous No.11912863]

>>11912699

How's about you answer my question you dicksucker. I'm not discussing the substance of the novel, of which there's very little beyond the ceaseless hand-wringing about imitations of imitations; I'm talking about the prose, the beauty of the sentences, suddenly careening off a cliff. When does he get his muster back.

[Anonymous No.11912917]

>>11912863
how about you keep reading or take your ritalin you child

[Anonymous No.11913098]

>>11912917

How's about discussing the immediacy of a substantially reduced prose style versus limpwristed proclamations that the remaining 8/10ths of a 1k-paged novel be endured when the previously dope writing has become shit. No wonder this guy slipped into irrelevancy; he's a dullard, and his defenders incapable of impassioned defense.

My nuts, anon; suck'em.

[Anonymous No.11913307]

>>11912708
based Dosto dominated this board years before JP was a thing.
the only influence peterson had on this board was the introduction of Solzenitzen and the reinforcing of Jung, Nietzsche, and Freud, who were already relatively popular here.

[Anonymous No.11913311]

>>11912456
I loved the first part but I dropped this when it started mocking french culture.

[Anonymous No.11913350]

>>11913311
french culture is shit though

[Anonymous No.11913376]

pretty much everything is better than dostoevsky

[Anonymous No.11913403]

>>11913098
what did you like about the prose previous to the pg. 200 "cliffdrop"? Maybe a comment on the aesthetics in regards to structure, rhythm and perhaps texture. Then I will be able to determine if he continues somewhere in the book with what you found great in the beginning.

[Anonymous No.11913406]

>>11913403
>structure, rhythm and perhaps texture
define these so that I can help you

[Anonymous No.11913421]

>>11913406
these were buzzwords to help you get started on describing what it is you liked about the prose, what it is in the prose that is not employed after pg 200. If the terms don't help you get started, disregard them.
What was good about the prose that dissapeared?

[Anonymous No.11913462]

>>11913421
What I noticed after page 200 is that Gaddis' imagination fell off of a cliff. He started resorting to filling up pages with stuttering straw men and baboons. Oh yea, idk, lemme just throw in this reference here that has nothing to do with anything but you should be impressed by my research. The book is also about a mute asshole who we are supposed to feel connected with. Not to mention that all of the women are written as sexual objects

[Anonymous No.11913529]

I had a lot of fun reading Gaddis's style in The Recognitions, but I understand if you don't want to read fractured dialogue from a shitty party for 80 pages. Brothers Karamazov probably has more general appeal.

[Anonymous No.11913669]

I think what a lot of people miss about the recognitions after page 200 is that it's about the culture surrounding art as well. Wyatt's journey at the beginning of the novel is a lot more captivating because he's working on something that means something to him and then after that you have all these people infatuated with the culture around it, obviously concerned with things beyond it. There are some moments where it's really good and captivating but I think too it's also meant to show the futility of art. I think a big take away from the book is " don't take it so seriously". A lot of the plot isn't directly stated you have to infer a lot of it.

[Anonymous No.11913711]

>>11912456
and Trifles for a Massacre is better than both

apply yourself when you make a thread

[Anonymous No.11913720]

>>11913403

Anon, it is I, the anon whom prior commanded thou gobble my scrotum; the responses to this post save this very one you read before you now are the words of an impersonator, perhaps you yourself, attempting to imitate me that they might see my reputation destroyed. I will not falter, anon. I will overcome this.

You will pay.

[Anonymous No.11913726]

>>11912456

I'll bet you can't provide one quote from The Recognitions that actually sounds good.

[Anonymous No.11915031]

>>11913726
>Trifles for a Massacre
“I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.”

[Anonymous No.11915205]

>>11912863
>There is much, much more godlike prose in that wonderful novel.
I did reply to your question you fucking mong.

[Anonymous No.11915211]

Dostoevsky was a sloppy stylist and a panslavist retard so that is not much of an achievement.

>inb4 anglo accusations
guess again, buzerant

[Anonymous No.11915304]

>>11913307
What’s wrong with Freud?

[Anonymous No.11915406]

>>11915031
fuck dude. im currently switching between kafka, cohen, and some philosophy stuff. should i drop all of it to read recognitions?

[Anonymous No.11915417]

>>11913462
I’ve read through your back and forth and I have to say I agree completely with this poster. I was absolutely enthralled for about 200 pages and then the colour and intensity drained completely from the novel. The next 200 pages were a slog with progressively more infrequent glimmers of the previous imaginative energy and insight. Dude needed a better fucking editor

[Anonymous No.11915420]

>>11915417
I should say after reaching pages 350-400 I quit the novel and never looked back

[Anonymous No.11915494]

>>11915406
I read multiple books at a time, it only took me around 2 weeks to complete I'd say add it if you're comfy with around 1000 pages.

[Anonymous No.11915514]

>>11915406
Definitely switch out Cohen with someone non-trash but don’t bother with Gaddis

[Anonymous No.11915636]

>>11915211
and gaddis was pseud and tryhard stylist who didn't see beyond anglonigger popculture.

[Anonymous No.11915646]

When group of American authors along with Gass, Gaddis and Ginsberg visited Soviet Union in the 80s, they stopped to Dostoevsky memorial home. Gass writes in one of his collection of essays, that Gaddis stood next to Fyodor table, looking at it closely, and there were tears on his face. Gaddis fans are traditionally something he would be ashamed of.

[Anonymous No.11915736]

>>11915514
i like cohen, or at least the text im currently reading. what did you read and why didnt you like it?

[Anonymous No.11915745]

>>11915646
source? would love to read this essay

[Anonymous No.11915749]

>>11915745
seconded

[Anonymous No.11915777]

>>11915745
>>11915749
it might be in A Temple of Texts (2006) or in Life Sentences (2012)

[Anonymous No.11915827]

>>11915745
>>11915749
Okay, this: Gass, Temple of Text Gaddis Gets Read To part.

'Gaddis’s god had never risen from the dead as so many of mine had, and I could see his youthful love glowing plainly when our group visited Dostoyevsky’s apartment. The sight of the master’s desk actually wet Willy’s eyes. I envied him. When my eyes moistened, it was only for Bette Davis, and such a shallow show of weakness made me angry with my soul. I fancied that he was feeling the same sort of exalted state of nostalgia for an imaginary past that I had felt a few days before when our party had left Moscow in a midnight snowfall for Leningrad on the legendary Red Arrow Express. The train moved slowly from the station through a whitened landscape more literary and historical than railed, while I cooled my glass of weedy tea against the compartment window and wondered if it could really be little ole me at midnight on this train tracking a perfect Russian snow, leaving my beloved Anna, Katya, or Marfa Petrovna behind, on my way to relieve Leningrad from its one-hundred-day siege by the Huns. Dostoyevsky’s room contained a table whose cloth covered all but its corners with red leaves cut into velvet. A lamp that bore a shade resembling a beaded glass crown shone on a casually opened cigarette box so directly, the case’s golden bottom glowed. Gaddis allowed a forefinger to rest upon the corner of a desk where the most ordinary of objects lay—letter opener, penholder, inkwell. This—this—is Dostoyevsky’s desk, his finger said. Or more likely: This is where those remarkable pages were made. Willy had taken his cap off as he entered, said nothing, but looked at everything as one looks at a lover at long last unclad.'

[Anonymous No.11915832]

>>11912456
Why bother ranking them?

[Anonymous No.11915833]

>>11915827

I was certain that Gaddis understood our situation, because, for him, Dostoyevsky was as near to God as nature got. He would have been as disdainful of our guide’s confusion of fiction with reality as I was, but he would have listened to every unclear word like a mole for a footstep. Then it was that our proctor, according to his guidelines, began to read the appropriate passage out of some authorized Soviet translation. My wife, Mary, standing with Adele Auchincloss a step above me, reached back a restraining hand and took my arm. Shut up, it said, with a squeeze for please. Gaddis had disappeared into a roll of wool. These Russians were not my idols. Well, perhaps André Bely was a bit golden-toed and his pseudonym properly accented; otherwise, my daily devotions were in Flaubert’s French and Rilke’s German. But the Russians spelled his first name Andrei, I remembered in the nick of time. On account of his accent, Professor Granin had turned the reading over to Mischa, one of our young translators. “Don’t you think,” I said to Gaddis, “that when a new character is introduced, the reader should be given more information than a long unpronounceable name?” “Just say he comes from the provinces.” We stood, our feet as fixed as our expressions, in a faint urine yellow light. It was going to be a long read. Mischa held the book close to his face. His accent was excellent.

[Anonymous No.11915838]

>>11915827
>>11915833

3/3
Gaddis’s love for the Russian novel—and for the predictable Russians at that—had surprised me, though in hindsight it shouldn’t have, if I’d kept The Recognitions fully in front of me, because these works were nothing if not epic, with a reach as extended as their own steppes, with borders as far off as their frozen mountains. “Loose and baggy monsters,” my treasured cher maître had said of them, a description too enviously mean-spirited to be forgotten, yet memorably on the mark. In sum, they wore plus fours, though not for golf. But if loose and baggy, The Recognitions was nevertheless knit. These Russian tomes were broody books, too, fundamentally melancholy, especially when, as Gogol was, they were funny. Above all, as Bakhtin had finally made us aware (bless his sainted name), Dostoyevsky at least was demonically polyvocal. He had been infernalized at an early age. Novels jam-packed with passionate ideas half-understood but as motivational as money. Every one evincing major moral concerns. Moreover, their authors were majestically indifferent to their mistakes, confident that any error would be but a beauty mark on a work of genius. Novels made of issues as well as innumerable details, richly peopled, penned in brash and innocent confidence, and written from outrage as much as ego. Worse yet, bedbugged and fleabagged by proper names. “Just say he wore a dusty overcoat and checked trousers, and came out hatless onto the low porch of the posting station at X,” Gaddis said. “There is a bucket marking the spot where Mr. Hatless stood.”

Also read this - https://medium.com/the-william-h-gass-interviews/william-h-gass-interviewed-by-stephen-schenkenberg-2009-3b3110ab662f

[Anonymous No.11915842]

>>11915827
>>11915833
>>11915838

OP is clearly ignorant retard.

[Anonymous No.11915862]

>>11915827
>>11915833
>>11915838
thank you!