/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22312267]

I really enjoyed this book for the first few hundred pages but now I am finding it nearly impossible to read the last 150 pages. this book has so much potential and just drops off into complete retardation at the end. has anyone else on here even read this book? .

[Anonymous No.22312278]

>>22312267
i have. i took a break to read a flashman book halfway through. it was fun.i enjoyed learning what happened to the time travelling ant.

[Anonymous No.22312291]

>>22312267
Its fucking great, dude bangs a mountain.

[Anonymous No.22312343]

>>22312291
I found that part to be pretty unbearable. this book becomes incredibly tedious to read. the same recycled jokes and non-sense over and over. disappointing really.

[Anonymous No.22312769]

>>22312267
I love Kaufman films but I haven't heard a word on how this turned out. Does it still has his trademarks at the very least?

[Anonymous No.22312964]

>>22312267
You see, any film of substance, to be properly understood, must be viewed at least seven times. Years of trial and error in critical viewing, first as a cub critic at The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University, where I went, then for various imprints, journals, ‘zines,’ and an experimental two-month stint as the film critic for the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, have allowed me to perfect my viewing technique. It has been a hard-won battle for dominance over the form.

Let me explain: The first viewing is to be accomplished utilizing only the right hemisphere, the so-called intuitive brain center. Years of practice have allowed me to allow the film to wash over me. I remove my critic ‘hat’—you know all about hats!—and watch the film as a layperson might, . . .
Step Two: Why? In this second viewing, I doff my Nameless Ape ‘hat’ and put on my psychologist’s ‘hat,’ which is not a literal hat—hence my air quotes—but rather an attitude or approach toward the film, although I do, for the sake of full separation of the viewings, imagine myself in various hats during this process.

Step Three is how. Here is where I tap into my vast filmic knowledge to explore how the filmmaker achieved his/her/thon’s results. What does that ‘pan’ signify? How is that ‘zoom’ essential? Why a ‘24mm lens’ here? I also examine ‘juxtaposition,’ ‘mise-en-scène,’ ‘blocking,’ and ‘dance numbers’ to determine how these and other cinematic techniques forced me to cry, laugh, or ponder uncontrollably in the aforementioned Nameless Ape viewing—which, remember, was Step One.
Step Four: backward viewing. Designed to look at the film as a ‘non-narrative avant-garde experiment in a foreign language.’ In other words, it allows me to see the film as a pattern of images unencumbered by meaning.
Step Five: upside down. We as Americans take gravity for granted, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps this is true in other cultures; I do not feel qualified to say. But here gravity is just whatever: Stuff falls, get used to it.
After the upside-down viewing, in Step Six, I watch the film one more time in a conventional manner to cement my reaction and to establish the film’s ranking—if any—on my many lists: best films of the year, best films of the decade, best films of the century, best films of all time.
The seventh step is to not watch the film.
This is the seven-step method toward a clear-eyed viewing of any film.

[Anonymous No.22313017]

>>22312769
Yes it definitely does. I would recommend it. Even if a chunk of the middle of the book is tedious. Overall the whole thing is good and quite funny

[Anonymous No.22313162]

>>22312267
I enjoyed it a lot, it's very long but doesn't feel that way because the prose isn't particularly dense. I do agree with you though, there are a couple parts that are tedious to get through and the ending didn't really do anything for me. Looking at the book as a whole, I would call it a failure. Kaufman has lots of fun, interesting, weird, silly, dumb, boring, etc ideas and jams them all into the book and he fails to make them congeal into anything coherent. Not much of the book stays with you once you put it down unfortunately. But, even so, the various parts of the book manage to shine bright on their own so reading the book is still a pleasant experience. One chapter you're reading about the discovery of the greatest film of all time, then about the guys desire to be a waifish anime girl, then about his clown fetish, then you see him get in an online argument and get called a faggot, then a tribute to Judd Apatow followed by an attack on Kaufman's own films by his character. It's fun to read just for the sheer amount of whacky shit in it and the character is basically a /lit/ style pseud so it's entertaining to hear him ramble about various subjects.

[Anonymous No.22313172]

I felt that massive chunks of this book could be removed and it would not even alter the story in anyway.

[Anonymous No.22313176]

>>22313162
I both enjoyed and hated that there were a million jokes packed into every page. Some of them are absolutely genius but at other times while reading they became very annoying. The other part of this book that annoyed me was the vast amount of shit he sets up and seemingly forgets about later as The book fizzles out at the end.

[Anonymous No.22313182]

>>22313172
Much of the theme comes down to how memory makes the experience. The book being an erratic incomprehensible mess for 700 pages is not only intended, it’s the entire thematic backbone. Everyone gets a different experience from the book because everyone remembers different bits and bobs of the story. He attempted the same thing with Synechdoche but wasn’t able to flesh it out fully in the space of a movie.
Also, his editor forced him to cut over 400 pages that he was very adamant about keeping in. I wish he didn’t cave in that.

[Anonymous No.22313357]

>>22312267
It started to drag for me, got a few hundred pages in.

[Anonymous No.22313366]

>>22312769
It's worth a read. It basically pulls themes from all his movies. Being a cinephile, memory, neuroticism, stop-motion. He just chooses some concepts that I think could've been more interesting to most people if they were different but the core plot is good.

[Anonymous No.22313372]

>>22313162
that's my issue, if we were to work backwards I wonder if it's that he just had skits in mind and needed something to tie them together, or that the scenarios in the book were just to pad the content of the film. Some are just not that strong.

[Anonymous No.22313459]

I want to read it because of cinema, but I remember someone posting an excerpt out of it and it literally fucking was picrel. I don't mind it being a certain part that is supposed to be like that because the narrator goes apeshit or something, but does it really have anything genuinely fun and beautiful in it?

[Anonymous No.22313515]

>>22313459
The book is a 700 page basedjack, and I mean that in the best way possible. Kaufman is absolutely vicious in his portrayal of the liberal basedboy. Once you realize these Wendig quarks are completely ironic and mean spirited it becomes really fun.
The thematic elements of it are straight out of a Kaufman movie, so if that's your thing you'll likely find beauty in it.

[Anonymous No.22314625]

>>22313459
>fun
yes
>beautiful
eh, it's not going for that, some of it is self-flagellating but the main character has an obnoxious ego

I wouldn't say it is like your picrel. The dude is one of those so sjw conscious they're incidentally racist and ignorant types. He tries to be overly correct but says backwards shit. He's a 'feminist' but will see a woman and go jerk off fantasizing about her stepping on him. He's a textbook jew but not jewish but will get upset if you think he's jewish. You're just not supposed to take him seriously and he'll be the first to let you know that as a white, cis male but also he takes himself super seriously and expects others to. Interesting contradictory character.

[Anonymous No.22315304]

OP here I finally read the last 150 pages last night after making this post. I had to really force myself to read a couple chapters but once I got past those the last 100 or so pages give or take a chapter or two were good and I enjoyed the ending. I think the book is overall worth it to read.