/lit/ - Literature

What classifies something as bro-lit?

>>9230601
>is there such a thing as "lit bro culture"

Yeah this board

>>9230601
what is this 'bro problem' your feminist lit class is trying to address

I mean "important" literature has some pretty male-oriented history and associations.
DFW was consciously part of a tradition and so misogyny is kind of an under-current in his work.

>>9230601

I've read the article that's from, and I'm of two minds on it.
On the one hand, Wallace's writing shows a vastly deep sensitivity and empathy that doesn't go at all with the 'bro' label (and also makes the /lit/ diagnosis of him as autistic absurd, but /lit/ gonna /lit/ ofc)
On the other hand, his treatment of women irl was often pretty horrendous
Maybe his writing betrays something misogynistic I'm not picking up on, that's more apparent from a female perspective. It could have something to do with his development of female characters

>>9230667
? explain please. If anything I read him as being one hundred percent honest about his pretensions regarding dating/sex/females. I mean there is a significant element in Infinite Jest regarding gender theory

>>9230676
youre retarded if you dont see the conscious nudgings of "hey I'm a man and always will be so I am this way, and oh by the way women are this way too so it doesn't matter" that appear throughout IJ and TPK

>>9230683
the element of gender theory in IJ and TPK is incredibly simplistic and limits women to their appearances and other generally helpless positions. While these women may be likable, they're portrayed as slaves to their problems unlike (admittedly only some of) the male characters.

>>9230685
Your IQ is in the double digits if you actually care

lol...."lit bro culture problem". you people are such queens

>>9230702
I don't care. It just bothers me that somebody would be so blind to the reeking and even self-aware macho posturing in his work.
honestly, learn to analyze and read.

>>9230693
>only the women are slaves to their problems in DFW's work

this is a joke right?

>>9230702
One less dig than yours I bet.

>>9230735
did you read my post?
Obviously, helpless people are the main theme of his work but women in particular are judged superficially, are incompetent and displayed as emotionally helpless.

>>9230705
You have an embarrassing tonal detector. Keep your inadequacy under wraps until properly trained

>>9230702
>You're stupid if you care about analysing a major aspect of literature

Go home pleb

>>9230744
After trying to think of competent female in his work I think I have to cede that you're right. Although when I brought up gender theory I was talking more about the elements of transgenders and AIDS in IJ.

>>9230764
Youre referring to Poor Tony and Hugh Steeply.
Both trans-genders played for laughs at the expense of their appearances.
Hugh is likely there as somewhat of a disclaimer, the inability for man to truly know woman, but Poor Tony is literally portrayed as mentally ill.
It's a bad look.

>>9230705
bitch i know i am a q(thot)ueen

It exists, but in 2017 it's a minority culture that has all but been purged from the mainstream by the neopuritan progressive gynocentrism of modern literary scholars. The self-avowed tastemakers of contemporary literature are uniformly left-leaning women who are desperate to redefine wider Western culture in accordance with their political identity and as such will only permit trash like The Meursault Investigation or some whiny Negroid's thoughts on why his race is incapable of personal responsibility to grace their attention. The Hemingways are "problematic," whereas Zadie[sic] Smith is a "vibrant" "young" talent offering a "fresh" "perspective." DFW can be considered a consciously male writer, but bear in mind that he wrote most of his significant work in 90s academia at the height of the culture wars. His writing is male, but it still kowtows to the harpies he knew would be whipping out their red pens at his next MFA workshop.

>>9230745
you are a preening little queer hyperventilating over "bro lit" on the internet and no catty remarks on your part can change that

>>9230781
this is truth.

>>9230771
Trannies literally are mentally ill though. They have a psychological disorder that negatively affects their ability to function. To portray a competent and well-adjusted tranny would just be inaccurate.

>>9230792
that may be true, and maybe most of his portrayals of women are true, but it's not nice. Society isn't accurate, it's about ideals.
Portray things ideally and they more likely become that way.

Wallace was very theoretically savvy, much more so than most of the attacks on him. From what I've seen, most of those widely shared articles attacking Wallace as an icon of bro-lit are not real "criticism"- they're cheap entertainment-journalism for a popular audience and they don't engage Wallace seriously.
However, I think it's easy to cheapen Wallace from the other side, as it were. IJ, in my eyes, is a monumental novel that's inexhaustibly rich- to reduce it to a "critique of late capitalism" is to lean too heavily on the theory, in my view. It's not what made Wallace's writing great. The amazing thing is that he was able to weave this incredible variety of cultural and intellectual material into an emotionally compelling narrative.
Lastly, I'm troubled by the premise of your question- you're worried that it's "wrong" for you to defend DFW, but you also don't need to defend your "naive[te] on a personal level?
A huge red flag goes off whenever I see someone say "identity politics" as though this is a well-defined field of study or an area of critical theory. By now, it's a buzzword, most often used by the right in a pejorative sense.
I applaud your curiosity, though, and it's vitally important to acquaint yourself with contemporary theory- I think the way to honor Wallace is to read as much good criticism about race, sex, and class as you can.

>>9230771
hmmm i think youre right. I admittedly havent thought too much about it, probably because I'm a man

>>9230782
That was my first post of the thread. My point is that if you think this is a subject approached with seriousness you're in the wrong place. And for some reason, even after I told you this, you still don't understand.

>>9230800
I think you're giving fiction too much credit there

>>9230822
Eh. maybe.
but it has an effect. If you have a choice when choosing something to "say" make sure you're telling the truth in a positive light, otherwise whats the point? To show how smart/jaded you are? The only people who will get it are people who already know, so there's not point other than to circle-jerk. If youre trying to enact change, which should be the point, i think its important that you don't get your personal bias/agenda in the way of your greater goal

>>9230800
>Portray things ideally and they more likely become that way.

>>9230845
and what does zizek have to say that doesn't contradict/negate every point he makes?
It's easy to be a pessimist and he's basically made his living as a clown.

>>9230849
Not a serious argument

>>9230855
like yours was lol. youre arguing like a cop

>>9230650
wtf i love lit bro culture now

>>9230861
Shh

how long did it take you guys to become disillusioned with the possibility of making a living writing fiction? It took me embarrassingly long.

>>9230884
I've changed lanes now, hoping to make a living streaming overwatch on twitch now instead
I see it as only a moderate compromise

>>9230884
Meh, I still think I can do it.

>>9230895
Take a look at last years best seller list and say that

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2016/books

>>9230676
someone on here once responded to a DFW bait thread (would DFW have been alt-right?) with something along the lines of
>he would have normie social justice political opinions and describe himself as 'woke'
and i think thats really accurate. In contradistinction to your suggestion that
>the /lit/ diagnosis of him as autistic [is] absurd
I'm going to say that he would have been labeled as a cyborg by /r9k/ (pic related).

Basically he was a normalfag with a heightened sense of self-awareness that made him sociopathic. He still got laid but had an intense love/hate relationship with the world and people around him. I'm sure he would have had all the social 'graces' of your average Chad hildawg, belying the fact that his true self was discordant with the views he expressed.

In a word, he was too timid to ever drop (or live up to) this facade (which he might not have recognized as completely inauthentic, or might have held up as an ideal), and he was disgusted by himself for it. That's probably why he abused drugs and eventually an hero'd, and why he was so 'into' Sincerity.

I've never read anything he wrote though (except the David Lynch article), just looked over his wikipedia page and watched some interviews

>>9230907
David would have sympathized with alt-right internally but for image/humanistic reasons he would have spoke against it.
THIS IS THE ONLY REASONABLE RESPONSE TO THE CURRENT POLITICAL CLIMATE

>>9230901
holy fuck i did not realize rupi kaur was that popular

bumping a Great bread

>>9230800
>Portray things ideally and they more likely become that way.

>>9230601
dfw is the problem with everything

>>9230603
brotherly affect I'd suppose

>>9230901
Two non-YA novels in the top 20. Better than I expected.

>>9230781

>>9230954
This is really depressing desu.

>>9230800
I wish the sun was blue and I can write a million novels about it or paint a billion masterpieces and it won't change anything.

Portraying transgender characters as always being beautiful in fiction will change nothing about the challenges presented in mutilating a body into a desired form

I feel like heavily liberalized fiction is deluding people into believing in a comforting notion of fairness and equality in the world that doesn't reflect reality.