So whats the deal? Do people just like DFW for the quality of his writing? There was some good excerpts in the book but I need you guys to tell me what to think honestly.
Should I read more DFW? How he writes amuses me occasionally but I could read 7 books in the time I read one of his.
His non-fiction work is better and you will enjoy it more. He has a good writing style but in his fiction he is so self-conscious about proving his intellect that he makes too many tedious, po-mo decisions
I really enjoy his essays, but I never could finish his novels. Any suggestions for his most entertaining novel?
I read for entertainment, not to have some sort of profound artistic experience.
I would read consider the lobster first. I really liked Infinite Jest, but it took me forever to finish.
The Pale King.
While we are at it, what's the reason this board hates on DFW so much? I get the meme status of Infinite Jest, but I legitimately think it's a great book. Sure it seems a bit like he's trying to show off his knowledge, but so? It never really felt that way to me, but I can understand the argument.
Here's what I think the dealio is in a nutshell:
DFW's publisher realized that he was very talented and potentially at the cutting edge of contemporary fiction and advertised IJ very well. Thus, IJ reached meme status among tryhards and bros and film makers.
So, in spite of its own merit it has become a reference beyond its actual merit and readership in the populace. It's a shame because it is intrinsically worth inspection.
>Do people just like DFW for the quality of his writing?
Yeah, pretty much, and that is all that matters at the end of the day
Plus, he came up with some cool things, like that guy stealing the woman's heart and the guy obessed with MASH. And Marathe is a top 20 character since the dawn of universe
He can't get to the point/to what is important. He drags stuff on too long and ends up making no point at all that way.
I liked the book, but imo it was devoid of going somewhere.
>I read for entertainment, not to have some sort of profound artistic experience.
y not both?
He had some great stuff but I don't get why those are what you choose as examples...sure, on their own they're good but in the context of IJ it kind of gets lost in the crowd. To take your example of the MASH guy, DFW would take every day occurrences and take them well beyond their logical conclusions and go on and on and on. Fascinating, but after a few instances of this it gets old.
The passage with the tranny having the withdrawal seizure is literary gold, though. And the Gately fight scene and the part at the end where the goons kill the Fax man. Dude had an immense capability to describe and if he got over some of the need to describe ev-er-y-god-damn thing he could have been truly great.
And but so and but so.
is he really in a wheelchair or is that like a cover?
I've been on Veeky Forums for two days and have seen this book like 4 times already, although I've never heard about it before. Should I read it?
I'm reading it at the moment, about 100 pages in, and it's alright so far. There are a lot of long tangents about seemingly pointless shit though, but I think it will be relevant later on.
It's the best post-modern work together with Gravity's Rainbow.
Most insightful and talented literary voice there was for Gen X and Millennials as of now. I think one thing that always sticks with me when I read DFW is this notion that he was always self consciously trying to BE someone. He simultaneously wanted to be seen as a profound, academically minded literary genius--clearly besotted by his influences like Pynchon and Delillo and just showing off what a smarty pants he was. But at the same time he tried hard to project this image of being a regular guy who wasn't pretentious, which often came across as just pandering or another mutation of insecurity.
His novels are all worth it. I've never thought much of his short stories. Brief Interviews is complete trash--and this is from someone who likes DFW. His essays are good.
Pale King is definitely not as fun as IJ.
no
One thing I want to know about Wallace's conception of sincerity is where he got the idea that society is somehow crawling with irony, and that "sincerity" was something that needed to be rescued or revived. The only place I see genuine insincerity or tryhard irony is reading postmodern novels like delillo or Pynchon, or on Veeky Forums, as a modern example. Your average cunt on the street is at his most ironic sharing stale memes on Facebook, the rest of his life is spent in the same basic sincere manner of living as almost any other human in history. Problem with Wallace was the guy spent so much time watching TV and chasing his own mental tail that he assumed the whole world must be similarly caught in a cycle of "insincerity" , whatever the fuck that is. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy his books, and without this constant paranoia of wanting to be liked, or seen as genuine, he wouldn't have had the flair that he did. But new sincerity is a joke
Dude he lost his legs jumping in front of trains.
>I need you guys to tell me what to think honestly
really?
to save his deflated head wife?
I thought it was just a bullshit cover story to find out what she knew about the entertainment
Did you read Infinite Jest? There's like a 30 page endnote specifically about the train game.
He probably never read any of the appendices.
I did not read the endnotes, guess I fucked up.
>I didn't read half the book
Interesting thought, but as far as I know he was trying to respond to the irony of postmodernism, not the culture at large.
you fucking dumbass the footnotes lay out the whole archplot of the fucking book
jesus christ himself's filmography maps all the events in the story
they talk about the possible synthesis of DMZ based on mold and suggest what happens to hal
I was planning on giving it a proper read in the future
Why not read it properly when you read it?
>your first read wasn't your proper read
I used to do that too
I'd read 700 page books in a day or two
I'd get what I thought was the gist, glean a few themes
its so fucking wrong dude
Fantastic books should take as long to read as they were to write
True, it could be seen as purely a reaction to postmodernism, but Wallace justifies the need for sincerity by providing television and advertising as examples of postmodern insincerity. He situates his criticism of irony in the realm of everyday, lowbrow entertainment just as much as in supposed "serious" literature. He definitely attempts to present this irony as an overarching problem with modern society. The thing is, even assuming TV is riddled with irony, which I'm sure it isn't if you look at the type of programming that the average viewer goes for, nobody is incorporating this irony into their lives in any meaningful way, except pretentious freaks who lack a real personality. That kind of affectation would be the equivalent of spouting Veeky Forums memes in real life, people just don't act like that. Wallace had trouble separating the real world from its distorted cultural image, he saw insincerity in entertainment as signalling some basic insincerity in the modern outlook. You'd have to wonder how he'd have fared on a board like this, taking every shitpost as a literal sign that humanity had lost its ability to think clearly in a world of never-ending symbols and referents lol
>I read for entertainment
maybe /co/ is more your speed then pleb
You know that’s a really good point. People are going to think you’re samefagging when I say this but legitimately one of the best critiques I’ve seen on this board
kek, good post.
I disagree with your assessment. Plenty of people I meet on a daily basis spout ironic memes irl. Usually, they aren't Veeky Forums memes, but the idea is still the same.
His short stories are better imo; they fit his style a bit more. You can dislike IJ and still enjoy them
Cheers m8
Are you fucking kidding me? You just decided that 100 pages full of fun things to discover that DFW put his heart and soul in and specifically put in the book to make its story and world become richer and more alive weren't worth reading? Kill yourself or go back to r/books you shit.
But I thought they were optional since they were at the back, like an appendix
you think so? I read one of his books of short stories and concluded that they generally chug dick, but I might have been missing something. I thought the greatest strength of the longer books is world-building.
Where his short stories are at their best, then yes, I'd say they are better than IJ. There are complete and utter shit ones of course - a few from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men come to mind - but their shortness limits the kind of meandering plot points that dragged IJ down (tennis academy, fucking wheelchair terrorists, etc).
>not liking the parts about assassins fouteil rollent
come on, they were between just interesting and borderline hilarious. Wallace was amazing at creating such fictional accounts.
Ok, why did this retard use annoying ass endnotes as opposed to footnotes? Does he just have disdain for the readers?
Many of them would take up whole pages alone, so I guess it was easier to put them at the end, since otherwise every page of the book would have a constant crawl of footnote running along the bottom