Why have you not read them yet? You do know these are the three best novels of the latter half of the 21st century...

The second novella in Cartesian Sonata is beautiful but fucking boring.

Is this how it's going to be with Gass? The "Visiting with Grandma and Grandpa that you appreciate greatly when they're dead but at the time it's boring but nice" of prose.

Where THE FUCK do you get Women and Men?

They're reprinting it next year.

where'd you live senpai
I'll give you a copy for free if you live near me

Bars.

Chicago

damn that sux senpai I live in nova scotia

I got a hardcover copy from half price books for 13 dollars and then gave it back to a different half price books about 2 years later cause I knew I was never going to read it.

The library.

I have read the first two. Just waiting to find women and men.

>Implying these aren't better than anything that will be released in the next 80 years
fucking plebs around here

Resurrecting this thread to say these books are all shit

HOW come my Man? Lay it on me brother. I have read all three.

his best is Frolic

Are you illiterate? They're not implying that, they're saying that they're works of the previous century, sperg.

Recognitions and The Tunnel are pretty good, I like The Recognitions more because it has more heart even though The Tunnel is much more aestheticized and has a way more intense and amazing style. Women and Men, I read the first 50 pages and decided it was shit; the style sucks and it's incomprehensible, one of long and complex modernist/postmodernist books where you can genuinely say it's just masturbatory drivel --- and I accuse The Tunnel of that too to some degree, but not nearly as much as McElroy.

Lol reads 50 pages of women and men and thinks it's going to make sense right away.
Fucking kys

>universal acclaim and some of the biggest awards
>shaky and uneven writing
wot

>The Recognitions
>universal acclaim and some of the biggest awards
are you fucking retarded
it was a complete flop
J R won all the awards

it wasn't a "flop", it was just very inaccessible and got little attention at first

JR won National BA, it was the reason why everyone noticed the Recognitions and realized how amazing it is, and ever since the R is considered his greatest

I accept that criticism is valid on some level, but on a sentence-by-sentence level, I found the writing atrocious. Not worth my effort. You don't need to read all 7 books of Harry Potter to decide it's not a very high level quality of writing.

If someone can love The Tunnel I think they can appreciate when writing is sloppy or just complicated.

It isn't though. The Recognitions is rightfully known as his romantic, youthful novel. Since you have no problem appealing to authority, Joseph McElroy even acknowledged that the power of the book wasn't necessarily its writing (as he calls Pynchon the better writer, which is true on a sentence by sentence level).

man i just wish more of mcelroy's work was more available, he's literally the only interesting writer alive right now

What's so interesting about him?

Read some of his books. I recommend ancient history.