David's whole thing

Do you believe that sincerity is truly the answer? These days, it seems as though describing a work as 'sincere' seems like a pat-on-the-back for an honest effort that lacks depth.

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I don't eve understsand his dislike for irony.

In music I find sincerity an invaluable quality. It's harder to connect with something emotionally through irony.

i dont think he dislikes irony as a concept

i think he dislikes the oversaturation of irony, as in substituting genuine feeling and emotion for irony because of the vague notion of it being more "literary"

Sincerity is the virgin loser in high school who had a crush on the prom queen.

Irony is the great destroyer, which has its purpose up until a point. That point is once everything's destroyed, there's nothing but the eradication of any efforts to derive new meaning through ironic discourse. So irony begets irony begets irony and everyone writes Carver and Pynchon stories forever.

Irony destroys lies. Facts stand on their own. Sincerity is crying into your wankrags because your 900 page novel is shit and using it as an excuse to get it published.

>Irony destroys lies
oh, okay, so I've just been deceived by a malevolent god and literature hasn't been total shit for the past twenty years due to a lack of direction, thanks for letting me know

Of course someone on Veeky Forums would put irony on a pedestal.

>hasn't been total shit for the past twenty years due to a lack of direction
literature has been total shit for the past twenty years because you're a brainlet that only reads whatever is canonical or famous.

Literature is lies though. Irony and sincerity both turn it to shit. You need to find a raconteur to tell you anything worthwhile.

Yes, 99% of the time irony is born out of weakness.
Ironic jokes are far easier to make than non-ironic jokes, so if you resort to them it just mean you're not that funny.
Ironic replies are either born out of being too incompetent to patiently explain why that person too wrong or out of being too much of a pussy to just straight up insult the person.
Ironic anything else is mostly the result of not being able to defend anything as good or decent, so you just have to discard everything else with really bad criticism that makes you look smarter and more knowledgeable than you actually are.
In fact, the destructive character of irony can not be understated: it's overwhelmingly clear to anyone how insidious and corrosive it is to any sincere passion whether deep or superficial.

>Carver
>irony
judging by your previous post, your malevolent god is called mental retardation

can you recommend some good contemporary literature that isn't canonical, famous, or too obscure for a brainlet like me to understand?

You can assert that about any style of rhetoric or humor or behavior, but it doesn't make it a true or worthy unless you have a reason to back it up. Being funny doesn't mean making the hardest jokes to make.
People don't necessarily use irony because they can't explain why someone is wrong. An ironic statement can perfectly explain why someone is wrong. See: Socrates. Sometimes people happen to disagree, and their disagreement is consequential and important to them. So they use rhetoric to emphasize their argument.
It's true that irony is basically destructive. But if it can interrupt a sincere passion, that sincere passion was superficial. Irony isn't incompatible with a sincere passion when it has any depth: a person can have a sense of humor about something they value when they aren't insecure about its value.
Socrates was ironic, why? Because it was his mission to help people realize how little they knew, so they could learn something about themselves. Irony is sometimes the means to an end, which is realizing the inescapable contingency of your beliefs, humbling yourself a little.
There's nothing mature about declaring a style which can be applied in many very different ways universally or generally bad.
That's a good way to put it, it's a pat on the back for an honest effort. It comes off as a shortcut which I don't think even applies to DFWs writing, and for the better. By declaring irony the cause of all ills you can raise the most superficial sincerity above actually deep satire, because satire doesn't make you as happy.
It takes a lot more talent to put the most vulnerable and sincere passion into the language and setting of irony. Many great writers do this. Look at Shakespeare, Cervantes, Plato, Goethe Kierkegaard, Kafka, Samuel Beckett. They all did it. Who are the hall of fame for being unironic and sincere? John Green and JK Rowling are probably great candidates.

If you want to blame a decline in artistic quality in recent times on something, irony isn't a great candidate. I'm not gonna act like I can explain it, but mass production for popular consumption comes off to the top of my head as a way more feasible explanation.

>Irony destroys lies.
So when someone jokes about gassing people, or throwing them in the gulag, they're just using humor to point out the brutality of ideologues, right? They're mocking those people, right? No one would ever use ironic memes as a way to normalize extreme beliefs and behaviors, right?

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that's what we call fascist humour in the good old boot

I remember being overjoyed when I found Dean Blunt because he seemed to convey familiar emotions in very interesting new ways, but supposedly the whole thing is some abstract, ironic art project, which would be really disappointing. Maybe that's just masked cynicism, but I share Dave's feeling that it's mostly just vapid and empty.

>Irony is bad.
A-Are the Greeks wrong?
kek
I see this point being made everywhere but don't see anyone but the 'in group' laughing at their er, 'humor'. I can guarantee no one in real life would laugh at this stuff because of how unfunny and crass it is.
Stop cashing the red haring of meaningless Internet drivel and do good by the real life people around you, fixing or reporting a pot hole has more impact than arguing on twitter against 'fascist humor', who knows, you might even save a life fixing a pothole. besides, if you come across someone irl spouting fascist humor, just say 'fuck off'.

That's a shallow analysis. It is a way to normalize extreme beliefs and behaviors. But that is a strength. By normalizing abnormal things, less ideological rigidity and dogma can take place in discourse and people can be more flexible about their beliefs.
Of course people making gulag and gas chamber jokes don't mean it specifically, but are sometimes sincere nazis and communists. The point is to own up to evil behavior without dismissing the ideas associated with it. That's not a bad thing.

>David's whole thing

Plagiarized it from Kierkegaard.

>Name 3 (three) contemporary works of fiction that are not horseshit, preferably american, as DFW seems to be deriding american literature in particular

Irony can be the greatest of all midwives as well, its negativity can beget positivity: read Kierkegaard's concept of irony if you're interested in this, he goes into great detail of how this works based on the irony of Socrates, but it is easy to extrapolate it to other kinds of irony. What it demands is intellectual work from the receiver, and I think that the problems of irony are not really problems of irony, but problems of intellectual laziness.

And I'll reiterate: . Wallace's entire shtick can be found in 4-5 extraordinarily succinct and clear pages of Either/Or. If only Wallace had read and plagiarized Kierkegaard's doctoral thesis on irony as well, he wouldn't have dismissed irony as categorically as he does.

the tunnel, austerlitz, remains of the day

also europe central

you too

>The point is to own up to evil behavior without dismissing the ideas associated with it.
The humor trivializes the evil associated with the ideology. That is its intended purpose. You cannot own up to something if you cannot even discuss it in frank terms.

Or maybe what it trivializes is the association of the evil to the ideology, not the evil itself. Do you need frank terms to know the gulag and gas chambers were monstrosities? No, the orthodoxy constantly tells you it already is. Irony opens up the space for a different take on what the association really amounts to.

>Or maybe what it trivializes is the association of the evil to the ideology,
That's even worse. Now you've got people who honestly think that a revolution to overthrow a civic democracy somehow won't cause untold suffering and chaos. The association of radical ideology with brutality is well earned, and undermining it with irony only serves to hide the truth.

>Being funny doesn't mean making the hardest jokes to make.
I didn't say that, but if you have to resort to the weakest shit, you're probably not that good at humor.
>An ironic statement can perfectly explain why someone is wrong
No, it will always be inferior compared to a sincere explanation of why the person is wrong. Irony is quick and easy, it takes very little to do it and it's usually just insulting and divisive. Actual, careful explanation to someone who you really disagree with takes actual intellectual talent and honesty.
Most intellectual laziness is on the part of the person doing the irony.

It's a thought worth entertaining, because it is a matter of great importance. The alternative is blind intellectual conformity. Deep thought is deep thought, regardless of what the consequences of the readings of the deep thinkers have been.
I hate to use this word, but privilege is what convinces you the costs of the status quo are necessarily smaller than the dangers of trying to change the world. One should take the questions of whether it is worth it to radically change the world, and in what ways would it be worth it, and so on seriously. Through oversimplified communism = gulag you don't really look at the question.
Also, it's laughable to think that any of the real great brutality of the historical radicals was a reaction to some peaceful civic democracy. The powers they replaced were not liberal or democratic, or without great suffering and chaos.
>The association of radical ideology with brutality is well earned
But is it, relative to the distinct lack of association of perfectly acceptable status quo ideology with great brutalities? The spectrum of radical ideology is large; some of it will never get to be tested, some of it has not yet been tested. Stop with the sweeping generalization and conformity.

struggle is the answer
get rid of coddle technology

You act as if all irony is the same, is never a part of something larger, and always in its lowest for. You're being lazy with the concept.

>One should take the questions of whether it is worth it to radically change the world, and in what ways would it be worth it, and so on seriously.
This is exactly what I have been trying to say. You HAVE to take it seriously. You should not use irony as a way to avoid thinking about the potential consequences of your actions.

nobody mentioned sloterdijks "critique of cynical reason". it explains the phenomenon of the incessant irony and cynicism of our time

I'm not saying that irony is always in its lowest form, I'm saying that comparing irony with non-irony of similar quality, irony is always going to be of inferior quality.

Everything that William T Vollmann has written,dfw even said that he dreaded vollmann because he was more "sincere"

I mean, I’ve got my weird neuroses. Like I’m totally—I had this huge inferiority complex where William Vollmann’s concerned. Because he and I’s first books came out at the same time. And I even once read a Madison Smartt Bell essay, where he used me, and my “slender output,” and the inferiority of it, to talk about, you know, how great Vollmann is. And so I go around, “Oh no, Vollmann’s had another one out, now he’s got like five to my one.” I go around with that stuff. But I think, I’m trying to think of any example that

Dfw atleast meant some sincerity in language per se,example to read literature not with irony but sincere,which you faggots cant do,as every supposed critic of literature doesnt know how to read,thats also why all the pseud "literary community" of the world dont read vollmann
some of you are alright,read him before kys while binge watching foucault vs chomsky

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I mostly find it in older music like 40's or 50's. The Beach Boys are probably the newest group that still hits that sweet spot for me. youtube.com/watch?v=m_hPqnxaYYI

Also no offense to new music or anything I just can't sense the sincerity in it.

I'm not that user you replied to, but can you post a song that is ironic or lacks sincerity? I need some context.

It's more of a feeling I get from singing these songs than just listening

Another example of what I'm trying to get across
youtube.com/watch?v=h7KJCns5v3g


and a song that lacks it
youtube.com/watch?v=jVO8sUrs-Pw

I don't have a quantifiable rationale if that's what you're searching for though.

>Irony destroys lies
Life is a lie.