"David Foster Wallace" is trending on Twitter as we speak

A lot of the people I know would benefit from reading some of DFWs phenomenology of addition because they're too stupid to understand it themselves.
Dfw would be a great read for a lot of gutter brains desu

Why did you make this thread?

>Pre-Reading Impressions

For awhile, I was seeing a guy who really liked David Foster Wallace. He once forced me to do cocaine by shoving it inside me during sex. He wasn’t the first man to recommend Wallace, but he’s the last whose suggestion I pretended to consider. So while I’ve never read a book by Wallace, I’m preemptively uninterested in your opinion about it.

Jesus fucking christ

They probably just saw The End of the Tour and haven't actually read any of his books.

A pretentious rap artist in my country released a book of poetry last year. (if you want to know: country is Finland, book was post-alfa by Paperi T, he is the hideous man in this image)

It had a poem where he mentioned mansplaining David Foster Wallace to a girl, it made me laugh, but it appears this is a serious issue. Really though, it was a pretty pathetic piece of work: it played on that old trick of "sincerity" and basically tried to make everything okay if you're self-conscious about it - just like OP:s image mentions.

I would never talk about books with a woman. Closest I ever got to discussing lit with a negro was an Irishman. It wasn't worth the effort.

as a "female DFW fan": lol

Please be my girlfriend.

it's literally about her reading hideous men (the worst place to start, plus like 5th at highest on the list when men are recommending dfw, behind ctl, if, a fun thing, and broom), she hasn't seen the movie or anything else

men are annoying, but of those recommending it (of those who have actually read his work) it's probably bc they were very touched by it...not that they want to make women suffer by reading dfw writing about women suffering or whatever her argument is (and df writes about women way less-positively or negatively- than 80% of the canon)

I first heard about DFW from a girl in college who really liked Infinite Jest

It's almost like individual experiences are unique and some people know how to get people's attention

Haha, I agree completely and I feel like it accurately describes DFW fans. Liking Infinite Jest should be a hate crime, even if I will have to accept it's not for the reason I want it to be.

the people who haven't read dfw or have tried and failed (and it is a failure, if you're over the age of 17 and are "a reader" it really not that difficult) and feel insecure about it outnumber the irritating fanboys 25:1
hm

if twitter ever does this to don delillo... I'll be very mad

t. crypto-SJW

I think it's trending bc people are annoyed at the article, not that they agree
the septum piercing-bangs-cushy media job white girl twitter thing of hating on their ex bfs via hating on wallace is already* so cliche, but then again same with their whole personas
*since like 2012 at least I've been seeing it

Cool to see this essay by someone who is 30 and identifies as Goth and has an Iggy "statutory rapist" Pop tattoo, where else will I find guidance on feminism?

>t. frogman

"sincerity" is more of a cultural evil than irony is (or ever was?) at this point

These people remind me of the Veeky Forums comic of the guy being triggered by a back guy then going home to type shit on his computer. How do you function in the world, when being recommended w book can hurt you so much?

To be fair, DFW and other maximalist authors kind of overstayed their welcome as subjects of interest in literature programs. Their contemporaries who weren't white or male were overlooked for quite a while, and this was after the big canon wars of the 70's where proto-feminist lit finally got accepted into the canon (Life in the Iron Works, The Awakening, etc.), so the return to venerating white male authors that write from a position of extreme privilege felt anachronistic, and people pushed back.

To be fair, as much as many people really enjoy DFW's writing, he does write from a position of privilege. He always had access to the best education, lived a cushy adolescent life, and had groupies willing to suck his dick everywhere he went.

I'm not trying to turn who we read into the oppression Olympics, and less people that complain about DFW mean to do that than you would think (I have no clue about the quoted person in question). It's more that everybody knows about DFW. He's famous for a reason. On top of any id political reason for wanting to highlight the works of other writers, you have to recognize that recommending DFW is like recommending Radiohead to somebody. Everyone already knows who he is. The people that like him already know they like him. The people that don't, well they already know that they don't. When people complain about you recommending DFW, they're letting you know that you're a pleb and should expand your tastes.

That one story about the boy going off the high dive is my favorite DFW story. The interviews could be a very offputting place to start, but the contained stories within the collection seem pretty good.

More like (((David))) Foster Whiteass

>To be fair, as much as many people really enjoy DFW's writing, he does write from a position of privilege. He always had access to the best education, lived a cushy adolescent life, and had groupies willing to suck his dick everywhere he went.
I don't see the problem here. How is it a refutation that he was rich? Why do plebs think that only people who they can pity are worthwhile?

this desu
The person in the screenshot is obviously catastrophizing, but at the same time being upset that literature is dominated by people in a position of privilege isn't really silly, and Wallace does undeniably have a fanbase that reflects his privileges.

>rapes you
>hehe nothing personal kid why don't you read "Infinite Jest"
are they implying this has ever happened?

>privilege
This is the worst meme, take your ressentiment somewhere else

Queer Women Recommend Maggie Nelson To Me

I think it's a matter of knowing where he's coming from, like DFW was a messed up dude (and I don't mean just his depression/maybe undiagnosed bipolar) and the way he lived his life is not going to apply to a lot of the people reading it for some kind of guidance, which is how a lot of people approach IJ (and this is water) esp if they're depressed/have addiction problems or even just more standard malaise with life.
The real joke is that most new authors/ people who can write (/teach college) full time do come for a place of privilege and luck and being a woman or not a straight white doesn't cancel that out (some intersectionality...), how many debut lit authors didn't go to an ivy or one of the same 5 grad schools? The privileged white girls hating on privileged white dudes is so old, talk about how and why they suck, not just repeating how they're such -likes thing I don't- bros.

>but at the same time being upset that literature is dominated by people in a position of privilege isn't really silly

it's the epitome of silly, baka

> The real joke is that most new authors/ people who can write (/teach college) full time do come for a place of privilege and luck and being a woman or not a straight white doesn't cancel that out (some intersectionality...), how many debut lit authors didn't go to an ivy or one of the same 5 grad schools? The privileged white girls hating on privileged white dudes is so old, talk about how and why they suck, not just repeating how they're such -likes thing I don't- bros.
I don't think "going to an ivy league" stands as a good bar for who is/is not privileged when compary literary figures ***to the general population***. And besides, minorities and poor people have been rallying against female figures who come from positions of power too, even feminists (Lena Dunham comes to mind here)

>tfw you made your difficult book too accessible

The issue isn't that he's rich. The issue is that the privileges afforded to him got his name out more widely than other writers of equal or comparable talent and quality, so people are kind of tired of hearing about him. Also, everybody just already knows who he is, so why do y'all keep recommending him?

It can be a bad meme, or it can be relevant. It depends on the context. Sandra Cisneros came to my university once, and another person in my department asked if I was excited to see her since I speak Spanish. I said not really. I think her use of Spanish words once or twice every sentence is kind of trite, and it doesn't seem to add much to her writing, but before I could explain all this, the other person said "well I think it's important that we read people who didn't grow up rich and white." Shit, I was about to say "I'd rather have somebody like Rigoberta Menchu come visit," but never mind. In that context, privilege can be a conversation ending meme, sure, but it really depends on the context.

Intersectionality is good, and if good writing existed from non-white, non-male people during literary periods that we generally conceive of as having been dominated by white male voices, then it deserves our attention to read them as well. The literary canon as we generally experience it is pretty arbitrary. It isn't reflective of what was popular academically or among laypeople at any given point in history, and it often serves to hide other literature that is also good.

"write an article about this DFW book"
"write about my ex raping me and how it made me hate men? gotcha"
"um..."
*PR emerges from doorway, patting baseball bat against palm*
"o-okay"

Holy shit you are so spooked, I recommend you get out of college as soon as possible

I mean DFW was a well off white guy...but um lol at using him as stand in for well off white guys* having it easy when he was literally so mentally ill that he killed himself.
* which to be fair, the boneheaded article doesn't do exactly

>What I want to understand is why you read liberal literary reviews, twitter, or articles on social currents by post-structuralists?

>What I want to understand is why you read liberal literary reviews

Is there something wrong with understand different philosophies. It makes me better with mine etc.

I think this applies more to like Franzen or other people writing more standard books or to DFW imitators than to DFW himself, he got attention bc his work was ambitious, not bc it was just some pretty good family drama novel. Him being a guy absolutely plays into the narrative of him as a once in a generation genius, but the "other writers of equal or comparable talent and quality" part isn't really fair because in 1996 there weren't dozens of other people doing what he was doing, better or not.

lel the Stirner spook.
>implying that Stirner isn't responsible for 25-50% of the spooks that are spooking my post there.

It's possible that he was the best. Mostly I think it's important to point out that most of the people that complain about people recommending DFW don't think DFW is a bad writer, and most don't dislike him either. They just think it's cliche and telling if your super deep recommendation is the author that literally everybody thinks of when they think of a good author from that time period, like recommending that somebody listen to this great band, The Beatles or Radiohead or the Pixies or some other cliche band that everybody knows about. Sure, some contrarians really dislike those bands, but mostly it just seems silly to assume other people don't already know about them.

I recommend you get out of high school and/or your mom's house you living meme

I don't have twitter so feel free to use this joke Veeky Forums friends :)

"Hey DFW fanboys feeling defensive- just hang in there!"

why cant we just appreciate him for his good writing? He has the Gass stamp of approval

>implying the majority of Veeky Forums doesn't hate bandana man

a. because fanboys can be annoying
a1. because dfw has become shorthand for a generation of Tough Serious Deep Lit so people feel pressure to read him and then brag when/if they do
b. because people annoyed at the fanboys and conflate how much they may suck with his work are annoying
1b. jokes about guys who like dfw have become so overused that people are making these jokes when no one in real life has ever mentioned him to them
a.1a. these jokes then trigger people into defending dfw, thus "making their point" (even if the defenses are reasonable/not dickish) (see: jokes about vegans far outnumbering how many vegans/annoying vegans there are)

and the cycle continues

side point: in my brief time using tinder I almost never got Infinite Jest as a common interest w/ guys...the amount of dudes who know or care so much him is way overblown unless you're in specific circles

DFW: the PSL of white dude jokes

Wardine be cry.

hold up. People list their favorite books on Tinder? And Infinite Jest is also a meme outside of Veeky Forums? Bad enough for IJ to be used as a sex ploy?

I think it's funny that he doesn't get how post-structuralism directly leads to maximalist writers like SAFE even having an audience.

It was a meme 10-15 years ago in grad school programs, then everyone got tired of it when they realized it was a meme.

No, there isnt. But post-structuralism is reductionist in the extreme. The ideas are not new or varied. The woman in the article everyone is flipping out over is doing the same old tired song and dance, IE men are oppressing her by recommending her IJ. Its bad criticism, it is predicated upon a tenuous extension of a silly theory, and I hear it every time I open a liberal cultural review.

I do not consider myself redpilled or alt-right, but the intellectual bankruptcy of the progressive extreme left has made me shut myself off to them. Gone are any honest examinations of plot or character or prose. Instead, we identify the identity of the protagonist, and then identify and discuss the boogeyman that is the cause of her...unless he is gay....oppression.

I liked it on facebook years ago, wasn't an intentional ploy- just noticed that it was never a common interest (as they they also liked it on facebook) for how much it's hyped as every dude's favorite book (lolita being a common interest was more common, but it was mostly the little prince of the 10% of guys who had ever bothered to like a book on fb).
it was a big (in lit terms) thing when it came out, not just in the 2000s, but interest did rise further after his death

Post-structuralism has little to nothing to do with identity politics though. Its most frequent criticism is that it ignores subjectivities of alterity and assumes a majoritarian subjectivity for its critical approaches. I don't get why it's so commonly equated with other critical schools of thought that it has little or nothing to do with.

It is the bedrock of it. Outside real academic discussion, interested parties have dug up Foucaults corpse (or rather the part that dealt with power structures) and applied it to the bete noire of every single possible identity that can be conceived as a minority, and then sought to tear it down. In the context of the literary world, it has spread like the AIDs that killed foucault into every goddamn publication and literary award outside the New Criterion and sometimes Lapham's. Practically, it is getting hard to find literary fiction that doesnt drown in the structures of power grinding some bitch with her panties in a twist into the mud. And I dont even mind that kind of story, but it is like an insidious poison now.

>coerced

How is this word being used?