ITT: Novels that cannot be fully understood unless the reader

Lord of the Rings

I am sorely disappointed in the amount of replies I am getting to my --what I thought was thought provoking--thread.

You're saying we have no imagination. And to that I say, WRONG.

>>9175566
Anything by Thoreau in my opinion. Anglos are different from other Europeans, Americans are different from other Anglos.

>>9175821
yes but consider how a blind man imagines a tree.

He can grasp the basic notion, feeling the bark of the trunk and picturing the outreaching branches, but he cannot possibly conjure the image in his head of what the tree looks like in reality without actually seeing it with his own eyes.

>>9175813
>>9175566
lol most of books imo. Yo may read "st Lucas from greek to romans to jew" and those placing seems like namedropping unless you know where are they and how look

>>9175566
I reject your exclusivism i have a very wild imagination

>>9175566
Could you give us an example of a nuance you noticed in ACoD that someone wouldn't pick up on?

>>9175828
Im sad now.

>>9175879
Well, for one, you don't know what neighborhoods that come with all the street names mentioned. You don't know, for example how greatly different the French Quarter of New Orleans is from the Garden District that Ignatius lives in. You can google pictures of St. Charles ave, but you won't get the full feeling of taking a quaint forest green streetcar down the grand lineup of victorian mansions and still being bored because of how many times you've seen each house from that same little car.

You also haven't met any Irene Reillys or heard the accents that are so crucial to the dialogue in the book. You haven't stayed at a boring house like the one the Levys occupy up in Bay St. Louis (not saying that every New Orleanian has been to Pass Christian, but most have made the drive through southern Mississippi at least).

You haven't been surrounded by the air of laziness and carelessness that looms throughout the novel that makes every character behave this way. Everyone here at least slightly does not have their shit together in some way. There's people who you talk to who don't seem like real people, but merely automatons that you'd encounter at a theme park, dispensing their words in brief spurts of personality that you can;t quite understand. I can give examples of these people and what they do if anyone is still curious

>>9176098
I'm curious, do it.

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>>9175566
this, desu

>>9175828

You are making a objective statement about the perception of trees. Not possible. Try again.

Try again.

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>>9175566
This. I grew up in Wiltshire.

>>9176419
There is the guy across the street who seemingly never leaves his yard, leaning on the chain link fence and greeting everyone when they pass by, no matter what time of day

And the man who lives alone and feeds my dog an infinite line of treats while whispering to him sweet nothings when I walk by (he is also the best example of a New Orleans accent I know)

The "okra man" who drives around in his truck yelling lyrically over a loudspeaker about the produce he has

These few may sound like mundane characters you might have encountered but they all factor into the "dilapidated theme park" simile I made in my previous post. Pretty much everyone who isn't one of the transplant millennial hipsters that shitted up the marigny and bywater is a nutter and the whole town is like a roadside attraction where everyone is absurd.

The thing is, there are nutters in every big city, like the people who shout on the public transportation in bigger cities, but the nutters here aren't really the "mental illness" type nutters but are really just eccentrics, products of the city itself

i lived in metairie, post katrina

didn't really get the true experience, saw some of it

made me wish i had been there 30 years beforehand

>>9176911
>Metrarie
At least you actually admit it and don't just lie and say you're from New Orleans like most Metrarians

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>>9175566

>>9175566
Definitely Notes From Underground. Still essential Dostoevsky but you'll only really empathise and understand the Underground Man completely if you're near to becoming him.

>>9178378
Neat post.

>>9175828
The blind man would know the tree better than you do.

Fucking idiot.

>>9178380
More like 'NEET post', amirite?

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I feel like I'm stating the obvious here.

I thought I got most of the references, until I heard Frank Delaney analyse the book in Re:Joyce. So much that you wouldn't get unless you grew up in Ireland.

>>9178485
You are a contrarian faggot and should leave my thread immediately

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>>9178517
It is possible to "understand" Petersburg, in the sense of traditional forms of analysis. It is possible to grasp the symbolist program. But it is not possible to feel the sense of the city that Dostoyevsky was afraid might dissolve with the morning mist unless you've been there.

It's also high time to acknowledge who is in whose debt. The Russians claim to have invented everything, but in this case, if no Petersburg, also no Ulysses.

>>9178694
gross misuse of "contrarian"

implying the only way to know something is by looking at it kekk

>>9178786
I didn't say "know something" I said "know what something looks like." Do you really believe that a blind man knows what a tree looks like better than you and I do?

>>9178771
Nonsense - Joyce hadn't read it when he wrote Ulysses. The similarities are a coincidence.

>>9178771
Have you read it in Russian? Are you from St. Petersburg? If not, then shut the fuck up, you have no idea what you're talking about.

>>9179216
>>9179225
/lit/, everybody

>>9176098
ok, you are special for living in new orleans

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>>9179225
Пapaшa yнылaя твoй Пидopcбypг, тaщeмтa.

>>9179327
that is not the air I wished to portray, I actually very much dislike the city and hope to move out soon. I was just making the point of nuances people wouldn't get about the book without having lived in the city, which was the entire point of the thread

>>9179216
>>9179225
>I would really like to elucidate Nabokov's unpublished thoughts on this topic with a pair of petulant masturbators like these two.

Dropped.

>>9179076

Do you really believe that because you can see that you have the better perception of the tree? What makes your image of the tree superior to the blind mans?

Even if you can see what makes you so sure that your view isn't incomplete? Or that the blind man doesn't have a very intimate knowledge of the tree?

>>9179337
>т. ayтиcт из Myхocpaнcкa

Bleeding Edge requires a decent sense of New York but New York is such a universal city that most people understand it

So I guess this post was just worthless then

I'm not replying to the bait post, I am merely posting a comment acknowledging that I know his post is bait and therefore I am not replying. He knows that his poor attempt at bait serves no purpose for the conversation, so I tantalize him by passively allowing him to know that I see his bait for what it is while simultaneously depriving him of the (you) which he so desperately craves.

Fuck you, bait man. You have not bested me today.

>>9175578
Kek'd>>9175821

>>9178517
Has /lit/ ever organized a Bloomsday meetup in Dublin? Just imagine, all of us getting pissed and cavorting from landmark to landmark

>>9180010
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>>9179488