[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 286 KB, 750x1064, img_8960.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16719961 No.16719961 [Reply] [Original]

Is it worth all the struggle? I've heard it is unreadable

>> No.16719973

>>16719961
Don't bother. Guy thinks he's Dr Seuss meets Gaddis.

>> No.16720020

>>16719973
even more embarrassing is that he worked on it for 30 years and it came out as complete slop

>> No.16720024

Not OP but could you give a better argument?

>> No.16720279

>>16719961
It's pure cringe.

>> No.16720289

>>16720279
>>16720020
>>16719973
Completely and utterly filtered.

>> No.16720298

>>16720289
>pseud thinks shit is gold because it took many years to be made
rookie mistake

>> No.16720322

>>16720298
The thirty years is a marketing ploy. If you would actually read some of his interviews, he states he started it, then put it aside for 24 years, still going back to refine the idea in his head, and finished it.
I don't see what the problem is. It's a wonderfully written book that explores the mind of someone who can actually exist. I get that there's a lot of references to literature, philosophy, and esoterica. What did you expect from a novel written from the POV of an academic by an academic?
You people are silly sometimes.

>> No.16720360

>>16720322
>can't understand that some people just don't like his beloved favorite book
>'You people are silly sometimes.'
Come on, pal.

>> No.16720414

>>16720360
Because most of your critiques are shallow. You people cannot think.

>> No.16720419

Worth reading and the topical overview from Dalkey should make some parts less cryptic for first time readers. Gass' prose is solid and I could turn to any random page to illustrate that fact. For all the experimental tricks, the main draw is that its just a thorough character study of a single mind. Any paragraph is so metaphorically and linguistically rich that you can slowly savor the turns of ideas and words.

>> No.16720812

>>16719973
Lol.

>>16720020
In an interview he basically says he wrote almost all of it 30 years prior and didn't change much. It's just a meme.

>>16720322
This guy gets it.

>>16720414
You were baited.

>>16720419
Accurate, but I wouldn't call any of it cryptic. It's the smoothest pomo doorstopper I've read.

>>16719961
There's zero struggle. Just read a few pages and see.

>> No.16720818
File: 118 KB, 1874x273, william h gass.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16720818

>> No.16720823

>>16719961
quite literally only the first 60 pages are difficult

>> No.16720907

>>16720823
Why difficult?

>> No.16721125

I just started and I genuinely don't get why people claim to have so much trouble with it. Unless it's your first postmodern novel or maaaybe if it's your first read of Gass

>> No.16721134

>>16720907
Sean Penn tier prose.

>> No.16721261

>>16721125
Pristine sentence construction throughout. No poetic structure jamming like Pinecone or Joyce. Maybe the cover and length are intimidating.

>> No.16721806

>>16721261
There's still the complete nonlinearity, Kohler mentioning all sorts of names that you'll only be properly acquainted with much later in the book like all his colleagues and Tabor, stray references to stuff that you'll better grasp if you've read any of Gass' other essays, and extremely monumental sentences or paragraphs. I mean these aren't unique to The Tunnel but there's a lot of reason why the first part is intimidating to many and some will have no idea what's going on without any sort of summary.

>> No.16722219

>>16721806
If you pick up a nonlinear book and don't understand a reference you should assume that this omission of context was deliberate. If it was deliberate then you shouldn't sweat about it and keep reading. Really not a trait unique to Gass and certainly not a reason to resort to secondary articles.

>> No.16722221

>>16719961
Yeah how about I tunnel balls deep into your ass faggot

>> No.16722224

>>16721261
>No poetic structure jamming like Pinecone or Joyce
Mate, Gass loves silly and forced alliteration like Dr Seuss or Sean Penn.

>> No.16722244

>>16722224
Silly and forced are meaningless aesthetic judgments unless you can argue specifically with contextual and phonetic evidence why Gass' alliteration does not work in the text as opposed to other writers who use alliteration.

>> No.16722251

>>16722224
>waaah waaah I don't like rhymes
>>16722244
>waaaaaah you need to justify to me why you don't like rhymes
Just suck and fuck eachother already. Jesus fucking Christ.

>> No.16722267

>>16722251
>waah waaah I don't like book discussion on this chinese basket weaving board

>> No.16722279

>>16722251
Are you the angry guy from New Jersey who posts vocaroos?

>> No.16722285

>>16722279
No, but you sound like the guy from fagopolis who sucks a lot of cock.

>> No.16722289

My anus is itchy

>> No.16722293

>>16722285
Sounds like you're projecting your homo fantasies. Just come out of the closet, bro.

>> No.16722298

Gonna wipe my anus with some toilet paper, see if that helps

>> No.16722301

>>16722293
Yeah how about I come out of the closet all over your face faggot.

>> No.16722306

>>16722221
Amen brother

>> No.16722311

The Jethro Furber section of Omensetter’s Luck is more “difficult” than The Tunnel

>> No.16722313

It helped with my anus being itchy, guys. Turns out there was some poop there still, and it got agitated by my increased body temperature due to masturbating just ten minutes ago. I guess sweat and poop don't mix together.

>> No.16722315

>>16722313
Nice. Thx for sharing brother.

>> No.16722318

>>16722315
Oh no problem. Hope it helped anyone else out there with an itchy anus.

>> No.16722338

>>16722318
More than you will ever know.

>> No.16722356

>>16719961
William H Gass apparently took 26 years to write The Tunnel, but my god what a shit book it is, despite all that time invested. It's clear when Gass was writing it that most sentences were created almost purely for the way they phonetically sounded, the meter and alliteration. Full of shit like
>Time was a fellow traveler
It's meaningless. He used his brainpower to lay out phonetically pleasing phrases with no brainpower left to put any discernible fucking meaning into what he writes, because not even he knows. This is the mark of amatuerish writing, and The Tunnel is riddled with it. Read the "worst novel ever," Irene Iddesleigh, and you will be shocked how similar the style is in many instances. Sure, The Tunnel is full of powerful and masterful moments, but only when Gass has a clear mind to go beyond phonetics and actually develop meaning and a narrative. You quite literally cannot refute this post.

>> No.16722369

>>16722356
t. guy's mom got fucked by the elderly braphog that is the Gassmeister himself

>> No.16722372

>>16719961
The Tunnel is an alright read, but it probably won't contribute to anything in life. Gass has an issue with alliteration and similes that are 70% of the book and it becomes very choked (an ugly excuse if you want to say that "contributes to the theme."). Though at times beautiful and insightful, it goes virtually nowhere, ultimately making the point: "Hey bros, mediocrity blows."

>> No.16722373

am i banned?

>> No.16722374

>>16722373
Yes

>> No.16722376

The Tunnel is garbage. Gass rambles on with half-baked philosophies which fail any discernable direction or relevance, with constant name-dropping of other authors (lol muh literary allusions), 100 similes per page, and too much fucking alliteration.

I enjoyed, sure, but I got almost nothing out of reading it. In that vein, Gass is in the same league as DFW, though not quite as overrated because Gass never achieved the celebrity status of DFW. They're quite same anyway.

>> No.16722382

>>16722376
the Tunnel is literally "long sentence repeating itself over and over, attached to mediocre similes and edgy comparisons to cunt, farts and cocks with a bunch of LOLSOWACKYANDQUIRKY gimmicky autistic formatting shit" the book

>> No.16722384

>>16722373
More than you will ever know.

>> No.16722386

>>16719973
Gaddis will remain relevant in history as a seminal American author while Gass fades away into an oblivion of puns and alliteration.

>> No.16722389

The anti gass shills are out in full force today. Sorry that the guys who win the literary prizes and fuck the qt lit girls read and love Gass, you fucking bitter faggots.

>> No.16722393

>>16722389
t's cringey because it's obvious how hard Gass is trying to be a "serious, literary" writer. everything about the book reeks of artificiality. The fact he purposely made it a big book. The constant references he makes almost because it seems like Gass feels that that is what a "serious literary" writer would do. Not to mention his very style, which reeks of self-consciousness and artificial techniques, without any sense of original talent. He is a vain, stupid, talentless man, trying as hard as he can to come across as something he's not, projecting a terrible side of his personality onto a character and than distancing himself from it so as to construct a better public image of himself. He put an admirably amount of work into his books, but reached far beyond his level of fundamental talent to lead to an artificial dissonance between appearance and actual ability that we can only see to be cringy.

>> No.16722395

>>16719961
Critics can't write novels.

>> No.16722398

>>16722393
Lol who fucked the girl you like, incel?
It's postmodern literature made by an academic. What did you expect? I bet you got mad at Ulysses too.

>> No.16722403

>>16719961
This is a good example of the boomer mindset that has unraveled the west (even if Gass is technically from the prior generation): decadence, with criticism turned inward, but unable to determine the actual source of the problem. This is the mindset that fucked us.

I have read his rotten milk prose, tasted the sweating odor of the man through his pages, and escaped, reeking of foul disappointment.
This, and the first person thing, made the book a real disappointment. All that time he spent crafting this dark, depressing door stopper could have been used to create something beautiful and lasting. Just a real waste all around.

He's also perverted, and not in the jolly "let's look up her skirt and find a clown face popping out" sort of way, or even the "i'm observing, recounting, or creating instances of perversion which are to effect you in the ways i see fit", but rather in a "i'm a cellulite ridden imp of perversity, i am going to allude to my very own depraved crevices constantly and clumsily and unsuccessfully attempt to pass it off as a theme perpetrated by one with higher skill than mine". style of perversity.

I know he's a little too old to be a boomer, but he's still a boomer. As old as they get, they still push this degeneracy and perversion like they're rebelling against the 50s and their parents. It's pathetic.

>> No.16722406

be serious now ya'll motherfuckers, I'm about 200 pages in and it seems like drivel so far and everything negative people are saying in this thread appears correct, does it get better why does everyone say it's great?

>> No.16722410

>>16722393
You really come off as a midwit sociopath, anon. Seek therapy. These are all complete non arguments that fall down to subjective aesthetic taste. You wrap up these very shallow critiques with extremely jagged and verbose language whose tone is all over the place. You probably haven't been out of high school long.

>> No.16722415
File: 126 KB, 670x931, 1502464495814.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16722415

>>16719961
How much of the Gass hate comes from the fact that he is a feminine fat faggy-looking geezer? I don't disagree with the people expressing hate, but I must admit that it adds an extra level of faggotry to his work. Look at this fucking fat faggot, acting so serious about his BIG BOOK about farts and micropenises

>> No.16722421

>>16722403
Kohler identifies the problem clearly. This is obvious pasta.

>> No.16722427

>I want to rise so high, I said, that when I shit I won’t miss anybody.

>> No.16722430

>13 posters

Just sad.

>> No.16722438

>>16722415
>I dropped out of Kooley High, GASSED UP by a cokehead cutie pie
Nas was Gasspilled

>> No.16722443

>>16722415
I harbor a hatred for frumpy gaseous Gass, and his incoherent, incessant, affinity with alliteration.

>> No.16722447

>>16722443
Stop trying. This is just cringe. What are you, a faggot? You think you're pretty clever right now, do you?

>> No.16722452

>>16722447
I get the impression that Gass spends years rearranging words and making sure they have just the right alliteration but the result just feels laboured and artificial instead of musical. Over-written literature without any true merit.

>> No.16722459

>>16722443
that's soooo ironic anon, wanna be my femboy bottom that I rail while we read Infinite Jest together?

>> No.16722461

>>16722452
If the style isn’t for you that’s fine but it’s clearly intentional. I like Gass but he is admittedly very pretentious. To say his work is without merit is silly

>> No.16722470

>>16722452
And how exactly do you think music is composed?
God, you fucking faggots who are obsessed with "authenticity" are the worst bunch. Honestly, who do you people think you are going after novels that follow a clear lineage, with clear axioms of length, vocabulary, and complexity, then bitch about them being laboured over? It's not about the books for people like you, it's about how little you grasped. Really, what is the image you're trying to establish here? The rogue autodidact student of literature who is above such needy displays? Do you fucking tell people to listen to John Fahey too, you fucking insufferable faggot?

>> No.16722489

>>16722452
>musical
I guarentee you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. How many of you people are there? Guys who read big pomo tomes and talk to people about the "music" in the prose. You probably couldn't even explain consonance in a real life conversation if asked.

>> No.16722495

I'd say it's pretty good. Ultimately, it evens out to be pretty accessible halfway through and is manageable pretty soon after it begins, and importantly, it's shorter than a lot of the novels it's compared to.

It took me a little while to read, but Gass's prose is so fucking incredible that I have to recommend it.

>> No.16722506

>>16722495
>it's shorter than a lot of the novels it's compared to.
bugman detected

>> No.16722511

>>16722495
Gass's style is cool at first but it becomes more and more tiresome and you read. Kinda like Nabokov.

>> No.16722518

>>16722470
>>16722489

>>16722504

>> No.16722524

>>16722393
>>16720279
Are people mistaking 'cringey' for just uncomfortable to read? Kohler is a pathetic dicklet fascist, one of the most deplorable characters ever.

Idk tho, the book is way too long imo.

>> No.16722531

>>16722470
kek

>> No.16722541 [DELETED] 

>>16719961
''The creation of character is what matters,'' said Harold Bloom, a professor, critic and author who has known and disagreed with Mr. Gass since they were both students at Cornell University 50 years ago. ''I think the post-modern novel is increasingly a disaster. I'm tired of games. It can't be an accident that the three authors who manage to maintain themselves are Shakespeare, Jane Austin and Charles Dickens. It is because they create worlds and the worlds are full of people. But I don't want to be the anti-Gass.''

It sounds like Bloom actually respects Gass as a writer but disagrees with him on what a novel should be.

>> No.16722583

>>16722244
peak autism

>> No.16722601

Hey so is anyone gonna talk about the book? All I see is 70 posts of people not talking about the book. If Gass is an actual great writer surely one can give an excerpt with explanations of what makes it so great right?

>> No.16722610

>>16719961
I read it earlier this year and I hated it. There's something repellent to me about a weakness - a depravity - that constantly wheedles and tergiversates and leaps through hoops to justify itself, clothe itself in tawdry makeshift beauty... if I must endure ugliness I prefer the bald, triumphant ugliness of Sade's Justine, or even Canetti's Auto-da-fe, to this too-timid cretin. I can appreciate the technical achievement of the prose and prosody but I simply do not enjoy plunging myself into the mind of a hideous inferior.

>> No.16722614

>>16722610
once you get to a certain level of writing ability you can pretty much just publish entire books of unedited rambling

>> No.16722632

>>16722610
You could have more musicality if you cut out '- a depravity - that constantly'. 'Makeshift' is also unneeded. I recommend the following edit:

>There's something repellent about a weakness that wheedles and tergiversates, that wears on oneself a tawdry beauty

>> No.16722755

>>16722610
>tergiversates

>> No.16722767

>>16722386
Gaddis is trash.

>> No.16722770

>>16722767
If Gaddis is trash then I can't imagine what Gass must be. Probably diarrheic excrement.

>> No.16722772

>>16722393
This is the worst attempt at an analysis that i have seen in quite a while.

>> No.16722781

>>16722767
Both Gaddis and Gass are very interesting writers that appeal to different types of people and people should learn that we all have different tastes and maybe one thing that i like might not be liked by others and thats the beauty of the world

>> No.16723068
File: 270 KB, 640x480, kohler.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16723068

I just finished it and honestly I think it's one of my favourite books of all time. I think it's absolutely in the tradition of a misanthropic polemic (Notes from Underground, Houellebecq at times) but the brutal honesty on display I find really cathartic.

The first one hundred pages is schizophrenic, totally unhinged, very non-linear, just getting hints to things he expands on later; honestly I enjoyed this part, wasn't bothered by the strange typographic things he does.

The rest of the book is easier to follow. Although Gass continues to do strange typographic things, word play, and have long, intricately constructed sentences, I find it reads easily due to the alliteration, assonance, meter, and obvious care for phonetic construction.

'The Tunnel' is a metaphor for a 'tunneling' within a man, exploring what is in his psychology and serves as an incredibly bleak and personal character study. The slow construction of a miserable person appears, ultimately to serve as a model for the American fascist, the kind of person who exactly would support a fascist dictatorship were it to arise in America.
>i suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called coach.

Absolutely I think The Tunnel is worth a read, provided you are willing to accept post-modern shit and don't mind egregiously cruel descriptions of thing.

>> No.16723287

>>16722781
Go to Tumblr if you want to play like that. /lit/ is a manly board.

>> No.16723350

>>16719961
Absolute garbage. Nobody will remember this or the author when they die.

>> No.16723481

>>16719961
>not reading the better tunel
you're already filtered

>> No.16723506

>>16723350
Ironic

>> No.16724066

>>16722382

But when Beckett does literally the exact same thing in First Love y'all cream your jeans

>> No.16724073

Smells like underage autism in this thread...

>> No.16724075

>>16724066
Beckett =/= Gass.

>> No.16724107

>>16724075
retard

>> No.16724534

>>16722459
You deflect it because it hurts.
Gass is a hack.

>> No.16724860

>>16724534
Seethe more.