When did infinite jest become casual reading for the uninitiated?

Know your memes, you fucking fuck.

>Think of Harold Bloom’s comments about David Foster Wallace and his novel Infinite Jest in a 2011 article by Lorna Koski (“Just awful,” “He can’t think he can’t write,” “No discernible talent,” etc.)

Bloom is a meme that went so much further than expected

Reminds me of pic related.

>You're no artist! You're a no talent piece of shit!

...

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

There was one line towards the end of IJ that called his criticism turgid. Do you really think he was even aware of it?

He probably read the book and since he's not illiterate yeah he probably noticed it.

there is not a niche single thing in existence that doesnt have the potential to become casual everyday normie stuff, if it gets memed enough it becomes socially acceptable and people will like it

not that im implying that book is any good desu

is that quasi modo?

When it started appearing in Apple ads.

When it was written.
Actually, while it was being written.

this picture triggers and arouse me

when i picked this up from the library there was a bookmark 18 pages in. The last reader had made it 18 pages and given up.
The bookmark was a generic advertisement for a national sports team and a public holiday.
I think this would describe the majority of peoples experience with the book.

Wallace is the progenitor of YA fiction

My dear friend, when you reach your early twenties, as I have, you come to realize that life is short. We're allotted limited hours here on this pale blue dot we call Earth, so we best not waste them. That's why when it comes to reading, I read the best and only the best. And the best is David Foster Wallace. I strenuously urge everyone on this board who's reading this to pick up Infinite Jest when you get the chance. Just remember: Wallace said, "Fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being." He didn't say, "Fiction's about what it is to be a fucking Witch-king of Angmar."

ever since it came out.
I told my girlfriend it was a quirky book about a teenager and his totally dysfunctional family.

Is that Partial Asian?

Fuckin dropped.

>'Thus the Flood's real consequence is revealed to be dessication, generations of hydrophobia on a pandemic scale,' the protagonist was reading aloud. Peterson's /The Cage/ was running on a large screen behind the lectern. A number of shots of undergraduates with their heads on their desks, reading their mail, making origami animals, picking at their faces with blank intensity, established that the climactic lecture wasn't coming off as all that climactic to the audience within the film. 'We thus become, in the absence of death as teleologic end, ourselves dessicated, deprived of some essential fluid, aridly cerebral, abstract, conceptual, little more that hallucinations of God,' the academic read in a deadly drone, his ever never leaving his lectern's text. The art-cartridge critics and scholars who point to the frequent presence of audiences inside Himself's films, and argue that the fact that the audience are always either dumb and unappreciative or the victims of some grisly entertainment-mishap betrays more than a little hostility on the part of an '/auteur/' pegged as technically gifted but narratively dull and plotless and static and not entertaining enough -- these academics' arguments seem sound as far as they go, but they do not explain the incredible pathos of Paul Anthony Heaven reading his lecture to a crowd of dead-eyed kids picking at themselves and drawing vacant airplane- and genitalia-doodles on their college-rule note-pads, reading stupefyingly turgid-sounding shit[366] -- 'For while /clinamen/ and /tessera/ strive to revive or revise the dead ancestor, and while /kenosis/ and /daemonization/ act to repress consciousness and memory of the dead ancestor, it is, finally, artistic /askesis/ which represents the contest proper, the battle-to-the-death with the loved dead' -- in a monotone as narcotizing as a voice from the grave -- and yet all the time weeping, Paul Anthony Heaven, as an upward hall full of kids all scan their mail, the film-teacher not sobbing or wiping his nose on his tweed sleeve but silently weeping, very steadily, so that tears run down Heaven's gaunt face and gather on his underslung chin and fall from view, glistening slightly, below the lectern's frame of sight. Then this too began to seem familiar.

>[366] Sounding rather suspiciously like Professor H. Bloom's turgid studies of artistic /influenza/ -- though it's unclear how Flood- or dead-ancestor discussions have any connection to S. Peterson's low-budget classic /The Cage/, which is mostly about a peripatetic eyeball rolling around, other than the fact that J. O. Incadenza loved this film and stuck little snippets of it or references to it just about anywhere he could; maybe the 'disjunction' or 'disconnection' between the screen's film and Ph.D.'s scholastic discussion of art is part of the point.[a]

>[a] (Which of course assumes there's a point.)

'Suspiciously' is an understatement: it's a direct quote from Anxiety of Influence.

I'd be willing to bet that the majority of actual readers on this board either skimmed it or read it and assigned it little to no discernible merit.

It is purely a troll for the uninitiated who have not developed their own taste and interest.

It's not that bad. It's not that good either, but there are worse things you could be reading.

>there are worse things you could be reading

Of course but many new readers come to this board (as evidenced by the preponderance of Lolita, Catch 22, 1984 threads) and are like "oh, here is the defining contemporary novel" when in fact the back story is far more interesting than the novel itself.

When it was published.

There's one thing and one thing only that the mods could do to immensely improve the board, instantly, overnight, and that's facilitate more threads about David Foster Wallace. Create them, nurture the ones that exist, guide the discussions, and make sure they stay on track. If we're here to discuss literature, ultimately, we are here to discuss David Foster Wallace. There is no way for a person to grasp the full implications of Infinite Jest and not realize this. We're talking about the smartest man who ever lived. You must realize this. It's not a joke anymore. We're seeing the world degenerate further and further into chaos, and we're standing by and watching it happen. You want to fix this board? You want to fix the world? You want to fix your life? You need only take one step: read Infinite Jest. There is no substitute for hard work, and that's what Wallace requires of you if you are to understand him. If you are to understand not just him, but the world. We're not talking about escapist literature, fan fiction, genre nonsense. We're talking about saving our lives. We're talking about meditating on God. We're talking about communing with the primary presence. This is not an issue to be treated lightly.

if you've paid any attention to the literature world in the pass 20 years its name has always been around

It's not his best work and everyone knows it.

it's been pretty popular since it came out 20 years ago dummies

No that was Rowling

ya like it is now wasn't even around then, this makes zero sense, meme harder
it is true that John Green is obsessed with DFW and basically lightly plagiarizes him/takes df's larger points and boils them down to easy banalities, and some of dfw starts out pretty banal to begin with

if by back story you mean m karr then agreed
ij isn't bad though, people just overhype it and focus on the gimmicks

>lightly plagiarizes him/takes df's larger points and boils them down to easy banalitie
lightly? literally every one of his books is contained in infinite jest

I haven't actually read them! I meant he stole everything but didn't literally reprint exact words from dfw afaik.

is that okmalissa?

It actually is the defining contemporary novel. Even though it's 20 years old, it's extremely relevant to today's times. Though that's more because nearly everything that came out after it has been banal or inadequate than IJ being that good.