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/lit/ - Literature

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13179779 No.13179779 [Reply] [Original]

Is there anything I should read before:
>Moby Dick
>Tristram Shandy
>In Search of Lost Time
>Berlin Alexanderplatz
>Gravity's Rainbow
>Infinite Jest
In the same way that you should read Dubliners, Portrait, The Odyssey and Hamlet before Ulysses?

>> No.13179783

unironically the Bible, at least some parts

>> No.13179790

>>13179779
Read Don Quixote before Tristram, perhaps. And V. before GR.

>> No.13179811

>>13179779
Yes, you should read
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
Because all of these authors(with the exception maybe of Infinite Jest because DFW was a dumb retard)read and engaged with the whole of the western canon before them in their works. This doesn't mean literature alone, but philosophy, art, music, history, politics etc, so if you want to get out anything out of these books you must be knowledgeable in the western canon.
If you only care about being entertained, go ahead then, you don't really need anything. Just go and read them.

>> No.13179871

>>13179779
You should be fine with them, remember its not like you get one shot at a novel, re-read them later after you've got more aquainted with other books and philosophies and bibles. Don't let a weird game of intellectual-history boxticking stop you from being productive and reading (the good books) you're interested in.