/lit/ - Literature

What do you mean by ended postmodernism?

>>6397948

He made way for the new sincerety movement which is now morphing into post-irony and then into new irony, and now post-sincerety is becoming the new thing.

>>6397948
Postmodernism = brain but no heart
DFW = brain + heart

A new kind of literature.

>>6397951
if you could identify what is postmodern you probably wouldn't be saying what you just said

>>6397956
>if you could identify what is postmodern

it's after modernism

>>6397956
Postmodern lit = pynchon, barth, barthelme, etc. All the ironists whose cold-hearted work DFW grew out of. Their work was instantly dated by the appearance of Infinite Jest.

>>6397960
>All the ironists whose cold-hearted work DFW grew out of
I can't speak to Barth or Barthelme, but Pynchon is in no way cold-hearted. He's a warm and humorous writer.

>>6397967
No.

>>6397947
Couldve just read anything but retarded American academic fiction and this wouldnt be a problem

>>6397969
Have you read one damn book by him? You fucking dfw faggots literally know nothing about postmodernism other than what dave told you to think. Have you read a single work of postmoderm philosophy, even?

>>6397951
>>6397953
>>6397960

Is this a /lit/ cringe thread?

>>6397980
Yes, I have.

>>6397984
Read that quote. And read it. And read it.

That is what Pynchon didn't understand.

That is what Wallace showed us. That is what he will be remembered for. Rest in peace.

read
>>6396676

>>6397951
*unsheaths katana
*teleports behind you
*cuts you in half
nothing personnel, kid...

>>6397989
You are baiting

>>6398004
Fantasizing about how miserable everyone around you is so you can feel better about your own pathetic depression is not a good way to live. That's why he killed himself.

>>6398007
I'm not baiting. And I'm certainly not masturbating, which is what the postmodernists turned literature into, and which Wallace felt he needed to stop. Fortunately for us, he succeeded. Human fiction is back, thanks to him. The next time a new book has traditional characters and makes you feel something, you know who to thank.

>>6398008
Fact

>>6398008
I think you need to read the speech again. It's a profound philosophical statement about modern life, and it went way over your head, apparently.

>>6397951
Why is American literature absolutely shite? All that sounds terrible, honestly.

>>6398008
No he killed himself because
1- he couldn't finish his novel
2- he wanted to secure some literary fame anyway
3- he was a faggot

IJ still has top-tier jokes tho

>>6398032
Better than 300 pages of a peasant wailing about his shit life and then hanging himself.

>>6397951
>labeling movements like this
I sincerely hope you're majoring in literature or in a big pretentious city

>>6398035
Harold Bloom rejected IJ because DFW skewered his life's work in a brief endnote. Bloom's emotions got the better of him. It will haunt his legacy. It's perhaps the most wrong a literary critic has ever been.

>>6398039
Contemporary European literature (prose, poetry, and theatre) is much better than American literature

>>6398048
It's been over a hundred years since this statement was true.

>>6397951
You mean postmetamodernism

Ah, another European novel. Here we go. "My Life is Shit" by Gygorgkgky Boulvielrer. Masterpiece.

The latest European masterpiece is here.

*opens book*

"My life is shit, and I have grown uncomfortable with being alive."

Breathtaking.

>>6398056
Nope. Quit being obstinate.

>33 posts
>14 posters

>>6398069
Read more, astringent pleb.

>>6398043
which endnote?

>>6398006
Tsch, that was just a shadow clone
*unsheathes tennis racket*
Disappear
*serves dramatically*
with the thunderclap!

>>6398084
366

>>6397947

>pic not related

>>6398065
>>6398069
You forgot no girls with good old American tittes.

>>6398013
IJ is incredibly masturbatory what are you on about

>>6398098
I want to sink the SS Milicent Clarke if you know what I mean.

>>6398013
>Human fiction is back
>2015
>human

>>6398098
Not at all. Wallace said to Michael Silverblatt after it came out, "There's nothing in there by accident." He said he had to "shrug my shoulders" when people suggested it was overlong and random, as you just did. It's an incredibly tight book. It was much longer originally. Bet you didn't know that.

<- Next time you think you know what reality is.

>>6398035
it was lit tier

anyone else read Julian Barnes? Thoughts?

I read Sense of an Ending last year and enjoyed it.

>>6398111
>It's an incredibly tight book.
Wardine be cry, anon.

>>6398122
you think that's in there by accident? ;-)

>>6398122
>implying wardine be cry wasn't intentionally out of place
i don't really think you got the book, anon.

>>6398122
All you know about IJ is whats been posted on /lit/ kill yourself.


>>6398114
Irrelevant Chris could've carried the book on his own. This and when David Wallace shows up at the IRS was the only IJ tier parts of the novel. The rest was so-so.

>>6398069

Wonderful. Here, now that you're done, read this refreshingly original American Litfic.

*hands you a book*

"The world has exploded, and I'm overjoyed, because it means I don't have to go to work anymore."

*smiles, awaits your praise*

*reads for hundreds of pages about anti-confluential art*

"Hey, why didn't this book tie up all the loose ends"

>>6398139
Sounds like a good book to me.

>>6398111

>Wallace said to Michael Silverblatt after it came out, "There's nothing in there by accident."
>Wallace said

>authorial intent

I enjoyed many parts of IJ, but there is no way you could refer to that book as "tight."

>>6398143
It was a fuck you to the American public who even though DFW's spend a thousand pages making his characters human and endearing to them just want to see them being shot by french terrorists and tortured into giving them a film that will "kill" thousands of people.
The jest is the one Wallace pulls on you.

>>6397947
>DFW

So this is what people that take too much molly read.

>>6398210
what?

>>6398219
DFW wrote and spoke like someone permanently high on MDMA. Only fitting that his admirers be brain-damaged hedonists.

>>6398224
Oh, because he was on next-level shit, man.

>>6398224
>spoke
No. His writing style in IJ, most of his stories and even non-fiction is extremely affected and nothing like the way he'd naturally speak

>>6398231
No, he speaks like he writes. Listen to the man sometime.

>>6398231
It's not his diction, you putz. It's the ideas he conveys. He's an insufferable obscurantist that deals in twaddle full of "feeling" and devoid of substance or meaning.

>>6398263
>DFW
>obscurantist

>>6398234
No, he doesn't speak like he writes. Listen to the man sometime.

>>6398283
His This is Water speech gave me cancer.

>>6398234
>>6398293
>This is Water
yeah those are prepared speeches btw

>>6398293
The most profound statement about what it's like to be alive in the modern world gave you cancer?

>>6398302
Most profound? I am sad for you if you can't think of anything better than that, anon.

>>6398302

The most profound yadda yadda is Ian Brady's The Gates of Janus.

>>6398310
Why so hostile? Maybe it's time to remind you that this is just water.

>In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as Atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping.

Projecting your misery onto others so you don't feel alone in your ugliness is not a way to fight depression.

>>6398325

Why not?

OOOH MY COCK

> “Pornography won’t be enough. Because it never is. Sooner or later, all niggers want to touch the real thing. All dogs want to smell and taste the true information. All artists want to make their fantasies reality. And everyone with a cock wants to use it to fall in love.”

>>6398006
>>6398086
Game
Set
Match

Because no one posted it yet: http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

DFW is bad because he's a crypto-Calvinist Lol

>>6398375
tl;dr

>>6398317
Amen.

>>6398375

Read this a few years back. The writer's problem is that all he has to go on is knowing junk better than someone who never claimed to have been a junkie. The dish about Vollman being a Batemanesque sociopathic whoremonger was worth it though, and Franzen is... not the kind of guy I like.

>>6398393
No. Don't 'Amen' that garbage. DFW is a smiling reactionary putting a new-age spin on bronze-age idiocy and superstition.

>>6398375
>not Dolan
why the fuck should I care?

>>6398423
DFW is a saint who was murdered by the Illuminati. The "suicide" was simply a cover-up.

>>6398433
Kinda glad he offed himself.

>>6398426
gooby pls

>>6398439
Reptilian pls.

>>6398433

His suicide was gorgeous. I wish you more than luck... go all the waaaay to the end of the niiiiight, mwhahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

>>6398453

Joking apart, though, it's not funny, of course.

>>6398453

>>6398423
He was actually a Marxist.

Water = ideology.
Infinite Jest = half socialist realism.

>>6398473

>>6398423
>smiling reactionary

You just stole a turn of phrase from Deepak Chopra, my brother.

>>6398479
>Deepak Chopra

>>6397947
Is this guy as based as the six threads dedicated to him daily suggest? I haven't read anything that is of his yet, but this meme is just overwhelming.

>>6398057
Link?

>>6398492
Decide for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

>>6398496
To the Tundra book or to Kolsti's greatest hits?

>>6398492
He's based as fuck.

>>6398478

>>6398508

>>6398513

>>6397947
But New Sincerity is postmodern.

>>6398073
Kek he's right though

>>6398746
no, it isn't
>>6396676

>>6398210
DFW is for people too smart for Oprah, but underdeveloped emotionally enough that they still crave the simple emotional patterns provided by her and others.

Take a look at his readership, nearly all young adults in their late teens, to mid, maybe late twenties. Precisely the age when the mind is more developed than the sentiments, and subsequently where we see radical politics grounded in simple, emotional feelgoodisms, and all other types of intellectualizations of a fundamentally shallow sense of self.

DFW provides for them an intellectually validating barrier to entry, which alleviates the guilt they feel when usually indulging in a media of similar sentimentalism that possesses an outright unapologetic rejection of the intellect (The Big Bang theory say, of positive difference fm). Freed from their guilt they may now gorge on the milquetoast neuroticism, reinforced notions of self-absorption, a blind sense of emotional certainty and belonging, and whatever else they may in peace. This proves a transformative experience for them; no longer are they feeling self-invalidated and pressure to grow emotionally from their intellect, rather they sense an possible alternative which allows them their candy but wraps it in torn out pages from a pharmacology encyclopedia or a differential equations worksheet.

This is what people mean when they say new sincerity. If post modernism, or even modernism, seems cold to them, or in need of replacement, it is only because, for the moment at least, DFW has removed the pressure works of high intellect, high art, and nuanced, expanded emotional patterns places upon them to adapt by mere presence.

>>6397947
literally who

>>6398908
I don't really think you understand new sincerity.

>>6398908
This poster celebrated his bar mitzvah approximately seven years ago.

>>6398908
Lol, no.

>>6398908
Nice speech but you're still not getting in......finite jest.

>>6398529
>I dirty rocker boys

>>6398982
it says
>I ❤ DIRTY ROCKER BOYS

>>6397947

DFW wrote the best academic piece on Terminator 2: Judgment Day I've ever read.

Granted, he wrote the only academic piece on Terminator 2: Judgment Day I've ever read, but still...

>>6398908
A lot of effort went into this troll thread. 10/10.

>>6398310
enlighten me, oh rich patrician, what is the most profound essay on modern life?

>>6398908
is this a hot new pasta?

>>6399075
I'm definitely going to repost it, but mainly because I agree with it.

>>6399082
i'm definitely going to repost it, but mainly because it's silly, trite, and retarded.

It's bad.

>>6399096
It's right for the most part.

DFW is sentimental garbage.

>>6398908
Are you saying that Infinite Jest is better than the sound and the fury?

>>6398908

Wow, great analysis.

As much as I love DFW and a lot of New Sincerity artists, the radical far-left SJWs have shown there are some massive problems with New Sincerity that nobody's interested in addressing.

>>6399004
>not dirtying rocker boys

lol its not a good analysis at all, its a ramble supported by no evidence, based entirely on simplifications and silly stereotypes about dfw's readership.

it's pretty good bullshit though. i bet he does well on last-minute papers.

Good times create weak emotional people. These people will break and cause a wave of shit times, leaving only the strong, which will bring back the good times.

DFW's This is Water shit may be relevant if you're a middle-class drone worker going through the trials of "boo hoo I have a hard job and life is hard and...I-I...have feelings. I just realized others have lives too. I am enlightened", but it's hardly anything anywhere else in the spectrum of humanity. He's a good writer but taking him seriously? Consider that this is the generation that romanticizes mental illnesses and binges on nostalgia. It's got to the level where human emotions get mass-produced in the form of memes even.

>>6399246
>Good times create weak emotional people. These people will break and cause a wave of shit times, leaving only the strong, which will bring back the good times.

I hope your English professors are impressed with these sweeping, grand statements you made up and which would take a long time to prove.

You have a future as a political speechwriter, but not as a literary critic.

Maybe lay off the Nietzsche for a while. ;-)

>>6399272

I'm not trying to be a literary critic. This cycle has happened throughout all of time.

>>6399279
Lay off the weed then.

Honestly, you sound like you may be predisposed to schizophrenia with these ramblings. Either that or you're practicing to be an impressive bum.

>>6399288
Stop, anon.
His logic's solid. You're not refuting anything by calling someone names. If you have an argument STATE it, don't be a condescending hyena with nothing to share or add.

>>6399288
get off your pony honey

>>6399292
His logic's solid? You're probably the same dude, but I see nothing but extravagant historical/sociological generalizations being broadcasted from a smoky dorm room.

>>6399301
Do you really believe that your behavior isn't as insufferable to every anon in this thread as it is to the one you insulted ?

>His logic's solid?
Yes. His logic is sound and makes for a sound hypothesis about the state of the state of things.

GODDAMNED DOOFUS

>>6399301
>>6399288
Yet another dude here, just to confirm: please fuck off, thanks

>>6399345
If his Starbucks musings sound to you like a penetrating critique about "the state of things," that's tremendous for you. To me it sounds like a "Throughout history..." freshman-paper ramble about enormous subjects he has no clue about. To each his own.

>>6399407
>Sharing your notions is for freshmen
The hell's the matter with you ?

Offer a counterargument if you disagree with someone's claims. Simply stating that a notion is foolish is not sufficient grounds to dismiss that notion.
You're the only anon in this conversation acting like a freshman. You and you alone. Needlessly rude and condescending.

>>6399444
I'm sorry, do I honestly have to offer a counterargument to...
>Good times create weak emotional people. These people will break and cause a wave of shit times, leaving only the strong, which will bring back the good times.
>This cycle has happened throughout all of time.

If there are really three people telling me to fuck off for laughing at this bullshit, I'll be amazed. I think it's the same guy.

Really, where would I even begin refuting a ridiculous statement like that?

>>6399458
>Really, where would I even begin refuting a ridiculous statement like that?

You would simply posit the truth if'n you knew that that anon was wrong and why.

>>6399473
>posit
*state

You know what, forget it. I surrender. It's incredibly insightful and smart. I can't believe I didn't realize that what he said has been happening throughout all of history. It explains everything.

Itt: 1 dfw fanboy getting btfo with his hands wrapped around his ears

Op, dfw may have done something for you. Great. But no one else really seems to care. Dfw probably wouldn't have even cared. He would not have wanted you to make this thread

>>6399558
actually, dfw owns

>>6399558
>implying

>>6398092
Can you explain this to me? I don't get what's so how it skewered [Bloom's] life's work.
Endnote 366

Professor H. Bloom
Harold Bloom (born 1930) is a prominent American literary critic.
artistic influenza
not actually one of Bloom's concepts
peripatetic
walking around

>>6399582
"artistic influenza" = the anxiety of influence = the only thought Bloom ever had that people pay serious attention to.

>>6399585
who's idea was it then?

>>6399602
idk probably shakespeare's

Somehow I doubt the reason Bloom dislikes Infinite Jest is because he's mentioned and perhaps subtly made fun of in an endnote

>>6399622
Oh, word?

>>6398908
Total armchair shitposting. How about you cite some fucking passages from a book. Oh wait, you definitely have not read DFW and are probably going to close out of this thread after reading this response to retreat from your shame.

>>6399628
Yes, indeed, word.

>>6399641
>his face when

>>6399641
>>6399648
lol hyperprojecting ITT

>>6399641
lol p much

gr8 b8 gets r8d 8/8

>>6399646
That's a freakin' hot take, my man.

>>6399666
>666

>>6398908
Notice how there hasn't been a single substantive reply to this post from any of the DFW fans ITT. There have only been ad homs and flippant dismissals. It's almost like they have no good argument against it

>>6399677
Hey come now.

They're being sincere (newly so) and that's what's truly important.

>>6399677
>getting mad that no one is attempting to argue against someone's opinion when it is clear that they have already made up their mind and have it all figured out

If DFW is the New Sincerity, then what was the Old Sincerity?

>>6399690
fgt.

>>6399717
The Crusades.

Hey, uh, notice how no one's refuting the awesome points I made here in this dumb angry ramble I wrote? Anyone notice that?

>>6399745
>awesome points

>>6399745
That ramble was, like, super-sincere. You should bow down in front of his unparalleled sincerity.

>>6399745
It is neither dumb nor angry, but it does have plenty of awesome points.

>>6399169
I'll bite. What problems are there?

>>6399677

There is no good dismissal against it because it's accurate.

However, it's a critique of his readership and fans. That doesn't mean the book is worthless, or even not good, and it doesn't hold true for all his fans, or even most of them.

>>6397947

1. Define post-modernism.
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________

>>6399770
I agree. It's perfectly possible to defend the book, as many academics have done, but no one here is capable of that.

>>6399777
Trips wasted on a snob. Pity.

>>6399777

What's in it for me?

I liked it. You didn't. Good for you, I'm sure you're top patrician

>>6398908
>DFW is for people too smart for Oprah, but underdeveloped emotionally enough that they still crave the simple emotional patterns provided by her and others.

Evidence for this claim?

>Take a look at his readership, nearly all young adults in their late teens, to mid, maybe late twenties.

Evidence?

Precisely the age when the mind is more developed than the sentiments,

Is that science or did you pull that out of your ass? Need evidence!

>DFW provides for them an intellectually validating barrier to entry

Them = the straw man you just built?

>which alleviates the guilt they feel when usually indulging in a media of similar sentimentalism that possesses an outright unapologetic rejection of the intellect (The Big Bang theory say, of positive difference fm). Freed from their guilt they may now gorge on the milquetoast neuroticism, reinforced notions of self-absorption, a blind sense of emotional certainty and belonging, and whatever else they may in peace. This proves a transformative experience for them; no longer are they feeling self-invalidated and pressure to grow emotionally from their intellect, rather they sense an possible alternative which allows them their candy but wraps it in torn out pages from a pharmacology encyclopedia or a differential equations worksheet.

More attributes of the strawman.

>This is what people mean when they say new sincerity.

This is what who means? Quotations? Evidence?

>If post modernism, or even modernism, seems cold to them

Who? The straw-people?

>or in need of replacement, it is only because, for the moment at least, DFW has removed the pressure works of high intellect, high art, and nuanced, expanded emotional patterns places upon them to adapt by mere presence.

None of what precedes this conclusion proves this.

Next.

>>6398908
>>6399819

STATUS:

Rekt [x]
BTFO'd [x]
Told [x]

>>6398908
>DFW is for people too smart for Oprah, but underdeveloped emotionally enough that they still crave the simple emotional patterns provided by her and others.

So basically you're saying the book's emotionally underdeveloped because it offers the same message you'd hear from all kinds of sources typically seen as trite / cliché / oversimplifying things?
It's almost as if a third of the book is talking about the tendency of people to overintellectualise / overcomplicate their pain, only to end up distancing themselves from other people because of deluded self-perceptions as being above everyone else.

>Take a look at his readership, nearly all young adults in their late teens, to mid, maybe late twenties.
I mean, if you're basing this off the lit section of a Bulgarian Alfalfa Trading Board where everyone's that age anyway, sure.

>Precisely the age when the mind is more developed than the sentiments, and subsequently where we see radical politics grounded in simple, emotional feelgoodisms, and all other types of intellectualizations of a fundamentally shallow sense of self.
>"When you grow up you'll be edgy like me and be sad about everything. Leave me alone Mom, my darkness is above your feelgoodisms."

>DFW provides for them an intellectually validating barrier to entry, which alleviates the guilt they feel when usually indulging in a media of similar sentimentalism that possesses an outright unapologetic rejection of the intellect (The Big Bang theory say, of positive difference fm). Freed from their guilt they may now gorge on the milquetoast neuroticism, reinforced notions of self-absorption, a blind sense of emotional certainty and belonging, and whatever else they may in peace. This proves a transformative experience for them; no longer are they feeling self-invalidated and pressure to grow emotionally from their intellect, rather they sense an possible alternative which allows them their candy but wraps it in torn out pages from a pharmacology encyclopedia or a differential equations worksheet.

So are you basically saying people are bad for liking it???? Because they identify with it too easily? Or because it's 'about' the wrong stuff?

Fine, you baited me.

this is why philosophy is so popular on this board because you can just pull things out of your ass and call it a truism

oh yeah, sure, in your late teens to late twenties, as everyone knows, "the mind is more developed than the sentiments."

everybody knows that.

>>6399856
and from there you can ramble for ages while inventing more truisms about "youths" and "society" and other large bodies.

>>6399169

You must be quite uneducated if you think those people are in any real sense far-left. They're consumer crybabies.

>>6399407

What you've said is true.

Nobody who thinks novels should provide fake difficulty, so their readers feel better about never really grasping anything honestly difficult, has any business pontificating about anything.

>>6399893
uhhhh........ what?

>>6399896

Read what the Oprah-scared anon said. Read the replies. Read mine. You should understand. There isn't anything that needs explaining.

>>6399893
You have to remember anon, most academics are cucks who crave abuse. If it isn't unpleasant, it must be false!

>>6399904
you sound like a real dummy

>>6399906

This is it. People who call anything that cuts the nihilist crap 'sentimental' reveal their own sentimentality - they think their momentary confusion or displeasure while reading puts them more in tune with the suffering of 'the human condition'. In fact, it puts them further from it than ever.

>>6399910
You sound like a real kike.

>>6399916
?????????????

>>6399819
>Is that science or did you pull that out of your ass? Need evidence!
>>6399856
>oh yeah, sure, in your late teens to late twenties, as everyone knows, "the mind is more developed than the sentiments."
The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain largely responsible for emotional understanding (among numerous other things), is not fully developed until about the age of 25. Damage to the prefrontal cortex often results in anti-social and sociopathic behavior.

>>6399920
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡

>>6399925
durrrrrr durrrrrrrrrr

Harold Pinter's wife said that when her cat went missing for a couple of days she knew how the mothers of the 'disappeared' must feel. That's the logic of thinking that reading Giles Goat-Boy brings you in touch with the absurdity of the human condition. No, it puts you in touch with the aesthetized boredom of rich Western life, where you can advocate despair all day long because nobody will actually be given reason for despair. DFW, a man with actual problems, broke the pattern.

>>6399932
You are so Jewish it's not even funny.

>>6399939
Yes!!!!! Finally. Somebody with a brain (and a heart) shows up.

>>6399939
Too bad one of his problems is that he couldn't write!

>>6399951
Actually, he as the most talented writer of his generation. Unfortunately, he was also the most tortured. R.I.P.

I remember one time I was in Union Square playing chess and I overhear this guy trying to explain to a rather uninterested girl the plot of Infinite Jest. I got his attention and pulled from my backpack my copy of the book as I happened to have been reading it at the time and he gave me a thumbs up.

And still, years later, I cringe at this thought.

>>6399951
TALK
SHIT

GET
HIT

>>6399954
He isn't nearly as talented as Barth tbh

>>6399955
>years later, I cringe at this thought.

This is a legitimate symptom of autism. Not even shitposting.

>>6399955
Why do you cringe? You were reading Wallace and were clearly under his influence during this moment. You were trying to create a bridge between you and another human subjectivity. This was Wallace's subject. You were trying to make a connection. Why would you cringe about that?

>>6397951

"hey I learned what a few big words mean even though I can't use them coherently and I probably haven't read any books that they categorize"

>>6399964
>>6399962

>>6399964
thats just such a lame way to make a connection. its just total dorkiness, which coincidentally in my opinion was DFW's achilles heel

Cringing for years about a time you tried to be social = DFW didn't get through to you.

>>6399971
What's wrong with dorkiness? I'll bet people called you a dork when you were in middle-school and you're still "cringing" about it to this day.

>>6399985
it's a matter of taste and perspective, i know.
but the fact that you dont agree also says a lot about you.
Dorkiness is, in my opinion, an alternate form of plebianism

>>6400115
You can like a book and someone else can like that same book and there's nothing shameful in feeling warmed about it. You're both people.
You sound like a phony to me.

>>6400115
>Dorkiness is, in my opinion, an alternate form of plebianism

I cringed.

>>6400140
its a shade of plebianism. a sign of unrefinement
>>6400136
>worrying about phoniness in adulthood and not simply doing what needs doing by accepting what is

>>6400115
isn't plebianism the quality of being arbitrarily less intelligent in one's interests/habits/aspirations/dreams/ideas? dorkiness is usually defined along the lines of being less intelligent socially, so it appears they are related, though very loosely, for there are many plebs I would bet (not that I'd call them that necessarily but sometimes a mood allows me to) are from far being dorks and may even be objectively 'cool', though not in the sense of having read such and such a book, but maybe they are autistically good at painting or something. Not that that's necessarily a takedown of such an association. The idea of plebianism rubs me the wrong way, but whatever; a name's a name, and a label describes. I don't really care that you have to place yourself above others to feel good about yourself, nor that you have to think that social actions where you're genuinely trying to connect with a person over a shared interest is cringe worthy, but do go on, if you feel it's necessary, do.

>>6398908
Or you're just an autist.

> tfw you will never be DFW covering the AVN Awards in the mid nineties.

http://social.rollins.edu/wpsites/sexwarandplague/files/2012/07/DF-Wallace-Big-Red-Son.pdf

>>6400208
this is actually the first thing I read from Wallace. really nice introduction, I'd say; such a good and hilarious essay.

>>6400235
Agreed, even when he touches the subject of suicides within the industry I couldn't stop smiling.

>>6400173
Who defines what is "refined?"

>>6398048
>people unironically believe this
lol

>>6398048
>Contemporary European literature (prose, poetry, and theatre) is much better than American literature

Please name some then.

>>6400346
Ugh absolutely revolting, typical provincial American. Take some time away from your fast food and NFL to peruse some of these fine titles:

"Life Is Shit" - Pierre Lefagote
"I Hate Everything" - Gunther Nieberbenkised
"Happiness Is An Illusion" - Yitzhak Shekelberg
"I Am Miserable and You Can Be Too" - Igor Podowowlski

>>6399767

The tendency for people to be manipulated by trite idioms without really thinking about what they mean (Racism = Power + Prejudice, slut-shaming, check your privilege), the emphasis on emotional well-being to the exclusion of damn near everything else (Listen & Believe!, you're victim-blaming), SJWs unilateral disregard of irony and humor as an excuse for problematics, the sheer emotional honesty and vulnerability of New Sincerity lends itself quite nicely to the uninhibited rage and haughtiness of SJWs as well as enables con men and opportunists to take advantage of them, the embracing of sincere emotional expression creates a hugbox that encourages thin-skinned people to be perpetually frail and sensitive, and perhaps the most important, the aw-shucks, back-to-basics simple life mood is in conflict with the champagne socialists currently entrenched in academia that tout it, these are the same people fighting for lower classes that have never met a blue collar worker in their fucking lives.

Wallace grew up in the midwest in the 60's & 70's, and was reacting to not just hipster irony and postmodernism but also the ground level realities of being an American man, expected to remain stoic, drink in excess and keep up appearances.

It's funny that SJW's favorite movement's biggest stars were a midwestern bourgeois white male, and a white male from Louisiana that fantasized about a 13-year-old girl.

>>6399879

Left/Right, I believe, descended from left-hegelians and right-hegelians. Right hegelians thought Hegel was right and philosophy was done. Left hegelians applied hegel to hegel and came up with a bunch of different shit. Thus, right = conservative, left = progressive.

They're consumerist defects of late capitalism that don't realize they're actually being used by the corporations they resent to expand their consumer demographic and labor pool to increase sales and cut employee wages, respectively, but that doesn't mean they're not leftists.

>>6397951

New sincerety is no a thing, please stop forcing it.

DFW is as postmodern as it gets.

>>6400393
>mfw i got exited about reading those before i realised they were a ruse

>>6398035
don't forget Harold Bloom is a neanderthal who read "momently" and assumed it meant "momentarily"

he's all round an awful literary critic

>>6397947
>spend career rallying against special snowflake syndrome
>commit suicide in hope people will remember you as a special snowflake

>>6400407
>Left/Right, I believe, descended from left-hegelians and right-hegelians. Right hegelians thought Hegel was right and philosophy was done. Left hegelians applied hegel to hegel and came up with a bunch of different shit. Thus, right = conservative, left = progressive.
Are you in HS? Left/Right comes from the french revolution, the first congress had the progressives on the left and the almost royalists and clerics on the right. It's not secret history or something like that, it's a well known fact.

>>6400436
those were some great titles, though

>>6400505

The only non-US history teacher I had in high school was a fucking SJW that blew through European history so we could learn about Bantu migrations and how the Chinese visited America in the 11th century. I didn't know the first thing about the french revolution until College, when I took a class where we roleplayed the French Revolution, and I had so much fun learning about Nationalism and Rosseau and Edmund Burke while conspiring with my classmates that trite factoids like that weren't mentioned.

Every other history teacher I've had were constitution-thumping neocons that devoted entire classes to JFK assassination conspiracies, and a few of whom were confederate sympathizers who, I shit you not, taught us the civil war was about states rights and not slavery. How they got away with it I'm unsure, but I'm fairly sure it's because niggers never took AP classes.

>>6400599
>taught us the civil war was about states rights and not slavery

but that's right

>>6399745
hey, uh, notice how there's not good counterarguments after >>6399819 and >>6399854? anyone notice that? you probably haven't even read IJ you fuckin tool.

>>6400869
it was definitely a mixture of both

>>6398101

Ya guf'd the name, m8

>>6398168

10/10 Pic

postmodernism is the best thing that happened to literature
it got rid of all those feelgood faggot modernists and added actual depth to the art
dfw was a manipulative insincere fuck who tried to become big and killed himself when it didn't last

>>6399819

>All posts on a mongolian darkweb may may trading site should be treated with the same scrutiny as an academic research paper

D I S G U S T I N G

>>6400869
The right of states to allow ownership of slaves and expand slavery into new territories.

>Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

>>6401000
waste of trips you idiotic fuck

>>6401137
buttmad dfw fanboy detected
he was just a postmodern writer masquerading as something else for attention
fairly talentless as far as they go

>>6397951
>new sincerety
>check Wikipedia for that
>a can of various movement opens
>turn 350 degrees and jump

>>6401016
>implying the pedantry wasn't a direct response to anon's gloating:

>>6399558
>>6399677
>>6399745

>not reading the thread

Just go.

>>6401338
I enjoyed his books. I guess it just means its subjective. I don't really care what label people give him.

>>6401400
>I guess it just means its subjective
how postmodern of you

>>6400869

It was a cultural war you pleb

State's rights was the legal justification. Slavery was the social justification. Really, all the scots-irish south of the mason-dixon line just wanted to be rid of WASPy yankees meddlin in their shit.

Neither the north or south really gave a shit about slavery because the southerners treated slaves exceptionally well and gave them Jesus.

>>6401611

>southerners treated slaves exceptionally well

>>6401611
>treated slaves exceptionally well
Please provide a reference point to what you are basing that claim on, otherwise some people might get the wrong idea.

>>6401673

Read some accounts of what happened to Brazilian slaves

Southerners actually understood slaves as an economic investment and wanted to get the most out of them as they could, so they tried to extend their lifespan. Most non-American slaveowners at the time beat the living shit out of their slaves for no reason and frequently killed them by accident, which is why America took so long to abolish slavery.

House niggers would typically look down on poor whites, because it was thought that poor whites had no excuse for their poverty. This is also why niggers were so fuckin' uppity after they were freed and why the majority of southerners (who never owned slaves) were so bitter and resentful over the civil war.

>>6401611
There was an ethnic/religious/clan aspect that tends to be ignored. But just becasue people don't pay enough attention to that it doesn't mean the other aspects were a lie. Everything was part of it.
That also included the south inveting military titles for land owners when the north tried to get european validation by studying military matters overseas, not wanting to incorporate black people to the army when they probably would had fight for their owners thinking the alternative was worse, the begining of the industrialization of the south that would had challenged the north. So many things, anon, all of them important. History is never a single simple answer.

>>6397947

>>6397951

I get you OP, don't worry about the plebs

>>6401747

I'm not saying they were allowed to lounge around and drink sweet tea and eat watermelon all day or that the plantation owners were particularly nice people. The life of an enslaved nigger was far more hellacious than most whites, that can't be disputed. But compared to the treatment of slaves (regardless of color) in Barbados, Brazil and Haiti during the same era, ending up in the US was the best possibility for most African captives. The real horrors started to show when we banned importation of slaves and breeding the current slave populations became necessary. Then black women were forced to undergo impregnation as often as feasible, they were bred like cattle, families were broken apart, wife and husband were seperated and mated with other people, all because the North wanted to stick it to southerners. Same concept as what happened in Liberia: made whites feel better but was absolute hell for all niggers involved.

One of my ancestors owned slaves but he was a unionist. They watched his hotel while he was out trying to sell land in Texas. His daughters often wrote letters about how they slacked off and the family had to do most of the work because black slaves weren't afraid of white women. A lot of slaveowners didn't free their slaves because they knew it would be difficult for them to have successful lives in that kind of society, which is why it was illegal to teach your slave how to read.

>>6401777
>comics
>movies
Why is the modern man so childish?

>>6401786

Slaves slacking off from work was a form of passive resistance. Why would they work hard?

>>6401761

What's important is the *primary* aspect of the war. Historians will never, ever be satisfied by any answer, because everything's complicated and each individual probably had a slightly different reason for going to war.

But most wars in history can be boiled down to an ethnic strife: My guys Yay! Your Guys Boo! as Gary Brecher--the best war analyst I've ever read--once put it. Considering the messy, complicated process of reconstruction that followed, and its opposition by the South, as well as the resistance to industrialization, modernization, immigration and integration that the South put up for well over a century despite every single fuckin reason for it to just bury the hatchet, it's pretty clear that the clan aspect was by a large margin the most decisive factor. It all boiled down to Fort Sumter: public opinion was pretty divided until a southerner was killed. Everybody picked a side after that.

That was the main tragedy aspect that the northerners touted, the whole "brother killing brother," concept of the war, whereas Southerners promoted the idea of war as a failed revolution in the vein of the founding fathers. Really, the North wanted to capitalize on industrialization and saw the South as wasting time, international trade treaties and money by trying to keep slavery functioning to preserve an outdated aristocracy, whereas the Southerners saw slavery almost as a religious rite. The bountiful land was awarded to them by God in exchange for their faith and proselytizing, and by interfering in the slave trade, the North was attempting to absolve their God-given right to prosperity by setting up factories--which in the North spurred child labor, alcoholism and the breakdown of families through bourgeois Gilded Age capitalism.

>>6401796
>Slaves slacking off from work was a form of passive resistance. Why would they work hard?

Idk. Fear of being beaten?

I'd slack if I were given the opportunity as a slave. I frequently slack at work even though I'm being paid a fair wage my employer and I agreed on when I was hired. I'm just sayin', the way we teach kids about slavery in America is fucked.

Especially in the South, where you have to read a badly written anti-slavery book every single goddamned year in school, despite everybody agreeing racism is bad and evil by 6th grade, but they can't bother to teach you about Plato or Nietzsche or Descartes because of dead white men. The closest those faggot school boards get to actual unbiased philosophy is Ayn Rand. It's fucking absurd, and if you pay attention you'll notice it's just another continuation of the culture war that's been going on since the early 19th century.

Evolution, prayer in schools, the founding fathers in textbooks, none of it has a goddamn thing to do with pedagogy. It's just cultural warfare, and I wish rednecks and wasps would just get over it and fuck already.

>>6401788
>dating a "yes" woman
>not someone who will challenge your views about life and change you into a better person while you do the same for her

I find the essence of "b-but she lieks the same X that I like" notion more childish though.

>ctrl+f
>no this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blnnQMEAfo8

>>6399972
Actually once he wrote BOT he cringed for 10 years until he wrote IJ he spent the rest of his life cringing so irreconciliably hard he killed himself

>>6399246
>this is the generation that romanticizes mental illnesses and binges on nostalgia

that fucking stings, holy shit

>>6401819
Are you high or something?

>>6401835
Suck it up pussy.

>>6399246
Romanticising mental illness is precisely appreciating the difficulties in life and the people who are not in good times, though.

>>6401872

Not when you use it purely as an attention mechanism

There's a difference between seeing the beauty in dysfunctional people and exploiting the dysfunctional side of regular people to gain internet likes.

There's nothing romantic about clinging to an unrequited love for five years because you're "depressed" and too "anxious" to find another boyfriend

>>6399819
>Who? The straw-people?
fokkkkkin REKT

>>6401837
Why?

>>6399854
Kek go2bed highschooler

>>6398224
>DFW wrote and spoke like someone permanently high on MDMA. Only fitting that his admirers be brain-damaged hedonists.
He seems like an alcoholic:

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

> At one reading in 2006, he gave a strange, Mafioso-sounding warning to anyone who disagreed with the AA programme: “Anecdotal evidence suggests that people who shit on those traditions do not come to happy ends.” But was it really the 12 Step Programme that kept Wallace alive? You might notice that 1989, the year he joined AA and stopped trying to kill himself, was also when he took up antidepressants. And guess what happened when he quit in 2008? That’s right.

>In fact, there’s something very alcoholic about his junkie characters. They get off on frat-boy sadism like the “Closed”-sign incident. They find Anonymous groups more natural than substitution therapy. And the transvestite harrassed by those anting ants spends two weeks (!) withdrawing, drinking codeine syrup (with the same alcohol content as vodka!) and getting Lost-Weekend-style animal hallucinations. In a ludicrously short time, he develops full-blown alcoholism with DTs. You wonder if this is because Wallace can only describe booze addiction, and needs some excuse to put it in the story.

>>6398375
>DFW is bad because he's a crypto-Calvinist Lol
Mor like a calvinist sans christianity.

>The current generation of “avant garde” drug-horror writers started popping up in the 80s and 90s. The prototypical example is Bret Easton Ellis, lamenting how hard it is for rich people to communicate because of their sheer self-absorbtion. Like most young 90s Puritans, Ellis is just rehashing a very old Christian theme – Augustine’s idea that fallen man is incurvatus in se or “turned in on oneself” – with secular postmodernish jargon. And while Augustine should probably be credited for inventing the basic structure of half the titles in your local bookshop’s biography section, there’s a crucial difference between his Confessions and books like Less than Zero. To Augustine, character flaws aren’t just a cause for moping and generational angst, but sins that could affect whether or not he goes to Hell, which, unlike Ellis, he strongly believes in. It’s not pear tree theft or whether his motives are impure that Augustine’s worried about, but the fact that those things put him in danger of burning forever in a lake of fire.

>The Augustinian structure flops immediately without eternal torment as a conceit. Sure these jaded Los Angeles kids are a “lost” generation, but why’s it so bad that they’re “lost”? They have plenty of sex, drugs, threads, cars and cash. Lacking a Christian Hell, the writer needs an equally powerful lie to prop up the narrative – either they pretend that insincerity is an emotional hell no amount of money can make up for, OR, they pretend that members of the Hollywood brat pack have the same life expectancy as Ethiopians, dropping like flies from an endless parade of overdoses and Lamborghini accidents, rarely hitting 30. The second option usually requires the writer to massively exaggerate the dangers of drugs, since they’re the easiest way to kill off rich characters without using your imagination too much. Naturally, this has lead to lots of books portraying your Ellis-Frey type as the sole survivor emerging from the wreckage. In the end, this is worse than if these brat pack authors were openly Christian – Augustine’s Catholic Hell would be just as scary if sex and drugs had no material consequences at all. It’s the terror of the hereafter that counts, not the pain of the present. Ellis can’t grasp this. He begins American Psycho with the words “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE,” but can’t find anything fearful enough to keep that promise. All his supposedly damned narrator can do is assure us that “there are no drugs, no food, no liquor that can appease the forcefulness of this greedy pain.” Pain which Ellis pulls out of nowhere.

If you want good drug books, there's only one.

>>6402028
>when he took up antidepressants. And guess what happened when he quit in 2008? That’s right.
Highest rate of successful treatments come from a combination of therapies and medication, actually

>You wonder if this is because Wallace can only describe booze addiction, and needs some excuse to put it in the story.
#shotsfired. pwnt. a scathing criticism amirite?

>>6402038
literally what? Why did I just read some hamfisted evangelical rambling appropriated to two modern books? The Christian conception of hell? Oh, SHOULD they have included that? Is this guy retarded? Are you?

The pain people experience doesn't come out of nowhere, it's very real. Living an affluent life does not make you any happier than someone living in poverty. This has been proven.

>>6402038
>Sure these jaded Los Angeles kids are a “lost” generation, but why’s it so bad that they’re “lost”? They have plenty of sex, drugs, threads, cars and cash.

Whoever wrote that sounds like a 14-year-old. That shit gets old real real quickly, and if you can't extend the ennui of drug and sex addiction unto vapid consumerism and vanity, you lack imagination. Though American Psycho does suck, and Naked Lunch is really good.

>>6402028
>the Exiled
>anything besides Gary Brecher
>mfw

We sympathize with Hal because ultimately he didn't have agency over his fate. Old-time Christian themes--which DFW was never, ever "crypto" about, he pretty explicitly stated he associated himself with the crowd of writers that explored old-fashioned themes using the postmodern aesthetic--is not a valid criticism.

>>6402028
>http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

Hi there, it seems you've sought an article for confirmation biased purposes.

Here's another one, a REALLY good read, that will help you understand his work and possibly radically change your view

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/09/the-unfinished

>>6402058
>The pain people experience doesn't come out of nowhere, it's very real. Living an affluent life does not make you any happier than someone living in poverty. This has been proven.
Honey. I've been on the dole. And I've had a quite nice salary and I still have savings from that job. And I can tell you that it's much better to have a quite nice salary and savings than being on the dole and no savings.

>mfw the only criticisms of dfw /lit/ can muster are copy-pastes/rewrites of a years-old article that's not even that good

>>6400434
New Sincerity is very much a thing. How else would you explain the recent surge of interest in the emo revival, or the folk revival, or the popularity of Stoner, or bronies, or lil B?

All of the above are examples which are opposed to the cynical irony and pretension of post-modernism, and celebrate the freedom of sincere expression (even if that does mean some of its current forms are pretty damn strange).

>>6397958
underrated post

>>6402619

Dude that's trash culture, of course the cincirety of marketing and advertising brainwashes people, but this not new, just browse advertising from the 90's and you will see the ideology of perpetual consuption and desire for eternal youth.

But this is not literature, literature is supposed to be critical to the rulling ideology and depict the issues of it's time. I don't think DFW was part of new sincerety, there is too much Pynchon and irony in him. This whole thread is retarded because most idiots who read one pomo novel think postmodernism is exclussively cold,acedemic way of writting books, but the form of writting something has nothing to do with the content.

>>6398029
>profound philosophical statement
nope

buddha figured this shit out years ago

>>6398079
People talk to each other, anon, that's sort of the point of this site

>>6401611
>Neither the north or south really gave a shit about slavery because the southerners treated slaves exceptionally well and gave them Jesus.
Doesn't matter, they were still pissed that if slavery went out they were going to have to pay their workers. Literally the whole reason for the war was the north wanting someone to buy their shit and the south having to be the one to indirectly provide the money

>>6401807
I think you're desperate to see the tree and not the forest. Without every element the war wouldn't had gone as it went, for good and bad: they could had gone in guerrilla mode and be fighting to this day backed by anyone who would want to states to be slowed down for a while at the time. Sherman actively destroyed most of the industry they had, he can say whatever he wants but he didn't hurt the fields as much as he hurt the industry.

And yes, I also touch myself thinking of Gary. I'm sure he isn't really the best, but he's so damn fun.

>>6402784
if you're really interested in war you should try clausewitz (but dolan is the man)

>>6401777
This comic is fucking gold, moar pls

>>6401777
I love how these supposedly feel good comics and the people who write them are so actively hostile towards attractive people that they accuse them all of being shallow whores

Say what you will about IJ, but there's some seriously good stuff in Brief Interviews.

>>6402814
I'll try to see if I can get something by him!

>>6397947
you can't "end" postmodernism with new sincerity. NS is not a new contending movement, but a critique. It's not coherent and defined enough to be a replacement. It'll never go beyond being a small subset of postmodernism itself.

The only way to end postmodernism is with a political shift. The world will have to go full fascist, or religious, or something of the like.

I'm currently re-reading IJ and enjoying it even more than before, which was a lot. But I'm nothing but happy for people who prefer something else, and don't feel any urge to disparage whatever book or writer they think is the 'most'-whatever of the last generation.

I notice much the same dynamic from people who are hostile to Nirvana or Nevermind. The fact that so much more energy goes into efforts to tear down that band or album than would be put into and argument against any other claim of greatness for any other band or album seems to say something in its own right. Say that Blur was the greatest band of the '90s or that Slanted & Enchanted was the best album and no one will get too upset. The fact that Nirvana or DFW get the most vocal detractors indicates, possibly, that like it or not everyone knows they are the biggest buttons on the board.

It's dissapointing that he only completed one novel worth reading.

>>6404496
Yes, the Pale King was quite decent.

>>6404496
The Pale King and The Broom of the System are both worth reading. I enjoyed either more than I did a whole lot of acclaimed others. But I guess I would agree that he only wrote one book it was ^essential^ to read, if any book is, and not many can say that.

>>6399621
kek

>>6404517
TPK wasn't completed though.
Broom of the system is his opus though and I'd recommend it for anyone trying to break into the modern market of literary fiction. If you have what it takes to imitate what he can do with that book you would be a successful modern writer

>>6397947
>TFW i read DFW as "Dallas-Fort Worth"

Dah las? Sah lad!

>>6397947
What do the chapter symbols mean?

>>6402038
This guy, the a
Author of the article, has some interesting things to say about Darren arranofsky, and probably about dfw, but I haven't read that far yet, but boy oh boy did he misread Ellis here. The moral of Ellis is clearly that the rich and sexy nihilistic hedonists are going to eat you alive if you don't wise up, and fast.

>>6397984
No.
Writing has substance, is ethical, when it is in the process of triggering enlightenment in my mind,
providing Salvation through Scientific/ Dialectic truths.

>>6398106
I infer that this post is more likely than not oscillating at higher frequencies.

>>6401777
pffff hahahahahahahahaha! That comic is just a man-child fantasy.

>Leiks my stuff! We play games and isolate ourselves.

Ever consider this? >>6401819. Gaining what you already had and already knew is for comfort babbys who will never fully develop.

>>6401788
>cinema is for children

>>6401788
Because he can. Why not be childish when you can? It's fun.

>>6407328
>he thinks calling it 'cinema' will change the fact that its just glorified play-acting

>>6407354
>fiction is for children

>>6398908

I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

>>6399246
>Consider that this is the generation that romanticizes mental illnesses and binges on nostalgia.

I would just like to take time to point out how poignant and well stated this is.

>>6397947
tfw you will never be Michael Pemulis