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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 103 KB, 392x574, Gravitys_rainbow_cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6912281 No.6912281 [Reply] [Original]

How do you justify the shock scenes in this book? I was planning to read it once I'm done with Infinite Jest, but I'm having trouble seeing the benefit in reading gruesome scat BDSM and incestuous pedophilia scenes.

>> No.6912296

>>6912281
It's garbage. Characters are uninteresting, story is incoherent and also uninteresting, there is no insightful commentary on any political, social, or philosophical issues. It's 800 pages of some guy trying to be witty.

>> No.6912325

>>6912296
I disagree

>> No.6912326

what kind of faggot doesn't want to read gruesome scat BDSM and incestuous pedophilia scenes?

>> No.6912333

>>6912281
Well the gruesome scat is a metaphor for WW1. Pynchon uses feces and the colour black as symbols for death throughout the book and the character who eats the shit is a survivor of the first world war, the fact that he becomes sexually aroused and fantasizes that he's giving head to a black guy is a commentary on the sickness European societies that gloried in the deaths of millions.

It's also a commentary on the traumatic effect of war and how the veteran is so fucked up by his experiences in the war that in his old age he's looking forward to dying.


>>6912296
Retard.

>> No.6912336

>>6912296
>objective criteria

>> No.6912341

>>6912333
The coprophilic episode was a commentary on gender, morality, and 'noble' sacrifices, as well as the effects of closed-off perceptions (the many rooms and doors)

>> No.6912342
File: 7 KB, 205x246, 1432769307730.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6912342

>tfw don't know if GR really is a masterpiece or if it is just a bunch of nonsense
>tfw don't want to find out myself because no matter what category I'll fall into, I'll get called a pleb anyway

>> No.6912343

>>6912333
>>6912341
It was also a commentary on mythology, feminism and what it means to be human.

>> No.6912355

>>6912281
If you go into a book and need things to be "justified" for you, you're a bleeding vagina and should castrate yourself immediately.

>> No.6912374

>>6912355
>implying that thoughtful rationalization isn't a masculine trait

>> No.6912386

>>6912374
It's a mangina trait. Read whatever the fuck you want. Write whatever the fuck you want. Worrying about whether something "inappropriate" or disgusting is "justified" makes you a pussy.

>> No.6912388

>>6912281
I could only read 250 pages of Infinite Jest. I read V and Gravity's Rainbow almost back to back and The Crying of Lot 49 after. Why? Because Pynchon is beautiful, fun, and enigmatic to read.

>> No.6912410

>>6912386
Do you see the irony in deliberately avoiding certain thoughts because of the label you associate them with, while proclaiming that one should do what they want without care for labels?

>> No.6912432

>>6912296
see
>>6912333


Not everyone can be as stupid as you.

>> No.6912440

>>6912410
You're going to encounter a lot of pedophiles on this board. Most of them resort to cartoon kid porn. You're new here, I get it.

But don't ever think for a second that anyone here knows what they are talking about. You have to remember, they are a tab away from searching google and copying and pasting things most of this websites community are too lazy to fact check.

Oh, and /pol/ used to not actually believe what they are vomiting over there. It used to be a satire board. Newfags like you get recruited and since you are lonely, angsty little cunts with no future they revel releasing their anger on middle-class white boys and wannabe rednecks while pretending everyone is a jew who runs the world.

Have fun!

Also /mu/ is shit, /tv/ is shit, if you go to the anime boards stay there because weebs are cancer, /sp/ is fun, /b/ is a cesspool, and /v/ is /a/ and /b/ talking about video games kind of.

>> No.6912441

>>6912342
Who fucking cares either way. Start reading it and if you don't like it, don't continue. If you're not somewhat curious as to how it unfolds in narrative or language or you don't have a curiosity in trying to understand it, don't continue. But whining about not being able to read it without evening trying - that's the true pleb.

>> No.6912447

>>6912440
>/sp/ is fun
found the normie

>> No.6912510
File: 5 KB, 250x217, 1342796221940s.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6912510

>>6912440

>> No.6912533

>>6912326
the worse kind.

>> No.6913242
File: 750 KB, 2048x1152, 14384575595781297661858.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6913242

I just checked it out myself, I think this is one of the coolest book covers I've ever seen.

>> No.6913245

>>6912296
I wholeheartedly agree

>> No.6913252

>>6913242
that's a fucking great cover
you should steal it

>> No.6913253

its funny to me that someone would waste their time on infinite jest and balk at gravitys rainbow, an infinitely superior book

>> No.6913384

>>6912440
What does anything you just wrote have to do with the post you replied to?

>> No.6913519

>>6913253
How so?

>> No.6914526

>>6913242
that is the best GR cover I have ever seen

>> No.6914544

>>6913384
It's pasta I think? I can't fucking tell any more.

>> No.6914570

>>6912281
lol John Green sounds a little more your speed. It blows my mind how anyone has made their way here and just knowing that this kind of stuff is in a book offends their palette.

>> No.6914623

>>6914570
>if you don't like reading graphic depictions of eating human shit, you can't appreciate fine literature

>> No.6914642

>>6912281
Are these actually part of the story? If so I'm never going to read it, clearly meme-tier attention whoring garbage. Might as well be fifty shades

>> No.6914647

>>6914623
>implying literature depicting humans eating shit is fine

>> No.6914682

>>6912333
kek, and you people try to act too-good for fantasy novels.

>> No.6914710

>>6914647
That statement didn't express that the depiction and fine literature were mutually inclusive.

>> No.6915221

>>6914642
>He hit her upside the head with his open hand, a loud and terrible blow. That took care of his anger. Then, before she could cry or speak, he had dragged her up on the bed next to him, her dazed little hands already at the buttons of his trousers, her white frock already pulled above her waist. She had been wearing nothing at all underneath, nothing all day...how I've wanted you, she whispered as paternal plow found its way into filial furrow...and after hours of amazing incest they dressed in silence, and crept out into the leading edge of faintest flesh dawn, everything they would ever need packed inside her flowered bag, past sleeping children doomed to the end of summer, past monitors and railway guards, down at last to the water and the fishing boats, to a fatherly old sea-dog in a braided captain's hat, who welcomed them aboard and stashed them below decks, where she snuggled down in the bunk as they got under way and sucked him for hours while the engine pounded, till the Captain called, "Come on up, and take a look at your new home!" Gray and green, through the mist, it was Denmark. "Yes, they're a free people here. Good luck to both of you!" The three of them, there on deck, stood hugging....

>> No.6915595

>>6914682
Gravity's Rainbow is fantasy. Maybe you should read it.

>> No.6915680

>>6912333
Or maybe Pynchon is a coprophilic cuck

>> No.6916929

>>6912281
You realise these things actually happen? Incest, pedo-, copro-, zoo-, and scato-philia are real things people are doing, not far from where you live. Look in people's eyes as you walk the streets with them. What unspeakable secrets could they tell? Invariably people call it gratuitous, but it's a fair account of the phenomena. If you can't stomach it then it's not a book about world war 2 you want to read but, perhaps, a fairytale about certain, nicer things happening around it.

>> No.6916976

>>6915680
well, they say write what you know.

Start on your autistic virgin saga anon.

>> No.6916981

>>6912440
>4chan culture 4chan culture 4chan cuture 4chan culture ...

I hate people like you.

>> No.6917059

Whats the best version of GR to buy?

>> No.6917081

>>6917059
Vintage with the gay pride rockets or the big orange star.

>> No.6917313

>>6917059
Original one, but it's expensive as fuck

>> No.6917468

>>6915680
There was a playboy article about him called "WHO IS THOMAS PYNCHON... AND WHY DID HE TAKE OFF WITH MY WIFE?" so if anything he was doing the cucking.

>> No.6917476
File: 193 KB, 987x1500, gravity's rainbow penguin.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6917476

>>6917059
Blueprint cover is fine too if you're not looking to get fleeced.

>> No.6917506

>>6912281
I'm a pretty normal guy, watch porn 3-4 times a week to masturbate when my gf isn't around, played hs sports, read a few things, all this to say: it's hard at times but it serves a purpose.

I spent the greater part of 450 pages thinking Slothrop was this hilariously awesome character who pulls crazy bitches, but ole Thom really does expose his vice, aboard the anubis.

Yeah, the shit-eating is gross, but it's not like you have a ten-page section filled with coprophilic prose, it's one paragraph.

>> No.6919138

I think it has to do Pynchon's theory that sadomasochism is inextricably intertwined with modern civilization, war, political control, etc... Sadomasochism is a joy in hurting the self and/or hurting others. This is quite similar to a joy in war and battle, and the joy in self-repression, self-discipline, both of which are integral, on a large scale, to the functioning of societies. People have to repress themselves to live in society. Societies must inevitably wage war every once in a while or die out (which Pynchon quite insightfully, I think, points out as a secret bypath to profit to keep a society running).

In Freudian terms (it's no question of whether or not Freud was a hack, Pynchon absolutely did read Freud and Freud's influence is evident to me in his books), it's eros and thanatos, the life-propagating instinct and the life-destroying instinct, combined, also relating to the union of the opposites that's a big deal in the book. The name Thanatz is a clear allusion to the word thanatos. Pynchon repeatedly contrasts in the book the desire for innocent love and sex, and then the desire of the "elite", those who manufacture wars, to destroy love and sex. Eros and thanatos. What happens, according to this conflict (recalls Hegel, too, thesis-antithesis-synthesis), is that eventually the death-drive gets into the sex-instinct. The sadomasochists are almost "casualties" of a sort of the social system that glorifies death. In the most potentially life-affirming joys, love and sex, death is introduced.

This holds well with psychological research and theorizing. Sadomasochists often have had repressive childhoods. The love their parents may have bore them was warped by some trauma or overly disciplinarian personality. And, of course, as many have pointed out, the typical parent-child relationship where the child is subservient is analagous to the state-citizen relationship, and so on. Like Confucianism, it's the same respectful relationship of master-slave reiterated only with different people, emperor-subject, father-child, husband-wife, etc... So it's almost like, on a large scale, everyone is a masochist repressing themselves and repressing others because they themselves are repressed by those higher than them. Like Theodor Reik says, or Philip K. Dick points out when he does a nice little infodump of Reik's ideas on masochism in VALIS.

>>6916929
This is a very good point I agree with.

>>6912333
As is this. Nice trips.

>> No.6919147

>>6912281
>gruesome scat BDSM and incestuous pedophilia scenes.
why nobody told me that i thought that was about rockets

>> No.6919156

>>6912440
I'm glad I stopped going on /mu/, but every now and then I find myself visiting /v/ again because it was the board I started out on
/fit/ is my home board now, with a little bit of /fit/ every now and then for when I'm feeling like a fat ass

>> No.6919160

>>6912440
what the fuck did I just read
and fuck you, there's nothing wrong with chinese cartoons, nerd

>> No.6919185

>>6913242
>>6913252
>>6914526
m80s that's a tumblr level cover, it even has pimp up girl with REAL CURHVES

>> No.6919298

>>6919147
There's only one scat bdsm scene in the entire book. One (pseudo) incestuous pedophilia scene that I'm pretty sure was imaginary

>> No.6919592

>>6913253
Kek, GR is one of the worst books of all time, and IJ is probably the best

>> No.6919596

>>6917059
The abridged, so you waste less time