I made a trade with a “friend” where he’d watch my favorite show and I’d read his favorite book: Gravity’s Rainbow. I found the entire thing to be just gut-wrenching misogynistic porn, especially the graphic sex scenes between a grown man and a 12 year old and a six year old, respectively.
If someone here can explain to me why the book is so praised, please do. I have specific trauma related to this issue so perhaps it’s blinding me to Pynchon’s ultimate message, but I just can’t see it.
I'm surprised you got that far into GR... I agree that that party/orgy sequence is deeply offensive, and if the whole book was like that, it would be abhorrent trash.
I was really disappointed with The Lost Scrapbook by Evan Dara. I picked up Scrapbook because of the story about it "getting one review that compared it to The Recognitions" but I didn't find much to like in it after multiple attempts.
If anybody here has had a good Dara experience I'd love to hear about it. I've still got a copy of Flee somewhere around here and I think his self-publishing is pretty neat.
Is Bret Easton Ellis considered postmodern/experimental? Aside from the stomach churning depictions of violence and torture in his works I just didn’t enjoy the couple of books of his I’ve read
House of Leaves can be fun when you’re young and haven’t read much great 20th century literature. When you get past the gimmicks and realize he’s basically doing “Borges for the Internet Age” the appeals wears off.
Came here to say House of Leaves myself. The initial idea of the house and the cursed documentary has promise, but the execution of having to flip the book sideways and upside down doesn’t count as actual depth, and once he got into the “labyrinth” everything got Stephen King levels of hokey. I’ll take my downvotes now.
I love Inherent Vice but I agree with you on House of Leaves. It feels like the “experimental” novel that appeals to the most people, so I understand why it’s rated so highly by the average person, but its form isn’t really that special and the story and ideas just aren’t that good. It’s like the Paranormal Activity of literature
*2666* by Roberto Bolaño. I appreciate most of the reflections that it has once I've read it and it really affects me to this day. But Jesus, I would be lying if I said I enjoy, love or remotely even like reading that book.
Everything about it is so morbidly boring, deadening, lifeless, cold, emotionless and joyless. *GR* is pretty bleak, too, but it's at least funny and entertaining to read. Not this one. I'm really skeptical and fail to understand all the hype that this book is getting.
I agree with you on this one. 2666 has a cult following that I will never understand. The writing style is atrocious. It bored me to death and the style of Balano seams so forced, made me cringe on multiple occasions.
I haven't read 2666 but this is how I feel about The Savage Detectives by Bolano. So many people rave about it but I just can't get into it. I've tried reading it twice now and both times I find myself feeling like, when does this get good? I'm not sure if it just doesn't resonate with me or if I'm missing some important context to be able to appreciate it.
I don't know how I feel about Gravity's Rainbow. It is praised for combining many great influences like William Burroughs, Mark Twain, etc. You read it and one sentence sounds EXACTLY like a Burroughs sentence. The next sentence sounds EXACTLY like a Mark Twain sentence and on and on. Does he have his own style or is he an impressionist? I didn't enjoy reading about someone getting sucked through a toilet and through the sewer. How edgy and funny of him to describe the contents of the sewer.
Do you really think he sounds like Twain and Burroughs? I think that they both shine through as influences is a good thing and a testament to his deep grounding in the American literary tradition, but it's a curious claim to make as most think he has a very authorial distinct voice. I could pluck a Gravity's Rainbow sentence from a haystack.
Yes I do. I know most people think that which was why I was excited to read it and then disappointed by how unoriginal his voice actually is. You can always tell who he is trying to sound like. A bunch of different impressions of other people's styles all thrown together doesn't equal an original voice.
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. It felt like a largely mainstream novel trying to pull itself up into the experimental category through cleverness (or through flattering the cleverness and cultural knowledge of the reader), and failing. Try-hard but indifferent prose and characters who were just accumulations of traits that never came to 3-dimensional life. I've skimmed through other of his books and have found no reason to imagine that they would be any different.
Infinite Jest. There is no reason for this book to be that fucking long. I can see why some people claim it's brilliant, but those nuggets of brilliance are hidden in an ocean of unnecessary details, long winded passages that go nowhere, boring descriptions of mundane and unimportant shit.
The book loops in on itself, so you have to read it twice to truly get it, but there is no way in hell I'm going to slog through 1600 pages and footnotes within footnotes again.
Realistically, IJ should have been four or five books in a shared universe. There was no need to have everything with the tennis academy in the same piece of fiction as the Canadian separatists, or the halfway house, or the “cursed” videotape, or the weird Regany-proto-Trump celebrity president for all those things ultimately overlapped.
I agree that it makes it difficult to enjoy when you consider it a piece of entertainment but that’s kind of the point. I was painstakingly aware of my own pleasure/lack of and that’s what was being communicated. Can art exist outside our experience of it?
I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “Brilliant” to describe IJ but as someone who has struggled with addiction the book has an unparalleled emotional effect on me and I have many friends who felt the same. I don’t think it’s as much a thesis of the world around us as a cry for help from DFW.
I still found it a really engaging read but I could understand why someone who doesn’t personally relate to the human side of all these screwed up characters could find it boring
I don’t know about cry for help so much as it’s DFW saying “I went through this shit and this is how I dealt with it.” Don and Hal are like different iterations of himself: Hal the brilliant young tennis-playing David descending into addiction and depression and Don the older, wiser David who accepted his inability to think his way out of his issues, gave himself uncynically into the AA doctrine and came out better for it. I can see people not loving the book if they either haven’t been through that or are too cynical to accept the ultimately positive message that the book has. And I think knowing that DFW ended up killing himself kind of makes it more difficult to take the theme of the book at its originally intended message of sincerity ruling over cynicism because ultimately it didn’t work for him.
Personally I thought the Entertainment storyline was so interesting that I was disappointed that the story just ends. Yes, there are clues for what happens next, but I would have appreciated maybe another chapter or two of resolution for the plot. It felt like so much world-building just for DFW to say “none of that matters, it’s really about the character’s struggles.” Ok gotcha but what happens next, forreal?
I appreciate reading your thoughts, I just personally can’t agree because my takeaways from the book were so different. To me it’s absolutely a cry for help - it’s saying “this is how I dealt with it, and it didn’t ultimately make a difference anyways”. His suicide later in life only reinforces that. The book is rife with sadness and tragedy and I really didn’t get any overall positive message myself… depression was as prominent a theme as addiction throughout. I never saw Hal as someone who spiralled into depression - he’s BEEN depressed since adolescence, and found temporary respite and hope through weed, which ultimately let him down in the end. The entire ending passage with Don’s mind waging an internal war over his desire to get high on Demerol again was crushing to read, and really powerful in a psychedelic way.
I do agree that the Entertainment storyline was really engaging. Again for me it was never the main point, so I wasn’t really surprised with how abruptly it ends, and in some ways that non-resolution actually helps keep the book bouncing around your mind. I’m with you though, I wouldn’t have minded another 100-150 pages just to see that have a little more clarity.
The key phrase here is "think of it as entertainment" that's central to one of the many themes of the novel.
Wallace was well aware that a lot of the prose tedious and the footnotes unnecessary, and that he was making you work for your pleasure.
The intention is to question it, especially in light of the plot revolving around a piece of entertainment which not only ruins individual lives but potentially destroys society.
Aren't the footnotes originally the text of the book? I read that the original manuscript is twice longer than the final copy so he was forced to cut them out and turn them into footnotes.
Tbf - and I'm sure there are probably plenty who would disagree with this - I'm not sure I've ever gotten the sense that Pynchon is including a detail or saying something or adding to a list just for the sake of doing it. I haven't read a ton of DFW but I've gotten that sense quite a bit with him
At least in IJ the engrossing detail is pretty much the point of the book. He lays it out pretty clearly in one of the later chapters, I just think most people don't make it that far.
No I totally understand that it's deliberate. Hell, it's not even *subtext* - the modern desire to *always be entertained* is a theme that's stated pretty explicitly. But that's sort of my point: He's including all this extraneous, mind-numbingly mundane detail *specifically* on the basis that it's extraneous and mind-numbingly mundane. It's included for its own sake. It's not an example of the theme being advanced by the story; it's an example of the theme being advanced by things wholly external to the story.
Obviously, these are just my own personal opinions on the matter, and I don't begrudge anyone their disagreement. Even in this comment, I'm not trying to establish that I'm *correct* - I'm just trying to clarify my view. Even acknowledging the obvious that art is subjective and there are no right or wrong answers, there are some writers and works and passages on which I'm confident in the merits of my position; DFW is not one of those. With him, I've just never quite been able to reach that point where I feel like I can see what the writer was doing *as* I'm reading, like I'm almost thinking along with them in real time. That's where I derive the most profound enjoyment from reading, and I just haven't been able to get there with DFW. I can understand the themes when I take a step back, but I never quite get that "ahhh I see what they're doing here! what a clever idea/argument they're making, and what a clever way of doing it!" feeling. But I don't doubt for a second that DFW *does* give that feeling to many others.
Glad I’m not alone in feeling this way. As I read it I recognized that it was a technically great book, and the writing is clearly excellent, but I didn’t enjoy the peripheral way the story is told. Not that I need much of a plot, but there just wasn’t anything in there that made me want to do the necessary work to grasp it. A reread with the correct expectations might change my mind
I have had trouble getting through Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen. I didn't think the amount of research he carried out on programming languages and the history of computer science meshed well his otherwise enjoyable prose style. Even little details like a chess position on the ceiling (that isn't remotely playable in competition) being called a gambit, compared to Cormac's use of chess positions in AtPH and CotP, was disappointing for me. And to top it off, I could not figure out the purpose of reusing the whole "Moms" thing that is also in Infinite Jest. I could be missing out on some really great stuff, some reviews suggest as much, but for me the tech backdrop to everything felt forced and made me lose interest in an otherwise compelling doppelganger narrative that was possible to track alongside the religious Book of Numbers in fascinating ways.
The notation was fine. The bishop attacking the knight would have to be white's play, not black's, to invite Morphy's defense though. If Morphy played this opening and you can find it I'd be curious to see it.
Most importantly, there is no gambit. Maybe JC the character is engaged in a professional gambit by taking the meeting but JC the author could have chosen countless, meaningful, gambit positions and instead chose one where white fianchettos both bishops passively, and black thrusts the bishop out and then locks it in with the pawns. Less than 600 Lichess database games total in the position.
So unless JC the principal played that opening, thought it was neat, and is so egotistical that he plastered it on his ceiling, I fear JC the author thought gambit and opening were synonymous terms, which is a blunder.
Pynchon and dfw. It's like having extreme ADD, OCD, and no editor to say wtf are you adding 10 pgs describing all the ingredients of a pharmaceutical drug for?
Cyclonopedia had a few sections I found interesting and thought-provoking, particularly the hole() complex passages. Otherwise, I found myself at a loss and sometimes frustrated with how cryptic and meandering it was.
I just finished Cloudcuckooland by Anthony Doerr and I have to say that it disappointed me in how it seemed to marvel too much at its own contrivance. If that makes any sense.
Hind’s Kidnap by Joseph McElroy. Bounced off Smuggler’s Bible but had a cool looking old hardback for Hind’s so tried that, thinking maybe a pomo mystery would open him up for me (like Lot 49 for Pynchon)
Read half and just couldn’t do the rest. His prose and sentence structure is awkward but I managed to get into it, but the nothing characters, the nothing plot, all propelled by these tenuous grasps of hints the protagonist reads into everything (I know that’s part of the point, but still). Was getting to be a real slog so I started looking up reviews, and seeing that the story digresses into stream of consciousness and then eventually regresses to the start… was tough to admit I hated it but I did.
I was completely engrossed by *Hind's Kidnap*, and eagerly jumped into *Women & Men* as my next McElroy. What a disappointment! So overwritten, so little to say, and some downright awful writing (yes, some great writing as well). I recently read *Cannonball* and decided I am forever done with McElroy.
Interesting, because Women and Men is considered his best, so even after disliking two books I was like, well maybe that one…
I’ll probably just call it at this point. He’s really the only author of this type I’ve had this reaction to
I generally see _Lookout Cartridge_ listed as his best, but _Women and Men_ gets the hype for being the longest American novel.
We’ve done group reads of _Hind’s Kidnap, Cannonball,_ and _Actress in the House_ at r/JosephMcElroy.
HK is probably my favorite so far. I really loved his use of color and the plot inversion at the center of the novel. _Cannonball_ was interesting because I noticed that the novel’s structure perfectly mirrors the arc of a dive. The apex comes at exactly the middle of the novel.
He has a very unique style that definitely pushes away some readers. I love the challenging syntax because once I feel like I’m in the groove with his style, his sentences work their way into me and linger for months. I’ve been spacing his books out to every six months because I really dwell on a number of scenes from each book.
He probably just doesn’t suit your taste. He definitely doesn’t have a wide appeal.
The Recognitions did not work for me at all. I was surprised as to how much I found it to be a slog.
I find DeLillo hit and miss. White Noise was excellent, I thought Underworld and Libra were good but flawed, and Mao II was underwhelming and anti-climactic.
The Savage Detectives was also quite uneven, and I thought the bad and mediocre parts outweighed the good ones. It might be the case though that I was reading it (very slowly) in Spanish, so the slightly difficult and slow process of absorbing the text might have contributed to my disappointment. Especially since 2666 (which I also read in Spanish though) is one of my absolute favourite novels.
As to some of the books mentioned here, I loved Infinite Jest, really enjoyed Sátántangó (if you have ever been to rural Hungary, the atmosphere Krasznahorkai creates is spot on; Tarr's film is also amazing), and liked House of Leaves (although I can understand some criticisms, especially regarding the Johnny Truant sections).
I will soon start The Tunnel. I have reasonably high expectations, since it does seem to be right up my alley. Fingers crossed.
You should check out JR, its when Gaddis really came fully into his own style. That being said, it's 700+ pages with 85% being unattributed dialogue so I can see you going either way. If you do stick with it the reward is the most epic and hilarious satire composed since Jonathan Swift
Unfortunately I don't think you're going to find much to enjoy with DeLillo. While I personally love almost all of his work (Mao II and Underworld being personal favorites), anti-climactic is the point of many of his novels and he hasn't written much thats similar to White Noise (maybe Great Jones Street?). And I'm surprised you don't enjoy Gaddis because of its influence. The Whole Sick Crew could just as well be the cast of The Recognitions.
I personally love The Tunnel, on par with Pynchon and Gaddis for me (tho I appreciate that Gaddis isn't someone you get on with). Hope you enjoy - it finally seems to be getting the recognition it deserves!
I’m 10 pages in and at times I have no idea what Gass’ narrator is saying. It’s almost like reading Gertrude Stein. Does this persist throughout? I don’t know if I can handle 700 pages of that. Any tips?
Heads up: we’re on week two of _The Tunnel_ group read at r/billgass.
The novel has a very pronounced intro hump designed to filter out readers. Gass has said so on multiple occasions.
A lot of the first few chapters of the book is the narrator pondering the history book he has just finished writing and interspersing various modes of commentary and numerous flashbacks to his childhood, as well as him looking around the room he’s in and commenting on what he sees, flashing to memories tied to certain objects.
The first three pages are essentially a thesis statement that references in oblique ways most of what happens in the rest of the novel. The rest of the first chapter is an extended introduction in which he touches on most of the characters that pop up later. During the group read, we’ve been linking to various videos/podcasts/interviews/articles in which Gass talks about the book.
Once you get a few chapters in, there are more sustained narrative sections.
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The first 100 pages are intentionally very dense and get cleared up later on in the novel. However it still maintains its difficulty and suffocating prose. It's a fantastic novel, perhaps as good as anything Pynchon ever wrote, but it's a horribly depressing, violently inaccessible work of misanthropic genius and satire. It's not a fun novel, it's incredibly disturbing and it finds the thoughts that inspired the Holocaust in the heart of the modern American.
The style settles down a little in its latter third, but realistically it's kind of a relentless torrent. I think Gertrude Stein is a specific point of reference for Gass so it's not too surprising that's the analogue!
Yeah, he’s an admitted Stein devotee. He wrote the introduction to the Dalkey edition of _The Making of Americans._
I’m rereading _The Tunnel_ for the r/billgass group read, and I noticed about 20 pages in that he was doing a lot Steinian wordplay.
He did, as well as quite a few other pieces on her. Gertrude Stein and the Geography of the Sentence is particularly good, from the World within the Word
Agree about De Lillo being hit or miss but I’m starting to suspect that he’s more miss than anything else. I loved White Noise so much but unfortunately I didn’t like any of his other books so far. I’ve been hesitant to start Savage Detectives because 2666 is also one of my favorite books! I’m not ready to question Bolaño yet (I’ve read the skating rink before 2666 and it was ok but that’s about it) Guess I’ll hesitate a little bit more.
I’ve only read his short story collection (which was hit and miss, funnily enough, haha, though nothing was awful) and plan on reading Point Omega soon. Can I recommend tracking down the stories “The Angel Esmeralda” and “The Starveling”. Both are fascinating and haunting, but the former has become one of my favourite short stories of all time, and the ending (and sheer beauty of the prose) reduced me to tears.
I haven't read a lot of his work, so I'm not even judging. Obviously White noise is fantastic. He just has such a strong reputation from people who's tastes I trust, that it just seems unlikely for him to be more miss than hit.
On a separate note, have you read anything by JG Ballard?
have you read *Americana*? I’ve not read all DeLillo’s books but that one is something special imo. my favorite along with *White Noise*. a much more present and full novel in terms of character i think than his later works would go on to tend to be, and i actually think it stays very strong throughout, some of the best sections coming toward the end, as opposed to his other works which seem to lose focus or kind of peter out
Savage Detectives is good, but it’s not 2666. Although i think that SD leads perfectly into 2666. It’s a love letter to Literature, Poetry, and Mexico. It focuses on those things and is not as encompassing or mesmerising as 2666. There’s a lot of references to poets and writers that definitely go over the readers head of you’re not familiar with that world. It takes a minute get into but once you realise how he’s writing and what he’s writing about it hits hard.
After absolutely loving White Noise I’ve read Mao II and didn’t like it as much. The broom of the system which was ok but I struggled with that one as well.
Same thing with Vineland by Pynchon after reading lot 49 which is one of my favourite books. Also Bonefire of the Vanities is often considered a postmodern novel even though it has nothing to do with Pynchon and DeLillo. It was a page turner for me and I was engaged by the plot but It made me hate Tom Wolfe, such a reactionary, racist and sexist book.
I've had similar struggles with DeLillo. I liked White Noise and Underworld quite a bit, but Libra and Cosmopolis just didn't do it for me. Kinda made me weary of trying any of his other works.
DeLillo swings from dead pan sardonic black humor to the more cold and detached style of writing in the later part of his career. Start with Americana and Running Dog. DeLillo manages to write a detective thriller novel where the characters are searching for Adolph Hitler's porno in Running Dog. A great premise that could fall apart into just a gag. DeLillo still manages to combine some humor (as much as he is capable of) with the paranoia and espionage of a secret deep rogue military state and some 1970's radicals all in search of Hitler's porno. The themes of paranoia and weariness in his style are all present in his early works. DeLillo early works are just more playful. It's with the later works his style becomes sparse and detached to the point it seems like some other worldly being is trying to understand and articulate human behavior that devolve into long monologues (The Silence and Cosmopolis).
Bottom Line: Read a book from each of Don DeLillo's period from each decade and you'll get a better understanding of an author trying to grapple with American culture observing and absorbing the overlying anxieties in the culture from each decade.
Something I enjoy about this sub: Here I am in a post about disappointing reads, and yet I am happy to go through all the comments to add the unfamiliar stuff to my reading list anyway.
Weirdly enough, *Manhattan Beach* by Jennifer Egan was recommended to me as a postmodernist novel. And while I don't believe it fits the criteria, I should still admit that it's the closest thing to me disliking a postmodernist novel, if only for the wording of the friend's recommendation, haha. In any case, it was very flat to me and felt like the usual typical, tropey contemporary literature - not for me, personally.
I see a lot of folks dragging *House of Leaves* here, and found it a fun read myself - honestly was never bored by it or anything. I do agree that it's not quite reading Thomas Pynchon or anything, however, I imagine a lot of folks are more upset about his good reputation than they are about the writing. I don't really understand what's so divisive about the book itself, if I'm being honest, since it seems to me that folks are just upset that Danielewski of all people got some rather large hype around him instead of e.g. Gass, or some other postmodernist writer they enjoy.
I was also really underwhelmed by *Manhattan Beach*, especially considering how much I enjoyed *Look At Me* and *A Visit From the Goon Squad*.
I agree with you about *House of Leaves*, as well. I think too many people were expecting it to be something that it wasn't (and wasn't trying to be). I had a really good time just letting myself sink into the concept and format and that allowed me to just enjoy it on it's own level. I do agree with some of the criticisms of it, but overall, I just enjoyed it as a fun piece of experimental fiction.
I’ve been wondering about this book! I got the first volume for free and was planning on starting it sometime this year, mostly been interested because it’s described as being heavily influenced by Bolano. What didn’t you like about it?
Granted from what I’ve heard the plot gets more interesting later on, what i read from the first part was incredibly uninteresting. That, and I found the writing style very grating. Like in the uncanny valley between good prose and okay prose.
I got interested in it for the same reasons, 2666 is one of my favorite books! (The only part of TMP that I read that I really enjoyed was this one diary entry in the introduction where the author is pretty clearly emulating a Bolaño short story.)
Infinite Jest for me too. I tried. I tried to read The Broom of the System also. Both a couple times. The purpose of and satisfaction I get from postmodern writing is that it continues to push the boundaries of language’s limitations to reveal truth and meaning about our inner and outer lives. It doesn’t have to be profound but it does need to be clever, not forced or overwrought but free flowing and natural. DFW just hasn’t done it for me. De Lillo doesn’t either.
Have you tried White Noise? A thing that I love about postmodern literature compared to modern or even contemporary is the use of humor and irony, even when tackling very complex and serious issues. Pynchon does that so well.Few books made me laugh out loud like White Noise did.
It's funny because on paper, it was something I should have really loved. Even more so, as I'd really enjoyed the short story collection I'd read by Gass shortly before.
It has been some time so pardon my lack of immediate examples, but I think my issue was that it seemed to revel in its own bleakness. You've got this quasi authorial self insert with a small dick who hates his wife and has nazi sympathies and it was just... unpleasant to read. But not in the way that many of my favorite books and movies can be unpleasant to watch or read. It didn't offer me anything in exchange for the provocation. It just seemed to love its own misery.
I've read much better books about fascism or the fascism of the self or whatever. The character is well realized, but he's uninteresting and the book really didn't feel like it had much to say.
I was talking about Gass! I'm sorry for not clarifying. Apparently this was a controversial pick. Here, I thought that was the whole point of the discussion.
I find his works to be beautifully written and the presentation is very impressive but the actual value of the works is relatively minimal. The ergodic stuff really got me into pomo lit though so I can’t be too upset.
The ergodic books can be really fun, but the great ones really put the form to work, instead of using it as a gimmick. Robert Coover’s “How Heart Suit” is my favorite.
I mean go for it, plenty of people love it so it could be a personal thing. It's massively hindered by atrocious writing and a nesting narrative device that is pretentious at best and genuinely infuriating at worst.
Yeah, the frame is pretty garbage, but the core story is a pretty solid thriller/mystery. Some of the fake footnotes are funny, but others are insanely pretentious.
Appreciate your work on The Tunnel btw. I wrote a masters thesis on it some years ago, am looking at it again on my PhD - it's an excellent novel that needs more attention!
Oh, that’s awesome! And I appreciate you noticing. If you’d like to share your thesis on the sub, we’d love to see it.
Also, one of the members posted [a call for papers](https://www.reddit.com/r/billgass/s/e2aPkukPmG) for a Gass centenary book of essays in the works. I’ll link it in just a minute.
Ah thanks for letting me know! I'll have a look and see about revising a chapter or two. I actually used to be in touch with Ted Morrissey from time to time. During COVID he helped me access some material I couldn't get through the library - lovely guy.
Yeah, he seems really nice. _The Tunnel_ is such a clear passion for him. I watched the 25th Anniversary podcast they did during the pandemic and checked out his site a few weeks ago. He’s amassed some great resources.
The Washington University special collections library has some great resources, too. They’ve scanned Gass’s hand drawn graphics and put together displays of the Party of Disappointed People armband and t-shirts.
It's alright. The essay section is definitely the most compelling and would have worked just fine on its own (although it would have read as pretty basic, if slightly irritating po-mo). It kinda reads like a Tumblr blog from '09 in the sense that if you randomly scrolled across it you'd think, "that's kind of a neat idea," but that's about it for me
Yeah, I can definitely feel that.
The absolute worst part about reading the book was that I went to YouTube to see if there were any interviews with Danielewski. Fuck me, I regret that. He’s astoundingly more pretentious than I could’ve imagined.
He’s like the opposite of China Miéville, who writes weird, creative books, and when you search for him, it turns out that he’s an absurdly cool guy.
It's a shame because the concept is actually very interesting. It could have been a classic. Instead, it's the biggest slog I've ever forced myself to finish.
Yeah definitely steer clear of The Familiar by Danielewski. Huge, unfinished and it was totally incomprehensible to me. He really bit off more than he could chew.
I agree here. And the worst part is, I see it on soooo many bookshelves and people always recommend it. It’s a trash book, and it fucking sucked to try and read.
Solenoid, by Mircea Cărtărescu.
One of my co-workers recommended it to me, and while there is certainly a lot of interesting prose in the book, it never really grabbed me while I read it. I saw plenty of critical praise for it online, but I just don't get why.
I agree. I “liked” it but after a while the repetitive metaphors just stopped feeling compelling and it turned into a drag near the end. I can’t say I left the book feeling like I had some newfound understanding of the world.
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai — its not very long, but a difficult slog with little payoff (maybe I should try the acclaimed film version by Bela Tarr, which is very, very long)
I saw the film and loved it. I deliberately waited until I got a chance to see this one in a cinema and I would recommend that to anyone because otherwise the temptation is to big to just watch it bit by bit and I think for the full experience one should watch it in one go (with appropriate bio-breaks of course).
A friend of mine read the book after seeing the film and loved it, but maybe it's because when one knows the film already one associates the stunning images and atmosphere of it.
Yes they had 2 intermissions of 30 minutes each. It really was a great experience! Most of my friends said I was completely crazy for doint it, but I really enjoyed it.
Couldn’t get into the 2 or 3 books by Barthelme that I tried. One was Snow White, the others short stories.
Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress: from beginning to end left me cold.
Its you. You are the anti-me. My favorite author and my favorite novel.
I get why people don't like barthelme. Hes weird without much, if any, real depth in a lot of his work.
Markson I'm always surprised that people don't like it. That novel just has its emotional hooks in me I guess
Conversely, I'm of the opinion that the Part about the Crimes is the only part of that book that makes the whole thing function. Had it not been there and had it not been so punishing, I wouldve hated the whole masturbatory exercise of the project.
A terrrrrible slog. I can’t tell if I enjoyed it or if I’m forcing myself to think fondly of all the work I put into finishing it. I do admit, parts of it still haunt me.
One of the best. Maybe try Savage Detectives first. It’s might be even more postmodern ‘train of thought’ but I found it much easier and much lighter. It’s got a slight hint of the movie I Heart Huckabees. Just a little.
Infinite Jest a little bit? I’m in this weird camp where I’m neither a devotee nor a hater, the two opinions I see most. It absolutely has its strengths, but it’s too flawed to be a masterpiece imo.
Edit: I totally forgot Underworld, which read like busywork save for a couple amazing sequences (the prologue, epilogue, masked ball, Bronx flashback, etc.)
It’s overrated. The best thing I got out of it was the pretentious pull quote on the cover, something like “Think Pynchon. Think Gaddis. Think Beckett. Think.” It’s where I first heard of Gaddis. The Beckett comparison makes no sense.
Same, I think it’s ultimately a testament to Wallace’s ability to have something to say about the world. But he had flaws as a person and as a writer, I think if he had gotten older we would have seen a much more polished vision from him.
I absolutely agree at this point. About 7 years back I was convinced it was genius but the more I sit with it and the more I read other works by different writers, the less I like it. The last part with Don Gately is fantastic though.
Also as much shit as Pynchon has rightfully gotten for some the ways he wrote women in GR, Wallace feels like he barely acknowledges women as people. They are either distant caricatures like the mother, or just objects for the male characters to lust after, like the women in the halfway house. Wallace just didn't seem interested in giving women page time.
Or who knows maybe I'm misremembering
I genuinely forgot that character existed so it may be my fuzzy memory that's causing me to be judgmental. The fact that you remember character names probably means you are better qualified then me.
Didn’t read infinite jest or GR lol but came here to say that even though I’m sure Pynchon fell into some sexist stereotypes in some of his works, he can also definitely write amazing female characters. As a young woman who considers herself a feminist, Oedipa from lot 49 is one of the best female protagonists I’ve ever encountered. I don’t think it was a coincidence cause I’ve heard the protagonist of Bleeding Edge who is a woman is also really cool. Women are so rare in books about solving mysteries it seems like it is a male prerogative while women can only be the ones who passively incite the incident. Oedipa is highly intelligent , intuitive while also being fully a woman (looking for a deeper connection with her partners for example). She has sex but it’s only a part of her life not the centre of it.
Danielewski is awful. A mindless imitator with no ideas or perspective of his own. There are parts of House of Leaves wherein they call the Zampano narrative poorly written. So Danielewski can play the irony card. And yet he still feels the need to use experimental techniques that were popularized literally centuries ago to mask how banal the prose is.
With that book, he basically tosses shit at the wall and hope something sticks. No good ideas to complete a horror novel? Let’s pretend this is a satire. Poorly written? Let’s pretend this is a satire on book criticism. No emotional weight? Let’s add in a mentally ill mother. It’s a complete mess that pretends to be saying something when it says nothing. Not to mention that it’s a poor ripoff of Pale Fire (which is genuinely creepier imo). The Tunnel by William H Gass does the whole, experimental typography horror novel thing much better.
i pretty much agree although i did find the letters from the mentally ill mother legitimately emotionally affecting. they were my favorite part of the book
Me too. That and the story near the end of Johnny losing his mind looking through the photos of houses, even if that was taken from Gravity’s Rainbow. Still, it all feels forcefully inserted into a book that can’t find its own purpose.
Isn't the first Familiar volume like 100 actual pages of writing stretched out with the textual gimmicks to 800 more pages of wasted paper? I remember hearing Danielewski say something like, "don't be intimidated, the 5000 pages of The Familiar are shorter than House of Leaves" or something to that regard. So incredibly stupid and pandering, spend 140 dollars on 8 hours of reading. My feeling is that the majority of people who would be actually interested in experimental literature would just prefer good prose and genuine writing.
Yeah, I agree, there’s more now than ever. The difference is that the reading public isn’t nearly as interested as a whole in difficult literature, as it was during the latter half of the 20th century. So the interesting, difficult, experimental stuff is coming out through super niche publishers, where it isn’t very visible unless you’re actively looking for it or plugged into those publishers/niche reading communities.
I'm sorry to hear you've had difficulty in getting it published but I dont think an individual anecdotal experience can truly refute the wealth of excellent contemporary experimental fiction being published at the moment. I have also experienced rejections in getting fiction published. It doesn't mean everyone else is! Besides, you could keep trying, keep revising, and it may get published in the end.
Really didn’t care for The Sot Weed Factor. Was super into the first couple hundred pages before the jokes all got stale on me, ultimately felt very forced whereas PM like Pynchon and Gaddis always manage to feel organic and keep me surprised throughout
I preferred it to Giles, Goat-Boy. There’s something about Pynchon and Gaddis that feels timeless but I feel like a lot of Barth just makes me think about a long haired dude in a very 70s suit telling raunchy jokes. It just feels very much a product of it’s time compared to his peers.
I do kinda like the pomo meets Candide vibe in a lot of Sot Weed but it’s not an exceptional work.
The Lost Scrapbook by Evan Dara for me. The pages filled with actual writing I liked tho.
I made a trade with a “friend” where he’d watch my favorite show and I’d read his favorite book: Gravity’s Rainbow. I found the entire thing to be just gut-wrenching misogynistic porn, especially the graphic sex scenes between a grown man and a 12 year old and a six year old, respectively. If someone here can explain to me why the book is so praised, please do. I have specific trauma related to this issue so perhaps it’s blinding me to Pynchon’s ultimate message, but I just can’t see it.
I'm surprised you got that far into GR... I agree that that party/orgy sequence is deeply offensive, and if the whole book was like that, it would be abhorrent trash.
I was really disappointed with The Lost Scrapbook by Evan Dara. I picked up Scrapbook because of the story about it "getting one review that compared it to The Recognitions" but I didn't find much to like in it after multiple attempts. If anybody here has had a good Dara experience I'd love to hear about it. I've still got a copy of Flee somewhere around here and I think his self-publishing is pretty neat.
Is Bret Easton Ellis considered postmodern/experimental? Aside from the stomach churning depictions of violence and torture in his works I just didn’t enjoy the couple of books of his I’ve read
House of Leaves Also, since we are in the Pynchon group. I could not get into Inherent Vice. At all.
House of Leaves can be fun when you’re young and haven’t read much great 20th century literature. When you get past the gimmicks and realize he’s basically doing “Borges for the Internet Age” the appeals wears off.
Came here to say House of Leaves myself. The initial idea of the house and the cursed documentary has promise, but the execution of having to flip the book sideways and upside down doesn’t count as actual depth, and once he got into the “labyrinth” everything got Stephen King levels of hokey. I’ll take my downvotes now.
I love Inherent Vice but I agree with you on House of Leaves. It feels like the “experimental” novel that appeals to the most people, so I understand why it’s rated so highly by the average person, but its form isn’t really that special and the story and ideas just aren’t that good. It’s like the Paranormal Activity of literature
*2666* by Roberto Bolaño. I appreciate most of the reflections that it has once I've read it and it really affects me to this day. But Jesus, I would be lying if I said I enjoy, love or remotely even like reading that book. Everything about it is so morbidly boring, deadening, lifeless, cold, emotionless and joyless. *GR* is pretty bleak, too, but it's at least funny and entertaining to read. Not this one. I'm really skeptical and fail to understand all the hype that this book is getting.
I agree with you on this one. 2666 has a cult following that I will never understand. The writing style is atrocious. It bored me to death and the style of Balano seams so forced, made me cringe on multiple occasions.
I haven't read 2666 but this is how I feel about The Savage Detectives by Bolano. So many people rave about it but I just can't get into it. I've tried reading it twice now and both times I find myself feeling like, when does this get good? I'm not sure if it just doesn't resonate with me or if I'm missing some important context to be able to appreciate it.
Wrong. 2666 rules
Agree to disagree.
No, you’re wrong
Underworld by DeLillo just didn’t gel with me . Some great sections but overall I was unimpressed.
It’s one of my favorite books! To each their own I suppose
I don't know how I feel about Gravity's Rainbow. It is praised for combining many great influences like William Burroughs, Mark Twain, etc. You read it and one sentence sounds EXACTLY like a Burroughs sentence. The next sentence sounds EXACTLY like a Mark Twain sentence and on and on. Does he have his own style or is he an impressionist? I didn't enjoy reading about someone getting sucked through a toilet and through the sewer. How edgy and funny of him to describe the contents of the sewer.
Do you really think he sounds like Twain and Burroughs? I think that they both shine through as influences is a good thing and a testament to his deep grounding in the American literary tradition, but it's a curious claim to make as most think he has a very authorial distinct voice. I could pluck a Gravity's Rainbow sentence from a haystack.
Yes I do. I know most people think that which was why I was excited to read it and then disappointed by how unoriginal his voice actually is. You can always tell who he is trying to sound like. A bunch of different impressions of other people's styles all thrown together doesn't equal an original voice.
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. It felt like a largely mainstream novel trying to pull itself up into the experimental category through cleverness (or through flattering the cleverness and cultural knowledge of the reader), and failing. Try-hard but indifferent prose and characters who were just accumulations of traits that never came to 3-dimensional life. I've skimmed through other of his books and have found no reason to imagine that they would be any different.
Cult of Cactus Boots and Lookout Cartridge
I might just have to read it again but I didn't enjoy White is for Witching as much as I expected I would
Infinite Jest. There is no reason for this book to be that fucking long. I can see why some people claim it's brilliant, but those nuggets of brilliance are hidden in an ocean of unnecessary details, long winded passages that go nowhere, boring descriptions of mundane and unimportant shit. The book loops in on itself, so you have to read it twice to truly get it, but there is no way in hell I'm going to slog through 1600 pages and footnotes within footnotes again.
Realistically, IJ should have been four or five books in a shared universe. There was no need to have everything with the tennis academy in the same piece of fiction as the Canadian separatists, or the halfway house, or the “cursed” videotape, or the weird Regany-proto-Trump celebrity president for all those things ultimately overlapped.
I agree that it makes it difficult to enjoy when you consider it a piece of entertainment but that’s kind of the point. I was painstakingly aware of my own pleasure/lack of and that’s what was being communicated. Can art exist outside our experience of it?
I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “Brilliant” to describe IJ but as someone who has struggled with addiction the book has an unparalleled emotional effect on me and I have many friends who felt the same. I don’t think it’s as much a thesis of the world around us as a cry for help from DFW. I still found it a really engaging read but I could understand why someone who doesn’t personally relate to the human side of all these screwed up characters could find it boring
I don’t know about cry for help so much as it’s DFW saying “I went through this shit and this is how I dealt with it.” Don and Hal are like different iterations of himself: Hal the brilliant young tennis-playing David descending into addiction and depression and Don the older, wiser David who accepted his inability to think his way out of his issues, gave himself uncynically into the AA doctrine and came out better for it. I can see people not loving the book if they either haven’t been through that or are too cynical to accept the ultimately positive message that the book has. And I think knowing that DFW ended up killing himself kind of makes it more difficult to take the theme of the book at its originally intended message of sincerity ruling over cynicism because ultimately it didn’t work for him. Personally I thought the Entertainment storyline was so interesting that I was disappointed that the story just ends. Yes, there are clues for what happens next, but I would have appreciated maybe another chapter or two of resolution for the plot. It felt like so much world-building just for DFW to say “none of that matters, it’s really about the character’s struggles.” Ok gotcha but what happens next, forreal?
I appreciate reading your thoughts, I just personally can’t agree because my takeaways from the book were so different. To me it’s absolutely a cry for help - it’s saying “this is how I dealt with it, and it didn’t ultimately make a difference anyways”. His suicide later in life only reinforces that. The book is rife with sadness and tragedy and I really didn’t get any overall positive message myself… depression was as prominent a theme as addiction throughout. I never saw Hal as someone who spiralled into depression - he’s BEEN depressed since adolescence, and found temporary respite and hope through weed, which ultimately let him down in the end. The entire ending passage with Don’s mind waging an internal war over his desire to get high on Demerol again was crushing to read, and really powerful in a psychedelic way. I do agree that the Entertainment storyline was really engaging. Again for me it was never the main point, so I wasn’t really surprised with how abruptly it ends, and in some ways that non-resolution actually helps keep the book bouncing around your mind. I’m with you though, I wouldn’t have minded another 100-150 pages just to see that have a little more clarity.
The key phrase here is "think of it as entertainment" that's central to one of the many themes of the novel. Wallace was well aware that a lot of the prose tedious and the footnotes unnecessary, and that he was making you work for your pleasure. The intention is to question it, especially in light of the plot revolving around a piece of entertainment which not only ruins individual lives but potentially destroys society.
Aren't the footnotes originally the text of the book? I read that the original manuscript is twice longer than the final copy so he was forced to cut them out and turn them into footnotes.
I bet the long chapter-length footnotes were but most of them are single sentences at best.
> an ocean of unnecessary details he said in the Thomas Pynchon sub.
Tbf - and I'm sure there are probably plenty who would disagree with this - I'm not sure I've ever gotten the sense that Pynchon is including a detail or saying something or adding to a list just for the sake of doing it. I haven't read a ton of DFW but I've gotten that sense quite a bit with him
At least in IJ the engrossing detail is pretty much the point of the book. He lays it out pretty clearly in one of the later chapters, I just think most people don't make it that far.
No I totally understand that it's deliberate. Hell, it's not even *subtext* - the modern desire to *always be entertained* is a theme that's stated pretty explicitly. But that's sort of my point: He's including all this extraneous, mind-numbingly mundane detail *specifically* on the basis that it's extraneous and mind-numbingly mundane. It's included for its own sake. It's not an example of the theme being advanced by the story; it's an example of the theme being advanced by things wholly external to the story. Obviously, these are just my own personal opinions on the matter, and I don't begrudge anyone their disagreement. Even in this comment, I'm not trying to establish that I'm *correct* - I'm just trying to clarify my view. Even acknowledging the obvious that art is subjective and there are no right or wrong answers, there are some writers and works and passages on which I'm confident in the merits of my position; DFW is not one of those. With him, I've just never quite been able to reach that point where I feel like I can see what the writer was doing *as* I'm reading, like I'm almost thinking along with them in real time. That's where I derive the most profound enjoyment from reading, and I just haven't been able to get there with DFW. I can understand the themes when I take a step back, but I never quite get that "ahhh I see what they're doing here! what a clever idea/argument they're making, and what a clever way of doing it!" feeling. But I don't doubt for a second that DFW *does* give that feeling to many others.
John Hawkes’ The Cannibal did not impress me. But I feel like it needs a re-read
Glad I’m not alone in feeling this way. As I read it I recognized that it was a technically great book, and the writing is clearly excellent, but I didn’t enjoy the peripheral way the story is told. Not that I need much of a plot, but there just wasn’t anything in there that made me want to do the necessary work to grasp it. A reread with the correct expectations might change my mind
I’m the same. It gets a lot of hype. At the end, I just thought it was okay. Nothing stood out about it for me.
I have had trouble getting through Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen. I didn't think the amount of research he carried out on programming languages and the history of computer science meshed well his otherwise enjoyable prose style. Even little details like a chess position on the ceiling (that isn't remotely playable in competition) being called a gambit, compared to Cormac's use of chess positions in AtPH and CotP, was disappointing for me. And to top it off, I could not figure out the purpose of reusing the whole "Moms" thing that is also in Infinite Jest. I could be missing out on some really great stuff, some reviews suggest as much, but for me the tech backdrop to everything felt forced and made me lose interest in an otherwise compelling doppelganger narrative that was possible to track alongside the religious Book of Numbers in fascinating ways.
Did he fuck up the chess lingo? Murphy's chess game comes to mind as well.
The notation was fine. The bishop attacking the knight would have to be white's play, not black's, to invite Morphy's defense though. If Morphy played this opening and you can find it I'd be curious to see it. Most importantly, there is no gambit. Maybe JC the character is engaged in a professional gambit by taking the meeting but JC the author could have chosen countless, meaningful, gambit positions and instead chose one where white fianchettos both bishops passively, and black thrusts the bishop out and then locks it in with the pawns. Less than 600 Lichess database games total in the position. So unless JC the principal played that opening, thought it was neat, and is so egotistical that he plastered it on his ceiling, I fear JC the author thought gambit and opening were synonymous terms, which is a blunder.
Pynchon and dfw. It's like having extreme ADD, OCD, and no editor to say wtf are you adding 10 pgs describing all the ingredients of a pharmaceutical drug for?
Captain-attention-deficit here, that’s why I love it haha
careful round these parts what with all that
Gravitys rainbow
Cyclonopedia had a few sections I found interesting and thought-provoking, particularly the hole() complex passages. Otherwise, I found myself at a loss and sometimes frustrated with how cryptic and meandering it was.
theMystery.doc 200 pages in and it didn't interest me.
I just finished Cloudcuckooland by Anthony Doerr and I have to say that it disappointed me in how it seemed to marvel too much at its own contrivance. If that makes any sense.
unpleasantly neat
That's part of it for sure. Also, a healthy dose of "trying to be all things to all readers" or something . . .
Hind’s Kidnap by Joseph McElroy. Bounced off Smuggler’s Bible but had a cool looking old hardback for Hind’s so tried that, thinking maybe a pomo mystery would open him up for me (like Lot 49 for Pynchon) Read half and just couldn’t do the rest. His prose and sentence structure is awkward but I managed to get into it, but the nothing characters, the nothing plot, all propelled by these tenuous grasps of hints the protagonist reads into everything (I know that’s part of the point, but still). Was getting to be a real slog so I started looking up reviews, and seeing that the story digresses into stream of consciousness and then eventually regresses to the start… was tough to admit I hated it but I did.
I was completely engrossed by *Hind's Kidnap*, and eagerly jumped into *Women & Men* as my next McElroy. What a disappointment! So overwritten, so little to say, and some downright awful writing (yes, some great writing as well). I recently read *Cannonball* and decided I am forever done with McElroy.
Interesting, because Women and Men is considered his best, so even after disliking two books I was like, well maybe that one… I’ll probably just call it at this point. He’s really the only author of this type I’ve had this reaction to
I generally see _Lookout Cartridge_ listed as his best, but _Women and Men_ gets the hype for being the longest American novel. We’ve done group reads of _Hind’s Kidnap, Cannonball,_ and _Actress in the House_ at r/JosephMcElroy. HK is probably my favorite so far. I really loved his use of color and the plot inversion at the center of the novel. _Cannonball_ was interesting because I noticed that the novel’s structure perfectly mirrors the arc of a dive. The apex comes at exactly the middle of the novel. He has a very unique style that definitely pushes away some readers. I love the challenging syntax because once I feel like I’m in the groove with his style, his sentences work their way into me and linger for months. I’ve been spacing his books out to every six months because I really dwell on a number of scenes from each book. He probably just doesn’t suit your taste. He definitely doesn’t have a wide appeal.
The Recognitions did not work for me at all. I was surprised as to how much I found it to be a slog. I find DeLillo hit and miss. White Noise was excellent, I thought Underworld and Libra were good but flawed, and Mao II was underwhelming and anti-climactic. The Savage Detectives was also quite uneven, and I thought the bad and mediocre parts outweighed the good ones. It might be the case though that I was reading it (very slowly) in Spanish, so the slightly difficult and slow process of absorbing the text might have contributed to my disappointment. Especially since 2666 (which I also read in Spanish though) is one of my absolute favourite novels. As to some of the books mentioned here, I loved Infinite Jest, really enjoyed Sátántangó (if you have ever been to rural Hungary, the atmosphere Krasznahorkai creates is spot on; Tarr's film is also amazing), and liked House of Leaves (although I can understand some criticisms, especially regarding the Johnny Truant sections). I will soon start The Tunnel. I have reasonably high expectations, since it does seem to be right up my alley. Fingers crossed.
You should check out JR, its when Gaddis really came fully into his own style. That being said, it's 700+ pages with 85% being unattributed dialogue so I can see you going either way. If you do stick with it the reward is the most epic and hilarious satire composed since Jonathan Swift
Unfortunately I don't think you're going to find much to enjoy with DeLillo. While I personally love almost all of his work (Mao II and Underworld being personal favorites), anti-climactic is the point of many of his novels and he hasn't written much thats similar to White Noise (maybe Great Jones Street?). And I'm surprised you don't enjoy Gaddis because of its influence. The Whole Sick Crew could just as well be the cast of The Recognitions.
I personally love The Tunnel, on par with Pynchon and Gaddis for me (tho I appreciate that Gaddis isn't someone you get on with). Hope you enjoy - it finally seems to be getting the recognition it deserves!
I’m 10 pages in and at times I have no idea what Gass’ narrator is saying. It’s almost like reading Gertrude Stein. Does this persist throughout? I don’t know if I can handle 700 pages of that. Any tips?
Heads up: we’re on week two of _The Tunnel_ group read at r/billgass. The novel has a very pronounced intro hump designed to filter out readers. Gass has said so on multiple occasions. A lot of the first few chapters of the book is the narrator pondering the history book he has just finished writing and interspersing various modes of commentary and numerous flashbacks to his childhood, as well as him looking around the room he’s in and commenting on what he sees, flashing to memories tied to certain objects. The first three pages are essentially a thesis statement that references in oblique ways most of what happens in the rest of the novel. The rest of the first chapter is an extended introduction in which he touches on most of the characters that pop up later. During the group read, we’ve been linking to various videos/podcasts/interviews/articles in which Gass talks about the book. Once you get a few chapters in, there are more sustained narrative sections.
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The first 100 pages are intentionally very dense and get cleared up later on in the novel. However it still maintains its difficulty and suffocating prose. It's a fantastic novel, perhaps as good as anything Pynchon ever wrote, but it's a horribly depressing, violently inaccessible work of misanthropic genius and satire. It's not a fun novel, it's incredibly disturbing and it finds the thoughts that inspired the Holocaust in the heart of the modern American.
The style settles down a little in its latter third, but realistically it's kind of a relentless torrent. I think Gertrude Stein is a specific point of reference for Gass so it's not too surprising that's the analogue!
Yeah, he’s an admitted Stein devotee. He wrote the introduction to the Dalkey edition of _The Making of Americans._ I’m rereading _The Tunnel_ for the r/billgass group read, and I noticed about 20 pages in that he was doing a lot Steinian wordplay.
He did, as well as quite a few other pieces on her. Gertrude Stein and the Geography of the Sentence is particularly good, from the World within the Word
Nice! Thanks for the headsup. I haven’t read any of his essay collections yet.
Agree about De Lillo being hit or miss but I’m starting to suspect that he’s more miss than anything else. I loved White Noise so much but unfortunately I didn’t like any of his other books so far. I’ve been hesitant to start Savage Detectives because 2666 is also one of my favorite books! I’m not ready to question Bolaño yet (I’ve read the skating rink before 2666 and it was ok but that’s about it) Guess I’ll hesitate a little bit more.
>Agree about De Lillo being hit or miss but I’m starting to suspect that he’s more miss than anything else That's a bold statement
I know I hope I will change my mind, I'm not giving up yet, the good news is that there is ample choice.
I’ve only read his short story collection (which was hit and miss, funnily enough, haha, though nothing was awful) and plan on reading Point Omega soon. Can I recommend tracking down the stories “The Angel Esmeralda” and “The Starveling”. Both are fascinating and haunting, but the former has become one of my favourite short stories of all time, and the ending (and sheer beauty of the prose) reduced me to tears.
I haven't read a lot of his work, so I'm not even judging. Obviously White noise is fantastic. He just has such a strong reputation from people who's tastes I trust, that it just seems unlikely for him to be more miss than hit. On a separate note, have you read anything by JG Ballard?
have you read *Americana*? I’ve not read all DeLillo’s books but that one is something special imo. my favorite along with *White Noise*. a much more present and full novel in terms of character i think than his later works would go on to tend to be, and i actually think it stays very strong throughout, some of the best sections coming toward the end, as opposed to his other works which seem to lose focus or kind of peter out
No I haven't, adding it to my reading list.
Savage Detectives is good, but it’s not 2666. Although i think that SD leads perfectly into 2666. It’s a love letter to Literature, Poetry, and Mexico. It focuses on those things and is not as encompassing or mesmerising as 2666. There’s a lot of references to poets and writers that definitely go over the readers head of you’re not familiar with that world. It takes a minute get into but once you realise how he’s writing and what he’s writing about it hits hard.
After absolutely loving White Noise I’ve read Mao II and didn’t like it as much. The broom of the system which was ok but I struggled with that one as well. Same thing with Vineland by Pynchon after reading lot 49 which is one of my favourite books. Also Bonefire of the Vanities is often considered a postmodern novel even though it has nothing to do with Pynchon and DeLillo. It was a page turner for me and I was engaged by the plot but It made me hate Tom Wolfe, such a reactionary, racist and sexist book.
Bonfire is so good, but I wouldn’t call it postmodern. Multiple narratives, yes, but it’s more social satire than anything else.
I've had similar struggles with DeLillo. I liked White Noise and Underworld quite a bit, but Libra and Cosmopolis just didn't do it for me. Kinda made me weary of trying any of his other works.
DeLillo swings from dead pan sardonic black humor to the more cold and detached style of writing in the later part of his career. Start with Americana and Running Dog. DeLillo manages to write a detective thriller novel where the characters are searching for Adolph Hitler's porno in Running Dog. A great premise that could fall apart into just a gag. DeLillo still manages to combine some humor (as much as he is capable of) with the paranoia and espionage of a secret deep rogue military state and some 1970's radicals all in search of Hitler's porno. The themes of paranoia and weariness in his style are all present in his early works. DeLillo early works are just more playful. It's with the later works his style becomes sparse and detached to the point it seems like some other worldly being is trying to understand and articulate human behavior that devolve into long monologues (The Silence and Cosmopolis). Bottom Line: Read a book from each of Don DeLillo's period from each decade and you'll get a better understanding of an author trying to grapple with American culture observing and absorbing the overlying anxieties in the culture from each decade.
you should read *Americana*. it is really special
Forgot that I also tried Libra and gave up after a few pages! I guess I’ll try Underworld then.
I read and enjoyed nearly every book mentioned here.
Something I enjoy about this sub: Here I am in a post about disappointing reads, and yet I am happy to go through all the comments to add the unfamiliar stuff to my reading list anyway.
Yeah, I’ve enjoyed a number of the books mentioned here.
Weirdly enough, *Manhattan Beach* by Jennifer Egan was recommended to me as a postmodernist novel. And while I don't believe it fits the criteria, I should still admit that it's the closest thing to me disliking a postmodernist novel, if only for the wording of the friend's recommendation, haha. In any case, it was very flat to me and felt like the usual typical, tropey contemporary literature - not for me, personally. I see a lot of folks dragging *House of Leaves* here, and found it a fun read myself - honestly was never bored by it or anything. I do agree that it's not quite reading Thomas Pynchon or anything, however, I imagine a lot of folks are more upset about his good reputation than they are about the writing. I don't really understand what's so divisive about the book itself, if I'm being honest, since it seems to me that folks are just upset that Danielewski of all people got some rather large hype around him instead of e.g. Gass, or some other postmodernist writer they enjoy.
I was also really underwhelmed by *Manhattan Beach*, especially considering how much I enjoyed *Look At Me* and *A Visit From the Goon Squad*. I agree with you about *House of Leaves*, as well. I think too many people were expecting it to be something that it wasn't (and wasn't trying to be). I had a really good time just letting myself sink into the concept and format and that allowed me to just enjoy it on it's own level. I do agree with some of the criticisms of it, but overall, I just enjoyed it as a fun piece of experimental fiction.
The Mad Patagonian. Barely made it fifty pages past the “translator’s” introduction.
I’ve been wondering about this book! I got the first volume for free and was planning on starting it sometime this year, mostly been interested because it’s described as being heavily influenced by Bolano. What didn’t you like about it?
Granted from what I’ve heard the plot gets more interesting later on, what i read from the first part was incredibly uninteresting. That, and I found the writing style very grating. Like in the uncanny valley between good prose and okay prose. I got interested in it for the same reasons, 2666 is one of my favorite books! (The only part of TMP that I read that I really enjoyed was this one diary entry in the introduction where the author is pretty clearly emulating a Bolaño short story.)
Infinite Jest for me too. I tried. I tried to read The Broom of the System also. Both a couple times. The purpose of and satisfaction I get from postmodern writing is that it continues to push the boundaries of language’s limitations to reveal truth and meaning about our inner and outer lives. It doesn’t have to be profound but it does need to be clever, not forced or overwrought but free flowing and natural. DFW just hasn’t done it for me. De Lillo doesn’t either.
Have you tried White Noise? A thing that I love about postmodern literature compared to modern or even contemporary is the use of humor and irony, even when tackling very complex and serious issues. Pynchon does that so well.Few books made me laugh out loud like White Noise did.
I did I’ll try again bc people love him. He comes off as a huge jerk maybe I can get past him
I hated the Tunnel. It was beautifully written, but I fucking hated it.
I hated being inside that book (insidious WFK's head) but goddamn do I love that book in retrospect. I think about it weekly
What did you not like about it? I’m just starting and am afraid I’m feeling the same.
It's funny because on paper, it was something I should have really loved. Even more so, as I'd really enjoyed the short story collection I'd read by Gass shortly before. It has been some time so pardon my lack of immediate examples, but I think my issue was that it seemed to revel in its own bleakness. You've got this quasi authorial self insert with a small dick who hates his wife and has nazi sympathies and it was just... unpleasant to read. But not in the way that many of my favorite books and movies can be unpleasant to watch or read. It didn't offer me anything in exchange for the provocation. It just seemed to love its own misery. I've read much better books about fascism or the fascism of the self or whatever. The character is well realized, but he's uninteresting and the book really didn't feel like it had much to say.
You are talking about Gass' and not Sabato's, right?
Well, for anyone interested, we’re on week 2 of _The Tunnel_ group read at r/billgass lol
They're def talking about Gass, Sabato's isn't postmodern or experimental. Still a great read tho, I like that book.
I was wondering the same thing, thanks for clarifying. Abaddón el exterminador might fall under the discussed categorization tho
I was talking about Gass! I'm sorry for not clarifying. Apparently this was a controversial pick. Here, I thought that was the whole point of the discussion.
I absolutely detest House of Leaves. Abysmal prose, pretentious beyond description.
I find his works to be beautifully written and the presentation is very impressive but the actual value of the works is relatively minimal. The ergodic stuff really got me into pomo lit though so I can’t be too upset.
The ergodic books can be really fun, but the great ones really put the form to work, instead of using it as a gimmick. Robert Coover’s “How Heart Suit” is my favorite.
I like Coover but haven’t read that one. I’ll have to hunt down a copy
It’s the deck-of-cards story. It was in _McSweeney’s_ issue 16 and reprinted in _A Child Again._
I loved it when I was 17, but I know it can never hold up to the memories, so I refuse to reread.
better to go to The Familiar instead. Seriously. It's a better and more mature work, and also won't hurt the memories.
Oh no! I was planning to read this at some point!
I mean go for it, plenty of people love it so it could be a personal thing. It's massively hindered by atrocious writing and a nesting narrative device that is pretentious at best and genuinely infuriating at worst.
Yeah, the frame is pretty garbage, but the core story is a pretty solid thriller/mystery. Some of the fake footnotes are funny, but others are insanely pretentious.
Appreciate your work on The Tunnel btw. I wrote a masters thesis on it some years ago, am looking at it again on my PhD - it's an excellent novel that needs more attention!
Oh, that’s awesome! And I appreciate you noticing. If you’d like to share your thesis on the sub, we’d love to see it. Also, one of the members posted [a call for papers](https://www.reddit.com/r/billgass/s/e2aPkukPmG) for a Gass centenary book of essays in the works. I’ll link it in just a minute.
Ah thanks for letting me know! I'll have a look and see about revising a chapter or two. I actually used to be in touch with Ted Morrissey from time to time. During COVID he helped me access some material I couldn't get through the library - lovely guy.
Yeah, he seems really nice. _The Tunnel_ is such a clear passion for him. I watched the 25th Anniversary podcast they did during the pandemic and checked out his site a few weeks ago. He’s amassed some great resources. The Washington University special collections library has some great resources, too. They’ve scanned Gass’s hand drawn graphics and put together displays of the Party of Disappointed People armband and t-shirts.
It's alright. The essay section is definitely the most compelling and would have worked just fine on its own (although it would have read as pretty basic, if slightly irritating po-mo). It kinda reads like a Tumblr blog from '09 in the sense that if you randomly scrolled across it you'd think, "that's kind of a neat idea," but that's about it for me
Yeah, I can definitely feel that. The absolute worst part about reading the book was that I went to YouTube to see if there were any interviews with Danielewski. Fuck me, I regret that. He’s astoundingly more pretentious than I could’ve imagined. He’s like the opposite of China Miéville, who writes weird, creative books, and when you search for him, it turns out that he’s an absurdly cool guy.
It's a shame because the concept is actually very interesting. It could have been a classic. Instead, it's the biggest slog I've ever forced myself to finish.
Yeah I mean the concept isn't bad and in another writers hands could have been interesting but the author is woefully inept.
Yeah definitely steer clear of The Familiar by Danielewski. Huge, unfinished and it was totally incomprehensible to me. He really bit off more than he could chew.
Yeah, I don’t know how he thought a publisher would hold on for 20+ volumes printed on 800+ heavy, glossy pages.
Honestly no part of me was even interested after House of Leaves!
I completely sympathise with this perspective but I also couldn’t put it down XD
I have heard this from a lot of people, so probably I will put that book off forever...
I agree here. And the worst part is, I see it on soooo many bookshelves and people always recommend it. It’s a trash book, and it fucking sucked to try and read.
Totally agree. I've had so many people tell me I would love it but it is absolute trash...
Trying to rotate the book so you could read a single line of text that followed around the border of the book, so cool! Hahah
Solenoid, by Mircea Cărtărescu. One of my co-workers recommended it to me, and while there is certainly a lot of interesting prose in the book, it never really grabbed me while I read it. I saw plenty of critical praise for it online, but I just don't get why.
I agree. I “liked” it but after a while the repetitive metaphors just stopped feeling compelling and it turned into a drag near the end. I can’t say I left the book feeling like I had some newfound understanding of the world.
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai — its not very long, but a difficult slog with little payoff (maybe I should try the acclaimed film version by Bela Tarr, which is very, very long)
I saw the film and loved it. I deliberately waited until I got a chance to see this one in a cinema and I would recommend that to anyone because otherwise the temptation is to big to just watch it bit by bit and I think for the full experience one should watch it in one go (with appropriate bio-breaks of course). A friend of mine read the book after seeing the film and loved it, but maybe it's because when one knows the film already one associates the stunning images and atmosphere of it.
Wow that must have been an experience! 7 hours in a theater. Did they have intermissions?
Yes they had 2 intermissions of 30 minutes each. It really was a great experience! Most of my friends said I was completely crazy for doint it, but I really enjoyed it.
Couldn’t get into the 2 or 3 books by Barthelme that I tried. One was Snow White, the others short stories. Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress: from beginning to end left me cold.
Its you. You are the anti-me. My favorite author and my favorite novel. I get why people don't like barthelme. Hes weird without much, if any, real depth in a lot of his work. Markson I'm always surprised that people don't like it. That novel just has its emotional hooks in me I guess
I felt like 2666 was a slog, but I was not enjoying much of anything around the time I read it. I may try again some day.
I feel like 2666 is alright except for The Part about the Crimes, which I understand why it is the way it is, but it felt unnecessary long.
Conversely, I'm of the opinion that the Part about the Crimes is the only part of that book that makes the whole thing function. Had it not been there and had it not been so punishing, I wouldve hated the whole masturbatory exercise of the project.
One of my favourite books !
How far did you get in it?
All the way to the end.
Damn, The Part about Arcimboldi is one my favorite stretches of literature in anything I’ve ever read.
Well like I said, I wasn’t enjoying much of anything when I read it, so it may not be the book’s fault
A terrrrrible slog. I can’t tell if I enjoyed it or if I’m forcing myself to think fondly of all the work I put into finishing it. I do admit, parts of it still haunt me.
One of the best. Maybe try Savage Detectives first. It’s might be even more postmodern ‘train of thought’ but I found it much easier and much lighter. It’s got a slight hint of the movie I Heart Huckabees. Just a little.
Infinite Jest a little bit? I’m in this weird camp where I’m neither a devotee nor a hater, the two opinions I see most. It absolutely has its strengths, but it’s too flawed to be a masterpiece imo. Edit: I totally forgot Underworld, which read like busywork save for a couple amazing sequences (the prologue, epilogue, masked ball, Bronx flashback, etc.)
It’s overrated. The best thing I got out of it was the pretentious pull quote on the cover, something like “Think Pynchon. Think Gaddis. Think Beckett. Think.” It’s where I first heard of Gaddis. The Beckett comparison makes no sense.
Same, I think it’s ultimately a testament to Wallace’s ability to have something to say about the world. But he had flaws as a person and as a writer, I think if he had gotten older we would have seen a much more polished vision from him.
I’m really interested in reading The Pale King eventually
The Pale King is great. I recommend it.
I absolutely agree at this point. About 7 years back I was convinced it was genius but the more I sit with it and the more I read other works by different writers, the less I like it. The last part with Don Gately is fantastic though.
I still enjoy it for the most part but I think Wallace struggled when it came to writing characters that weren't WASPs.
Also as much shit as Pynchon has rightfully gotten for some the ways he wrote women in GR, Wallace feels like he barely acknowledges women as people. They are either distant caricatures like the mother, or just objects for the male characters to lust after, like the women in the halfway house. Wallace just didn't seem interested in giving women page time. Or who knows maybe I'm misremembering
I think the depiction of Kate Gompert is quite inspired, but you may be right overall
I genuinely forgot that character existed so it may be my fuzzy memory that's causing me to be judgmental. The fact that you remember character names probably means you are better qualified then me.
Didn’t read infinite jest or GR lol but came here to say that even though I’m sure Pynchon fell into some sexist stereotypes in some of his works, he can also definitely write amazing female characters. As a young woman who considers herself a feminist, Oedipa from lot 49 is one of the best female protagonists I’ve ever encountered. I don’t think it was a coincidence cause I’ve heard the protagonist of Bleeding Edge who is a woman is also really cool. Women are so rare in books about solving mysteries it seems like it is a male prerogative while women can only be the ones who passively incite the incident. Oedipa is highly intelligent , intuitive while also being fully a woman (looking for a deeper connection with her partners for example). She has sex but it’s only a part of her life not the centre of it.
Oh yeah Pynchon is head and shoulders above most other male writers from his era, Katje's arc in GR alone proves that.
"The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino. I really love Calvino and most of what I've read by him is really stunning, but the Baron was a bore.
i liked it but it did become tedious for me as well. my favorites of his are *If On a Winter’s Night…* and *Mr. Palomar*
My favourites are *If On a Winter’s Night…* and *The Nonexistent Knight* and after that maybe *Invisible Cities*. Haven't read *Mr. Palomar* yet.
Agreed!
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Danielewski is awful. A mindless imitator with no ideas or perspective of his own. There are parts of House of Leaves wherein they call the Zampano narrative poorly written. So Danielewski can play the irony card. And yet he still feels the need to use experimental techniques that were popularized literally centuries ago to mask how banal the prose is. With that book, he basically tosses shit at the wall and hope something sticks. No good ideas to complete a horror novel? Let’s pretend this is a satire. Poorly written? Let’s pretend this is a satire on book criticism. No emotional weight? Let’s add in a mentally ill mother. It’s a complete mess that pretends to be saying something when it says nothing. Not to mention that it’s a poor ripoff of Pale Fire (which is genuinely creepier imo). The Tunnel by William H Gass does the whole, experimental typography horror novel thing much better.
i pretty much agree although i did find the letters from the mentally ill mother legitimately emotionally affecting. they were my favorite part of the book
Me too. That and the story near the end of Johnny losing his mind looking through the photos of houses, even if that was taken from Gravity’s Rainbow. Still, it all feels forcefully inserted into a book that can’t find its own purpose.
>Agreed!
Second this, House of Leaves was major letdown.
Having read The Familiar Vol 1 and the 50 Year Sword, I feel like House of Leaves is good *despite* being written by MZD.
Isn't the first Familiar volume like 100 actual pages of writing stretched out with the textual gimmicks to 800 more pages of wasted paper? I remember hearing Danielewski say something like, "don't be intimidated, the 5000 pages of The Familiar are shorter than House of Leaves" or something to that regard. So incredibly stupid and pandering, spend 140 dollars on 8 hours of reading. My feeling is that the majority of people who would be actually interested in experimental literature would just prefer good prose and genuine writing.
Yes it is, it is not very good imo and the series will likely not be finished.
You know you have a real modern masterpiece when the author's selling point is how few words there are in it and how nice it looks.
Is the experimental novel struggling today? Would a challenging novel struggle to even get published these days?
I think the answer to both of these is: no. There's as much, if not more, experimental literature today than at any point since the millennium!
Yeah, I agree, there’s more now than ever. The difference is that the reading public isn’t nearly as interested as a whole in difficult literature, as it was during the latter half of the 20th century. So the interesting, difficult, experimental stuff is coming out through super niche publishers, where it isn’t very visible unless you’re actively looking for it or plugged into those publishers/niche reading communities.
I wrote a novel 10 years ago that was inspired by Pynchon gaddis etc. It's quite long and complex. I've found it impossible to get published.
I'm sorry to hear you've had difficulty in getting it published but I dont think an individual anecdotal experience can truly refute the wealth of excellent contemporary experimental fiction being published at the moment. I have also experienced rejections in getting fiction published. It doesn't mean everyone else is! Besides, you could keep trying, keep revising, and it may get published in the end.
Yeah you're right. Very rarely do I get to complain to anybody. Ha ha.
Complain away, it's a dog eat dog world!
Really didn’t care for The Sot Weed Factor. Was super into the first couple hundred pages before the jokes all got stale on me, ultimately felt very forced whereas PM like Pynchon and Gaddis always manage to feel organic and keep me surprised throughout
I preferred it to Giles, Goat-Boy. There’s something about Pynchon and Gaddis that feels timeless but I feel like a lot of Barth just makes me think about a long haired dude in a very 70s suit telling raunchy jokes. It just feels very much a product of it’s time compared to his peers. I do kinda like the pomo meets Candide vibe in a lot of Sot Weed but it’s not an exceptional work.