The first person narrative made the book a real disappointment. All that time he spent crafting this dark...

Sounds like something an unappealing writer with a warped mind would say.

> Losing your audience? Yell "bad readers"

I never see any real discussion of Gass' here. It all boils down to some fart memes and "muh prose mothafucka"

He knows that racism is wrong and American culture is dumb.

>tfw i wrote the middle paragraph
that was my experience with omensetter's luck and not the tunnel, btw.

This is such a hilarious thing to say.

"I... I'm not a bad writer! You're just a BAD READER!"

KEK

OP exposed as a guy so dunce he needs to steal away sentences from other user in his posts because he can't even articulate his own thoughts.

>what is copypasta
i'm just glad someone reposted my shit. finally, my immortality is secured.

I'm literally about to start omesetters this weekend. What am I in for?

>implying that is how pasta works

He decided to cop some lines you've written and write them off as his own thoughts: this isn't pasta, it's a brainlet patchwork.

i genuinely couldn't finish it. the first part is intolerable, but the stlye shifts a little. it was all right (just all right) until the old man pervert bullshit started setting in. the sentences offered as utterly beautiful prose also failed to astound to be sure. not a book i would suggest to anyone.

an excerpt
His eye entered everything like a needle even yet -- penetrated, looped, and then emerged -- and he hung these pictures on a string like beads around his neck. For hours he fingered the air obscenely, and when he moved, he felt they clicked. He would say to his wife: here's your vulva, it's next to the nose of the beagle; or he'd say: here's your blood, dark as wet bark; or he'd say: here are the stools your bowels are shaping; on and on, until she struck him.

shit's fucking old man gross. and i say that as one thoroughly enjoying GR at the moment. No pleasure to be found in Gass's work, unless you like being fondled by your grandpappy, and then being reminded of it constantly.
Someone might like this shit, even you. I don't.

what is it, mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery?
i'm prepared to deal with the plagiarism as long as it propagates my work, I'll always know the score. I'm not Otto, for chrissakes.

I read the first five pages when I got it. I thought it was great. To each his own I guess

Wtf this sounds awesome. Can't wait. He was also pretty young when he wrote that you dumb faggot.

yes, and? what of his age in regard to his old man-esque perversity?
regardless, i qualified my opinion with
"someone might like this shit, even you. I don't."
that means it's okay to disagree with people.
I hope you enjoy it, honestly. nothing wrong with that. what about it do you like, if i might ask?

I couldn't even get through Gass' interview on the paris review, honestly

holy fuck.
on a related note, have you seen pynchon's? fucking gold. blew the doors off.

>what of his age in regard to his old man-esque perversity?

.. the fact that he wasn't actually an old man at the time? You hysterical hausfrau.

Most young men go through edgy phases before they become old men. You're talking like this instance is some abnormal exception and not the relative norm.

so, one can't write like a perverted old man and not be one? why do you put such limitations on authors? because you have them?

Kek at that passive aggressive jab at the end. It's amusing to note in a meta sense that you're actually carrying yourself as a young edgy man would as well right now.

You talk one way yet act another. This is a larp.

you're reading quite far into this, i sense your pride was stricken in that jab? first blood, i have already won the duel, friend.

You're not some stalwart defender of maturity. You're just some bored young guy who likes to try out different shitposting techniques to stave off his boredom like all the rest of us.

My pride is fine because I'm self-aware. You're the delusional larper here, friendo.

i'm hardly shitposting, i don't like gass, and expressed why. i guess people having their own opinions is larping these days.
get over it, this is starting to get silly. building me up into some sort of villian,

>All that time he spent crafting this dark, depressing door stopper could have been used to create something beautiful and lasting. Just a real waste all around.

pseuds. cant teach em, can you?

>i'm hardly shitposting

Kek.

Ur in fookin shambles, mate.

ahuh.

havent read the book and your post looks like bait but i unironically hate the first person mode and have felt the same about other books, that they could have been good in 3rd person but were absolute dreck in 1st

thanks for the heads up op, i can scratch this one off the list

Please say something of interest in your posts. That is just shitposting.

it's what you wanted, for me to become the villian, so you could feel the hero, eh? well, here i am, waving my cock in your face, since that's all that appeals to you, so much so that you attempt to transform those around you into archetypes, so you never have to leave your fantasy world into the land of dissent.

What's wrong with 1st? There's literally no difference between he and I

>it's what you wanted, for me to become the villian

Lmao at your over the top treatment of this exchange. I just think you're a bored young guy who shitposts like the rest of us but for some reasons he paradoxically chooses to larp about maturity as he does it. What is this "villain" shit?

This post is aspie edge as fuck btw. Stop being such a katana king.

let's think about this, i say an excerpt reminds me of an old pervert. you say i'm larping about maturity? where have i spoken about one's maturity in any sense? you have latched onto that concept, not i. you are the one speaking of young men going through their phases, not i. you are the one accusing me of being a "young guy".
in this, you have chosen to take on the theme of maturity.
i think you need to regain your bearings in all of this.

What's your favorite literary work, I'm genuinely curious about your taste.

i aint the villian here, pal.

K A L I Y U G A

usually whatever i'm reading and don't want to quit at the time, but for an overall answer? I really was blown away by turgenev's living relics, and his hunter's album collection as a whole. that's made the most recent and strongest impression on me. i'd suggest it to anyone. a book about nature, the people, and a touch of religion, it has occasionally generous prose, but nothing outrageous, a true sense of what it felt to be russian at the time, i imagine. another incredible book was The Recognitions. fantastic work, plan to read again and again.

i should have added "how about you?"

>postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.

holy shit that pic me lol good

a nice quote.

aw, all my friends have gone.

>so, one can't write like a perverted old man and not be one?

But the thing he's doing nothing rise above that. Like OP said, it's one-note first person narrative and by the time you've finished the book there's been no development.

Gass' shtick is "A-ha! I'm writing like a pervert but you probably know that I'm just a boring academic. Now what do you think of that?"

Compare that with the perversions of Celine, who uses it to write about the working class in a way to deliberately efface bourgeois romantic notions about them while finding other ways to sympathize with them. Or with Pynchon where the perversions are a symbol of way in which each generation leaves the world a worse place for the next generation, technology and industrial have become literal death machines etc

Gass wants you to think about his superficial prose as if out of the opacity something really profound is at work but everything you can tease out is NYT op-ed tier.

> it was so good I read 5 pages

high praise, indeed

But, I mean, it's often accurate. Look up goodreads reviews for classics (Lolita's a good example) if you want to see idiots shit on artistic triumphs for "boring plot" or "unlikeable characters"

that's what i was saying to begin with. i'm the guy who wrote the second paragraph in OP. i agree completely.
the other guy was saying my criticism was stupid because Gass was young when he wrote the old man perversity. i was arguing that he could write as an old pervert and still not be one.

There was a reviewer who said there was no real point or development to the novel and its hard for you to separate the narrator with Gass himself. Gass would probably say this critic is a "bad reader" and justify his weak ironies by saying it was needed, maybe mumble something about Flaubert or Henry James, but really the reviewer is spot-on.

It's a pointless book. He spent 30 years writing it off and on and he should have just called it quits.

well all i've read of the tunnel was the first page and that was far more than plenty, i had read a bit into omensetter's luck before i formed my active opinion of Gass, whether it is unfair or a matter of my poor readmanship, i have determined that he is not an author i have any interest in. it's somewhat vindicating to have others share a similar opinion to mine, but i feel i would hold it regardless.
i am happy that others can enjoy it though. i try to keep from making others feel alienated for liking something i dislike intensely, or at least i'm working on that. i'm hoping that in some beneficial way it will ensure that my criticisms aren't aimed at harming others and find themselves befouled with maliciousness, but rather putting words to a justified feeling of dislike.

GASSED. and here we see the proof that plebs can't handle Gass. He's difficult for a reason boys.

I don't feel bad because he's shilled here daily without anyone describing what makes him worthwhile.

Like this guy
Gass isn't difficult, just bad.

Kys

???

How can anyone who has read this book claim that Gass' uses perverse images just 'for the image'?
The first passage with the jews is a critisism turned outward AND inward, of which the perverse image is a key element.

When he talks about the German wanting to rape dead jews did you really just think 'oooh so edgy?' and miss the part about how he thinks the Holocaust comprises human history while also being a larger projection of our day to day quarrels unmasking us a perverse beings?

He's not bad. I'm reading the tunnel right now. How on God's name could you call him a bad writer because you don't like his books. The writing in this is top stuff. When he fucks the student in his office weeeeew I wish I could write about fucking sluts that nicely.

>uses perverse images just for the image
you can't read at all, can you?

hardly difficult if you mean unpleasantness could be used as a substitute for complexity.
i wouldn't say he's bad, unlike the other guy. more along the lines that i don't like what he's written and don't wish to read any more.
his skill in writing isn't in question, and shouldn't be, i don't find it as beautiful as some seem to, i will say, but to flat out call Gass a bad writer isn't fair.

*unless you mean

Gass is basically too smart to write good fiction.

dem essays tho

>fucks the student in his office
Page no.? Curious but I'm also one of the people who doesn't like Gass' aura and gave up fairly early on.

It's not implied in the Op, but ut sure is elsewhere in the thread.
Also: 'you can't read' is a horrible answer in any thread on Veeky Forums.

>b-but i can read
nope. sensors reporting a lack of literacy from your quadrant.
>b-but the strawman i need is insinuated
yes yes, you're very smart.

This is just pathetic.

ahuh.
good job, you sure deterred me from posting ever again!

>ITT: undergrads at C grade colleges trying to criticize a man who literally studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein

It was disguised as an introduction to a work by a fictional historian, user. First person was the only way to have done it.

>butthurt asskisser dares not defy convention
he should have written something else. though i don't agree with the sentiment that a first person narrative spoils a work. i recall being criticized for using "first person omniscience" (when i wasn't at all, i think the person didn't have any idea what it actually means) and i wonder why that is such a negative thing inherently.

Seems like many people who claim he's bad gave up early in The Tunnel. This is a little amusing as he said, in his interview with Silverblatt, that he purposefully wrote the first ~70 pages as a kind of test to make sure only the right kind of reader made it further. I haven't read The Tunnel yet, but he seems like an incredibly smart person in every talk I've listened to, and I think he's a top notch essayist. I just find it funny that people will readily admit they did the thing he set his book up to make idiots do. It seemed to work so I'll likely read it next.

>falling for a pride trap
oldest trick in the book. DFW claimed the same, that the first few hundred pages were pleb filter.
what an act of bad faith from an author if it's even genuine. glad i won't be reading Gass, i don't particularly care for shithead lit.

He's butthurt because everyone drops his tiresome novel. The fuck else is someone with an ego that big going to say? Good lord you are a credulous retard.

Maybe a few hundred years ago it wouldn't be viable, being that anyone who could read typically could do so well. But today, every idiot at least learns basic word comprehension. So yes, bad readers are very much a real thing. If something is there, and one can't see it, you don't say the thing is invisible or nonexistent. You say the person's blind.

Some people genuinely enjoy the beginnings of those novels, and those are the people they're writing for. I honestly think those books turn out to be far more rewarding in the end. Gravity's Rainbow is similar in that the first few chapters are usually enough to make people drop it. I don't think there's anything wrong with being up front about what you're writing, and making sure the people who move on to the rest are at least up to the challenge. You can get butthurt about it if you want to, but it's a good move in a literary sense. The people who give up immediately would give up anyway, but they'd be far more upset if they didn't know what you were going for until 3-500 pages in.

He said this right after it was released, while being showered with praise. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how it was received by academics and respected critics like Moore and Silverblatt. At least listen to the interview in question, since you're misinterpreting the context it was said in.

I genuinely enjoyed the beginning of Infinite Jest. I don't understand the hate

>This is a little amusing as he said, in his interview with Silverblatt, that he purposefully wrote the first ~70 pages as a kind of test to make sure only the right kind of reader made it further.

The irony is that someone can read a few lines of good poetry and get infinitely more out it than slogging through 700 pages of arrogant bullshit

>someone's an idiot for refusing to take a test from an author
so, i pick up a book, don't like anything about it, and i'm in the wrong for it? fuck that, and suppose you read three hundred pages of it and stop? is that just a filter for the intermediate group? what a load of horseshit.
what a disgusting bootlicking experience you must have with literature.

GR has a compelling, funny, and interesting beginning. Worth every minute. Being a dick and saying your initial fifty to two hundred pages of pleb filter is not the same as saying that people genuinely like those beginnings, it's literally saying that it was purposefully made unpleasant so that impatient people wouldn't bother reading. it's hardly saying "i'm being honest from the beginning and showing you what i got", that's the opposite. they're lying and calling you an idiot if you don't play their game.

Awful, awful thread.

>/pol/ tries to understand why he's so sad, come to Veeky Forums, can't get into reading things above their level, so it's everyone else's fault!

this is actually one of the dumbest things I've seen posted here. I say that a lot but, by god, this is up there

well, you're a fucking moron. this has nothing to do with politics, it has to do with personal taste. the people who wrote the first and second paragraphs in OP have not defended their positions. I have. My position is not anything more than a dislike of a style of perversion that Gass portrays in Omensetter's Luck, The Tunnel is a book i put down after the first page, in which the word Tampax was written. I had no intention of reading further, whether people insist on intellect being the barrier for me to enjoy that which i do not, then so be it, i am a dunce for having a personality and am happier for it. i do think, however, that there is grave emphasis placed on enjoying works by people that are known to be difficult for the sake of difficulty, and to put others down with exaggerated elitism. some books are not to the taste of others, even people with erudite tastes. one can enjoy J R and not The Tunnel. it's fucking okay. not all men must be sorted and filed, dammit. God damn commies aren't even this bad with dissent, at least those fuckers have the decency to kill you right out.

I, and many others, genuinely like those beginnings. I don't know what your point is.

the point is very simple. the position was put forward that the author is intentionally putting their work up front, an honest position of clarity right from the start, when in reality, these authors themselves have said the beginnings of their works are purposefully unpleasant or holding back to sort out a specific type of reader, and cut away the rest. that is NOT being up front with your writing, it's being manipulative and dishonest. to hold back your best writing until you think people have "earned it" with patience is not putting everything up front at all. in fact, it is the opposite. i am arguing with your mischaracterization of the intent of the authors.

the use of first person moves the narrative into a subjective space that is much harder to perfect. writing in third person generally leaves more room for psychic distance and ambiguity. if you are writing in third person and your narrator isn't some detached manly man you're going to have a hard to complexly representing their interior world.

How did you get "not their best writing" out of any of this. You seem to feel pretty strongly about whatever your point is, but it relies on a willful misunderstanding of what they mean when they say that. In fact, on a technical level, I'd say the beginning contains some of the strongest writing. It's difficult, like in terms of difficulty. I don't see the point in twisting it to mean something else just so you can find your argument. The point is that it worked. Works. Seems to me that the readers who enjoy density and difficulty stick around while the ones who don't drop it. Mission accomplished and all that.

>respected critics like Moore and Silverblatt

my fucking sides

Silverblatt is a good interviewer but Moore is a hack. He's literally Veeky Forums tier "I like books because they seem difficult and long." He'll praise anything that's dense and at least 500 pages.

> like, humanity is perverse and full of hate, man! the proof is my prose shocks you!

what a brilliant insight.

The Tunnel reads like Flaubert's prose with Celine's one-trick edgy misanthropy but you realize the author is just J.K. Rowling's twitter.

Has there been any discussion of Gass' work beyond "muh foremost prose stylist?" DFW fans have more concrete analysis than anything Gass shills shill on an hourly basis.

It's clear you've never read any Moore. I just finished his newest collection of essays and it contains some of the most thorough analysis I've ever read. Your opinion of him seems to have been informed by (hilariously) Veeky Forums and reddit. Check out his long essay on Gaddis or Theroux. Also, Silverblatt is one of the closest readers I've ever heard of. If you read anything where he's the one being interviewed, it's clear he's incredibly picky as well. Watch his ~1 hour long talk on reading at, I believe, Cornell. I'm not comparing dicks but I've read a lot of criticism and listened to a lot of talks on literature, those two guys are some of the best we'll get for this generation.

Wow, people are prone to inter-tribal violence?

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE HAS A DARK SIDE????

Only a brilliant lit-fic reader could come up with this stuff. I wish I was smart enough to tease these diamonds of wisdom from a 600 page artistic triumph. I'm still skeptical, but if a Literary Scholar says it, who am I to contradict him?

you sound like a real uppity faggot...

>density and difficulty
you've missed the point entirely. it has nothing to do with difficulty. not a damn thing. it's not the density of a novel that is in question, it is the quality of the work and the overt commentary that the authors distributed themselves that their first fifty to two hundred pages are meant as barriers to readers they don't personally like. jesus, you have to be beat over the head with a simple point in twelve different ways until it becomes sensible, and here you are bitching about dense literature being unappreciated by my point of view? i love dense and complex literature. i don't love being toyed with and withheld from intentionally as though i'm a child, i paid for the book, i researched it, i opened it the fuck up. what more do dfw (not that i dislike dfw, the opposite actually) and gass want? they want obedience before reward, and some of us, who have willpower and mental fortitude to hold their opinions.
that's not even the reason i dislike gass either! i dislike him because of what techniques he uses to portray his themes, his particular brand of perversity, and though skillful, am unimpressed with his prose. the argument about an author toying with his reader maliciously is irrelevant, and one i don't think you completely understand.