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/lit/ - Literature

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4785427 No.4785427[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Look how smug he is.

>> No.4785429

he isnt smug at all
do you know nothing about the man?
there are so many things to accuse him of but smugness is assuredly not among them

>> No.4785434

>>4785429
>[citation needed]

>> No.4785439

>>4785434
read his books

>> No.4785450

>>4785439
I have.

>> No.4785458

>>4785450
well then my penis is fully available as you clearly can't partake of the intellectual realm

>> No.4785467

>>4785429
He was a smug guy and he drove himself crazy trying to hide this fact from the world. Have you read Good Old Neon? Christ he was full of himself in that story, painting his alter-ego as some sort of psychological mastermind with the ability to outsmart everybody on the planet including his moron analyst.

>> No.4785471
File: 51 KB, 370x370, tips.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4785471

>>4785458
nice, explanation

>> No.4785473

>>4785471
ill post a pic of my body if youre implying im fat

>> No.4785484

>>4785467
Well...he was pretty smart.

I don't know that I'd call him smug. He certainly felt some kind of distance between himself and others. Much of his writing was an attempt to reconcile that fact and create any sort of pathway to meaningful compassion.

He was even kind to the writers he hated, like Bret Easton Ellis and Mark Leyner.

>> No.4785486
File: 32 KB, 620x463, tipping intensifies.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4785486

>>4785473
Yes please, it'll help with this DFW thread and the board in general.

>> No.4785513

that doesn't look smug at all to me.
and besides a man with that many anxiety issues isn't smug at all. you can tell this by the relationship his neck has with ropes.

>> No.4785515

>>4785486
this is a joke i take it

>> No.4785534

his gaze doesn't show smugness what it shows is insecurity

>> No.4785530

>>4785484
>He was even kind to the writers he hated, like Bret Easton Ellis

Source?

>> No.4785546

>>4785427
>Look how ugly he is.
ft4u

>> No.4785580

>>4785467
that is not an alter ego what that is is a character

>> No.4785590

>>4785515
I am not joking

>> No.4785723

I like Wallace, but he was definitely smug in a kind of indirect way where his modesty was a thinly veiled attempt to make people like him despite how highly he thought of himself. Also many times he attempted to speak as an authority on a subject that he had no business writing about. Linguistics and math are two glaring examples of this. In his earlier work this was more apparent and he got better as he went along. IJ was great, but I would have liked to take an editing pen to it a bit more. I think he really might have had something with The Pale King and it's a shame he left it undone.

>> No.4786389

Why the fuck does he always wear that stupid looking bandanna?

>> No.4786420

>>4786389
So he can deflect tennis balls that jocks throw at him.

>> No.4786430

>>4786389
It's an autism limiter

>> No.4786446

>>4786389
He had a sweat problem. See the Marlon Bain character in IJ for a self-parody.

>> No.4786500

>>4786389
its his "logo" (do not steal)

>> No.4786765

Shit, everyone's smug. I'm smug. You're smug. The thing is that his smugness was exposed because he was so separated from other people. We're not going to notice the smugness of people we're drawn to, unless they're so outlandish that you can't deny it.

>> No.4786877
File: 46 KB, 480x640, wallace-broom.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4786877

I'm willing to go along with Broom of the System-era Wallace being smug (pic is his author pic from that book), but he grew past that. He was too bright and self-aware to stay smug.

>> No.4786906

>>4786877
Yeah, that D.T. Max bio pretty much confirmed this impression for me; Wallace was smug up until he went into drug rehab, and then it slowly started to fall away -- especially as he wrote Infinite Jest, which was meant to be a kind of response to the Pynchonian 'form' or 'tone' that characterized most of his previous work.

>> No.4786934

I'm a huge fan of DFW, and to the people who are saying he was NOT smug: go read his stuff some more. and then read interviews with people like franzen. read or watch his own interviews.

he was a hardcore drug/alcohol addict by the time he was 16, because he could get away with it and hide himself and still get good grades etc.

he definitely had an inner smugness, in his defense I feel like much of his writing was an attempt to over come that. for example he talked a lot in interviews etc about how important it was to feel like a regular guy and not assume he was the smartest person in the room.

>> No.4786952

>>4786906
Did you read the part where he went around and apologized for all kinds of minor, insignificant shit as part of a kind of atonement?

I was pretty impressed, then I realized that Wittgenstein was known for doing the same thing, and that DFW probably did it to copy him or whatever.

>> No.4786993

>>4786952

this was part of his AA requirements

>> No.4786997

>>4786877
Holy shit he was a BABE.

>> No.4787050

>>4786993
nah, he took it much further. like, he'd apologize for lying about his SAT scores 12 years earlier and shit

>> No.4787056

>>4787050
oh wow...I didn't know that. Given his interest in Wittgenstein I can see him taking it to the next level and doing that. Why would he lie about his SAT scores?

I'm imagining like, missing one question in the verbal section leading to his first suicide attempt

>> No.4787096

>>4785723
>Also many times he attempted to speak as an authority on a subject that he had no business writing about. Linguistics and math are two glaring examples of this.
YES. I stopped being a fan of his after reading that essay about prescriptivism vs descriptivism. As someone working on their linguistics degree, I couldn't finish it.

>> No.4787110

>>4787056
he used to tell his friends he got a perfect score. I don't know what he actually got but it couldn't of been that far off.

>> No.4787131

>>4787110

The thing that I thought was interesting was that he wasn't nearly as good at math as some people think.

He was mainly a logic guy; when he wrote his honors thesis in philosophy, he needed one of his math-major acquaintances to help him with the notation, because he had avoided actual computational math for most of his undergraduate career.

I mean, he was still good at math, and a lot of math-related stuff, but he wasn't turning differential equations over in his head for fun while he wrote his books or anything.

>> No.4787141
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4787141

>>4785534
his is an affected smugness that only ends up highlighting his fundamental insecurity

it's sad really

>> No.4787216

>>4787141
stop projecting

>> No.4787275

>>4787141
What led you to that conclusion?

>> No.4787288
File: 34 KB, 287x446, DFW 2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4787288

>> No.4787397

>>4786877
Jesus, he was hot as shit. The fuck happened?

>> No.4787435

>>4785467
Have you ever thought that he wrote it that way because he just wanted to make a character who acted like that?
No?
Stop reading that deeply into things.
Most of the time you're wrong and opinionated.

>> No.4787439

>>4786389
>stop liking things and wearing things that I don't like
Because he fucking wanted to. Goddamn.

>> No.4787444

>>4786952
Millions of other people do shit like that too.
just because you wished you could copy him doesn't mean everyone does.

>> No.4787591

>>4787397
what the black and white picture doesn't show is that he had acne and shitty skin, his dormmates would call him "mushface" behind his back

>> No.4787599

>>4787591
Some nice dormmates...

>> No.4787762

Has it occurred to anyone in this thread that we are talking about the guy who wrote "Lyndon" and intended it to be taken seriously?

>POTUS is a faggot

really? /b/ as /lit/erature? And Girl With Curious Hair is political caricature of the most shallow and arrogant kind. He's Naruto for bookish damaged kids who want to shut down the whole airplane for fear of a peanut skin.

"Performative narcissism." Sounds about right.

>> No.4788148

>>4787762
If these are accepted as indicative of smugness, they are nonetheless from early in his writing career. Look through the thread for a bit of insight into his growth in his later years.

>> No.4788564

>>4788148
I'm the guy who is alone in decoding IJ as a fourth wall nodwink all the way through. See the archive for a more comprehensive dismissal of this masturbator than you can dream of. Keywords: book of the dead, wraith, spoiler, coke can, mushroom cloud.

>reply at your peril. remember ghost Mary McCarthy? Not Bill Murray? The minutes of your life are valuable. Calculate them.

>> No.4788593

>>4785427
You want smug? Check this mug:
>>4786196