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/lit/ - Literature

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3356444 No.3356444[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

So I actually read the DFW article on The Exiled, and what a load of bullshit it is. I mean, it had some interesting points about other things, like Vollmann and drugs in literature and movies, but most of it was just a try-hard attempt at fulfilling their offensive or whatever image. The actual criticism of the book was all nit-picking. E.g.:

> he’ll lump nearly anything into one big category of Addiction with a capital-A, whether it’s opioids, masturbation, TV or chocolate

And? They are all forms of addiction, that's the whole point.

>And despite giving a famous lecture telling people to question everyday life (that one about fish not knowing what water is) Wallace never ponders basic things like why whoring’s even illegal.

Apparently, because Wallace didn't use the book to write about why something should or shouldn't be legal, he's not "pondering" these things.

>If you read Wallace’s conversations with David Lipsky, though, you’ll find out just what sort of torturous crap he really enjoyed – Alanis Morrissette, R.E.M. and Huey Lewis.

Now you're attacking his music taste? Wow. Either way, we all have these "guilty pleasures", the author of the article is obviously a 4chan-tier elitist who calls other people plebs for enjoy something like a fun, catchy song.

I could go on, but what's the point? The author was still using "hipster" as an insult in 2011 and called Wallace wrong because the NARRATOR of a part of the book told a factoid (the author doesn't seem to understand what postmodernism is either).

http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

>> No.3356451

The article is trash. The fact that anyone thinks otherwise speaks volumes of the level of intelligence among /lit/'s resident obnoxious DFW detractors. I've yet to see one smart and reasonable criticism of DFW on /lit/ in my two years of browsing (funnily enough I've encountered credible arguments against him IRL, though).

>> No.3356454

>>3356444
>The Exiled
Hi /mu/

>> No.3356458

>attacking his music taste
This is a good argument in favour of pseudonyms and anonymity.
If you don't understand why you should use either in your work, why aren't you name/tripfagging right now?

>> No.3356480

DFW is the worst thing to have ever happened to earth

>> No.3356501

how does he know what DFW sees in that music though

maybe his brain is so advanced he hears things mere mortals don't understand

>> No.3356510

>>3356458

Maybe if you're worried about what immature fucks are going to think about you because you listen to a certain type of music.

>>3356480

Care to give any reasons?

>> No.3356516

>>3356510
I'm worried about the book having its interpretations limited based on external judgements of my tastes.

>> No.3356890

> he’ll lump nearly anything into one big category of Addiction with a capital-A, whether it’s opioids, masturbation, TV or chocolate

Holy fucking shit can you be so stupid.

Why do you think in Boston AA they refer to the subject of their addictions as the Substance and rarely by specifics?

>> No.3356931

DFW doesn't understand literature, philosophy, or art. He took his earnest attempts at understanding, hijacked beaten-to-death forms to express his Euripidean bullshit, and left us nothing but another note in the symphony of failed attempts at Art after Modernism (joining, among others, Thirlwell, Franzen, and Roth).

Dull bullshit from an arrogant middlebrow who watched too much television. Luckily nobody will care about him in 50 years.

>> No.3356942

Yeah it's pretty fucking terrible & Ramon Glazov is a pimple on the ass of the Exile. As I've said on /lit/ pretty much every time this has come up.

There are good criticisms of DFW to be made, but Glazov didn't make them.

>> No.3356941
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3356941

>>3356931
>implying DFW will not be remembered as the post-modern GOAT

>> No.3356960

It's a bad critique (and I hesitate to even call it that). I don't know why you guys constantly bring it up. That doesn't justify how awful Infinite Jest is or how misguided his fans are.

>> No.3357020

he was too saturated with pop culture and became disgusting

>> No.3357028

>>3356931
>y is contemprary lit so bad waaaahhhh

your ignorance is showing young man

>> No.3357047

>>3357028
uh, contemporary literature is really shitty.

>> No.3357049

>>3356941
He;s too newly sincere for that.

>> No.3357052

>>3357020

> saturated with pop culture

Just like most of us are today, whether we want to or not (unless we choose to "live under a rock", there's no getting away from it).

>> No.3357054

He's being ironic

>> No.3357058

>>3357047
no, but see, you're wrong

what is it that you don't understand about this? help me help you

>> No.3357070

>>3357047
You're haven't read nearly enough to be qualified to make such an assertion. You're no better than those "Don't let the spirit of music die!" kids from Led Zeppelin videos on YouTube.

>> No.3357075

>>3357028
>an attack on Wallace is an attack on the WHOLE of contemporary fiction!

You couldn't be more confused, could you?

>> No.3357191

This whole thing is hilarious and I need to read the Exiled more often

>> No.3357224

>>3357191
it's mostly dead now, the writers have generally moved over to NSW Corp (which is a subscription site) in an attempt to actually learn a living

>> No.3357329

>>3357070
I love posting "Pretty good but nowhere near as good as Skrillex's [whatever]" on those to bait response.

That and navy seal pasta in airsoft videos

>> No.3357531

The Exile's editorial line has one setting: "I'm edgier than you, look and watch."

DFW was temperamentally conservative. So with Joan Didion, George Orwell, and Graham Greene. Some people are just too mired in the contemporary situation and their own ego to realize these people can still have profoundly valuable stuff to say- often as a result of them wrestling with that temperament.

>>3356931
>Roth

Really? I esteem the others quite highly but can see arguments against them. But I've never heard someone argue Roth is bad.

>> No.3357533

>>3357531
And for the record, I'm a radical myself.

>> No.3357550

Exiled has gone way down hill but some of their writers are really good on occasion

War Nerd is consistently fantastic, but he's at NSFWcorp now

Mark Ames wrote a really good book about spree killings, "Going Postal". He's the closest anyone has come to explaining why that cultural virus has come into existence. In general Ames is admirable for being willing to write about stuff that other writers won't. He has done like the only serious journalism on murders of American citizens by MKULTRA assassins like, ever

Yasha Levine's Victorville dispatches were really good, he's starting those again at NFSWcorp

>> No.3357557

>>3357531

>temperamentally conservative
>fights in a revolutionary war

Wha

>> No.3357562

>>3357557
It's true, you dope

and the Spanish Civil War wasn't a "revolutionary war"

>> No.3357585

>>3357562

>attempt at anarchist revolution
>not a revolutionary war
>fighting on the side of anarchists
>temperamentally conservative

Wha

>> No.3357599

>>3357020
do you know what postmodernism even is?

>> No.3357628

>>3357585
How is a war fought to defend an elected republican government against an unlawful military coup "revolutionary"? It's not like the Republicans launched an anarchist uprising - it was the Nationalists who did that.

>> No.3357644

>>3357585
>How is a war fought to defend an elected republican government against an unlawful military coup "revolutionary"? It's not like the Republicans launched an anarchist uprising - it was the Nationalists who did that.

There are plenty of culturally conservative but politically progressive types.

Camillle Paglia.

>> No.3357805

>>3357557
Orwell was a solid left winger, but it wasn't a natural position for him to take. He began his adult life as an imperial cop, for fuck's sake. His experiences there started his radicalization.

He never fully reconciled himself to women, homosexuals, or ethnic minorities, but he spent his entire life making a very admirable and successful effort to do so. He thought patriotism was a very fine thing and socialism had to adapt itself to it in England.

>> No.3357823

>>3357562
Also, the SCW started as a non-revolutionary war, but it rapidly became one. There's no way to argue that.

>>3357628
lololololololo no. The fascists started an anarchist uprising. No.

>> No.3357826
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3357826

>>3356444

I hope you checked your trips privilege today, anon. Otherwise, DFW will eat you in your sleep.