/lit/ - Literature

In Search of Lost Time was also heavily marketed: Proust paid magazines to publish positive reviews of the first volume.

>>12810481
Not really, had never heard his name when i read it, found it in a box of free books and remembered a friend mentioning he was reading it, so i grabbed it since we have common tastes. Glad i did, loved it.

I read it because of /lit/ almost 7 years ago

>>12810487
Proof

>>12810481
Enabled by his parents who had connections*

>>12810481
Why wasn’t the interview published?

>>12810481
Wallace, David Foster. Very shit tier. Vulgar. No real talent.

>implying marketing is bad

>>12811855
It is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKlIsqPe1w0

>>12811855
If you aren't exclusive, aren't elusive then you're nothing. Nothing more than an ant to parade around at book signings, barnes and nobles. This is how you become a James Paterson, or a Clive Cusler. If this is what you want, then congratulations. In the course of history, this too will be how DFW looked upon: A useless, banal, 'writer' who churned out quantity over quality, who shamelessly paraded his works. There is a reason why the likes of John Green have an affinity toward his garbage. At the end of the day there is nothing of value there and all credit for the success of his worthless career is owed to his parents (Two rich bourgeois professors) who leverage their connection to ensure sonny dearest was published. Fuck them all. He was a complete and total pseud like any other person who speaks about sincerity when writing. In point of fact, he wasn't sincere at all, quite the opposite really. A shallow creature who built a facade, no an entire frame with a signpost plastered that said "I, DFW AM AUTHENTIC", but if you look past his puffing up, and go past the movie-set frame, you'll find the inside empty and deserted all with a single postcard reminder that his parents were the ones who built bubba-boy up. This was the real reason he couldn't live with himself because he knew he wasn't self made, and he wasn't authentic at all. You want to sell your soul by "marketing" like some huckster salesman, then go ahead. I'd rather die and have my work fall to obscurity than live on with the guilt of having whored it out like a cheap prostitute.

>>12811912
based

>>12810481
It felt like it was a meme I had to read in undergrad because everyone else was too.

>>12812011
This.

>>12811912
Based. Nothing about DFW's writing was sincere. Even his supposedly non-fiction essays and travelogues invented characters, dialogues and situations whole cloth to construct a narrative. Will be glad when this fad of calling him a great "authentic" author is over. Nepotism pure and simple.

>>12813528
Good post, reminiscent of the the nabster.

>“When I hear a critic speaking of an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool”

+ Bonus
>There exist few things more tedious than a discussion of general ideas inflicted by author or reader upon a work of fiction. The purpose of this foreword is not to show that "Bend Sinister" belongs or does not belong to "serious literature" (which is a euphemism for the hollow profundity and the ever-welcome commonplace). I have never been interested in what is called the literature of social comment (in journalistic and commercial parlance: "great books"). I am not "sincere," I am not "provocative," I am not "satirical." I am neither a didacticist nor an allegorizer. Politics and economics, atomic bombs, primitive and abstract art forms, the entire Orient, symptoms of "thaw" in Soviet Russia, the Future of Mankind, and so on, leave me supremely indifferent. As in the case of my "Invitation to a Beheading" - with which this book has obvious affinities - automatic comparisons between "Bend Sinister" and Kafka's creations or Orwell's cliches would go merely to prove that the automaton could not have read either the great German writer or the mediocre English one. ---- Nabokov

Can some explain to me what the fuck new sincerity is even supposed to be

Resentment. Light of my life, fire of my brains. My sin, my fuel. Re-sent-ment: the trip of my tongue zigzagging back, forward, then concluding with a definitive labial movement, the finality of the t resounding like a bell in my head. Reeee. Sent. Ment.

It was hate, plain hate, in the morning, at ten till four on the clock. It was rage to pay tax. It was anger on the dotted line. But in my amygdala, it will always be resentment.

Did it have a precursor? It did, indeed, it did. In point of fact, there might have been no resentment at all had I not, discovered, one summer, a certain, initial 4chan. In the internet, on a website, on a computer. Oh when? About as many years ago since Windows 10 was released from then. You can always count on a shitposter for a plagiarized style.

>>12813603
Read Knausgaard and you will know

>>12813603
Those who are sincere, never mention that they are sincere.

I motion that DFW be removed from the /lit/ trilogy.

Bump

>>12813528
Hmm. I've just started reading it and I do think that he's certainly overrated on 4chan, but think of the demographics. You have a bunch of kids, naturally searching for an intellectual; a large book with big and obscure words (and a certain youthful zest) is going to be right on the money. If I had to degrade it, I'd say it lacks a certain realism, true non-fiction-ness that separates the reader from the writing but that's just IMO. It's a fucking madman of a book and I don't think a lot of people out there are capable of writing it.

Was Wallace autistic? Seems he had a mastery of not only the dictionary but medical dictionaries, along with a large assortment of acronyms.

>>12810974
Because DWF was beeing too much himself.

>>12814011
yes if for no other reason than plagiarism

EVERYTHING YOU REMEMBER BEFORE THE INTERNET WAS HEAVILY MARKETED YOU FUCKING RETARDS

>>12815367
there is no plagiarism you fucking retard.
the worst there is heavy-handed homage.
>>12814011
it's called the meme trilogy you fucking newfag.

>>12810692
Pynchon too you fucking asswipe.
this is not uncommon, it's the reality of the media industries.

>>12810692
Everyone is enabled by someone who had some unfair advantage to begin with desu.
It's mostly absolute luck.
You could have all the advantages and connections in the world but no skill to back it up. It has to meet in the middle somewhere. It's okay to be jealous, everyone else sucks.

>>12815393
>heavy-handed homage

LMAO

>>12816313
i think you're implying that in essence that's still plagiarism, but while it might be embarrassing, you're actually missing the trees for the forest. Everything is sort of plagiarism when you get down to it, it's not necessarily a bad thing to acknowledge your influences

>>12810481
The problem with this logic is that there's tons of other shit that's been heavily marketed but didn't reach classic status.

>>12816434
i dont think it would have reached true classic status had he not killed himself.

>>12813634
Until they do

>>12816287
Seething

>>12813528
>Based. Nothing about DFW's writing was sincere.
Infinite Jest is more than 1000 pages about how the only way you can be sincere is by lamenting the fact you can't be sincere, it's unironically the most sincere thing you can write.

>>12816287
"Vladimir Nabokov, American novelist and literature professor who once had something like the following conversation with a student at Cornell University:

'Mr. Nabokov, I want to be a writer.' Nabokov, interrupted from his work, looks up to see a well polished student his early 20s, well fed with an impeccably tailored shirt and nice watch. The boy continued after Nabokov initially ignored him, 'A great writer', he said with a smile.

'How much money do your parents bring in' he asks the student.

'What?'

'What is the income of your parents' asks Nabokov. 'Mother and Father.'

'It's always been great. They've provided for me and give me a nice stipend. Never had to worry about money. Why? What is it to you?'

'You'll never be a great writer.' says Nabokov, 'At best, you will be a formidable mediocrity. Resentment, bitterness, are sensations that are alien to you and if conjured are cast unto tepid banalities. Go write children books. I loathe students such as you and your "dreams" and "aspirations" Get out of my sight.'

Speechless, the student began to cry.
In the months that followed, owing to the success of his recent novel, Nabokov gave up his professorship (loathing having to teach 'pretentious pseudointellectuals',) and moved to Montreux.

>>12814011
Seconded, but only because it's actually entertaining to read, unlike SHIT and directionless blob of some random faggot's hobbies and interests.

>>12817533
Keep at it

Marketing is literally the only reason for existence though. Living things are just highly marketable matter.

>>12817559

>>12817564

>>12817572
How perfect. The inverse of it shows shows your thought process:
>Muh stock market!
>muh moneys
>muh marketing is literally the only reason for existence though.

>>12817584
You have to market money to convice people to use money so that you can market even more markets to extract money from brainlets like you who think that marketing is some silly bullshit.

>>12817584
How the literal fuck is the inverse of that image even close to what you typed? Are you having a fever dream?

>>12817504
intelligent post.

>dude im down with the struggle, see im all upset, *wipes tears with stack of money*, yeah sucks that you can't pay rent, or afford food or afford to pay the tuition ransom to continue college but, look dude, im more upset trust me!
>yeah man, my parents were two professors who raked in a modest 300k a year collectively and had millions in savings and paid for my college, paid for a new car for me, paid for everything and their connections allowed me to be able to publish. but dude, depression dude! you don't know how good you have it!
>but dude, i get you because i dress like im down with the struggle but let's be clear, I, DFW, lived a harder life than anyone because woe is me! see, look how street i am, i dress just like a regular joe, look how authentic I am!

>>12817504
Low IQ and contradictory post.

>>12817754
How is it contradictory?

>>12814011

my english professor says infinite jest is her favorite book. more qualified to have an opinion than any of you.

>>12818263
I'll have you know I have a STEM degree

>>12818331
yikes

>>12811912
imagine coping so hard that you actually believe someone got published because their mother, who taught at a community college, and father, who taught at a mid-tier state school, were publishing insiders who had "connections"

just because you can't get published, don't blame your parents

>>12818482
>>12817747

>>12810481
It's a shit book promoted by pseuds

>>12818492
This.

>>12817520
sounds like Nabokov was a little jealous.
I mean, I would say he wasn't wrong for the most part, but as I already pointed out it takes more than money and connections to make a talent, there has to be some amount of pain (which David had), and he surely knew this. Pynchon was a student of his, and he was probably one of the more privileged american writers despite his cripping strangeness.

>>12818492
>>12818766
books in general are for pseuds if you ask me.
get a STEM degree if youre gonna larp as smart-boy, faggots.

>>12817520
Based and classconsciouspilled.