I kinda find it amusing but yeah it’s hard to go through every single one of the narrators thoughts this long

Wish I had an audiobook along it but it comes next month lol.

Honestly, there's no reason for a debut to be 700 pages long
Unless you're certain what you have is the next Pynchon or Steinbeck

Like, I'll give it a bit of a chance for two more chapters, but this needed an editor badly. The reason his movies work is because he is confined to a length, where he needs to plot out his story arc.

Yeah DNF at 10%
I usually try till halfway through with books, but this story is so uninteresting and long-winded.

Its one of those infinite jest types huh

just came in the mail

this thing is f***ing

like, literally as big as some lexica I have lying around here lol. As big as my hardcover of Underworld by Delillo

nah he's already got plenty proof of his writing ability with his scripts tho, if anyone can debut with a 700 page novel it's him. Personally v excited about seeing him just go off creatively without the commercial and practical constraints of a film.

Ayt Imma let you get into it so you can see for yaself. You might like it better. Lemme know what you think after chapter 6.

this first chapter really was f***ing brilliant several laugh out loud moments and I don't laugh at my books that often usually lol

"I always make sure to position myself behind her so that I can watch her amazing African American ass."
"Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It's the Christopher Nolan of coffee."

Rosenberg is def an American Psycho-type narrator... repulsive but weirdly hilarious

In the middle of finals rn but very hype to sit down and read through this now

Have you ever seen a Charlie Kaufman film?

Voice over narration appears in most of his work and they have this exact rambling, off-the-cuff-train-of-thought feel to them.

I watched being John malkovich (I liked that one) and anomalisa but I don't remember much from that film tbh , but I get what you're saying. Idk, I wish it worked for me in the book but it simply didn't

Yeah, if you’d seen Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you’d probably be more prepared for it.

Are they also deliberate in pacing? I don't mind that, as long as there's not too many train of thoughts going on at the same time

oh i totally forgot about this release

reviews seem a little mixed, im debating whether to order it or not.

Seems a bit similar to this Joseph Heller book called "Something Happened" which is just long rambling tangents by a neurotic narrator for hundreds of pages, that book also had mixed reviews but i love it so maybe ill give this a shot

honestly like on the criterion overview of reviews I linked in op I think the most importabt outlets receive it fairly positively (major exceptions only being NPR and avclub), especially considering movie-dude-tries-to-crossover-into-lit is fairly negative baggage to prove against among lit reviewers. He gets a lot of positive comparisons to Pynchon while also usually saying that it's still quite unique.

I think both the idea for the central character and the actual plot sound great, and like I posted above reading the first two chapters I was literally lol-ing on every other page which is def not a thing which books achieve often with me, so I'm really having high expectations for this at this point tbh. Will drop a review in here once I get to work my way through this beast tho

Haven’t been able to read as much as this as I have liked to lately but I’m already laughing extremely hard at how much Kaufman is roasting film criticism.

Bout to cop sounds fire and I got 2 weeks to kill

On chapter 11 and loving this

still waiting for my order to arrive

yo wtf your message about it shipping soon is exactly one month old now get that mailman on the phone lol

my Elaine Radigue book took longer than this lol that's the only reason I haven't started throwing s*** at the mailman

It's still in transit just held up somewhere I guess

Dafuq I got mine in less than 48 hours

same, just read chapter 11 and I'm enjoying this immensely. Honestly it's not even a difficult read at all, in that sense the Pynchon and DFW comparisons are a bit off. Chapters are mostly shorter than 10 pages which gives it a very accessible format and the language isn't all that difficult either. And it's funny af... Like legit on every page there's something which cracks me up.

But although it's very satirical/ ironical there's actually legit fascinating things here which get you thinking about film and pc topics in different ways.

When he lists all the different puppets in Ingo's boxes and there's "all the white cast members of Hamilton"

I love the way he is able to go from coherent thoughts to another monologue completely contradicting his previous idea, while maintaining the "logic" of thought. An interesting perspective on the competing inner monologues I think everyone deals with

im jealous

gonna stay clear of the thread for now dont want any spoilers