Tell me, Veeky Forums. What makes DFW the meme that he is on this board? What does he mean to you? Be genuine

Tell me, Veeky Forums. What makes DFW the meme that he is on this board? What does he mean to you? Be genuine.

>DFW the meme that he is on this board?

he's part of the meme trilogy, duh.

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Theres something about wearing shoes and a big winter coat indoors that bothers me

He is the only good YA author. His scenes of the teenagers really capture being a high school student.

tis the ever present bandanna that makes me want to punch walls

He probably just came in from outdoors. He was a filthy subhuman who let his dogs run wild all over his house and smoked indoors.

Never seen that pic before, very nice. In regards to your question: This board's culture leans towards philosophical undertones because in literature that's the most continually interesting aspect of the medium to study, what does x mean. The board is also anonymous leading to more sincerity per capita than equivalent sign up account/real name medias which fall victim to a lot of the intentional use of irony, performance and posturing to hide sincere individualistic thoughts and feelings from others because of lack of understanding about those feelings or out of an unconscious need for social manipulation. Thus is the problem with Reddit format as as a general forum that you may see becried on Veeky Forums.
DFW has the most pertinent philosophy for this board in relation to how people and communities should orient themselves towards others, in a general sense.
I sympathise with empathy even if new sincerity has clearly failed beyond some genuine TV shows like parks and rec, social media has in a sense swallowed the gains and there is no DFW to critique this new insincere reality. So it's clear to say my my interest in the guy is deep.

op here, thank you for the analysis.

First I had seen of him, I think, is primarily reaction images from the odd faces he makes during interviews as well as of course some of his more well-known headshots, or that image of him sitting on a porch with a headscarf in what very much seems to be the 90s. I've since actually watched an interview or two of him, and his self-consciousness is thick enough to choke on. He seems to have INCREDIBLE insecurity and with these aspects come unbelievable modesty, and though I don't much respect weakness I DO respect one's ability to be modest. I also was thoroughly beta in my teens and thoroughly socially awkward so seeing him in those interviews definitely made him seem familiar to me on a personal level. I've not yet read his stuff, but I'd like to.

Also, if you take his legs, double it, and position it just right, the bottom half of his body becomes a swastika with two assholes so he MIGHT be a secret Nazi. I guess we'll never know.

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Because he was the last "Great White Writer" to create a work that, love it or hate it, meant something to some people. Love it or hate it, Infinite Jest was the last "Great White Book." At the very least, it inspired some sort of reaction to it, and the whole literati and anyone who was a hipster's hipster had to read it. We haven't had a "Great White Writer" and a "Great White Book" that did that since.

>inb4 /pol/

Listen, I'm not. I swear. Don't hate the messenger. Fact of the matter is, no matter how great some novel from an African, South American, Middle Eastern, Indian, wherever, it will not get the attention that the type of novel that is deemed the next "IT" novel by a "Great White Writer" will get. That's okay. It's nobody's fault.

tl;dr: There hasn't been a "Great White Writer" to replace him since he killed himself and there hasn't been a "Great White Book" since Infinite Jest.

His tiny, prissy mouth.

I think more broadly the 21st century is just artistically bankrupt.

Not necessarily wrong. I just think we still haven't realized the actual cultural impact of the internet. By that, I mean no one has figured it out, yet. It's not a coincidence IJ was published in '96.

He's the quintessential lit pseud, but he has a level of self-awareness that saves him from being detestable. He seemed to be aware of how full of shit he and everyone around him was, but tragically, it was too late; his writing, when it wasn't dreadfully pseudo-intellectual, came from a place of emotional development that most people passed through in their late teenage years.

I agree completely. In the long run, I think it's been largely negative in an artistic sense, but people never admit it because it makes everything so easy.

It's been largely negative in the short term but I think, in the long run, it'll be great. We're just like infants with this thing.

I also think it's an entirely new medium itself. I've heard people talk about it being like gutenberg's printing press to the book. I disagree. We had books before gutenberg.

I think the "internet" is birthing a new medium. Like film and photography was birthed from the mid 19th through in the beginning of the 20th century. The same thing is happening with the "internet" or "computer" into the 21st century.

I don't have a good name for it, yet.

This is interesting. Can you expand on what you mean? Particularly on exactly what the new medium is.

It means memes are art

This is not me but I don't disagree with what he said.

Like I said, I don't know, yet. The video game is a good idea for general direction, but I imagine it even further. The possibilities are endless. Don't get me wrong, the writer is not going away. You'll still need the writer. I just mean why just produce a novel when you can add moving pictures and music and lead the reader/viewer on a journey around the world or into a completely new fantastical world. Not only that but it's interactive. Even if you just use words, let's say you're reading my book and I include a description of a shadowy group. Well what if I bought the website that I link you to and write a whole background and story about this non-existent shadowy group. What if, even further, you don't know this shadowy group doesn't actually exist? What if I go so far to include a phone number that you decide to call and staff it with someone to play a part. Now, obviously that requires serious production dollars, etc., but who's to stop it and then who's to say where it stops?

Before televisions, the audience had to get up and go somewhere to see a production. Before that they had to go to see the artist's production. Before that they were lucky if they ever saw the artist in their lifetime. Now the person has the artist in their pocket. Not only that, but they're connected to everyone and everywhere else in the world at all times and can go and do and explore from the comfort of their home or on top of a mountain in Patagonia. The artist can be, too.

It's just...I think the computer...more specifically the computer paired with the internet...is the sort of cultural and technological shift/change that fundamentally changes humanity. Like a prism. I truly believe, in the future, we'll look at life before and life after the internet.

Truthfully, we've all known it was coming. It sort of memed itself into existence.

he wrote a pretty good book. it pisses a lot of people off for reasons i haven't been able to figure out yet - i've seen complaints by feminists offended that a modern WHITE man in this day and age would have the masturbatory audacity to write a 1000 page book, but that doesn't feel like a good enough explanation. a lot of people really hate DFW for some reason that never gets adequately explained... "he's pretentious! he's self indulgent! he's too self aware! it's too long!" yeah so what? you could say all of that about james joyce too and you'd be right. there's more in a great man's flaws than a weak man's virtues

>I just mean why just produce a novel when you can add moving pictures and music and lead the reader/viewer on a journey around the world or into a completely new fantastical world

i don't agree with this. Half the point of novels is that reading them is like lifting weights for your imagination. that effect is lost by using external stimuli like music or images

I didn't mean to imply that the novel would go away. It certainly will still have its place. I just meant writers will have another medium to write in. A medium that will ultimately be very fulfilling and exciting for the writer.

people said this during the 20th century, the 19th century and so on

Your analogy to the printing press is part of the reason why I have chosen to study computer science instead of literature in university. Plenty of novelists had a connection with the printing press and considering the novelty of the computer and the internet I can't see why there are not more literary types interested in this new medium. Literary education, on the other hand, does not require a 4-year university degree as plenty of poets and novelists have totally forgone university—let's not even mention the pathetic state of the academy today.

So why not learn about something incredibly difficult and new that has radically changed our lives?

It was actually the catalyst for the Renaissance, believe it or not.