Who is responsible for this?

>>9496522
>Gaddis
>tfw read that first as Gaddaffi

>>9496595
are you new?

I read all of these, ask me questions

>>9496787
best one? I'm guessing it's W&M

>no Mein Kampf

GET OUT

Why do some of these books have to be so long tho?

Seems a waste to me. I don't get why these books can't get their thing across in fragments or short stories.

I can read a bit of a book and at some point realize I basically have sponged up its experience and style essence enough, and that's it for me, for the time being. Same goes for nonfiction.

>>9496522
Must have been 4chan.

>>9496789
ish

Women and Men might be the most demanding in terms of the text being rewarding for you to tear yourself around (with the possible exception of ulysses) but they're really all monsters. My favorite among the 6'll wander just because there are nights where I'll think of the christmas party in Rec and loose my shit (or analogously with the reference to melville in 2666)

>>9496799
you're not on the wrong page;

for me the appeal of these tomes is how even though we 'get' the author's stylistic approach in the first 20/100 pages or whatever else, the author 'gets' that we 'get' him. This works especially well for these more postmodern novels (which really all of them are and if you think Joyce isn't than you haven't read joyce) because it becomes a sort of hyper-awareness of the text and how things like tone, pacing, ect. modulate or shift paces within the story

>>9497077
they're still all fucking masterpieces though, and all completely worth reading at any level of "literary" awareness or anything similar

File: images.jpg (127KB, 710x1080px) Image search: [Google]

127KB, 710x1080px

>>9496522
Instead of 2666 it should be Finnegan's Wake or this

>>9497164
>instead of 2666 it should be alan moore
Please leave

>>9496786
nothing is.

>>9496799
Well Ulysses is fairly varied throughout so it's not a valid criticism there. Admittedly it's not an entirely different style in every chapter but it definitely is more so than most books.

Why is the second trilogy wall to wall pomo trash?

>>9497813
the second trilogy is better simply because it doesn't contain infinite jest

File: IMG_0668.jpg (24KB, 318x439px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 318x439px

>>9496522

This should be there instead of 2666.

>>9497085
Yes, W&M is my favorite of them, but they were all masterpieces and should be a prerequisite for anyone posting here.

>>9497833
Its close, but I agree.

>>9496522
A couple years ago someone tried to make a sequel to the meme trilogy. It never caught.

>>9497833
This.

>>9496789
ulysses > recognitions > 2666 > women and men > gr >>>>>>>>>> ij

Burger post-modernism's stranglehold on /lit/ is toxic. How did we let it get this bad?

File: 1449855882227.jpg (253KB, 850x500px) Image search: [Google]

253KB, 850x500px

>posting the "le epic meme trilogy" made by redditors on discord rather than the original 2004 selection

>>9498054
>this autist who keeps forcing this shitty meme
>no one else gives a shit
>he just reposts ceaselessly

reconsider your life senpaiitachi

>>9498054
this i like

>>9498038
Ur lucky I don't kill ur ass u fuckin idiot

>>9498038
Agreed
European continental literature is tip-top but nobody talks about here since this is after all a Taiwanese hentai dating site

>>9498055
lel, stay mad winslow

>>9498026
You've clearly not read Women and Men if you put 2666 above it. I mean, come on, it's a great novel, but Women and Men is something else.

>>9498075
women and men was tedious and not that good. the execution was interesting but the themes were trite and its genesis is symptomatic of everything that's wrong with american postmodernism

>>9498084
It's okay to not understand something fully the first time through, but to make vague comments about it as criticism that are more trite than anything in the novel seems a little reductive and embarrassing, to be honest.

>>9498121

it's the same old boring narrative about the importance of individualism and how everyday interactions and occurrences subvert the idea of a grand/overarching/epic narrative instead of subsuming it (a la ulysses)

>inb4 hurrr no you jsut dont get how DEEP it is

kys

>>9498121
that's a complete misreading of his post, embarrassing really.

>>9498127
This is one of many themes of the novel, but misses an incredible amount. I'm not saying you didn't get it, that'd be ridiculous, nobody understands everything the first time. Look into Steven Moore's analysis, and listen to McElroy on Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt caught a ridiculous amount of shit that I missed, and it was interesting to hear it broken down. There isn't a entire novels of analysis and annotations written for W&M like there is with many of the other similar novels, so anyone saying they understand it all on their first read is lying, especially since one of the main points is how language can be misinterpreted and memory is often false or misleading.

>>9498186
not him but this sounds really boring anon

rather just go read hamlet instead desu

>>9498206
Reading both has worked just fine for me, anon. In my opinion, Women and Men is more of a commitment than the others on a lot of ways, but was just as, if not more, rewarding. The prose is beautiful as well, and different than anything I'd ever read before.

>>9498206
Yeah, Hamlet remains the most significant experimental work in all of literature anyhow (t. Bloom). I don't know why pomo writers so feebly execute the vision of their vast maximalist obsessed ambitions. Must be a compensatory thing among brainlets too dumb for mathematics and science.

>>9498253
>he has strong opinions about things he's never experienced
The clearest and most obvious sign of a brainlet

>>9498307
As a matter of fact I have read a good deal of the pomo lit shilled here. Most of it is bloated chaff much like continental philosophy, critical theory, and other types of modern astrology.

Lmao, pseuds like you defending the mediocre sort of pomo lit are why /lit/ is a shithole. Enjoy your McElroy as if you were experiencing real intellectual fulfillment.

>>9498340
Please, share the authors and books that gave you "intellectual fulfillment". I see the opinion you just stated repeated over and over on this board, but the funny thing is I've never seen a well thought out explanation of what it is you mean, while there exist simultaneously hundreds of critical essays breaking down these novels and what is good about them. Why can't you appreciate both types of literature? You're so obsessed with being edgy that you're willing to write off an entire, extremely influential genre of novels, and I'm not sure I understand why. Personally, I get a lot of fulfillment out of these novels. If you don't, that's fine, but can you expand on why without using what basically amounts to useless buzzwords and trite criticism that might as well be copypasta at this point

>>9498356
>>9498340
you both sound like insufferable twats

>>9498358
You sound 12

>>9498358
t. insufferable twat

>>9497164
No to both, although I do think Finnegan's Wake is a more intriguing work than Ulysses

>>9496799
>every book has this one compartmentalized thing that it's trying to communicate to a reader
>the entire novelistic effort is tying up in a little bow and putting into a box some idea
Yiiikes

>>9497167
>hasn't read it
Please leave

>>9498356
And I've never seen a well thought out explanation of why most pomo literature is good.

I do like both types of literature. Some pomo writers are among my favorites. But looking at people who read pomo for the sake of pomo (people like you who can't form a coherent argument, or expand on the merits of your so called difficult literature) makes me laugh with piteous contempt for the future of readers.

>>9497164
>'

>>9498070
oh yeah well recommend me some big guy I'm all eyes

would rather have underworld than 2666

>>9497082
I generally do get through the longer ones over time, actually, but I can never at this point just sit and read just one doorstopper over a few months anymore, I'm always reading at least like 20-ish books at a time (just as one balances several relationships, or weaves in and out of various environments throughout the day, or thinks across different subjects in minutes).

It might sound kind of ADD, and I'm sure network structure of online life has exacerbated it, but by now I've adapted to the pace and can more efficiently and even pretty gracefully fit in the time for whatever narrative or idea I'm working through when needed or wanted.

should be recognitions, underworld, the tunnel

mcelroy is a talented writer but his stories are simply boring as shit desu

>>9498440
>Some pomo writers are among my favorites

like who im curious. i think most people on here just read "tomes" to be Big Book Certified. I wanna know which ones are worthwhile

>>9498553
>good
gaddis, bologna man, some pinecone, some gasman

>mediocre
delilo, some pinecone

>mostly worthless
memelroy, the hawk, bandana man, most of barth

>>9498578
>puts Delillo above Barth and McElroy
This is the state of /lit/

>>9498578
my nigga you are a straight up retard

>>9497833
I agree totally

>>9498229
Mcelroy's prose is dope.

>>9497164
Retard.

And Finnegans Wake would have its own level. It's not accessible enough to ever really become a meme. Enough people have to read the meme for it to really be a meme. The real memes are 80% of the time shitposted about, and 20% "real" discussion. I've never seen a real discussion of FW here.

>>9498544
Are you fucking serious? Ancient history is pulse pounding and a smugglers bible was hilarious and obsured and also mysterious. I hate when people talk shit about things they haven't read.

>>9498578
Fucking kys

>>9498578
yemcbandanafana fofana fee fy fo fana man*

>>9498675
>>9498656
just because you guys got into /lit/ at age 19 and thought literature began and ended in 1955 america doesn't mean you know anything about quality

>>9498666
I've only read night soul by him and didn't like it much desu, is it representative of his work? what else should I read to get a better picture of him?

>>9498694
>1955 america
what the hell are you talking about

>>9498701
>doesnt even understand the history and literary tradition of burger pomo

not that guy and he sounds like a twat but im starting to think maybe he's onto something. namely, most of this board started (and ended) with the memes

>>9498696
Ancient history is my favorite and it's not long if you're a pleb who cares about book length.

>>9498694
Lol what are you on about

>>9498729
tfw read isolt, wap, ak, etc

it's not about length, it's about quality. and ancient history sounds boring as shit.

>>9498708
No man. No not at all. Most of this board has never left the the top 100 chart and most have barely even read that.

>>9498733
Damn you are dumb nigger.

>>9497164
No because the secret behind the meme trilogy is that they're actually good books

>>9498694
i got into /lit/ at 18, thank you very much.

>>9498741
>tfw this college dropout thinks hes smart for reading mcdumbroy

>>9498737
i would say the top 100 chart is "above" "the memes"

the memes (trilogy, whatever pomo garbage is currently flavor of the month) -> top 100 -> actaully reading lit

most people are at "the memes"

>>9498765
No I think they start with top 100 then go to memes. But who knows. That's what I did. What about the rest of you? But fuck I read a lot of that top 100 chart even before coming here.

>>9498462
>big guy
For you

>>9498683
Joyce?

>>9496799
when a book is long (and also good) you start to form some kind of bond with it since you're carrying it around with you for quite some time

>>9498463
christ no

>>9498801
for me it was more like entry level shit -> discover /lit/ -> top 100/more "classics" -> memes -> back to "classics" to get a solid foundation

>>9497164
Kys yourself

Why is everyone being such a pseud, I know /lit/ can be better than this.

Thomas LeClaire is a name that comes to mind with these giant tomes, there's a fairly nice essay he wrote called "The Art of Excess" where he gets into McElroy (pre-woman and men mcelroy) in a somewhat fitting postmoderny science way.

Here's the article (for those with jstor) :

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1207862.pdf

let me see if I can post an excerpt:

The overloaded novel will resist processing because of the way it
introduces information (its excess) or because of the unassimilability
of the information (its newness). The experience of the fiction will
refuse to be foreshortened in expected ways. Denied the pleasures of
recognition and abstraction-the pleasures of consuming the text-
the reader will be uneasy, discomfited, perhaps even bored, almost
necessary responses if the overload is to do its work. The overloaded
novel does inform in the old sense: it gives the reader knowledge of
his world-say, for example, information about analog computers
and the functions of Stonehenge-he may well lack. But more
importantly, informational excess forces the reader to modify the
way he experiences the text, the codes through which he understands
and judges the text-and possibly the ways in which he understands
the world. The reader may have to read more slowly, to experience
each part of the text as part rather than as part of some predictable
whole. Texture will assert itself. Understanding and judgment will be
modified by the new process of reading. In the best fiction, informa-
tional excess makes the reader aware of a new kind of imaginative
system, one in which the principles of selection, structure, and
valuation are alien; yet that system, once properly seen, may be
interesting in itself, may be true in some unexpected way, and may
even be useful as a model by means of which the reader can see the
familiar world in a new way. This response to anomalous information
is the change of paradigm Kuhn finds in scientific revolutions. While
one does not need information theory to know that an original novel
expresses more than a hackneyed work, information theory does
offer a scientific rationale for originality and challenges the artist
with its concepts of efficient improbability, complex disorder,
density, and redundancy. Gene Youngblood has documented in
Expanded Cinema the influence information theory has had on
experimental film, but its direct influence on the composition of
American fictions seems limited to Burroughs, Gaddis, Pynchon,
and McElroy, authors of some of our most origin

Women and Men will NEVER be part of the meme trilogy, get that through your thick skull !

>>9499176
Also relevant is Comnes little piece on the redemptive power of the Gaddis (he focuses more on JR than Recog though). He really tries to ground his argument in a walter benjamen type lens and does a pretty great job overall breaking down the novel. Here's the link :

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/441609.pdf

and here's an excerpt:

As did Willard Gibbs, Wiener sees entropy not simply as an outside
force acting on man but as one that includes man as an agent who
endeavors to interfere with the natural random order of events. Wiener
goes on to equate information and value as what he calls "negative
entropy," the motive force in the relationship of man to his
environment, for in seeking order and knowledge man is continually
trying to establish an otherwise improbable congruence between human
ideas and natural events. Because of the possibility of what he called
"local enclaves of order," Wiener felt that the randomness associated
with entropy was a privation, an Augustinean "organic incompleteness"
rather than the "positive malicious evil of the Manichaeans":
the Augustinean devil, which is not a power in itself, but the
measure of our own weakness, may require our full resources to
uncover, but when we have uncovered it, we have in a certain
sense exorcised it, and it will not alter its policy on a matter
already decided with the mere intention of confounding us
further.37
In presenting entropy as a "thought fragment" which, when placed in a
new context, can be understood as something other than an indication
of absolute disorder, Gaddis is asking the reader to go beyond the
confines of the deterministic action within the text, to stretch the
reader's "ability" to meet his "need" and redeem an implausible order
within an otherwise entropic novel

>>9498694
Angry contemporary author detected

File: 129958-004-C9B8B89D.jpg (18KB, 343x450px) Image search: [Google]

18KB, 343x450px

>>9498744
>2666
>Good

>>9496799
One of the central themes of Infinite Jest is how enjoyment turns into obsession turns into compulsion, which is exactly what happens (or what Wallace intended to happen) to the reader. It's a bit of a gut punch to recognize in yourself the same addiction habits you read about for hundreds of pages on end, to the point where after weeks or more probably months you finally reach the 1079th page and you're compelled to go right back to the beginning and start again... Which of course is why anyone who gives up on this book has no right to claim they really "get" it, even if they've had it explained to them like I'm doing now, because it's very much about the experience, not just the "style essence" (though that's a whole nother beast in itself).

>>9499537
That's a very interesting perspective. One I hadn't considered before. Allow me to respond...

What a crock of shit

>>9499555
o fug nice trips ive been btfo

>>9498744
Did you read Jerusalem? Genuinely curious? A lot of people say shit like this but I've yet to see anyonr point out why it isn't good

>>9499193
>>9499176
can you upload the PDFs?

What's your real opinion of these books?

>>9500043
sure here's Commnes:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5tVwwVoeJ6VcHVqVzJwVW8zRGs/view

LeClaire:

https://drive.google.com/a/g.ucla.edu/file/d/0B5tVwwVoeJ6VUzVWendkaVQtdjA/view?usp=sharing

>>9500130
Good, good, haven't read

Good, haven't read, haven't read

>>9496522
https://strawpoll.com/as4g86b

>>9500190
Sod off

>tfw wanted to get W&M, but it's literally impossible.
I just want to have all of them, except IJ

>>9501106
Reprint in July.

>>9501132
hasnt he been saying that for 2 years

>>9501135
Legit confirmed. Got mine on order.

>>9501135
preordered mine yesterday so seems legit