Similar to Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. I recommend to people to just fight through the first 200 pages and you end up in the flow and things begin to come together.
Gravity’s Rainbow in particular is confusing for a long while but when it begins to come together it’s rewarding.
Agreed - Finnegan's Wake is impossible. Try the audio version and it’s somehow even more difficult. I was tempted to eat a bag of mushrooms and listen to it but alas, perhaps one day far in the future.
It seems like after 100-200 pages of Gravity's Rainbow one of two things can happen:
1. The reader can't figure out what the hell is going on anymore or who anybody is. They give up and stop reading.
2. The reader can't figure out what the hell is going on anymore or who anybody is. They stop trying to make sense of the book and just read the words.
"Sure this guy has a toilet stuck to his foot now, and can prevent bombs from landing on him by magic or something. That's great, oh I think somewhere in that sentence it became 20 years earlier in a different part of town and there are two entirely different characters I don't know talking about something else. That's neat."
The literary device in the novel is effect preceding cause. Like, very early in the book the hypersonic v2 - and how series it is for things to blow up and then you hear it - is introduced, but if you miss it then that then you miss all the other times we see the same concept.
That's not effect preceding cause, that's just sound moving slower than something else! The sonic boom didn't blow up the tenements, the faster than sound missile did.
I'm definitely category 1 there: couldn't tell where it was going or why (was a blind pickup because little said it was important) and Wikipedia'd a synopsis to see if I was missing out on anything. Didn't seem like it.
I'm not convinced you can compare Ulysses to Gravity Rainbow and Infinite Jest. Ulysses is not a postmodern book. Apart from their length, there are few things bringing these books together.
Gravity Rainbow has Pynchon's inimitable prose, constant segue between language register and mingling between the trivial and the profound. Infinite Jest is rambling and convoluted but it is extremely funny from the get go. Both can be a joy to read even if you don't finish them.
Ulysses on the other hand asks more from its readers. You can pretty much ignore the references in Gravity's Rainbow and still get (or not get) the point. Meanwhile, Ulysses is full of oblique metaphors and layered references which make it impossible to understand without knowledge of the referenced material.
The problem I have with Infinite Jest (I have a paperback edition; USD/my currency is expensive and I'm not made of money) is that the tome is too big for its binding and will seemingly fall apart at any time; and too heavy to hold in your hands in a reading chair (as opposed to propped on a table).
Your advice is spot on. For me it was 100 pages. It was decades ago, but I still remember being puzzled, feeling like I didn’t know what was happening, but being pulled along by the unique quality of the prose. 100 pages in, the lightbulb went on. It’s as if the book teaches you how to read it.
Yeah it’s almost like magic. I remember feeling pretty confused and then suddenly there’s a chapter with an adenoid walking around and it’s like wtf?! But because the prose was so good and there were enough nuggets tugging you along I stool with it. And then right as it feels the entire endeavor is pointless it comes into focus and you get a grip on it.
I thought Gravity's Rainbow got more confusing as time went on, if you just flow through it yeah its not too bad. But to fully understand the 100s of characters disappearing, reappearing with new names, etc. I definitely found myself consulting notes in the later pages to remember what role someone had played 400 pages earlier. The earlier chapters you can just absorb with no thought for how it contributes to the whole, by the end it is a lot of threads to try and keep in order.
Try Sartre's "Le Sursis". The novel follows several groups of young people as the news that the Germans invaded Prague and war is probably weeks if not days ahead. But it switches focus between groups mid-paragraph and sometimes mid-sentence. Sartre's not known for experimental fiction, but whew.
I felt that by page 180 or so it really starts to hone in on Slothrop’s journey and it stabilizes. You can page back to revisit a character you faintly recall. It was around then I felt I had a grip on it.
I disagree. I felt like Wallace used many more $10 words and the annotations were often long enough I would lose track.
Gravity’s Rainbow had easier text to read but I’d agree the narrative is probably more difficult to follow. I also think Gravity’s Rainbow is the better book in many ways especially as it rebates to “them” co-opting everything useful.
The chapter detailing Pokler’s history is probably the finest literature I’ve read.
Gravity’s Rainbow in particular is confusing for a long while but when it begins to come together it’s rewarding.
Agreed - Finnegan's Wake is impossible. Try the audio version and it’s somehow even more difficult. I was tempted to eat a bag of mushrooms and listen to it but alas, perhaps one day far in the future.