>Everyone posts Moby Dick>Obscure and repudiated by critics of his time and still isn't really popular or even a cult classic now>Weirdo incest novel with gems like " For surely a gentle sister is the second best gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes after. He who is sisterless, is as a bachelor before his time. For much that goes to make up the deliciousness of a wife, already lies in the sister." and his sister larping with his mother>But is also a kunstlerroman that is arguably autobiographical after his failure with Moby Dick>has his dense dense philosophical prose and arguably his most difficult work other than Confidence ManWhy isnt this more popular or a /lit/ meme?
>>25122579You answered your own question with your last point. Also MD would fly over most littards heads too if it wasn't explained to them in school
It's difficult, and too obscure for people to have the patience to power through it like they do with Ulysses and co. They treat Ulysses with the respect it deserves: they read slowly and reread passages they don't understand, they use annotations, interpretations, consult their Gifford, and slowly come to love it. But they attempt to power through Pierre without any external aid, plus there's not much of it in the first place.It doesn't help that the book is consciously ambiguous and confusing.>Soon then, as after his first distaste at the mystical title, and after his then reading on, merely to drown himself, Pierre at last began to obtain a glimmering into the profound intent of the writer of the sleazy rag pamphlet, he felt a great interest awakened in him. The more he read and re-read, the more this interest deepened, but still the more likewise did his failure to comprehend the writer increase. He seemed somehow to derive some general vague inkling concerning it, but the central conceit refused to become clear to him.
>>25122579>thinks praising sister as wife has to do with sexdude back then women had to do all the chores, so he's just saying he could make his sister be his live-in maid not that he wanted to fuck her.
>>25122579If it's any consolation, this is the third post I've seen related to Pierre in the past 2 months, while before that I never saw it mentioned even once, so perhaps it is actually gaining in popularity.I personally read it about 6 months back, and like second anon said I don't think I took the time I needed to take with it, but from what I remember and what I absorbed during that reading, it was a novel with still excellent prose and rich characters, as well as Melville delving even further into the realm of the human psyche and the ambiguities (heh) therein. Probably the third best work of his I've read, right behind Bartleby and ofc MD, though that may change upon a more thorough and analytical reread. There are few things that sadden me more than the fact that Melville didn't get the recognition he deserved in his life, and that he would quit writing novels only a few years after Moby-Dick. Not only because it's an inherently tragic event for a man of so great genius to go almost completely unrecognized, but also that if he had received the support he needed, who knows what he could have written- already he was leaps and bounds ahead of his contemporaries and willing to experiment and push the boundaries with his writing more than basically any other author, before or since.
>mfw sisterlessIt never began for me
