ITT: Maximalism

>Maximilasm doesn't really work in the world of litetature.
Does when I read it or when any of the other people read it that have caused it to become an established genre with established relevant masterworks.

>Your shit better be fresh and your prose better be smoothe as butter if you want people to enjoy it.
Your prose better be good. Prose doesn't have to be "smooth" to be good. Prose can be jagged and angular and rough and still good.

>But when you're adding fucking integrals to your lit book for no reason, that's a problem.
Why? How do you argue that something is for "no reason"? It affects the overall form and texture of the book. Without it, the book would be a different book. Can you say that it would be better, and why? Is it so unpleasant to encounter something in a book which is unique and unexpected and novel?

Idk, i like reading books which do things which other books have not done to me. I like exploration and experimentation for exploration and experimentation's sake.

It's not unique. Pynchon did it first, as well as some French writer I can't recall. I like experimentation as well, hell I've jerked off using my left hand, but useless math in fiction just for the sake of pomo.... c'mon

>just for the sake of pomo
well, it /is/ pomo, after all. this feels like criticizing jazz for featuring horns and improvisation to me.

poor analogy but yeah i dig wallace despite this.

>brainlet who doesn't understand basic analysis

it is a poor analogy in that its kinda dumb and i wouldnt write it into a book or something, ie its not literary, but i think it makes the point fairly clear which is what analogies are supposed to do in argument.

yeah, if you meant improvisation is to jazz what experimentation is to pomo then it is a good analogy, but if you meant math in fiction is a staple of pomo, then it's a poor analogy. Either way, have a nice day :)

you mean basic calculus?

jason segel has strange, buggy eyes. he looks nowhere near as warm or comforting to be around as dfw was.

it's strange how a man notably more attractive than DFW played a version of DFW in a movie who was much less attractive than the actual DFW.

> jason segel more attractive than dfw

im not gay or a girl but that's some bs

>improvisation is to jazz what experimentation is to pomo then it is a good analogy
this is what i meant. it is a staple of the genre. pomo is into experimentation for experimentation's sake as a way of trying to find new ways of articulating and synthesizing human experiences as we move into postmodernity as an age, that is, postmodern life, and all of the ways in which it differs from past eras. life today (and perhaps for a while now) is like it has never been before, for better or worse, and because of this writing about life must be like it never has been in order for the reader to continue to identify with the text.

the fact that i don't often or really ever hear other people echoing this sentiment makes me fearful that my ego is perhaps manufacturing it, but i really have always been perplexed when people frame discussions of pomo-lit around how disconnected or detached or alienated they feel from the work, around how far apart they feel from it and around how much trouble they have identifying with it. maybe it's that i've lived a strange life and done far too many drugs (or am a "degenerate", as i think they say now) but much pomo-lit feels much more intimate than a great section of other literature which i have read. large chunks of my life really do feel fractured and scattered - there are whole six month - 1 year pieces of it where i could not reliably tell you if one event came before another - and often i am not convinced it is too important. it is the character of these times, and the taste of these memories which seems most important to me. it is the feelings and ideas and lessons which i think were imparted onto me. it is the asinine obsessions which i formed and they ways in which time was wasted, the odd memories and experiences which at the time seemed obvious or normal. it's strange but it's the nearly unintelligibly peculiarities and aspects of my experiences which seem nigh impossible to fully express with words which seem to have given my life the most meaning.

sorry for blogging or whatever but my point is just that i dont vibe with the coldness or inhumanity or deliberate alienation which is so commonly ascribed to pomo.

oh and whilst the integer bit of IJ certainly isn't my favorite bit of the book or anything, i really don't think there's anything wrong with it. it's given in the context of something pemulis is writing, concerning the rules of Eschaton, and both tells you some very important and insightful things about pemulis and by proxy some important and insightful things about Eschaton and since Eschaton is a game which is played at ETA it tells you some important things about the culture of ETA and the students there and the founders etc, and it is genuinely entertaining and also imo meritorious to include this sort of brain-picking extratextual "trivia", for the same reasons that including the paper Hal wrote on byzantine erotica (am i remembering that section right?) serve the work-at-large.

I would agree with you, because i think segel has a very douchey face with very ambiguous douchey features whilst DFW looked smokey and kind (albeit a bit facially rotund), but I think that if you were to take photographs of the 2 men and randomly poll members of the american public, the majority would favor segel's map.

He got dfw's smile wrong. He made it look like a dumb smile, the guy was just dopey, not dumb. Also wrong ethnicity, dfw had quite a bit of oriental blood, that segel faggot looks like any dumb, big faced, cow gazed american.

>Maximilasm doesn't really work in the world of litetature.
Literature is actually easily the best setting for maximalism.