And there's something terribly sad and banal about that

He wasn't, he just had terrible fashion sense

No

That guy didn't even use it correctly, because DFW wasn't pontificating. Also DFW blows him the fuck out, he smiles and says "that's a nice word". That guy got embarrassed, so did you.

alcoholism bloating and years of heavy tobacco use

stop pontificating

I don't think DFW was a pseud as much as he was mentally ill. He was obviously very unprepared for that interview, but it seems to me that they wanted to hear some genius answers and DFW was just a genuine guy. He was eccentric and honest to that, but he was no genius and he grappled with that label everyone put on him.

>he grappled with that label everyone put on him.

>He was unusually self-confident, perhaps buoyed by a sense that Infinite Jest was on target. “You should know I am really really smart,” he told the English department members who met him. He sent a résumé with his publications and on the second page added entries for “REVIEWS IF ANYBODY CARES…” and “PRIZES &c (IF ANYBODY CARES…).”…During a question-and-answer session, when a faculty member asked why they should hire him, he responded, “Who else?” Then the faculty committee went out with him to a local Chinese restaurant, where he told the department char, Charlie Harris, a Barth expert, that Barth was dead.

Seems like he embraced and encouraged it desu

Modern Life Is Rubbish

I don't think he truly believed it, that's why he relied on self deprecating humor like (IF ANYBODY CARES).

I'm holding on for tomorrrrrooooow

>*fashionista hipster woman toting designer bag walks up sipping a bottle of artisan swedish water*
>*she dumps it on my head*
>"no, beta, this is water"
>*she laughs in privilege*

>and DFW was just a genuine guy.
looooool
he was a high iq proto sam hyde

Right.

Nice word, Charlie. But you haven't seen anything yet.

What?! There's no link between the two of them intellectually, though they look like they could be related.

...

I will never not laugh at the greatly deserved ridicule of this hack fraud. DFW will be remembered by posterity as the most incompetent snake oil salesman western literature has ever produced.

The only sincere act of his life was when he kicked away the chair. His life was nothing but a series of ironies and lies predicated on the the joke that is new sincerity. The big punchline was the creaking of the rafter and the piss trickling down his leg to the floor.

his epiphany that the only viable thing for him to do was to kill himself was the best thing to happen to literature in 30 years since he began writing because behind all the self aware gimmicks and self help books and the drugs and the audience pussy there was no discernible talent

Do you have a source for that? Or is it a clever new pasta, like the Fila sweatsuit one?

>are we really shitting on a pile of shit?
FTFY

It's from his biography.

goodreads.com/book/show/13589124-every-love-story-is-a-ghost-story

Your idol was a textbook narcissist, a talentless tryhard, his own endnote.

This is the blurb:

>David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his era, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

>Since his untimely death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become more than the quintessential writer for his time—he has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age. In the end, as Max shows us, what is most interesting about Wallace is not just what he wrote but how he taught us all to live. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes, this portrait of an extraordinarily gifted writer is as fresh as news, as intimate as a love note, as painful as a goodbye.

Pretty cruel treatment for the patron saint of 'sincerely me'.

was he an alcoholic? he speaks like he's on adderral, which i also think bloats. he dipped right? or did he smoke? i dont htink dipping fucks your skin up like smoking

No, parodying.

I wish he was alive so we could meme him into suicide, we could had out-irony him the fuck out

>life of the postmodern writer - a condensed version

>too smart for humanities, not disciplined enough for hard sciences, but just cocky enough for philosophy
>"I'll become a writer, lel"
>live dangerously unbalanced drug and alcohol fueled life that ends up inspiring your works
>fuck a couple of qt3.14 TAs too
>write a handful of very insightful essays
>one 1,000 page book that is basically you jerking off to your own intelligence and le writing theory
>amass a huge fanbase of pseudo-intellectual betas and edgy academics who find reverence in your fap material
>somehow your jizz covered manuscript gets branded as one of the most significant works of the later half of the 20th century
>realize the perversion in all this
>anhero, but your memory will go down as one of the best trolls/disappointments in literary history

Fair summary?

I think I will end up following that path

das it mane

You guys never stop talking about him but this is the first time I have found out he killed himself. Kind of sad he isn't alive to defend against the criticisms.

HE CAN'T THINK
HE CAN'T WRITE

Criticizing him though isn't necessarily hating on him or diminishing the value of his work. That being said, he was a brilliant writer and an intelligent man, but unfortunately his personal life was a bit fucked. His suicide is to the literature scene was what Kurt Cobain's suicide was to Nirvana and rock music in the 1990s. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if DFW's suicide shared similar veins with Cobain's.

Yeah, he was an alcoholic. Either in his late college days or after, for a while. The End of the Tour (and i'm sure other sources) talk about it.

I don't think his work shouldn't be criticised just because he is dead. I just think it is a shame that he isn't here to defend it. Because he is the only one that could answer a lot of the critics. His work probably has a lot of criticism that could be explained away by him. But IDK I haven't read his work.

Also
>Cobain's suicide

>Cobain's suicide
Thanks, brawh. I didn't want to be repetitive.

Are you saying you think DFW wife killed him?

Forgot quote.

>DFW's suicide shared similar veins with Cobain's

That would be great twist on things, but I think that DFW realized, like Cobain, that he had become something a version of his former self would have railed against. The fame and the money was nice, yet I do not think he expected the popularity of Infinite Jest to be so intense. Where DFW might have thought that that particular work would have served as more academic (like his essays) and brought together a circle of like-minded intellectuals to his disposal, the book also exploded in popularity among pretentious pseudo intellectuals more interested in the credentials that come with reading a long, big book. DFW seemed like a very humble man, but I'm sure he was frustrated that some of the book's nuances were lost on individuals who were reading IJ not for the art of the book or it's deeper meaning, but because reading it seemed like the popular cool thing to do.

I see your point. But this is exactly what I mean. You might have totally missed the mark with that, but the only person that could refute it is DFW himself.

In my opinion his suicide had nothing to do with his work, he was just mentally ill, like most suicidal people. Killing yourself because you are "misunderstood" seems like people trying to force the troubled genius stereotype, and romanticise suicide.

>seemed like a very humble man
;)))

I agree with this. If you watch some his interviews he is very self critical.

*sweats profusely

That's not humility, that's omphaloskepsis

nice word :^)

>Hey guys look at my look-at-me headband and long hair.

so... THIS is water?

>welcome to the water

>we've got fun and games

That joke was good the first time it was used. It's not anymore.

He's not my idol, I don't even own a single DFW book. I just enjoy the memes.

Tell me about Dave, why does he wear the bandana?

To cover his massive brain from spilling out

Didn't like to shower, so held together that greasy mop.