/lit/ - Literature

>>7338155
That's a loaded question.

>>7338155
>being handsome

You have low standarts

dude pearl jam

I think physical appearance has a big part in how successful people will be.

>>7338155
He committed suicide. What success?

Well, you got yourselves more DFW shitposting. What's the next step of your master plan?

>>7338155
on /lit/, most definitely.

>>7338168
no homo but...

>>7338216

Robin Williams never had success?

>>7338216
Nobody cared until I put on the belt.

>>7338155
being attractive helps you literally everywhere. if you're total shit at whatever nobody will care tho

Are there any good video interviews of him?
Does anyone know the one where he admits to being a shitty journalist?

>>7338269
Are you the guy who had the reddit account where he would just post DFW praise pasta over and over again for years on end, and post pictures of DFW to porn subs?

>tall
>athletic
>rich but with a regional accent and dresses and claims to be poor
>white
>nerdy

DFW is pretty much most womens' wet dream. I found a white, sticky semi-dried substance in my girlfriend's underwear after she had finished An Interview with Hideous Men and it tasted like the sort of gunk she emits when I finger her too rapidly.

>>7338583
That's me cum, not hers

No matter how dumb you think successful, attractive, people are...they are smarter than you.

Even the blonde bimbos.

>>7338334
L.O.L

>>7338574
link

>>7338606
>Even the blonde bimbos
That's right. Every good looking person is an intelligent person.

>>7338664
And you feel that image is proof positive why?

>>7338621
This guy's been at it for a year:

https://www.reddit.com/user/jeremy1122

>>7338695
Holy fuck I'm laffing here.

>>7338786
>https://www.reddit.com/user/jeremy1122
>Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Technically it came out in 1996, but more technically it belongs to every century, era, eon, whatever you want to say. It is the most formidable piece of literature ever written, and therefore I think it isn't violating your rules here to mention it. Actually, any system in which talking about Infinite Jest would violate its rules would be by definition a tyranny, since reading the novel, yes, is freedom itself. It is literary freedom. It is intellectual freedom. It is political freedom. It is even, I dare say, existential freedom.

>>7338695
This is amazing.

>>7338920
he is a god

>>7338303
Yeah, and he was really good looking dude? In any case, Robin Williams killed himself because of his terminal dementia. He was not a writer. He was not depressed. Yes, he was successful. Also, eating shit for lunch is a success if you want to.

>>7338695
fuckin machine

>>7338920
>Has anyone here read the entire Mahabharata? If so, what did you think of it?

>I read it last year! Interesting work, interesting. But not QUITE as interesting as David Foster Wallace's work in Infinite Jest, which of course is written in the margins of the Mahabharata as it is, of course as we all know, written in the margins of every important book the world has produced. Of course, Wallace was fascinated by the Mahabharata in college but then grew tired of it in his senior year after he completed it for his thirtieth time and wrote his own epic (now lost, except for fragments) in which he brought the epic genre to a close. His professors at Amherst who DID get ... on and on and on


lmfao

>>7338695
I cannot comprehend this man's motives.

>>7338695
>just finished Moby-Dick, wow.
>Your post confuses me. Do you know that you could've been reading Infinite Jest? The only conclusion I can arrive at is that you don't know what Infinite Jest is. Well, it's a novel by David Foster Wallace. Look into it...Do you really not know about it? You're weird lol.

>>7338337
>dfw someone reposts your OC

>>7338695
>As Wallace said in 2005, "There has to be a reason why we're alive and conscious at this point in history." Wink wink. Nudge nudge. He was dumbing it down for the folks sitting cross-legged on the floor when he said that. Yes, there is a reason. To read Infinite Jest. To allow it to teach us. Who we are. Where we're going. What art is. What life is. What love is. Wallace was saying: "Read the damn book!"

This is gold

can someone tell me why he is a shitty writer?

>>7339328
He's not

>>7339328
He's a fine writer. /lit/ is doing mental gymnastics here to create a sense of controversy and hype around their hobby. A lot of boards do this. It's a lot more obvious on /tv/.

Ths guys is a fucking hero, man.

>>7338155
He's meme'd all day long 24/7. Iv'e never read him. If he's so great why does noone talk about his ideas?

>>7338695
>I'm disappointed to find that Infinite Jest didn't make it. I guess this is a list of books that are ONLY about music. Very disappointing. The 'jest' in Infinite Jest is not only the dance of life but the music that incites the dance.

>>7338695
>Although of course the bridge to Wallace is a bridge that ends up going only one way.

lol... subtle jokes everywhere

>>7338155
First, who's him? Second, handsome by which standards?

>>7338583
lmao what the fuck

>>7338155
I've never read his memes, but I would lick his balls. Does that answer your question?

>>7338695
lmao

>>7339475

when will people realize that 4channers meme things they actually like?

dfw, death grips, joanna newsom, etc.

it's memes because it's good

>>7338695
holy shit. the dedication.

>>7338695
Lets uptoast the DFW image in r/ladyboners. Make it top all-time.

>>7338664
On average, yes. The more good genes your ancestors had the more easily their offspring could add better genes to your lineage since better genes = more attractive = better than average mating success.

success in getting the femmebitches? how many?

>Everything came easily to Wallace. He was blessed with severe genius, but it was also a curse, as all blessings are also curses. It tormented him to know that he could do anything he wanted. Think any thought imaginable. Life, he once said, came to him at ten times the speed it comes at everyone else. He could read The Bible in fifteen minutes. He took math apart and put it back together again for fun. In fiction, finally, he thought he had found a pursuit that would accommodate his abilities. The novel was his Everest, as Infinite Jest is our Everest. But where he ascended effortlessly, we will take centuries to match him.

>"Shut up about Infinite Jest." Right. Should we also shut up about Hamlet, The Canterbury Tales, and The King James Bible? Should physicists shut up about Einstein? Should historians shut up about the past? This is a literature board. Infinite Jest is the greatest example of literature we have. A discussion about literature that doesn't mention Infinite Jest is like a discussion about religion that doesn't mention God.

>You claim to have read Infinite Jest—the most harrowing book about alcoholism ever written—and yet you also claim to drink. This cannot be anything but a contradiction.

>Of course, that Dostoevsky essay was more of a herald for Infinite Jest and only ostensibly about Joseph Frank's biographies of the Russian author. Wallace uses the book review form really as a prologue to his novel. Scholars are coming to terms with the way Wallace used extranovelistic forms as adjuncts to the novel itself. It may be necessary to include these essays in future Critical Editions of Infinite Jest. Although of course what am I saying. Infinite Jest performs its own exegesis, and a Critical Edition would be redundant.

>Infinite Jest is as powerful an anti-war novel as any we've had. Of course, it's also the greatest manual for warfare ever written that every general would do well to read. If they sold the Eschaton section separately, there would be no reason to print Sun Tzu's Art of War. Of course, Wallace was interested in covering more than just warfare, and so Infinite Jest is too large as a substitute. This was, of course, his intention.

>>7338695
>Yes, yes, we all know Shakespeare's penchant for naming plays after minor characters, but did he ever write a play in which the main character was the reader himself? That's what David Foster Wallace achieved in his masterpiece Infinite Jest, my friend. Have you read it? I don't believe you have if you're still talking about Shakespeare. Of course you'll say, "But Wallace named his masterpiece AFTER a line from Hamlet! He's indebted to Shakespeare!" That's what it may seem like, but let's look closer. Infinite Jest is of course a novel, but it's also a parody of novels. By naming the novel Infinite Jest, he was mocking the novelistic convention of cribbing from Shakespeare for a fancy title. The Sound and the Fury. Brave New World. Pale Fire. Etc. Etc. Infinite Jest is simultaneously, therefore, the culmination of novel-writing, novel-writing brought to its conclusion, and also a parody of it and every genre except one: the posthumous novel. That Wallace achieved with The Pale King, which is of course a hilarious send-up of posthumously published work. No one's ever done that before, and most likely we won't see a writer attempt it again. As for Shakespeare, he was Wallace's plaything. In Infinite Jest he surpasses him in all things: intelligence, imagination, compassion, observation, wit, and so on. Of course, Wallace at five years old was enchanted with Shakespeare but outgrew him by age eight. It was at that age that he began to compose his own sonnets, lost today, but in the opinion of his parents (professors) and their co-academics they undoubtedly rivaled Shakespeare's and in a few instances he'd even surpassed the old bard. Of course, as we know from D.T. Max's biography (who will go down in history for being the first to write the Sorrowful Jester's life), Wallace at nine years destroyed all the poetry and prose he'd produced until that time in a temper tantrum that later on he admitted to be a parody of literary temper tantrums in which the writer destroys all his work. In this regard, the temper tantrum and its parodistic function is still being analyzed by scholars who are baffled by the complexity of its critique.
Holy kek

>>7340298
This guy is a genuinely good writer. 'Severe genius' is intensely amusing.

>>7340298
>>7340432
This guy is amazing.

>>7339916

>death grips
>good

dfw fans, ladies and gents.

>>7340468
Good or no, Death Grips is still a unique as fuck group. If you don't get screaming black men, you don't get me.

>>7340147
It's been archived. Someone post another.

>>7340298
>>7340432

>>7340436
Yeah he definitely comes off as a postgraduate student or something. It's all insanity, but he's got the terminology and cadence down to a point.

>>7340468
I listen to Death Grips every day. Nothing quite satisfies my megalomania than a screaming nihilist with undertones of social and political paranoia.

>>7338695
>As Wallace said, it is a book that is MEANT to be read more than once. He said this in conversation with Michael Silverblatt on his show "Bookworm" in 1996. I think you'll find that a second reading will be a very enriching experience. As Silverblatt said, reading Infinite Jest over and over is like "getting to know someone well." Indeed, the text is deeper and rewards scrutiny better than any book ever written. There's a reason Wallace never finished The Pale King. With Infinite Jest, he dismantled the novel. It was finished. We didn't have to write novels anymore. And indeed, we don't have to read any others. The Pale King, of course, isn't a novel but a parody of posthumous novels.

holy crap this is beautiful

>>7340468
TMS is goat

>>7339351
real talk. straight shooting. props

>>7341038
He's a professional shit poster. Nothing more, nothing less, this guy actually exerts effort to write this garbage, but it's great.

>>7340468
Death Grips are great though

>>7339916
Don't forgot In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

>>7338196
Ugly people use this as an excuse.

i want dfw to fuck me and whisper soft words that will expand my vocabulary

>>7342858
>implying attractive people don't get positively reinforced over and over again in childhood causing them to be much more successful and perceived more confidently

there's not even any chance to pass on your genes if you're ugly in this era desu(no war rape/mass promiscuity.)

>>7341056

Yeah but the music sucks.

>>7342879
Hello r9k

>>7338155

No. I think his upbringing in an academic home and hard work had something to do with it.

>>7338695

>mfw

>>7342879
Being this detached

I forget where I heard or read this, might have been 'Endnotes" the short documentary about him, where one of the people talking about him said something along the lines of "David would have wanted nothing more than to write like Tolstoy or Dosteyevsky, but he saw that he couldn't in this day and age, and so..." and it actually makes reading him a lot more interesting and enlightening, I'd say. It's so obvious that he wants to say something very deeply personal and 'big' like Tolstoy and Dost could, but has to practically trick the audience into letting him do so, I mean IJ is full of real honest personal moralizing, but no one ever pays attention to it, they talk about how 'funny' the book is, or how smart DFW is, how encyclopedic the book is, but they never mention how even past the television/ media/ entertainment stuff in the book, he really wants to discuss something way past that, those thoughts that everyone has and can't admit to thinking anymore because it's not 1850.

>>7345024
>they talk about how 'funny' the book is, or how smart DFW is
I'm always candid to comment on the crack-whore who had the abortion in the motel room, and poor Tony in the bathroom for days, and all the hobo-porn.

>>7345024
they mention it plenty

People usually reference IJ in conversations about Pynchon and since I recently finished GR, I was curious, is IJ a breath of fresh air/less challenging?

>>7345027
Hobo porn? I just finished IJ two days ago and i dont remember hobo porn.

>>7345090
Not at all. Its definitely not as hard as GR but its not easy.

2 QUESTIONS:

I. THERE IS A CHARACTER CALLED PINÇON IN CÉLINE'S JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT. WHO IS THAT BASED ON ?

II. WHO IS ARCHIMBOLDI IN 2666 ?

Is Pynchon both Bolano's and Celine's bud and therefore we should raid their homes for their cute pictures ? and profit ?

Also, FUCK DFW. He's the Tarantino of novels.

>>7345134
That comparison is total garbage.

>>7345090
Don't listen to that other anon. I'm full fucking pleb and I think IJ is really easy. Plot may be confusing, but its highly readable.

>>7338695
>When we talk about David Foster Wallace, we’re talking about a man whose I.Q. could not be measured. Past 200, I.Q. tests get imprecise. We don’t know whether we’re dealing with a man with an I.Q. of 200 or 300 or what. We can’t measure it. When it comes to Wallace-tier geniuses, the standard tests simply don’t apply

He was not handsome, so yes.

>>7338695
GOD AMONG MEN

>>7344619
>implying detachment isn't the true cessation of suffering

ok

>>7339123
He definitely suffered from depression.

>yfw ground zero in the new fallout game is precisely where ETA was

When you look good you feel good; when you feel good you do good.

>>7346503
Isn't that shit speculation from way before release? Don't think it's accurate

>>7345115
By hobo porn I mean all the parts in which it looks like he is getting off of narrating hobo misery.

>>7338695

>>7346596
wisdom

>>7349216
Fucking roastie whores on reddit.

>>7338695
OK, which one of you guys is running this?

>>7349216
wat is SO. POC SJW SMHs use too many acronyms.

>>7349258
Significant other

>>7349258
I think it's "Significant Others", i.e. wives and girlfriends.

>>7349261
i think you meant to use e.g. instead of i.e.

>dark star

>>7349248
Holy shit he's back. There was a 2 month hiatus, then an 18 day hiatus, and now the guy probably saw this thread and went into full overdrive.

>There's one thing and one thing only that the mods could do to immensely improve the board, instantly, overnight, and that's facilitate more threads about David Foster Wallace. Create them, nurture the ones that exist, guide the discussions, and make sure they stay on track. If we're here to discuss literature, ultimately, we are here to discuss David Foster Wallace. There is no way for a person to grasp the full implications of Infinite Jest and not realize this. We're talking about the smartest man who ever lived. You must realize this. It's not a joke anymore. We're seeing the world degenerate further and further into chaos, and we're standing by and watching it happen. You want to fix this board? You want to fix the world? You want to fix your life? You need only take one step: read Infinite Jest. There is no substitute for hard work, and that's what Wallace requires of you if you are to understand him. If you are to understand not just him, but the world. We're not talking about escapist literature, fan fiction, genre nonsense. We're talking about saving our lives. We're talking about meditating on God. We're talking about communing with the primary presence. This is not an issue to be treated lightly.

I wonder if an /r/books mod lurks here, because they have banned him from their reddit. Every comment you click now just shows up as a 404 if you visit the link itself rather than his userpage.

>>7350095

no because an elaboration, not an example

>>7350095
Hello reddit.

There are many cases in which both IE and EG would make sense, this is one of them.

thats how u can tell hollabecqs is the read deal that nigga ugly as sin

>select all images with books

holy shit for once in my life the captcha didn't make me click cheeseburgers or trucks

>>7338574
>I completely agree. It's not a waste of time. If you're going to dedicate yourself to a pursuit, you have to give yourself to it entirely.
legend.

>>7350170
I love this guy.
>Actually, as David Foster Wallace said, "Fiction is about what it means to be a fucking human being." A lot of people think the "fucking" is there just for emphasis. It's not. Wallace didn't mince words. He loved words, and he didn't waste them. He used exactly as many words as he needed to make his point, always. That is what he taught explicitly in the classroom and implicitly through his work. A lot of people know Wallace as a "maximalist," but in fact he was a minimalist, in his own way. His task, always, was to take a thought, a neurological event, a mere moment in psychological time, and articulate it completely. To stretch it out like a strand of DNA and document each and every component, from beginning to end. So of course this means long sentences. You experience thought in a series of flashes, but those flashes take pages to unravel and translate to words. This, of course, was Wallace's task. Alas, the Amazon reviewers do not, shall we say, appreciate it.

>But anyway, back to my point. When Wallace said that "Fiction is about what it means to be a fucking human being," he wasn't just making his point forcefully. He was saying that fiction is about what it means to be a human being who fucks. Who has sex. Who yearns to copulate with the opposite gender. Wallace once told his best friend Jonathan Franzen that he sometimes thought it was his purpose on Earth to stick his cock in as many females as possible. Wallace recognized before anyone else that this was the most important question facing his generation and all generations that would follow. Is the "orgy" the ideal state of being? An "infinite jest"? No, Wallace said. If we're to survive as a species, we need to aspire to more. If we are to endure, explore space, inhabit other planets, evolve, and finally, shed the chrysalis of the body and emerge as divine spirits of pure thought, we have to heed a higher calling. But how? you might ask him. Where do we start? What's the first step? http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jest-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316066524

How about serious works on IJ.

> " Once Infinite Jest has sufficiently initiated the reader into AA, it challenges the reader to Identify instead of Compare. The first AA story to appear in Infinite Jest is by John L. The story is very generic in its details, and outlines the basic AA form of decline, conversion, and recovering. After John L.’s story there are a few others that impress various points about AA narrative, and habituate the reader to the form of AA narrative. Some of these speakers are negative examples in which the speaker diverges from the AA narrative, and some are positive examples of an orthodox AA narrative that works well. Then, there is the “meeting’s last and maybe best... speaker” (376). Her story is repugnant. She was a prostitute and freebase addict who smoked cocaine through her pregnancy, even through labor. Her baby is stillborn, but she still keeps the little corpse with her for months until the smell of the corpse (now actually physically stuck to her chest) keeps her from prostituting anymore, and finally the authorities catch up with her and send her to an asylum. This whole story is told with very few references to her interior state and no invocations of pity from the audience. It is mainly a chronicle of events ordered by the AA form. The audience pays this speaker “the ultimate Boston AA compliment: they have to consciously remember even to blink as they watch her, listening. I.D.ing without effort” (379). The best stories in AA are the ones that make people lose their own identity and mix with the speaker into a single group identity. The details of the story shouldn’t matter as long as the form works. Even though her listeners have never experienced what she has, they feel linked to it. If Infinite Jest has succeeded in recreating AA aesthetics, then the reader will also Identify with the speaker’s story, along with the AA audience."

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/brooksdaverman.htm

bump

>>7338695
This guy is inspiring as hell. A work of IJ shitposting so far-reaching and earnest, that we have in our midst the writer we deserve (jeremy1122), even if it's not the writer we need right now (darknight foster wallace).

What would we classify this ironic, shitposty, long-form work which is largely concerned with the prototypical post-irony work as?

>>7352693
>What would we classify this ironic, shitposty, long-form work which is largely concerned with the prototypical post-irony work as?

parody

>>7338583
Seems silly but I'm kinda like that minus the athletic part and I manage to get laid.


This is what the cute-'mousey girls seem to be into these days.

Also alcohol

>>7341387
exerted*

why do you think he killed himself

>>7352774
So jeremy1122 is DFW? He faked his death?

Do you guys prefer DFW with his ponytail or with short hair? >>7338155 vs. >>7339209 hairstyles, for example.

I prefer him with the ponytail. He looks like one of those rugged, ponytailed older men in anime.

>>7346487
His wife just confirmed depression wasn't the reason for his suicide.

>>7353987
He's like Jin from Samurai Champloo. *karate chops you on the arm*

>>7354449

and you're not going to elaborate?

>>7338695
>Oh, it's a journey indeed, my friend. A journey indeed! This is my eleventh time through. It is bliss. Bliss is all I can say about it. Actually, I can say much more, of course, since the text can be read on about three thousand different levels (that scholars know of).

>Read the sex scenes in IJ and you don't need to read another sex scene. As a topic to write about, Wallace brought sex to its conclusion. Everything in Infinite Jest tends toward infinity, like a great cosmic orgasm, and in the end, reading the text itself is the real sex. A coital bond between Wallace's mind and ours.

holy fuck, can't compute

>>7350186
how is the phrase "wives and girlfriends" not a set of examples?
>>7350318
uh, no both of them cannot be used here. "i.e." should only be used if an exhaustive list of examples followed and clearly that did not happen. being correct is not "reddit." using shit when you don't even know what it means is reddit, fucking faggot. i.e. is without a doubt wrong here

>>7338155

>>7354601
>being correct is not "reddit."
Reddit is famous for this type of fedoracore pedantry, things like saying
>actually, that's an initialism, not an acronym!

>fucking faggot
If there was any doubt you were reddit, it is now gone

Anon was elaborating on what 'significant others' meant, and thus IE was fine.

>>7338155

You don't have to be attractive at all, just don't be incredibly ugly

>>7355032
did you even read my fucking post? i already adressed that. do you think i.e. stands for "in elaboration" or are you just having fun?

Why are there 6 threads devoted to some fag who killed himself on /lit/ right now? Just make a fucking DFW sticky and be done with it

>>7338695
>shower thoughts
>DFW is the greatest writer to have ever lived

killt me

>>7338155
You think sucking my dick has anything to do with you being gay?

>>7353987
>>7354449

>>7338155
>handsome
he's Christian Kane's ugly brother. Is everyone here so removed from normal society that you just don't know the difference between "barely average" and handsome?