See everyone shit talking the tunnel by Gass

>see everyone shit talking the tunnel by Gass
>get compelled to read it even more
>start reading it
Wtf it's amazing. You guys are all faggots.

k.

Never believe any opinions you read here.

>Fuck the facts, honey. Fuck 'em.
>amazing

>see everyone shit talking the tunnel by Gass
What niggee?

>put my small penis in her
>came like an ad in the mail
KEK

90% of the time, the person criticizing the novels seen as great didn't read it. At most they read a page or am excerpt online. Yes, Gass is incredibly talented. He doesn't hit me in the heart as hard as Pynchon, but his sentences are consistently perfect.

>Put my small penis in her. Only the chair was moved. And I came like an ad in the mail.

Your Amazon.ca order of "The Tunnel" has shipped!

cringey as fuck, is this real?

Yes. this is what some consider one of the greatest works of american fiction.

Kys pleb.

So this is the power.... of the Gass...
Woa

>you don't like my author? kill yourself
spoken like a person who would like Gass, a dipshit.

Nothing causes me to physically cringe as much as the word "cringey". I respect your opinion, though. Could you go into why you feel that way a bit?

Can you at least describe what it is that makes them perfect? Call me tasteless but I don't see it

isn't it obvious? the mention of microphallic premature ejaculation and prose reminiscent of rancid mayonnaise, the huddling of the literati masses to sanctify his ability to demean the very art itself, the base humor a vapid modern simulacrum of rabelais, all assemble round a marvelous reflex to slap the book shut and recoil in reprehension.

...

once you get to a certain level of writing ability you can pretty much just publish entire books of unedited rambling

Your metaphors and analogies are worse than anything Gass wrote. You could probably learn a thing or two from him.

>trying so hard to validate your own opinion of Gass
are you doing this for your smarting pride, looking for valuable yesmen or trying to fellate Gass himself for no gain other than to gulp the pudgy man's semen?

>chastising me with your poor taste
yes yes, for shame!
look, if i wanted to write like Gass, i would. i have my own voice and your complaints are hardly any reason for me to discontinue on my path.

No I'm just posting the pages where he talks about dick BECAUSE it's funny to me desu senpai.

i guess one can't help what's funny. carry on all you like.

HOly fuck this bloarf is infested with plebianes

ITT: Veeky Forums is the smartest board on Veeky Forums

People don't like books they don't understand
Not really that difficult of a concept

yes, that's it, people can't dislike things they understand, that's impossible!

you say that... but it's true at the end of the day.
this book has essentially unlimited merit to offer, it's not concise or simple but it's there, like finnegans wake (though the wake is a far better work)
you can dislike it because it's tiring to read sometimes but calling him a terrible author is just a mistake to my thinking

also I was referring to the general phenomenon
do you think the 26% of people who hated ulysses on goodreads all read it with high comprehension?
And with erudition, critically interpreted the text and only then determined it was a poor work?

literally no one called him a terrible author in this thread.
if you genuinely think that one who understands something can't dislike it, then you must inevitably like rape, cancer, eating dog shit, etc. you know how retarded that is, which is why you switched tactic slightly to include people who have given reviews without a specific guideline on the review process itself. some, you realize, review a book poorly because they didn't like it, not because they called the quality of the work into question.
look, to relegate human opinion to an on off switch of comprehension is a dishonest way to criticize people who dislike a given work of art or what have you. it just doesn't fucking hold up, man.

Listen buster, you must've noticed that there's been a massive cultural paradigm shift in public opinion for the worse. Entertainment has become largely dominated by visual stimuli, it's become easier and easier to access and enjoy and requires less and less of the reader. Cultural taste has steadily declined with this trend and the works which are becoming popular widely praised now are getting worse: Rupi Kaur, John Green, modern pop-music, endlessly repetitive and profitable marvel movies etc.
With this in mind, it's not so unfair to make the claim that a significant portion of the audience didn't understand the work, especially a work as complicated as The Tunnel. Modern things like Synecdoche, New York are innovative and important reflections of culture but are shit on by everyone because why? Can you really say with any integrity that finding nemo deserves a 99% rating as one of the greatest films of all time, while tarkovsky's mirror suffers?

idk where im going with this, it's a really hard book and there's a lot in there, he may be one of the most well read people who's ever lived (if not the most) and he spent like 25 years writing it.

accessibility is consistently a determining factor in public reception of works. that is objectively partially due to the average audience member's comprehension

>muh world is becoming the ideocracy film meme
look. i'm speaking in no way of generalities. which is where your argument fails. sure, there are many who do not understand great works and ultimately avoid them or attack them as failures. this truth is nothing new, the majority of people in all eras have been uneducated fools. that is not what we now are discussing. you have put forth the massively ridiculous proposition that if one understands something, that forces them to enjoy it. i believe that i have made sense of this now. a simple concession here would be for you to say "SOME people don't understand the book and that's why SOME people don't like it."
just tone own your elitism a bit. some people understand books, but still dislike them, for example, difficulty is relative. say you like charlotte's web. an illiterate person may dislike it, sure, but what of someone of equal intelligence to yours dislikes it as well? what becomes of your statement then? it would be ridiculous to assume that they didn't understand charlotte's web, since they have the same intelligence you do. could it be that they simply dislike the book for their own personal reasons and that you shouldn't make the asinine assumption that everyone who dislikes charlotte's web is merely a dunce that lacks comprehension?
i think that is the case.

I agree with you completely.
I think we lost footing on generalizations though, I'm referring to the trend, the data.
And my first post was referring to Veeky Forums as an audience where most of the critics haven't read more than an excerpt of the book, if that.
It is certainly possible to understand and dislike a work.
I'm just noting the fact that about a year ago there was essentially no anti-gass sentiment and suddenly a few weeks ago they started popping up for some reason. Did everyone suddenly buy a copy and give it due diligence? Or did they follow the trends as they seem to always do?

the last question is easy, i started the trend about two years ago and have slowly become a working force of anti-gass propaganda on Veeky Forums.

now that we have come to grips with the essence of my argument and have resolved that, i am glad.
as to your trend idea, that is very likely.

i have a question for you. how much of a book is one to read before they are sufficiently entitled to criticize it? does this vary based on the work? the length, the proposed difficulty, the topic, etc? i think this is a more interesting topic to discuss, as i think it's the heart of your problem with critics, a guideline we could work out, you know. i wonder if that's even possible, perhaps the crutch of misunderstanding runs deeper than you or i know. that one man can sit and pore over a work for five years and still rise with a completely different opinion than another man in the same position. what then do we do with the imperfection of criticism? how to we ultimately validate an analysis and critique?

Well I find it irritating when people post ">has a description of furniture, dropped" or something. (a thread that was quite the argument the other night)
I think it's important to find what a work offers. I don't go through and make a list of pros and cons, or detract points for stuff like it's an assignment I'm grading. Yes, mistakes or unenjoyable portions of a work are important but what matters more is what is being offered.
Take DFW. on one hand, I find some of his writing to be annoying or too experimental or overly verbose but this isn't grounds of dismissal, because beneath that there is valuable literature and strong insights on culture.
Maybe Proust is a better example, there are sometimes literally hundreds of pages where he's wasting time or describing dumb shit but beneath that there is also some of the most angelic prose ever written, and the grander didactic offerings of in search of lost time are like a bible to me, a theology of their own, despite not liking every moment of the book.
With this in mind, it's tough to say in good conscience that sometimes you can toss a book 50 pages in if you're not digging it. Although on the other hand, 50 pages into Jest and Lost Time, I knew the books had something special.
Definitely hard to say definitively

You sound spooked.

Like, public opinion really worries you for some reason. Are you reading as a virtue signal? Are you a pseud?

>SYNECHDOUCHE, JEW YORK
>NOT TARKOVSKY'S ONLY GOOD FILM, ANDREI RUBLEV

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*GASPS* HHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

...

...

kek

thanks for the (you)'s friends im leaving Veeky Forums and that was my last ever post if you want some recommendations for some actual good directors try:
>Mikio Naruse
>Robert Bresson
>Edward Yang
>King Hu

Wow, in his dying words he recommended some super shitty hipster directors.
What a tremendous faggot

Gass's style is cool at first but it becomes more and more tiresome and you read. Kinda like Nabokov.

6 million already fell before the power of Gass.. Will you be next?

Nigga, you gay.

>subjective opinions of a novel
>facts
I'm surprised people with down syndrome can surf the net as well as they do

>voice

it's a line right there in the book you dumbfuck.

I'm not the guy you're arguing with there's something that I don't quite understand about these discussions of whether or not someone "likes" something. It seems that there are two ways that you can come to like something: either because you recognize something as well-made, or simply because of idiosyncratic opinion, the opinion that everyone's entitled to have that doesn't have to make any sense at all. Sure everyone should be entitled to their opinions, but why on earth does anyone think that it's worthwhile to discuss something, if it's something that you dislike for no particular reason?

People on this board and most other places in general, seem to be very eager however, to voice an opinion, whose origin they aren't quite sure of. What's the fucking point of discussing something if the discussion isn't about the quality of something, rather than having an argument with one party wanting to do what I'm suggesting, and the other simply ending up saying, "well I'm entitled to my opinion".

I don't give a fuck about anyone's opinion if they don't explain themselves.

Afterlonging is such a nice fucking word. I'm taking it.

it is because even the quality of a work can be called into questions and the axioms that exist within can be quibbled on further ad infinitum. there is no common ground except that on which we simultaneously choose to stand. otherwise all discussion is aslant.
that's why in this post
i ask about guidelines for a critique, what common groubd can we build? it inevitably becomes a complex philosophical discussion that requires its own common ground as foundation. i think it all serves as the ultimate goal of writing to begin with. the attempt to communicate between two minds without any pretense, trying to hew away the bullshit, you know. that is the reason it is so simple to fall back into the fortress of opinion, because genuine connections are quite simply to be left up to the geniuses, or to god, or to no one at all. i do marvel at your being here if you don't like a good argument over nothing. a good laugh at the expense of someone who doesn't share your thoughts on a given thing. at least in that one particular there can be a sense of communication between all of us here.

I'm talking about questioning quality, not circlejerking. My point was that I don't understand why some people think that their opinion matters if they can't even explain it to themselves.

yes, okay. i think it's clear that we're not on the same page here.

anyway, if you just want an easy answer to your point, people are dumb plebs who think emotionally, and this makes their opinions completely invalid. isn't that what you want to hear?

also, you really don't understand why a person's opinion matters to them?
really sure that you don't understand? isn't that simple? because who the fuck else would think their opinions matter if they don't? this is why they post their opinions to seek validation! i mean, do you genuinely think your uneducated opinion doesn't matter to yourself? i doubt it.

Of course i believe that everyone's opinion matters to themselves. My point is that one's opinion shouldn't matter if it's based on idiosyncrasy. Idiosyncrasy completely removes the common ground that you need to have in order for there to be any sensible discussion.
I have idiosyncratic opinions, and those I most often bring up so that they can change and become more refined.

Also, I completely understand that a lot of people think emotionally, my point was rather, that it leads us nowhere if we only let our emotions dictate opinion, at least when we are discussing the quality of literature.

>6658 >see everyone shit talking the tunnel by Gass

holy shit is prose is shit

oh shit i misclicked
not gonna delete it tho

>My point is that one's opinion shouldn't matter if it's based on idiosyncrasy.

and my point is that there are no ground rules to begin with and that any discussion on "the quality of literature" is, has been, and always will be a dickwaving contest. you're lookin for the unicorn, trying to prove the earth is flat or round to the masses, whatever your preference. there is no more valid idea of literary quality than another. get it?

What you're saying is true, but it doesn't get us anywhere, so we construct rules. If a person who doesnt' agree with the rules wants a debate he can debate the rules.

Most often this isn't what we see though is it? It's just people saying, "this is bad because I don't like it". Explain why you don't like it, even it if your reasoning isn't congruent with my axioms. And often, when people try to explain, they can't, and only dig their heels in because their opinion matters more to them than the discussion.

PASS
THE
GASS

so you're upset that people voice their opinions without following your rules for warfare? i get that, but it's an inevitability my friend. you're pissing in the wind trying to convince people that they need reasons for their opinions, especially when you have to question those reasons themselves for their validity. not many want to waste that much time to please someone else, since they know in their heart of hearts what they think. look, i agree with you to an extent, hence my attempt to set up a guideline for critique, but as the response to it suggests, the person was simply looking to voice their own unvalidated opinions and wanted nothing more than to invalidate someone else's. you have to struggle with ulterior motive in this situation. people don't always want to communicate on meaningful levels, don't want to intertwine the human experience or whatever. they want to rant and rave and have people nod their heads or shake them. it's a pleasant idea to hope some unifying system of literary quality will bless us with its presence, but let's be honest, you know? we're gonna be able to only read a handful of novels in our lives, gonna be able to voice an opinion on even less, and most lilely it won't fucking matter either way. this place isn't one for working towards a goal all together, it's a place for friends and enemies to gather and talk and bitch and shit at, on, with, or around each other.

I agree with you, but the thing is that questioning the validity of one's own opinion isn't something that you do to please someone else, but something you do so that you're able to achieve a greater understanding of something as well as an understanding of the person you're arguing.
It's not so much about people being nice to each other and agreeing. It's more about getting smarter.

no, that's why YOU question your opinion's validity, to gain insight and what have you. many others do not do this. some people don't want that, my man. some people don't want to get smarter at all. it's frustrating that some people will never have the same goals as you or i even on a basic level, but that's life. i don't know that learning to accept that will make anything better, but who knows. just at least try to remember that before you get frustrated with the next voice (mine most likely) that shouts an opinion and doesn't want it questioned, doesn't have a reason, and doesn't want to learn anything.
interestingly enough i find the people that want that ask other people for their opinions, and listen, instead of offering their own from the start.

You're right. Guess I'm just idealistic. You're an insightful fella. Thanks.

no need for thanks, it was a nice conversation. now let's all get out there and shitpost.

bump, cuz gass blows donkey dick.

i saw the tunnel reccomended by some little manlet faggot at my local bookstore

like, he put his name on it and it was involved in a display near the front.

>90 percent of all great writers were manlets.

Woah, maybe I should just stop reading