/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:19:17 2012 No.2722688 [Reply] [Original]

Why did Harold Bloom have a rivalry with DFW?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:22:17 2012 No.2722693 HB was a west coast nigger and DFW was east coast and getting up all over his shit. everyone knows HB had DFW killed over that diss in Infinite Jest, that shit was fucked up.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:24:16 2012 No.2722702 >>2722693 pretty much this

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:25:15 2012 No.2722704 hahaha, Bloom does have the silhouette of Biggie, and DFW always wore a bandana. Fuckin G's man.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:43:16 2012 No.2722754 Rivalry? Bloom said like three sentences about the guy.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:45:15 2012 No.2722757 File: 41 KB, 465x346, soda-fountain.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] where da hood at

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:45:16 2012 No.2722755 Do you think David Foster Wallace is Gnostic enough for Bloom, /lit/?

Anonymous Thu Jun 14 21:47:15 2012 No.2722763

Asked about novelist David Foster Wallace, who took his own life in 2008, but who has a new book out, “The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel,” put together from manuscript chapters and files found in his computer, Bloom says, “You know, I don’t want to be offensive. But ‘Infinite Jest’ [regarded by many as Wallace’s masterpiece] is just awful. It seems ridiculous to have to say it. He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent.”

It’s all a clear indication, Bloom notes, of the decline of literary standards. He was upset in 2003 when the National Book Award gave a special award to Stephen King. “But Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. We have no standards left. [Wallace] seems to have been a very sincere and troubled person, but that doesn’t mean I have to endure reading him. I even resented the use of the term from Shakespeare, when Hamlet calls the king’s jester Yorick, ‘a fellow of infinite jest.’

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 22:02:15 2012 No.2722787 >>2722763 >But Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. This eternal butthurt. He must really miss his butt

Anonymous Thu Jun 14 22:06:16 2012 No.2722799

>>2722763

I went to the store today to buy a book recommended by /lit/ to read.

Saw Infinite Jest, Lolita and Blood Meridian.

Went with Blood Meridian. After reading that Bloom quote, I've lost a lot of interest in Infinite Jest. That book was massive.

Anonymous Thu Jun 14 22:09:15 2012 No.2722810

IJ endnote:
366 Sounding rather suspiciously like Professor H. Bloom's turgid studies of artistic influenza — though it's unclear how either Flood- or dead-ancestor discussions have any connection to S. Peterson's low-budget classic The Cage, which is mostly about a peripatetic eyeball rolling around, other than the fact that J. O. Incandenza loved this film and stuck little snippets of it or references to it just about anywhere he could; maybe the 'disjunction' or 'disconnection' between the screen's film and Ph.D.'s scholastic discussion of art is part of the point.a

a. (Which of course assumes there's a point.)

>>	Anonymous Thu Jun 14 22:14:16 2012 No.2722825 >>2722810 If I was Bloom, I'd shit on an author who said that about me.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 05:18:16 2012 No.2723555 >>2722763 >But Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. And then Bloom lost his credibility. There's discernible senile dementia.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 05:32:15 2012 No.2723568 >>2722799 >After reading that Bloom quote, I've lost a lot of interest in Infinite Jest Ignore him. That quote's the biggest blunder of his career.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 05:39:15 2012 No.2723575 god, bloom is a sack of shit for saying that. did he get dissed for it?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:00:15 2012 No.2723592 >>2722763 Bloom was exactly right on DFW. He just said it at an inopportune time. In fifty years, DFW will be forgotten and no one will bother to ask men of Bloom's distinction questions about him.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:02:15 2012 No.2723594 File: 16 KB, 600x398, no2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2723592 DFW's going to be remember for a long, long time, to the chagrin of Bloom and those like yourself.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:03:15 2012 No.2723595 >>2723594 ed*

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:09:16 2012 No.2723600 >>2723555 I thought Bloom killed Stephen King

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:36:15 2012 No.2723632 DFW is a well-polished Chuck Palahniuk. I'm with Bloom on this one.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:39:16 2012 No.2723636 >>2723632 >a well-polished palahniuk You're going to have to expand on that.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:43:15 2012 No.2723643 >>2723632 Yes, please, do go on. I fear you have scant idea what you're talking about.

Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:52:16 2012 No.2723655

Expanding briefly: DFW has some good insight into people but lacks poetic spirit.

I'm actually in bed already so I don't feel like digging up my copy of IJ to cite passages, but some are just bad (as well as numerous wordings). I'd say Infinite Jest is still a pretty solid read, but it's quite lacking, and while someone studying the period decades later is likely to study IJ, I don't see it holding up its esteem.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:53:15 2012 No.2723656 >>2723655 And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: 'Look at that fucker Dance.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:54:15 2012 No.2723658 >>2723656 Yes, like that.

Anonymous Fri Jun 15 06:58:15 2012 No.2723659

>>2723658

I love that quote, along with many others. But picking out quotes isn't good for argument on either side.

I think the great thing about his work is its honesty and lack of irony. He wasn't as great an offbeat storyteller as, say, Pynchon, but he has his place among the finest. He's probably the greatest author of the 90's, imo, and IJ's damned good. I don't find him lacking poetic spirit, though his style's awkwardness can be off-putting, even if it is intentioned.

In short: to each his own.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:05:15 2012 No.2723669 File: 37 KB, 300x300, 1339705896026.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2723656 Every time.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:06:15 2012 No.2723671 File: 87 KB, 612x257, 100226-europa1991.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2723659 The greatest author of the 90s is Jonathan Lethem.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:08:15 2012 No.2723675 File: 51 KB, 550x550, 43f.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2723669 I know that feel.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:19:16 2012 No.2723688 >>2723575 Perhaps it's distasteful, but I appreciate people who don't gild their thoughts merely for propriety's sake.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:50:15 2012 No.2723725 >>2722810 DFW's prose is painful to read. The guy had no sense of rhythm whatsoever.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 07:50:15 2012 No.2723726 >>2722688 he doesn't have a rivalry. he has an opinion like everyone

>>	Anonymous Fri Jun 15 08:45:15 2012 No.2723801 He got butthurt because DFW (like all intelligent readers and writers) doesn't respect him.

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