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/lit/ - Literature

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3307597 No.3307597 [Reply] [Original]

Hey, /lit/. I have a dilemma.

I had previously never read any David Foster Wallace, but picked up The Broom Of The System on a friend's recommendation. I got about 2/3 through, but I don't think I really "got" it. I feel like I understood some of the metaphors, but the prose was somewhat dry and tedious.

Am I just not ready for this, /lit/? It might be worth nothing that I typically read Dostoevsky and other Russian authors...

Pic related. Cover is gorgeous, at least.

>> No.3307672

I haven't read BotS but I adore his short stories. Look a few of them up online to see if you might be into them. He's not for everyone, though. No worries if you can't get into his style.

>> No.3307698

The Broom Of The System is pretty masturbatory. DFW was very green when he wrote that.

Personally I find the near-clinical exactness of his prose one of his best features, but I can see how some people might not be into it.

>> No.3307731

The only DFW I've read is Brief Interviews With Hideous men. I disliked that so much I've not picked up another of his. Harold bloom is someone whose opinions I often agree with and he basically said that Wallace was crap so I've disregarded him as an author.

>> No.3307735

>>3307731
>Harold bloom is someone whose opinions I often agree with and he basically said that Wallace was crap so I've disregarded him as an author.

lol

>> No.3307737

>>3307731

here.

I may try Infinite Jest in a few years, when the dust has settled, as a kind of anthropological experiment, trying to retrospectively understand the aesthetic errors of the naughties zeitgeist.

>> No.3307742

>>3307735

what's funny about that?

>> No.3307774

>>3307742
He thinks bloom is shit, because /lit/ told him he was when in fact it is all a joke.

>> No.3307783

>>3307774
That's not why I loled and you shouldn't reply to your own posts.

>> No.3307800

DFW said that David Markson's novel Wittgenstein's Mistress accomplished what he wanted in BotS much more effectively, but I haven't read either. They're both supposedly about loneliness expressed through Wittgenstein's philosophy and being trapped in language.

>> No.3307913

>>3307783
i didn't, he was someone else, but please explain what was funny about my post that mentioned bloom