/lit/ - Literature

>>7198609
DFW said nothing new.

Wallace had no original personal views. He was a fucking robot. Bleeding Edge is awesome btw.

>>7198614
>>7198620

>DFW said nothing new
>Wallace had no original personal views

So did any authors write new sincerity novels after DFW wrote E Unibus Pluram, or not?

>Bleeding Edge is awesome btw

I'm not singling it out as bad, just wondering if literary authors are trying to move away from postmodernism or not.

The weird thing is that most of DFW's criticisms don't apply to Pynchon or DeLillo all that well. They're spot-on for the lesser figures and humorists that got by on the coattails of post-modernism (see: Mark Leyner), but even Wallace never really tried to argue that Pynchon or DeLillo's work was any less than deeply felt.

Wallace certainly had an impact on contemporary authors though, you can see it in Egan, Chabon, Lethem and plenty of others. "New Sincerity" really only makes sense in context - you could claim that's what Tao Lin is doing, but Lin clearly isn't influenced by Wallace as much as by people like Lorrie Moore.

Most of the really acclaimed literary works of the 21st century so far have been on balance more sincere than ironic, so I guess you could count that as a win.

>>7198632
Haha you think pomo is a thing, even? He-he okay cuz. DFW isn't the NS, he's achingly faking it. Ellis is actually sincere about his literary endeavors, something it took Wallace a swingy-swing on his belt to attempt. He sure fool'd you, my Juden Friendo.

>>7198637
Is Pynchon really even ironic though? Because from what I've read of him, sure, he's caricaturesque, but he doesn't seem to take anything seriously, himself and what he likes included.

What do we mean by irony, exactly?

>>7198681
He takes the Military Industrial Complex srsly...

by the time infinite jest came out the whole "big postmodern novel" thing that gravity's rainbow and underworld represent was already sort of dying out. i don't know if "new sincerity" is what replaced it, but writers like lydia davis, ben lerner, and anne carson are not really like pynchon at all and are very strong writers

>>7198693
>very strong writers
We laugh at ye, hairless monkee, ha-ha. Strong writers! Ha! Haha! Wha?

>>7198708
Good post.

>David Foster Wallace is dead, Thomas Pynchon is alive.

i propose we repair such imbalance

>>7198681
I think it makes sense to call it ironic in the sense of being non-representative. Like, Pynchon is not trying to educate the public on the actual facts about 9/11 or the "deep web" in Bleeding Edge, but is rather playing with those concepts in an ironic way. But by the same token, you can call Gabriel Garcia Marquez (whom Pynchon loved, by the way) ironic.

The "ironic culture" DFW criticises in that essay is less about novels and more about television and the way people consume television, anyway. I'm not sure it's a fault of the essay that it doesn't really go after Pnychon. Or that "New Sincerity" hasn't become a fiction movement. I'd say DFW's influence is just as easily felt in nonfiction writing. Perhaps the "First-Person Essay Industrial Complex" (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/technology/2015/09/the_first_person_industrial_complex_how_the_harrowing_personal_essay_took.html)) is in a way the endpoint of New Sincerity in journalism - the pendulum has swung far enough the other way that radical self-disclosure is banal and obnoxious to many of us.

Wallace's error was buying into critics' ideas of literary generations. Wallace thought the literary world was being inundated with ironic pomo shit because that's all he was reading. At the same time, there were plenty of pro writers writing sincere, heartfelt, emotional literary fiction, just as there is today, and not because David Foster Wallace wrote an essay.

>>7198732
Denied.

>>7198721
10/10, a new depth in the deeps of sarcasm. Absolutely dripping. Can anyone take you serious? Did you type that with a straight face? I bet you did! Oh man! UnSTOPable!

Keep in mind also that Wallace's true literary mode was not the novel or the essay but the manifesto. Everything he writes veers toward it.

>>7198746
Please crawl back to the board you quite obviously come from.

>>7198754
>embarrassing yrself on lit 2015
Oh man, pls keep responding, this is awsm.

>>7198748
Wha? I thought it was the short story. His two most pop manifestos weren't his own. This is WaWa is CBT and IJ is AA. No?

>>7198609
Reminder that Pynchon killed Wallace over E Unibus Pluram because he felt personally attacked. Wallace was also a little shit for claiming not to have read Pynchon when it's almost certain that he had a pretty big chip on his shoulder over Pinch-man and Delillo.

>>7198693
>big postmodern novel
Honestly there's not a whole lot of difference between lengthy works of the past and lengthy works of today. Someone pulled down a two-million dollar advance a few years back for a huge novel I've never seen discussed on /lit/ and Book of Numbers is definitely a "big postmodern novel" still getting a ton of exposure.

>>7198688
>he doesn't take the military-industrial complex seriously
People who work at defense contractors make no bones of their relationship to the taxpayer, and military people get hilariously defensive when the subject is brought up. The fact is, it's a dangerous thing when you spin up a war economy and then let lobbyists and professional soldiers maintain that spending for their own benefit.

>>7198746
>Denied.

oh come on, you didn't even hear my plan out

it involves painting dfw's body blue and fedexing him

we just need some crowdfunding

sincerity in fiction is a myth

its true that pynchon writes heartfelt, humane fiction, like the one about math and the military-industral complex

>>7198609
There's nothing to respond to. Not everyone has to like Pynchon.

Wallace should have learned another language or something.

Also, Delillo isn't really po-mo yet covers similar themes as Pynchon.

>>7198791
Chip on his shoulder over P-cone? Pretty Girls Have Ugly Feet was a cover version of Lot 49. That's when all the lying about it started. He corresponded w/Delillo—his first letter was acknowledging he ripped him off. WallWall was all PoMo thru n thru.

I do not understand your point about the MIC. Can you elaborate? I'm interested.

>>7198737
This.

The irony he was against wasn't the kind you see in postmodern lit so much as the watered down pop kind you see in movies, TV shows, and ads.

>>7198794
Ok ok I'm in.

>>7198798
Truth.

>>7198805
Truth.

I coulda done this tho:
>>7198798
>>7198805
Truth.

Hmm.

>>7198808
Not everyone has the brainpower for Pin. Y'need a big wily neural-net.

infinite jest is a touchstone for this generation just like gravity's rainbow was a touchstone for wallace's. pynchon is old hat, man. he's still read, for sure, but that's bolstered mainly by pta making the inherent vice movie and bleeding edge saying pokemon in it. but most arent interested in reading him further. dfw's msg is reaching young people far and wide. gravity's rainbow sits in the library. nobody's talking about it outside of here.

>>7198845
Which means They are doing their job. IJ doesn't tackle anything important. I'm not kidding. You need IJ to Get that binge watching is bad? I think that shows We've regressed. But Wallace got the future right, which is impressive.

>>7198865
sounds like you didnt really understand the book

>>7198882
How so?

>>7198814
You would learn more by just googling the subject. In short, the military-industrial complex is a symbiotic relationship between the highest ranks of the military and the companies that supply the military. There is huge incentive, obviously, for the companies to get the government to pay them a lot of money for various projects. There is also some incentive for Generals and Admirals to get a lot of money allocated to whatever it is they oversee. Between the two groups, a lot of pressure is put on the US government to maintain high military spending. As for the behaviour of Generals and Admirals, they may make strategic decisions based on the needs of their buddies in industry, and the companies have high-paying jobs waiting for those Admirals and Generals when they leave the service, provided they have a beneficial relationship with the company.

It's a whole network of insidious overspending and nepotism that feeds on the taxpayer. This all has to do with Pynchon because in Gravity's Rainbow, he takes the military men and executives to task for things like valuing the technology to be gleaned from Germany above other concerns.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal

>>7198938
Well, yeah, that's why I said he has a srs point in his books. We are on the same page :^)

I feel like a lot of ppl assume Pynch is just being ridiculous but I think he thinks the only way to say these things is how he does.

>>7198632
there have been like 100000 "sincere" literary realism novels written both before and after DFW.

>>7198993
That many, wow!

>>7198609
Irony and Hypocrisy are at the heart of fiction. You can't write anything truly sincere because fiction is, before anything, a lie.

You can take an alternative though; that fiction, similarly to one of the possible definitions for myth, is a lie with a core of truth. But such a thing is, by definition, ironical. Irony, concisely, happens when you say something but a different interpretation instead of the literal one is heavily suggested. Fiction is analogous, you tell a lie, but you suggest something true.

Plato said enough in the last book of the Republic. If you want to access the truth directly you have to use philosophy since all art is imitation and all imitations are lies.

The Divine Comedy and similar religious books are the closest you can get to a real non-ironical story since they believe heavily in the core of truth that the literary piece contains.

>>7199045
00000/10

>>7198814
>Pretty Girls Have Ugly Feet was a cover version of Lot 49
wat are yu talking about

>>7198693
Nobody has called you out yet so I will: Underworld came out a year after Infinite Jest.

>>7198688
>that image
How Postmodern of you!

>>7198845
Dude... swerve
While it might not be GR specifically, Pynchon is widely taught in courses around the world as essential to the American canon, Bleeding Edge doesn't just say pokemon, it's extremely modern in every aspect, and the themes and elements of his stories, all the way from V to his most recent novel are practically timeless until we reach a technological singularity.

>>7198865
oh man infinite jest basicaly talks about everything in some form or another.
Its kinda muddled with fart jokes but it definitely tackles a lot of stuff. Doesnt solve them, but i dont think anyone would be able to and that kinda the point

>>7199045
>You can't write anything truly sincere because fiction is, before anything, a lie.
The fact tha people miss that this is essentially what IJ is about bewilders me.
Orin is like an embodiment of this, a stand-in for whats wrong with masculinity in our era.

>>7199203
At the time, quartets in blackface were unironic, so?

>>7199246
Y-You think you scare me?

>>7199228
What are you what the fuck what?

>>7199266
its really complicated, like teh book, but im not gonna explain it.
More or less, Orin represents a generation that recieved too much love and yet still feels alienated and as a result acts out in emotional and insincere ways. He strings people along by making them "feel" loved even though its ultimately a selfish act.
It ties into the act of writing a novel. David is being very honest with you about the ways in which he's trying to fool you.
The only truely likable characters are damaged and dumb.

gravity's rainbow was clever, but infinite jest is scary good.

>>7198609
I know Pynchon is viewed as postmodern, and I mean, he is. It's just that his books are sorta like comic books in a way? All the references to pop culture and stuff don't really feel self-conscious or tongue in cheek. In a way I think he just makes "lowbrow" highbrow lit. In a lot of ways I think Pynchon and New Sincerity line up pretty well.

>>7199186
He's talking about Broom of the System.
It starts with that line and just like that wardine the shit, its just "that-level" of wallace-weird where it kinda becomes mocked too the point of memery.
Its also widely recognized as a Lot 49 rip-off, which in many ways it is, but the reason why he gets so much shit for it is that he's always publicly denied ever reading pynchon which is clearly untrue and basically anyone who knew him knew that was a load of shit. The influence is undeniable, but y'know he eventually kinda disowned this novel as wel as his short story collection "the girl with curious hair" (which has moments but geez that last story/novela is basically just a self-insert fan-fiction that wallace wrote about himself being the chosen one). But back to Broom: It's essentially Gravity's rainbow in some ways, with the whole delayed meta-film twist. There were things he said he disliked about pynchon, which does makes sense as i think he was that kinda guy who hated the things he loved. Like his dad, pynchon, as well his life.

>>7199338
Oh sorry i meant Gravity's Rainwbow is kinda like infinite jest in terms of structure and design.

>>7199338
Broom of the system is like TCOL? I've read both multiple times and I don't see the slightest resemblance, wtf are you talking about... nor between IJ and GR

>>7198845
You'd be surprised to find out just how many people are reading Gravity's Rainbow these days. That Inherent Vice movie may not have been a box office hit or anything but it really did a great job of introducing old Tommy R. Pinecone to a new generation of people who may not even have heard of him had it not come out.

The closest public library near me suddenly has 4 copies of Bleeding edge alone, not even mentioning his other books.

>>7199447
you must be really dumb bro

>>7199470
Adding to this,

If anything, DFW's more likely to become irrelevant as the years go on because his overall body of work is much more narrow in scope and size than Pinecone's. That and Pinecone has more accessible entry-points than Wallace, whose books and stories are all at a similar level of complexity.

Anecdotal evidence but whatever, af my university the only pynchon book thats checked out is vineland. The ONLY wallace book on the shelf is oblivion. Rest of his oeuvre currently checked out, and ive been here three years and infinite jest has NEVER been on the shelf. And i browse the shelves in the library between classes every day.

Also infinite jest has more reviews on amazon than Pynchons first three books combined.

>>7199072

Clever.

>>7198609
>Thomas Pynchon is alive.

says who?

>>7199289
This is what Maoist-Platonists actually believe.

>>7199447
u smokin too much weed then

>>7198833
>reading [ ] affirms my intelligence
this is why irony rules and dfw killed himself

Can I just say that this is one of the better threads of the past months or would that be breaking the spell?

>>7200300
It's: I find reading [] entertaining, sorry if you don't. It takes more effort to read [] and I understand that you prefer lighter reads. I don't know how reading something would affirm intelligence.

Don't take out your difficulties with Pinecone on other ppl brah.

>>7200312
It sounds like you were the one who had difficulty.

>>7200318
Doot dootin on that cakehorn! Tommy's not a slut, so yea, stick w/it it's worth it fam tbh.

>>7198609
New Sincrerty isn't about writing a "sincere" book. It's about a whole attitude in your life. You can live life like Pynchon, laughing at everything, saying everything with a half-grin and a double meaning, or you can be like DFW, and act warm and humane, and embrace human emotions.

>>7200325
haha

>>7200325
Read DFWs bio bro. Read Pynchon too, it sounds like you skipped V and GR. or just watch IV...

Wallace was painfully insincere. He was a notorious liar and alcoholic drug addict. That adds up to antisocial personality disorder, which is what idiots today call a sociopath. He is an amazing writer and story teller, but so are the apd ppl I've had the mixed pleasure of knowing.

>>7200338

DFW just couldn't take it that he lived in such an insincere world. He's not perfect, but he tried hard to spread his message about insincerety.

And I did try to read GR. People told me that I should talk about it because I didn't get the message or plot, but that's not the point. What the point is that Pynchon doesn't understand how people are affected by his work. It's not about what some literary academics feel about it, it's more important what common everyday readers feel about it, and when I read it I see a man who tries to impress by making everything too hard.

I know DFW made things hard too, but he's like a teacher who makes things difficult because he wants you to succeed. He showed such love for his readers and you don't see that in Pynchon.

>>7200353
First off, you think Wallace checked out because ppl were insincere?

Second, GR is significantly more beautiful than IJ. For instance there is a Brockengespenst scene in both novels. Your going to tell me that legless Marathe and cross dressing Steeply were more sincere than Geli and Slothrop?

Also, a lot of GR is heavy duty beautiful, where IJ really never hits the heart notes. Yea, yea Mario loves Hal so much his heart beats hard. Very nice but the thing is 1k+ pages.

>>7200366
he killed himself because he hadn't any talent

>>7200406
Ok so DFW is on the hate part of the lit cycle—so for the record: Good Old Neon made me cry and Pynchon wishes he could have thought up the twist at the end of The Soul Is Not A Smithy (which also outdoes the Pale King).

He was talented but he was not sincere, though he really tried pretending to be. He affected everything about his life because he was hollow. He did keep a poster of the PinchedOne on his wall at uni tho.

>>7200413
i don't hate him at all but that is the reason why
i'm not really into comparing him with pynchon either

also sincerity is not as final/real a concept as you think it is
ironically, dave had a more sophisticated understanding of that than he might have let on as well

>>7200366
>>7200406
he died for our sincerity tbh

One reason people commit suicide is when their subconscious id and ego overwhelms their conscious id and ego. Its the reason we dream of falling yet jolt out of the sleep before we fatally hit the bottom (sometimes only a few seconds of consciousness and then back to sleep - just enough to save your life). We struggle to understand death so we never hit the bottom. Your subconscious is also active when you're awake and sometimes throws up some very strange thoughts. Its the resolution mechanism of our being and when it fails in this task the dangers become very real. In the case of mass suicides its when another person or idea coalesces around itself others who willingly give up their personal right to resolution. So sad he didn't make it. Just a personal view.

>>7200413
>the twist at the end of The Soul Is Not A Smithy
what was the twist? I don't want to read it again, it was like super boring.

>>7200585
There was no twist. That guy has no idea what he's talking about.

>>7200499
dude. psychoanalysis is a bunch of fairy stories

>>7198609

Irony is a healthy and rational attitude to take in an age where our culture is for sale.

DFW's ideas about sincerity are a reaction to the academic bubble he spent his formative years inside. Humanities academia is a world of bullshit. Everyone else has no problem with being sincere.

>>7200499
i've had clinical depression and considered suicide and you have no idea what you're talking about.

stop playing armchair psychologist or quoting armchair psychologists

>>7201280

Your rejection of the theory is obviously due to repressive forces in your psyche not being able to face the truth.

>>7201260
>Everyone else has no problem with being sincere.

have you ever read any social media ever

>>7199338
The only time I've seen him mention Pynchon he claimed to have been a fan until Vineland, when he decided that the trick had gotten old and he wanted something else out of fiction. To me it seems like his aim in the '90s was to take all of the technical developments pioneered by Pynchon, Barth, etc., and use them to put across a new message, to attempt to answer some questions instead of endlessly asking new ones. It was daring, you have to credit him with that much. But for me he only really discovered his voice in the 2000s, but unfortunately never had the time to complete anything great except perhaps Good Old Neon.

>>7201357
I believe that Infinite Jest was intended to be the anti-Gravity's Rainbow, hence the structural parallels. He wanted to show that you can write like Pynchon and still convey a clear moral message that will hopefully improve your readers' lives in some small but significant way.

>>7201365
>He wanted to show that you can write like Pynchon
Did you really need to go so roundabout as a way of saying "he failed miserably"?

>>7200413
>He was talented but he was not sincere, though he really tried pretending to be.

He was pretending, he was sincerely trying to be sincere... and failing. And it made him doubt that sincerity was even possible. But really I think he was projecting his own neuroses onto everyone else, when in fact many people apparently don't have this problem. And that is probably why he's so divisive and why people feel so strongly about him, both for and against.

>>7201400
>He was pretending

Wasn't*

>>7201390
Well, his sentences probably owe more to DeLillo, but his stories (at least in the '90s) are certainly very "Pynchonesque"

>>7201309
if that was an attempt at sarcasm it was damn near perfect

>>7200585
>>7201209
The twist was that the teacher wasn't referring to the kids, he was referring to Them, the government, he was the civics/gov/history/whatever teacher. The same people that shoot him. You missed this? It was painfully long, tbh... The Exorcist? Really?

>>7202073
That's not a twist? Or were you really expected to assume that he meant the kids all the while?

>>7201365
Wallace doesn't write like Pynchon at all. Wallace writes crystal clear sentences. What was the moral message in IJ? It doesn't sound like you've read GR...

>>7202104
It was implied that it was the kids, then the narrator gets really sidetracked, and then at the end his brother(?) says no one consider that the teacher might not have meant the kids. I thought it was a good gestalt flip, especially in light of that awful dream he tells us about with his dad at the office.

Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable criticizing Wallace? He was clearly gifted but clearly surrounded by powerful demons that he lost a battle to. I feel too much of a personal connect to him - he was a flawed person but clearly trying to 'figure' things out - and his essays really spoke to me

Comparing him to Pinecone is like comparing Jean Renoir to Truffaut. Very different people (as much as we know "about" Pinecone, which is exactly the point ... let the work talk), very different views of the world

I don't understand the parallel drawn whatsoever. I like how noone actually responded to my other post with HOW Pynchon and Wallace are similar, I just got the typical 'wow lol xd u dumb' shit.
Almost every sentence of Wallace's communicates something intense and deep yet simultaneously meandering about the highly personal vagaries of individuals' emotional thought processes and this is the lifeblood of his stories, the teary, verbose outspilling of sentiment. Pynchon is dense, mathematical, action based, propulsive, perhaps autismal with descriptions, his characters are action driven and their internal thought states are rarely subjected to the scrutiny used by Wallace. Pynchon's stories GO, they are technologic and bureaucratic, Wallace's feel, the obstacle for every character is inside of them. Debate me

>>7202167
>Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable criticizing Wallace?
I think art criticism is so inhumane in general. You feel uncomfortable because even though it's obvious to all of us he was far from a perfect writer, he had good things going and he's fun to read. You feel bad because he committed suicide. Honestly if any reviewers that pan what they're reviewing actually met the writers of the books or the people in the band they'd probably chill out, because of course real human connection transcends what is literally composed of pretense

>>7202187

You nailed it. I write criticism (don't ask) and it's especially though if you've met the members of the band or the actors or crew of a movie (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for example, is a really fun guy). Just people (largely) trying to do their best to make a living. Some are jerks.

I was told by someone who met Franzen he was the nicest guy you'd ever know.

That said, as someone more knowing than I, criticism is not supposed to be humane, it's supposed to be a little nasty sometimes

>>7201260
10/10 post

>>7201260
>Irony is a healthy and rational attitude to take in an age where our culture is for sale.
culture has always been a financial commodity

bump

>>7202171
I think you haven't read Pynchon if you're calling him bureaucratic (over DF "rambling secretary style" Wallace, no less)

>>7202073
>>7202104
I wouldn't call it a real "twist". It was really vague about the incident the whole time and by the time you find out he's just standing there writing it over and over instead of actually going for the kids it's not hard to tell that it's not directed at them.

That and setting it during the 60s makes you expect there was some paranoia or overreaction involved somehow.