/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19411405]

Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.19411406]

>>19411405
No he has no thoughts because he is dead

[Anonymous No.19411407]

midwit pseud.

[Anonymous No.19411409]

David Poptart Walnuts

[Anonymous No.19411410]

>>19411405
pseud boolicked by failing academias and crypto-fascists

[Anonymous No.19411431]

>>19411410
What is a crypto fascist anyway?

[Anonymous No.19411690]

on of the few writers i actually always believe and admire

[Anonymous No.19411699]

>>19411690
Why?

[Anonymous No.19411712]

Hadn't any talent.

[Anonymous No.19411778]

>>19411699
Even in IJ (1996) he writes about problems we are facing today - consoomption, addiction to entertainment; reminds readers that we are always addicted to something and just replace one habit with the other. It's not simply "le television is... le bad, worse than le drugs", everyone spending way too much time on the internet knows that. His passages on depression are very personal, and even though his writing style is supposed to be overly academic and detached from average human thought process, it's still very reletable (I never smoked pot, so these episodes to me make no sense, but to someone else they just might). His interviews and the fact that he comitted suicide mean a lot to mean, if we're talking only individual feelings. I do agree, Wallace's style may seem overly academic, pretentious, like a pseud forcing himself to sound like a genius. I'm fairly certain he believed he was genius. And maybe it takes equal pseud to read IJ, but beneath the facade there was always hidden brilliance there.

[Anonymous No.19411938]

>>19411778
David's suicide is disturbing to me because I deal with many of the same problems and fear the same fate

[Anonymous No.19411948]

>>19411778
>he writes about problems we are facing today - consoomption, addiction to entertainment; reminds readers that we are always addicted to something and just replace one habit with the other.

Does he offer a solution?

[Anonymous No.19412012]

>>19411948
No. Although he identifies problems he doesn't offer solutions, because the search for those lead him to an early death. Wallace experimented with drugs - when being intoxicated led him nowhere, he thought maybe giving up EVERY habit and addiction was the solution.
I am afraid there is no solution other than leap of faith (into God like Kirkegaard, into anything, really). If you decide to be naive and un-ironic, then you have chances. Otherwise you're stuck like DFW in involuntary nihilism and repitition. It's like his example - man trapped in burning building decides to jump, because the alternative is far worse.
I believe /lit/s rejection of reddit nihilism and pessimistic view as a whole is better, and Wallace is the type of guy you go to, when you tried to struggle, but it wasn't enough; there is no substance, when the battle was all in vain.

[Anonymous No.19412038]

>>19411948
>Does he offer a solution?
Anon, I...

[Anonymous No.19412042]

>>19411405
He killed himself when he realised what a pseud and asshole he was. If he had a more normal profession, he wouldn't have killed himself.

[Anonymous No.19412047]

>>19411405
Adam Sandler? His movies are pretty popular here in Brazil.

[Anonymous No.19412061]

>>19411778
>we are always addicted to something
plot fag take. It is not addiction, it is seeking short term pleasure at the cost of the long term good, which you can do without being addicted to anything, unless you want to be a reductionist and say the addiction is to short term pleasure seeking but then you cause other problems with interpretation.
>>19412012
>No
Yes. Teaching our children to communicate honestly and to focus on the long term goal, not the short term pleasure, there is value in short term suffering. This is what all that stuff about communication, not speaking and parents is about.

>>19411948
Ignore that moron.

[Anonymous No.19412094]

>>19412061
>Teaching our children to communicate honestly
Oops, not just teaching our children but also being honest with ourselves, especially about our children. Even if you teach your children to honestly communicate it will do them no good if you are not honest. The whole sincerity thing, all sides have to buy in for it to work.

[Anonymous No.19412109]

>>19412061
You are correct about the short-term pleasure =/= addiction, and I actually agree with you about teaching children and all that, but I presonally don't think I can fix myself anyhow by now, that's why I go to DFW for comfort. I don't think there is a way for an adult to
>sincerely
change and really become someone else, better, improve. "fake it till you make it" also doesn't seem to help.
And I also agree I am an absolute ngmi retard, will kym soon

[Anonymous No.19412116]

>>19412109
*kms, i meant
me drunk

[Anonymous No.19412117]

>>19411948
>Does he offer a solution?
The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal". To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.

[Anonymous No.19412146]

>>19411431
It means saying you're not a fascist but promoting fascism or behaving like a fascist anyway. Think antifa.

[Anonymous No.19412150]

>>19411405
More like infinite breast.

[Anonymous No.19412174]

>>19412109
Fake it till you make it is the more of the same, the people in AA can only really be honest when in the AA setting, Ferocious Francis fails Gately when he needs him most for this reason. They are just jumping through hoops and getting rewards for doing so, Gately could not hold up a hoop for FF to jump through so FF could not help because it is all he knows, they never actually took the time to get to know each other, just rewarded each other in the ways AA outlined for them.

It is not difficult to make the change in your life and become that honest person, you just need to surround yourself with people who are and be willing to fail and keep learning until you succeed. This is the problem with fake it until you make it, it is not about learning and getting better. Start putting in the time and work to understand, you fell for the short term pleasures which the plot of IJ offers. It takes time and work to really sort out all of IJ and most things of worth also take time and work. Make those long term goals and start working towards them.

[Anonymous No.19412874]

>>19411778
Is Infinite Jest a good read?

[Anonymous No.19412882]

>>19412117
Between this and the religious undertones of IJ, people think he is a fascist.

[Anonymous No.19412887]

>>19412874
The best.

[Anonymous No.19412888]

>>19412882
Was David religious?

[Anonymous No.19412935]

>>19412888
Was pretty heavy in the NA scenes. Google gave me this: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/september-web-only/david-foster-wallace-broke-heart-suicide.html

[Anonymous No.19413011]

>>19412882
>religious undertones of IJ
There are no "undertones," there are just a few religious characters. Most of the religious content is not exactly pro religion and the the only part which could be viewed as pro is Mario but viewing it as pro destroys theme and Mario's purpose in the novel and is also antithetical to the novel.

[Anonymous No.19413083]

>>19413011
>"Saying God with a Straight Face": Towards an Understanding of Christian Soteriology in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest

[Anonymous No.19413105]

[Anonymous No.19413129]

>>19413083
>there is a paper on it!
>that means it is true!
And? Believe it or not I have already read it and it is antithetical. Mario believes in god wholeheartedly, but he never lets that get in the way of communication, he never tries to prove, he would rather understand others and their beliefs. He gives Hal an example of something which he sees as proof of god and asks why it is not proof for Hal, he wants to understand. DFW took his faith the same way, it was personal to him and had nothing to do with others, his faith was not proof that other views were wrong, just different.

[Anonymous No.19413184]

>>19413129
>the hazards of being free thinking about not thinking in infinite jest

[Anonymous No.19413272]

>>19411938
Do it, faggot

[Anonymous No.19413353]

>>19413184
You are making some assumptions there. I was in error for attempting to open discussion on the topic.

[Anonymous No.19413526]

i will never respect fags who anhero

[Anonymous No.19413534]

>>19411405
David Foster Wallace, good good American writer. Yeah yeah yeah, Infinite Jest. Brief interviews, with hideous mandated Foster Wallace: you're the best man in the whole world. David Foster Wallace, you're the best man to ever walk on the earth.

[Anonymous No.19413571]

>>19411405
Why should people live sincerely? Only retards who take themselves and life too seriously have such naive concerns about comedy called life. Sincerity is a way towards suicide and being vulnerable to tons of petty emotions, deceptions and unnecessary baggage. Cynicism is best attitude towards life.

>Society, what people call the world, is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later—this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!

-Nicolas de Chamfort

[Anonymous No.19413583]

>>19413571
>"Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself.

>And so who does not see it, apart from the young who are preoccupied with bustle, distractions, and plans for the future?

>But take away their distractions and you will see them wither from boredom.
Then they feel their hollowness without understanding it, because it is indeed depressing to be in a state of unbearable sadness as soon as you are reduced to contemplating yourself, and without distraction from doing so."

-Pascal, Pensees

[Anonymous No.19413682]

>>19411938
I mentioned to my psychologist that I've simply accepted that suicide is the only way my life will end, and I described it as the "only truly human death." I'm not even depressed, rather melancholic. I was depressed for a while but now I'm just tired. It's an interesting day when I actually feel depressed rather than dissociated.

[Anonymous No.19413704]

>>19413272
You first, retard

[Anonymous No.19413740]

>>19413682
>described it as the "only truly human death."
please elaborate further

[Anonymous No.19415136]

>>19411405
The Marshall Mathers LP was dope imo

[Anonymous No.19415147]

>>19413682
What did your psychologist say?

[Anonymous No.19415391]

>>19411409

[Anonymous No.19415400]

>>19411712
None I could discern, at least.

[Anonymous No.19415470]

>>19411405
Has anyone else noticed he kinda looks like Meg Griffin?

[Anonymous No.19415473]

Logic?

[Anonymous No.19415497]

>>19413105
wow he’s cute

[Anonymous No.19415543]

>>19415470
Ellie Goulding

[Anonymous No.19415652]

>>19413740
Other deaths, such as being murdered, starving, having some sort of accident, are not unique to humans. The will to live in other animals is so strong that we see animals slaughter each other, and we also see weak ones starve to death and so forth. One could argue that something like a car accident is human, but animals also can have accidents that end their life (consider a turtle going the wrong way, a sloth falling out of its tree, a wolf stepping in a hole wrong and damaging its leg). As such modern accidents are still within the same class as accidents that animals experience. If we went back five thousand years ago, the equivalent would be a hunting accident using a spear. Technology created new methods by which we could die, but not new classes of dying.
Suicide, however, is a situation in which our will to live is seemingly overpowered by some other force. although animals have, in random occasions, taken their life for unknown reasons, it seems humans are unique in their ability to consistently go through with it, not to mention contemplate it. If 27/100,000 men actually succeed yearly, imagine how many more think about it.
When I look at the Bible, I see suicide from the beginning. God told Man not to eat from the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or else they would surely die. Even though Eve did not immediately die, until she ate she was not aware that death was not immediate: she willfully did something that would, as far as she knew, kill her.
Moving forward, we see this: They had life and the opportunity to live, and yet they also had a choice to die. We often see it as a choice between ignorance and wisdom, but it almost seems as if suicide is the ultimate rejection of reality, and that it's a "release valve." If suicide was impossible, then humans would be slaves to life in the same way animals are. Since we have the ability to even CONSIDER rejecting the basic biological imperatives (suicide, chastity, martyrdom), we are able to go beyond instinct, and yet we can go even further if we actually COMMIT to these rejections. Humans are uniquely able to choose death. Animals cannot. Any other death is a class of death we share with animals.

[Anonymous No.19415682]

>>19415147
>>19415147
We just talked about why I felt hopeless and melancholic. He said that, since he's practiced for more than two decades, he can tell which people are actual suicide risks, which people are just ideating suicide, which people are threatening it for attention, and which people are just pessimistic (like myself), and so I wasn't institutionalized. I don't necessarily desire death at the moment, but I just feel like my persona and my life experiences inevitably lead to it. As time goes on, my distance from society grows (high functioning autism gets harder to mask when you can't drive and haven't had a GF, but these things only matter to normies the older you get, as a highschooler it had been excusable, it isn't as an adult). He's against medicating me since he doesn't see it as related to my problem: melancholy and anxiety are natural human response and they can only be called "disorders" if they inhibit functioning to a serious degree. As he put it, people with anxiety about a test because they didn't study don't have an anxiety disorder, but people that can't eat because of a fear of choking do.
We just spend a lot of time talking. For a while we talked an hour per week, but now that I am less stressed we've been doing it biweekly. It's usually the highlight of a week since he cares to listen about my autistic interests.
I had mentioned being lonely and he said something along the lines of "yet you're not impossible to talk with, like you imagine. You aren't cursed to be alone." This was in response to be feeling hopeless about friendship. He said that he had been talking to me for a while and that he had a general grasp as to who I am, even if he didn't fully understand specific things. If other people couldn't get a general grasp, this wasn't my fault but their fault. A lot of my stress/anxiety, he said, comes from my need to control other people's thoughts about me when this is impossible, so instead I should be my most authentic self, and even if I am alone for now, take hope in the fact that I can be understood, and that there are people out there who are willing to get different degrees of understanding regarding me.

[Anonymous No.19415686]

>>19415652
Philipp Mainländer called this rejection of Will-to-Live, Will-to-die.

[Anonymous No.19415747]

>>19411405
Oh man it's nice that we've had this thread twice a day for ten years now.

[Anonymous No.19415808]

>>19412874
some say Pale King is better

[Anonymous No.19415838]

>>19415808
I would say that TPK is the better novel from the standpoint of achieving the authors goals, but that is mostly because TPK was probably more planed and IJ evolved with it being structured after it was written.

[Anonymous No.19415858]

>>19415682
>>19415682

hey anon, idk if you ever read Jung, but he mirrors the advice you mentioned by saying in The Red Book words to the effect of 'individuals should be themselves in a group, otherwise they cannot hope to function within the group'

be yourself or you will just be made into something other people want you to be, and there is no greater sin than being what someone else wants you to be

[Anonymous No.19416019]

>>19415858
That's what my psychologist basically said, yeah. No reason to act like someone else for approval since even if I DO put on a mask, I can't actually make someone like me. Essentially it's futile, and so between the choice of suffering under a persona or being authentic, being authentic is the sound choice. I have not read Jung yet, but I do have a compilation of his letters with a minister called "On Theology and Psychology." I intend to read these in January of February.

[Anonymous No.19416110]

>>19411405
He's alright

[Anonymous No.19416165]

IJ 10/10. I only laughed twice

[Anonymous No.19416240]

[Anonymous No.19416268]

>>19416240
Who is she? I've heard people call her proto DFW.

[Anonymous No.19416283]

>>19416240
the last sincere one

[Anonymous No.19416479]

>>19411405
who is his successor?

[Anonymous No.19416562]

>>19416479
>who is his successor?
>>19416240

[Anonymous No.19416596]

>>19411405
I prefer Ernest Milton. His work, Pretentious Angst, is a masterpiece and a classic.

[Anonymous No.19416598]

>>19416479
>>19416562
am i supposed to recognize her? what is their name?

[Anonymous No.19416630]

>>19411405
what is his name? is he some kind of pathetic pessimist you faggots have a crush on like retarded romantics?

[Anonymous No.19417038]

>>19416598
yes, megan boyle, lurk more

[Anonymous No.19417916]

>>19413083
I took a class with Dave when he was writing this. Nice guy.

[Anonymous No.19418182]

>>19416268
it's megan

[Anonymous No.19418232]

>>19411405
I have a good feeling I would really, really hate this guy on a personal level but I enjoyed IJ overall.

[Anonymous No.19418857]

>>19411405
butterfaces having great feet was quite an insight for the time. feet pics hadn't been invented yet

[Anonymous No.19418879]

>>19411405
Where do they keep his cryofrozen brain?