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/lit/ - Literature

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4671729 No.4671729 [Reply] [Original]

Is this guy actually good? I imagine him to be sort of like a hipster version of Jack Kerouac for some reason.

>> No.4671739

>>4671729
Jack Kerouac is the hipster version of Jack Kerouac. And DFW is nothing like him at all.

Whether you would like DFW or not, I don't know - he's a polarising author - but your impression of him is completely wrong.

>> No.4671741

>>4671729
>hipster version of Jack Kerouac
Kerouac was OH

>> No.4671745

saged, hidden, reported, kill yourself

>> No.4671813

If you want to get a good taste of DFW without reading Infinite Jest, you should try out this 11 page nonfiction article he wrote about the Maine Lobster Festival. It's called "Consider the Lobster". It really provides good insight into his abilities as a writer, as well as his Asberger's style compulsion to overthink and his ability to make you give a shit about it.

here's the link, take out the spaces
http:// www.gourmet. com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster

>> No.4671923

Read this excerpt and find out:
>Gately had smacked himself in the forehead at yet another limp oblique Gene M. analogy, which Gene had already bludgeoned him with several insectile tropes for thinking about the Disease. The counselor had let him vent spleen for a while, smoking as he crawled along behind land-barges lined up to unload. He told Gately to just imagine for a second that he's holding a box of Betty Crocker Cake Mix, which represented Boston AA. The box came with directions on the side any eight-year-old could read. Gately said he was waiting for the mention of some kind of damn insect inside the cake mix. Gene M. said all Gately had to do was for fuck's sake give himself a break and relax and for once shut up and just follow the directions on the side of the fucking box. It didn't matter fuckola whether Gately like -believed- a cake would result, or whether he -understood- the like fucking baking-chemistry of -how- a cake would result: if he just followed the motherfucking directions, and had sense enough to get help from slightly more experienced bakers to keep from fucking the directions up if he got confused somehow, but basically the point was if he just followed the childish directions, a cake would result. He'd have his cake.

>> No.4671935

>>4671741
What the fuck does OH mean? Ohio?

>> No.4671962

>>4671935
Original Hipster.

DFW doesn't look like a hipster. He looks like a guy who attend math club and wears too big pants.

>> No.4671970

He sort of have that "absurdist realist" quality to him like Thomas Pynchon, although stylistically they're not much alike.
IMO, he's a bit overrated but leagues better than Kerouac (which isn't very hard).

>> No.4671975

>>4671813
>his Asberger's style compulsion to overthink

Replace "Asperger's style" with "healty" and "overthink" with "think" and you're spot on.

>> No.4671979

0/10

>> No.4671984

>>4671729
Not really. DFW sounds like a total bro.

>> No.4671993

>>4671975
This. Wallace was, if anything, overly tuned-in empathy-wise, and he had a gift for seeing past obvious conclusions and sharing deeper insights.

>> No.4672005

>>4671729
>>4671739
>>4671813
>>4671923
The best analog, constrained by "US novelist, writing in English, obsessed with Seraphic transcendence of traditional forms, died prematurely of self-inflicted disregard for value of his own life, nagging ass-pain prima donna diva to his editors," was Thomas Wolfe. But DFW was never lucky enough to meet up with a contemporary Maxwell Perkins. So we have the conflicted mess as described above.

Harper's published all of his "journalism" on line, for free. I am fond of the cruise ship piece.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

>> No.4672012

>>4671729

Jack Kerouac was cool, this guy looks like Dave Matthews fan.

>> No.4672025

you kjnow what's really fucking bad? that franzen essay

"his loathsome hunger for career advantage" - jonathan franzen, about somebody who isn't himself

>> No.4672107

>>4672025
Without disagreement, let's enlarge that, slightly:

" I imagine the side of David that advocated going the Kurt Cobain route speaking in the seductively reasonable voice of the devil in “The Screwtape Letters,” which was one of David’s favorite books, and pointing out that death by his own hand would simultaneously satisfy his loathsome hunger for career advantage and, because it would represent a capitulation to the side of himself that his embattled better side perceived as evil, further confirm the justice of his death sentence."

Not quite the hawked loogy of your terser, though,

you know what?

never mind.

>> No.4672236

>>4671729
dee eff double yew is a dork, not a hipster

he was easily the most unhip of all the authors labeled as pomo