How do I read this out in public without looking like a douche?

now im self conscious that i'll never be able to read a book with the kind of incisive perception of someone who can expend 1000 postit notes.

lol your joking right? I see regular people reading the last 2 game of thrones books all the time and those are like 800 pages.

lots of normies know what this book is. sorry to burst your bubble, snowflake.

lol no they don't

>says national bestseller right on the cover

tick tock

That doesn't mean a lot when no one buys books anymore

A fucking movie was made around that book last year

none of my friends have heard about it and when I told them what it was they said why would they watch a movie about a guy who wrote a book I've never heard of lel

"a vast, encyclopedic compendium of whatever seems to have crossed Wallace's mind."

This book is acclaimed for essentially the same hollow reasons Boyhood is acclaimed.

If you wear an invisibility cloak then people will just see the book and you'll be fine.

Kill yourself.

now there's an idea

...

You get a tablet or an e-reader and you read it on that. Nobody will even know you are reading, let alone what you are reading. Crazy isn't it?

Does it matter if I take a shit in a sewer? No.

Does it matter if you read Infinite Jest in public? No.

There is, unfortunately, a stigma that exists amongst certain people around reading this book. You have to make a choice whether or not you're going to let that constrain your behavior. If you are reading it earnestly and not in a pretentious attempt to seem smart, then I don't see why you would worry.

In any case, you at least won't be one of those dickbags that buys this book, puts it on his shelf, and never reads it.

Get to my level, op.

I just chatted up some girls who were really into the D(fw), so no, you're probably just autistic.

Some blogger marked every time a color was mentioned.

>get the vintage español paper back
>read it on the train
>some hispano-nigger looks at it and stands infront of me
>dang thats a phat ass book
>gets out of train

???

>how do I read any kind of books in public ever?

Everyone judges, you shouldn't care. My English teach gave me the most disgusted look when I read Ride The Tiger during lunch time in his class. I prefer to read in public spaces that I will remain anonymous like on the bus or in a coffee shop

>reading Ebola in public
God, you must be the most memed-out fucker on the planet.

for the picture

>he wants the d

>board is 18+

>My English teach gave me the most disgusted look when I read Ride The Tiger during lunch time in his class.

Holyshit I hope you're baiting

>my anecdotal evidence
>all my friends don't know about it and they are a perfect sample of the rest of the world

Not saying you're wrong, just saying you're evidence is bad for the position you take.

Books in general aren't really well known these days unless they have a movie/show made about them. Doesn't mean those who read won't know what it is though.

...

did I mention we're hipsters

only correct reply. you disappoint me Veeky Forums

10/10

Yeah, "national bestseller" can mean anything from a book that genuinely penetrates the national cultural consciousness like Da Vinci Code or Twilight to something that sold a few thousand copies in a week.

slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/book_blitz/2004/10/whats_with_all_the_national_best_sellers.html

That was interesting, thanks for the read.
As our industry shrinks more and more, will literature get better overall? Are we going back to the 19th century by-the-intellectuals-for-the-intellectuals model?

Whats more likely is that less and less good literature will get published, and the only companies left standing will switch over to more of the easily marketable shallow mass appeal kind of material. It will probably die the same way written media died/is dying. By 2030 we'll have clickbait literature

I don't see commercial literature lasting in the long run. It doesn't give anything that others media can't and it's just less engrossing or addictive that movies or videogames or tv shows.
Honestly I blame that state of the industry on the marketing. We should have marketed literature the same way we market expensive clothes.
Noone hates elitism when they feel like they're part of the elite, and creating the desire to be part of the literary elite is not just possible, it's something we could have easily done

You can´t, looking like a douche is an inherent part of reading the Infinite Jest.

You must accept that fact.

It's literally impossible to read that book unironically and not be a douche.

Read it in a library or some other area designated for studying.
Reading it on the bus or in a cafe without looking like an asshole simply cant be done

>Noone hates elitism when they feel like they're part of the elite, and creating the desire to be part of the literary elite is not just possible, it's something we could have easily done
Any fuckwit can wear a hat.

Not just any fuckwit can sit through a book. And it *would* be sitting through one; marketing like that, people would be buying books to look good, not to read them.

It makes no difference whether dunces actually read them or not.
It would keep a quality-based industry going

Dunces aren't going to buy books unless they can show off with them. And you can't show off books you haven't read -- not safely, at any rate, not the way you can with clothes.

Besides, this would still result in a borked market for books that look trendy, and are considered trendy by all the right critics, but aren't necessarily any good. Although that might be the lesser evil.

Cover it with a porn mag.