that tfw when your library is based

>>9661956
More details, please

>>9661958
details on what?
I suggested the get a copy and then they ordered five

>>9661956
>that that feel when
What did he mean by this?

>>9661956

Women and Men is the newest--and gayest shill on /lit/, since IJ. It will gain minor meme status (since only a few will actually read it), and deservedly be forgotten.

Is Dzanc actually releasing it soon?
It was originally supposed to be released 2 years ago.

>>9662076
It says July on book suppository

>>9661956
are yo that insufferable instagram cunt that keeps shilling this book? this is getting sad. You and your extra pretentious Instagram buddies should all get together and shortly after circlejerking it to first edition paperbacks of obscure writers, should off yourselves.

>>9662998

Which one?

>>9663011
I'm sure whichever one you pick will be extra stylish in prose and just as thick in obscurity.

>>9662998
>he couldn't understand it and is still butthurt
Okay

>>9663078
Yeah, be more like this guy and only read popular novels, everyone. You're pretentious if you don't.

>>9663093
yeah ok, professor. lol. Keep spreading the good word and thinking you're doing a servie to society or whetever it is you think you're doing. You're only agrandizing your ego in your safespace with your friends. Meanwhile I'll be reading both popular and obscure novels which you will never even know about, but will dismiss because it's not known whithin your circle. I know your type.

>>9663093
I dont have anything against reading obscure literature. I just hate OP and hisgroup of "friends". I know exactly who I'm talking about.

>>9663111
Dismiss novels? That's what you're doing right now. I really like McElroy, but it has nothing to do with some group I align with (Wtf do you even mean?), I enjoy novels organically, and this happens to be one of them. Do I only read obscure novels? I wasn't aware. You seem to know more about my reading habits than I do. In all seriousness, I know the type you're talking about, but I think it's just as idiotic to shun a group of novels based on their ridiculously small audience. A lot of those books are legitimately great, and most people are able to enjoy them as well as the popular literature. I think you're just upset because those books are hard and you seem like the type of person who calls anyone more intelligent than you pretentious.

>>9663122
Some of the nicest people I've ever met are in that group. Shit, two of them sent me extremely rare books just so i can read them. Are there overly elitist people among them, sure, like any group, but that doesn't mean the enjoyment isn't real or that you're not just offended for some dumb reason. How old are you anyway?

>>9663187
I'm upset because there has been countless threads about this book in the last few months. I have no quarrel with reading obscure novels, but shilling, spamming, and shitposting is runing this board. Why keep starting threads about Infinite Jest and Women and Men and Nietszche again and again. Dont kid yourself, Mcelroy isnt "difficult."

>>9663199
I've read pretty much every novel considered difficult on this board, and there are sections in McElroy's novels that are up there with any one of them. I know for a fact that you've only read, at the most, the few paragraphs that are memed on here (that on context are styled that way for a reason) to convince idiots he's simple and had bad prose. The funny part is that W&M has more stylistic changes than almost any novel I've ever read, so you immediately give yourself away when you make comments like that.

>>9663197
so a few people send you some gifts and they're the nicest people in the world? and you know this through their online person somehow? grow up.

>>9661956
What's a good starting point for Jo Mel?

>>9663210
there you go showing off you grandiose knowledge. Wont ya tell me again how you are so smart and read every difficult book mentioned here? :^)

>>9663215
Are you assuming I only talk to them on the Internet? You're absolutely idiotic, man, and you're embarrassing yourself. I'm saying that I've made legitimate friends within those groups of people, some are truly close to me. Some people truly enjoy literature the way you pretend to.

>>9663216
How is spending all of my time reading in any way about showing off? You made a ridiculous claim that shows you likely don't read at all, and I'm correcting you. Would you like to discuss the work itself? You probably understand it a lot better than I do, considering you found it easy.

>>9663221
says the guy on the anonymous literature board. this is golden.

>>9663216
Sounds like you're just a butthurt brainlet

A curious thing about these effervescent Women and Men threads, They never discuss the actual book, only how hard it is to find them and how expensive they are, how exited for a new version coming out etc. Never have I read a discussion about the content. really gets your noggin joggin.

>>9663231
I guess I'm just not sure what your point is. Let's get back to that. So, you find Mcelroy easy. Well, I don't. Can you please explain which parts of the novel itself were easier than the other memes, and just what your interpretation of the mythology sections was? Because I plan on rereading it and would like to have some advice from someone who found it simple.

>>9663238
I've asked the other guy in here to discuss the book, but he's refusing. Would you be down to actually discuss it? I am not sure anyone here has actually read it, for the same reasons you state. What did you think the angels were supposed to represent?

>>9663197
>How old are you anyway?

Dumb question when you gave anon all this attention. For whatever intellect and understanding you profess, you can sure get agitated by some random poster who might have never read anything in his life. If anything, all this arguing is probably turning people off from buying or reading anything from McElroy if it incites such an immature spat. Too bad, It took me a while to finish Cannonball, but it was very enjoyable.

>>9663275
Sure, but it's just too entertaining to pass up calling out the people who clearly haven't read the novel, yet have reductive things to say about it or its fans. It anything, that's what's turning people people off. The same way the constant memeing that it's unreadable has made new readers truly question whether or not Gravity's Rainbow is worth reading. I liked Cannonball a lot, it was my first McElroy. Once I got used to his style, it wasn't too bad, but it's pretty dense for such a shirt novel.

I read W&M, ask me questions

>>9661956
I've been wondering about this. Is there any required reading before tackling W&M?

>>9663287
I feel for you Anon, but I think what you and a few others are doing by spamming W&M is having an adverse effect. A lot of us here, myself included, only have this place to discuss books, wether it's the best place to do that is out of the question, and when you start to see the same threads over and over you start to associate the memes and shitposting with the books themselves, I cant even look at a text by Hegel without retching and sweating, and so why not just slow down on the 2666 ( a book I love), Infinite Jest ( a book I am ambivalent to, meaning other anons must be absolutely disgusted by) and Ulysses ( another book I love, but can barely come firmly to grasp with ) posting. I understand the feeling of having knowledge of a nearly unread author who's work transcends the conventional novel and feeling like you want to share it with others, but this is aint the way. Wait for it to be published and the epub to come out again, it'll get more attention then, people tend to be apprehensive of spending over $30 on a massive and dense tome already. Isnt he supposed to be writing some Water Book or something? I bet that'll get the hype machine again and you'll probably be back here. McElroy probably wouldnt want that.

>>9663323
I agree with what you're saying, but you seem to be assuming I'm one of the people making these threads. I'm not. I just come into them to point out, and make sure others know, that the people talking shit haven't actually read the novels. I've never created a McElroy thread, nor do I want to. Not just because it's so overdone, but because it's clearer every day that nobody here has read him. The only thing I'd say in response to your overall point is that if people are truly getting put off from reading novels because there's a lot of threads about it, they might want to consider spending more time reading then browsing this slow board.

>>9663311
No. The only thing I'd suggest is picking up one of his shorter novels first, if you're one of those people who gets nervous about diving into something long by an author new to you.

>>9663400
Where do you think we are?

>>9663304
How is it and is it worth reading?

>>9661956
>that that feeling when when
Are you a fool or is this some elaborate meme?

>>9663652
WnM will do this thing (that ulysses will also pull off) where even though you have no idea what's going on in the chapters as you're reading them, there will be a sort of 'settling' period afterwards, where some of the characters and themes become more clear and come into a sort of retrospective focus. I sometimes hop on these threads so let me see if i can pull up what i had from before :

>>9663713
At the center of it all is a character called Jim Mayne, who's repeatedly described as being "from the future." This cute little sci-fi jab comes into play a lot though, and there are elements of WnM that are straight sci-fi, but all of them sort of swirl around the book's central themes of Men, Women, and the space between them. Let me give some examples:

Grace (the "Woman" of women and men) never meets Jim despite living in the same apartment building. We instead get this very confusing web of relationships and conspiracies involving their mutual friends and influences.

More on the 'sci-fi' factor: the book hypothesizes about some futuristic device that sends two humans to a space station exactly halfway between the earth and the moon. Thing is, the souls of these individuals end up being fused in the process. So little themes of childbirth are there from the very beginning; quite literally so as the book begins with the childbirth of a minor character. This "two becoming one" happens a lot; certain characters are reborn into mythological roles, sometimes taking on two roles at once in respect to different people in their lives. Eg. Jim's grandmother is told to "go west" (in a very american sort of way) from New York, which is mythologized as being called something like Tron(?), a city created by the hermit inventor (a kind of jab at puritans/jesus/whatever)

Melroy tries his very best to establish a sort of mythos for the book. So we have a pantheon of characters including the aforementioned Hermit Inventor, as well as the Anzazi (mispelled) weatherman, who doesn't get reborn but is immortal in that he doesn't die. He also eventually becomes a cloud in the myth and all this weather talk gets repeated over and over again. We have the sky meeting the earth, slightly reminiscent of Gaia/Uranus couplings.


what else... McElroy is smart...like incredibly well read and knowledgble in every little reference he's able to pull out of his ass. So there are moments where despite the schitzo nature of the book (especially in the not so aptly named "breathers" in the book where the angels talk cacophonously under interrogation by an anonymous torturer (maybe the reader). You do have to "trust" that there will be moments of sudden focus where you're given an insight into the floating "why" of the book regarding its sometimes unreadable momentum. One that comes to mind is a discussion somewhere halfway through where we get a cute little singularity in the midst of all the weather, wind, ect. This brief singularity/eye of a storm/where the wind isn't blowing is also scientifically broken down as a sort of optimization problem, specifically in the econ discussions in the book.

>>9663718
Also worth mentioning is that the characters are...well great. One of the biggest surprises I had when reading the book is that I sort of gave a shit about mayne and all his little failed relationships/the poor girl who fell off of a mountain once possibly due to some insurgency in South America (the book goes everywhere). Jim's childhood is fun, and he finds himself constantly haunted by another reporter who may or may not be his long lost brother. His grandmother is a bad ass and his mom a hottie violin player. There are plenty of little flashbacks where we get episodes of Jim's childhood and they're often staggeringly poignant in how they echo all these crazy themes we're supposed to keep in mind.


I'll attach some Jstor articles that are also worth checking out:

LeClair is pretty standard when it comes to these sort of postmodern criticisms, so here's some of his stuff on McElroy (but it's more heavily dependent on lookout catridge and smugglers' than women and men (i think women and men was actually being written during the time the article was written)). Either way he's a pretty central name when it comes to these kinds of authors :

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1207862.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

and here's an extended interview with mcelroy himself, dude will fucking dig into his influences like no one else (ESPECIALLY when it comes to women and men) :

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24514809.pdf

so is this just going to remain an expensive and virtually unobtainable book for decades to come then?

>>9663799
Until July 11th, I believe

>>9663718
Good post OP, you've clarified a great deal for me.