/lit/ - Literature

>>11594010
In the words of Schopenhauer, "Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.".

This perfectly describes the worthless piece of literature that is Infinity Jest.
It is the ramblings of some woe-is-me pretentious, arrogant, child of two professors, David Foster Wallace.

You can measure a work by the life of its author.

You know that kid you didn't like at university?
The parents bought the boy a new car, he never worked a day in his life, and merely was able to get good grades simply because they told him it was important.
Then, he tries to be down to earth and pretends to know the struggle, by wearing bland clothing or something to distinguish him from his erudite hobnob parents. That is David Foster Wallace.

He goes on to fail at philosophy, writing post-modernist drivel but to his credit, recognizes this and switches to writing. The writing unfortunately, gained more acclaim than it should have. Likely made possible by his parents, their friends, and connections. Otherwise, his first novel would have never seen the light of day.
Mr. Wallace lived an insulated life, one with pats on the back from fellow academics, and most importantly his parents.
He knew he was fraud, which is why he killed himself.

Unless you enjoy the meaningless work of a man who never knew struggle in his life, then you would best "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

>>11594088
Fuck, I didn't knew it's this bad.
I'm taking it out of my reading list, thanks anon.

>>11594162
It's actually really good though

>>11594162
You're welcome. The reason why he is shilled so heavily here is because (by my estimate) 15% of the posters here are undergraduate English/Literature majors and their professors have DFW as assigned reading because he fits the mold. He also ticks the box of SJW-tier "educational concepts" such as 'mental illness awareness' (a misnomer really, as they shocase it, it is mental illness glorification and bastardization), 'sexual themes', post-modern and post-postmodern themes, etc.
>>11594186
You wouldn't know good literature if it came up and bit you in the face.

>>11594010
I'm 300 pages thru and I find it ok-nice-maybegood so far. Sure tryhard cringe disasters such as "Wardine be crying" are kind of a put off.

>>11594010
I'm pretty sure it's another one of those shit books written by some /lit/ard and spammed to hell and back over here because these people have no idea where else to vomit their literary crimes to. Pay it no heed.

>>11594199
People shill it here because it’s a fucking meme. For some reason it’s funny to post Infinite Jest in twenty different threads, probably because it’s a shitty book that comes off as wise. Then, because it pisses off people like you, trolls post it even more to get a reaction.

>>11594088
>>11594199
>>11595006
I find it hard to believe people this retarded exist. Did you even attend college?

>>11595028
lol, see >>11595015

>>11594010
>1,000 pages

No one with something worth saying needs that much space to say it.

>>11594088
he killed himself yet you say he didn't know struggle, explain

>>11594010
Great book on addictions and dependence, you know it's accurate because he killed himself when his pills stopped working

It's a fun read if you like unconventional writing styles and narration, however it's not perfect. For instance I don't think there's a single accurate french sentence in the entire book

>>11595068
Anon didn't even read the book, his entire critic is based on the biography of the author

>>11595035
The first sentence is true, but the rest of it makes it clear the Anon has not been around that long or isn’t from the same cultural background that /lit/ was created in

>>11595035
>implying Infinite Jest isn’t spammed here for memes
>implying I would ever pay 70k a year to study any field English/literature in college
>implying it’s not because of pic related

What I mean is that it’s a shitty book compared to how people like you treat it. It’s better than a majority of the acclaimed contemporary books produced, but it’s still mediocre at best.

>>11595111
>>11595035

I meant to reply to >>11595028
Fuck

>>11595028
>bragging about undergrad like it means some thing
>didn't read the posts in this thread
>didn't read this
>The reason why he is shilled so heavily here is because (by my estimate) 15% of the posters here are undergraduate English/Literature majors and their professors have DFW as assigned reading because he fits the mold. He also ticks the box of SJW-tier "educational concepts" such as 'mental illness awareness' (a misnomer really, as they shocase it, it is mental illness glorification and bastardization), 'sexual themes', post-modern and post-postmodern themes, etc.
Did you even go through an MSTP? Wow o-m-g! Such good argument. My education level blows yours the fuck out of the water. In my case, it is a measure of intelligence. Going to your 4 year undergrad means fucking nothing. It's proof that you're a retard that chose to study English and ate up all the junk literature they provided for you because clearly you are unable to think for yourself. That's why you have a superiority complex about something as trivial as undergrad education (what something a majority of young people attend in most western countries?). You deserve an icepick lobotomy and live out the rest of your days as a simpleton rner never able to opine on anything again.

>>11595006
>>11595028
Just goes to show the people who hate on IJ are the ones that have never read it and/or are too dumb to get past page 1.

>>11595123
Overstepped it a bit with the b8 there but overall pretty good, almost indistinguishable from your average STEMfriend emotional tantrum

>>11594967
A little after page 300 is kinda the turning point for the book. Starts to be less vignettes and the story starts becoming more focused and intermingles

>>11595239
Most great books are done by page 300, why is DFW so special that he's worth slogging through 300 pages of mediocrity before the work gets good?

>>11595068
Struggle in the sense it was used means literally "a very difficult task". And nothing was difficult for George Foster Wallace.
Struggle is growing up poor, not being able to see your dreams through because of financial limitations. Struggle is loss of leg, chronic pain. Struggle is abject poverty and homeless. Struggle is having both parents die in a car accident. Struggle is a real tangible despondency, not "oh man, my life is so good that I need to invent drama by being lovesick over some female author and getting her name tattoo and getting all upset over issues I literally invented".

DFW lived an easy, bourgeois lifestyle.
Rich parents. Actual social life.
Never had to worry about rent once!
Great life.
And yet? Woe-is-me! Boo Hoo!

>David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, to Sally Jean Wallace (née Foster) and James Donald Wallace, and was raised in Champaign, Illinois,[9] along with his younger sister, Amy Wallace-Havens.[10]
>His father is an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
>His mother was a professor of English at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, which recognized her work with a "Professor of the Year" award in 1996. When Wallace was in fourth grade, the family moved to nearby Urbana, where he attended Yankee Ridge Elementary School and Urbana High School

The complete opposite of struggle.
That's a life of ease. All his problems were created by himself, and all his actions and subsequent medical treatment stemmed from guilt over knowing he was not a self-made man but the brainchild of his professor parents who made him literally, and career wise. Something he never reconciled or accepted. Such individuals normally can be forgiven if they are exceptional, but there was nothing exceptional, interesting, or noteworthy about DFW. A 115 IQ kid, not a prodigy. Just a bland man. The sort of person who peddles intellectual poison, spreading his caustic, unjustly pessimistic approach to life to everyone who reads it.

It leads to a greater philosophical question. Does a life without struggle or aim leads to a literal atrophying of the will? Looking to nature, life itself is a brutal struggle. Remove the struggle, you remove life. Regardless, not the question to provoke here with DFW fanboys, the sort of people who get upset when you discuss philosophy on /lit/.

>>11595349
Sometimes a book just starts a bit slow. See also Malazan.

>>11595383
In 300 pages I could read all of something good.

>>11594088
all those words and not a single mention of why the book is bad. very pathetic

>>11595383
>Sometimes a book just starts a bit slow
Books are like a box o' chocolate, you never know what you gonna get! :D

>>11595379
What is your struggle? No one would be this torqued unless they felt unlucky in life and also jealous of dfw

>>11594088
>>11594199
>>11595379
>not being able to separate the artist from the art and analyze the contents of a work

Do you even literary criticism?

>>11595412
Yes and you could read three novellas too, but what’s your point unless you think what matters in the study of literature is a statistic

So does anyone have any actual insights of the writing other than it's slow for the first bit? It's still on my reading list. Should I take it off or no?

>>11595383
You started life out a bit slow. It affects the rest of your life. Same applies to books.

>>11595474
it's a fun read, read it if you want to it's not like you have better things to do

>>11595491
Better to read nothing than a hack.
>One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
>In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited."

>>11595507
absolutely buttmad, i read your dumb quote the first time you posted it

>>11595474
What an attention-seeking faggot. If you're serious about reading fiction, then you should at least start reading it. Whether you think it's good or not you can judge afterwards. But any topics that ask whether classic or highly-praised books are worth reading are redundant. The answer is always YES.

>>11595515
>highly-praised books are worth reading are redundant. The answer is always YES.
hello bugman

>>11595474
What the fuck is this bullshit? Are you too dense to actually read a book and form an opinion yourself?

>Oh god I NEED REVIEWS I NEED TO FIND REVIEWS!!!

If you dont like it then stop reading and fuck off to find another book. You'd have to shave off a couple sessions of staring at a computer screen to make up for the time you "wasted" reading the book and making an opinion yourself.

>>11595491
>>11595515
>it's not like you have better things to do
>What an attention-seeking faggot.
I have other responsibilities. Time for reading is a luxury for me. I don't want to spend time reading the first 300 pages only to discover I should/could have been spending time reading something else on my list. I'll just keep on my list then, thx.

>>11595535

>20 minutes to an hour a day is IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME.

Learn to time manage idiot. I run a business and go to class and I always have time to consume books, good or bad.

>>11595547
good to know

>>11595535
no wonder why this Notorious DFW faggot killed himself.
everyone kept putting his book down after 300 pages.
>>11595547
don't have much business sense then. 20 minutes of some fags book could have been spent on a good book

>>11594088
Great pasta - saved.

>>11595379
>struggle is serious bodily trauma, poverty, homelessness, loss of both parents
So what, most people have never known a very difficult task?

>Proves DFW is born into the upper-middle class
>The complete opposite of struggle
>All his problems were created by himself...stemmed from guilt over knowing he was not a self-made man but the brainchild of his professor parents
Yes, like our appetite for food, our appetite for doing something meaningful will only keep regenerating. It is human nature to find something else to tackle when the typical struggle for physical existence is already cared for. His "literally invented" struggles like many borderline schizophrenics with untiring minds is to impose a paranoia about these "pats on the back" sort of things so as to be more critical about cheap forms of affirmation, and incorporate that into his work. DFW's writing stood out even among professor-born academics with similar connections. IJ is a best seller even if it is controversial on /lit/, there is clearly a desire for writing like this, and its style hasn't been successfully replicated since it was released. And you seem to think he was some fraud who wrote because he had nothing better to do, got it published for no better reason than he was just high-born.

>A 115 IQ kid, not a prodigy. Just a bland man.
pure projection. He wrote a distinguished critique of fatalism at the same age you are writing these shit comments. But they were all just his bourgeois friends right?

>The sort of person who peddles intellectual poison, spreading his caustic, unjustly pessimistic approach to life to everyone who reads it.
His preferred audience was probably more of the critical reader type if you can beleive that, also this comment literally describes this post.

Your last paragraph is just hard to take seriously.

Jesus, this is still going.
It looks like I opened pandora's box.
It's a 1k page book and by what I'm seeing it's just an "ok" book, maybe I'll give it a try one day (or not), but for now back to Dostoiévski and Fernando Pessoa.

>>11594199
I don't know of any class at my uni that reads DFW

>>11597656
It's more than okay, but it's different than what many expect.

>>11595379
Tl;dr: DFW was a successful middle-class white man. I don't like successful middle-class white men, so I will blithely dismiss all his troubles as pseudoproblems created by himself in order to fill the void of his life - nevermind the fact that DFW killed himself, that's probably another one of his tricks.

People like you disgust me. Your lack of empathy and oversimplification of a man's life just for the sake of sounding hip and cynic is sad. Have you learned nothing from reading all your books?

>>11597894
>DFW was a successful middle-class white man.

Not what that guy is saying. I can't speak for him, but I have a problem with any nepotistic appointee in the Academy hired and praised beyond his/her capability simply because they were born into the system and their parents prop them up through it. Like the thing about his honors undergrad thesis being published. That had more to do with his parents connections to publishers etc. than it did to the quality of the work. Same with John Kerry getting his honors thesis published through his parents connections. John Kerry is not a great thinker, neither is DFW.

>>11594088

Holy fuckin shit

Topkek

48 posts and nobody has mentioned what the friggin' book is like.

>>11595068
LMAO any fag can kys themselves dude

>>11597946
>DFW is not a great thinker
You're stupid

>>11598207
Honestly, this board discourages actual discussion. I had made a thread about Infinite Jest some time ago, where I actually gave a somewhat extended opinion on what I thought of it, and after a hundred or so replies (a lot of which were stale memes), the thread died after a couple of days.

>>11598260
Not an argument. There are hundreds of well established "great" authors in the canon who are more worthy of your time than any of DFW's work. Why should you read 300 pages of a 1000 page work before it "gets" good when you could read Heart of Darkness or something else of substance?

>>11598266
Well, what did you think of it?

>>11594967
I’m at like page 520 right now and I’m getting really tired of the wheelchair man + crossdresser subplot. I’m going to finish the book but I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone.

>>11598270
DFW's work does have substance though. If you can't see how his work faithfully reflects contemporary hedonist nihilism (which is like, the default world-view of middle/upper classes in every single Western country) and its relations to passivity, consumption, addiction, etc., the fault is really on you.

>>11598279
Also:

>prandial
>sub rosa

>>11594010
It's good but not amazing. I decided to take a break from it after about 200 pages because I couldn't be bothered to read 1000 pages of something that's only decent.

IJ is a really good novel; different, entertaining and somewhat challenging.
BOTS, his debut, is a very nice read.

>>11598282
>his work faithfully reflects contemporary hedonist nihilism
yawn, being topical and moralistic is how Balzac bulldozered his way into the canon, and no one reads his works beyond Father Goriot

your bandanaed autist will fade away with time

I have ADHD and already read 500 pages of this shit but it's just mediocre with some good parts sprinkled throughout. Should i read Gravity's Rainbow or The Pale King instead?

>>11595507
this post is basically the equivalent of that 15 year old kid who draws fan-art of ben shapiro with "FACTS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS" in bolded font above it

>>11597656
Yes it’s a good book you fucking moron. Just read it for fucks sake

>>11595379
I sincerely wish death upon you. Not because I care much for DFW, I've read a little of him. It is because you are worthless human garbage who spoils the air we all breathe simply by living.

You're probably the anon who shits up Schopenhauer threads by being a mindless groupie, aren't you? If not, it is no matter—you are all the same.

Hurry yourself to the grave.

>>11594088

If one needs to know about the author to understand their text, then what they wrote was shit and nobody should care about it.

It should never matter who wrote,said, or discovered anything, just what it was and how they did it.

>>11594088
lmao

>>11594010
It shows it’s easy to write a 1,000 page novel if your writing is lazy.

>>11599143
who you are affects how you think. The two are inseparable.

First time visiting /lit/ in a while and I have to say this place is a real shithole. Do any of you cocksuckers think for yourselves? The sheep mentality here is disgusting

>>11599089
>that one guy who wishes death upon people for authorary criticism
Same guy from the Roth thread when he died. Literally snaps and wishes death or threatens people for being critical of his heroes.
Last time he said he'd stab the guy in the heart if he could.
Listen buddy, you might want to look in the mirror and ask if you're the problem. You've got some deepseated issues. See a therapist.

>>11599504

Yeah, how the author thinks is based on who they are, and that can explain where the ideas came from, but it doesn't change what's already on the paper.

What good is knowing that "Timmy falls down a well" was inspired by someone named Timmy falling down a well in real life? Anything important relating to real Timmy should be included in the book about Timmy, and if it wasn't, the text is not in some way redeemed by learning it through some other way.

Books aren't suddenly different if you change the name on the bottom of the cover.

>>11594088
>You can measure a work by the life of its author.

>>11595379
>Struggle is abject poverty and homeless
>Struggle is ... homeless
>Struggle is homeless

>>11599544
I agree, DFW fanboys need to be mature enough to realize his work isn't nearly as good as they think it is.

>>11599781
you can.

bump, this is my favorite book.

DAE really relate to "Wardine be cry"? Powerful stuff.

>>11594162
Shut up, you're so stupid

>>11595111
that physically pained me to read it.
i remember a guy in college told me that IJ was the book hipsters loved to not finish. well, this fag surely underestimated my autism bc i did read it. so, ha.

>>11595379
based and redpilled. laying the truth on these NYU hipster /lit/fags that keep popping antidepressants for made up mental illnesses

>>11599797
Based

>>11599557
It's not about authorary criticism. It's about this unjustified pretentious dogma which is poison to the craft and to the mind, and yet which every pseud thinks places them at the mountaintop. If I am acerbic and hate everything, then surely, surely I must have discerning taste. Make wild claims, dig in, and challenge everyone to a sophistic duel to the death—one you believe you cannot lose because you are a weasel, who sees intellectual endeavor as a game to win and not as exploration. Placing the flag of Daddy's Cock at the top of the mountain, just to show everyone how god damn delicious you find Schopenhauer, Nabakov, or whatever other pseud-god you've chosen.

So yes, die. Wastes of space. The world would be better off with these types dead.

>>11595491
I guess it might be fun if you're into tennis and weed

>>11602123
>tennis and weed
And they say the book isn't a reflection of the authors life. Two of the basic bitch hobbies of a rich kid.