I know they were originally lumped together arbitrarily by merit of their supposed "difficulty", but am I the only one that sees the Meme Trilogy as thematically consistent? They're all concerned in some form with what DFW called "regular-guyness". In Ulysses, Joyce takes a mild mannered uninteresting lower-middle class man and makes transcendent art of mundane life. Then in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon tells the story of Slothrop, a normal regular dweeb transformed into someone of far greater importance by everyone else's misconceptions of him. And to round it all off, Infinite Jest is about genuinely extraordinary people who are ultimately defeated by their inability to be "normal".
Is that about right?
>reading gravitys rainbow
>reading infinite meme
>he thinks these are about the characters
>>8030807
>arbitrarily
>by merit
op you are what we call a pseud
>>8030897
>he thinks that books being about characters means that they're about particular real-world people
>>8030879
>>8030919
found the pleb
>falling for /lit/ memes
>and liking it
top kek
>>8030807
I can see what you're getting at here. It's an interesting line of thought and one I hadn't seen.
>>8030807
Nice analysis OP
>>8030925
I'm actually upper class so I can like what I want.
>>8030957
>i'm actually upper class
t. middle class
post 'em, /lit/
>>8030807
>Infinite Jest is about genuinely extraordinary people who are ultimately defeated by their inability to be "normal".
i hate you. i hate you so much. read the fucking book again you piece of shit
Gravity's Rainbow is a complete outlier, Slothrop is not a 'regular guy' at all.
>>8030977
>literary value
ulysses > gr > ij
>personal opinion
gr >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ulysses > ij
>>8031003
Yea he is. He's just a somewhat handsome soldier who smokes weed. Most of his adventures are probably imagined or coincidental. He loses his entire identity when the conspiracy surrounding him collapses.
>>8030977
>dat quasi-perfect editions game
>dem dubs
well memed, relative
>>8031078
if you have any of these editions you must either burn them in public or kys (kill you are self)
>>8031104
Literally nothing wrong with 25th anniversary IJ
>>8031104
They fixed that edition of GR
>>8031133
nice meme!
>>8031138
>>8031110
1) It looks like something a girl would read
2) Stupid bullshit deckled fucking page edges (also pertains to point 1)
>>8030807
Eh. Instead of assigning meaning where there is none, as books share little in terms of themes, I'd rather consider why are they so meme-worthy. To make my sample size bigger, I will lump in Stoner and Blood Meredian with these three.
All five books share the fact that they transform mechanical into organical, breaking a seemingly impossible barrier in communication. This is most obvious in Stoner and IJ, which excel at translating a typical "mechanical" figurant-type-man into a living, breathing thing. The only living thing there is is you, or me, and as such some translation is required from the language of mechanical and inorganic to your language. IJ and Stoner are so easily comprehensible because(for members of this board) they translate the mechanical parts of ourselves to the lingo of living parts, i.e chemical depression to feelsies, or autamatic way of living into a purpose.
Ulysses, as you described it, is about a "regular man" - well, this is true, but a lot of books are about Other, which is incomprehensible, and Joyce suceeds about making the regularity your own, inhaling life into it. This is also a translation.
GR seems wacky and weird and insincere at first, which makes my claim of it being "the translation of mechanical into organical" dubious, but one look at the main themes - the War, which turns within the book into a part of human condition, the Entropy, translated from physics... Actually, GR is almost blatant with it: look at decriptions of Imopolex, of rockets.
Blood Meridian I am too lazy to describe so, but again, look at the themes of violence and war.
>>8030977
>>8031366
IJ is fucking huge!
>>8030931
Literary analysis is by-and-large the art of bullshitting. For a two sentence shitpost about the epic meme trilogy OP did a decent job.
>>8031439
>Literary analysis is by-and-large the art of bullshitting
t. doesn't know what real literary analysis is
>>8031443
Okay why don't you go ask Harold Bloom how the school of aestheticism is doing or write a thesis refuting the death of the author
>>8031104
kek I have the penguin edition of gravity's rainbow and a wordsworth collection of James Joyce
Memes
looking for ppl who want to read Ulysses, chronologically the first installment, in a /lit/ chat reading group
https://discord.gg/01016TZPAPULpxT67
>>8030931
Nice analysis, dude. (Let's see if it goes over your head twice.)
>>8031104
1. You can find that edition of GR with the missing line restored.
2. That's the best edition of IJ.
>>8031366
Wow ulysses is that small a file? Thought it was a man's book...
>>8031166
>gendering books that aren't YA
found the autist
>>8030906
If you say that unironically your opinion doesn't matter.
>>8031443
>t.
I just started coming to /lit/, and I've seen this multiple times. What does it mean? Translation?
>nb4newfagnormieplebpseudo
>>8033541
That's the point you dense pseud. It looks like a YA book. Stop shitposting and start reading for fuck sakes.
>>8034669
>literally judging a book by lame cover art
>thinking this is shitposting
>>8030807
i just bought gravitys rainbow
if i got memed im going to be pissed
>>8034028
>t. newfag
t. oldfag
>>8030807
has anyone called it memélogy yet?
>>8035432
It's good. The first 70-100 pages are a mix of surrealism and emotional war turmoil. A couple of episodes after Slothrop is introduced it really starts to take off. The major pleb barriers are the shit eating/African penis fetish scene that cost him the Pulitzer somewhere before page 60 and the opening bananadream sequenceand adenoid monster attack. If this is your first Pynchon it's going to be weird. Try not to be a bitter faggot and just engage the text. All of the 4 parts of the book are distinct from each other in style and subject matter. Read the entire book, don't read 50 or even 500 pages and then come shitpost on /lit/ about how he is a hack because he's a meme because people like him so he sucks etc.
The whole meme author = inherently shit concept is retarded. But everyone knew the board would turn on Pynchon after the movie came out.
>>8030989
that makes sense for at least JOI, Hal, Orin, and almost JvD
>>8030807
Gr and Ij actually owe more to Finnegans Wake than to Ulysses.
>>8035763
How so?
>>8031366
I got no idea how you read books on your PC.. Gotta be really uncomfortable
>>8035814
either e-reader or matte screen with low brightness and low color temperature (using flux/redshift/sct)
>>8035800
They both employ cyclical forms where the beginning and end flow into one another, also GR's four part structure is similar to the four part structure of Finnegans Wake. And the "nightlesson" chapter made the way IJ uses notes look tame comparatively.
