100 pages in, and this is going to be a slog. Writing is fantastic, it's just long. I don't know about you guys, but the type is so small in my edition I have to hold the book right next to my face. I don't have bad eyesight.
Also, I get that this is partially about fraudulence, but he constantly uses this negative/false/descriptive technique (maybe there's a word for this I don't know) where he'll say something like, "it wasn't true what they said twenty years later at the Tabard Inn about his liking the homemade donuts or feeling up the girls at Smith Point, and it wasn't true..."etc. etc.
Maybe it's too early to feel strongly either way, but something about the over-use of this technique feels a little name-game-y. Thoughts?
>>8132656
Finish the fucking book before you start these retarded thread
>>8132663
Yeah that's fair - just think I'll forget by the time I finish in ten years.
>>8132656
He uses the motif a lot, but there's a lot more to the book than "lol everything's fake". Read more of the book, you pleb.
>>8132656
It picks up a lot after Wyatt stops being referred to by his name which is later on in the chapter you're on. The first three chapters are relatively slow compared to the rest of the book.
Not op but I've only got 100 pages left to go. Man, Stanley's a fucking nutjob. Frank Sinisterra's probably my favorite character, dude's hilarious.
>>8132656
How do I know I'm ready for this book?
The error, when in doubt, is to take things more on the serious side rather than the humorous.
>>8135202
Sounds like you've got the plot, with the smallest sketch of characters and no theme.
>>8135434
Nah, I understand what it's about. You can only read so many conversation snippets at parties where no one has any clue what they're on about, people becoming depressive, sometimes suicidal alcoholics because of how vapid and unfulfilling their lives are, mistaken identity gags, talk of fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, and general chicanery without getting what it's about.
I focused on the wackier aspects of it because it's still a very funny book in spite of its message and overall vitriol for everything about modern society.
>>8136673
pseud detected
>>8136695
Sure thing, Otto.
>>8136702
what ever you say max
>>8136709
I'll survive.
>>8136714
I know you will.
>>8135434
what are the themes?
>>8136782
Artistic fraud. Religious fraud. Fraudulent social interactions. Identity fraud. Intellectual fraud. It's basically about coping with the fact that all of society is so fundamentally full of shit that it's impossible to survive without either drinking yourself into oblivion or aestheticizing the lies you'll inevitably have to tell and live before you even stand any sort of chance at finding anything genuine or worthwhile.
>>8136821
oh, i thought i was missing something, okay. no, yeah, i got all that so far.
honestly i thought one of the larger themes was how we tend to make ideas our own, how thought is just a mirror image of truth, that anything we create is a forgery of god's works, even our ideas, and that we know this and try to compensate ourselves by convincing ourselves that the ideas are original, that the well of god isn't where we're dipping our thought buckets into. like the part when i think valentine talks about the brain having two stages, one area recognizing data before the other, so an instant nostalgic effect can occur? if anything, this book has brought me more towards the concept of god than any other.
>>8136940
That's part of it, yes, but even an intellectual awareness of this isn't enough to stave off all our insecurities and the pressures around us. Even those who actively seek God are liable to fail for the same reasons as those who couldn't care less about God. One of the things Gaddis was getting at was an inevitable recognition of God in all things once one has been brought high or low enough to gain that perspective, but God is overwhelming, terrifying even, so you're not necessarily going to be changed for the better by running afoul of God.
