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/lit/ - Literature

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2387671 No.2387671 [Reply] [Original]

I know this might be /lit/ sacrilege, but did anyone else think that this was just vastly superior to Infinite Jest?

>> No.2387677
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2387677

>>2387671
I haven't finished it.

I liked Broom of the System better than Infinite Jest though, so I couldn't see why it would be 'sacrilege'.

>> No.2387679

It was shit.

Except for chapter 22. That 100 page stretch is one of the best things he's written.

>> No.2387695

>>2387679
22 is really ferkin' good

>> No.2387799

>>2387671

vastly superior to the greatest novel ever? impossible

>> No.2387818

If he had finished it, I don't doubt that it would have been.

With IJ there was at least a sense of closure. Some of the chapters were the best he's ever written, for sure.

I read it a while ago, but the long one with the spinning foot sign and the mental institution bar story were amazing. As was the story about the nice-to-the-point-of-annoyance guy, the end of that chapter tore my fucking heart out.

>> No.2389466

the pale king really touched some places in my heart that I thought no one would ever touch or that the even existed

>> No.2389486

It's a good novel.

+ Lots of really good prose
+ The subject matter is done well
+ Some interesting characters
+ Chapters like 22, the chapter about the beautiful woman, and the chapter about the nice kid
+ Weird

- No proper ending
- The chapter are so fucking disparate, with very few characters appearing lots, and no coherent plot

>> No.2389507
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2389507

It's even better than Infinite Jest, yes. But incomplete.

SENTIENT LIFEFORM TIER:
David Wallace explains how it is he comes to be David Foster Wallace (fictionally)

GOD TIER:
>the boy's desire to press his lips to every square inch of his own body

MUHARAJAH TIER:
dude listening to whore in bar and floating on chair

>> No.2389529

>>2389507

I'm impressed someone on /lit/ knows what muharajah means.

His best work is still Girl With Curious Hair.

>> No.2389543
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2389543

>>2389529
I picked up 99 percent of my vocabulary from Tin Tin comics. I'm a bit of a troglodyte

>> No.2389962

>>2389486
It's post modernism you fucking dipshit. It doesn't need a "coherent plot" or an ending. It's fine the way it is.

>> No.2389972

>>2389543
Check out "Tin Tin and the Secret of Literature" by Tom McCarthy.

>>2389529
Really? I like some of the stories in GWTCH, but a bunch of it is very green and Oblivion definitely stomps all over it as a whole.

>> No.2390057

>>2389972

Why not? Most postmodern books have SOME plot. I could list 5 off the top of my head, but won't. It wasn't even that it jumps around in time so much, because IJ did that well, but nothing seems connected.

>>2389962

The best thing about Girl With Curious Hair is the Americana, and how perfectly it is captured. There aren't that many writers who could do that, certainly not living. Oblivion: Stories are really good though, especially Another Pioneer, which had both great content and a good writing style. We won't see another writer like DFW again.

>> No.2391005

>>2387695
>>2387679
I wonder if DFW really did like Brian Eno and the Beatles.

>> No.2391011

>not liking the broom of the system more than IJ
>not knowing that Miguel de Unamuno was the 1890s spanish version of DFW

>> No.2391110

>>2391011
Oh please. Unamuno is just a castillian proto-goth. I mean, one of his books is actually titled 'The Tragic Sense of Life,' come on!