/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1271004]

Has anyone here read this? I just started and it seems like it's going to get really good.

[Anonymous No.1271008]

>>1271006
I'm barely thirty pages in and it already feels like a life-changing book.

[Anonymous No.1271006]

I still need to read this. The girl that broke my heart told me it was fantastic. I figure I can trust her one more time.

[Anonymous No.1271014]

>>1271006
>The girl that broke my heart told me it was fantastic. I figure I can trust her one more time.
Confirmed for life failure.

[Anonymous No.1271012]

>>1271008
I've gotten that vibe but I figure since it's so all over the place I'd better keep my expectations somewhat conservative. But hey, enjoy the book, man. I'd pick it up if it weren't for the fact that the local bookstore only seems to carry the fucking $40 publication.

[Anonymous No.1271017]

>>1271008
It's not. I read it expecting it to be great and it was barely okay. It wasn't even scary.

[Anonymous No.1271020]

>>1271017
what, like a 3/10?

[Anonymous No.1271021]

>>1271012
Forty dollars? Shit. What is it a textbook?

[Anonymous No.1271025]

>>1271021
It's fucking huge. And probably holographic. I have no idea, dude. "More space on every page!"

[Anonymous No.1271026]

SO POST MODERNNNNNN

[Anonymous No.1271029]

>>1271020
I still enjoyed it so I'll give it 5/10. Maybe a 6/10 because some parts were fun to read.

[Anonymous No.1271037]

I'm about halfway through. It's a mindfuck and a half, dear lord.

[Anonymous No.1271042]

>>1271037
That's exactly what I'm expecting.

[Anonymous No.1271039]

Wow.

I have to say, /lit/ is the nicest, most polite, most on topic part of 4chan I've ever been to.

Thank you.

[Anonymous No.1271051]

>>1271039
>on topic
NEEDS A HYPHEN
>I've ever been to
TO WHICH I'VE EVER BEEN. DON'T END SHIT WITH PREPOSITIONS PRETTY MUCH (with some exceptions, though) EVER.
MUTHERFUCKINGSHITBASKETHEADEDBATHTUPSHITTERFROMDENMARKAFTERITCONQUEREDSWEDENANDTHEGODDAMBAHAMAS

[Anonymous No.1271053]

>>1271039
I try.

[Anonymous No.1271056]

>>1271051
Never change, /lit/. Never change.

[Anonymous No.1271057]

>>1271051
>lol i beileve in the whole "don't end a sentence with a preposition" bullshit

[Anonymous No.1271060]

>>1271051
AND you have a sense of humor!

[Anonymous No.1271062]

>>1271039

Shucks, we like you too.

[Anonymous No.1271072]

>>1271026
>FUCKING HIPSTERS

[Anonymous No.1271103]

>>1271072
I know.

I was being...
ironic.

[Anonymous No.1271125]

The half of the book about the guy who found House of Leaves in the apartment is forced and boring. I don't think Danielewski has a good perception of how an insane person's mind works. The part written by "Zampano" is brilliant.

[Anonymous No.1271126]

Book fucking sucks and if you like it I hope that you are in your teens otherwise you are a retard with no taste in literature.

[Anonymous No.1271132]

This has no linear thought process at all and tends to loop back on itself, and unfortunately, that's the best part about it. It's not a book so much as an angry, angry rubix cube smashed with a hammer and it can't be fixed.

Synopsis:
Bitches go in House
Bitches go in Basement
Bitches get eaten
/Book.

[Anonymous No.1271150]

>>1271004

I'm amazed that you fags still haven't caught on that this is a fucking troll thread posted every goddamn day. Every single day there's like ten of you saying OMG JUST STARTED LIFE CHANGING, which I take as a sign that /lit/ is just a truck stop through which all of 4chan's hipsters pass, reading that one goddamn book...

Pic related, it's you.

[Anonymous No.1271589]

It's amazing. Truant's internal dialogues are so interestingly related to Navidson's, who in turn we can pick apart to understand Zapano, who, oddly enough, is neither the main character nor the focus (the way Marlow was the main character, and the narrator, but Kurtz was the focus) as you get further along, until the darkness of the house, which seems to come actually from Truant's creation, really starts to get at the reader in a way that isn't intended to be "scary" as such. ( >>1271017 I'm looking at you. )
It's great because it's such a work of obsession, because Danielewski has a genius you can gleam from the pages, from the words, and because it gets at what Melville was going for with Moby-Dick--tackling that infinite underneath reality, etc--more successfully, in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.1271627]

He might as well have been a LOST writer. His originality is shallow and fools only teenage girls. also, hipster.

[Anonymous No.1271634]

OP, nevermind the pretentious teenager cocksuckers that infest this board with their circlejerk over 19th century drunkards and their DEEP and PROFOUND EXPLORATIONS OF HUMAN NATURE which were no more than fucking penny dreadfuls wrtitten to cover gambling debts. It happens every time people try to discuss actually interesting literature

My advice would be not to skip the footnotes and appendices, and maybe look up some of the hidden codes on the internetbotown. Some people skim them over because the Navidson Record is just that awesome, but this way you'd lose the layers of metafiction and they relate to one another.

[Anonymous No.1271648]

>>1271634
>>1271634

[Anonymous No.1271653]

As a metaphysical book, it's shit compared to David Foster Wallace
As erudition, it's shit compared to Umberto Eco
As a paranormal book, it's shit compared to Borges
As a 'total novel' it's shit compared to Joyce
As a horror story, it's shit compared to Stephen King

[Anonymous No.1271659]

>>1271648
implying I was trolling or being trolled?
because it wasn't the former, I assure you. Browsing /lit/ has become absolutely unbearable as of late due to these failed abortions constantly trying to validate their socially inept existence by glorifying their hobby - because, yes, that is exactly what literature is you bunch of conceited fucks, reading Joyce or Dostoyevsky will teach you no more about the human condition than reading Bukowski will make you less of a virgin. So if you all could manage to keep the ego-stroking about how your tastes are better than everyone else's out of each and every thread maybe this board could actually make for interesting discussions again

[Anonymous No.1271662]

>>1271659

[Anonymous No.1271665]

I got about a hundred pages in and finally ragequit the fucking thing in disgust. How did this piece of shit become so big? People act like it's the horror novel of our generation; really it's just slow-paced mediocrity combined with some fifth-grader's Letters to Penthouse.

I think I'm pretty open-minded about most people and their various tastes and interests, but anyone who claims they thought this book was good pretty much plummets in terms of my respect for them.

[Anonymous No.1271668]

>>1271662
yes, once again you show the level of discourse to be expected from a channer. Way to prove my point about books not making people more intelligent

did any of you fucks who shit on every damn thread about HoL even read it at all? Did you try and piece who Truant is, how his story relates to Zampanò and TNR, why Z and Pelafina communicate through codes intended for Johnny, did you basically understand any of it?

[Anonymous No.1271688]

>Fucking hipsters acting like they like literature. Fucking ego-strokers, it's not their hobby!
>It's my hobby god damn it! It's mine! I'm the intellectual! Fuck hipsters!

I'm nowhere close to a hipster but this is pathetic. Encourage people to read god damn it, even if they're not quite doing it for the right reasons.

[Anonymous No.1271701]

>>1271688
assuming this is directed at me, how is that cute greentext of yours not applicable to the monocle crowd here who shits on everything that is not century-old literary fiction? They are the ones fucking up threads on books they dislike without any argument whatsoever.

Reading is not a value in itself. It's a damn good hobby, more demanding than most in this ADD day and age, but this entire board is worse off than Twilight or Dan Brown fans, who at least read what they read because they like it, however shitty it may be.

[Anonymous No.1271749]

>>1271668

The problem is, and this might seem trivial to you, all those things you think are 'clever' about "House of Leaves" have been done a lot better by other writers. If you've never come across such things before then I'm sure HoL is mindblowing, but to a more avid reader the novel is nothing new and not very interesting.

Anyway, as to my personal opinion on this dreaded text, 'The Navidson Record' is the star of the show, whereas everything else is trite and overplayed. Truant's narrative reads like Bret Easton Ellis X Chuck Palahniuk slashfic, the last 200 pages are mindnumbing, as their only purpose is to add some backstory to a totally uncompelling character.

It's not a terrible book by any means, I'd give it a 6/10 purely on the strength of 'The Navidson Record', but I can't help rolling my eyes when someone claims the book is deep or life changing; that is a sign that someone seriously needs to read more (read: BETTER) books.

[Anonymous No.1271754]

see, arguments. These rare beasts are what actually constitute discussion, glad you could find some

Now find me another novel that blends three or four layers of metafiction into another hidden, subtextual story. I'm not arguing that Zampanò is just as good as Borges though it is an obvious homage or that Truant is as good as any beatnik writing about fucking and doing drugs or even other stories about going insane. Individually these parts of the story may not even be that good (the reason why The Navidson Record stands out so much might be precisely that, it's really fucking awesome by itself), but the way they interact and create this book that is also a labyrinth is pretty unique

[Anonymous No.1271776]

>>1271754

A retort without a knee-jerk ad hominem attack? For a second I forgot I was on 4chan!

Anyway, you do raise an interesting point in that the overall text is greater than the sum of its parts, my problem is that I wish he'd tried a bit harder to make Truant's narrative more interesting. By the time I was half way through the text I was feeling nothing but annoyed with the constant interjections.

Regarding your question:
>Now find me another novel that blends three or four layers of metafiction into another hidden, subtextual story.

Have you read "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie?
Also, if you've got the balls to be seen reading a fantasy novel, you should check out Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun". You might not grasp the numerous metafictional layers of this badboy on your first read but I can assure you the text has far more depth and intelligence to it than it may first appear; it doesn't have the unofficial title of "The Ulysses of Fantasy" for nothing!

[Anonymous No.1271785]

>>1271776
I have no gripes whatsoever with genre fiction (in fact, it's quite the opposite, and what annoys me the most in the general mindset here), and have in fact read the first of the Book of the New Sun. Amazing read, though I'd say the subtext that it's in fact our world, like the "picture of an armored man in the desert" being the moon landing is different from HoL's intertwining stories. Also read Delany's Dhalgren that someone once recommended, but the only similarity I found was the general mindfuck, unreliable narrator and unconventional tipography.

will be sure to check Rushdie out, always looking for more crazy shit and couldn't really get into Danielewski's Only Revolutions

[Anonymous No.1271820]

>>1271785

As I said, there is far more to The Book of the New Sun than meets the eye. Somewhere in the first or second volume (I can't remember exactly where it is), Wolfe throws you a line which draws a parallel between Severian's profession and the act of writing which totally flips how I read the narrative. On my second reading, with this in mind, the book takes on an extra layer of meaning. Then, taking into account the metafictional aspect of the text, being a translation of a manuscript from the future that's written in a language that doesn't yet exist and adhering to an epistimology completely alien to the reader, the issue of interpretation and understanding is central to the narrative function. I could go on and on but I know how much /lit/ hates my tl:dr posts so I'll leave it there!

You should definitely check out Rushdie, both Midnight's Children and the Satanic Verses are worth a read in my opinion.
If crazy shit is what you're after I'd also recommend Angela Carter's novels if you feel like being dazzled. If you want it wild, go with "The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr. Hoffman" or "Passion of the New Eve", if you're want something a little less bawdy, go with "Nights at the Circus" or "Wise Children"; if you're an avid reader you're bound to enjoy all of these books though.

[I am tittyfucking Thecla No.1273447]

>>1271820
I wasn't gonna read the thread, but I saw the watercolor painting of the naked girl and the post about The Book of the News Sun.

Shit is cash. If you are wondering if you should read the book - by all means start. Gene Wolfe likes to play tricks on the reader, but at the same time, it is a very interesting , imaginative mindfuck of a book and you wouldn't regret reading two or more times.