/lit/ - Literature

>>11772025
All of Good Old Neon

I miss him bros

>>11772025
His short story "Forever Overhead" is probably my favorite of his and one of the reasons is its descriptions that I think any guy past age 13 can relate to. The story is about a boy's 13 year old birthday pool party. Heres a small description of semen:

The smell is, more than anything, like this swimming pool: a bleached sweet salt, a flower with chemical petals.

I think some anons will think im being sarcastic here, but I honestly think this is one of the few stories Ive read that has unique ways describing a boy's adolescence. Coming of age stories for boys almost always seem to be about courage in one way or another, its almost never about the boy's body. If it is there is no emotion about it. Some other character makes a comment about how theyve grown, a lot of the time from a girl to grab a male reader's attention. After a small description of their bodies is simply that they are just stronger, stranger, lengthier, etc.

This story isnt even really about this. There is a lot more going on about the pacing of the story, and what exactly is happening at the end of the story. Its been years since I read all of DFW's short fiction. Out of everything, I cannot forget chemical petals.

Is this book so good that it single handedly earned DFW a meme status? Why is he so famous anyway?

>>11772025
epitome of pseud

Really miss him. Hard to single out just one passage of his, but here’s one of his hidden gems:

>Och aye Betty! Och aye! I’ve just soiled meself! Betty I’ve soiled meself! Och aye I wanted to let out a rasping, eggish fart but I’ve ruddy soiled meself! Och aye get me an underwear change Betty!

>>11772123
Nah Consider the Lobster is huge as well. They make High Schoolers read it

DFW more like dumb fucking weeb

Post some rare wallaces

>>11772123
because the book was a big deal in the late 90s
he took elements of experimental literature to a wide audience and wrote a contemporary study of addiction and the culture of consumption hidden within the trojan horse of a comic page turner and puzzlebox. it was a good book, a zeitgeisty book, and a major undertaking to slog through and puzzle together.

Anyone else pronounce the W in DFW "wee"?
Having looked it up in the archive I just found a 2016 thread claiming as much, but I don't know if they were sincere

>>11772206

>>11772057
In which short story collection is it?

>>11772025

Where did you find a picture of him not dressed like a scrub?

>>11772025
I found a Wallace hardback reader for $5 that has lots of random stuff like notes for courses he ran and email chains he shared with his mum. Super cute stuff. Also miss that boy holy heck hope he's sleepin well. Great writer. Memed hard but good.

>>11772025
Reading The Broom of the System at the moment, my first DFW.

Is IJ a lot more refined? Broom is clever and funny, but feels really stunted and unnatural. It's like dude, we get it, you studied philosophy.

PS- I am enjoying the book and love his interviews that I've read/watched.

Evan Dara > DFW

Suck it.

>>11772408
Evan Dara is a project by same people who created Pynchon. Can't really compare those to a real, single person.

>>11772359
He never stopped trying to show off in novels later in his career, but the essays and some of the shorts were spared it

>>11772139
>rope
It's like you aren't even a fan

>>11772424
Does he show off in a more classy way or more subtly? I mean, my man Pynch is showing off all the time, but it comes across as sincere somehow.

>>11772359
>starting with broom

Why? Should have started with his essays or just gone straight to infinite jest

>>11772445
Haven't read Broom for comparison and I can risk saying no. At least it's not phil. If you still need to make it more palatable you can always take it for a deliberate quirk of style, rather than the failed attempt that it is at having a genius-stamped cake for oneself and humbly eating it too.

So who did him in? Nobody seriously believes he offed himself, do they?

>>11772359
have you read the dsm iv? have you taken calc 2? because, woah nelly, the guy who wrote IJ sure did

The long chapter in The Pale King about this guy named Chris Fogle or something like that

>>11772241
I pronounce it "Wallace".

>>11772285
I’ll post my eight-years-of-foraging-and-wasted-youth-old DFW folder when I get home

>>11772304
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

>>11772025
Reminder that IJ is the worst book in the meme trilogy

>>11772025
Nothing of value was lost.
DFW was an overrated pretentious child of two professors, who grew up in luxury and abundance. He had everything there for him and never knew struggle. Yet, he killed himself. Their connections opened doors for him that otherwise would not have been possible. His success is rather their success. He was more intelligent than average but that's a low bar, if you're very intelligent, he's below you. It's obvious seeing interviews of him that he was a total, pseud. The smart enough to bullshit but not smart enough to really think. His life can be summed up as "wrote and spoke much, but said very little".

Suffering makes you a better person. It bestows humility, not arrogance and pretentiousness. Foster was self-absorbed, hollow, and empty and knew that he was a fraud. He may have redeemed himself had he admitted to this prior to the act of ending his own life, but, he didn't or at least his parents did not disclose his final admission of defeat.

His story is a reminder that having an abundance of money, time and connections opens more doors than actual talent.

>>11772758
Yeah but that’s not really an insult

>>11772761
Are you ever going to stop sperging out about this?

>>11772139
second only to you anon

>>11772761
lol damn u must be mad or sumthin

>>11772025
wardine be cry

>>11772730
Thanks

>>11772408
I dont really see what's so special about Dara.

>>11772025
That pic is rare as heck

>>11772644
>calc 2
he only does the fundamental theorem which is like literally the first day of calc 1

>>11772206

>>11773204
Eugenides in the background?

What were his last thoughts?

I will never not laugh at the greatly deserved ridicule of this hack fraud. DFW will be remembered by posterity as the most incompetent snake oil salesman western literature has ever produced.

The only sincere act of his life was when he kicked away the chair. His life was nothing but a series of ironies and lies predicated on the the joke that is new sincerity. The big punchline was the creaking of the rafter and the piss trickling down his leg to the floor.

his epiphany that the only viable thing for him to do was to kill himself was the best thing to happen to literature in 30 years since he began writing. Because behind all the self aware gimmicks and self help books and the drugs and the audience pussy there was no discernible talent

>>11772758
>not as good as two of the greatest works of literature ever written

Well I'll be

>>11774187
I thought IJ was ok so im not sure what you mean. It wasnt a masterpiece or anything that people may have memed it to be, but it was fine

>>11772761
>Growing up middle class means you aren't allowed to be depressed or ever attempt to succeed in anything at life

>>11774207
>>11774200
t. reddit pussies

>>11774187
>>11772761
Yeah, but, he does capture that modern comfort ennui well. The only reason posts like this get replies is because everyone hates Foster a little bit on some level so stating it is being too obvious and makes you appear foolish.
The people who take Foster seriously are the greatest proof that his work is good at explaining the modern ennui.

>>11772761
>mfw this comment

>taped his hands together

This is the part that bothers me the most about his suicide

>>11774178
>And but so

>>11772761
this but unironically

>>11774254
fight me bro

>>11774291
shuttup pussy

>>11774295
im serious lets meet up

>>11774298
ok where?

>>11774273
>...in a gesture of prayer

>>11774306
Montreal, there is a park by the mountain

>>11774311
>>11774266
Remember when there were hundreds of these photos on /lit/ at any given time?

That interview is a trainwreck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxUY0kxH80&vl=en

>>11774320
Shut up that interview is pure gold except for the camera man

This fucking thread.

>>11774320
what is wrong with him here, it's like his brain is fried

>>11774315
I'm not going to canada. Especially french canada. Come to boston

>>11774336
are you some sort of Irish bezonian lmao

>>11774336
Let's just meet halfway in Tuscon Arizona

Is this the average DFW fan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXvAd7COpJY

>>11774323
>when u explore the paradoxes but he pontificatin

>>11774346
why would we not meet in phoenix? it's far superior

>>11774320
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmIAbHXr0Y
This one is far superior.

>According to Jonathan Franzen, DFW was such a hopeless horndog that he once wondered aloud if his only purpose in life was “to put my penis in as many vaginas as possible.”
>Was known to sleep with his students

>>11774392
i wonder if these people would be less neurotic if they had a basic understanding of evolutionary biology

>i wonder if my purpose in life is to dick as many women as possible
literally yes. that and helping raise children maybe, or providing for a woman, or women to do so. That is literally why you exist

someone will inevitably come along and call this a brainlet position without offering an alternative view because their justificaiton for existence is some torturously complex and abstract refuge in metaphysical speculation, and they can't properly articulate it, and are in fact embarrassed at how arbitrary it is. Instead they will vaguely hint at stuff as if you were already supposed to know this deep secret they are aware. absolutely memed are their minds

>>11774392
You are just jealous because you're a virgin.

>>11774438
i wouldn't fuck DFW groupies with your dick. they're the ugliest women alive. all the hotties with bodies read shit like rupi kapur and bukowski

>>11774207
>middle class
There is nothing "middle class" about DFW'S background.

>>11774178
>they'll be sorry >:(

>>11774422
Woah, you just solved the hard problem of the meaning of life. Everyone seeking meaning just needs to get laid.

>>11775132
i didnt say anything about meaning, i said that the reason you exist is procreation. There are many ways to interpret this in various philosophical frameworks, but it remains true.

>>11772206

>>11775089
he must mean midwestern

>>11774178
I'll be at peace now or something along those lines.

>>11774187
>The big punchline was the creaking of the rafter and the piss trickling down his leg to the floor.

someone watched Sopranos last night

>>11774254
wha.. uh.. huh?

>>11774422
This serves a larger purpose though.

Reproduction (life) has implicit meaning. To reproduce.

There is no explicit meaning (right now).

It is only rational to keep reproducing until we have the ability, by way of transhumanism, to dictate explicit meaning.

You aren't wrong, just devastatingly short sighted

>>11772025
I have only read Broom of the System, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. I understand it is considered his weakest work, but I still feel like it is disingenuous and a patronizing letter to literature in general. It kind of turned me off of his other works, but should I go on, or do his latter works have roughly the same feel?

>>11772057
I find this essay particularly interesting because he confines (you) to the second person, applies a life to you and drags you into the narrative until you’re forced to start living it. At this point it’s no longer about “this isn’t me” but rather the immersive viscerality you experience through the boy as he emerges into social recognition, confronts the idea of death and matures through the art of sublimation in a concise manner which parallels the reader’s experience in reading the essay as well as Dave’s experience writing it.

>>11772057
lol gay

>>11775089
>this redneck thinks middle class relates somehow to the amount of zeros in your salary
If you are working for a salary and you don't earn enough money to retire in a year of savings, you are middle class. By definition, even NFL players are middle class but most consider them too rich for that.

>>11775213
i wasnt talking about meaning i was talking about why we exist

>>11775155
DFW was wondering about meaning. Not literally why he exists

>>11774275
based

>>11775315
>I find this essay
Its a short story
>At this point it’s no longer about “this isn’t me” but
Thats not true
>parallels the reader’s experience in reading the essay as well as Dave’s experience writing it.
This seems just thrown in because you can

To all of that, sure, but how do you make sense of the last lines, seemingly alluding that the boy has dived head first into concrete killing himself?

>>11772025
>What is your all time favourite passage of his?
his passage to death

>>11775599
>quad dubs

nice

>>11775229
It's by far his worst work and he sort of disowned it whilst he was still alive. Read Oblivion

>>11772761

What is this type of DFW memorial called? Is there a tennis metaphor?

>>11772619

It's tough for Ellis to get around let alone murder someone, especially with his permanently gaped posterior that he must pack with a large was of gauze every morning

>>11774323

What a druggie piece of shit. A queer. A probable pantywaist and an inevitable bug-chasing homofiend. I don't know why he stepped in front of that train, but I hope the conductor laughs himself to sleep every night at any moments remembrance of the dopey charlatan in a bandana and non-Rx spectacles worn to lure vulnerable women, smug and aloof before the impending train. One moment he's a literary pervert and the next a cloud of pink mist. I bet he was reciting O Captain My Captain or something like that in his death rattle. Too bad we never got to see him write about FacialAbuse and Incest Humiliatrix genres. What a loss to the world. Not!

He's in my head and always will be.

>>11776507
If anyone killed him, it was Franzen.

>>11775599

Kek has blessed this DFW thread. Please watch over my bathroom cameras and when I creep shot girls wearing sandals at late night diners.

>>11772619

The heebs wanted DFW to choose between Sarah Silverman and Asia Argento and to be their best lil goy servant in return for them giving him literary fame.

"Someone taught that temples are for fanatics only and took away the temples and promised there was no need for temples. And now there is no shelter. And no map for finding the shelter of a temple. And you all stumble about in the dark, this confusion of permissions. The without-end pursuit of a happiness of which someone let you forget the old things which made happiness possible."

>>11774207
>>Growing up middle class means you aren't allowed to be depressed
Two professors, one tenured, are bringing in at least 300k in household income in salary alone, both coming from middle to upper class families, having hundreds of thousands if not millions in net wealth. "Just middle class, bro!" What an ordinary guy! Man, look he wears a t-shirt, jeans, shorts and a bandana! Just one of the guys! Get fucking real. There is no real struggle that would make him utterly despondent that would lead to a true depression.
The depression induced in such a state is entirely self afflicted from invented machinations like not having a GF, exacerbated by his own drug use, and validated and crystallized by a diagnosis saying he's just depressed.
He had a non dysfunctional family. He had friends. He didn't have an inability or constraints on pursuing his dreams. He had no traumatic events in his life to trigger induce a sudden depression. Failing out of his philosophy doctorate track might have shaken him but this undermines the usual DFW lackey's narrative that he was a genius. If he experienced genuine suffering, he would have came to the realization of how good he had it.

>>11772973
A thorough proof of the fundamental theorem is usually reserved for calc 2, though obviously its stated in calc 1, but generally not on the first day because it involves integrals which arent introduced in most calc classes until after the class has thoroughly studied derivatives (and delta epsilon limit proofs in a good course), anyways its true that theres more serious calculus in GR (which no one complains about), and if you can't get your head around the MVT footnote in IJ you can just skip it

>>11777942
you unironically need to read more dfw

>>11774369
>He didn't read IJ
Hilarious how often DFWs critics refuse to read a sentence of his work

>>11772025
>It's been ten years to the day since David left the map.
Guess he won't be incentivised to eat cheese no more

>>11775583
It's troubling that you believe those to be disjointed

>>11774275
*And but so e.g.

I cried when I read his autopsy report. Said he went through electro shock about 13 times or something. Fugg

>wallace
>toole
>hemingway
Why is it that the best male authors kill themselves? Why do female authors lack this equivalent conviction?

>>11779757
Is this bait?

How did dfw kill Himself again?

>>11774187
hey I haven't seen this pasta in a while! cool find!

I've only read a few of his essays as well as part of (so far) TPK, but I would say that Ch. 5 of TPK is my favorite of his writing so far, starts at 13:00 of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoU3l8trOnY
Otherwise, the whole of Signifying Rappers is pretty great, but I probably love it so much just cause I'm a really white dude who loves rap.

Saw the thread thumbnail in the catalogue and thought it was Styxhexenhammer666.

>>11775670
sincere thanks, anon

>quit his job because someone he knew came in and he was embarrassed

>>11779108
I think I've read the same one, I thought I heard it was fake though?

>>11780466
Styx doesn't look that greasy. And he's shirtless half the time.

rip

>>11775670
> the last lines, seemingly alluding that the boy has dived head first into concrete killing himself

what? How do you read it that way?

>>11781231
Had a nice place, paid for. Didn't need to worry about rent or finances.
No real stress.
And the goes and hangs himself? Lol.

>>11781402
He was an all-around basketcase for decades even if he managed to keep it together enough to have a successful writing career for about 15 years.

>>11772761

t. J. Franzen

>>11781402
he realized that he was a hack fraud

>>11774422

This gets to the issue I always had w/ Wallace: he lacked self-control. That might sound like a banal observation, but it explains most of his faults, both personal and literary. He had little ability to put checks on himself, and it ultimately led him to suicide

>>11781231
>everything is about money
Generation Z everybody

>>11781402
sorry meant for this zoomer

"The View from Mrs. Thompson's", the story relates to the 9/11 attack, and gets pretty close to summarizing a fundamental aspect of his philosophy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz5fqzrKidY

>>11776539
Stupid but good post, i like your prose but the content I do not agree with

>>11780041
Microwave

>>11774178
Relax – This won’t hurt.

>>11772761

true. if someone is born to two professionals they are basically different people

>>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.

Finished IJ 2 weeks ago, and I liked it.
Are other DFW's books recommended, or IJ is his best work by a long shot?

>>11772025
Dave and I worked together when we were teenagers ama

>>11783498
anything

>>11772025
I liked his review of Garner's Modern American Usage, because that's how I discovered the best usage guide.

>>11773234
kek i immediately saw that guy too. dont know who eugenides is but still funny

"'I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say 'The library, and step on it.'"

>>11784634
it was the 90s, context matters.

>>11783169
Pale King is good also and a few of the chapters are probably the best work he's written, but sadly the book in its entirety is unfinished/imperfect, and IJ is still his opus. It's also excellent if you want to understand his philosophy.

>>11784675
i posted it because i really liked it

>>11772761
I agree, spoilt rich kid who never knew struggle. Never knew anything other than the academic world to be honest. Total pseud who wrote unreadable drivel.

>>11772025
the whole BS 1960 chapter of IJ.
>that whole experiencing and hearing your fate at the same time
>>11774178
John Franzen imagined that he apologized to his dogs right beforehand

>>11785343
/thread.

>>11772025
The whole "pro-life" chapter in Pale King.

>>11784675
It was lame in the 90's and it's lame now

>>11785851
Hal's supposed to be a dork so it fits his character.

>>11777942
You understand literally fucking nothing about psychiatry or neurobiology, do you?... like genetic influence just completely goes over your head, doesn't it?

>>11786225
The neurochemical deficiency is an obsolete. Real cases of depression arise from trauma or prolonged stress. If he had that sort of despondency, he would have never written a single word.
You think you're intelligent but you're not. You have a Facebook meme tier understanding of it. #Depression, born this way! Deal with it, don't it?

>>11786268
synaptic serotonin deficits, the fact that MDD is treated with SSRIs as a first line approach, and mood disorders show a 50% genetic inheritability, thats all just happenstance?

And as far as "meme tier" knowledge, Im literally in grad school getting my NP. Did my psych rotation last semester. Whats currently taught in the medical community is that the primary mechanism of depression is serotonin influence, environmental influence also being a contributing factor... obsolete my ask. Go back to reading derrida and thinking it makes you matter you /lit pseud fag, leave actual science to the mentally competent.