ITT

>want to recommend Gravity's Rainbow to family
>but it has a shit-eating scene

>want to recommend Against The Day to family
>but it has a scene where a man tries to convince a dog to give him a blowjob

why do you do this to me tommy

I have this sitting next to me and every day the temptation to start it is harder and harder to repress. I was going to read it in September after I finish my backlog but ehhhhhhhhhhh

You clearly haven't read it. It just talks about how capitalism works, not communism

For everyone who likes Mason & Dixon I strongly recommend they check out Barth's 'The Sot-Weed Factor', I'm not saying it necessarily eclipses M&D in quality (for me it does), but I couldn't imagine someone liking one and not the other.

One interesting anecdote about the two is that after Pinecone finished writing M&D, he sent one of the first copies to Barth with the inscription "To John Barth, been there, done that."

And my vote is for Ada by Nabokov

So you're saying sot-weed was a clear influence on M&D?
Does it still contain the mystical quality?

...

>son Thomas Pynchon & Mason & Dixon xon

>Does it still contain the mystical quality?
No, Barth to me isn't as mystical and interested in strange beauty and wonder as Pynchon is. He's still a great and very fun writer though, but I wouldn't call the book as beautiful as M&D is. Still an amazing book though, just more about the plot and characters and parodic scenes and jokes and semi-joking looks into existentialism, nihilism, and different philosophies than having the mystical quality Pynchon's works have.

M&D is my favorite book and I just ordered Sot-Weed a couple days ago. Really relevant because I'm growing tobacco right now. I hope I like it as much as M&D.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

It had a very clear influence, which Pynchon explicitly talked about. No, there isn't really the mystical/supernatural flavour that a lot of Pincone's books have

I hope you enjoy it user

Sot weed is fucking brilliant, the book just encourages conspiracy theorizing about it. Burlingham is a fantastic character, and it's not completely impossible that he was all his brothers and his father the whole time, this and any other conspiracies Henry was working with in regards to starting America

Can someone suggest something like this?

It is the best book i've ever read.

Please no Pynchon. He can be really crass sometimes. I want to have a prolonged fever of deep poignancy like Moby Dick gave me.

Not sure if you would count this as proof contrariwise (death of the author, novel, etc.), but in LETTERS (one of Barth's later novel's) he more or less states that this isn't the case.

I agree about your appraisal of Burlingame, what a perfect personification of fun, erudition, humor, and most importantly, passion.

Here's my nomination. Something about this one has me keep coming back to it. I really love it

It's a wonderful book, user. Perhaps the latterday dark horse of all Russian lit.

I agree, which translation did you read? I prefer the original longer text, I feel like all the cuts Bely made later on were far too excessive. Regardless, I've never had such joy reading a book.