noooo 
give This Side of Paradise a shot - it’s Fitzgerald’s best IMO
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yeah it’s definitely not difficult. gravity’s rainbow felt much harder to parse and anything is easy compared to ulysses. i just definitely won’t keep a handle on everything everything, but i think that’s the point anyway.
fitzgerald is cool! i don’t mean to be a captial H hater even tender was fine i just thought it could be an all timer for me and instead it was just kinda mid. i do wanna check out this side of paradise.
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okay i mean I felt like I was working pretty hard to keep Infinite Jest straight, even though I did read a lot of it by a pool. I guess everyone here is just super talented
I get it re: Tender though. I’m not sure I really got The Crack Up and for me The Beautiful and The Damned Beautiful and the Damned The Beautiful and Damned was just okay. I haven’t read Tender is the Night
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Speaking from the perspective of the average Joe Hans I would say that American literature is not particularly more or less respected than that of other countries here. It’s generally agreed upon that good stuff comes from over there but I feel like what the US considers its Greats is comparatively lesser known over here. Like, I can think of only one person I know IRL that I would expect to know what Infinite Jest is and that’s my ex from Switzerland that studied English at university.
Knowledge about American lit also feels like it follows music charts logic. People know what’s hot right now but don’t remember much from the past. If you were to ask random people on the street for big American authors you would probably hear a lot of R.F. Kuang and very little Wallace or Fitzgerald. If you asked the same about Russian authors I’d expect it to be the opposite with very little contemporary authors and a bunch of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski.
In English class at school the focus was more on literature from England back when I went to school. We spoke about The Great Gatsby but never read it and aside from that we read Death of a Salesman.
Other than that I remember mostly more Shakespeare than I think was necessary, especially considering most kids at that time couldn’t handle modern English and reading fart jokes in what felt like a different language at times went straight over most student’s heads.
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great observation
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There’s definitely complexity to the book that doesn’t present itself in the first hundred pages. On the whole the spirit of a given passage or chapter is legible even if it’s a challenge to grasp the precise who and what of things, but the who and what can be overwhelmingly fussy/complex. (Partly the point, I’d say.)
The greatest hurdle in IJ for me was finding the will to push through all the noise like the filmography, drug formulations, the Eschaton rules—that stuff. By which I don’t mean to say that stuff is pointless, but that it’s purposefully labyrinthine and arduous.
Was this also in English class?
Obviously not dismissing the work but the emphasis on Shakespeare as subject of study at least in French schools strikes me as bizarre. Because the language is so singular it’s not the most effective stepping stone to engaging with other English-language literature. It’s fine to have a look at it and expose kids to challenging stuff of course but I know some students now who may take their inability to understand Henry V as evidence that they’re incapable of understanding English prose. idk don’t want to sound like a helicopter parent, just a little odd
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Yes! I don’t mind students having a look at Shakespeare to get a taste for what’s out there but I remember spending almost one full school year on Shakespeare and very little else - maybe a bit of review of the tenses. I feel like something a bit more approachable would have built more self-confidence in our class back in the day.
Though that does track with my experience that I only started to feel like I really understood English once I got immersed in it on the internet through YouTube, forums etc. School did a reasonable job at getting me to learn basic vocabulary and grammar but failed pretty spectacularly at getting me interested in consuming any media in English for fun. With the exception of that one teacher that had us watch Office Space in English as homework and then quizzed us about it during class.
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say what you will but i remember this chapter far more than i remember other things about the book or even in general
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hearing tell of complexity in Infinite Jest that reveals itself after the first 100 pages. Should I give it another try?
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I don’t think you would like it tbh, but I do think you would begrudgingly respect it.
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do you think I would like Infinite Jest
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Knowing you as I do, yes I would say there are certain parts in infinite jest that would really light you up, particularly the parts with a character named Mario and Don Gately.
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I kinda got that vibe too yeah
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It’s because I am infinitely jesting
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Love that it’s branded secret
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So I’ve seen maybe half of adaptation for the whole series so coming into the books I basically already had those visuals in mind which helped me settle in with the stuff you mentioned. Like the humor and stuff is basically exactly as it is in the anime, but written down. It’s a little weird but I think it works. For the cultural and folklore aspects I think the book actually explains a bit more than the anime does from what I remember. Basically I think if you liked the anime and vibed with what it’s doing then the books will also be really enjoyable.
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Just this morning I finished reading the story collection Hellions by Julia Elliot and I adored it. I don’t usually go in for short fiction but this hooked me completely; very magical realist, ecofiction-y, with lots of sneering 12-year-old tomboys who smoke Marlboros and hang out in swamps and like, accidentally summon demons. It’s blurbed by Jeff Vandermeer and Carmen Maria Machado so you know it’s legit. V highly recommend.
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