/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20609350]

Is he actually good or is he a fake intellectual?

How poignant were his observations about the modern world even at the time? Was it stuff that everyone already knew?

[Anonymous No.20609583]

>>20609350
It is if he was good or bad. He definitely wasn't a pseud.

[Anonymous No.20609595]

>>20609350
He never said or did anything of great consequence.

[Anonymous No.20609627]

>>20609350
fake intellectual

[Anonymous No.20609656]

>>20609350
I owe much of my conservatism to him. Very grateful I read his work in my early 20's. Helped me get my life back together and realign myself with what I find sacred.

[Anonymous No.20609659]

>>20609656
retard

[Anonymous No.20609891]

he was pretentious. he realized this, and roped himself

[Anonymous No.20609925]

>>20609350
Fake

[Anonymous No.20609941]

>>20609350
Anon.
Look at what's on his head.

[Anonymous No.20609960]

>>20609941
A bandanna

[Anonymous No.20609978]

>>20609350
The secret is that everybody already knows everything. A visionary is just the one who says it out loud. A true genius can somehow actually change it.
DFW was a visionary but not a genius and he couldn't live with that failure. It's the fate of a life obsessed with excellence.

[Anonymous No.20610303]

>>20609350
what do you think pussy? Or were you not confident in yourself?

For me? Infinite jest is a really great book and is pretty much a magickal tome.

[Anonymouṡ No.20610421]

>>20609350
4chan loves to go to extremes. They want everyone to be either a genius or worthless. Most people, DFW included, are somewhere in between.

He was, in /lit/speak, an intelligent midwit. His main problem was that he was basically too conformist. He tried to interpret the entire world through a contemporary liberal lens. You can't make that work, however hard you try, and however clever you are.

[Anonymous No.20610426]

>>20610421
>midwit
He won awards for his undergraduate work on maths and philosophy, then got into an Ivy League for his PhD.

[Anonymous No.20610430]

>>20609659
Please elaborate.

[Anonymous No.20610579]

Bit of a midwit writer who wrote books much that were much better than the garbage usually put out, but IF is far from the masterpiece Moby Dick, Ulysses, or GR is. Also he, luckily for him, happened to catch the tail end of two eras: one was of the maximalist postmodern/postmodern-influenced novel being seen as the ultimate literary accomplishment, which already has had its pushback in the literary world. The second one, the era of the great white, male novelist which is over more due to cultural influences (feminism, metoo, blm, etc.) and the fact that the publishing world is definitely pushing more diversity than before. I doubt he’d get the marketing push now as he did in the nineties.

Also, after the abuse allegations got pushed to the fore there’s been a real devaluation in him and his work (fair or not). I suspect he’ll end up at the level of Updike or Barth when it’s all said and done, mainly due to shifting cultural standards than the quality of his work.

I work in publishing so that’s just been my observation.

[Anonymous No.20610583]

>>20610579
That should be IJ not IF, obviously

[Anonymous No.20610585]

>>20610579
>Infinite Fest

[Anonymouṡ No.20610668]

>>20610426
Yes, he's a fairly high IQ midwit. If you're defining "midwit" as something like "100-115 on an IQ test", then feel free to use Taleb's "IYI" ("Intellectual Yet Idiot") instead.

[Anonymous No.20611040]

>>20610668
>posting on an Indonesian basket weaving website

[Anonymous No.20611154]

>>20610430
Please go back to r3ddit

[Anonymous No.20611170]

>>20610579
>i work in publishing
tits or gtfo

[Anonymous No.20611316]

>>20609350
He's wearing a stupid hat, he's obviously fake.

[Anonymous No.20611341]

>>20609350
Maybe try reading his work instead of asking contrarians what to think of him

[Anonymous No.20611574]

>>20611341
Someone having a different opinion isn't being contrarian.

[Anonymous No.20612008]

>>20611574
Except you want to dislike everything to express how witty you are. Listing adjectives is not an opinion when you don’t even read (anything)

[Anonymous No.20612043]

Why does he wear the hat? Was he bald and hiding his skullet? I've never seen him without a hat.

[Anonymous No.20612062]

>>20612008
Well, how about this substantive criticism: the Infinite Jest movie plot device was obviously ripped off from Monte Python's (not that great "The funniest joke in the world E G1 sketch. What you are hearing is the sound of not even one hand clapping because even cursory research reveals that the "death from laughter theme seems to have been around since antiquity. You want authors with humanity? Why don't you read a bit of Mark Twain for beginners. Now there was a real man at the pen.

[Anonymous No.20612078]

>>20612008
Don't produce garbage and I won't tell you that you are producing garbage. Fair?
Did you read David Foster Wallace, by any
chance? It's a swill of teenage depression
packaged into a hack of English. Does
teenage depression appeal to people who
never grew up? Of course it does That's
why he is popular. Does popularity make
him a great writer? No. Am I allowed to say that? Yes. You are free to explain to all of us why am wrong. Good luck with that.
>"I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair."

[Anonymous No.20612092]

>>20609350
Some of his writing is a demonstration of neuroticism. Is that intellectual, hard to say, I'm thinking of his story Good ole Neon. Have not read infinite jest, but I heard the jist of that is we're living this fake dream reality of social media and mainstream media and authenticity, whatever that is, fades out

[Anonymous No.20612127]

>>20610421
>intelligent midwit
this seems like a conflicting description. Wouldnt an intelligent person by definition not be a midwit?

[Anonymous No.20612137]

>>20610668
midwit literally means of average intelligence

[Anonymous No.20612265]

He is smarter than anyone in this thread, that is for sure.

[Anonymous No.20612314]

>>20612043
He would sweat profusely.
He has characters in both IJ and the Pale King who deal with heavy sweating.

[Anonymous No.20612785]

Do you guys think he's autistic?
>Refused to wear anything other than 100% cotton shirts and didn't want to be uncomfortable.
>His sister described him as "Someone that just came out of a space capsule" in terms of how he handled social norms. Everything seeming foreign to him.
>Almost all of his characters being caricatures of himself
>The stuttering in interviews
>The way he often asks "Did that make sense? I'm not sure if that made sense."
>The maximalist prose
>The way he was so big on being alone and in solitude for many years
>His struggles with mental illness

[Anonymous No.20613003]

>>20612265
I don't know anything about him at all, but my impression (and that of others) of his stupid hat is like to see a Man leaping around in a colorful leotard, and I cannot take it serious.

It almost looks like a Zoroastrian priests cap (a forerunner to the papal fish hat), is that what it is?

[Anonymous No.20613032]

>>20612785
He was a textbook sperg imo.

[Anonymous No.20613054]

>>20612785
>Refused to wear anything other than 100% cotton shirts

That’s not autistic. Pure cotton shirts feel better, breathe better, don’t hold smells, and get softer as they age - unlike synthetics or synthetic blends. Except for maybe a linen shirt for hot weather you shouldn’t wear anything else for day to day life.

[Anonymous No.20613094]

A fucking angloid.

[Anonymous No.20613916]

>>20612127
No, you can be of high intelligence and middle wit. That's what midwit means, midwit.

[Anonymous No.20614152]

>>20612137
Yes. Iq is a normally distributed variable, so 67% of people have an IQ between 85-115 (SD=15,mean=100). 115 is one standard deviation from the mean, making an 115 IQ "king of the average range", or perhaps "fairly high IQ midwit"
t. Not even the guy you're quoting

[Anonymous No.20614172]

i think he was all over the map in his personality. wanted to be athlete but couldnt stop overthinking shit. which shows in his novels, and is probably what makes them great. obvi read and watched a fuck ton of stuff, and tried many drugs. felt himself a liberal but hated libs and cons and just felt alienated. tried to focus on modern america and its saturation in drugs, as a way to get a grip on his own addiction. then got older and wiser and put all his chops into the novel he was beggin for trouble for writing

[Anonymous No.20614484]

>>20609350
He was like an observational comedian or something, who points out something we all already knew, but never put into words ourselves. For Gen Xers, he touched on something they hadn't thought much about before because boomer writers weren't writing about it because they hadn't experienced it themselves, specifically a lack of real purpose. Millennials and zoomers have this too, but combined with a sense of doom

[Anonymous No.20614814]

>>20609941
A banana.

[Anonymous No.20615295]

>>20609583
>He definitely wasn't a pseud.
He killed himself for a reason.

[Anonymous No.20615934]

>>20614484
This

[Anonymous No.20615952]

>>20615295
what a dumb post

[Anonymous No.20615960]

>>20614152
a lot of ultra high IQ folk are just math wizkid spergs incapable of grasping humor or turning their subjective experiences/observations into interesting thoughts and ideas. Just look at most top level chess players. Most definitely top 0.1% IQs but complete autists.

[Anonymous No.20617732]

>>20613094
nig

[Anonymous No.20617868]

>>20610579
>I suspect he’ll end up at the level of Updike or Barth when it’s all said and done, mainly due to shifting cultural standards than the quality of his work.

intredasting, I remember reading Barth's Giles Goat Boy at age 13, it was a pretty amusing takedown of academia

[Anonymous No.20617899]

DFW -> Barth -> Pynchon

TIL: Pynchon Vonnegut and Nabokov all at Cornell, wow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49

[Anonymous No.20618768]

>>20614484
This

[Anonymous No.20618871]

>>20610585
kekek

[Anonymous No.20618884]

>>20612314
I think it's sort of an autistic comfort mechanism. "helps him feel like his head won't explode"

[Anonymous No.20618888]

>>20613054
wool > cotton.

[Anonymous No.20619912]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20620795]

His short stories are good, some of his essays are amazing. Infinite Jest is contentious I guess.

He's also great in interviews. There are some on Youtube and he consistently makes great points even if they don't necessarily make you feel better. Check em out if you want something to listen to

My take on the guy is that he isn't a pseud. He genuinely loves great and challenging literature and language, and tried to write great stuff to his tastes. Some of it is very ambitious and if you don't like it, I guess you could call it pseudo intellectual. A lot of his stuff is more grounded and straight forward though and undeniably fantastic (I purposefully didn't use the word great).

Read the essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" if you haven't already, it's great fun if occasionally a little mean. But I think that flies here."Consider the lobster" and "Both flesh and not" I also like. The last one actually made me care about tennis which is shocking.

[Anonymous No.20620809]

>>20618888
For shirts? For sweaters, suits, and sports coats I agree.

[Anonymous No.20620820]

>>20612062
That is not substantive or criticism, just an observation with poorly formed opinion tacked on.

[Anonymous No.20620880]

>>20614484
what's the difference between genX, millenials, zoomers

[Anonymous No.20621014]

>>20615952
Doesn't disprove what I said.

[Anonymous No.20621075]

>>20614484
>t. zoomer
Maybe millennial. He was literally writing about everything we (gen-x) were talking about and our culture was built around, at most he pointed out that the context of our irony and sarcasm would be lost on the following generations (You), but not really. Our irony and sarcasm was just the final recourse left to us to rebel against the phony sincerity of the boomers. You are reducing gen-x to Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins but that was just the end and that is when we had finally given up.
>specifically a lack of real purpose
You really have no clue, we absolutely had purpose, we were the generation that unironically grew up believing that we could change the world and we had every intention of doing so.

[Anonymous No.20621099]

>>20609350
Has anyone read his book on metaphysics?

[Anonymous No.20622127]

>>20621099
I haven't yet.

[Anonymous No.20622132]

>>20621075
I thought genx was the slacker/mallrat generation?

[Anonymous No.20623182]

>>20622132
We were slackers because we did not follow our parents example and it was also a carefully crafted aesthetic because fuck you Mom and Dad. The mallrat thing seemed to be primarily suburban upper middle class and far from generation defining, antithetical if anything; we had every intention to change the world and do it our own way, not our parents way which was malls filled with chains. Look at things before grunge became huge, hundreds of small independent labels and zines along with everything needed to support them right down to distribution, marketing and merchandising all done ourselves largely outside of the established channels. All those handmade record sleeves which helped define the aesthetic was not exactly the work of slackers, make a few hundred sleeves sometime. But we either got too big or not big enough, we were hurting the sales of the big labels but we had no real power in comparison to them.

Grunge exploding was pretty much the death of the generation's cultural relevance, our parents walked in with their checkbooks and reaped the rewards of our hard work; you either succeed by our way or you do no succeed at all. By the time Kurt killed himself half the labels had folded, by the end of the decade only dozen or so survived and they did it by becoming a part of the industry either figuratively or literally.

The whole indie/small business thing is probably what defines the generation and the one thing we never really gave up on despite it being turned into a marketing gimmick.

[Anonymous No.20623263]

I was in college for the DFW heyday and at the time the discussions I was having with my classmates were more around his stylistic quirks and his sheer writing chops (dude could write, that’s for sure)... Not so much his apparent “message” that seems to get bandied around the internet these days. The way he is discussed on this board is quite odd to me and doesn’t resonate with my experiences.

[Anonymous No.20624481]

>>20623182
The problem was that genx came from a landless class in the first place; so there was no inheritance coming that previous generations would have had that would've allowed the life of leisure, you can say "upper middle class" if you like but this was never true; it's been several generations of working for somebody else for scrip, and this produced a kind of house of cards compared to the "big labels".

it's worth examining the actual flow of capital of the big labels, and still today especially; where these massive organizations or national radio stations, for example, appear to owe their hundreds of millions of dollars to a crappy advertising model, with minuscule returns. It should be easy to rewind to the paid subscription model of the pre 1900's and floor these "big labels" which are garbage nowadays... the biggest con imo is that the internet advert model has passed off this dogshit onto every new artist; presenting them with the idea that a penny for a song is a good deal.

[Anonymous No.20624492]

>>20615960
Isn’t hikaru’s iq below 110?

[Anonymous No.20624496]

>>20623182
or, rather, it was the error of the dayjobber that equated showing up, doing nothing and collecting a paycheck that was passed along as being a "work ethic" that was the real problem.

genx was completely correct to reject this; they had a work ethic that showed-up the dayjobber mentality as being a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.20624803]

>>20609350
His writing is shitty and gimmicky. Yeah let's just type down the brand name of everything in sight and whoa I'm a genius!

[Anonymous No.20624938]

>>20623263
I am guessing by heyday you mean Oblivion era? I have many found memories of sitting about conversing about the message of IJ back in the late 90s,
>>20624481
What are you getting on about? You seem to be ranting. Regardless of whether or not there technically is an upper middle class most anyone should know what I am referring too. Also, you obviously have no experience with the recording industry beyond consumer, but if it is so easy what is stopping you or anyone else?
>>20624496
We were not really rejecting that, we were sort of oblivious to it. We got our work ethic from our parents; just as we believed them that we could change the world we also believed them on the whole hard work spiel they fed us which was probably just a mix of their repeating what their parents told them and lies they told to themselves/us.

[Anonymous No.20625679]

Bump

[Anonymous No.20625731]

I find a lot of wisdom in his This Is Water essay/speech. Every time I listen to it I find something new. In the unlimited information era of the internet, calling to be intentional about what you think about is very useful and poignant.

[Anonymous No.20626036]

>>20621099
No, why? Is it good?

[Anonymous No.20626222]

>>20624938
>What are you getting on about? You seem to be ranting.
Yeah hey, look, sorry, I forgot you were genx. You guys almost invented that whole "talking in depth = incoherent rant", I'm not sure why I forget this before I wrote those posts that what I said wouldn't be met with snark. It had been a long day. :D

I was trying to point out how the financial basis of those various companies (big record labels etc) was bad to start with, and that the lack of property/bad-work-ethic; both on part of their parents had set genx up with a pretty bad situation from the get-go,

Looking back it seems to me that the parents were furious with genx because they knew that if genx didn't follow them in the dayjobber mentality that there would be no other means of employment around, as they knew this firsthand from their own experience.

>We were not really rejecting that, we were sort of oblivious to it. We got our work ethic from our parents
exactly, that's what i was getting at.

I mean, without the property or businesses (things a middle class would have) to pickup from the parents, manage for income, etc., then there was really no means to have the free time to pursue the other things in life from a safe position; this is more or less how any generation in history was able to do that stuff ad invent music and write plays etc without having to worry for money or without having to make the music/plays profit focused.

It's just a point I never hear being made. Moreso it's an on-going illusion we seem to have about things, that (whatever you're doing) isn't "legit" until you're a millionaire from it, or on tv, etc. but it's not true at all.

anyways that was all

[Anonymous No.20627074]

>>20615960
this is painfully true. modern education/professional life thrives on these sorts who can, machine-like, come up with quick, powerful iterations and analysis of things already apparent. there's something about, call it whatever (genius, creativity, individuality, SOVL,...) which transcends intelligence. you need a good helping of iq-type smarts, sure, but not that much and instead much more of something else.

dfw had enough iq-type smarts to do something amazing with his work but not enough of that other mystical whatever to do something transcendent to which he was achingly, asymptotically approaching. he didn't have that sort of ecstatic vision that writers like blake exemplify. i think it's part of why a large part of his work is influenced by this background hum of needing to be part of something much larger than oneself; or to, in some fashion be it secular or otherwise, fulfil the religious impulse. ij deals with that via addiction, obvs.

if you want to put it in obnoxious dfw-esque speak then you could say he's great but not capital G great. he doesn't move in silence like lasagne.

[Anonymous No.20627153]

>>20623182
not entirely on-topic but let me run this by you, or whoever else reads it (if anybody).

my impression of the biggest difference between the gen x & post-gen x cultural milieus would be that xers were the last to en masse really give a shit about the authenticity and, as it were, genealogy of something. whether it was real or whether it was just some sell out trying to cash in on whatever money there was to be made. there was, it seems, more of an indignant pride in the poverty (or, at least the lack of unimaginable riches) typical of the diy scene.

contrast that with millenials and zedz who, comparatively speaking, are almost indifferent to who's funding their cultural products or whether that new cool thing has an agenda. sure, nowadays you see memes now about corporate twitter accounts with pride logos selling gay t shirts made by bangladeshi girls or whatever lol. but even those appeal to a minority of these generational cohorts and even this small emblem of corporate distrust has been a long fucking time coming! to say nothing of the total disregard most people have towards this kind of thinking.

i think Z are more clued into this than the millennials generally speaking, but at the end of the day these generational cohorts are both, i think, more concerned with copping a paycheck than worrying about who's signing it. i don't say that with any venom, i think it's more a consequence of everybody being strapped.

>But I don't care
>I care
>I really don't care
>Did you see the drummer's hair?

[Anonymous No.20627169]

>>20612092
He’s basically Woody Allen for less-pedophilic gentiles.

[Anonymous No.20627188]

>>20620880
Progressively curlier hair.

[Anonymous No.20627221]

>>20627074
>>20615960
The je ne sais quoI you guys are grasping at is just even higher IQ. You have conflated “high-status achievements with a minimum IQ threshold” with “high IQ”. The defining characteristic of the average professional chess player or FAANG employee is not based in IQ but in socioeconomic class and trait conscientiousness.