/lit/ - Literature

>Like many Midwest towns, Bloomington is lousy with churches: four full pages in the phone book. Everything from Unitarian to bug-eyed Pentecostal. There’s even a church for agnostics. Except for church – plus I suppose your basic parades, fireworks and a couple corn festivals – there isn’t much public community. Everybody pretty much has his family and neighbors and tight little circle of friends. By New York standards folks keep to themselves.** They play golf and grill out and go to mainstream movies …
>… And they watch massive, staggering amounts of TV. I’m not just talking about the kids. Something that’s obvious but still crucial to keep in mind re: Bloomington and the Horror is that reality – any really felt sense of a larger world – is televisual. New York’s skyline, for instance, is as recognizable here as anyplace else, but what it’s recognizable from is TV. TV’s also more social here than on the East Coast, where in my experience people are almost constantly leaving home to go meet other people face-to-face in public places. There don’t tend to be parties or mixers per se here; what you do in Bloomington is all get together at somebody’s house and watch something.
>Here, therefore, to have a home without a TV is to become a kind of constant and Kramer-like presence in others’ homes, a perpetual guest of folks who can’t understand why you would choose not to have a TV but are completely respectful of your need to watch TV and offer you access to their TV in the same instinctive way they’d bend to lend a hand if you tripped in the street. This is especially true of some kind of must-see, Crisis-type situation like the 2000 election snafu or this week’s Horror. All you have to do is call somebody you know and say you don’t have a TV: “Well shoot, boy, get over here.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/david-foster-wallace-on-9-11-as-seen-from-the-midwest-242422/
Was life in the 2000's really this soulless?

I started wearing a bandana on my head, /lit/.
It started when I was doing yard work and getting sweaty.
But then I didn’t take it off.
I started reading and I read deeper and longer than ever before.
I channeled my inner DFW.
I am the infinite jest.
Have you taken the bandana-pill, /lit/?

>>17447954
agreed

>>8511860

If David Foster Wallace couldn't not kill himself, what chance do any of us have?

dude weed lmao

How do I into writing contests? I hear people talk about them all the time. How do I get started?

The meme king, obviously. At least until I read more and develop my own voice.

Hey, I've been reading although of course you end up becoming yourself. Around page 88, I heard an interesting idea. David said that the Internet would turn into a hobbes-style government, with a few small media outlets controlling the vast interests because people will want focus and quality. That didn't really happen, did it? I think the Internet has become entirely a democracy, and that advertisers are still around because there aren't real subscriptions outside of television. Does that sound more accurate than what David said?

By the way has anyone else read thr book? It's fascinating, much more illuminating than the movie the end of the tour.

I've been living in southern California for the last four years and it's just now dawning on me that almost no one here is authentic, especially when it comes to 'literary circles'. I've just about had it and I'm ready to move. Where's the best place for an aspiring young writer to move? I was thinking Atlanta.

/lit/ cities thread

>"One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one".

What does that even mean?

I've been posting on /lit/ for about 2 years now, but I have yet to read anything by DFW. Should I jump straight into Infinite Jest or is there a better starting point? I watched the German Interview and the 2003 Charlie Rose interview; I identified with him immensely.

dead

>>6654194
>unironically being an english major

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

>>6613414
so you can date hipster girls that wear skirts and tights

its audience pussy or bust

>>6611894

D A N K

>>6585022
>the introduction spoils the ending

>>6582007
Define "smart."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hCgUifBI1k