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/lit/ - Literature

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5261534 No.5261534[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

So... is this basically catch 22 with sex jokes?

>> No.5261552

The emperor's clothes are so thick and so ornate that it's impossible to divest him of them.

>> No.5261566

Nope. Not even close.

>> No.5261754

Catch 22 has sex jokes

>> No.5262151

>>5261534
No, you see it is brilliant satire because rockets look like dicks and sex itself is an allegory for conquest. That and the fact that he used real rocket equations are just super kawaii.

>> No.5262333

>>5262151
Jeeze, that's embarassing.

You're trying to mock something by making it sound juvenile, when a big part of the concept is melding together the juvenile and erudite.

Your post is just an accurate assessment by someone who has barely scratched the surface of the book except for when you call it a 'brilliant satire'. GR contains satire, but is not satirizing anything as a whole, and your explanation for why it is a 'brilliant satire' has nothing to do with satire.

>> No.5262370

>>5262333
Hey, man. I didn't even read the book. Just the synopsis on wikipedia. Can't get past the maximalist aesthetic. Too much digression and superfluous information.

>> No.5262397

>>5262370

That's too bad. It's a great book.

It's the 21st century, maximalism is at the very least a great training exercise for processing information presented to you.

Compared to 4chan, there is virtually no superfluous information in GR.

>> No.5262401

>>5261534
It's a super confusing Catch 22 with jokeless sex and magic.

>> No.5262404

>>5262397
Yeah, but I can skip the things that are superfluous on 4chan. I believe that somewhere in there is a good book. I'm excited to see if Paul Thomas Anderson can make Pynchon accessible. As it stands now thoughm it is just too much like an 800 page word problem from a 5th grade math book.

>> No.5262429

>>5262404
Why do you always try to downplay everything? Do you think it makes you look smarter if you write off well written books as beneath you?

>> No.5262478

>>5262429
I'm not writing it off. I believe it is good. It really does feel like an 800 page word problem though. I'm sure it is an acquired literary taste that I have not appreciated the prerequisite styles for. My patience has been ruined by the modern era.

>> No.5262514

>>5262478
Then why did you say it's like it's from a 5th grade math book?

>> No.5262541

>>5261534
I'm about 300 pages into it, going very slowly and reading a lot of other stuff at the same time. I wouldn't call it Catch-22 with sex jokes (for one because Catch-22 is chock full of sex jokes) mainly because the entire style of humor, the things that I'm laughing at from Pynchon, are a totally different flavor from Heller.

As other posters itt have said, the maximalist style is just hard for me to want to read. It takes more effort than I generally want to put forth after a day at work or on the train ride, so I pretty much only look at it on the weekends. I spend a good deal of time re-reading the same passages over and over, but I feel like the massive web of characters is still kind of going over my head (which I think is part of the point).

>> No.5262542

>>5262514

he probably meant that the book has too much writing for the message it's trying to make.

>> No.5262548

>>5262514
That is where you find the math story problems where there are important nuggets of information buried in more or less useless information. I think it is an effective metaphor.

>> No.5262552

>>5262541

i only got interested in pynchon because of /lit/ because it's not really popular outside of the US.

as a non-american will i get some of the lingo? or is it more oriented towards an american audience?

>> No.5262563

>>5262542
get the fuck out of here, Ernest.

>> No.5262615

>>5262552
There are parts in the book that are Europeans asking Americans to explain American slang. He often uses UK or German lingo and expects you to understand it.

Almost none of it is even set in America. Most of it is in the UK, France, and Germany with emphasis on Germany. There are a lot of lingo that Americans who haven't spent a lot of time in Europe won't really get. There's plenty of African language references you probably won't get either without really understand without looking them up.

>> No.5262625

>>5262552
As an American, a ton of it is lost on me.
>>5262615
This is pretty spot on. Try it anyway. It's a hell of an endeavor.