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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 260 KB, 1280x720, David Foster Wallace.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22882296 No.22882296 [Reply] [Original]

Stop pretending to hate him. Stop hiding behind the "akshually he wasn't that good" memes. Just admit it already, /lit/. You miss him.

Just imagine the kinds of things he would be writing about if he got the chance to see the modern world.

>> No.22882637

>>22882296
He would have a mid sub stack

In fact just read Freddie deboer and there’s pretty much your “dfw in today’s world”

Still miss him though, I’m glad he didn’t have to see this shit

>> No.22882663

I unironically love this man, and IJ. I have loved him for years and won't ever stop.

>> No.22882704

i dont know who this is and i dont care

>> No.22882706

>>22882296
It’s not pretending THOUGH

>> No.22883797

but so who do I read now

>> No.22883807
File: 19 KB, 479x505, 1702096469838958.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22883807

>>22882296
I never pretended to dislike him. I miss that perspirous little nigga like you wouldn't believe.
Brief Interviews got me through my undergrad.

>> No.22883810

>>22882296
>he would be writing about if he got the chance
DFW would have been cancelled, done an interview with Jordan Peterson, and The Pale King would have not seen publication

>> No.22883820

>>22882296
I have embraced his new sincerity so when I say I hate him I am truly sincere about it.

>> No.22883967

>>22882296
Imagining DFW didn’t commit suicide and were alive today is absurd. It’s like saying what if Nietzsche didn’t have a nervous breakdown. His descent in to madness is crucial to his philosophy, just like the death of DFW was an enactment of the the Death of the Author.

>> No.22885383

In the end he won. He's the last of the giants. People today would kill to be in the spotlight he stood in.

>> No.22885653
File: 125 KB, 667x1000, 71nLEFqgn2L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22885653

>>22882296
I feel a deep kinship with him on some level and we might have shared similar fates had I not been introduced to a new way of looking at the world — saved by divine grace.

>There's something particularly sad about it, something that doesn't have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It's more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it's unique to our generation I really don't know.

>The sadness that the book is about, and that I was going through, was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it's the same thing.

>I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

Perhaps if he had been turned on to pic related, or Saint Augustine, or Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, etc. it could have turned out differently.

Being fed a steady diet of Nietzschean overcoming from adolescence never informs you of the Logos, of the essence of freedom as reflexive self-control and self-definition, and especially of man's natural role as a contemplative. I think I was over thirty before I heard of Thomas Merton, Dogen, Rumi, or Origen. It's a context we turned our back on. Existentialism cum scientism became the blank religion of the Western middle to upper classes, and it's hollow. Even Hegel is deflated and turned into an atheist to make him "safe for consumption."

>> No.22885687

>>22885383
He wasn't really in a spotlight, almost no one knew who he was before he killed himself and that movie was made. IJ sold something like 40k copies world wide in its first year, hardly massive sales. Most who knew about him before the movie came out knew him as someone who occasionally wrote mildly interesting essays. DFW was not the superstar people make him out to be, just look at his interviews, they are mostly with small publications and the like, Charlie Rose was probably his biggest.

>> No.22885805

>>22882296
he did have a chance to see the modern world

>> No.22885827

>>22882296
Never finished Infinite Jest, will never pick it up again. I'd rather read Harry Potter again.

>> No.22885857

>>22882296
>Just imagine the kinds of things he would be writing about if he got the chance to see the modern world.
it's all been written already. do you really think out of 8 billions humans alive and witnessing the world not one is close enough to him?

>> No.22885862

>>22882296
I like his writing. I just can't stand him as a person because he abused women

>> No.22885899

>>22885862
>he abused women
sounds based

>> No.22885919
File: 24 KB, 400x400, 1703650481240400.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22885919

>>22882296
He seemed like a really nice guy in that interview.
Suicide is for cucks though.

>> No.22885932

>>22882296
He wasn't that good. The is subject matter and approach was interesting but the writing itself was embarrassing.

>> No.22885936

>>22882296
I fell in love with his essays. Now I'm getting into his short fiction. I'm so excited that I still have a collection and a half that I haven't read.

>> No.22885947
File: 156 KB, 362x507, 1703113513050398.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22885947

>>22885936
You don't "fall in love with" a fucking essay. Stop talking so gayly.

>> No.22885949

I dropped IJ. Unbearable. Liked The Good Old Neon though.

>> No.22885977

>>22882296
The camera guy gets surprisingly little attention on this board.

>> No.22886106

>>22885899
You sound like a horrible person!

>> No.22886717

>>22885947
I said "with his essays" you retard, ie. the writing.

>> No.22887021
File: 111 KB, 610x927, Surge Kit Starline Really Anon Wow That's Pathetic sthg POV Sonic.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22887021

>>22882296
>sad depressed guy hooked on antidepressants rather than just eating good food cries over irony
>makes overly pretentious, condescending, ironically ironic book to whine some more
>book becomes the Catcher & the Rye for high IQ fags
>get's sad and kills himself cause of said drugs

I'll stick with working out and reading comic books, thank you very much.

>> No.22887089

>>22887021
His meds worked THOUGH. Seems like he became much calmer and collected later in his life but he hopped off his meds and couldn't recover from that downward spiral.

>> No.22887098

>>22887089
His heroin worked THOUGH. Seems like he became much calmer and collected later in his life but he hopped off his heroin and couldn't recover from that downward spiral.

You want serotonin? Eat a fucking banana.

>> No.22887225
File: 243 KB, 1069x1600, Jonathan-Franzen-2013.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22887225

>>22882296
Eh he's better than Franzen

>> No.22887227

Alas, poor David! I knew him, /lit/. A fellow of Infinite Jest

>> No.22887232

>>22885827
nu-/lit/ epitomized

>> No.22887235

>>22887232
nu-/lit/ sounds based

>> No.22887244

>>22882296
I have never read DFW, why would I? So I can put the thoughts of some guy who killed himself into my head? When you read the thoughts of someone else, you echo their own thoughts and feelings, repeat their mental patterns and so on. Why imitate a suicide case? Why listen to someone who disavowed life and himself so extremely?

>> No.22887253

>>22885919
lol no suicide is for some of the strongest individuals who are able to break all their chains binding them here to suffer needlessly, you are a scared bitch which is why you feel the need to talk shit about the dead.

>> No.22887266

>>22887253
Wrong, suicide is mainly commited by mentally ill people, drug addicts, gamblers, the poor etc.

>> No.22887301

>>22887266
>mentally ill people
That's an awfully wide umbrella there, Jack. A veritable planetary greenhouse. Shoot, in the <current <year>>, under the current condition of the (((Medical Industry))), one might say it encompasses every individual living upon Sol III.

>> No.22887340

>>22887301
To paraphrase Huxley, soon medicine will be so advanced that we will all be sick...even so, suicide remains the pastime of the failed, delusional and decadent.

>> No.22887451
File: 47 KB, 720x405, 7628556e80493edbd889addeb4b388240068abb04c83924616c8fe6a42dae0b6._AC_SX720_FMjpg_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22887451

I like Dave. It took me like 4 tries to get into IJ, but I finally did, and I am glad I did.

>> No.22887505

Yall think he would be based lol, he would be a cringe bluepill faggot today

>> No.22887716

>>22882296
I miss him and I hate him for dying before he finished Pale King

>> No.22887727

>>22882296
Hideous Men was a good book but I have no desire to read anything else he wrote, and I don't give a fuck about his weepy thoughts.

>> No.22888555

>>22887505
Doubt it. He probably would've been canceled and moved in with the anti-woke crowd. But he definitely would've hated Trump and his lobotomized Trumples so half the schizoid christcucks on this board would've disavowed him.

>> No.22888569

>>22888555
The only thing Trump did wrong was promoting the covid "vaccine". Otherwise he was a very good president.

>> No.22888571

>>22888569
i don't not believe this, but what he represents is something stupid

>> No.22888596

>>22888571
what's that

>> No.22888608

>>22885653
DFW was religious though.

>> No.22888623

>>22882296
I will read him when the gay cult around his personality dies down.

>i love him!!

Shut the fuck up you simpletons

>> No.22888631

>>22888555
You have your head in the sand if you don’t want another trump presidency, I don’t even think anything will come of it, just now is a great time to be fucking with globohomo for 4 years

>> No.22888723
File: 1.62 MB, 1080x720, 1688003929432387.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22888723

>>22888631
Making all the third world shills seethe is funnier though

>> No.22889407

>>22887451
I couldn't get into it at first either but I finally bit the bullet a few years ago and loved it. I love the weird little overly descriptive fake tech and pharmaceuticals he added into the story.
I always hear people complaining about how the book "has too much fluff" and I believe this is what they mean. The book is filled with a bunch of tiny details that aren't consequential to the story but really add to the world building and I'm surprised to find out how little people care about this stuff. Seems like people just want a good, straight forward moment to moment narrative and everything else is pointless "fluff".

>> No.22889488

He would have been cancelled 20 times over and /lit/ would have a general dedicated to his twitter feed.
>o shit he retweeted JK Rowling
>FUUUUCK WHERE'S MY POPCORN

>> No.22889520

>>22888623
post your stick arms

>> No.22890234

>>22888555
The only affect canceling DFW would have is some people who would never read him anyways would use his being canceled as justification for not reading him. He was no where near big enough to bother with canceling, Oblivion sold a massive 18,000 copies in its first year, no one cared.

Also, you really missed his whole message regarding politics and big social movements, he wold have viewed the anti-woke thing as big of as cancer as the woke thing. Also, he lived through the 90s and the woke movement and cancelling of the Obama era was just a rehash of the 90s, just went after celebrities and politicians instead of businesses and CEOs.

>> No.22890256

>>22882296
I'm going to write a fanfic about what happens with the camera guy for the rest of the day.

>> No.22890267

>>22888608
There is an audio recording of him and a radio reporter that I heard on YouTube. DFW was talking quite freely because his assumption was that not all of it would air.
The reporter asked him about some of his deeper beliefs and FDW said he was something of a Platonist, but obviously kept it quiet because it would make him a laughing stock in academia and the literary world.
I've been trying to find the recording for a few years now. I wish I bookmarked it.

>> No.22890293

>>22890267
That is probably the recording for the Boston Globe interview and no one in academia would care about someone being a Platonist, that is like caring that he takes milk in his coffee. You really should get some perspective. He knew perfectly well how interviews went and that anything he said could get used, tape is rolling so it is on the record.

>> No.22890621

>>22890293
I remember watching that interview and to me it came across as a snide little joke, not some big secret he was terrified of revealing.
This isn't the first time someone here has brought up the Platonist thing and I've never been able to understand why people took it so seriously.

>> No.22890724

>>22890621
People who think a persons beliefs defines their identity can not see past beliefs and think anyone who does not make everything about their beliefs is avoiding it for some ulterior motive. They are plotfags to the core.

>> No.22890752

>>22889407
I would love to be sitting in a room full of nu-/lit/ers trying to read Moby Dick. Would just love it, would be like watching cats trying to fit their heads into a box which hasn't been opened and neatly laid out for them yet. Bearing witness to experiences like that must be what motivates people to still get into teaching literature nowadays, despite the fact which - as you implied - nobody seems to care about what literature represents anymore.
Well, clearly not nobody, but less and less in each new generation.

>> No.22890773

>>22890621
Do you have the link?

>> No.22890791

>>22890293
No, it was pretty hardcore materialist quasi Marxist and publicly stating you believe the word is something else would get awkward looks at the workplace.
Platonism is almost as bad as "fundamentalist" Christian in their eyes.

>> No.22891034

>>22890791
lol. Seriously, touch grass. No one outside of a small sect of students would even raise an eyebrow at this and even that small sect would just find it curious. And it is most likely the tapes from the Boston Globe interview which are easy to find if you are not retarded.

>> No.22891052

>>22882296
can't say I hate him but anything I've read of him just seems like he was a guy that thought way the hell too much about stuff, obviously to his detriment

>> No.22891060

>>22891034
>most likely the tapes from the Boston Globe
It isn't, but thanks for not giving the link.

>> No.22891105

>>22891060
Your ignoring my stating of that and asking the other anon for a link strongly implies you did not need a link but somehow I suspect you never even tried to find it let alone listened to it. There are not many unedited interviews with him which have been released and it is the only one I can think of which goes into such things.

>> No.22891147

>>22891105
I know there aren't many interviews, which is why it's hard to find. The Boston interviews are broadcasts directly from the station. The one I'm talking about was a recording done by a journalist using his own audio recorder.
The one you are talking about isn't hard to find and they don't discuss his "faith"

>> No.22891177

>>22891147
>The Boston interviews are broadcasts directly from the station.
lol. So The Boston Globe is a radio station? Is your point actually that you are a retard? These are almost certainly the recordings you are talking of and they are easy to find but you never even tried to find them, you just assumed.

>> No.22891213

>>22891177
I'm talking about wbur
Do you have the link to the platonist part?

>> No.22891261
File: 641 KB, 1080x2408, Screenshot_20231230_212636_Vivaldi Browser.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22891261

>>22891213
>waffle
It is literally the first result.

>> No.22891640

>>22886717
oh so now you're polygamous?

>> No.22892175

>>22887244
You have no soul if you are that easy to influence

>> No.22892447
File: 91 KB, 850x400, quote-the-fact-that-the-most-powerful-and-significant-connections-in-our-lives-are-at-the-david-foster-wallace-66-49-29.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22892447

>>22885653
Amen anon. Especially considering Wallace's statement that we all worship something, I hold out hopes he found Christ in the end.

>> No.22892459

It's been a long time since I got very very drunk, watched the interview, cried, and then shitpost about it on /lit/. Those were awful times, but I miss them anyway.

>> No.22893087

I don't care if I sound like an incel but the fact that an abusive, impulsive, bipolar schizo drug addict like him apparently had tons of sex only makes me hate women more not feel bad for them.

>> No.22894323

>>22893087
feeling empathy for women is the #1 leading cause of inceldom

>> No.22895926

You ever think about geocentrism
Tons and tons of works, study, classrooms, all dedicated to a system that was founded on a false presumption