Did he really not finish Moby Dick and Mason & Dixon? I can appreciate the sentiment, but how could he have "admired Derrida and the Marxist and feminist critics, people whose job was to find fault with modern Systems" without having the patience to work through Moby Dick?
Also, Corrections discussion?
I wonder if he would have the patience to read his own work if he didn't write it.
He is a pleb. Like most americans.
>By the time the book was published, in 1975, the country's mood had caught up with him. "J R" received major and admiring review attention and won the National Book Award. The chunky paperback edition with its chunky title lettering was, like Patti Smith LPs and the "Moosewood Cookbook," a common sight in the secondhand stores and student-slum apartments of my college years. The spine of "J R" was often suspiciously uncracked, however, or a strangely low used price was pencilled inside the cover, or the bookmark, which might be a sheet of rolling paper or a Talking Heads ticket stub, could be found on page 118, or 19, or 53, because Gaddis's fiction was, if anything, more difficult than ever. "J R" is a seven-hundred-and-twenty-six-page novel consisting almost entirely of overheard voices, with nary a quotation mark, no conventional narration of any kind, no "later that same evening," no "meanwhile in New York," not a single chapter break, not even a section break, but thousands of dashes and ellipses, another cast of dozens, and a laughably complicated plot based on Wagner's Ring and centered on a multimillion-dollar business empire owned and operated by an eleven-year-old Long Island schoolboy named J R Vansant.
Sounds like Freedom... Pristine copy on the shelves of every college student in America
He wishes freedom was JR
>Corrections
Pretty redpilled book. Tried telling people on /pol/ about it but they're ironically more into postmodernist junk.
>/pol/tards talking about Gaddis
Im now genuinely done with Veeky Forums and leaving
I think he meant shit like delillo not gaddis. It's just because they like conspiracy theories.
That and Turner Diaries self published type trash. Many of them don't have the patience sit down and make rational arguments which is why they resort to da joos and conspiracies.
He finished The Recognitions by Gaddis which is more difficult than those
>I grew up in a friendly, egalitarian suburb reading books for pleasure and ignoring any writer who didn't take my entertainment seriously enough. Even as an adult, I consider myself a slattern of a reader. I have started (in many cases, more than once) "Moby-Dick," "The Man Without Qualities," "Mason & Dixon," "Don Quixote," "Remembrance of Things Past," "Doctor Faustus," "Naked Lunch," "The Golden Bowl," and "The Golden Notebook" without coming anywhere near finishing them.
Obviously I'm aware he said that. I mean, should we take him at his word? I think it's a put on. I kind of admire the sentiment he's expressing - that it's okay to admit that sometimes one finds Pynchon taxing; and even better that postmodern literature's attempt to dismantle blah-blah-blah just disappears up its own asshole...
but the dude definitely finished and liked Don Quixote, right? I mean that book isn't even taxing. It's funny, engaging, straight, moving...
Just how naive are you? Nobody who has *made it* actually has time to read Derrida and that feminist bullshit. But they sure as hell are smart enough to know supporting them in the current climate will be a net positive for their bottom line.
Let me break down this for you. It's almost certain that 90% of people you've read or idolized are shameless pragmatic self-promotors with no spine. The Great Novel, The Great Author, The Great Artist...is all bullshit. A hypnosis induced by a cabal of loosely connected individuals who all benefit by conspiring against you; the idiot consumer.
You should read Derrida tho, it's one of the best philosophers that ever lived.
jokes on you - i never bought any franzen novels. read them at the library sucka!
Don Quixote repeats itself a hundred times and is far more taxing than Moby Dick
He isn't a pleb.
He claims to have not finished J R but his whole "status vs contract" dilemma is actually a line plucked from a few dozen pages after where claimed to have stopped reading
I think his claim to have not finished many works is hyperbole. He probably wasn't as satisfied with them as he thought he would be, and he's exceedingly humble in almost all his writings.
He's translated Karl Kraus for god's sake how could he not have read Robert Musil
I (op) can see both sides. Moby Dick has been a favorite for years, but I remember the first time I read it, in high school, not being able to stand more than 50 pages on a go. Any more and I simply lost concentration. I must’ve read it a dozen times since, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t occasionally find it dull.
Don Quixote I’ve only read a few times, but I’m increasingly inclined to say it’s my favorite novel. You’re right that it’s repetitive and sometimes boring, but I imagine if you read it slowly (a few chapters a day), you wouldn’t notice. Plus no book sticks in your head nor lends itself to such contemplation as Quixote.
But for fuck’s sake I read - or at least finished, maybe “read” is a strong word - Moby Dick in high school... Surely someone who can produce something as good as the Corrections (anyone who says it’s bad hasn’t read it or is lying for Ideology’s sake... which is not to say it’s a masterpiece) can finish Moby Dick? Right...?
Never read Gaddis, so I can’t comment. JR is in the stack, to be read soon.
Unironically this ... Derrida's clearly not taking himself 100% seriously, and neither should anyone else. He's the anti-Kant, and you have to figure that when writing some of his more absurd pronouncements he had to have been a little like "I am so full of merde," laughed and then lit his pipe
wtf I hate the canon now
Thank you. If Status/Contract really does come from JR, this is a useful post.
I can admit Naked Lunch is a tough read the first time...but come one it's really interesting what Burroughs describes. Then once you let it sink in, you want to read it again.
It's just his schtick, appealing to readers who don't like "difficult" literature. I'm one of you but literary too; read my stuff.
>Did he really not finish Moby Dick and Mason & Dixon?
I don't even read but I've finished both of these.
If you read very carefully there's a subtle out in this statement. He's said that he has started and then not finished those books, not that he's never finished those books. He implied but does not outright state.
Surely it's an opinion issue, for he's read and understood/got the references in Gaddis' works. Great essay of his, Mr Difficult