Apart from IJ, what makes DFW's books difficult? And how

The Beetle Leg isnt so much difficult as it is droll and meandering, with spurts of goodness.

I like Hawkes, but he's better when he drops the pretense. The Lime Twig felt like working a whole lot for very little.

Very long sentences, vocabulary, and the different writing styles he uses throughout the book.

Overall its not "hard" to read. At first you don't know wtf is going on but you pick it up after about 250 pages in. During this time you also get used to the sentences and writing style.

My description of IJ is having a stack of shuffled papers spread across a table - as you read the book they start to organise themselves and by the time you start to understand (250-300 pages in), the papers start to arrange themselves into an order.

Just read it - its not as hard as people say. The end notes can be annoying though.

Fuckers in school telling me, always in the barber shop DFW ain’t bout this, DFW ain’t bout that My boy a BD on fucking Lamron and them He, he they say that nigga don’t be putting in no work SHUT THE FUCK UP! Y'all niggas ain’t know shit All ya motherfuckers talk about Infinite Jest like it ain't no classic DFW ain’t this DFW a fake SHUT THE FUCK UP Y'all don’t live with that nigga Y'all know that nigga got some mental health problems and shit Nigga been on anti-depressants since fuckin, I don’t know when! Motherfuckers stop fuckin' playin' him like that Them niggas savages out there If I catch another motherfucker talking sweet about DFW I’m fucking beating they ass! I’m not fucking playing no more You know those niggas role with Pynchon and them

>>8439038
There is no pretense. He wrote those the way he did for a reason. That and The Lime Twig was easy as fuck so you might just suck at reading.

Can you please answer my thread anons

How is the recognitions hard?

>>8439324
turn up

>>8439538
Just read the damn books
Use an e-reader to expedite looking up obscure words or reading the footnotes

>>8439035
He literally copied and pasted an outdated Merck manual in the middle of the book, so there's that.

Enjoy your "post-post-modern literature"

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>>8439591
>he hasn't read "Mr. Difficult"

>>8439038
>The Lime Twig felt like working a whole lot for very little.
There's so much there, it's so dense, hire can you say that? I can't wait to reread it. And it's not work if you enjoy it, which I feel sorry you didn't.

>>8439642
DFW isn't very difficult actually. He usually goes out of his way to be direct and cogent; Infinite Jest is just long and require a bit more effort than the typical novel. I've never read something by him, thought it was completely incomprehensible, and had to repeatedly reread the same page like with Faulkner. He very much has the audience in mind at all times. Sometimes he plays with their expectation of entertainment, but I think that's different than being difficult

>>8439035
>Pale Fire
>hard

Pale Fire is a pleasure to read and very funny. It's got great poetry, picaresque adventures and a plot twist for those who need that sort of thing. It's not a book for absolute beginners but it's not at all difficult.

>>8439035
Paradise Lost is harder than Gravity's Rainbow. Why isn't it on there ?

>>8439686
seconded

>>8439675
the later short stories like hideous men are more complicated/purposefully obscured/purposefully tedious (like the depressed girl, god)

Is Gaddis difficult or just long?

>>8440447
Recognitions wasn't difficult, but you'll need annotations if you want to understand most of the references and allusions, especially Christian ones.

>>8439686
This entire post screams one thing to me: you didn't actually understand it. The Pale Fire has one of the most confusing, complex, and hard to pick out subtexts of any novel written in the past 100 years.

>>8439642
Not really, its just disjointed as shit but the core of it is very simple.

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>>8440485
is this annotated?

>>8441963
No, use this http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/preface.shtml

>>8440614
what is it? haven't read it, curious

>>8442731
So there's no physical annotated edition? That's a shame.

>>8440614
>subtext
And what is that 'subtext', pray tell?

>>8439035
In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon touches on life being wired in parallel, not series--that is, instead of one thing leading directly to the next, there are many many chains all occurring simultaneously and interweaving. DFW takes this idea to the extreme. He throws many many plot lines, characters, experiments in language and syntax, digressions, etc. at you and expects you to juggle them all in your head. It's not that any one of them is particularly difficult to understand; it's that you're required to devote yourself enough to reading the book that you can hold all those threads at once.

And but so ultimately that's the charm of the book: in order to get to the end you have to become engrossed in the complexities. Given that the book is actually about addiction and absolute dedication, it creates a really nice effect when you feel as though you yourself have become addicted to the book and the process of decoding it.

>>8439035
>finnegans wake
>hard

>>8439035
Is there are chart of 'deep' books?

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>>8445339

>is there are

>>8439035
the first 60 pages of IJ were absolute torture for me. it took me until about page 80 to get used to his writing style and i have to say its great. definitely the funniest books ive ever read so far.

>>8444996
>And but so
hardy har har

>>8442931
Well not sure how much you know about Pale Fire but it is presented as a poem (in three cantos) by the late 'John Shade' book-ended by an introduction and notes by his "friend" and editor Charles Kinbote, but it becomes clear that Kinbote may not exist at all, or is really another further out (meta) character and all the confusion is exacerbated by more brilliant Nabokov fuckery.

Book is great btw

>>8443470
It's already a brick, adding annotations to it (which is absolutely replete with historical, musical, land literary allusions) may be a practical non-starter due to binding issues

>>8445137
I've found that ever since I started reading GR and FW in epicycles they have seemed more and more elementary.

A particularly crispy permutation is to read FW -> FW -> GR -> FW. This is when the meaning of the novels really begins to show itself

>>8447690
I hope someday an annotated edition sees the light. Maybe two tomes.

>>8440614
>The Pale Fire
The subtext is pretty obvious. I agree there are lots of references and some are somewhat subtle, but I'm curious as to what you think is incredibly hard to find. The thing about Kinbote really being V. Botkin? or about thr fact that Jack Grey was trying to kill the judge?