How to approach Wallace? Which one of his works should I read first?

Because they've all been dead for hundred(s) of years and didn't write about the specific themes and culture of life today nor do they suggest the latest dialectical step for todays literature

This guy needed Jesus badly and you know it.

He apparently tried to become a Maronite but he couldn't keep up the faith

Start short. He has an amazing depth of thought that I think shows best is in short stories.

I read gon and it was Ok. I wating for tpk to arrive, decided to read it because some faggots here shilled it hard.
I would suggest to approach him however you want

>Maronite
So he was a LARPer.
>he couldn't keep up the faith
No wonder.

>So he was a LARPer

Well yeah its DFW everything he did was LARPing

Read the cruise ship essay, then some short stories. If you like it even a little, pick up IJ. You might need 2-5 tries to really get into it, but it's worth it

He's not, faggot. Fight me.

youtube.com/watch?v=VCSJmUT22io

>tfw ywn write infinite jest
Why live ;_;

>tfw you will never bother to finish reading Infinite Jest because you have better things to do with your time.
=D

his essays and short stories are superb though, the guy did have a one of a kind sense of humor

bad advice

Start with his essays. Read "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", the lobster one, and then the one on the Illinois State Fair. If you like them, then go ahead and jump into Infinite Jest.

Oh, and welcome to the water, kid.

Infinite Jest then Consider the Lobster

the important thing to remember is what people are saying about wallace's short stories, because it applies to the pale king and IJ as well, in that the books are all short stories that wind up connecting to each other (less so in TPK as the guy shlumped himself during the writing, his prose was a lot sharper here too, imo. its a real shame)

honestly just find a part in any of his books that looks like something you might find interesting and start reading.

It's completely fine to start with Infinite Jest.

If I had to recommend an entry point, I'd choose Consider the Lobster.

Would unironically recommend reading in publication order.

Start with Broom of the System.

Logistically, Infinite Jest is going to be easier to find than other books. You can read something twice.

I Read IJ was hard, but doable

Logistically, everything is either a libgen or amazon click away so I have no idea what you mean

The only thing I know about Infinite Jest is it's not written like a traditional novel, and it was skewered in Castle as an awful book the titular character wrote called "Finite Laughter" (complete with a similar looking cover).

>She gestures to the coffee table. CASTLE reaches down and picks up a book. It’s light blue and white and looks nothing like the Nikki Heat books.
>CASTLE: Finite Laughter? I did not write this. This …
>(he opens the book and reads) “Babcock was a small man. A small man with large dreams and one of those dreams was Betty.” (he startles) This is awful!
>MARTHA: Exactly what the critics said. But I am pleased to see that distance has given you some perspective. Good.

this is what I did too. whats the big deal?

There's nothing wrong with doing it, its just bad advice. Short stories exist as a medium exactly because it allows one to investigate an author's style an message without having to commit to a larger work

Jump right in to IJ. It's actually one of his easier fiction pieces, aside from length

This, I started with IJ, but Broom of the System is a way better entry point. Easier, not as dense and I found it really funny to boot.

i just have to say, i really like dfw and i think it's tragic that he took his own life

>How to approach Wallace?

With great caution. Every fiber of your body must be on high alert. Stealth is of the utmost importance. Approach from his left side in a flanking maneuver, that's his weak eye. Strike hard and fast. You will get only one chance. Godspeed Veeky Forumsanon. We are depending on you.

Get the audiobook for infinite jest, it's awesome and is 57 hours and lots of fun. Buy the book too so you can read the end notes, and go over some of your fav passages slowly. He has a beautiful way of observing things. IJ has a main plot that's seperated by lots of very interesting side stories. Don't worry about "getting it" like all the psueds and brainlets here, just enjoy it. And bring a dictionary!

>IJ is not a tough book
This is a dangerous level of posturing. So you're telling me a 1000 book compromised almost entirely of sentences whose main subject is hidden and obscured on purpose, distracted by extensive footnotes, sometimes in quick succession, with abundant references to arcane continental philosophy and theory, and whose entire plot and structure is detailed to a maniacal level is an easy read? I mean let's not confuse lucid prose with easy prose. I used to say the same thing about this book, that it was easy. But that's because it was one of my first real reading experiences and I hadn't yet learned how to savor and parse a sentence. IJ is not an easy book you absolute posturing fags

woah dude tv and drug addiction NO WAIT, tv IS a drug addiction WOAH

>books are an rpg

It's easy to see a novel the size of IJ and conclude that it's "very difficult." In actuality, one doesn't need to dig very deep to find the thesis of the book, and the philosophy preached is pretty easy to conceive and understand. The hardest part of the book is DFW's extensive lexicon - it's basically just a book displaying how many unique words DFW knew how to use in context.

DFW was absolutely a narcissist and (at least in IJ) every major character is a reflection of his own neuroses and every digression is a half-baked essayistic sociological statement meant to showcase his learning and putative thoughtfulness

What's the name of that phenomenon where you're too dumb to know you're not getting it?

>And but so,

What *exactly* did the man mean by this?

Look, I’ve never read a good piece of criticism on IJ because it’s all surface. It’s an interesting book, and impressive in its way, but it’s not Ulysses. It’s like minor DeLillo with a less developed style.

The thing about Broom is it's only 'easier' in the sense that it's less dense and less sprawling. The literary themes of Broom however are far more academic than that of IJ. Philosophical ideas of the self and depersonalisation. So it's easier for the layman reader to finish Broom and make superficial 'sense' of the novel, but I think that same reader will gain so much more satisfaction from persevering with IJ

Pull a late-stage DFW
>impressive in its way
I would go with this. Anybody who has 1,000+ pages of somewhat coherent thoughts to put on paper is worthy of praise in their own way, but IJ isn't exactly 1,000+ pages of Nietzsche. Almost anybody could pick up IJ and understand the point; most don't because it's 1,000+ pages.

Think it's Duning-Kruger.
It may not be Finnegans Wake but it sure as shit is Ulysses.

Reading Broom is fun; reading IJ is work. How you wish to attack it is your prerogative. I'm happy I read IJ first because it's a solid representation of how DFW's brain worked. Everything after IJ was that much more enjoyable to read.

I think you're being unfairly harsh on IJ. Why should the idea that people could pick up IJ and understand it be a criticism of the book? As an aside I don't believe your average reader, let alone your average human being could pick up IJ and "understand the point", at least not in the same way they would for 99% of the fiction that exists on this planet. Yes, almost anybody can understand IJ if they put in a little mental effort and have a dictionary handy, but it's hardly the intention of a fiction writer to be obfuscatory.

Track down a copy of 'Oblivion', read 'The Suffering Channel' then come back here and post your thoughts because no one will discuss it with me and I have questions.

To be fair, I'm also including "IJ" and "Nietzsche" together in the same sentence; I'm not downplaying the sentiment of IJ, but it's also not necessarily on par with great philosophy - it's philosophy that should click with the above-average reader, especially the above-average reader in the modern day who can relate to the current cultural situation.
>Why should the idea that people could pick up IJ and understand it be a criticism of the book?
My only criticism of the book is its length, and that more people won't read it due to the fact that it - having read it - is 'longer than it needs to be' for literary reasons. Regardless, I recommend this book to people all the time. They are turned off when they learn that it is over 1,000 pages.

Suffering Channel is probably my favorite Wallace piece.

Can you explain the significance of all the Incidences of twins please?

You could probably chop 1/3 to 1/2 of IJ and not lose its essence. That coming from Wallace's supposed 2000+ page draft. I'm not criticizing it because one of the points of it is that it's a bit of an endurance test in multiple senses.

To me the size and scope of IJ is a large part of its identity. I felt the same way reading IJ as I did the epic poetry of Homer. DFW had something of huge importance to say and to have it fleshed out in such detail feels appropriate if not necessary.

All right but some of it was really genius and some of it was redundant. How much of JOI's failed film ventures did we need? How many dads giving their kids goofy time - what was the point of that? Genuinely curious because no one seems to talk about that stuff. How much about the cartridges goddammit?

My favorite technique of DFW's was when he would give us these filtered looks at reality - the tape of Mario's puppet show, the third-account transcripts, a kid reading the essay from another unrelated character and making judgments on it. He also had a very natural descriptive sense that could describe movement and structures the way most authors can't.Then there's yrstruly peddling ass and shit like that

I've posted several times about the suffering channel and no one ever wants to discuss it with me either

>I guess I am having trouble connecting all of the thematic dots of the story. Right now they are kind of disparate strands that I can't quite put together. On one level the story is about not being mindful of the other, whether it be your neighbor or people who live on the other side of the planet. On another level the story is about art and how art is essentially about the 'shit' that the artist deals with as a human. On another level DFW is criticizing contemporary culture as being shit and a distraction. It gets kind of tricky though when I try to parse what he is saying about himself, if he is talking about himself at all. It would seem to me that he definitely is talking about himself and the duality of being the writer and the man behind the work. He is both Mr. Motlke and Skip, both the weak and passive artist who does his art to make the others around him happy and the pragmatic journalist who is searching for the upbeat angle and balancing the tension of working for a company who is superficial and propagates shit and doing real, honest work. (I'm not too fluent in theory or criticism so I'm not sure if this is at all off base or anything but I know DFW does take this type of theoretical problem seriously in his other writings yet I thought he claimed to have moved past that by the time he wrote Oblivion). I guess in an essay I would note the recurrence of the symbol of the twin. At one point the narrator says that Skip's challenge for the poo story is to find an upbeat angle in the suffering channel. Now I am also confused about what the suffering channel is metaphorically. It of course stands in as the type of 'shit' that DFW is indicting the culture for being so attracted to (and I guess also another point would be that there is something human about needing to see the pain of others that can't be found elsewhere now? I'm not too sure) but does it also represent DFW's work? or the work of the artist in general with respect to the suffering of life? Is the artist's job in other words trying to find the upbeat angle in life and is DFW by the end suggesting that this cannot be done? I guess this last question is the big one. However the last sentence of the story leaves me wondering whether he is 1. criticizing the self reflexiveness of metafiction (what happens when the artists looks at the mechanics of work) 2. a commentary on the American people watching endlessly the harmful products (shit) of their culture come back to bomb them or however this can be appropriately phrased or 3. is he talking about the uniqueness of human consciousness and how humans are really just the universe looking back in at itself, which in turn happens to be shit?

>I don't know how can anyone unironically claim that Finnegan's Wake is anything but incoherent rambling.

Bump

Learn to play tennis, then go from there.

>reading based on length and not on quality
>litterally viewing literature as some sort of videogame-esque progression system