/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15756540]

what am I in for?

[Anonymous No.15756552]

A good book with a difficult first chapter

[Anonymous No.15756557]

>>15756552
what did he think of twitter and trump?

[Anonymous No.15756558]

A very clean country.

[Anonymous No.15756582]

>>15756552
its very bad. I don't feel like reading it.

[Anonymous No.15756681]

Too many drugnames

[Anonymous No.15756687]

if you can get through the first ~200 pages it starts to open up

[Anonymous No.15756698]

>>15756540
A jest that goes on for infinity!

[Anonymous No.15756733]

>>15756687
I got through them a couple years back (hated it), then quit. Sad to hear this...

[Anonymous No.15756775]

>>15756540
shit

[Anonymous No.15756812]

>>15756540
Its pretty good and like others have said it gets better as it goes on

[Anonymous No.15756820]

>>15756557
He died before he had any reason to talk about them. He probably would've hated Twitter and found Trump utterly fascinating. DFW is about the only person whose take on Trump I'd actually give a shit about

[Anonymous No.15756836]

>>15756733
I feel like once you get to Eschaton it really really starts getting good.

[Anonymous No.15756872]

Everyone else on this thread is basically right. A little tricky at first, but enjoyable once you get the rhythm. Don't skip footnotes. If you like it, wait a year or so and read it a second time for maximum whoa factor.

[Anonymous No.15756892]

My strongest memories of this book are from the last 400 pages or so. I you like reading long books this one is a must read.

[Anonymous No.15757283]

>>15756540
Unironically a good book, it grew on me. It's a challenging book tho, I've read it for the memes and to be honest I don't remember much of the story (dunno if it's because I'm a fast reader or just low IQ). If you don'y have a strong will you'll drop it after a couple of hundreds pages. 7/10 to me.

[Anonymous No.15758838]

I'm around 70% done with this book and it's better than I expected. I thought it would be complete shit but there are some nuggets swimming among the turds.

[Anonymous No.15758877]

>>15756836

This was my experience as well. For me, it felt like the pacing increased exponentially to the point that I read the last ~150 pages in one day whereas it took me almost a month to get that far in the beginning. What a fucking precise writer. Im embarrassed just typing this.

[Anonymous No.15758886]

>>15756681
It's mostly in the beginning, though. He does cite and explain some drugs later, but it's a minimal component of the prose.

[Anonymous No.15758901]

>>15756836
Yeah, Eschaton is very funny, first time I read it I was so surprised and entertained by the whole situation I was laughing out loud

[Anonymous No.15758904]

The best storyline/thread of the book is Steeply and Marathe's conversation. The rest is just fluff.

[Anonymous No.15758928]

>>15758877
>What a fucking precise writer
Put in the time to really unravel the novel and really be amazed. I have been working on a webpage of a sort of linked index of it so one can see how everything connects, so I have been putting in a fair amount of time on the novel and disecting it, I do not think there is a single wasted line in the entire fucking novel, everything serves a purpose. The more I put into the novel the more I am impressed by it.

[Anonymous No.15758938]

>>15758928
How do I know you're <25yo?

[Anonymous No.15758955]

>>15758938
Because his passion hasn't been completely drained away yet?

[Anonymous No.15758976]

I read it first when I was 19. Reading it again now I'm 27 and I'm enjoying it a lot. Appreciating the intricate plot details a lot more. I love the writing too. It fills my head and I feel fatigued and calm after good sitting

[Anonymous No.15758981]

>>15758955
If someone told me they were passionate about Shakespeare, I wouldn't be able to guess their age at all. For all I care, it could be an oxygen-deprived 85yo typing and taking hits out of an oxygen tank. But this type of passion for DFW is shorthand for juvenilia. Not that it is bad, though. It's just interesting.

[Anonymous No.15758982]

Anyone read it chronologically? Kind of want to on my reread

[Anonymous No.15758984]

>>15758928

How does the Wardine be cry section contribute?

[Anonymous No.15758990]

>>15758976
Did the 8 year gap make any difference on how you're experiencing it?

[Anonymous No.15759003]

>>15758982
Is there any guide out there for the 20th anniversary edition? I'd be willing to buy those colored post-it thingies and give it a try.

[Anonymous No.15759049]

>>15758938
I was 25 when I read it for the second time, had just moved into my first home that I had all to myself. That was 15 years ago. Please do share how you reached your flawed conclusion.

>>15758955
It had been drained away for a good number of years, life kind of fell apart and I became liquored up. Seeing how the novel has changed for me through the changes in my life has also been interesting.

>>15758982
Read it without the endnotes instead, you will get more out of it. The skipping around in time is much easier to keep track of without the end notes. Part of the end notes purpose it to obfuscate by suggesting more compelling things than the simple honesty that is actually the core of the novel, it is a reflection of the main theme of the novel.

>>15758984
Provides important information regarding other characters who have a small but pivotal role in the novel.

[Anonymous No.15759065]

>>15759049
But the end notes have actual plot points in them, there are interviews with Orin, explanations about the jump-in-front-of-the-train Canadian game, etc.

[Anonymous No.15759131]

>>15759065
Sure, but it is not a plot driven work, they obfuscate. Just saying that reading without the end notes is more worthwhile than reading in chronological order, chronological order just makes things even cloudier. It is really hard to not flip back while reading, you see that superscript and remember that amazing endnote it points too, but if you show restraint you will be rewarded.

[Anonymous No.15759192]

My memory of reading it isn't perfect, so maybe some people here can corroborate what I'm about to say: past the first 200 pages, the prose gets a lot less technical.

That's something I don't see mentioned very often, but once you get past that point, it gets easier to read. Some of those early descriptions of the Enfield Tennis Academy and such are really dense and technical. But once the plot homes in on Gately, it focuses up on long form character studies. To me, it feels like Wallace was sort of laying the groundwork in the first 200 pages, and once that's there, he lets the heart of the book show a little more.

[Anonymous No.15759280]

>>15759192
Nah, the transistions between the differrent styles he uses for different parts becomes more seamless after about 200 pages. He is actually giving you a clue here, he is saying that there is important information contained in the stylistic changes! DFW teaches you how to decipher the book in those first sections, pay attention to anything abrupt or out of place, he will repeat that later on but it will not be at all obvious and will be very easy to just read right past without noticing.

[Anonymous No.15759929]

>>15756540
I recommend re-reading it immediately after you finish it which seems like torture but you'll appreciate it even more.

[Anonymous No.15759938]

>>15756540
a surprisingly comfy book

[Anonymous No.15759959]

>>15758981
>If someone told me they were passionate about Shakespeare, I wouldn't be able to guess their age at all.
>this type of passion for DFW is shorthand for juvenilia.
you're everything wrong with /lit/, brotha

[Anonymous No.15759994]

I'm 80 pages deep so far and not gonna lie, it's really hard to keep going bc the language is so advanced but posts like this everyday actually inspire me to keep pushing

[Anonymous No.15760997]

You are in for hundreds of pages of some stoner talking about how much he masturbates. Disgusting book.

[Anonymous No.15761406]

>>15760997
>t. Identified strongly with Erdedy.

[Anonymous No.15761599]

>>15759994
>the language is so advanced
You mean vocabulary? His sentence structure isn't really that confusing but he does send you to the dictionary every few pages (contrary to Eggers's foreword)

[Anonymous No.15761658]

I'm about 560 pages in and I only started liking it recently. Reading it at 27 is an interesting experience. I'm able to relate differently to all the characters plus the language become a little less difficult.

[Anonymous No.15761784]

>>15756540
You're in for a droopy poopy with a side of ice cream scoopy.

page 382, line 14

[Anonymous No.15762626]

Popping back to this fella >>15758938. When I was 25 or even 30 I would never have undertaken this website I am starting on, it is only my fairly recent interest in writing that has gotten me to consider such a massive undertaking. As I started to seriously consider writing a novel and all that it would take, I started reading differently and I started to see the amount of work a novel like IJ takes, I realized the amount of time I had given to it in my handful of readings was a fraction of a precent of the time DFW put into creating it, somehow that makes me feel like I am cheating him. The whole thing is mostly to get a better understanding of the process of creating such a larg and complex work but also it is a sort of thanks to David for writing this massively misunderstood novel, I really do have a strong desire to help people see the complexity and honesty of IJ.

>>15761599
For me the vocabulary was not an issue and I had little I needed to look up, but coming from a prescriptive grammar background, understanding how and why those long sentances worked was fairly difficult. I could just read through and accept them with no issues, but I wanted to understand their structures and why they worked so well.