Alright pseuds, given the surge of anti-DFW vitriol going on on this board in the last year or so, there’s a surprising lack of concrete discussion of DFW’s flaws. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone deliver a sustained, well-informed critique of pic related. So if you hate this book, here’s your chance to state your case against it.
Easy mode: >only post if you finished the book >no conflating DFW’s personal life with IJ >no Bloom
Overall I love the book, but I have my own reservations regarding IJ. For example, all but about one or two characters are flat and lack any real character development. Pemulis is just a punchline, and sometimes just a medium for DFW to dump out his (sometimes flawed) knowledge of mathematics and chemistry. More problematic is Hal’s character development (if he can be said to have any) and how his achieving “sincerity” is only understood by the reader retroactively rather than observed throughout the course of the novel, practically shoehorned into the first chapter, and achieved via a deus ex machina--the moss.
I guess I'm not really surprised that the boogeyman and summerfags can't construct a critique. Bump
Evan Ward
nemo me impune lassecit
Blake Harris
Then how about with kindness and a (You), my user?
Ryder Davis
IJ really was a life changing read for me.
IMO the fucking single paragraphs going on for pages and pages got annoying after a while because a.) a lot of them were just restating the same fact in different terms b.) it was just difficult to keep track of where you were on the page c.) a lot of the detail overload lessened the impact of some of the more important scenes, especially Joelle's attempted suicide near the beginning
I get that DFW was trying to invoke a sense of information overload that the character's in the book experienced but the whole shtick is part of what made a lot of people give up reading the book. And quite honestly, the book doesn't really start to shine until the part with Lenz going out and torturing animals.
Jaxson Stewart
This is a bullshit response, I know, but it does open up on a reread. Wallace said he wrote it to be read twice, but that he wanted the first time to still have enough surface stuff to make it entertaining. When I reread it, I was so surprised to find that every sentence seemed planned out, as if nothing was put in there without a purpose. I loved it the first time but I didn't think it was anywhere near the other maximalist tomes. After reading it a second time, I'm not so sure anymore. Also, it's really easy when you're reading it again. I found it somewhat tiring and a little challenging the first time through but, on the second read, having read a lot of dense lit in the interim, it was a breeze.
Isaiah Harris
I was able to gather that I would need to do a re-reading in the future to actually digest it a lot better. Between then and now I still have to tackle the other two books in the meme trilogy, so perhaps I'll be leveled up enough by then.
Michael Fisher
>a.) a lot of them were just restating the same fact in different terms Hm, I never really got this impression, though it has been a few years since I read it all at once. >b.) it was just difficult to keep track of where you were on the page But contrast the prose style of IJ with something like Gravity's Rainbow with its meandering sentences, with about 100 commas per long sentence and no punctuation (besides the commas) to guide the reader. Sometimes it seemed like in GR the reader was supposed to forget the subject of the sentence. I got the impression that in IJ a lot of care was put into those long sentences to make sure the reader DIDN'T get lost: the nested clauses, the hypens, the "but so". It almost feels like it was a programmer who was writing those long sentences. >c.) a lot of the detail overload lessened the impact of some of the more important scenes, especially Joelle's attempted suicide near the beginning Joelle's scene actually stood out to me and was memorable despite it being surrounded by 100 pages of setting before and after. She was, after all, set up as being Madame Psychosis before her suicide attempt. Seemed pretty memorable. But, sure, there were some character "backstories" that I couldn't connect to a particular character on a first read. The guy who smokes weed in the beginning who shows up later as Lenz's friend, for example. But maybe that's just something the reader has to come to terms with when he picks up a 1000 page novel, that maybe he won't remember everything. Which is especially true in the case of IJ, as you alluded to.
Nathaniel Hughes
I've been in AA for 7 years now. No other author has been able to capture the attitude of pre sobriety and post sobriety better than this book. Gosh, the fucking characters in the sections about AA are so spot on that I've met people so similar it was hilariously spooky. If I wasn't sober I don't know how I would've felt about it.
Austin Cox
Interestingly enough, the first thing I did when I finished Infinite Jest three years ago was post my thoughts on it on that same what.cd thread, but in those three years my opinion of the novel and David Foster Wallace himself have changed dramatically. While three years ago I was an IJ enthusiast, I now hold for it a slight disdain. I find a lot of his other works (his essay collections, Oblivion, and most of all The Pale King) to be a lot better than IJ. The more I read about Wallace, the less likeable I found him to be. The growing post-humus cult obsessed with him and seemingly no one else is also rather irritating. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about why I came to dislike IJ so much, but it basically comes down to Wallace not living up to his influences while trying his best not to acknowledge them; his whole faux-authenticity gimmick; a lot of things people think are novel about the novel are for me contrived experiments in uniqueness; and mostly the facts that (a) Wallace was more than likely a sociopath with ego problems and (b) he really wasn't anywhere near as intelligent as he wanted to be, as he wanted people to think he was, and how people who don't know any better think he is. For such a verbose nature and such a vast bibliography, he had very little to say.
I also reckon he would agree with me on a lot of those criticisms. It's pretty evident from The Pale King that he was finally reaching the heights he had hoped to, and was actually writing the way he wanted to.
Logan Roberts
>I'm in a office >I'm gonna describe it
Seriously dude why the fuck would you open ur book like that
Colton Rodriguez
(Continued)
[quote='anotherperson|I was mostly referring to DFW's own obsession with providing an image of himself depicting a down-to-earth midwestern casual guy. Yet behind that weak veneer was the complete opposite: another attempt at projecting an image of himself intelligent or matured or cultured as the authors of the books he respected and learned from (Gaddis; Dellilo; Pynchon; Koskinski; Kafka; Marquez; Wittgenstein; Barth; Roth; Dostoyevsky; Kafka). Yet his understanding of how real life worked was painfully insular, as can be evidenced by his letters from the halfway house, in which he got his first taste of how the other socioeconomic half lived. He lacked any of the natural tools to write a good postmodern novel: his knowledge of popular culture was painfully lacking, as was his knowledge of science; music (twice in IJ he refers to something screaming in the key of D minor, I mean, come on!); politics; anything beyond midwestern America. Any of these claims I haven't cited can be backed up by the DT Maxx biography mostly. His same attempt to portray himself as some regular guy with dazzling mental abilities best parodies itself in the Eschaton chapter of IJ, in which DFW, having seen Pynchon work calculus into Gravity's Rainbow, said, 'well, I can incorporate first year calculus to impress people,' not realising that for Pynchon, at least, the mathematics were thematically related to the novel. DFW decided to throw in basic college-level mathematics to appear smart and impress a bunch of literature majors. There's really no excusing it. Don't even get me started on the ebonics chapter, the footnote references to drug indexing in which it becomes clear DFW had no experience with any of them; the outdated medical books he didn't bother doublechecking; etc. Likewise, we're all familiar with the classic act where he throws in deep philosophy or the nature of infinity but then turns around at the end of the paragraph and says 'but gee, I'm just a regular guy.' He was asked for a list of his top ten favourite books and [url=openculture.com/2014/02/david-foster-wallaces-surprising-list-of-his-10-favorite-books.html]outright lied to pass himself off as a regular joe[/url]. (To be fair, there are lessons to be gleaned from each of these novels - it's the reason why he included Silence of the Lambs in his creative writing reading list, but it would be foolish to think he rated these as highly as he rated others). He denied ever reading The Crying of Lot 49 when his publisher noticed similarities between it and The Broom of the System and [url=medium.com/@kunaljasty/a-lost-1996-interview-with-david-foster-wallace-63987d93c2c]attempted to denounce the school of postmodernism from which he had actually graduated[/url].
Thomas Nelson
Well, I guess new pasta is welcomed here also.
Eli Bell
(Continued 3/3)
It's difficult not to question the validity of IJ's circular perambulations round the topic of authenticity considering how inauthentic DFW was. The worse part about all of the above is that he knew it, that's why he had to cover it up with a verbose style; repetitive maximal technical details. His entire presentation of himself as this worldly down-to-earth scholar is illusory.
I loved [i]The End of the Tour[/i]. So much so that I had to get my girlfriend to watch it with me shortly after I watched it by myself. I thought it was really well done. I also am a big fan of Jesse Eisenberg. I quite liked how Lipsky had the same impression of DFW as I did in relation to his supposed striving for authenticity. And I enjoyed the numerous potshots it took at the readers who romanticise mental illness. That said, it wasn't endorsed by the Wallace estate, and you can sort of see why. It's no accident that the loudest vocal detractors of Wallace since his death have been the ones who were closest to him. TEOTT is just another example of his post-humus status rising and rising.
The evidences I have mentioned above, but I'll also say he often tried to downplay them. He often pretended not to have read books he really had. He was very tight-lipped on his own personal library. It was a regular occurrence for him to criticise the writers he was influenced by the most as a way of distancing his work from theirs. The only situations in which he didn't do this is when the extent to which he had been influenced was so transparently obvious it would have been reckessly stupid to deny it, as in the case of Roth or Wittgenstein.
Luke Cox
Yeah, I wrote this on another forum a few months ago but I'm curious to hear other responses to it.
Grayson Cruz
the only complaint i recall having was being utterly disgusted with the representation he offered of entering a mental hospital. it was so out of touch to the point that it was embarassing, and you could sort of tell he was proud of it. otherwise, the only other problem i specifically remember was a feeling that DFW's inner voice and style was so similar to mine that it was annoying to me, that i felt i had nothing to learn from him (it was my attempt to further myself through fiction phase) so, i made it to some 300 pages, lost interest. i plan to go back fairly soon. just for pleasure this time around. might not get so disappointed in the dear lad, expecting some sort of genius.
Benjamin Bailey
There's not really anything to respond to, friend. You delivered a very detailed yet superficial review. I think the closest you came to actual literary analysis was contrasting the mathematics in GR with that of IJ, and you didn't really explore the former.
It's fun to talk about Dave, but that's not the same thing as talking about his work.
Liam Sanders
ur two doors down from illiterate. >doesn't have the attention span to make it more than 300 pages >still trying to justify it years later
Landon Smith
Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Irony Real Hahahaha Nigga Just Be Sincere Like Nigga Remind Yourself This Is Water Haha
Noah Rogers
yes yes, i'm such a dumb dumb. o woe is me and my mental incapacity, o woe is me and my short attention span. actually i immediately went and read Moby Dick and The Recognitions back to back afterwards.
James Anderson
9876148 Too bad you can't provide anything substantial here and just meme your way into (You)s. What's your favorite book?
Benjamin Rivera
Yep. I've been to hundreds of meetings and Wallace nailed it. I cried and laughed so many times just at how accurate it was with how hard addiction is. I recommend this novel to anyone who wants to get as good an idea as one can of addiction, without shooting up for years.
Nolan Peterson
Seriously, if nothing else, the novel gives an insight into the addicted mind.
Angel Lewis
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
Dylan Reed
Dfw is like that guy who can't stop apologizing for apologizing. If he would just stop, things would be alright. But he never does, so you just get angrier and angrier
Julian Johnson
Toss up between Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, Gerard De Reve's De Avonden and Gunther Grass' Local Anaesthetic. I don't put much stock in the concept of favourites however, too limiting. The library is too vast for favourites.
Kevin Russell
>yfw Tavis actually does this in IJ. >yfw Wayne flips out on the PA system doing an imitation of Tavis doing exactly this >yfw you really wish you could surgically remove all the brain neurons you've wasted storing every minute detail of this door stop suicide note
Hunter Russell
This is also the entire plot of "The Depressed Person"
Wyatt Bailey
He was aware of it and tortured by it, obviously.
Joshua Young
>i actaully knew a Kate Gompert in college >she tried to substitute orgasms for substances >lucky me in the right place, right time >night. crappy apartment. candle light >"yeah. put your finger back up in there, and use your thumb and pretend it's like a little nubbin girl cock. Clits have a shaft you know. It goes back up in there like two inches." >"ung. yeah. do it. stroke it. stroke my girl cock." >"unh. yeah. harder. Unh. UNH. HNGGG. [huff]" >"fuck yeah. see? Now let's do a shot and see if you can shoot it far enough to hit my boobs while fucking my feet." >"Wait! I want to get my ruler." >"Hold still. Don't be such a girl. It's can't be that cold. Huh. It's 7 and half if I measure this way, but only 7 this way." >"Hold this hot coffee in your mouth, then smash your tongue flat against my whole kitty." >"OW WAIT HOLD IT RIGHT THERE FUCK OW OW OW WAIT HNGGGGG" >"I need another bowl." >"zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"
I couldn't save her. Though Lord knows I gave it the old college try.
Robert Martinez
Wow... why the fuck would you post this experience?
