New to Veeky Forums. Is IJ worth picking up? Ive seen some very strong opinions either way, but no arguments as to why

youre gonna want to start with the greeks desu

don quixote.

if you need your sprawling door stopper fix, you may as well go with the more influential one and see where people have gone from there.

things IJ has going for it: occasional flashes of brilliance, a comprehensive and emotionally charged portrayal of anxiety/depression/mania, humor, an extended allegory of Literature as Tennis which honestly is one of the main draws of the text for me, and a killer setting. rewards rereads.

things against IJ: overextends. way too reliant on hypertext gimmicks. the errata is hit and miss; when you check the end notes and its like a serial number for a VCR or something you start to get real tired. the ending isn't an ending. people have mentioned the shit chapters. DFW goes full purple in places, not to create something beautiful, but to flaunt his supposed superintelligence.

What do you reckon are the other ostensibly horrible chapters near the beginning?

Real question: Had DFW not offed himself, could he have ever had a chance at the Nobel Prize for Lit? I mean shoot the Pale King was a pullitzer finalist and it wasn't even 33% done.

things i don't enjoy:

a) most of the self-conscious, ironic, lengthy "experimental" books from the 60's and 70's or authors like Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Gass.

b) books that are lengthy at the cost of cohesion and clarity

c) literature that focuses on ideas, rather than human beings

however, i love Infinite Jest. it's readable and sad in a way that books labeled "experimental" usually aren't.

I hated the first chapter and wasn't too fond of many of the stuff at ETA. The best stuff is Gately, Poor Tony, and Yrstruly.

This

Erdedy waiting for weed was pretty garrulous and comes to mind quickly.

I haven't read IJ for a couple years but I also remember the first yrstruly chapter being fairly agonizing.

Do you disagree user?

Totally disagree. Found the Eredy chapter painfully well conceived. Overall, some wonderful ideas but lacking in thrust due to digression. Putting together the content of IJ the film is fascinating / a bit horrifying: The mother as murderer apologising over and over for the separation (murder) stage of infant development.

>literature that focuses on ideas, rather than human beings
MFAaggot pls go

>Found the Eredy chapter painfully well conceived. Overall, some wonderful ideas but lacking in thrust due to digression.

I don't overly disagree with this, but from my perspective the digression ended up substantiating more of the chapter than the "well conceived" ideal of the chapter.

As to the content of the eponymous film that's not what I was referring to when I mentioned yrstruly, I was talking about Poor Tony Kraus' junkie friend, who goes/went by the moniker 'yrstruly'

I slightly disagree about your appraisal of Barth's lack of attention to humanism.

How can you read The Sot-Weed Factor by Barth and not care about Eben, yes much of the novels dramatic swells are at his expense, but the over arching motiff is of Eben losing his (non-carnal) innocence. When he realizes that he is a "morsel for the wide worlds lions" or lays himself crying at Burlingame's feet swooning because he's finally found a/his friend again I was affected.

I won't lay out similar arguments for Jacob in the End of the Road but I do feel that Barth doesn't forget about the human condition, and elucidates it beautifully at times

stop putting the book on a pedestal. it's not choosing colleges or careers.

>Erdedy waiting for weed was pretty garrulous and comes to mind quickly.
I enjoyed that part quite a bit, it dragged on a little too much but it definitely captured the feeling of waiting anxiously for substances

I couldnt find IJ at my local library so i picked up one of Wallace's short story books titled "Oblivion"...

If IJ's writing is anything like Oblivions, i'm gonna say it's not my thing. His writing drags on and he tries too hard to come off as this objective intellectual. It was just a drag to read

I read the first chapter and felt like it was trying to be both humorous and thought-provoking while succeeding at neither

Second chapter was more enjoyable but it didn't make me interested in continuing

yeah, i think that erdedy waiting for weed is the chapter that draws people in.

It is one of the most dense and well thought-through books I've ever read. Although DFW argued for being post-postmodernism (New Sincerity), IJ is very postmodern, at least in my sense of the word. There are a few subjects he's focusing on, the most apparent are depression, entertainment and addiction, but he goes deeper than that. He mocks and portrays a lot of subjects in a postmodern way.

There are a lot of subplots and tons of meaning behind basically every single scene. Even if the book is 1000+ pages a lot of the story is not actually told anywhere in the book, instead it's mostly just hinted at. At your first read-through you will most likely miss a lot of the story.

It's great for a re-read, some say, me included, that it's purposely made for a re-read. DFW made it as a sort of infinite entertainment, which speaks even more for how good he is at implementing ideas into his novels.

I'd say go for it, most people don't make it through, but it's an incredibly rewarding book.

>'I do things like get in taxi's and say 'The library, step on it'.'
You don't 'not' read a book with a line like that, user.