/lit/ - Literature

>>20042306
This is the only anon who really understands IJ desu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGLzWdT7vGc
Essential DFWcore right here

I just finished, seeking discussion, will post fuller thoughts in this thread later once I've let things percolate.

Attached image is something I stumbled on on /lit/ and downloaded but did not look closely at until now.

Appreciate any and all infographics/elucidation etc. Will be posting thoughts as they come and/or get more developed.

I'm on my third reading of Infinite Jest in as many years. The second reading is the best IMO; you're making all the connections and putting the plot together properly for the first time after the chaos and foundation of the first reading.
The third reading is less powerful, more like a survey of the weird world DFW dreamed up, armed as you are with the knowledge of what's actually happening.

>>10904175
This is pretty helpful.

found this recently
thought it was worth sharing

>>10496449
Hal becomes happy, kind of.

>>10497668
I liked him until it turned out he was a massive cunt.

>>10357697
two times actually
first one just go in and do it
second time to get the nuances in plot
if you don't read for plot, might as well do it only once but with some guide or something

What are some books that are entire puzzles in their own, on par with Ulysses and Infinite Jest?

I just want a hard piece of literature that I can research every little bit of it. My favorite part of Ulysses was that on every page I could look further into a name or a word and discover a historical figure or event and learn something.

i missed everying in post-ending. is there a chronological reading guide somewhere?

>Young William James Sidis was tutored relentlessly from the cradle. He could read English at the age of 3. He amazed everyone around at the age of four when he would use a typewriter to write in English and in French. When he was five, he could already speak five languages. He would read Plato in Greek. At the age of nine he was ready to pass entrance exams to Harvard but was not admitted as not being mature enough for college life. At 11, after three years of trying and being refused on the grounds of his youth, young Sidis entered Harvard. His stardom begun with a lecture about "Four-Dimensional Bodies". After the lecture, Prof. Daniel Comstock of MIT hailed him to be a material for the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. New York Times picked up a story and gave him national prominence.

>you won't be him
jesus.. is writing independent of influence?

>>9204549
I'm mostly confused when i see diagrams like these, because i can't see where they piece together the story's end (including the final scene with Orin) when it all seemed so open-ended and ambiguous to me

To start, can anyone explain how people are able to figure out the post-ending stuff? Is it explicitly mentioned in the text but not picked up because it appears to lack relavence the first time through?

Ok I get this whole picture except the "Too Late" red line
Was the thing the attaché watched the original cartridge?

Try reading it again.

>>8393339
>he thinks the narrator is JOI
*sigh*
I'll bet you don't even realize the connection between Gompert and John Wayne

never read the book but defenders always say "muh emotional arc completed" and post this picture

perhaps it will make sense to you

>>8255826
On a related note, I wanted to ask, does this plot graph for IJ make any actual sense whatsoever?

IJ is one of the most pretentious books I've ever read

What is its purpose? To talk about "muh weed addikshun" or "muh tenis" or "muh pretty plot structure" (see attached (warning: SPOILERS) or "muh postmodern" or "da future of american culture"?? The prose is nothing incredible and the plot is way too fucking complicated. It's like playing some obscure video game where you have to write down every detail that happens and every single key code because at the end of the game you will be quizzed on every single fucking detail mentioned. (Seriously: if you are going to take one thing from this post, TAKE NOTES WHILE YOU READ Infinito Jesto, you're going to have to remember everything. lol.) All in all it just manages to be obnoxious and at the end you're happy because you finished da big Booke not because you just read something great, unless you happened to decipher the book's code like a complete autist.

The book is impressive from a "look how complicated I can make it" stand point and I'm sure you can write hundreds of essays about it but even though it has a "plot" and a "structure" and this and that I still feel like it's missing a soul. One of the critiques of DFW's earlier works, Broom of the System, was that it felt like it was written by a "very intelligent 15 year old". I still think it's the case

I'm from Illinois and honestly I think the man was just bored.

It's just supposed to impress random people who don't read. Same for the Infinite Jest diagrams.

Even cursory analysis reveals the diagrams range from useless to stupid.

So I just finished Infinite Jest, and I... what? When did all the stuff in the 'post-ending' section happen? I entirely missed that

can a veteran jester tell me where the fuck these 'post ending' events happen?

obviously spoilers dont click if you havent read the book before

>>5960351
Morons have been diagramming the novel since it came out in the hopes of being internet-admired for "figuring it all out".

Just look at this mess. Farts are more articulate.

>>5112199
this one looks similar