Joseph Mcelroy general

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>>9151407
please pay attention to me :(

>>9151495
bump for actually reading?

Lookout Cartridge has a gimmick of sorts but is good but maybe not worth the effort, Women and Men is excellent but difficult not only to read but to find. It is however 100% worth the time and effort and contains some of the greatest passages I've ever read and reveals itself as you work through it as the masterpiece it really is despite a daunting and to put it lightly confusing beginning

>>9151731
will do anything to encourage people to read Women and Men so here is a summary i posted here a long time ago.

It focuses mainly on Jim Mayn a middle aged man who has never had a dream. The book jumps between stages of his life and the stories of his grandmothers youth. These stories are intimately linked to almost everything in the book, particularly Grace Kimball who lives in Mayn's building yet never actually meets.

Mayn also seemingly knows about the distant future and something known as simultaneous reincarnation.

There are also sections known as Breathers that are very complex when first encountered that are narrated by a group of "angels" who face an unknown interrogater. They tell the story in a spiral manner revealing more and then a little more each time if you get the idea. These parts can be nauseating as they change focus numerous times during long run on sentences.

I don't think anyone could understand the book entirely on first reading anyway but it is worthwhile I feel because when it's good it's unbelievably good. Highlights include Mayns relationship with his mother and later his father, the chapter on his failed marriage and Grace's masturbation classes and the end. If you're willing to take the time then it's definitely worth it. A very hard book to summarise for a pleb like me but hope it helps

>>9151769
I like to think of the interrogator(s) as the reader trying parse the dense double talk of the Angels so called breathers. Particularly when the Angels are forced to give only one answer to a question and everything becomes clearer as a whole.

The fact Mayn's present is also his past is difficult to initially get your head around and even though for large sections his name is only mentioned fleetingly to show how it all comes back to him, he still feels like one of the most fleshed out characters I've encountered. I love the way his memories of past, present and future slide back and forth. His relationship with his father though barely touched upon in comparison to the size of the novel (a sentence about Mel hitting Jim and not knowing how to say sorry and then nothing for hundreds of pages till Jims visit where through very little actually being said in the text you can feel and see their entire relationship. McElroys subtly is superb at times.

The dialogue is also some the best I've seen since Gaddis; Gordon's story to Mayn of the year he missed, Barbara (Jean!) telling Mayn he couldn't have known a torus was the best shape for a space station years before even Sci fi comics as a child or even Grace and the carpet fitters for comic value.

The book does slip with regards to trying to contain too much with some short stories or side plots complicating or distracting for the sake of it, others are sensational: Ship Rock being a favourite of mine.

This is a hard book to put across to someone else it's as I said the hardest book I've come across but like the final line of the book tells you , just take some time to sit and appreciate it. Don't rush it it's not a competition it's an experience.

>>9151775
also W&M meme content
>2nd person narrative
>masturbation seminars
> memes about chile
> hermit inventors, Indians , Angels
>people merging on the moon
>javelina

>>9151769
Sounds good they're re-releasing it this summer thanks for the good description anon will check

>>9151783
I'll probably buy it, would love to read it again later in life.

>>9151769
Would you recommend reading Gaddis before W&M, picked up second hand copies of W&M, Smugglers Bible and The Recognitions.

Do I just read them chronologically?

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W&M reissues fucking when.

>>9152080
Read whatever you want first they're not that similar, The Recognitions is nowhere near as difficult so maybe start on that but honestly they're all great. I'd leave Lookout Cartridge till last it's by far the weakest of the three but still great.