/lit/ - Literature

I think the widespread DFW memes are a little bit boring

He's shit. It's a meme.

>>8839071
>>8839072
please include age and location if you're gonna post

>>8839064
I like him because he captures a voice and perspective that is at the same time without pretense and intelligent which is difficult to do.

I dislike him because I don't think he ever contributed anything novel, philosophically or literary. He only took what other men did better and applied it to our current age.
Which is not at all a worthless thing however.

>>8839092
Forgot, I'm 22 and in Dublin, Ireland

>>8839086
37, International Space Station

>>8839064
Because I got left hanging with the complete lack of ending to "Broom of the system" then proceeded right into the first hundred pages of infinite jest only to realize I was the butt of the joke for trying to force my way through that stack of extraneous aimless vocabulary dump.

>>8839064
18 Oklahoma

I like him. Infinite Jest is my favorite book no meme
He just had a good way of making every topic read-able and even managed to put humor into things at the best times

I like him, but I don't understand people saying that he's not pretentious. He's extremely pretentious. His self-awareness over his pretension does not make him any less pretentious.

He executes big themes well, but tends to get hung up on his own conceits and pedantry.

>>8839534
Pretense might be the wrong word, its like he doesn't write with a voice that isn't his own

>>8839548
I'm not sure about this. I feel like he puts on the academic mantle to cover up insecurities, and he proclaims sincerity in order to better disguise his extremely embedded sense of irony. But it's worth taking into consideration that he may actually be a genuine guy.

>>8839534
22, Wisconsin.

I think he's a pretty solid dude, not amazing but solid. He's able to write about really common feelings of ennui in the modern world in a really approachable way. This is why some people love him, and also the same reason some people hate him.

I think Infinite Jest is a wonderful book, but at the same time I think he failed at doing what he set out to do with it.

I'm 18 from Ohio

>>8839625
>I'm not sure about this. I feel like he puts on the academic mantle to cover up insecurities, and he proclaims sincerity in order to better disguise his extremely embedded sense of irony. But it's worth taking into consideration that he may actually be a genuine guy.

This is the usual meme reading but frankly I think Wallace only hinted at this because he was afraid of the very platitudes he inhabited that the idea of this more authentic figure behind it all was an escape.

He wore his face as a mask.

25 Arizona

DFW is one of my favorite writers. I have been in and out of rehabilitation clinics for a long time. Shot dope 4 to 6 times a day for 3 years. Reading Infinite Jest really opened my eyes and helped me through a hard time in my life. I realize he is a meme, but there's something to be said about a novel that touches so many people. He nailed the struggle of depression, dependence, and many other things. It's not just meme, it's a Damn good book.

>>8839644
I'm not sure I follow. He hinted that he was disguising his own irony because he was afraid that his sincerity was a farce?

Did DFW succeed in executing the sincerity he proselytized? Was his a

passion of the real

>>8839661
>He hinted that he was disguising his own irony because he was afraid that his sincerity was a farce?

No, on the contrary, he hinted he was disgusing his own irony because he was afraid that his sincerity was NOT a farce

26 England

I tried reading him when I had depression, and he did strike a chord with me then, but I had to put the book (infinite jest) down because he just made me feel deep dispair. I could see him narrating the same horribly self-indulgent neurosis I was suffering from.

Since then, the idea of hating life so much you must find an addiction to get through it, or desperately find things to care about has become sort of alien to me again. It just seems juvenile, or at best the symptoms of somebody with a serious medical condition not any kind of profundity.

tl:dr DFW was a very troubled man, but not in a way that's interesting.

Oh and the writing just isn't very good.

>>8839734
Christ you sound like such doting mindless_
>England
Ah right, never mind

>>8839092

I'm also 22 and from Dublin, Ireland. I dislike him a lot. I agree with you, he took from other writers and marketed it in a 21st century pop-accessible fashion. He wasn't particularly original. There are flashes of brilliance. But they are few and far between.

My biggest problem with him is that he was, by all accounts, a psychopath. The theme running through his work that we can never truly communicate with each other arises from his own sociopathic nature.

I particularly dislike the way people read infinite jest and pass it off as something incredible, because if they read a single one of his influences they'd realise how poor a writer he actually was.