/lit/ - Literature

>>11772025
I took a creative nonfiction course with David Wallace at Ponoma back in '94. We weren't allowed to show anyone our essays outside of the class for some reason. He seemed naturally intelligent, didnt need to look at any notes or textbooks or prepare for any lectures, he just knew his stuff and was super casual.

I saw him talking to a girl on campus one day. He uncharacteristically wore a Fila sweatsuit, the kind that looks like it's made from the same material as parachutes, and trainer sneakers with a matching bandana. That was his pussy hunt outfit apparently. Several times a week, same outfit, I'd see him hitting on women in it. I once saw him wearing it while carrying an identical outfit from the dry cleaners, he had like 4 sets of same Fila sweatsuit.

I asked him about it in class and he said we aren't allowed to discuss anything unrelated to class while inside class, the same way we can't show anyone outside of cass our essays. A student called out "but Dostoevsky isn't in this class and last week you talked about replicating his black tea obsession to test its affects on your own writing". Wallace stared blankly at the student with dead eyes for 30 seconds in dead silence then said "you just got knocked down a full letter grade. Any other smart asses? Didn't think so." and pushed up his glasses with his index finger.

I remember telling myself this guy will either be super successful or kill himself.

>>10080926

Face the facts: IQ is almost directly correlated with suicidal tendencies in life. If you're living life, studying happiness, or enjoying yourself while dreaming of being a growing old someday, here's a wake up call:

YOU

ARE

NOT

INTELLIGENT

You're just pretentious!

If a smart person had any sort of sturdy belt, he would be hanging from it.

I watched three of the longer interviews with him and he had a really concise, impressive thought process going on there.

I decided to actually read him. What about starting with The Broom of the System and then IJ and then The Pale King? Is his debut novel worth reading?

Did DFW have ADD? Or was that kind of writing style purposeful. Ive been reading Oblivion and got through Mister Squishy and Started The soul is not a Smithy. He spends so much time on "random?" (maybe not random) descriptive tangents. Is he doing it on purpose or is it a reflection of how he was in real life? Also general DFW thread I suppose.

Why didn't DFW just write fantasy and sci-fi?

Motherfucker was so obsessed with "sincerity," with a reaction against postmodernism and irony. But that's exactly what the speculative fiction genres are. They all spring from Tolkien, who is sincere, much more sincere than Wallace ever was. Subsequent writers have carried that core of sincerity forward, whether to elevate it (like Wolfe and LeGuin) or to make it cheap (like Jordan). There are a few postmodern shitters that slum around the genres, like Moorcock, but overall both fantasy and science fiction remain extremely sincere fields of writing.

And even if you go back in time, to the forefathers of the genres, guys like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, they're all fairly sincere. Some of them are nihilistic--Howard certainly was--but it was a sincere nihilism.

And even if you think about Infinite Jest, there's an argument to be made that it's science fiction. It certainly has elements of cyberpunk in it.

So why didn't DFW just fucking write epic fantasy? I think he would have been happier.

Does anyone have any kind of YouTube philosophy (not activist or politics please) or literary channel? It'd be great something like Jordan Peterson (but maybe a less biased guy).

Does anyone understand what this means?
pic unrelated.


Atlas was a poet and came home with a back-ache.
His painted wife greeted: “But you’re so early, my dearest!”, an earnest smile of amusement upon the moonlike curve of her chin.
“That’s right”, said Atlas, while rubbing her shoulders; and did not bother to think (of abysses and annoyance).
“Why?”, she said, enquiring and with staggering honesty.
Just like a clockwork, he decided to ignore the timbre of her voice. “My back hurts, honey”, while massaging the amphibious surface of her skin.
“Oh but why my dear?”
Atlas hands stopped abruptly.
“I wrote a great poem today.”
She turned, both dutifully and non-expectant. “Yes?”
“Would you like to hear it?”
A most polished nod, impeccably polite.
“Do you think I don’t see you, my love?”, asked the poet.
She sighed, “You see me, my dear, you see me well.”
“I do see you, and we will go, will we go I and you”, coughed: “my love.”
She shrugged, “Where?”
He nodded, “A multicoloured land.”
“But where?”
“I and you, we will go.”
As expected, she drew a smile of contempt.
Atlas was a petty poet and his body felt spiritual pain. “I have a back-ache. Would you mind?”
She rose from her comfy patrician cushioned chair. “Oh but my love! Let me see…”, and laid a rough hand on his shoulder.
“There”, an elderly exhale of minor pleasure and content, “There.”.
Her fingers felt like prisoners “But where will we go?”, moving and curving and feeling the knots of his tired selfless wordy love, “…I and you?”.
He reassured “We will go,” a blank face, “very soon”.

What's a good critique of DFW's proposal for "New Sincerity"

>"Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. There's some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage… The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years."

>“The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows. ”

>That graphic male homosexual sex scene in the last 80 or so pages

What did DFW mean by this?

>In the jungle, welcome to the jungle
>Feel my, my, my, my serpentine
>I, I wanna hear you scream

What did he mean by that?

If he was so smart why is he dead?

"Logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

What did he mean by this?

I wanna write the next great american novel just to namedrop Nick Land

critically acclaimed now a days...DFW was really the last one

now the only way to get academic exposure is by writing post-colonial, marxist, PoC, transgender literature...

DFW was the last of us

So was he a fraud or not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxUY0kxH80

"What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves..."

>plot from Shakespeare
>style from Pynchon
>dialogue from Salinger
>characters from Dostoevsky
>themes from DeLillo

Anyone seen this? What's with the constant ticking? Why did he agree to do the interview if he wasn't comfortable with answering almost any legit question? He looks in pain.

my only dfw (OC)

but i've got about ~450 OC Elaines if you're interested

>>8061314
>>8061279
>>8061272
WOOOOOOW

YOU MEAN TO SAY

THAT THIS ALPHA PUSSY SLAYER

WAS ACTUALLY A BETA KEK?!?!?


WHO

WOULD

HAVE

GUESSED!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v45Uu8SlcsA

Just discovered this, 1.5 hours of audio with DFW that I haven't heard before, uploaded in Jan 2016.

Listening now, but I thought I'd share.

>In every relationship, there's the person who needs the other person less, and that person has all the power. There is one who loves, and one who consents to be loved.

What did he mean by this?

go piss up a flagpole you condescending piece of human garbage

Is Infinite Jest to /lit/ what Drive is to /tv/?

Also, how did DFW get his bandana's so round on top? (pic related)

And, this new site format is an april fool's joke, right?