Assposters Welcome

When will you fucks finally accept Ass as the savior of American fiction? When will you fucks finally realize that Ass's prose is on the level of Joyce, surpassing it in certain respects? When will you fucks learn to bow down to the greatest living American writer, perhaps the greatest living writer period? When will you fucks learn that The Tunnel is the greatest novel of at least the last 50 years?

>“Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen — the expression of an ecstatic state — though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God.”

Welcome to Ass land, my friends. Settle down, have a nice cup of perfect prose, and let's get to Assin.

This bloated and bordering purple prose? Is the whole thing written like this? Having readers skim through pretty metaphors you zing off at a rate of two-per-sentence to get to the fucking point is not the sign of a good writer.

Cool prose but I was expecting some ass

>Ass's prose is on the level of Joyce, surpassing it in certain respects

Stopped reading right there, m8.

>implying Joyce is good

>he thinks purple prose is always a bad thing
>he doesn't understand the importance of the metaphor
>he can't appreciate complex sentence structures
Something sure stinks, but it's not Gass.

I consider purple prose to be an inherent criticism meaning that something is overwritten and tacky in its ornateness. By definition it's not a good quality. I could only see it being a good thing if it were used ironically.

I suppose good prose that happens to be consciously literary and dense might just be called maximalism or something.

This is literal garbage.

>I consider purple prose to be an inherent criticism meaning that something is overwritten and tacky in its ornateness. By definition it's not a good quality. I could only see it being a good thing if it were used ironically.
Well, the way I see it, there is no such thing as overwritten prose, just poorly organized or redundant prose, and Gass' prose is neither of those things.
Neither literal nor figurative.

>when a cock makes a concept cry out

what

Why do you keep shilling this fat fuck? His sentences are excruciating and say less than nothing. He looks like an elderly Scandinavian bulldyke and writes like what I imagine such a creature would write like. Obscurantist garbage.

kek'd. I suppose it's a sort of "concepts are lived" kinda thing?


I liked the last sentence, would you really call that part garbage as well?

> The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God.

Sounds like woo-woo nonsense peddled by hucksters like Deepak Chopra or some other con man peddling oriental "wisdom" to disaffected westerners. It is without testosterone.

>It is without testosterone.

I might complain that soon enough you'll start complaining about betas and alphas, Chads and Stacies or whatever, but you are correct in describing it that way, I just don't see that as a flaw. Maybe you're taking it too literally and that's why it seems like nonsense. To me, it just describes a state where we are no longer structured by any desire and this is compared to a moment before creation.

I understand why you'd consider it pretentious, but it isn't necessarily Eastern, Christian Mystics used to be pretty wacky themselves when describing such things.

I'm not defending Gass since I haven't read anything else by him, but I kinda liked that sentence.

Alright. I'll bite. Who is, in your opinion, a good writer?

Someone like Nathanael West. This Gass fellow could take a lesson from him.

Oh, that makes sense--you don't like to have fun.

your days are numbered Gassposter

stop posting that fat piece of white shit on this board

Everyone's days are numbered.
No.

Veeky Forums - where every insecure 'writer' calls purple prose anything better than their own writing

the best part is that (judging by critique threads) most of these retards either write like some handicapped version of [insert popular YA author here] or employ so much purple prose they create unintentional comedy

Literally Paulo Coehlo tier.

Why not just reread the greats, like Tolstoy, Pynchon, Delillo?

There was a thread yesterday where people were posting their writing and this guy kept spamming "wow ez on the thesaurus there kiddo" after nearly every post, regardless of whether or not there were ten dollar words.

As far as ecstatic literature goes, this paragraph is poor.
It reads like Gass is puffing up his chest and evoking the deepest and darkest imagery he can think of.
>Skulls, cocks, fucks, egos, god, black, wilderness

Making an breathless itinerary of raw images is trite. A platitude of ecstasy.
Kind of like McCarthy in the Road.
Except in the Road the images are facts of the world, not breathlessly drawn out stand-in's for other emotions.

William (B)Lake is better

>it's about love so it is therefore bad
Found the sperg.

>It reads like Gass is puffing up his chest and evoking the deepest and darkest imagery he can think of.
That is the entire point of The Tunnel, which, as you have just indicated, you have not read. And I don't think you actually grasp what Gass is trying to do here. By using the vulgarities you mentioned, he practically defiles the sanctity and purity of love, and makes it a vulgarity itself.

> he practically defiles the sanctity and purity of love, and makes it a vulgarity itself.
so unoriginal

I haven't read it. OP posted an excerpt to look at his prose.
I doubt he had the expectation that anyone commenting would read the entire text and then post their thoughts.

Anyway, since you want to ardently defend Gass against any and all criticism let's get to it.
You don't invalidate my point by saying "I don't grasp it". Concepts are easy to grasp, it's how they're executed.
Combining the sacrosanct with the vile, the low and the high has a long thread in spiritual tradition
Ezekiel eats shit under God's commandment.
Allen Ginsberg says the asshole is holy.

The value judgement we're making here is whether Gass sells us on this idea.
Here's an analogy.
A painter who tries to use every colour possible, evoke the largest and biggest emotions, create a thick tempestuous paint film, a really moody impasto—is actually creating a canvas that is hierarchically unimpressive.
There's no contrast. No highs and lows.
Similar to here. The entire paragraph is emotional white noise.
You can raise it to a fever pitch, but the overall effect remains monochromatic.
Sometimes it works, but only if you buy into the artist's temperament.

I imagine you'll post something here about me not reading the book.
I'm just commenting on why this paragraph doesn't work on me.

If you buy into his emotional fervor then power to you.
But don't expect us to accept Gass as lord and saviour.
Especially if your rubrick is based on how stormy an artist can make their canvas.

And I make the assumption that it is your rubric
Because you hand picked a paragraph that showcases his manic prose.

I can't be the only one who skimmed the first part of the OP and then tried to read the greentext as some sort of elaborate metaphor for anal sex.

what a disgusting sentence. I agree with the other user, the testosterone level of that sentence implies a need for TRT.

ITT: muh contrarianism

Seriously, your criticism is basically "kek beta male cuck" ?

Guy looks like a troll and his name is fucking William Gass.

is this a sex scene or pre-sex?

purple prose literally only means badly done verbose prose. this is not that.

I am actually genuinely surprised of how many people are saying this is bad.
I can't recall anything like this before the sudden influx from reddit.

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