/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7997545]

>So, anon, what's your favorite novel?
>Oh, definately Gravity's Rainbow
>Never heard of it, what's it about?
> ...

>tfw plebs will never understand why this is a masterpiece if they haven't read it themselves

[Anonymous No.7997553]

>>7997545
>definately
Less time reading about magical dicks and more time on grammar, plebkun

[Anonymous No.7997562]

>>7997545
>definately

pynchon fans, everyone

[Anonymous No.7997582]

>>7997545
>definately

[Anonymous No.7997586]

>>7997545
Irregardless, this is widely jejune.

[Anonymous No.7997588]

>>7997545
>definately

[Anonymous No.7997589]

>>7997545
Gravity's Rainbow is a cautionary tale about Pavlovian conditioning gone wrong.
Gravity's Rainbow is the story of WWII, told from the perspectives of people often left out of the traditional narrative, such as psychics, scientists, and lightbulbs.
Gravity's Rainbow is what happens when you take the furiously scribbled notes of a poet, a mathematician, a drug addict and a quantum physicist and shuffle them together.

Just tell that to the plebs

[Anonymous No.7997591]

>>7997545
>Pynchon
>not pleb

[Anonymous No.7997742]

>>7997589
Wonderful

[Anonymous No.7997783]

>get asked this question by 60+ elephant woman
>tell her I really enjoyed Infinite Jest
>she's never heard of it
>starts to talk about the "classics," Dickens, Eliot etc
>makes up bullshit about how imagery doesn't exist in modern literature because "my generation" grew up with television

[Anonymous No.7997975]

>>7997783
this triggered me

[Anonymous No.7998763]

>>7997545
you're a faggot OP, GR is my favorite book and I have tons of ways of shorthand explaining it

>It's kind of a surrealist war satire, the whole thing is kicked off by a mixup where the main character's penis is thought to be directing V2 rocket strikes, it's pretty wild.

[Anonymous No.7998783]

>>7997545
>it's a look-at-me-I-read-Gravity's-Rainbow-I'm-so-well-read-please-praise-my-superior-taste thread
Please leave. Reading one of the 20th century's most popular and acclaimed books doesn't make you special.

[Anonymous No.7998795]

>>7997545
Terrible bait. Had a hearty chuckle though.

[Anonymous No.7998802]

>>7997783
>>makes up bullshit about how imagery doesn't exist in modern literature because "my generation" grew up with television

If I've got her right, she makes sense. Most new bestsellers read just like scripts for trashy tv shows. The closest things to a masterpiece are just script versions for, say, "classy" HBO dramas. The art of the written word is now entirely infused with the language of visual media.

[Anonymous No.7998806]

>>7997589
All three of these are awful, and would immediately oust you as a pseud to most people who have read it.

[Anonymous No.7998955]

>>7997589
But these are wrong. Pavlovian conditioning is a relic of the past in GR, it's why Pointsman goes mad, it's why he has no influence at all by the end.

It's decidedly not the story of WW2. It eschews everything we've come to know of WW2, there is none of the WW2 mythology nor WW2 truths. It is a story of a war fought by remote bombing, by spies, by occultism. It says nothing of ground wars, of concentration camps, of Adolf Hitler. It also only spends about 1/3 of the book IN WW2. It is a book begging to be read as a Cold War novel, Cold War and onward.

This last explanation is just embarrassing.

This whole post is embarrassing, because nothing about Gravity's Rainbow is subtle.

[Anonymous No.7999018]

>>7998802
bestsellers =! modern literature, let alone "masterpieces." is that the best you can do to prove that words are "infused with the language of visual media"?

pls get over yourself. I bet you haven't even read Bolano, let alone good contemporary poets like Cole or Gluck

[Anonymous No.7999032]

Halfway through V right now and having trouble finding the motivation to finish it. Think I'll have better luck with Gravity's Rainbow or am I just fucked?

[Anonymous No.7999039]

>>7999018
Cole and Gluck are both mediocre at best, desu

[Anonymous No.7999045]

>mfw filthy plebs constantly around me talking about plebby things like GoT and other reddit topics
>mfw a 8/10 girl once tried talking to me about Enders Game and could barely contain my laughter. ended up telling her to read some actual literature instead of that reddit trash
>mfw im truly a patrician that only reads authentic and difficult literature and all the other plebs are inferior
>mfw plebs will always be plebs whilst us patricians eternally bathe in the glorious intellectual pursuits of serious literature

[Anonymous No.7999053]

>>7999032
V is pynchon's novel most like GR in style/form but GR does have a greater sense of immediacy and pull - GR is like a preapocalyptic scifi, V is like a beat fiction novel with something evil lurking just out of reach - but if you're not liking V at all i don't see any reason to bother with GR

[Anonymous No.7999060]

>>7997545
>tfw /lit/ will never understand that the world cringes every time you mention Gravity's Rainbow unironically

[Anonymous No.7999105]

>>7997783
lol
You should have shown her that DFW interview.

[Anonymous No.7999126]

>definately

[Anonymous No.7999254]

>definately

[Anonymous No.7999265]

>>7997553
>>7997562
>>7997582
>>7997588
>>7999126
>>7999254
Shut the FUCK UP. Don't act like you've never made a fucking spelling error you MOTERFUCKER.

[Anonymous No.7999282]

>>7997545
Its about missiles, war, stuff like that.

[Anonymous No.7999301]

>Someone sees me carrying V
>"oh is that fantasy"

[Anonymous No.7999305]

>>7997545
During the Blitz, an American soldier stationed in London discovers that a map of all the girls he fucks is identical to a map of where German rockets fall. Gravity's Rainbow follows his zany adventures looking for answers across Europe as WWII comes to an end.

Was that so hard?

[Anonymous No.7999323]

>>7999032
What trouble are you having with it? I found it a blast