/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1726426]

You guys are probably going to flame me for this but I can't get over the fact that DFW is a Christian.

I mean this guys IQ has got to be through the roof. How could he believe in such a ridiculous mythology? He just doesn't seem like a person who goes to church and listens to an hour of bullshit about how J.C is great and he saved us etc. Does anyone else feel this way?

[Brownbear !Wfn4kkpLag!!fEGZw8wphGR No.1726432]

saged and reported

[Anonymous No.1726438]

He was depressed. Depressed people often turn to faith to help them get through life, it helps them see past the dull misery they often feel. That may well be why.

[Anonymous No.1726442]

I think he was in it for the community of the church. There was all that AA stuff in IJ about community and AA as religion, so I can definitely understand him joining a church. I would doubt he believed in the Bible.

[Anonymous No.1726462]

OP is a pretty huge faggot.

[Anonymous No.1726466]

Do you people really go through life thinking that every single religious person you meet has some sort of weakness or some shit.

[Anonymous No.1726492]

atheism isn't retarded but vocal atheists are just as fucked up as vocal christians

[Anonymous No.1726582]

No. I do not feel that way. Him being a Christian actually makes a lot of sense.

Together with his friend Jonathan Franzen, what he is first and foremostly concerned about, is writing something meaningful in a postmodern world. Postmodernity has pretty much put us in a position where nothing is true outside its context. Colloquially, everything is relative.

>For me, the last few years of the postmodern era have seemed a bit like the way you feel when you're in high school and your parents go on a trip, and you throw a party. You get all your friends over and throw this wild disgusting fabulous party. For a while it's great, free and freeing, parental authority gone and overthrown, a cat's-away-let's-play Dionysian revel. But then the time passes and the party gets louder and louder, and you run out of drugs, and nobody's got any money for more drugs And things get broken and spilled, and there’s a cigarette burn on the couch, and you’re the host and it’s your house to, and you gradually start wishing your parents would come back and restore some fucking order in your house.

[Alyosha !.Due65wyfw No.1726589]

No. I do not feel that way. Him being a Christian actually makes a lot of sense.

Together with his friend Jonathan Franzen, what he is first and foremostly concerned about, is writing something meaningful in a postmodern world. Postmodernity has pretty much put us in a position where nothing is true outside its context. Colloquially, everything is relative.

>For me, the last few years of the postmodern era have seemed a bit like the way you feel when you're in high school and your parents go on a trip, and you throw a party. You get all your friends over and throw this wild disgusting fabulous party. For a while it's great, free and freeing, parental authority gone and overthrown, a cat's-away-let's-play Dionysian revel. But then the time passes and the party gets louder and louder, and you run out of drugs, and nobody's got any money for more drugs And things get broken and spilled, and there’s a cigarette burn on the couch, and you’re the host and it’s your house to, and you gradually start wishing your parents would come back and restore some fucking order in your house.

How can you write a socially important novel in such a world? How can you ever know you're doing the right thing in such a world? The first thing is what bothers Jonathan Franzen the most. Take The Corrections where he attempts to write one, with lots of important themes and stuff, but eventually, without reaching any conclusions, just ebbs out in a sad resignation to the world.

[Anonymous No.1726593]

>>1726582
How can you write a socially important novel in such a world? How can you ever know you're doing the right thing in such a world? The first thing is what bothers Jonathan Franzen the most. Take The Corrections where he attempts to write one, with lots of important themes and stuff, but eventually, without reaching any conclusions, just ebbs out in a sad resignation to the world.

David Foster Wallace is more bothered by the other thing. His tragedy is the tragedy of a man who is able to intellectually grasp the implications of the modern world, what you call having an IQ out of the roof, but who in his sensitivity still refuses to accept them. I don't have to give you an example of his intelligence, but just google around for stories written by for example his students of what a warm person he was; for example, telling his class, first thing of all, that it would take him some time to remember their names, but that once he did, he would never forget them. In one way, you could say an adult Holden Caulfield.

In any case, about 200 pages into Infinite Jest, after bits and pieces of disorienting and confusing exposition, he suddenly stops and starts listing up the things he knows absolutely for sure.

One of the truths he lists is that there is truly such a thing as an unselfish, good act.

That, to me, is David Foster Wallace at his best. But hardly a scientific fact.

[Anonymous No.1726594]

>Teen atheists can't fathom how an intelligent person could be religious

>>1726438
>>1726442

Because we know for certain that he couldn't possibly have actually believed in the religion, right?

[Anonymous No.1726605]

>People can't fathom how an intelligent person could possibly be sincerely religious.

High school going well?

[Anonymous No.1726634]

European here, so I don't really know this guy, I read the wiki on it and I mean it seems like it would be entertaining enough, if a bit obvious in some of it's references, ONAN... really? but a kind of surreal thing? I don't know, it just seems a bit... kitsch?

Why should I read this book /lit/? what makes it great?

[Anonymous No.1726787]