/lit/ - Literature

>>19695574
DFW was racist or sexist or some shit

>>19695574
Plot fags can't deal with not knowing.

>>19695574
I don’t like that people say they like it because I feel they are only saying that because they read it not because they enjoyed it. It seems (to me) that they are bragging because they know it’s unlikely who they are bragging to will read it because it is so tedious and that tedium will be confused as a strength. It comes off (to me) as a favorite novel of pseudo-intellectual who read to be seen reading rather than to read. Having read the book myself after being recommended by a person I feel holds these characteristics it further confirmed the notion. The only plus I’d give it is I believe it made me a better reader, because having completed IJ I can complete many long challenging novels due to my enhanced capacity to endure tedium

>>19695574
cuz pseud queers found out about it and love it

>>19696341
I want to read it but I just finished Gravity's Rainbow and told people how much i loved it (i really do, in fact, am still obsessing over it and rereading the stupid little songs)

>>19696443
>pseud queers found out about

A pseud queer wrote it.

>>19696341
>i use ij readers in the way i think ij reader use reading ij
Do you have any ability for self reflection at all? You come across like a complete joke and a tool.

Same reason this does

>>19696469
Did you mean to say view instead of use, otherwise I don’t understand the green text but it happened twice

>>19695574
The book doesn't, the smug virgin "nice guys" who make up its fanbase are appalling so people need to shit on the "I'm such a tortured nice guy who stalks 5th graders home" nice guy by extension. DFW was a faggot and his fans are worse. It's very simple.

>>19695574
It is not the book, it's the fanbase

>>19695574
It's telling them to stop being so ironically detached from the world and people around them, people lash out because they've built their whole identity based on their detatchment.

>>19696985
Either works. It is a way to feed your self image, a externalized way which ultimately is self delusional.
>i am not them
But who are you? You should identify yourself by who you are, not who you are not.

Maybe because of comments like this. The entire book is filled with extremely based observations about people, progressives in general. Of course they hate anything that calls them out.

>That black and Hispanic people can be as big or bigger racists than white people, and then can get even more hostile and unpleasant when this realization seems to surprise you.

>That females are capable of being just as vulgar about sexual and elim-inatory functions as males. That over 60% of all persons arrested for drug-and alcohol-related offenses report being sexually abused as children, with two-thirds of the remaining 40% reporting that they cannot remember their childhoods in sufficient detail to report one way or the other on abuse. That you can weave hypnotic Madame Psychosis-like harmonies around the minor-D scream of a cheap vacuum cleaner, humming to yourself as you vacuum, if that’s your Chore. That some people really do look like rodents. That some drug-addicted prostitutes have a harder time giving up prostitution than they have giving up drugs, with their explanation involving the two habits’ very different directions of currency-flow. That there are just as many idioms for the female sex-organ as there are for the male sex-organ.

>>19695574
Because it's always the goody two shoes set who never take any risks within their niche who cling to this faggot. Like, even in a group of degenerate addicts, the goody two shoes of that bunch will have this in their collection.

Which means the book/writer is an aspirational object and whether or not he's good is irrelevant.

>>19697083

>>19697106
Sopgunanos

>>19697088
For fuck's sake, this was meant to make you think about others and emphatize, not shrink back even further into your misogynist hate fantasies.

Honestly, because it’s a shitty book. It doesn’t tell an interesting story. I felt nothing but fatigue and an urge to reach the end with every new page of pseudointellectual diarrhea. No interest whatsoever. Wasn’t fun either. Didn’t even make my dick hard. Frankly speaking I didn’t read it but I guarantee everything I said would be true. Thanks, Bill

>>19697233
shut up fag

>>19697632
Sorry...

>>19695574
Emmie didn't like it so I don't like it. Simple as that. I don't give a fuck about what Dakota says.

>>19697078
I’m a reader who did not like infinite jest

>>19695574
It manages to have a very gripping concept and plot while delivering it in the singular most insufferable way any story could have been written. Its maximalist prose is neither inherently artistic in the sophisticated and lavish descriptions of the sensory world through labored language that is beauty of its own like Nabokov would do, neither is it philosophically allegorical and poetic, connecting the mundane to the abstract in clever way like Melville would. Instead, DFW's prose is this clinical, technical, soulless and arid thing, a mechanical and downright forensic analysis of a situation or object, loosing itself in these descriptions of some of the most inconsequential inanities of life like a plastic chair, or a radiator or a metal shelf, which are never of any importance, the prose is never attractive, the contents are always extremely superficial. Still on the topic of style, the insufferable end notes that could just as easily be included in the contents of the page itself given the book's meandering nature, which constantly force you to return to the back of the book to read something, surprise-surprise, very inconsequential and disposable.

And it uses all of this style to meander and meander and meander. Going nowhere, threading in circles, masturbating throwaway segments that appear and disappear as if saving something for later, over the course of more than 1000 pages that could be neatly trimmed down to 400 or so of actually pertinent content. And when it comes to actually telling the story it only touches on it lightly, from a distance, in some sporadic episodes that dare actually delve into what we came here to get to grips with, and it's extremely unsatisfying in these moments.

And on top of all that the characters are these weird, cartoony one-dimensional elements so inconsistent with the clinical tone. Their zany and over the top eccentricities contrasting with the style in the worst way if not for the inhuman, unnatural verbose style in which they speak.

It is long, it is written in a seemingly educated style, it touches on the themes of family and nation and addiction, therefore it must be the greatest thing in American Literature ever, but it is actually a painful, often insufferable ordeal.

>>19695574
In general? Baby's first structurally experimental work. IJ doesn't have a "resolution" or catharsis of any kind as the book is structured around the impossibility of aesthetic, intellectual, or emotional completion in the modernist hellscape, so the form mimics the message. You're expected to scurry around reading all the footnotes in order to "piece together" what must have happened, but that information is also fragmentary and unsatisfying.

If an author is going to blueball me that hard they'd better give decent head for the rest of the book, and DFW's prose is among the sloppiest and most self-indulgent that I've encountered. I also didn't think any of the jokes were funny

>>19698896
based

>written by white male
>for white males
>enjoyed by write males

anything that fits these "chud core" criteria are hated by many

It's a long book written by a white male and college white males like it. There's no other reason.

>>19698896
>it touches on the themes of family and nation and addiction
If you bothered to actually identify the theme it would make more sense and not seem to meander about in a pointless fashion. But go ahead, blame the book.

>>19700454
>book has identifiable themes that everybody already knows of and are informed to you before you read it
>or even if you are capable to identify the themes by yourself
>automatically immune to meandering
retard

it tried, it failed, next big book please

>>19695574
The weed thing is hilarious because it's so exaggerated, but true.
>I asked her for weed
>>but in a manner to make it seem like I wanted the weed but didn't NEED the weed
>>>but then it'd been a few hours and the weed hadn't gotten here, should I remind her?
>>>>no, because then I'd seem desparate for the weed and I'd be seen like I wasn't honoring the implicit agreement which we made when she agreed to bring the weed at some later point in the day
>>>>>>>but I also didn't want to make it seem as if the weed was so inconsequential as to have no such importance that it wasn't worth at least another call...

This goes on and on and on and on, thrown in with a myriad of drug references that, no matter HOW this guy put them together, is literally at least at the pharmacology grad student level. Plot aside, just the composition of the book on its own is fun as hell to read because of how fucking stupid and retarded it is in its attempt to be clever. Also some nice hidden jokes and puns and stuff. I like Pale King more though because it's at least more straightforward.

I prefer his stories way more than his novels, overall.

>>19700530
I said theme, singular, not plural, as in central point. These themes he only touched on are all a plot fags ideas of theme, they are literally demonstrated by plot points, but theme, is often implied and indirect, you need to bother asking yourself why? Why did he cover these same few things for almost every character? Why did he describe a bug and a shelf in such detail? Why does it meander? You suffer from poor reading comprehension overall, notice that I said "not seem to meander," not that it wouldn't, Infinite Jest absolutely meanders, but it does so with a reason.

>>19700708
>an 1100 pages book has only one raison d'etre and its the one contained in style rather than substance
But I get what you're saying and it's still not the argument that will save this book from its failures, because it doesn't matter if there are certain intentions behind the employment of said style, as it can still fail in its mission like any other experiment or any other artistic intention ever employed. It occupies too much time and space, it is masturbatory, wasteful, endlessly self-indulgent and blatant in its supposed intentions. Refer to a Bret Easton Ellis book (who was a huge detractor of DFW and seemed to detest the worship he received, funnily enough), who employs the same style of meandering boredom and inane running in circles for the sake of expressing an element of ennui in the lives of wealthy WASPy types, but ultimately delivers it in a much more brief, less indulgent and more readable (although far form perfect) manner.

>>19701054
But your argument was (still is) based on a faulty premise, or seems to be. What would you say the main theme of IJ is?

>>19701119
Entertainment probably, and the pursuit of all things that pass as it (sport, film, drugs, politics).

because people in general need to pretend to outrageously hate something just to be on the top of hierarchy

>>19701287
Yeah, faulty premise. IJ is about the why and how more than the thing itself, those are just plot points. What do all those things have in common within the scope of the novel? And how do those other touched on themes come into it? The characters are all taught to mindlessly chase externalized goals/validation and never question why or ask themselves what they want in life. Some people like Hal and Gately are at the extreme, despite being at the opposite ends of social scale; no one cared enough about Gately to even consider it, they just tried to use the one thing he had an innate ability for as enticement, never told him why and just dangled a reward in front of him; Hal was a born performer, he could deliver the goods and meet expectations effortlessly, but same problem with the twist of his parents (Avril really) caring too much and being absolutely fixated on that performance, he performed well so there was never a reason to ask him those important questions. Every character is victim to this to some extent, even Mario, but he comes out better than most because he is excused from the performance aspect and given means, but the support is only superficial because that assumption everyone makes about him, but it causes him to live in a weird gray area of society and much of life will be unobtainable to him for the same reasons that the happiness, sincerity and contentedness which comes naturally to him is unobtainable to most of society. Society largely raises its children as one would train a dog, never looking beyond the treat balanced on their nose, never taught the value of the long term, of the difficult, of the pain, just to fixate on waiting for someone to tell them they can eat that treat and get rewarded for doing so, such a good boy! You should be able to pull in the rest and focus the main theme from there, the whole talking vs not talking thing is big, and how that relates to the characters who replace the rewards of society with more easily attained rewards like drugs.

The length of the book is because DFW wanted to make it clear that this was a wide spread societal problem, not just an issue of the Gatelys of the world, not someone elses problem and also that the whole class thing was part of the problem, a persons ultimate worth being determined by their class, which is part of the cause for people on both sides, the Hal/Gately thing once again.

>>19698896
pretty good post. I think I read someone time say that IJ would've been a great book it it had had a great editor.
>And on top of all that the characters are these weird, cartoony one-dimensional elements so inconsistent with the clinical tone. Their zany and over the top eccentricities contrasting with the style in the worst way if not for the inhuman, unnatural verbose style in which they speak
imo this is the biggest weakness of the book
>DFW's prose is this clinical, technical, soulless and arid thing, a mechanical and downright forensic analysis of a situation or object, loosing itself in these descriptions of some of the most inconsequential inanities of life like a plastic chair, or a radiator or a metal shelf, which are never of any importance
But what if I actually like this? I'll concede that his descriptions of a situation or event basically amount to the highest possible quality of sophmoric writing. But I often found the way he'd describe a phenomenon ("sons inevitably end up answering the telephone with the same locutions and intonations as their fathers" is one I really like) to be charming if not always totally accurate.

>>19701526
>is one I really like) to be charming if not always totally accurate.
It was very accurate back when the households only phone was kept in a central location of the house.

>>19701549
Sure, things change over time. There's not gonna be any single cultural pattern or social formation which persists throughout history. The fact that entertainment in IJ is cartridge-centered is often pointed to as a big weakness of the book insofar as DFW was apparently trying to write a prophecy. But the thing you quoted was definitely real, and something I don't know that many people noticed prior to reading that line.

>>19702918
Everyone who actually remembers the 80s was aware of it before IJ, it was literally common knowledge, everyone could immitate the way friends and family answered the phone and did and they would mention likenesses between phone greetings. There was no caller ID back then and people had very distinct ways of answering the phone, it was not tailored to the person calling subconsciously or consciously, not a response to what you see on your phones screen. This unique way of answering a phone is largely lost since caller ID has made the way one answers the phone personal in the sense of it is a reaction to who is on the other end and not something wholly unique to you and was a way of greeting the unknown. Fathers would get mistaken for sons and sons would get mistaken for fathers all the time and everyone acknowledged it.

Also the cartridges in IJ were actually discs, he explains that in the chapter about interlace. Cartridges were mostly extinct by the mid 90s, cassettes (vhs) and discs were the standards.

>>19703330
These days discs are pretty much obsolete though, although the book's timeline is mid-late 00s when they still were widespread.

>>19695574
I think this dude actually has a pretty clear headed take of Infinite Jest: https://drjosephsuglia.com/category/was-david-foster-wallace-overrated/

>>19703864
Sure, but I did a typo and they are even more obsolete, disk not disc, as in floppy, style, I forget what size they were, 25meg or something, a size laughably smaller than required for a feature length movie and smaller than the zip disks which were wide spread at the time. My favorite part is during an interview shortly after IJ came out he made fun of himself for suggesting it would ever be viable to rent movies by mail, 6 or so months later Netflix opened its doors doing just that.

But he did fairly well, no worse than SF authors when you get down to it, and better then some, from the human standpoint he was miles ahead of almost all SF authors.

>>19699826
>When this passes as criticism:
https://electricliterature.com/men-recommend-david-foster-wallace-to-me/

>>19700618
>I prefer his stories way more than his novels, overall.
His essays? I'd agree. Writing always came off technical.