Have you ever been memed by /lit/?
I got this and it's alright, but it's essentially the juiciest prose parts of a great novel and...nothing else.
>>7705860
No, it's not. Like myself and almost everyone else who as read it, you didn't understand it. Though the preface gives a good summary of what makes it great--its interesting plot, its nightmarish qualities, and its ideas, which are possibly the best an American has ever had--it lacks the shine required to illuminate it; so, if you want to actually understand it, I recommend you read some supplementary materials.
t. Gassposter
>>7705860
Hawkes is a man who literally said this
"I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained."
So you have to understand that's what you're in for before reading his books.
>>7705888
I don't really agree with this. Hawkes had a very well-defined style where his books weren't so much about things as they were externalizations of his psychic landscape. They're not really meant to be understood in the sense that something like Ulysses would be where Joyce deliberately did things and came up with charts that explained the designs to his friends.
The only way to really "get" Hawkes is to "click" with his sensibility. There are some places that use The Lime Twig for courses but I think it's something of a terrible idea to attempt an academic reading or dissection of his books. Despite him being a Harvard grad, the idea of that just runs counter to everything he did with his writing.
>>7705888
Gass is shit
>>7706031
Hot opinion lad. Got any more?
>>7706017
I can see where you are coming from, and agree that he didn't write novels that are supposed to be "figured out" in the same way Joyce or Pound did, but he certainly had a goal when he was writing The Lime Twig--as I understand it, the dissolution of reality--and, in my opinion, trying to understand how he achieved it is what makes him so difficult.
>>7706031
To reply with the same amount of effort you put into your post, nuh-uh.
>>7706071
Yeah, he's for pseuds. I got plenty, m8
>>7706088
This board as a whole is for pseuds.
>>7706088
Any reason why, gaucho?
>>7706107
takes one 2 know
>>7706178
Yes, it does, but, unlike you, I'm aware enough to know I am too dumb to call authors as respected as Gass bad.
>>7706202
Literally you and a few other autists respect him
>>7706202
Don't doubt yourself too much.
>>7706242
>Literally you and a number of literary critics and authors, including William Gaddis, respect (in Gaddis' case, respected) him.
Fixed that for you.
>>7706202
Respected by pseuds who claim his work cannot be understood or that it captures the unreality of reality or some other such nonsense.
>>7706244
For now, I have to. But I appreciate the kind words, friend.
>>7706262
>literary critics
pathetic
way to invalidate anything you said
>>7706078
I haven't read The Lime Twig yet, but I've read several of his other books and anti-realism seems to be a constant in all of his writing. By which I mean most of the things in his books are technically plausible in that typically, nothing outright fantastical happens, but there's a disconnect between the plausibility of the events and any sense of conscious rationality because he deliberately focuses on details that emphasize the imagery and sensations he wants to evoke while omitting details that would ground something as "realistic".
>>7706262
>slavish taste in /lit/ desu
>>7706299
Well then there's your "how": he carefully modulates the level of detail, and the kinds of details the reader is exposed to create a sense of unreality that mostly doesn't quite cross over into full-blown surrealism.
>>7706369
That makes sense. I appreciate your insight, anon.
>>7706384
No problem. It's really rare to see anyone here who even wants to talk about Hawkes or has read any of his books.
>>7706417
For real, though. The stories of his novels alone warrant a read.
>>7706473
Yeah. Travesty, for example was a really simple concept at first glance (crazy dude gets his daughter and her boyfriend into a car with the deliberate intent of crashing and killing all three of them) but it was amazing, especially if you read it right after The Blood Oranges and Death Sleep & The Traveler. It's just a perfect culmination of everything those two books were building up to conceptually.
i may or may not be having a hyper-manic phase but the discourse of the high(er)/low effort posts itt that in their synthesis so represent the modality of content generated by the nature of this place's ephemerality and anonymity are giving me existential feels and I'm nigh palpitating at the ability for communication and all its emcompassing hermeneutical process thus afforded by our incidental placement in time and space but whatever I'm a filthy aesthete fuck holy
