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/lit/ - Literature

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6068662 No.6068662 [Reply] [Original]

>tfw reading analysis of early Pynchon short story
>all these allusions to demas, psychology, philosophy, literature, ritual symbolism, mythology, etc.
>all this contained within a short story apparently improvised in a couple hours for a class project
>tfw you will never be that well read or autistic enough to embed so much meaning into your writing
>tfw you will never be /lit/erary

>> No.6068680

If you're parents aren't university educated and don't encourage you to read as a child (when you're most able to store things in your subconscious) then you may as well give up and start writing your "gritty" realistic novel right now while the big boys get on with defining the state of contemporary literature.

>> No.6068683

>>6068680
>you're

>> No.6068695

Care to post the analysis ? One property of references is that they easily look impressive even when actually using them isn't that hard. It's entirely possible to glean enough references, quotes and literary jokes to fill a short story in a few afternoons. After a year of well-tailored reading you should be able to write entire novels littered with references (not that it is enough to use them cleverly).

References is also where the disymmetry between reader and writer (the writer knows more or less what he's trying to say or allude to, while the reader is trying to makie sense of a text he didn't design) is greater. You can't have read every single author, and Pynchon can't either, but he has this on you that he wrote the story, so he gets to choose the references.

>> No.6068717

>>6068662
> read bardo thodol
> read book about japanese mythology
> read the book of lies
> read the satanic bible
> write a 3500 word short story with allusions to mentioned books

really not that hard
writing it so that it does not suck, now that's the tricky part

>> No.6068725

>>6068662
OP, you forgot the most important part.
You forgot talent. Erudition spices up works that were initially spawned with passion and creativity, and, sadly, this is the criteria that discourages 99% of attempting people from success.

It's not like your encyclopedic knowledge does all of the work.

Also, last paragraph of
>>6068717

>> No.6068749

>>6068662
Read "Pale Fire" by Nabokov, it is basically a satire of the sort of literary criticism that is getting you so down; academics and delusional "intellectuals" projecting their own baises and knowledge onto a work of literature that is usually very personal and has nothing to do with what the author intended. House of leaves is very similar; it's basically a complete satire of modern academia. I love Nabokov, mainly because his works are concerned with literature and only literature, his themes are really organic and can be comprehended by anyone who has felt certain ways in life. His work doesn't get caught up in making philisophical and religious and political allusions, and when it does, it is usually very tongue in cheek and sardonic. He is a writers writer, he writes for people who enjoy well constructed narratives, not readers who use literature to inflate their ego through criticism.

>> No.6068769

>>6068749
Nabokov would have ripped Pynchon up

>> No.6068776

>>6068769

Pynchon was Nabakov's student
Allegedly they were friendly and Nabokov thought highly of him

>> No.6068780

>>6068776
Nabokov has stated he didn't remeber teaching him, but his wife remebered reading his messy handwriting when she helped correct his students papers.

>> No.6068801
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6068801

>tfw reading analysis of an episode of bakemonogatari
>all these allusions to other anime, manga, literature, mythology, etc.
>all this contained within a short episode alongside plenty of beautiful fanservice
>you will never know enough to get all the allusions yourself
>you will never even know japanese

>> No.6068804

>>6068801
Shit taste and awful shitposting, go away.

>> No.6068805

>>6068780
I'm also willing to bet that the only Pinecone novel Nabokov would have enjoyed was TCOL49, he would have regarded the rest as esoteric trash.

>> No.6068809

>>6068804
This was the reaction I was looking for.

>> No.6068810

>>6068662

ITT: lots of people who never studied literature at university so they don't realise that the references you get out of a text are pretty much the ones you bring to it.

When you've been doing it long enough, you can demonstrate that Winnie the Pooh is a Lacanian interpretation of gestalt theory and that Where's Spot is a feminist text.

>> No.6068827

>>6068810
ignore this retarded death-of-the-author tier post

>> No.6068843

References by themselves bear no meaning. There must be a purpose to the techniques used. Listing allusions is not analysis, to analyze is to understand exactly why they were needed in the work in the first place. Few critics can do that properly.

>> No.6068920

>>6068695
Found it online:
http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=ijls

>> No.6068934

Have you read Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai?

It's from the POV of an extremely well-educated woman whose son is extremely and annoyingly into learning, the book is full of knowledge

>classic greek & writing system
>history of music
>Japanese systems of writing
>Obscure German secondary literature, in German
>Hebrew
>Inuit
>French writing and poetry
>postgrad-level mathematics
etc. pp.

No wonder DeWitt was a bit older when she wrote & published this book sometime in her 40s, you can't write a book like this in your 20s

>> No.6068935

>>6068776

See, the account I read said that Nabokov didn't find Pynchon to be particularly remarkable or memorable. Nabokov's wife, who corrected many of his students' essays, said she remembered Pynchon being erudite.

>> No.6068940

>>6068935
M.H Abrams, author of The Mirror and the Lamp and creator of the Norton, was also one of Pynchon's teachers, and remembers he was brilliant. He says he regrets not keeping his essays,

>> No.6068942

>>6068935
I guess it's neither, nor:

> Nabokov had no memory of Pynchon, however, and no knowledge of his work (Strong 77). Véra Nabokov, who often graded her husband’s exams, said she remembered his “unusual” handwriting, which combined cursive and printing: a detail appropriate to the conjunction of two writers and the orthographic nature of the V-shaped paradigm (Strong 77n3). Unfortunately, Charles Hollander, a scholar in pursuit of the very private Pynchon, has acquired “a bootlegged copy” of his transcript which shows no sign that he studied with Nabokov.

Source: http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1475

>> No.6068945

>>6068942

The plot is always thickening with this dude

>> No.6068974

>>6068942
I bet Nabokov was too busy catching Butterfly. Isn't it even questioned if he wrote Lolita at all, but in fact it was his wife.

>> No.6068981

>>6068974
kek
Lolita has too many things influenced by le cornfather's very personal tastes and little obscure shits he was/is in love with to be written by his wife, isn't it