This book

For what it's worth OP, I liked this book a great deal. As someone who grew up obsessed with baseball during the 90s steroid era, and especially prone to American nostalgia, the book resonated deeply.

Read it twice and probably more. Probably understand it better than you, but it really doesn't matter, because you think it's the greatest thing in the world because someone told you so and you looked up a synopsis on the internet.

This

samefag

Nope you're just a faggot.

>college sophomore who has just read his first avant-garde fiction on his own time detected

Normies will never understand the complexity of postmodern genius and Veeky Forums meme extraordinaire, David bandana man Wallace!

No one else describes the pain and anguish of being an upper middle class white male who is desperate to seem intelligent to his peers because he has nothing else going for him

>No one else describes the pain and anguish of being an upper middle class white male who is desperate to seem intelligent to his peers because he has nothing else going for him

spot on.

I haven't read underworld, but I'm currently reading White Noise, and read his Falling Man earlier this year. I like Dellilo's prose, and it has a cadence/rhythm to it. But I almost feel like I'm being bamboozled, as if he is conveying less than what you might think.

OP here. That's exactly what I'm trying to say! It's like you read 400 pages and you're enthralled with the really exquisite style and form, then you realize there's absolutely no substance to any of it and you just wasted hours of your life. Then you start noticing the author reusing "proscenium" five times in a chapter and you start to wonder if he just read the word somewhere the afternoon he wrote it, and thought it was impressive...

the flip side of that is..

are mostly white males the only ones that have the genius to produce post-modern works?

Yeah that's pretty much Delillo's thing. He's mostly about style. I heard in an interview once that he is not really concerned with any "meaning" behind his craft. It's more about the craft itself. You can take it or leave it, I think.

>No one else describes the pain and anguish of being an upper middle class white male who is desperate to seem intelligent to his peers because he has nothing else going for him
user is going for the deep cuts tonight.

It honestly strikes me odd the ironic shitstorm that IJ has bred.
Those few who hate it try to go around spewing their opinion as if they're some master of the realm of PoMo, chastising DFW for doing the exact same thing they do online.

You lack the self-awareness to see that you've been baited and tricked by DFW.

Not really

mostly liberal lit fags hate DFW and IJ because they despise the fact that a white male author is superior to everyone else

>Not really
>roughly 90% of PoMo work is done by white males

fuck off back to your creative writing class with your prof who thinks HP Lovecraft is "problematic"

yes really

there hasn't been a black writer this generation that is on the same level as DFW

not yet at least

or that PoMo are just white males that want to feel "superior" to everyone else

I don't hate infinite jest. It was one of my favorite books at one point. I just think it is lacking something that makes it feel real. It feels more like an academic exercise than a story, which I guess is fine if you prefer that.

I doubt it has anything to do with them being white males.

>all these triggered retards who can't handle a comment about DFW being read primarily by white college males

Even DFW said that they were his target demographic.

The thin skin of you people is remarkable

it has to be with White Males generally having greater IQ on average through evidence of many studies

Because why does it matter...why does it matter if its mostly white males that read these....like I don't understand your point

the only reason you would bring this up is to make some racial identity politics type remark.....plus its a fallacy as well

I notice that many humanities/lit people that attack white males the most are generally white?

why is this

And DFW is the exact same way. Yet everyone and their mother want to impute meaning onto something as a form of intellectual dick waving.

If you're enthralled with the style, form, and rhythm of his work how can you call it a waste of time?

I think when it comes to Dellilo and PoMo in general you have to give up on trying to wrap your brain around every tick the author put into his writing.

With white males everything has to do with the fact they are white males. They flaunt it in our brown faces every chance they get.

There is no scientific basis for a correlation between race and IQ

yes there is...read the bell curve

Jews and Asians have the highest iq. Statistically, there aren't many black people who read books anyway, so I guess I don't know what your point is. I think it's more important to judge everyone on an individual basis.

so brown people don't flaunt about their "browness" every second..i mean just go to your average university

something tells me your jealous that white men are superior to you

White jews....Ashkenazi Jews that have white blood in them are the smartest...think about that

there has never been a black man in history on the same intellectual level as John Von Neumann a white jew

My point is that it's meretricious...

>there is no scientific basis for correlation between race and iq

You people are the ones who turned it into idpol bollocks.

I just commented that DFW isn't half the genius this board makes him out to be, but is rather regarded as such because he's the first author recommended here to impressionable young (and primarily white) college males who found Veeky Forums because they probably weren't particularly socially adept.

It's like the Nazism on /pol/ or the woman hating on /r9k/. It creates an inferior other and is built on ressentiment resulting from a need to ground yourself somewhere because you aren't particularly secure in your skin, values, etc.

Do you honestly think that you'll hail DFW as a genius in 10 years when you're more well-versed in literature?

Got to disagree man. That books long as shit but it's got a heartbeat and it's what kept me interested

again, your not telling me why it matters that they are white males....like wtf are you trying to say..it doesn't diminish his work because his audience tends to be one skin color

You're delusional man. White males are the majority of people who read books in English. Maybe even the vast majority. Especially books like Infinite Jest. What is even a book that most black males in the U.S. have read. Any book? At least a lot of black females read smut like Sistah Soulja.

what is with literature people always trying to use "white male" as some sort of insult.

its weird as fuck

I have told many before here as well that Underworld is a very mediocre book and I find it very disappointing. I don't know what makes people go gaga over it.

DeLillo's prose may be stylized, but it's hardly sterile or meaningless. Think of it as being like Picasso's cubist paintings. The goal is to access a kind of feeling, a presence, that goes beyond just basic representation. At some point, you're either going to like looking at cubist paintings, and be intrigued by them, or you're just not. But that doesn't mean the painting failed by not being more directly representative.

DeLillo writes prose in the same way. It's stylish and abstract to show the reader the more alienating and depersonalizing aspects of American life.

In this context it makes sense; it points towards our insular tendencies that we laud as some form of 'misunderstood genius'.

I am talking about those who regard DFW as a literary genius.

They're impressionable college sophomores makes who happen to be white

You won't find anyone who gushes as much over this hack in the segment of the population who actually have read for a while and know decent literature (a segment that is primarily white, oh now I'm racist against nonwhites, be outraged!)

The point you shouldn't be missing is that I'm telling you that if you keep reading then you won't be as impressed with DFW in 10 years as you are now

>your jealous that white men are superior to you

but they're not. time and time again white people have only succeeded on the backs of blacks and indigenous peoples.

but your not telling me how that adds to the discussion...your only using white as a description but your not following up why this description is meaningful

"Dante was a shit writer only white italians read his work"

"Goethe was shit only white germans read his work"

"Toni Morrison is shit only black americans and white guilt liberals read her work"

do you see how your argument is faulty

So tell me who the true literary geniuses are since your an expert

This has to be a troll.

>White males are the majority of people who read books in English.

That is false.

lol seriously

the vast majority of modern science was created by white people

before you say, "Oh but the Arabs taught whites" yes they did, but they were also educated by GREEK texts as well

Isaac Newton, Gallileo...the vast majority of modern science comes from the mind of the white man

oh and by the way white europe was already surpassing most brown civilizations before the dawn of colonialism, besides how where whites able to colonize

BECAUSE THEY WERE SUPERIOR

top kek kys

White insecurity is proof of their inferiority.

You're like the SJWs you undoubtedly deplore.

I mentioned white in my post So what? That's what they primarily are. Can't you read the word white without throwing a strop like an SJW would've done had I pointed out that Morrison's work probably appeals more to blacks?

It's not particularly relevant. Nor is it negligible, but surely not worth 12 triggered retards who think it was an attack on their person. The fucking horror

Plurality then sorry... If you add in white women, whites are certainly the majority. Sorry, you didn't answer the question about the huge number of brown people who are reading books in English...

good thread

I understand OP. Delillo is not for everyone. He has a small reader base. He is, basically, The Genius's Genius - nobody else's genius.

the Egyptians and Mesopotamians and the Indians taught Europeans everything. Pythagoras left Greece and came back with the secrets of Egypt and people worshiped him for 1000 years. The Europeans started nothing. Everything comes from Africa.

...

...

>greeks
>white

next thing you'll be telling me Italians and Spaniards are white

if you don't originate from above the 44th parallel you are not white

Greeks were certaintly influnced by other regions but thats not the same as being taught anything

if you knew history, you would realize that the Greeks were the first ones to develop the concept of the "proof" in mathematics which launched formal mathematics via Euclid's Elements...

which then lead to Newton's Principia, the most influential scientific text of all time

what does Pythagoras traveling have anything to do with it...brown shit skin?

Next your going to tell me that the Egyptians understood gravity and general relativity before Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein

brown/black people that think their superior are really funny sometimes

to discuss literature some would argue you need a grasp on society and history - what some call context. what you call attack, others might recognize as simple facts. you can accept that white males have created great works of literature while also being problematic. it isn't that difficult a task, i would think. one of the reasons this examination of the white male is frequently brought up in the humanities is because the humanities is an area that tries to push critical thought.

"problematic"......jesus christ lol

humanities attack white males because they are jealous of their genius

>Problematic?? Serious??

muh bel kurv

guys don't meme me. seriously, okay?

well its not as bad as muh equality or muh we are all equal

someone troll me

You all ruined a thread about a great book.

Stick to manga.

best post in this thread.

Pretty much, but at a certain point you just accept how "shallow" it is of actual human substance and enjoy the originality.

I think in... Cosmopolis? Its protag says, "I say things for effect," which is Delillo in a nutshell. What that effect is? Something simultaneously really fun and stimulating... while also not really mattering to the human race at all.

Terrorism doesn't matter? Stultifying consumerism? Possible government conspiracies? An individual's right to privacy? Environmental catastrophes? Mob mentality? The way filmed images destabilize inferred reality? Paralyzing fear of death? Zealous trust in technology? None of these things matter?

check out the archive for any delillo threads...

>meaning
beaner

Moby Dick, apparently.

bad thread

is it about 9/11?