/lit/ - Literature

In the nineties Wallace sent this guy Steven Moore (editor at Review of Contemporary Fiction/Dalkey Archive, author recently of The Novel: An Alternative History) the first draft of Infinite Jest. Moore still has it and he wrote all about what was in it.

Interesting example:
>A-B. “Preliminary Throat-Clearings.” These two pages contain the dedication to Fenton Foster (whom Wallace identified as “My mother’s father, who died before I was born” in an interview with Valerie Stivers [http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0596May/Verbal/dfwmain.html]), an epigraph—“Sorrow brings forth” from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell—followed by various definitions of addict and addiction. The first is taken from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition, and the rest from Hal’s beloved Oxford English Dictionary, including some illustrative quotations. Two of the more relevant ones: “A man who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits” (Mill, Liberty) and “Each man to what sports and revels his addiction leads him” (Shakespeare, Othello 2.2.6). Wallace cut this Moby-Dick-like opening and decided to let Hal summarize his findings: “The original sense of addiction involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one’s life, plunge in. I had researched this” (IJ 900).

Here's the link: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/ij_first.htm

This is a monument of Western Literature, destined to be studied for hundreds of years, and no amount of jealous /lit/ carping will ever destroy that fact.

So, my copy is coming in the mail tomorrow. I am a bit nervous, this is actually a readable book right? If I can read a book like moby dick at least a couple hundred pages, and gather the general idea, I should be able to read something like this no problem, right?

hey /lit/ what's your favorite meta story?

pic related is mine. it has a meta ghost that moves shit around on a meta school campus and metas his son and talks to a comatose meta addict.

****SPOILERS****

Fuck me.... just finished it. It was amazing. I think I have most of it put together butI still have some questions. Who/ what was Lyle and what did he represent? Is Orin Marios father? Who the fuck is the bricklayer? What was with the the bird that fell into Orin's bath???

what is everyone voting for on the next /lit/ top 100?
Me, myself... I'm keeping the meme alive.
Then I'm probably voting for Blood Meridian xD

>freshman in college, want to become more /lit/erary
>decide to go to first meeting of school book club
>full of blue-haired harry potter fans
>the only books they read have movie adaptations
>the meetings are just watching the movies

is /lit/ just a countermeme?

I missed out on the Infinite Jest Book Club at the beginning of the summer, where can I make a irl book club with a bunch of other autists/super-normies.
Should I just wait for next summer for the next IJ book club on here?

I just got to the part with Madame Psychosis and explaining her broadcast and broadcasting building or whatever, around page 187 if you have the book and want to see.
I have about 4 pages of descriptions of the building and the roof of the building, and couldn't for the life of me get my self to finish the chapter (about 20 pages worth of these descriptions)
can I get some clarity from someone who has finished it... do these long, long, long descriptions have any kind of subtext or metaphorical meaning?
if I can just skim through them I will continue reading the novel just because, but if they do have some shallow meaning behind every single fucking crook and nanny of a fucking college radio broadcast building, I will have to think about continuing reading this fucking medical textbook of a novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7xwxWftzMc


I think the entire discography fits well with IJ

my cousin keeps coming over to play Zelda on N64, but I just want to read this...
what do I do?

I just finished Infinite Jest. Anyone care to explain the significance of the final scene? Are they making Fackleman watch the Entertainment? Wasn't this several years before its creation?

this is more important to modern American culture than any other novel, prove me wrong

Is it really good or just a meme? Is it worth my money?

>Authors name bigger the. The title text

I sincerely hope none of you bought this version

L'infinie comédie --- title in French. It's the third great "comedy" after Dante and Balzac

>most great authors weren't properly recognized in their lifetime

Is this even remotely true anymore? It seems as though the elements of literature that would previously make something subversive and controversial are now widely accepted, and authors that /lit/ masturbates to like Pynchon and DFW got to be called geniuses in their lifetime, while academics turn their nose up to "genre shit." And even then, the best "genre shit" writers get good reviews for their books.

The books that really do get terrible reviews across the board are things like 50 Shades of Grey, which I don't think is likely to be reevaluated centuries from now as some sort of masterpiece.

>Some may seize on it as a masterpiece, but it is a bloated monster of a book. (...) The bloat is a consequence of sheer adipose verbosity and an unremitting condition of moral and intellectual flatulence.

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