IJ "post irony"/new sincerity

I'm about halfway through with Infinite Jest. It's pretty good. I have no qualms with the text itself insofar as I interpret it. Then I go and see what DFW actually said about it, how it's supposed to be all sincere and unironic and shit.

I'm not seeing it. The tone, the structure, the absurdity, the cynicism - it all reeks of irony and postmodernism. Some of the stuff, if written from a sardonic perspective is quite humorous, but if it's meant to be taken at face value, then it's just straight up bad autistic writing. Okay well not just "bad writing" - more like "writing you'd have to be as autistic as he was to take completely seriously"

It seems more like Mr FW had a bone to pick with irony, but then absolutely failed at providing anything but. Am I wrong?

you are right. anyway, i think he don´t consider IJ sincere.

It's definitely what he seemed to consider his schtick to be. Is there any reason to believe IJ had a different intent?

IJ is full of the pain that you feel when you've lost the ability to be completely sincere in your expression. It's a humorous book but he's trying to make a sincere statement about literature and the dangers of alienation when you lose the faith in language.

It's meta-sincerity. Nice trips.

Bingo, he killed himself for a reason. Can't dig yourself out of a pit

why is Veeky Forums so pretentious, I WANT to take you guys seriously, but I overestimate all of our autisms

filthy philistine

You shouldn't take us seriously but post-ironically

this is fair

so he's trying as hard as he can to be sincere about the fact that no matter how hard he tries he finds it impossible to be sincere? how... ironic.

People hold up New Sincerity as the raison d'etre of DFW's whole artistic enterprise, but I don't think that is necessarily true. Outside of that one essay (E Unibus Pluram) of which the sincerity stuff itself was only a small part, he really doesn't beat the sincerity drum all that often. He has other, less abstract concerns. My advice: don't get bogged down in searching for sincerity in his or anyone else's work and don't let any outside idea of what a text is "supposed" to be doing pollute your personal reading. If you're enjoying it, great. If you didn't, fine. But don't look to it as this perfect ideological distillate or manifesto. The book has both serious portraits of drug addiction and a herd of hamsters rampaging across the continental US. The idea that the book is a monolith for any single viewpoint is a silly one.

Finish the book before you judge. Basically one character is ruined by his ironic disposition, and another is saved by rejecting his. DFW makes a very strong point about sincerity that can only be appreciated after wading through hundreds of pages of ironic shit first.

>and don't let any outside idea of what a text is "supposed" to be doing pollute your personal reading.

What a retarded sentiment

Ya so retarded, if I don't listen to other people's opinions how am I supposed to know what to think?

Irony is sincerity

...

What in Infinite Jest strikes you as ironic?

>Some of the stuff, if written from a sardonic perspective is quite humorous, but if it's meant to be taken at face value, then it's just straight up bad autistic writing.

Can you give an example of this?

The fact that it's funny doesn't make it ironic.

Anyway Wallace was attempting a mix of weird postmodern forms with traditional emotional human concerns. So the book is long and fractured and full of digressions and comedy, but it's also about human loneliness and sadness and pain and struggle.

The idea that there's any higher worth to a "pure" reading as if such a thing could even exist is nonsense, magical thinking

>Outside of that one essay (E Unibus Pluram) of which the sincerity stuff itself was only a small part, he really doesn't beat the sincerity drum all that often

That, and like every fucking interview he ever did. I get your point though

>don't look to it as this perfect ideological distillate or manifesto

I'm not. I was more or less wondering if I was missing something huge. Intent is a very small part of what a text means to me - but it's still something I'm peripherally curious about.

>The idea that the book is a monolith for any single viewpoint is a silly one

agreed

I'm not going to pilfer through IJ to try and convince you I know what irony means. No, it's not just humor.

>Anyway Wallace was attempting
eh, I wouldn't go there. But I'll chock it up to imprecise wording. I agree with you that much of it (so far) comes off as a sort of modernist storytelling set in a postmodern framework and style.

There is no way to read a book in a vacuum, I wasn't suggesting that there was, but there is a difference between the "pure" reading you are making fun of and one in which you are just looking to validate the ideas you have gotten about a text from other sources (i.e. critics, teachers, Veeky Forums).