[craggyjaggy]

Maybe one day I'll try reading it again and actually finish it, but so far I couldn't do it. Everything is fascinating and mind blowing don't get me wrong, but I feel like there is always this weird pretentious atmosphere going on. I don't know how to describe it, but by the end of the first half reading GEB was not fun anymore.

[andybak]

I've never understood why people think it's pretentious. It joyous and innocent. It's someone laying out the shiny baubles they love and inviting anyone passing to take a look.

[scrame]

It is for sure pretentious, he's a cloistered academic classic music nerd that appreciates art exclusively through rigid structure. He's also aware of that and tries to explore that.

The second half is weird too, because it describes the academic work he does in the future, but is a stab in the dark compared to the documentarian aspect of the first half.

Think of it like forming a hypothesis:

GEB: This is what we can see.

EGB: This is what I think it means.

[polytely]

I don't really get why it would be pretentious, like it's not pretending to be smarter than it is. It doesn't seem to me that the author is showing off for the sake of showing off, but rather that he is not hiding his joy and love for the themes discussed in the book.

[mejutoco]

You can skip the alternating socratic parts and it is much lighter :P I think Zen and the art of motorcycle repair has a similar structure with Socratic dialogs interspersed.