/lit/ - Literature

>>9787043
theory checks out

>>9628285
Jason here, might as well read this after I finish Crime and Punishment.

You'll like it John.

>>9502664
Pic related reads like the book DFW always wanted to write, and they'll probably teach it in schools one day

>>9509248
Underrated

Was this the next step in literature?

What are your thoughts on this? I feel like I should read it.

Here is a good one OP.

'Franzen has taken the somewhat inaccessible avant-garde concerns of writers like Don DeLillo or the David Foster Wallace of "Infinite Jest" and placed them in the context of a mainstream novel about *family* and how it prepares you to function (or not) in the larger world.'

Has anybody here read it and care to share whether they thought it a worthwhile read?

Will I gain something out of this, today?

I often feel lost, but I like people describing a lost state. That's the appeal of /r9k/.

I was listening to the Bret Easton Ellis podcast and he was speaking highly of Jonathan Franzen and The Corrections.

Is it worth a read? Is Freedom better?

Opinions?

Is it the Sound And The Fury of 2000s ?

Favorite character ? Most hated character ?

Is Franzen actually good?

Literally: incontinence: the book

ITT: Post your favorite book, others guess what kind of person you are.

I hear about The Corrections through many sources but never on /lit/. It is being sold two buildings down from my new place, should I pick it up and give it a read?

What did you take from the book?

What does /lit/ think of this book?

I started reading recently and am loving it 200 pages in. I think it's a very funny and poignant book and the writing is beautiful at times.

Is this truly just oprah book club tier boring old people doing boring old people things or is there some legitimate merit in this?

Rephrase, is this worth the 50 cents of which I can buy it from the library?

So I've heard it's one of the best novels of 21st century. Is that true /lit/?

What are your favorite books from the 21st century ?

anyone on /lit/ read this? General thoughts?

I just finished reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I enjoyed it a lot; the intricately detailed lives of the family members engaged me a lot. I understood it as a picture of the archetypical contemporary American family- although perhaps not typical. I got a deeper understanding of American culture and views, which is great.
However, it seems that other people see more than I do, read deeper or perhaps just make it up.
So, my question is, what did you get out of this novel?

Ok, il/lit/erates, I'm not understanding the criticism I've often heard about this book.

Most often I've seen it disparaged as a book chronicling "first world problems," as if it gives a sympathetic bent to the senseless despair of the affluent.
Yet the book I'm reading is a skewering of the characters' bitchings as complete non-problems. There is a near-constant emphasis on the qualms', quarrels', and agonies' existence being the product of mere boredom and a deluded insistence of importance that the characters themselves can't even muster up the courage to admit to each other, this lack of courage coming from a deserved fear that their issues are ridiculous things to worry about. The best they can do is squabble like the spoiled children they are while the narrator consistently shows how much it's their fault that their lives are terrible because of their lust for someone to blame even though there's nothing deserving of blame apparent in their lives. At worst, Chip had to eat a shit sandwich because he went into the fridge, got out all of the ingredients for a shit sandwich, and proceeded to make himself a big ole shit sandwich.

I could understand people saying he's belaboring this point, but that's not the gist of what I've seen. There just tends to be an emphasis on how he explores the "problems," without people noting, "And he's explaining how simple and ludicrous these are as problems."

Anyone else got this same vibe from this book, that it's a mockumentary-style Great American Novel purposefully showing how disgusting the idea of our Great America is, or am I misinterpreting it, or what?

Good? Bad?

Read? Don't read?

It almost won the Pulitzer, apparently.

>>1781578
I was going to say this but it seemed too obvious.