"This is not writing, this is Barbara Cartland - and Barbara

>>8399577
>non-entity says something about an entity
?

>>8399592
>Peter Ackroyd
>non-entity

>>8399577
>it may be that Nabokov is fascinated by his own work, and so continues to harass and worry it in order to extract some key or secret code which will justify it all; or, more probably, it may be that his talent has long since atrophied and he is condemned to the constant reworking of his original material, to press some scent out of the already heavily pressed flower […]. When a novel strives too hard to become literature, it falls into literariness. Nabokov’s words are hollow and external, and he lays them on with a trowel. All that is left is solemn persona playing with himself and that—of course—leads to blindness.

On Nabakov

>>8399577
>[Chimera is] a novel within a novel within something else on the Chinese principle that a great many boxes are better than a hat […]. When an American writer touches upon [classical mythology] I feel a frisson on behalf of centuries of classical scholarship; Americans, being a poorly educated race, take the Greek myths far too seriously and become either pompous or heavily jocular about them. Professor Barth has naturally gone for the jocular ‘angle’, and has recounted the unutterably boring mythic lives of Perseus and Bellerophon in a suburban demotic that relives the boredom of the original while increasing its capacity to irritate

On John Barth's Chimera.

>>8399621
lol

just because he was a blues brother doesn't mean i have to take his literary opinions seriously

>climb on a balcony, ready to deliver an epic speach you've prepared about the emperor
>get laughed at
>commit seppuku
>the beta kaishakunin can't even decapitate you properly, to spare the agony
>lay down in terrible pain
>regret everything

>>8401425
He's only one of the greatest English novelists writing today.

>>8399628
>too seriously
>jocular
Was this guy retarded or something?

>>8401471
>Expecting the proles to understand the depth of their own malaise

>>8401485
To be heavily jocular about the greek myths, one must first begin from the angle that they are incredibly serious. People who accept the myths to be fairly light and absurd do not dedicate even comic novels to them. A satire must ultimately come from something sincere.

>>8401583
Nice try, but no. That's total horseshit.

>>8401593
How is it? There isn't this dichotomy between humour and serious issues that you believe there is. When you think that humour is about expectations, what is more unexpected than a novel dealing with myth that is satirical and irreverent. The need to pick holes in something in the form of a work that you have dedicated some time to implies that you consider the subject worthy of spending a fair amount of time on. Think of Swift and his modest proposal.

>>8401583
Keep posting his bantz please.

>confusing harakiri with seppuku

reeeeeeeee

File: 1469976362783s.jpg (3KB, 125x93px) Image search: [Google]

3KB, 125x93px

>>8401613
>there is a difference
MASAKA

>>8401610
>So it is that Gravity's Rainbow, apocalyptic enough as it sounds, should be recommended by the man from the New York Times as one of the five books to take to the moon (there, of course, its seven hundred pages of fine print might conceivably float free) and by the man from Saturday Review as an advance "beyond" Agoby Dick and Ulysses. Why any reasonably intelligent critic would think that there is a point "beyond" the two, and that even if there was it was necessary to reach it, is "beyond" me. But there it is, on the cover of this gargantuan obelisk of a book. Of course, the American critics have always had a penchant for the Great American Novel, one which would somehow fabricate both a history and a culture in one volume, and their eccentric ravings can be dismissed as the foibles of latter-day Romans looking for a Greece.

>But it amazes me that a reputable English publisher can reprint their gush, and add some of his own to boot. According to the blurb, Pynchon has been greeted as "more bizarre, complex, obscene, difficult and stunning than anything since James Joyce." Hail fellow, well met kind of prose and of course I am pleased to note that it is now considered an advantage to be both difficult and obscene — not to say complex and, I would add, an excruciating bore.

>But the world is Mr Pynchon's oyster, and his private war radiates through time and space with as much subtlety as a stain. Occupied Holland, where Hansel and Gretel never had it so good, and pre-war Germany, the factotum of seances and poverty, are relentlessly exposed; similarly, the African tribe of the Zone-Hereros and the Kirghiz peasants of Central Asia are given the old historical one-two and are drawn into a cultural design as breathtaking as it is irrelevant. For the central portions of the narrative seem (and in a narrative of such staggering insouciance, 'seem' is to be believed) to be devoted to the wanderings of Slothrop. His psychic gifts render him the conventional outcast, and his later days are spent in the solitary track of the Rocket.

>I have to admit defeat at this point, and confess that I had no idea who or what the Rocket was. It may have been of such heavy symbolic intent that it went completely under my head, and I had to be content with the incidental detail of Slothrop's trips. He is lost and found in Zurich and Argentina, pursued by agents and tripleagents in a bewildering variety of guises. The Rocket is eventually fired, but not before the future has become a mechanical nightmare of considerable proportions. Yes, I would say it was bizarre.

>>8401613
They're the same thing.

>>8399577
If you /lit/izens feel enraged, know that Bloom considers him to be one of the greatest living writers.

>>8401644
Shakespeare was long dead before knowing Peter you imbecile

>>8401644
Bloom's a ninny though and only retarded memers take the bloomposting seriously.

>>8401425
underrated

>>8401609
The botched Swift comparison highlights exactly why it's horseshit. Swift was satirizing current events. Mythology hasn't really been held in reverence for ages. By the 70s playing with it in a literary context was already a very normal thing.

>>8401695
I don't see how your sentence contradicts what I said at all. Apart from the nonsense that the Swift comparison doesn't work because of the subject of his satire.

>>8401718
Ok, so you and this dude you're fawning over are both retards. Good to know.

>>8401748
How does your point that people play with myth in their writings contradict the point that a book length portrayal of a myth does not take that myth seriously? Also, he states that it is common for Americans to do it, so there is no argument there either.

>>8401658
somebody on /lit/ told me bloom was retarded so it must be true. I trust your judgement.

>>8401753
>contradict the point that a book length portrayal of a myth does not take that myth seriously?
contradict the point that a book length portrayal of a myth takes the myth seriously?