is the whole book like the first 10 pages? i can barely tell

>>8313038
yep
come back and try it again in a few years

>>8313038
It's not that hard. How old are you?

>>8313257
21.im not exactly having a super hard time with it, but im relatively new to reading and havent come across a narative structure like this yet.

>>8313257
That's foolish - Gaddis is known for writing difficult literature.

>>8313289
Everything past chapter one of The Recognitions was easy for me. Is JR the same?

>>8313289
>>8313312
op here. is the recog easier? should i read it first?

>>8313312
It takes a bit more effort to read because there are no chapter or line breaks and the narration outside the dialogue is very vague/sparse so you have to figure some things out on your own that would be shown or told to you in other books, but it's still not that hard overall.

how does gaddis compare in difficulty to the ol pynchmeister?

>>8314313
I'd say he's slightly harder in The Recognitions and J R, if only on account of how vague he can often be about things. Carpenter's Gothic is mostly pretty straightforward. I've only read the first 40 something pages of A Frolic of His Own and it seems like a midpoint between J R and CG difficulty-wise.

give it time, the book will give you little hints about who's speaking when, and pretty soon you'll be able to pick up the speakers by their diction/phrasing alone. Eg. Whitehead is an obvious example but he speaks overly pedantic and throws in as man "so to speaks" and "ahm"s as he possibly can. Bast's dialogues are usually somewhat reserved and always bordering on frustration. JR himself is also easy to pick out. Gibbs--who's essentially the author's self-insertion-- is usually drunk and making fun of the other characters.

You're supposed to be a little lost at times, the characters don't so much respond to each other's questions and comments so much as they use them as springboards for their own self-delusion and solipism.

Once you get to the 150-200 mark, it really starts getting masterful.

>>8314443
Eigen and Gibbs are both Gaddis. They're just slightly different aspects of him.

>>8314313
Comparable. Both probably are the funniest writers I know and use the same level of terseness/spiraling dialogue to layer and inject their methods of humor

>>8314443
i read a little more and its making a little more sense now. its all very interesting so far cant wait to read more

>>8314453
It's possible, for me Gibbs was always at least bearable while Eigen was one of the stranger characters from what I remember. He's pretty sympathetic up until he meets Rhoda in the uptown apartment, where he becomes completely deplorable.

>>8313289
nice emdash laddo

you're a fucking queer

>>8314465
Gaddis mentions in that one TV interview he did that he started out relating to him as an author who published one book but was down on his luck (basically a mirror of Gaddis's situation with The Recognitions around the time he started the book) but realized that the guy he was writing about was actually terrible and not someone anyone would want to be around once he moved past the point of identifying with him (and presumably identifying with the Gaddis he was based on at the time).

I mean, if you think about it no one really gets divorced for no reason at all so we just don't really see his bad side come out in full view until late into the book.