/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12077703]

So is it a good book? Or is it just redd*t memeshit?

[Anonymous No.12077711]

>>12077703
This is the opposite of reddit. This is one of our totems.

[Anonymous No.12077731]

4chan is reddit now

[Anonymous No.12077780]

>>12077703
It's overrated. A "big novel" with a lot of obscure cultural references - so it has an aura of difficulty and that's honestly the only reason it's popular on /lit/. Compared with other memeshit, it is certainly a good book. It has some genuinely funny passages, and Pynchon can be an excellent prose stylist.

But it's full of passages that should have been cut out by a good editor. Evidently everyone thought he was such a genius that they had too keep everything in. The book suffers for this. There are a long Mad-magazine-tier jokes and puns that are just not at all funny. The sort of thing that a professor of English literature would describe as "humor" but no one would ever actually laugh at.

There's also a distinct lack of tonal variation. Pynchon was obviously riding his Burroughs-Joyce wave and thought he was hilarious and therefore could make every character talk in pretty much the same voice. So in those moments when you're not on his wavelength, it comes off as grating and cringey.

Overall, it's a good book, yes, and definitely worth reading. It's not the masterpiece everyone says it is. Mason and Dixon is a better Pynchon novel, in my opinion, because he imposes limits on himself.

[Anonymous No.12077886]

>>12077703
it has lyrical passages - the part where Tchitcherine and Enzian almost meet is one - and i admire the courage of having it NOT have a traditional end.

still, it's hard to justify that passage with Brigadier Pudding, except in the sense of "writing fervently about a fetish you do not share".

[Anonymous No.12077893]

>>12077780
>and therefore could make every character talk in pretty much the same voice.


yeah, i kept getting Katje and Bodine mixed up. which one was raped by the octopus again?

> you're full of pudding

[Anonymous No.12077930]

>>12077893
It was Katje, but she didn’t actually get defiled the octopus just wanted to eat her

[Anonymous No.12078732]

>>12077703
it has actual pedofilth what more do you want

[Anonymous No.12078764]

airport fiction

[Anonymous No.12078779]

>>12077703
relies on shockvalue so its 4chan

[Anonymous No.12078786]

being more suited to reddit yourself, you wouldn't like it

faggot

[Anonymous No.12079830]

>>12077780

The lack of variation in narration is definitely one of the biggest weakness of the book. Half the time I coudn't tell who was the character narrating and what was his deal. The book needed definitely less characters.

[Anonymous No.12079993]

>>12077930

[Anonymous No.12080226]

>>12077703
>>She turns. "Hold up my fur." He obeys. "Be careful. Don't touch my skin." Earlier in this game she was nervous, constipated, wondering if this was anything like male impotence. But thoughtful Pointsman, anticipating this, has been sending laxative pills with her meals. Now her intestines whine softly, and she feels shit begin to slide down and out. He kneels with his arms up holding the rich cape. A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks. He spreads his knees, awkwardly, until he can feel the leather of her boots. He leans forward to surround the hot turd with his lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side… he is thinking, he's sorry, he can't help it, thinking of a Negro's penis, yes he knows it abrogates part of the conditions set, but it will not be denied, the image of a brute African who will make him behave… The stink of shit floods his nose, gathering him, surrounding. It is the smell of Passchendaele, of the Salient. Mixed with the mud, and the putrefaction of corpses, it was the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem. The turd slides into his mouth, down to his gullet. He gags, but bravely clamps his teeth shut. Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters somewhere, unseen, untasted-risen now and baked in the bitter intestinal Oven to bread we know, bread that's light as domestic comfort, secret as death in bed… Spasms in his

throat continue. The pain is terrible. With his tongue he mashes shit against the roof of his mouth and begins to chew, thickly now, the only sound in the room…

[Anonymous No.12080229]

>>12080226
>>There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.

>>The Brigadier comes quickly. The rich smell of semen fills the room like smoke.

>>"Now go." He wants to cry. But he has pleaded before, offered her-absurdly-his life. Tears well and slide from his eyes. He can't look into hers. "You have shit all over your mouth now. Perhaps I'll take a photograph of you like that. In case you ever get tired of me."

>>"No. No, I'm only tired of that," jerking his head back out of D Wing to encompass the rest of "The White Visitation." "So bloody tired…"

>>"Get dressed. Remember to wipe your mouth off. I'll send for you when I want you again."