Cat Person author has a piece hating on david foster wallace

Cat Person author has a piece hating on david foster wallace

thoughtcatalog.com/kristen-roupenian/2012/09/this-should-not-be-a-love-story-reading-dt-maxs-biography-of-david-foster-wallace/

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fivedials.com/fiction/zadie-smith/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

He was clearly not a well man and not particularly good to the people around him. She doesn't claim his writing is weaker because of it, in fact it seems she liked his work. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I knew I'd read that fucking name somewhere:

>"I can’t speak for Karina, but I must admit that, for me, part of the appeal of such a trip was the possibility that at the end of our impromptu book club meeting, the author might be willing to make out."

Is something I specifically remember for how hypocritical it made the entire piece.

>He was clearly not a well man and not particularly good to the people around him

This. He wasn't a saint, and his fanboys claiming he was the absolute paragon of sincerity are doing him an injustice.

Another interesting thing about Kristen Roupenian is that until Cat Person she was billing herself as a "horror" writer and had published a few stories in horror anthologies. So for all the real-life validity of her story, the motives are probably similar to her motives for her writing horror stories, i.e. (as she says i a interview) to scare the reader.

>Karina and I never made that pilgrimage, but if we had, David Foster Wallace would have had a term for us at the ready: “audience pussy.”

correction: that was mary karr's phrase

>to scare the reader
to make money churning any crap out that people who don't read would like

you have to start somewhere

I read that shit earlier this morning and the word "audience pussy" had been on repeat in my head all day

in a sense she has made a brilliant work of horror with Cat Person... we exist in a world where these characters are realistic and that the general population empathizes with

>audience pussy

fivedials.com/fiction/zadie-smith/

Why are women of color so based compared to white women?

>narcissistic cunt imagines whoring herself to a writer on the first day they meet
>becomes outraged when she finds out that a million other whores had the same idea

The modern woman holyshit, they're hopeless

>thought catalog
Either post the entire article or fuck off. Not going to that website

>comparing an article about DFW's writing to one about DFW as a person

DFW was an ass and he knew it, it's his fanboys that try to portray him as some kind of saint just because he could write well. A cult of personality doesn't do anyone any good.

Either read the article or fuck off. No one gives a shit

tou catalou is the absolute epitome of 103 IQ

>ambitious writers will continue to imitate him

Americans, always on point with the unintended hilarity.

Keep giving TC shekels, you faggot shill

I don’t read non males and I don’t read thoughtcatalog

Get over yourself. "Dumb, deluded, easily-exploitable 19 year old me"? This person is and was an adult, but portrays herself like a child expecting to be coddled by her writer-crush. Sorry, but that's just not how it works. The guy was clearly bipolar, and a piece of shit, but portraying yourself like this is just disingenuous and weird.Romantic encounters aren't walks with your dad, they're two people driven by physical attraction to each other. So what if he smack-talked exactly the type of person she was or seems to be? As with all these millennial perpetual teenagers, ultimately it is all. About. Them.

that's pretty ironic, isnt it

She even misses the point of the quote "We choose what we worship" at the end of the article, whatever you worship "will eat you alive", which is essentially what has happened to her crush. What a fucking idiot.

White women live lives that are absolutely adversity free. They are basically automatic people without souls unless they are totally fucked up.

she's just mad she can't get any audience pucci

this, when will Veeky Forums learn

>When [Wallace’s sister Amy] was three, he knocked out her front teeth. When he was in ninth grade, he got so mad at her… that he pushed her down and dragged her through the backyard through the excrement left by their dog
Jesus christ, David.

Obsessing over personal/moral qualities of artists is dumb. Polanski is a pos but made good movies, his movies don't suddenly become bad because he drugged and raped a pubescent girl. People in general overestimate the overlap of artist biography and their work.

>He takes full advantage of the “audience pussy” that becomes available to him after the publication of Infinite Jest; telling Jonathan Franzen he wonders whether his only purpose is “to put [his] penis in as many vaginas as possible.”
is this a bad thing to wonder? is this not what science tells us we've been selected to do?
why is innocuous stuff like this between friends so often used for character assassination?

he was a kid for most of his career.
the pale king should have been written at 80 with a natural life.
the 80s fucked him up. the book mentions this.

I've read about 100 pages of the book, up until he's 25, and there's not that much negative stuff by this point.


Agreed, however to be fair to him he did work extremely hard to get top grades in college and so on, and also his writing style being influences by Pynchon and the PoMoists wasn't expected to be slow, deep, meaningful stuff. He cared more about philosophical theories, sociological trends and linguistic strategies than he did people, which again isn't a bad thing per se, it just doesn't appeal to most folk. I think once he stopped writing for creative writing professors and fellow students his writing became more interesting because he seemed to know that he had a duty not to simply write about abstract stuff for his entire career. That's one of his finest virtues IMO. From what I understand regarding Pale King (which is my favorite Wallace book by far) he spent at least one year studying tax / accountancy in a formal manner before writing the book, to grasp not only the necessary language for the book but also to get an intimate sense of what it's like to dedicate yourself in a selfless manner for the benefit of your community / nation. I can't say I relate to the guy too much in many respects, but I think the fact he suffered and struggled is evidence at least that he wasn't some thoughtless narcissist.

>Obsessing over personal/moral qualities of artists is dumb
unless it reveals new ways to understand their art

The funny thing is that she so literally fits the definition of 'audience pussy' there that Wallace used. I mean, what else is he supposed to call her at that point? She is infatuated by his books, and wants to make out (and probably fuck) him as a result. She's not unique - Wallace was propositioned all the time. He gave into those propositions sometimes, because who among us wouldn't? And at the same time, he still recognized how demeaning and corrosive the whole situation was.

I do like "The Bandanna Man" as a moniker for Wallace though, so I suppose it isn't all bad.

BECAUSE I'M A WOMAN AND I DESERVE RESPECT
I SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE AN INDIVIDUAL EVEN IF I ACT THE EXACT SAME AS THOUSANDS OF OTHERS