/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18152929]

what was the most disappointing book you ever read? pic related
i read The Great Gatsby which was bafflingly good. i knew it was assigned in american high schools, so i expected it to be teenagetier, but it was incredible. then i read Tender is the Night, which was absolutely brilliant.
and i immediately followed it up with this piece of trash.
i suppose it wasnt terrible, but it was so fucking mediocre. i was expecting a gem after the last two, and instead i got this book that was simultaneously incredibly dull and incredibly self-indulgent

[Anonymous No.18152958]

most of Hemingway's novels. his short stories surpass all of them.

[Anonymous No.18152971]

>>18152929
I like it, but its probably Gatsby<Tender<TBaD<This Side of Paradise for me.
It probably deserves it’s reputation as his weakest novel because although I think it’s better than This Side of Paradise, Paradise had a much more unique style and was a pop-culture sensation in it’s own right.
People always blast the interlude with the ethereal personification of beauty who will live her life on earth in “the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror” but I love it.
It’s a very melancholy novel though, without the insights that make the tragic airs of Gatsby and Tender come off so well.
Fuck that guy Maury though

[Anonymous No.18152994]

>>18152971
>It’s a very melancholy novel though, without the insights that make the tragic airs of Gatsby and Tender come off so well.
fuck i need to reread Tender
that book is so good

[Anonymous No.18153039]

>>18152958
This and anything by Don DeLillo except cosmopolis which was dope

[Anonymous No.18153066]

kafka though maybe I'm due a reread

[Anonymous No.18153163]

Worst book i've ever read was turn of the screw, but i had no real expectations for good or bad.
Biggest disappointment was probably fitzgerald's tales of the jazz age collection. I loved gatsby and tender is the night, then dnf'd this side of paradise. The lees of happiness was 10/10, the diamond as big as the ritz was 8.5/10, mayday was 7.5/10, benjamin button was 8/10, but tarquin of cheapside was 3/10, the one about the camel at the party 3/10, o russet witch was 4/10, the plays in that were both 1/10 - porcelain and pink and the one about the mountain negroes were not even worth a read, total ass piss. I don't even want to buy another collection at this point because it may be loaded with dookies, and it's not worth it - even if i were to read babylon revisited and it was heat. Generally the stories in that collection reek of a great writer who can't leave his immature ideas alone and move on to something worth giving a quarter of a fuck about, but there were moments of absolute brilliance that rivalled gatsby/tender is the night.

[Anonymous No.18153199]

>>18153163
>I don't even want to buy another collection at this point
That’s a lot of outrage over a writer who’s mostly in the public domain

[Anonymous No.18153238]

>>18152929
Anything by Jim Norton is going to be disappointing.

[Anonymous No.18153262]

>>18153163
yeah his short stories were very cynical commercial ploys to fund his lifestyle. i think he at one point talked about always adding a twist to make them marketable.
his real passion went into Gatsby and Tender in particular, and both were failures at the time they were published

[Anonymous No.18153266]

>>18153199
Well this is a most disappointing books thread, and i prefer reading them.

[Anonymous No.18153311]

>>18153163
Dis me^
>>18152929
For some reason i have faith in the beautiful and damned. Should i read it soon or wait?

[Anonymous No.18153317]

>>18153238
Nabokov on various authors:
Thomas Mann - “Asinine”
Boris Pasternak - “Pasternak’s melodramatic and vilely written Zhivago”
Luigi Pirandello - “I never cared for Pirandello”
Jim Norton - “At his best, he is incomparable and inimitable”

/lit/ btfo

[Anonymous No.18153321]

>>18153311
>For some reason i have faith in the beautiful and damned. Should i read it soon or wait?
you know, i said it was disappointing, but to be honest it has its moments.
its an incoherent, self-indulgent book, but there is the occasional gem inside.
read it with that in mind. dont expect another Gatsby or Tender

[Anonymous No.18153334]

>>18153321
Sounds good, i'll give it a shot some time. Thanks G

[Anonymous No.18153338]

[Anonymous No.18153411]

>>18153317
Not one mention of a corncob? I don't think Nabokov actually wrote this.

[Anonymous No.18153424]

>>18153411
>Faulkner: writer of corncobby chronicles.
Faulkner eternally btfo

[Anonymous No.18153444]

>>18153424
Okay, now I believe it.

[Anonymous No.18153486]

>>18153163
Fitzgerald told his friends how he hated writing them, he only wrote them because they put food on the table so he could write Gatsby and his other novels.

[Anonymous No.18153506]

>>18152929
>what was the most disappointing book you ever read?
The Sexual Life of Immanuel Kant. The literary equivalent of clickbait.

[Anonymous No.18153602]

>>18153486
Yeah, and a decent reader can tell, which only makes it suck more that he one coughed up 4 novels in his life.

Anybody know how his posthumous novel is?

[Anonymous No.18153914]

>The first few shows went off without a hitch. Then we hit New Year’s Eve. We’re in the tent getting ready for the big show at one of Saddam’s palaces, when the USO representative, Tracy, informs us that, due to possible danger from incoming insurgent fire, the show might have to be canceled. Of course, I took this news with the grace and low-key humility that I’ve worked tirelessly to display. So everything is fine. Laurie is cool. Ellen is cool. Tracy is cool. I’m cool. But then suddenly I hear a quiet buzzing in the tent.
>At first I thought it was one of the giant flying insects that have been flying around this part of the world since the Old Testament. I looked around for a newspaper to put a stop to it, when suddenly we all looked and realized it wasn’t an insect—at least not in the conventional sense. No, it was Jim muttering to himself and walking spastically around the room in circles waiting for someone to notice him and ask what was the problem. Tracy or Ellen inquired and Jim, with a look of sullen reproach on his idiotic baby face, blurts out, “I’ve been doing comedy for twelve years, and I’ve never missed a New Year’s show.” He sulks dramatically; the rest of us stand in stunned silence.
>Let me state the situation one more time. We were in Iraq. In a war zone. There are boys and girls putting their young bodies in harm’s way every day to defend our barely defensible way of life here in the United States. They’re not getting a lot of high-profile celebrity visits. (I know that you knew that from the fact that we were there.) But the celebrities that do visit at least give these brave youngsters the reassurance that people appreciate the sacrificial nature of what they are trying to do.
>In the midst of that, this incubated hatchling is strutting around, quacking, feathers ruffling, because people don’t realize that this trip is not about giving brief respite to the nineteen-year-olds seeing the frontline horrors and depravities that will never leave their minds. No, no, no, no, no. That’s important, sure. But more pressing is keeping the torch lit on the unnoticed and immaterial New Year’s record of this ludicrous goblin.
>I bet our troops would have doubled their valor and courage if they knew that they were protecting the right of a drone to live in a movie within his own mind—a movie in which twelve December 31s in various New Jersey townships drinking a post-show glass of cream soda while being treated to a perfunctory suck-off by a bewildered blubber bunny trying not to smear her hair glitter matter at all, to anyone.
>That’s why we could never win in Iraq, because we’re all under the impression that our way of life is precious. Even a guy like Jim Norton is clinging to his one empty tradition like anyone gives a care. My prayers for his death, as always, went unanswered.

[Anonymous No.18154354]

>>18152958
This, shit like Big Two-Hearted River and Hills Like White Elephants are so damn good. FSF's short stories are great too

[Anonymous No.18154874]

>>18154354
Problem with fitzgerald is for every good short story he wrote 6 bad ones. This nigga >>18153163 said it right.
Also my most disappointing read was borges's the aleph. Something about every story just felt so pointless and soul sucking. I'm gonna try again in 6-7 months or so but jesus christ fictions and a history of iniquity were far better. I suspect i was filtered though.