/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14125026]

Should I read it? The author sounds like a pretentious, typical liberal intellectual.

[Anonymous No.14125032]

One of my favorite books of all time, changed my life, not even exaggerating.

[Anonymous No.14125048]

Post yfw you actually convince someone to read a book from the meme trilogy

[Anonymous No.14125055]

>>14125032
>changed my life

How?

[Anonymous No.14125056]

>>14125026
Read the prequel first

[Anonymous No.14125057]

It's terrible and amazing at the same time. I'm debating reading some of his other stuff Pale King etc.

[Anonymous No.14125061]

Don’t bother. If you cared about novels you would at least try it of your own accord, to see what the fuss is about. You clearly don’t care, so don’t bother.

[Anonymous No.14125067]

>>14125026
He is.
Not worth the read.

[Anonymous No.14125081]

>>14125055
Hal's story, his relationship with his dad, his character arc of learning how to care again.

[Anonymous No.14125093]

it was my gateway into doorstopper novels so it holds a place in my heart but you'd have to check it out for yourself and decide.

[Anonymous No.14125141]

>>14125026
Absolutely worth it, shortsighted worries about his being a liberal intellectual are stupid.

[Anonymous No.14126015]

>>14125026
>The author sounds like a pretentious, typical liberal intellectual.

DFW would most likely be an unironic radical centrist (Wowwwww both sides, like, totally suck), but IJ is, if not an endorsement of illiberalism, a 1000-page takedown of neoliberal existence.

[Anonymous No.14126091]

>>14125026
It's not liberal or pretentious. It is a very difficult read though. A lot of very long tedious sections. You gotta power through, and know ahead of time that much of the plot is going to go over your head, and that's because the book is cyclical and requires multiple reads to fully understand the plot. Don Gately is one of my favorite characters in literature though, and in my opinion when the focus on him the book is fantastic. Also, some of the digressions are fucking hilarious.

[Anonymous No.14126152]

It's a fantastic, incredibly emotional book. I'd strongly recommend it and advise not to be put off by the goofy criticisms you'll read of it here.

I don't really give a shit about DFW's real life antics.

[Anonymous No.14126164]

>>14126015
>DFW would most likely be an unironic radical centrist (Wowwwww both sides, like, totally suck)
as if, he would guest on Chapo if he was alive

[Anonymous No.14126173]

>>14125026
if nothing else the book will change your preconception of what a great novel can be. critics here who memify the book unwittingly do a great service: their criticism weeds out those who read solely for image's sake.

[Anonymous No.14126187]

>>14125026
DFW is the opposite of pretentious

[Anonymous No.14126205]

>>14126187
this exactly. the artifice is only half of the token.

[Anonymous No.14126242]

>>14126164
Try reading his 2000 article on John McCain--pay attention to how convinced DFW was that McCain was a genuine human bean, how easily he was yucked up into the then-developing veneer of "relatable, rolled-up-sleeve" politics--and get back to me on that one. For a man who wrote complex, dualistically interior characters, he didn't seem so capable of analyzing them in real life.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/david-foster-wallace-on-john-mccain-the-weasel-twelve-monkeys-and-the-shrub-194272/
Or perhaps a brief piece "Just Asking," regarding 9/11, which sounds like an article you'd find on the Heritage Foundation website.
>Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?2 In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?
Also
>Chapo isn't centrist
Assuming this is true (but can anything the establishment doesn't actively try to destroy be considered radical or, in other words, anti-centrist?), DFW never comes across as someone who would be anything more than tangentially sympathetic to the so-called "dirtbag left." His critiques were very narrowly aimed at consumerism and entertainment, while he almost completely eschewed any examination of the economic structure of capitalism itself (or, to go further, how the alienating consumerist culture was an inevitable consequence of capitalism).

[Anonymous No.14126409]

If you ever need a break from drugs or are trying to quit them, reading this will help.

[Anonymous No.14126606]

>>14125026
I read it 3 times, cover to cover, all the endnotes. The second read was the best, mostly because I read The Pale King before the third read, and the late DFW is by far his best. He's not a liberal. He was raised by his parents as an athiest and he chose to become a church going Christian as an adult (after he wrote IJ). Also, in the Pale King he writes about how the demise of America is based on our lack of civics and lack of civic pride (there's also a lot about this in "Oblivion" which is also probably better than IJ).
TLDR; he's probably the most conservative author in my lifetime to have reached the level of success he has reached.

[Anonymous No.14126639]

850 pages in

[Anonymous No.14126653]

>>14125032
You sound like picrelated

[Anonymous No.14126689]

its such a huge book but I feel like I need to read it again to fully understand since so much happens by inference, like hal and gately digging up Himself's grave. feels like the last 25% of the plot has to be deduced

[Anonymous No.14126775]

>>14125026
Read it and every time you you see a drug name, replace it with /pol/. Your life will start getting better the day you finish it.

[Anonymous No.14126778]

>>14125057
Pale King is pretty amazing, read it.

[Anonymous No.14126784]

>>14126689
I have read it 4 times and listened to the audio book a few times, I think views like this are simply over complicating it and the plot is actually simple and straight forward, it is just that the book lends itself to interpretation and readers get caught up in that.

[Anonymous No.14126890]

>>14125026
worst book I have ever read by far. taught me that it is ok to quit a book halfway through.

[Anonymous No.14126913]

>>14126890
>t. didn't read 1Q84, or loves 1Q84.

[Anonymous No.14126927]

>>14126913
i didnt read it but im looking it up now. what do you think of it?

[Anonymous No.14126932]

>>14126927
I hated it, but I love Infinite jest. You will either love it or feel better about Infinite Jest.

[Anonymous No.14126950]

>>14126932
ive read 1984 and brave new world. is it just more of the same?

[Anonymous No.14126959]

>>14126950
Not even remotely.

[Anonymous No.14126968]

>>14125026
Honestly, and I know the DFW fanboys might lynch me for this, but I prefer Jonathan Franzen. I'd recommend Strong Motion or The Corrections to anyone. Infinite Jest was a slog, but definitely had its moments.

[Anonymous No.14126983]

>>14126775
kek, based

[Anonymous No.14127478]

I really wish I could discuss this book but every time I tried to do it on /lit/, reddit or irl, it's either ironic memery or unironic "what happened to hal??? this is water.... woah..." drill.

[Anonymous No.14127510]

>>14125026
Took me 1,5 months to finish it, definitely worth my time. Next day I was reading somebody's fucking thesis on it, never done that before. May read it again a couple of years later - discussions on Infinite Summer made me flip through parts of it again and see the details I've missed.

POVs ranked: Donold > Hal (ascended) > Marathe > Orin > Hal for the first 80% of the book

[Anonymous No.14127992]

>>14125141
how did this guy post the same book twice?!

[Anonymous No.14127997]

>>14125055
wasted 10 days of his life is how

[Anonymous No.14128004]

Its entertaining

[Anonymous No.14128011]

>>14128004
ly boring,
finished your sentence bro

[Anonymous No.14128754]

gotta admit dude had a taste for movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GopJ1x7vK2Q

[Anonymous No.14128764]

I don't know I trained intensively for tennis when I was a teen then I turned to drugs so I figured this book would hit too close to home. Picked up east of eden instead.

[Anonymous No.14128783]

>>14128754
>gotta admit the dude had a taste for movies

He listed like 3 films in there

>he liked eraserhead he’s kino pilled

[Anonymous No.14128821]

>>14126913
Is 1Q84 really that bad? I checked it out because I wanted something easy to read in Japanese, wasn't expecting it to be great literature or anything (based on what I know about Murakami) but I was hoping it'd be somewhat fun at least.

[Anonymous No.14128954]

>>14126689
I think Wallace said that the ending of the story can be deduced pretty accurately but not completely. Still can't believe the fucker threw some key elements to the ending in unassuming endnotes.

[Anonymous No.14129928]

There is a current pop song based on The Pale King... Wallace's best work.

[Anonymous No.14130503]

>>14125081
I want to a book that has the same effect on me without being over 1000 page. I want to escape this juvenile nihlism that I keep fallong back into

[Anonymous No.14131090]

Eraser Head
Lost Highway
Blue Velvet
....El Mariachi

[Anonymous No.14131522]

>>14129928
What song?

[Anonymous No.14131532]

>>14131522
that dude has been posting that same mysterious terse comment in every thread. he's not gonna say what song it is.

[Anonymous No.14131550]

>>14130503
just read it lol

[Anonymous No.14131665]

>>14128011
stfu nigger lol

[Anonymous No.14131703]

>>14125026
This guy is a complete wackjob.

[Anonymous No.14131709]

Got me to look at myself and get sober, which nothing else seemed to have the power to pull off, for whatever reasons.

Also it’s a brilliant book. DFW is easily one of the funniest authors I’ve ever read. His short story collections are brilliant, too. People say it’s hard but it’s not, just long, with some tedious sections here and there that play their part. Just force your way through them and don’t give up and you’ll be fine. I remember once I slogged through to about a third of the way into the novel it really picked up steam and I just couldn’t put it down.

[Anonymous No.14131726]

>>14126164
He voted for Reagan.

[Anonymous No.14133042]

>>14131522
>>14131522

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmQARKa3E7Q

Silent room, hundred strong some hearing distant Muzak
It's setting the mood
Tedium here, in his cubicle he's doing his work
The same thing daily
Papers and forms, staring concentrating on the ledger
No room for error
Hours on end, takes a dogged man of great endurance
And nobody knows

Nobody will speak a word, at least no speaking out loud
No note-comparing, no jokes told, it's just not allowed
No one lines up to see the numbing endless toil and grind
It takes so much not to snap, not to lose a mind

Here's some white noise for you
For your car and or cubicle
Music, meds and white noise
Ease the pressure down in your crucible

This is the world, you and your job in your space with your data
Your files and your flow charts
And your ten minute break, nobody knows, nobody cares, but you know
You know what you are
Today's frontier man herding, taming an unending paper flood
Guarding the fort from disaster for your people
The brotherhood of tedium in your spartan chair
A hero for our time in the stale office air

Here's some white noise for you
For your pod and or cubicle
Music and meds and the white noise
Ease the pressure down in your crucible

Will the drugs help? A little music? Isometrics
White noise, white noise in your pod, relaxing white noise

[Anonymous No.14133137]

>>14125026
>That black and Hispanic people can be as big or bigger racists than white people, and
then can get even more hostile and unpleasant when this realization seems to surprise
you.
>That females are capable of being just as vulgar about sexual and eliminatory
functions as males. That over 60% of all persons arrested for drug-and alcohol-related
offenses report being sexually abused as children, with two-thirds of the remaining 40%
reporting that they cannot remember their childhoods in sufficient detail to report one
way or the other on abuse.
>That
purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an
abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and
masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer, and sitting so close to
Ennet House's old D.E.C. TP cartridge-viewer that the screen fills your whole vision and
the screen's static charge tickles your nose like a linty mitten.
> That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people.
>That having sex with someone you do not care for feels lonelier than not having sex in
the first place, afterward.

[Anonymous No.14133640]

>>14126242
This early 2000s nihilistic 'if your enemies kill you, you win'* makes me squirm now but it's also comfy because I was there. Things may be worse now but at least saying this kind of shit today would make you a redheaded wife's son.

*I do not mean this to imply I actually believe the 9/11 commission report, that would be almost as bad as what I accuse DFW of.

[Anonymous No.14134746]

>>14133640
That's not what he said at all.