David Foster Wallace

[Anonymous No.20391260]

I've been on a binge of most of this man's work. Holy shit, he really tried to save us all. Nowadays everything is coated in sarcasm, self depreciating irony and cynicism.

[Anonymous No.20391279]

I’m going to be posting memes, but I am also reading Infinite Jest again

[Anonymous No.20391292]

>I presume it’s probably facilitate that the tennis coach mistook for accentuate, though accelerate, while clunkier than facilitate, is from a phonetic perspective more sensible, as a mistake.

[Anonymous No.20391300]

I've been re-reading some of his essays recently. They are serious fun, but I can't help but feel that they are also very late 1990s. If there were someone on his level commenting on culture today that sure would be swell.

[Anonymous No.20391302]

[Anonymous No.20391305]

I also really like his commencement speech at Kenyon College

[Anonymous No.20391308]

Redpill me on why I should read this

He just reminds me of some pseud from my time at community college.
>>20391292
This sentence reminds me of a less funny and more pedantic version of larry david without any of the fucking charm

is he just a cynical fucking retard the whole time who hates irony or what

[Anonymous No.20391314]

>>20391279
David Faggot Walrus.

[Anonymous No.20391318]

>>20391308
>Redpill me on why I should read this
What do you mean, this, he wrote lot of stuff. If you mean IJ, well you should probably read some of his essays first. If you feel like reading 1000+ pages of fiction written in that style, well you know where to look.

>is he just a cynical fucking retard the whole time who hates irony or what
His personality or rather the image you have of him is part of the fun of reading his work, yes.

[Anonymous No.20391320]

>he tried to save us from irony and cynicism

After reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, I get the impression that he was terminally bitter and cynical himself, with true disdain for his fellow man.

[Anonymous No.20391330]

>>20391260
I agree with his message, but his writing is fucking awful. I've never read anyone else who could say so little with so much.

[Anonymous No.20391333]

>>20391320
Wait you see cruise ships and don't think they are fucking weird?

[Anonymous No.20391335]

>>20391305
You couldnt pay me to say this retarded shit

I agree and it's still annoying
>>20391318
Look maybe he was a sweetie so I dont want to disparage him too much but it all just seems annoying

[Anonymous No.20391351]

>>20391260
The only sincere thing he ever did was hang himself

[Anonymous No.20391353]

>>20391333
No. I'm not a joyless cynic, so the idea of people having fun isn't foreign and strange to me.

[Anonymous No.20391360]

>>20391351
Suicide is inherently a treason against nature.

[Anonymous No.20391364]

>>20391320
Seriously, those boomers he met on the cruise treated him sincerely and kindly and he still had to go and shit on them in the most passive aggressive way possible. He was bitch made to his core no wonder he ended himself.

[Anonymous No.20391371]

>>20391300
This is the saddest part about his death to me. If he didn't die we would probably get another novel or two and a couple short story collections, which would be awesome, but I would really love to read his essays on modern internet culture, things like 4chan, youtube, twitch, twitter, etc etc.

[Anonymous No.20391372]

>>20391320
>>20391353
>>20391364
Honestly that's the first time I've heard of anyone having a reaction like this. Personally I could relate a lot.

I wish he had made a report on the horror that is Disneyland.

[Anonymous No.20391373]

>>20391360
Nature is a bitch, better suck my dick bitch.

[Anonymous No.20391385]

>>20391364
This also shone through to me in his one essay on 9/11 where he was wondering why everyone just had American flags around. This fuck grew up in the midwest, but is baffled by the idea that people would have American flags? What a pretentious asshole.

[Anonymous No.20391408]

>>20391372
>>20391385
Are you sure he's not just critiquing patriotism and corporatism.

[Anonymous No.20391432]

>>20391372
>>20391385
Are you sure he's not just critiquing patriotism and corporatism?

[Anonymous No.20391452]

>>20391260
Everyone else might be but I'm not. Irony and sarcasm is gay hipster shit and I prefer vagina, thanks

[Anonymous No.20391465]

never read him but for some reason i feel like this guy's stuff will effortlessly annoy me--like pynchon does

[Anonymous No.20391466]

>>20391432
He isn't, he's talking about feelings of genuine alienation and sadness in the very unreal life of American consumerism. I guess some people won't be able to realte (surprising that those people hang out on /lit) but it feels quite natural to me.

Like there are boomers at the local supermarket that explicitly ask for the little pamphlet with offers for next week; they are actively asking for looking forward to advertising. Makes me feel existential dread.

[Anonymous No.20391469]

I see a lot of people interested in Infinite Jest here. Some people are eager to jump in, others are intimidated. I've read the book about eleven times, so I just want say a few words and address people who are thinking about reading it.

Before you embark on your journey into the mind of a genius, you have to understand a few things that are very important. When we talk about David Foster Wallace, we’re talking about a man whose I.Q. could not be measured. Past 200, I.Q. tests get imprecise. We don’t know whether we’re dealing with a man with an I.Q. of 200 or 300 or what. We can’t measure it. When it comes to Wallace-tier geniuses, the standard tests simply don’t apply. You see, Wallace could have entered any field he wanted. He was a real-life Will Hunting. He could’ve been a doctor or a lawyer, or both, if he wanted. He could’ve been a pioneer in physics. He could’ve been a codebreaker for the NSA. But no. He decided to be a writer. He decided to devote his life to aesthetic beauty and to illuminating for us the way to live. That was the beauty and the tragedy of his life. In one way, it’s a blessing to have been born in Wallace’s time, to be able to hear his voice in interviews, to hear him delivering his famous commencement speech, which is already transforming people both intellectually and spiritually. On the other hand, I will surely die before we know even half of the secrets buried within the labyrinth of Infinite Jest. That I consider a curse.

It’s been eighteen years since Infinite Jest was published and scholars have only begun to come to terms with its full implications. This is what you must understand. Wallace reverse-engineered not only the novel, but all of Western literature as well as language itself. Packed within Infinite Jest is Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses, and everything else. Hell, it even serves as an overview of human history, from dawn to today. It’s a book you could spend a lifetime studying. A lifetime spent in bliss, no doubt. It would be more worthwhile to spend one’s life reading and rereading Infinite Jest than to achieve being “well-read” in the traditional sense.

I don’t say this to intimidate you, but to encourage you. You must understand that, on your first time through, you will not understand everything Wallace is trying to communicate to you. Don’t worry. He knew things about life that we won’t discover for decades. Your job is merely to get on the road. In the decades to come, we may, if we’re lucky, discover scientific applications for the new ways of thinking Wallace gave us. We may have to throw out science altogether. We simply don’t know. For now, we have to be content with our vanguard roles. We are the ones who will break the ground and loosen the soil for Wallace’s future interpreters. This is not only our pleasure, but our duty. And for that, as Wallace famously said, “I wish you way more than luck.”

[Anonymous No.20391484]

>>20391466
Oh wow old people that survived hard economic times are spendthrifts. SAVE MW NIGGERMAN.

[Anonymous No.20391491]

>>20391484
It's not about spending, it's about spending lots of money on being constrained in small ship sounded by artificial spectacle.

[Anonymous No.20391530]

>>20391491
You get to spend your money on a huge ship with nice ass pools jacuzzis And spas. You get good ass buffets and open bars. You get some nice singer like Burt Bacharach or Tom Jones to sing ballads
Why are you such a miserable cunt.

[Anonymous No.20391558]

>>20391466
>people saving a few dollars on groceries gives me existential dread

Maybe you should get out more.

[Anonymous No.20391630]

neck yourself faggot

[Anonymous No.20391690]

>>20391530
Only an American would think a cruise is a vacation. Don't you ever get sick of eating and drinking yourself into a coma?

[Anonymous No.20391740]

>>20391690
Okay yuroshit. It's not my fault that your idea of fun is vacationing in Spain crimea or some southeast asian sex tourist shithole.

[Anonymous No.20391759]

>>20391302
this is great

[Anonymous No.20391991]

Men will honestly write thousands of pages of self-pitying bullshit before they get actual therapy.

[Anonymous No.20392041]

>>20391469
Who on earth wrote this

[Anonymous No.20392112]

>>20391305
A wheelbarrow full of horse cocks.

[Anonymous No.20392176]

What do you guys think he'd say about modern internet culture?

[Anonymous No.20392408]

>>20392176
People on the internet are so me-ACK

[Anonymous No.20392606]

>>20391260
His essays are all great. I wish I could read Big Red Son again for the first time.

[Anonymous No.20392814]

>>20391466
That's not existential dread. That's gay dread or something like that. Anyway, you will never be a real woman.

[Anonymous No.20392882]

>Nowadays everything is coated in sarcasm, self depreciating irony and cynicism.

is everything really though? the blm people don't seem sarcastic or self-deprecating to me? the people who think the election was stolen don't seem that way? the people who stand with ukraine don't seem that way? the people who think they will die if they catch a coronavirus don't seem that way? the people who think the world will end in 10 years due to climate change don't seem that way? if anything everyone is too god damn serious. the problem with writing about pop culture shit like dfw is that it's dated already and the dude's only been dead for like 15 years.

[Anonymous No.20392886]

>>20391466
>old ppl on social security look forward to sales and bargains
when u grow up and have to buy your own groceries you'll understand

[Anonymous No.20392914]

>>20392882
Every piece of pop culture is littered in postmodern irony and cynicism. What are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.20392931]

>>20392914
i don't really consume pop culture but the little i have seen took itself pretty seriously: drill rap? it might seem over the top, but it takes itself seriously. i saw the new dune movie, it took itself pretty seriously. i don't watch tv but the last show i watched, that southern gothic thing with matthew mccaughney, true detective or whatever, took itself seriously with all kinds of melodramatic monologues in shit. idk dude.

[Anonymous No.20392948]

>>20392931
Modern marvel movies and pretty much most American media is drenched in irony and sarcasm.

[Anonymous No.20392975]

>>20392948
oh i did watch that joker movie, another melodramatic slog, but i guess since it had some jokes u'd consider it ironic or something

[Anonymous No.20392984]

>>20392975
Modern media consumption is designed around cynicism. The executives who greenlight these sorts of things aren't doing this because they hate their media properties. They're doing it because sincerity isn't as cost effective.

You make a shitty film/show but give it a cynical tone, and the you get to use the excuse that it being shitty is part of the tone. If it becomes a hit, you get a bunch of idiots defending it as "making a statement" and it's a flop you flip the script and say "we're sorry it was a rushed product caused by XYZ." Compare that to a sincere or earnest product, those are ride and die. The Black Cauldron and Treasure Planet are evidence of that. They were sincere products that failed (and if you look closer they failed because of executive meddling which is a look executives want even less of)

The Qwipism of the MCU was developed entirely because of this mindset. Nothing is serious. Nothing is sincere. Be cynical. Be cruel. Nothing has value. Consume product because you risk missing out if you don't. That's what these modern companies want. They want junkfood for your soul because nobody swears off a junkfood because of one bad bag of chips, but one bad lobster and suddenly people start saying they have a Shellfish allergy. They want your anger, your apathy or blind consumption. If you hate these films and what Disney's production you need to go out of your way not to consume their products and convince people to watch other stuff not because Disney is bad, but because the other stuff is better. Disney can spin you calling their products shit to bait people with FOMO, and losing one sale is a drop in the bucket if you don't go out of your to convert others.

[Anonymous No.20393039]

>>20392882
This is because Wallace was writing from a former generation, and was steeped in a certain milieu — that of the pop culture and mainstream media of his time (Generation X), as well as the literature, the postmodern and avant-garde artistic circles. Hence, Wallace’s worldview is like an obscure autistic little niche based on modern disintegrating hyper-rapid American culture with a surfeit of information and new communications media and technology, as well as the whole system of hyper-consumerism and advertising, which we haven’t necessarily evolved to keep pace with, mentally and emotionally. Keep in mind when he makes these observations on sincerity and irony, he’s someone, as a writer interested both much in the literature and avant-garde theories of art of his own day and circle, and the pop culture he absorbed, that he’s so much as saying, “There’s a sincerity and spiritual striving in the works of Dostoyevsky (a famous writery writer whom I, David Foster Wallace, have also read, since I am a modern famous writery writer) I don’t necessarily find in the works of modern writers as apparently different like Pynchon on the one hand or Bret Easton Ellis on the other hand (ditto), who share this same hip irony and cynical transcendence of tradition.”

Wallace is someone who disappeared so far up his own asshole in this new soulless American cultural milieu plus, that he created this outrageously detailed, autistic, claustrophobic little niche of, “What reality and humanity and modern literary and mainstream media and pop culture seems like to me, David Foster Wallace.” In this little cranny, he paradoxically disappeared so deeply up his own asshole, thus becoming the characteristically “Wallacian” writer he is — this metamodernist sprawling hyper-detailed experimental bric-a-brac, colloquial yet poetically literary, high-culture (references to Joyce and Shakespeare and the like) yet low-culture (also to the Brady Bunch and Beatles), while claiming he was precisely NOT trying to escape up his own asshole like other postmodernist writers did, and that he was trying to transcend modern hip cynicism — so, over his essentially cynical, emotionally and psychologically damaged nature as a victim of the claustrophobic consumerism of the place and age he lived in, he artificially and painstakingly grafted over it, this idea of a “sincerity”, an “authenticity”, which he couldn’t actually reach, only pretend and try so hard to — hence, “Yes, I’m going to write this 1000+ page long book, hundreds of pages of which are endnotes, but I’m also going to include stream-of-consciousness analyses of just some average drug addict from Boston, an apparently low-class unsympathetic character, one people with PhDs in literature might find themselves too ‘hip’ and ‘cynical’ to relate to, but I’ll try to MAKE it relatable.”

[Anonymous No.20393060]

WHAT THE FUCK WAS RICKS SECRET AT THE END OF BROOM OF THE SYSTEM? MR. BEADSMAN KNEW GRANDMA LENORE WANTED TO GIVE THE FORMULA TO GERBER WHICH IS WHY HE NEVER CALLED THE COPS WHEN SHE WENT MISSING RIGHT? HELP MEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.20393069]

>>20391385
He grew up in the midwest, but the essay is like an anthropological report on his fellow midwesterners for a swanky east-coast-magazine readership whose relationship to patriotism and response to 9/11 were very different.

[Anonymous No.20393070]

>>20392931
You didn’t actually read IJ or it’s probably one of 5 books you’ve finished if you can claim that life isn’t drenched in irony and people will say whatever it takes to justify their morally justified endorphin high.

[Anonymous No.20393096]

>>20393070
junkies sure will lie to justify getting high but i wouldn't call it irony

[Anonymous No.20393113]

>>20392984
dude what is it with people from reddit and marvel movies lmao calm down if u think their too ironic or something don't fuckin' watch 'em. last marvel movie i watched was spiderman in like 1999 or something which was like peak dfw era, and there's was nothing ironic or cynical it was just standard hollywood blockbuster shit.

[Anonymous No.20393114]

>>20393113
I don't remember joker making some epic quip just after he killed the TV presenter or his mom.

[Anonymous No.20393130]

>>20393114
so when arnold schwarzenegger blows some dude away and says a one liner you think this is some signal or deep american ennui or something? hollywood movies have been doing that since i can remember. if bruce will says a one liner after he blows up a building or something, that's not some conspiracy to erode your sincerity, it's minor comedic relief after an action sequence.

[Anonymous No.20393254]

>>20393130
>He's now deliberately misunderstanding the discussion
You type like a retard and think like an even bigger one.

[Anonymous No.20393268]

>>20393254
>marvel movies have jokes in them, this proves dfw is a literary genius!
ok dude great

[Anonymous No.20393277]

sneed

[Anonymous No.20393288]

>>20393268
There's a difference between comedic relief in certain moments and away from serious moments and deliberately inserting jokes into tense scenes just so that your audience doesn't feel any legitimate emotion.

[Anonymous No.20393295]

>>20393288
so cancel disney+ and get criterion channel? it's full of super serious artsy shit where nothing happens for 20 minutes

[Anonymous No.20393303]

>>20391260
Hey, what the fuck you guys, I was reading Hamlet for school today and I realised that Hamlet namedrops DFW's magnum opus randomly. What did Shakespeare mean by this? Is this an Elizabethan metatextual echo across time and space?

[Anonymous No.20393311]

>>20391364
He was a boomer himself. He was born in '62

[Anonymous No.20393314]

I think it's hilarious how he goes on and on about sincerity, but his brand of sincerity is the passive aggressive denim "rose in the guitar case" brand of bohemian idealism which is exactly the sort of thing that people wanted to die in the early 2000s. I mean, there was a 'curve' to sincerity that he was completely unaware of in his lifetime. Fedora Ronin are extremely sincere, but they're tone-deaf to the zeitgeist of their environment which is more often than not in tune with the natural behaviours of humanity. Academic life is unnatural and I can't help but feel that in pursuit of his own identity he inadvetently became the most unnatural expression of himself. "I'm unique. I'm better than the people around me. The people I've never been able to understand at all."

[Anonymous No.20393319]

>>20393303
it's another example of how elizabethan england was coated in sarcasm, self depreciating irony and cynicism!

[Anonymous No.20393467]

>>20393295
>He still doesn't understand the argument

[Anonymous No.20393481]

>>20391466
touch grass faggot

[Anonymous No.20393541]

>yippee kay yay mf

OMG IS THAT ... A WHIMSICAL QUIP? SAVE ME BANDANAMAN!

[Anonymous No.20393604]

>>20391469
nice post, mind if I save it?

[Anonymous No.20393613]

>>20393604
It's all yours, just make sure you do proper MLA citation if you're going to use it.

[Anonymous No.20393617]

So tired of people psychoanalyzing this poor nigger. He was a great author, and IJ is a great work.
>uhhhh he preached sincerity but wasn't actyualkly always sincere himself gottem
you fucking niggers who gives a fuck how autistic he was in real life IJ obviously contains sincere, interesting, and well-articulated messages, and what more can you ask for from a guy
also very prescient like OP notes which is the best indicator of an accurate and valuable worldview

[Anonymous No.20393618]

>>20391260
no he didnt. maybe early in his career, but oblivion and pale king have completely black worldviews

[Anonymous No.20393646]

>>20393617
yeah, he comes off so lame in interviews, but who gives a shit about him personally. i'm into texts, don't give a shit about the author t b h.

[Anonymous No.20393800]

>>20391466
>Like there are boomers at the local supermarket that explicitly ask for the little pamphlet with offers for next week; they are actively asking for looking forward to advertising.
How can you be so cynical? Maybe they're looking to save some dough, maybe they're hoping to see something that they hadn't thought of, and want to try.

[Anonymous No.20393808]

>>20392931
>new dune
I am in the unfortunate situation of watching many new movies and shows as they come out, and Dune was a shining ray of hope in the sea of self-conscious, ironic dross.

[Anonymous No.20393816]

>>20393295
what the fuck kind of response is this? we're talking about whether cynical, ironic shit exists, and you're just saying "dont' want it dude"? What do you think we're even talking about

[Anonymous No.20393840]

>>20391302
Good to know I can type 2x faster than one goated on the words.

[Anonymous No.20393892]

>>20393840
Yeah bro that image is so fucking real and just btfos DFW!

[Anonymous No.20393896]

>>20391302
This has so much soul it's unbelievable.

[Anonymous No.20394229]

>>20392882

Pretty much this. Post-modernism and irony are dead. It has been replaced by a hysterical sincerity and a conformist fanaticism that's far worse.

[Anonymous No.20394250]

>>20392176
"we've never been more connected and yet never so far apart" or something like that

[Anonymous No.20394264]

>>20393295
lmao get a brian, moran

[Anonymous No.20394322]

Can someone post the anime DFW if they have it please

[Anonymous No.20394358]

>>20391305
damn what books do i need to read to make my own brain voice like a tuning fork?

[Anonymous No.20394806]

>>20394229
Clicktivism doesn't count. Sincerity isn't believing whatever to justify a dopamine laced moral high.

[Anonymous No.20394860]

>>20393114
>What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?
Not very witty, but it works.

[Anonymous No.20394864]

>>20391469

[Anonymous No.20394874]

>>20391320
>he was terminally bitter and cynical
Yes, it's called depression.

[Anonymous No.20394878]

>>20392931
Everything you mentioned was created after DFW. For the sort of peak irony that his work was responding to, look at media from the 90s/00s.

[Anonymous No.20394884]

>>20394878
op said "nowadays"

[Anonymous No.20394895]

>>20391300
His essays were totally embarrassing. I don't know how he showed his face in public after publishing the 9/11 one.

[Anonymous No.20394899]

>>20391371
The saddest part about his death is him not writing new essays for you to read? Seems a bit weird.

[Anonymous No.20394905]

>>20391305
>it's like eating candy for the soul
Jesus Cringing Christ.

[Anonymous No.20394944]

>>20394905
Yes. It's bad writing.

[Anonymous No.20394957]

>>20394905
>candy for the soul
So it's pleasurable in the moment but bad for your health in the long run?

[Anonymous No.20395001]

>>20394884
Yes. Which is the truth. Almost every piece of media nowadays is littered with it.

[Anonymous No.20395020]

>>20393314
He deeply hated himself for his passive pussy attitude. When he was teaching at that California college he admitted that he shitted all over one students story just because he was talented and confident. Like what the fuck how petty can you be?

[Anonymous No.20395030]

>>20394884
"Nowadays" refers to the recent past, as we are currently living in the future.

[Anonymous No.20395037]

>>20395020
>When he was teaching at that California college he admitted that he shitted all over one students story just because he was talented and confident.
lol where can I learn more about this?

[Anonymous No.20395300]

>>20395037
He also abused his wife.

[Anonymous No.20395314]

>>20395300
Who didn't.

[Anonymous No.20395378]

Generation X and their smug detached ethos has been a disaster for America.

[Anonymous No.20395434]

>>20393113
Admittedly Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films are very earnest

[Anonymous No.20395468]

>>20395037
I can't find the source at the moment but take a look at this as consolation.
https://terrorhousemag.com/david-foster-wallace/
I'm sure the author of this is an anon.

[Anonymous No.20395472]

>>20391432
>corporatism
You don't know what that word means

[Anonymous No.20395484]

>>20394229
Having autism, I always saw irony and detachment as dishonesty and while I'm no fan of the current zeitgeist of humanity, I can't help but think that it's better to not be lied to so the sickness is on full display than being lost in a sea of questions and uncertainty

[Anonymous No.20395489]

>>20393069
>selling out to the enemy

[Anonymous No.20395551]

>>20391452
>I prefer vagina, thanks
No straight guy would ever say this, you LARPing weasely queer.

[Anonymous No.20395596]

>>20395468

[Anonymous No.20395716]

>>20395468
Eh.. could only get a few paragraphs in before I stopped. He attacks his fans and supposed plagiarism more than anything else. I wonder why he even wrote this.

[Anonymous No.20395816]

>>20391260
Infinite Jest just got translated in my country, and the translator, while loves Wallace and his works, considers him a bit too conservative to his taste.

Is this true? Can he be considered a conservative?

[Anonymous No.20395827]

>>20391292
I gotta read this book in english one day

[Anonymous No.20395932]

>>20395816
If "conservative" is advocating for the importance of healthy families and not being addicted to entertainment or drugs, then yeah he's a conservative
There's also some tentative pro-religious stuff

[Anonymous No.20395943]

>>20391360
Our whole culture is treason against nature. I see suicide as a natural response to a completely unnatural existence. I have my own reasons for not killing myself, but worrying about committing an act of treason against nature is not one of them.

[Anonymous No.20396319]

>>20394322
This one?

[Anonymous No.20396889]

>>20392882
Wrong.

[Anonymous No.20397797]

>>20395300
>Of course, those are just the literary crimes. Here are the acts of outright abuse:

>He pushed the poet and memoirist Mary Karr from a speeding vehicle.
>He threw a coffee table at Karr and shattered it.
>After attempting to pay Karr back for destroying the table he threw at her, he demanded that she give him shards of the table to keep.
>He stalked Karr and punched out her car window.
>He assaulted a student during a creative writing class he was teaching.
>He stalked Karr and her five-year-old son, and threatened to shoot Karr’s husband with a gun he’d bought for that express purpose.
>As Karr elaborated in one tweet: “tried to buy a gun. kicked me. climbed up the side of my house at night. followed my son age 5 home from school. had to change my number twice, and he still got it. months and months it went on.”
>He had sex with his creative writing students and, while on book tour, a 17-year-old

(okay last one is based)

[Anonymous No.20399710]

>>20397797
Damn.

[Anonymous No.20399716]

>>20397797
>He pushed the poet and memoirist Mary Karr from a speeding vehicle.
Loved how the Hans Zimmer soundtrack emphasized his lightning-quick motoric movements when pushing her out

[Anonymous No.20399878]

>>20393060
the ending of that book blew my mind after i read it but it was so all over the place i dont remember it at all lol

[Anonymous No.20399888]

>>20393060
Did you really read the whole thing? Respec

[Anonymous No.20399898]

>>20394905
That line was particularly bad.

[solarfair00;;;;5006 No.20399964]

>>20392984
>Nobody swears off a junkfood because of one bad bag of chips, but one bad lobster and suddenly people start saying they have a Shellfish allergy.
Pretty yinyu.

>They're doing it because sincerity isn't as cost effective.
If it's not even cost effective for huge companies, how can it be cost effective for the little guy? It's rational for Havel's Greengrocer to feign FOMO because he'll be isolated and broke without it.

>They were sincere products that failed
Black Cauldron grossed $21M in 1985. Is that failure?
For comparison, The Fox and the Hound grossed $39.9M in 1981.
The Fox and the Hound was a success because it cost $12M. If Black Cauldron had cost that much it would have been a success.
Conversely, Black Cauldron was a failure because it cost $44M. If The Fox and the Hound had cost that much it would have been a failure.
Why was it necessary to spend 4x the money to be "sincere"?

Bonhoeffer. Bordieu. Rule #1: Know your audience. Know the media [sic] through which you can reach your audience. If your audience is small, than you must be small. If your audience is scattered, then you must be scattered. And if your audience is despised by the State, then you must not attempt to reach your audience through State-owned media [sic], nor tolerate an audience that's so lazy as to want to reach [and pay] you through State-owned media [sic].

My discord is in my name, also on IRC, Fediverse, etc.

[Anonymous No.20400340]

>>20392041
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/redditor-infinite-jest/
a redditor

[Anonymous No.20400366]

>>20395816
He's personally conservative, I don't think you should try to extend that to his political leanings, which were liberal in the American sense. A good example might be his stance on abortion, where he describes himself as simultaneously pro life and pro choice- that when a friend of his goes to get one he thinks what she's doing is wrong and she shouldn't, but she still should have the right to do so

[Anonymous No.20400375]

>>20397797
If you cut out the made up shit by Karr, known BPD psychopath, that doesn't sound so bad. Assaulting a student though seems kinda crazy

[Anonymous No.20401458]

>>20399964
This

[Anonymous No.20401481]

>>20391260
imo, Consider the Lobster is a classic essay, as is Authority and American Usage. His verbosity gets tiresome, though. There are mch better writers.

[Anonymous No.20401518]

>>20400375
Him striking out against Donna Tart sounds hilarious. Euginides was probably laughing his dick off watching him do it.

[Anonymous No.20401569]

>>20391279
the book is so lost on its own times period, so informed by urban legend and juvenalia that it hits with all of the self-awareness and insight of a nirvana music video: here we are now, entertain us

[Anonymous No.20401707]

>>20391260
He couldn't even save himself, anon.

[Anonymous No.20402252]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20402688]

>>20391292
>more sensible, as a mistake.
I hate when he adds a clause at the end of the sentence after a comma
>But he thought it was quite large, the cock.
>But he knew he'd never feel better, inside.
>His life would never be the same again, was the thing.
irritates me to no end for some reason

[Anonymous No.20402702]

>>20391330
other than William Vollman you mean

[Anonymous No.20402734]

Had a college course on classics of American lit since 1945 and postmodernism. Novel list started with Ellison, then Heller, Didion, Morrison, Atwood, Delillo. It was in chronological order. Ended with two weeks of Wallace. Keep in mind they were a very prominent literature scholar, and very based, believe it or not. He never said anything to the tune of "Wallace is the new GOAT" or whatever, but he chose to include Wallace's writing at the end of the semester for a reason.

[Anonymous No.20403860]

peak psued

[Anonymous No.20403943]

>>20400366
That's my opinion on abortion too. I find it immoral, but not everything immoral should be illegal, and people should have the right to make decisions I don't like

[Anonymous No.20403951]

>>20403943
>and people should have the right to make decisions I don't like
So you're a cuck.

[Anonymous No.20404026]

>>20403951
Well I reserve my right to judge them for their decision

[Anonymous No.20405820]

>>20400375
What did the student even do?