/lit/ - Literature

Because he can't write; he can't think. There is no discernible talent.

"Maximo autismo. Stately, not-so-plumb David Foster Wallace used footnotes and then again some. KEKEK KEKEK KEKEK"

- Jimbo Jones

There are no reasons.

I don't think I've read anything from the past two decades I liked that much, but I haven't read much at all. Anybody know some stuff that doesn't reek of postmodernism? I thought Chronic City from Lethem was ok, and The Day I first believed had potential but was a mess

>>5714056
how the fuck can you say this? Have you actually read anything by him? Is this like a board culture meme or what am I missing here?

>>5714051
pretentious shit

>>5714090
>Is this like a board culture meme
yes
Harold Bloom wrote that about him

>>5714090
It's from a review of Infinite Jest by perhaps the world's most notable literary critic and canonist Harold Bloom.

>>5714090
Are you OP? If you are, then the fact you don't recognize that quote means you aren't qualified to say anything is the best of anything -- or even anything is the anything of anything.

>>5714090

366 Sounding rather suspiciously like Professor H. Bloom's turgid studies of artistic influenza — though it's unclear how either Flood- or dead-ancestor discussions have any connection to S. Peterson's low-budget classic The Cage, which is mostly about a peripatetic eyeball rolling around, other than the fact that J. O. Incandenza loved this film and stuck little snippets of it or references to it just about anywhere he could; maybe the 'disjunction' or 'disconnection' between the screen's film and Ph.D.'s scholastic discussion of art is part of the point.a

a. (Which of course assumes there's a point.)

>>5714088
J.M. Coetzee might be to your liking. No Post-Modernism. No magical realism. Just good old fashioned narrative about regular people enduring, and sometimes even overcoming, regular people issues.

Nobel Prize winning quality narratives.

>>5714051

because Underworld was written in the 90s.

>>5714088

Read Underworld. It'll rock your world

>>5714111
I do wonder if Bloom was affected by this.

Wardine be cry.

>>5714119

He didn't touch his Spaghetti-Os for weeks, dude. He was devastated. Some speculate it's when he lost the final bit of elasticity in his anus.

OP here. Haven't really heard anything substantive from people who don't like him. Since there seem to be a lot of fans around here, I'll throw out the fact that reading DFW nonfiction really helped me understand his fiction. The themes he discusses more baldly in his essays end up popping up again in his fiction, and knowing that they're coming can be really helpful

>>5714134
This is 4chan, m8. People criticize free pussy and chocolate on some corners of this website.

At least know that here on /lit/, we're more suited to good-natured ribbings than outright rejection. It's all a merry prank.

Everyone knows how good and impactful Dee-Eff-Dub will be in the history of American literature. Most of us like his writing too, or at the very least can find much to admire. But if all we did was sit around and touch ourselves to good prose and sound philosophical arguments, without picking apart the petty flaws, then this place would be as boring as all the other politically correct websites where people behave themselves whenever they express an opinion. Or, perhaps worse, websites where the users can't even formulate a coherent criticism, much less do it with some gusto and humor.

Cool your anus and join in the fun.

>>5714108
>>5714109
Bloom is a hack and a poseur and any suckups are the worst of the pretentious cliq breed

>>5714158
>Cool your anus and join in the fun.

Thats what your mom said last night.

>>5714167
Now you're getting it!

>>5714128
I just mean I wonder if he was reading it and said "fuck this guy."

I'll bet he liked the book less after he read that.

>>5714167
aw shit

>>5714166
This but replace "Bloom" with "David Foster Wallace"

>>5714067

How you gonna use Ulysses first page on this shit breh?

>>5714180
no replace it with this
*grabs dick*

>>5714051

Pretty much anything by Don Delillo written in the late 20th century is better.

>>5714051
>Ulysses
>Gravity's Rainbow

I read this book and loved it.

A legitimate criticism is that the ending could have been better. I know he was probably making a comment on how most popular entertainment spoonfeeds audiences and subverted it but man, sorry, the buildiup was so well done and then the ending just leaves you hanging.

If I'm being honest, I think that Bloom probably doesn't like DFW because a lot of it is artifice. Which I say not to be derogatory, but rather as a compliment when compared to what every writing teacher in every workshop ever tells you. You're not supposed to have characters sit there and think for pages on end, going deeper and deeper into their internalized psyches. DFW was not only not afraid to do this, a touch that probably reflects his background in philosophy and non-fiction whereby a certain degree of personal perspective is called for, but he relished it and possibly even stretched it to its narrative limits.

In some ways, fiction should be about action instead of fidgeting. There's an old adage that says, "Is this moment one of the most important moments in the most important event of your character's life? No? Then why are you telling your reader about it?"

DFW often flew in the face of that by writing for what seemed like the sake of writing. He was deeply expressive and a lot of people take comfort in that line of overanalyzing and pondering toward inaction. But I could also see how it would frustrate others, especially those who see it as a bloated book sitting in a pile of narratives that are bold enough to get on with it already.

I don't know, that's just my take. Bloom also labeled Pynchon as one of the four great post-war American novelists and DFW himself talked about how he was majorly influenced by Pynchon, and scholars tend to agree that Pynchon is something of a forebearer to DFW (no Pynchon, no DFW), so who knows what the fuck Bloom is thinking.

>>5714199
What Bloom is thinking is that Wallace isn't a good writer...

Mason & Dixon
2666
I just proved you wrong

>>5714108
>Harold Bloom
>world's most notable anything

Have you heard of The Anxiety of Influence? He thinks that every poet has an oedipus complex for their predecessors and they're upset that they can't give birth to themselves or some batshit crazy nonsense like that. Anyone that takes Freud seriously is full of shit.

>>5714214
this is pretty awful

>>5714051

>>5714197
Read the first chapter again. That's the real ending

>>5714563
>>5714214
Haha

>>5714088
Franzen

>starting a thread about le meme book

>>5714115
I adore Underworld, and agree with you that it is way better than Infinite Jest, but if someone wants something that isn't post-modern I wouldn't say Delillo.

>>5714108
a review of Infinite Jest by the guy that Infinite Jest explicitly calls a shit in the footnotes.*

Which probably contributed to the memery of it all.

>>5714088
American Pastoral by Roth

>something written by an american
>good

>>5714051
I have an preference for admiring/accepting authors and their books based on their deaths. It's pretty much pure ad hominen, but i still think the way they died says a lot a about them and their books. It goes something like this:

More admirable:
1) Died standing by what they wrote
2) Died old being a politician standing by its ideas.
3) Died old having a stable family, recognition and an overall happy life without regrets.
4) Died young because overly bohemian lifestyle.
5) Died old ruined and hated without money and family.
6) Suicide.
Less admirable.

DFW is 6. It makes me think there's something really wrong in the way he approached and undestood life. A book having these kind of ideas must not be good.

>>5715075
8/10

>>5715075
So if I live in Syria, and am a mediocre writer, and write a line saying something like: "Allah is penis"; and get executed for standing by what I "wrote", I would be an admirable writer to you?

>>5715599
>Allah is penis

>>5714051
>unquestionably the best book of the late 20th/early 21st century

It's not even the best book by someone named Wallace.

If you want to read a funny teardown, read the exiled one. Its purrty brutal


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

>>5716242
>childish ad hominem, the memearticle

>Who am I referencing now? You'll have to read the footnotes!

- The Riddler

>>5716377
>calling something a meme to avoid refuting it
cough

>>5716406
when your hobby pony has already been "refuted" a hundred times, it's time to admit your troll's become stale and you need to find new material

>>5714982
Franzen is just DFW with less mental firepower I also get the feeling that Franken really dislikes his characters, still a pretty good writer.

>>5716242
>vanity fair profiles the eXile...
fucking dropped

>>5714051
>Go to used bookstore
>See Infinite Jest
>Gonna buy this
>$16.95 written in pencil on inside cover
>O-oh maybe a-another time

>>5714563
I wish I had friends who would get this...

because laszlo krasznahorkai exists

>>5716634
No, I really don't think you do.

>>5716645
That pic is wrong

>>5714563
>chinese cartoons

I lel'd

>>5715075
>I have an preference for admiring/accepting authors and their books based on their deaths.

Me too, and I like your admirability list because mine is the exact reverse of yours. If a person kills them self I'm very interested in their world view and If a person can look back on their work uncritically and stand by what they wrote it signifies stagnation to me.

>unquestionably the best book of the late 20th/early 21st century
I'm pretty sure that at least in mainstream literary circles, Min Kamp by Karl Ove Knausgård has that title now

>>5714051
>there are people here who didn't know who DFW was before he offed himself

>>5716707
I didn't know who he was until I read Bret Easton Ellis' twitter back in 2012.

>>5715016
is this true? I've read IJ but don't remember that.

>>5716775
The footnote is posted in this thread... I haven't even read the book and I knew that, c'mon.

>>5714197
see
>>5714570

Once you connect the pieces it makes it all worth it and want to read it again, it's the perfect entertainment

>>5714056
Your use of the semicolon is contrived and shitty; what now?

I haven't read it but I think Wallace was a gimmick writer who killed himself because he knew it.

>>5716645
I like how they're all crammed on one couch

>>5716689
This

>>5715615
Wallace Stevens ftw

>>5715033
And your country, sir?

>>5714051
m'lady.