/lit/ - Literature

>>18661201

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC85LYxXKU4

1. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the video.

2. But, on a more critical note, the format of the video undermines its very content, I think.

Wallace's statement about the Academy Awards are part of a bigger argument which Wallace repeatedly makes throughout his work. It's not solely about the emptiness and shallowness of entertainment per se but also about our engagement with it and, in addition to that, the kind of toxicity and addictiveness this kind of emptiness unfolds. In his thought-provoking essay "E Pluribus Unum" Wallace referred to self-referentiality and self-irony within advertisement and TV.
I believe I am not too far off when summarising some of the key aspects of his essay with this: Television programmes and commercials begin to refer to each other via intertextuality or in the form of "stars" appearing in commercial (as is mentioned in this video as well). Moreover, the kind of relation between TV programmes and their viewers changed: By inducing self-irony (that means by basically mocking themselves for being TV programmes or ads making fun of themselves for being ads etc.) programmes can't be mocked by viewers anymore because you just can't make fun of something which makes fun of itself. I mean, you CAN make fun of it, but then you would appear to not "get" it, it would appear that you weren't "in" on the joke, so to speak. In consequence, a lot of viewers developed a disassociated relation to the programmes, a feeling of detachment. The object of mockery shifted: no longer were programmes mocked and made fun of for being, for instance, terrible TV shows, but these viewers who allegedly watch these shows while not being "in" on the joke. Take reality TV. You don't watch it sincerely because you are aware that everything is fake and (at least partly) scripted. Why do so many viewers watch it? Because they are "stupid" or "ignorant" of that fact? No, on the contrary: A lot of these viewers watch these shows because they KNOW that it is all exaggerated, they know that it is fake. Why do they watch it? People watching these shows often make statements like "I don't get how anybody can watch this" or "This is sooo cringy" while laughing at the supposed "actors" humiliating themselves on TV because, guess what, the reality TV 'actors' are "in" on the joke as well. Neither the alleged 'performers' nor the audience is (with exceptions) generally as stupid as often unfairly presumed. But this presumption itself is toxic because it enables us to watch these shows with a slight feeling of superiority not against the programme itself but against its very own supposed "stupid" audience.

>>11332596
b-but google calls him Count Myshkin and then Prince Myshkin in their description

>>10829848

DFW only wishes he could write like Rogers.

>>9928143

>>9903835

^ This. So much this.

I know it sounds like a platitude. And it is. But that's what sincerity is. It's an endless stream of platitudes and maxims, flowing like... heh... well... there's a lecture you guys should really watch.

>>9834801

>femboi in tights

>>9721427

>>9196772

dfw TFW is dead

>>9162188
feel ur pain op. i am too smart to shower in the mornings

>>8663233

She believes in astrology...

She genuinely believes in astrology...

And she teaches at a university...

>>8554856

in all honesty no language is truly "why" tier and old english should have been ancient or great tier but what makes cree better than or equal to, say, finnish? especially in the context of literary study i just cannot compute

>>8501644

nobody cares about your shitty experimental hypertext poetry that you "published" with that construct-a-website CD ROM you bought in 2004.
obviously EVERYTHING is physical if we're talking about "things" at all. let's not get caught up in retarded ontology; this is pretty basic heidegger. the LED and the light that is coming out of it is just as physical as the little blot of e-ink temporarily suspended against the screen. don't be daft and pretend you can't understand the sense in which a printed text has a special (if only provisional) kind of independent existence that isn't replicated on a kindle. on this note...

>>8501637

>Because, we are culturally engineered to favor the physical over the ephemeral, but that is entirely off-point.

This is entirely the point. This is a real state of affairs. It is the case that we favor the physical over the ephemeral. It may be "cultural engineering" but so is your classically Platonist rhetoric about "human side take shits, rational side approach god". People like books to hold; they remember them better. Each proposition is one side of the same phenomena, I doubt we'll be able to separate the cause and the effect, this is simply an immanent fact. This has and will continue to be backed up by research. You can obviously "get" something out of a work reading it online; if you are somewhat literate you can even get more out of a digital work than a numpty reading a paper copy of the same work. OBVIOUSLY engagement with the text is more important than the medium. All I'm saying is that for whatever reasons (be they historical, biological, idiosyncratic, necessary) physical texts offer a richer experience. It's actually really fucking simple, and while there are plenty of studies suggesting that this is the case I haven't seen a single study suggesting otherwise. Normally I am hesitant to go to materialist proofs for psychological suppositions but we've otherwise reached an impasse.

>>8475562

Davegasm.

Needs more silly names, and some shameless suggestions that the book is for "intellectuals".

>>8382225
If you still want to go on stoner adventures by the time you finish the book, I and dead DFW be cry.

>>8381495

>implying he wouldn't be sleeping well before the thirty minute mark

>>8373472

bro it sounds like you need some new sincerity in your life

check out zadie smith and chimamanda ngozi adichie, its good for your feelings

>>8371663

OP here. was sober when this was written; disregard completely.

>>8362246

Powerful. I was staggered by the power in this scene.

Not no

>>8312851

Nah. As long as she really cares about something it's all good.