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/lit/ - Literature

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12630156 No.12630156 [Reply] [Original]

Is this, dare I say it, the most overrated book of all time?

It's literally just shock literature. Nothing but violence, blood, and action to entertain the uncultured. No different than a shitty rated-R action movie.

>> No.12630178

It has some nice sentences, but as you mention is too rooted in tedious masculine posturing to have much to say. I can see it fading away much like Hemingway has, as fewer and fewer people are interested in that white male solipsism

>> No.12630184

>>12630156
It's interesting as a meditation on toxic white masculinity although I doubt that was the intention.

>> No.12630301

>>12630184
I think it kind of was, especially if you believe it to be an allegory for manifest destiny. The Judge basically fools the gang into believing that they’re above morality, only for them to eventually find that the violence they commit is self-perpetuating and consumes everyone in the end. The Judge is therefore one whose job it is to “judge” their actions.

It certainly doesn’t romanticise toxic masculinity.

>> No.12631058

>>12630156
You'll have to be a straight, white male to understand it.

>> No.12631070 [DELETED] 

>>12630184
>muh toxic masculinity
Am I on?

>> No.12631074
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12631074

>>12630156
I agree that it’s overrated, but I can at least understand the appeal I think. Unlike this, which I will never understand at all. Just dull and incredibly repetitive. It’s at least twice as long as it should have been.

>> No.12631076

>>12630184
>muh toxic masculinity
Am I on plebbit?

>> No.12631100

>>12631074
It's the opposite of dull, though? it's full of life and sex wtf

>> No.12631104

>>12630156

>translation: only the 'uncultured' are 'entertained' by violence and blood, and because i am not, i am cultured

>> No.12631117

>>12631074
>>12631100
Did like the novel but I kind of understand what anon means. I enjoyed the ending and the first part but there's a whole section in between where you pass through generations of people with the same name more rapidly and it's just a bunch of x person you know nothing about fucked y person you know nothing about and died because of z and then THEIR SON that you know nothing about went on to- etc.

>> No.12631142

>>12631100
This guy >>12631117
explains it well. The initial few chapters are great, plus a few near the end. but a lot of the same ideas get repeated over and over without much of a reason to care about anything that’s happening. I think it would have been a pretty great novella, without the repetition.

>> No.12631172

>>12631142
To be fair as much as I had to struggle through sections of the book I did feel that conveying a sense of nothing ever changing and people being doomed to never rise above their petty flaws and so on was a big part of the book. Like zooming out on streets you know well to reveal a city plan that could be any city in the world really. The execution just didn't really do it for me I guess.

>> No.12631183

OP is just a mean red nigger

>> No.12631188

>>12631142
But the repetition is one of the central ideas in the novel. Maybe you just didn't like and wasn't for you.

>> No.12631219

>>12631172
>>12631188
I understood it as relevant to the theme of repetition or history repeating itself, but that didn’t make it more enjoyable to read. It’s one of those things where it makes sense in theory, but in practice it just drags down the pacing and hurts the actual experience. I’d agree that it isn’t for me rather than thinking the book is shit, I’m just always surprised that I don’t see that as a criticism more often. I’d be surprised if I was even close to alone in my thinking.

>> No.12631287

>>12631219
I think part of it is appreciation for committing to the idea to begin with (imo it's fairly hard for professional reviewers to separate what they think of the book in its own right vs what they think the book contributes to the literary landscape) and of course Marquez is a very talented writer so if this is the first novel of him you read I can imagine his style and confidence standing out more than the particulars of this storyline.