when will the next Infinite Jest come along in terms of big, complex, zeitgeist capturing, popular bestselling literary fiction?
i don't know how many of you remember 1996 but Infinite Jest was a big deal in a way we haven't really seen since, not to say better books haven't been written but i am more wondering when the next blockbuster of literary fiction will come along
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Do you even?
>a good looking 45yo from a tiny European country talking about himself captures the spirit of our time
Even Elliot is a better bet
This, actually.
>"a good looking 45yo from a tiny European country talking about himself captures the spirit of our time"
>live in the most narcissistic epoch of all time
actually yes.
never, ij is a once in existence kind of book. the words literally transcend the page and merge with physical reality. the stark critique of entertainment can be applied to every culture throughout the ages.
>Even Elliot
>Elliot
Please don't give that bitter man-child this level of relevance.
Never.
We have entered the final phase of theological thought. People are abandoning religion in droves. The most educated and successful countries are predominantly secular. IJ came at the dawn of this phase for a reason: it is our holy book in this new secular world.
Simply put: God is dead, and DFW has replaced Him.
I think IJ was one of the last books of its kind. the novel has been dying a slow death ever since interconnectivity has become such a huge part of our lives, and very few people nowadays have the time or focus to plough through that sort of maximalist fiction.
The real innovation (if any at all) is going to come from writers who are able to embrace the 21st century's insistence on brevity and fleeting representation as opposed to the huge, zeitgeist-capturing projects of modernity or post-modernity.
Jane Austen's Persuasion is a good model for this - it concerned itself with the big issues of war and international identity without ever writing beyond the limits of her domestic field of reference. 21st century fiction will have to approach the big issues of the contemporary era through the smallest of scopes.
Probably the most autistic thread on Veeky Forums right now.
That's because you decided to post in it friendo :^)
please, this thread is for lit highly intellectuals only. please leave
Do you really think there won't be any more big books coming out? Remember, what is remembered isn't always what sells.
Source: I'm going to kill myself soon. I have set up a rube golberg machine to send a letter to my editor so he can discover my diary and publish it post-mortem. It's going to be huge, watch out fo it on Veeky Forums in the coming months.
>Do you really think there won't be any more big books coming out?
Oh, there'll definitely be those (like yourself) who will keep flogging a dead horse (or the corpse of a suicidal/critically acclaimed writer). Its just they won't be remembered or considered particularly innovative because they aren't doing things differently.
Source: I'm a straight white male publishing my first novel under the pen name of a woman, and when my identity is finally revealed I'll be revered as the man who radically changed the perceptions of 'toxic masculinity' forever.
You'll have to wait until I decide it's time to start writing.
This is actually completely untrue. See contemporary fantasy and its obsession with colossal books. Also, TV series have become extremely popular as well, and they are much longer and less compact than movies. Even movies are as big as possible. One short book can be turned into three 3-hour movies. Superhero universes have become ridiculously complex, individual movies are just small pieces in massive franchise puzzles. Same is about to happen to Star Wars. "Maximalism" in art is more popular than ever.
This. His manifesto was better written than most, but that doesn't make it anymore than just the writings of a mentally ill person. There's no real depth or cultural analysis beyond "women suck" in it, and you could find that on /r9k/ or /rTRP.
2666, My Struggle and the Neapolitan novels are all best sellers, fäm
Most people discovered and read IJ thanks to "interconnectivity"
>contemporary fantasy
>superhero universes
>star wars
>art
entertainment always lags behind art, I'm afraid. What was once considered literary innovation - the grand projects of Pynchon, Wallace, Joyce, James, etc. - is now commercial fodder which gets churned out on an industrial scale across all mediums. What you've just demonstrated is that it isn't 'innovative' to go big anymore - its become the accepted form of storytelling.
I'd agree with you about TV shows however - they are genuinely benefitting from a kind of large-scale novelistic presentation, whereas cinema just feels bloated and inconsistent by comparison.
>good looking
>most raised-by-the-internet millennials
ftfy
keep in mind the overwhelming critical response is most likely the result of cloistered academics, journalists and self-professed intellectuals who were determined to keep their literary fields relevant, by celebrating a book that criticises the kinds of entertainment which threatens the sanctity of their ivory towers. You probably wouldn't be reading it if it wasn't for the critics desperately trying to stay relevant in a world which basks in irrelevance.
im writting it tbqh
great pic.
Depends how many people are still reading pynchon and joyce considering that they're the source. I'd say josh cohen does already do work like this although at the same time much different.
>What you've just demonstrated is that it isn't 'innovative' to go big anymore - its become the accepted form of storytelling.
Yes, and that contradicts
>very few people nowadays have the time or focus to plough through that sort of maximalist fiction.
If "common people" (ones not too interested in art) can consume such massive works, so can the "artistic people". There is actually nothing suppressing this kind of art.
>What was once considered literary innovation - the grand projects of Pynchon, Wallace, Joyce, James, etc. - is now commercial fodder
Are you trying to say that techniques - such as Joyce's stream of consciousness and paralleling Odyssey - or the idea of a massive, detailed, 1000-page work are commercialized?
>There is actually nothing suppressing this kind of art.
There is if you distinguish between literary fiction and commercial entertainment, as I did in my previous post and which you seemed not to recognise. The former depends a lot on the reader's ability to focus, to piece together seemingly disparate parts into narrative coherence over hundreds of hours of reading - without that, books like infinite jest and gravity's rainbow are almost entirely incomprehensible. Add to that the sheer number of literary and cultural references these works draw on, and its clear that they take a lot more work to consume than your average fantasy novel.
Cinema and television are different because they require a much greater state of passivity on the part of the audience. Particularly in the case of television serials or cinematic universes like star wars or superhero flicks, each event is scheduled in bite-sized chunks separated by enough time for the audience to digest, to discuss it with their friends, to read reviews or internet discussions about it. It's maximalist in the sense that they can be pieced together to form an apparent unity, but you can still take each episode/film as a standalone object and it won't detract from its base entertainment value.
>Are you trying to say that techniques - such as Joyce's stream of consciousness and paralleling Odyssey - or the idea of a massive, detailed, 1000-page work are commercialized?
not the techniques in themselves, just the sort of large-scale world building they engage in. Because cinema, television and even games can have huge numbers of writers contributing to the same universe, it isn't hard to replicate the experience of totalised realism which those writers are known for. It's just not really what I'd identify as art, given the production of film and TV series is more industrialised than creative.