Gravity's Rainbow

>I've read a lot of bizarre, long, and complex stuff
>proceeds to describe Blood Meridian as a 'long, dense, and stylistically obscure book'

embarrassing post by a pseudointellectual

>appeal to authority

fucking pleb, do you follow bloom's advice on cooking an omelette as well? god damn plebs.

No, Ramsey's.

>If one of your biggest gripes is stylistic, aesthetic, 'storyness',

My dissatisfaction isn't so much with the lack of "storyness" as it is with how little the lack of storyness adds. Sure, maybe the bewildering diversions and tonal shifts are meant to disorient the reader (and they succeed) but of what value is that? It could have been accomplished with much less randomness, detail, and length. It seems like Pynchon is embarking on an exercise in how convoluted he can make the narrative while at the same time expecting us to mine fantastic meaning from every piece of it. Can anyone justify why the adenoidal fantasy should have been in the story? What did that passage contribute, tonally, narratively, or stylistically? Some flights of fancy (like the candy drill scene) can be justified for the sake of humor, certainly.

> a book I have not read, but at least know loosely it has to do with indians and stuff.

> The content of gravities rainbow alone then, related to the content of Blood Meridian, could be argue to be more, interesting, pertinent, vast, complex

I know what you're trying to say here but I'm not sure I agree. Yeah, I've never gone out killing indians but that doesn't mean I can't empathize with the characters or see the book's commentary on human nature. Blood Meridian is just using a setting common to the American mind (the Wild West) to tell a more fundamental story. Similarly, some of the best literature is about situations seemingly remote to the modern consciousness (Danish courts, Martian colonies) but their worth lies in the fact that they can transcend their situational trappings to say something about nature, life, death, etc. that we can see today. In GR I didn't see that so much as "technology is complicated, sometimes people get paranoid, and humans like sex." The message was not spectacularly profound and was conveyed in a very convoluted way.

"Stylisticly obscure" is probably the most outrageous thing i've read all week.

opinion cuck, feeding on the chewed bland cud spit out by minds who dared to seek the new.

The bewildering effect simulates drugs familia

I can't speak for this but The Crying of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon are two of the best works I've ever read and I definitely think rank Pynchon as one of the greatest living American authors, even if he's written shit. If an author is really good, they're allowed to write shit, in a sense: it doesn't make their good stuff any worse or bring down their literary stature. This post actually makes me want to read Gravity's Rainbow and see what's the hype about it. I will make a thread on it after I am finished and link to your thread in the archive, I hope you're ready, OP.

Just because BM ain't Finnegans Wake doesn't mean it's not stylistically obscure. Just because it isn't 1200 pages doesn't mean it isn't long.

McCarthy's lack of punctuation, use of obsolete or outdated vocabulary, use of multiple untranslated languages, and putting all of these things into page-long complex sentences definitely puts him into the "stylistically obscure" category.

>justify why the adenoidal fantasy should have been in the story?

Because some works of art can at a time and/or place contain if only for a moment purely what the artist concludes to desire to share with the world

>justify why the adenoidal fantasy should have been in the story?

englit0500.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/the-adenoid-and-nazi-germany/

gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_7-16

Sure, I'm not going to discourage you from reading it. Like I said, I didn't think it was horrible, just that an excessive amount of praise and meaning has been heaped upon it.

For what it's worth I have read TCoL49 and enjoyed it even if I wouldn't put it in my top 10. I've yet to read M&D but I've heard positive things.

I hope you enjoy the read!

ask yourself if you're trying to find pleasure in the book for the sake of pleasure, or if you're trying to know how to feel about something because you're too afraid that your justifications of displeasure are inadequate. i mean look at your complaint about it here
where you complain about the author's desire to convolute his themes for convolution's sake, if you want him to simplify just for your convenience, i think that's selfish. it's selfish and presumptuous as hell to demand someone who wrote a book change it so it can appeal to your sensibilities. he wrote what he wished. if you don't like it, you don't fucking have to! if pynchon wanted to appeal to everyone, he wouldn't written at all, since it's fucking impossible to please every god damned selfish pleb who wants to enjoy everything without compromise.

>"some of the best literature"
>Gravitys Rainbow is not some of the best literature
>that means anything or matters

Thanks a lot man. Not too often you get a very sensible and polite person on Veeky Forums

Expect my analysis of GR in a few weeks, it'll be there

>In GR I didn't see that so

I can understand, it doesnt seem as comfy, or intimate, or characterized, or 3d/4d, maybe?
none of the characters seem human, or real, or redeemable, or lovable, or full, fully drawn.

>The message was not spectacularly profound

It has been quite a few years since I first learned about GR, and read it, but it did have a novel affect on me, as did Ulysses, just some novelty, poetically, quantity and quality of content, attracted a bit to the freedom of storytelling, which might be a critical point of yours, that these people opened the doors for writers to embrace sloppiness;

It is not like other books in ways, there is a long history of great books, and even bad boring books that are written at least well, at least detailedly, at least pacedly, at least semi traditionally, where you can sit down on a farm house porch and drift away into a magical, deep, well painted world, that takes you on many places and journeys inner and outer, with characters really and more deep then people you have met:

There are a lot of books in the world: it seems that a lot of your gripe may as you say, be how acclaimed it is: if it wasnt known or acclaimed at all, no hype, but just some guy on the street came up to you and gave it to you and said, I wrote this: maybe you would read it and be like.... ok... its one of those crazy homeless szhiophrenic savants, who looks at conspircy theories and porn at the public library, but maybe if straightened out in youth, could have written something half decent, why does he care about conspiracy theories anyway, why doesnt he just write about horses, or love

So many cringey posts on Veeky Forums recently, If this is intentional, good job.

So many cringey posts on Veeky Forums recently, If this is intentional, good job.

I tried reading it, but I didn't really find it interesting desu.

So many cringey posts on Veeky Forums recently, If this is intentional, good job.

So many cringey posts on Veeky Forums recently, If this is accidental, good job.

So many good jobs on Veeky Forums recently, If this is cringey, intentional accident.

btw im a girl

So many intentional accidents on Veeky Forums recently, If this is good, cringey job.

I'm probably going to start this today.
I was going to read Lot 49 before, but I'm, only, 3 chapters in and just not giving a shit at all.
I've read Inherent Vice and a good amount of V. But Lot 49 is boring me to death, and knowing its all about paranoia, setting up threads and essentially going nowhere is pulling me down.
I guess I'm asking, GR is fun right?

btw i'm a girl

I just finished this book last month, and I found it to be really challenging, especially without a story to keep my interest and connect the book along as I read. I only get in about 30-60 minutes of reading a day, and sometimes a week would go by without any recognizable characters showing up.

I read it without a guide, and there was lots that was very fun to read- some scenes where I could barely continue (the castration scene in particular) and some that are still hanging around in my brain.

I think calling something a meme is an easy dismissal. I like books with lots of plot lines, with the Illuminatus trilogy being one of my favourite books, but that one was fun, and GR was pretty depressing.

Still, it was easier than Ulysses to get through because the cultural references were simpler.

I really was blown away in some of the scenes, Pynchon was able to grab some of impossible-to-remember-and-even-harder-to-express notions and ideas that come when in a really high drug state, or deep mathematical pondering, or full blown panic moments. It seems the plot was never the point of this book, and maybe the reader should look for meaning what connects these scenes that range from fecalphilia and sadism to banana gardening and candy fantasizing and see what impressions are left on their psyche after letting it soak in for a while.

Meme book or not, my final take is this: I have read lots of books that I've enjoyed much more, but few books that have made me daydream about what I read the day before like this one.

hes fat

Definitely agree with you OP. I read the first 150 pages and gave up a few years ago but I reread it in its entirety last spring. The parts that I was rereading were really easy to digest, much easier than the first time, so I feel like giving GR a second reading would be much more rewarding. Personally, by the time I got to the second half I was growing disinterested and just trying to finish it, so I don't remember a lot of what went down. Overall I wasn't entirely impressed with the book, but I also definitely didn't understand a decent amount, especially in the latter half.

On the other hand Infinite Jest was a fairly casual read and didn't have the same comprehension problem. The difficulty there was moreso in piecing together all of the fragments into a cohesive story without missing out on the details. I'd say I liked IJ more overall.

>why does he care about conspiracy theories anyway, why doesnt he just write about horses, or love

I think that if you get to that point where you really don't care about a book you should just drop it.
If that attitude is because of the book changing or getting tiring and you don't want to continue then you shouldn't because you won't get much out of the experience and most importantly it won't be enjoyed.
If that attitude is just because of your own mental state at the time then forcing yourself will taint the whole experience and potentially ruin the book or author for you. Also it won't help you it will just make you feel bad because you're doing something you don't want to do.
Unless I'm really close to the end I drop a book if I stop liking it. I'd rather read something else.

>thinking his subjective preferences matter

"What's wrong with you is wrong all the way through you."

If you ever talk to Gordon like that I will fuck you up.

As a guy who generally doesn't get pictures when I read, GR had four or five instances where I actually "saw" something. The angel appearing and being bombed really stands out for me. I can only name a few authors that have had that kind of impact on me. Pynchon is my personal #1. Plus this book in particular changed the way I interact with literature as a whole. I had (prior to reading GR) read Ulysses. Basically just to say I had. I read it again six months after GR and it was a completely different experience.

Update.
I did start it and it's fun as fuck.

>I'm not some STEM pleb who just hopped in
LMAO, this is literally the only book of serious literature where being a stem-fag would actually help you.

Usually when you think most people that like something are only doing it because they don't understand it and you do, it's because exactly the opposite is true.

Postmodernism in general is a meme

its 350 pages & a very easy read tbqh

Fairly certain that most people who read it don't remember 90% of what happened (myself included). In GR threads discussion always centres on the same handful of memorable scenes (e.g. the Franz Pokler story, Byron the Bulb, Slothrop eating English candy, etc.).

>when I was younger
>"Lol the curtains were just red, who cares, why am I being told to find subjective conclusions and being judged as if they're objective?!"

>When I was older and smarter
>"The curtains were red for a very intelligent reason by the genius author, a reason which gives maximum insight in to human nature and the objectivity of aesthetics, not that I will dare ask why I should care about those or why everything is so obscurantist!"

>when I reached my final form

Literary Theory, as it is practised and as a whole is a set of intentionally vague, contradictory, and ever changing rules that create a logical system used by the academia-media-publishing industrial complex in order to monopolise the judgement of art, secure government funding, compete in the form of social posturing (by far the strongest reason), promote a large government, and guilt trip insecure members of the public in to paying for and proclaiming enjoyment of art.

>inb4 you say "I don't know art but I know what I like" in a non RP accent

I'm not even passing judgement on the "value" of this dominant version of "literary theory". I'm simply awaiting the butthurt that will inevitably commence just from pointing out that other forms can exist and not genuflecting towards the dominant form.