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/lit/ - Literature

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5251422 No.5251422[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Remember, /lit/, "This is water."

>> No.5251429

Daily reminder that David "please like me" Wallace dragged his sister through dog shit and refered to his female fans as "audience pussy"

>> No.5251431
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5251431

what "is" water?

>> No.5251466

>>5251431
is wiseau interview?

>> No.5251583
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5251583

>>5251429
Daily reminder David gottago Faster Walrus would gloat to his sister after her grueling day of work about his wonderful day of coaching Tennis to seniors for a couple hours and earning considerably more than she, while flicking his surfer hair from his eyes and driving past her without offering a ride home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLEdNmbvsA

>> No.5251596

>>5251422
fuck your shit pynchon.

>> No.5251598

reminder that DFW once broke into Mark Leyner's apartment and installed a keystroke logger on his computer to preempt all of his publications with complaints about irony

>> No.5251615

>>5251429
The bad thing is that people mistake his neurosis for sensitivity.

>> No.5251619

>>5251429
daily reminder that every person has their personal struggles, which under certain circumstances erupt in violence. WOW! let's focus on judging his character!

>> No.5251626

>>5251619
Violent tendencies is a part of someone's character.

>> No.5251635

>>5251583
"he really liked pearl jam"
LLLLOOOOLLLLL

>> No.5251639

Serious question: why would anyone give a shit about an author's character unless they're into childish hero-worship?

>> No.5251643

>>5251583
>he really liked pearl jam a lot

>> No.5251645

>>5251626
yes, but who are you to criticize someone over their inability (because it is hard for many, especially for an author who was recognized at a young age) to overcome them? you don't think he knew his flaws? why do you think he killed himself?

>> No.5251648

>>5251635
>>5251643
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwW12jBKzYk

>> No.5251656

>>5251639
>Serious question:

>> No.5251658

>>5251639
General interest. It's not unusual to find other people interesting - it's common advice given in creative writing classes to carry around a notebook with you for observations, or to use a real person as inspiration for a character - why should you pay any less attention to someone just because they happen to be an author?

>> No.5251675

>>5251615
They also fail to realize that his views on society and literature were influenced not so much by his study of social trends but of his own mentality.

He only disliked irony when he found that the irony of his own life was preventing him from being sincere toward people.

Same goes for Zadie Smith and her recent attack on solipsism. She surely knew when she was younger that it was a means to success and nothing more, though now she has that success she feels she can say that everyone should get together in one giant feel-good cirlcle-jerk.

>> No.5251677

>>5251645
>why do you think he killed himself?
the dumbass went off his meds

>> No.5251678

>>5251658
I should have clarified. It doesn't bother me to find out my favorite authors were assholes because I evaluate their work independently of their lives. Why should an author's personality affect your enjoyment of their work?

>> No.5251687

>>5251429
>degrading women

not seeing the problem?
>dragging bitch through shit

still not seeing the problem

they have rights, they can vote, they don't deserve respect

>> No.5251689

I don't understand DFW's fame. His writing is hackneyed in thought and expression:

>The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

The above quote is typical case for DFW. If this kind of stuff appeared on /lit/ it would be mocked as facebook fodder.

>The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

See how trite all of his phrases are and how unsubtle his thought is? I've had depression and I hated DFW a lot more then, because I felt like he had an adolescent and self-pitying understanding of it. He's trying to describe the hopelessness and despair of melancholy that drives one to suicide, and to do this he uses the metaphor of a fire - this right away is a huge blunder because anyone who has had depression knows that it is a "black bile" that eats away at you slowly until you are hollow, making fire which is associated with passion an unfitting metaphor. Then he goes on to describe how the terror of the fire of depression is worse than the terror of falling out of window (or doing whatever to commit suicide, fire a bullet, tie a noose). That's not it at all. The melancholy man when he finally kills himself out of sheer despair is not filled with terror but with a glum resignation that can no longer find any worth in living; he is already dead before he kills himself, so the intensity of emotion that DFW is describing is not apt to describe depression.
What it would be a good metaphor for is the suicide out of shame. Like when Lucretia kills herself because she cannot bare to live with the shame of her rape - that shame is fire. That still would not excuse DFW for how trite his phrasing of the metaphor is though, how needlessly long-winded it is and how commonplace its language.

>> No.5251691

>>5251583
Daily reminder that,
Faulkner was a drunk who abused his children
Tolstoy was a cult leader who exploited ignorant peasants
Dostoyevsky was a misanthrope and detested everyone
Kerouac was a misogynistic reactionary drunk with serious mother issues
Hemingway slaughtered animals to deflect attention away from his insecurity over his masculinity and raised inbred mutant cats
Salinger was a hermit who liked to seduce teenaged girls using his literary fame
Burroughs shot his wife in the face and spent the next ten years as a junky fucking boys in tangiers
The list goes on. Tons of authors were terrible people. It doesn't mean they never had anything of value to say or were incapable of insightful or sensitive observations.

>> No.5251723

>>5251689
I've said this before but there's a very well-researched article on theawls.com about his love for pop-psychology self-help books, and how his This is Water speech is basically pieced together from these books, and how his previous books are basically rehearsals of previously argued points, albeit in the style of a hyper-active, needy guy

>> No.5251724

>>5251689
>Then he goes on to describe how the terror of the fire of depression is worse than the terror of falling out of window (or doing whatever to commit suicide, fire a bullet, tie a noose). That's not it at all. The melancholy man when he finally kills himself out of sheer despair is not filled with terror but with a glum resignation that can no longer find any worth in living; he is already dead before he kills himself, so the intensity of emotion that DFW is describing is not apt to describe depression.

When a melancholy man bitten by years of depression throws himself out of a window he is not afraid of the pavement. He is not afraid of the bullet, or the noose. His despair is that he ISN'T afraid of the pavement, the bullet, or the noose; his life has become so empty that he sees no loss in becoming a scrambled corpse on a pavement. DFW presents it as though the pavement is scary, the depression is just that bit scarier. No, the melancholy man has no fear of death, not because he is brave, but because he does not see it as any different than life.

>> No.5251726

>>5251691
And we love them all anyway!

It would all make for one incredible sitcom...

>> No.5251728

>>5251691
>implying any of those things are as bad as dragging your little sister through literal dog feces

>> No.5251734

>>5251728
>manslaughter

>> No.5251740

>>5251691
Don't forget Proust torturing rats while masturbating.

but to be honest
>anything after the Romantics

Romantic artists were a bunch of lunatics with a few exceptions, and it has been the same ever since.

>> No.5251742

>>5251734
>shit dragging

At least the person is dead with manslaughter. DFW was more sadistic than that. He wanted his sister to smell that shit in her hair and on her clothing for the rest of her life. That is messed up.

>> No.5251765

Harold Bloom's famous quote about DFW seems like one of those edgy comments butthurt contrarians like to make - except in this case the comment is spot on.

>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.

>> No.5251767

>>5251689
His writing on depression is more thoughtful in Infinite Jest.

>> No.5251933

>>5251689
>I've had depression and I hated DFW a lot more then, because I felt like he had an adolescent and self-pitying understanding of it

>implying you understand depression better than a guy who killed himself

top kek

>> No.5252036

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blnnQMEAfo8

>> No.5252057

>>5251689
>I experience depression differently than this writer
>This writer is bad

Flawless reasoning

>> No.5252105

>>5251767
That is from Infinite Jest.

>> No.5252143

>>5252105
Yeah? Yeah, you're right. Uh, well, he has better thoughts about it elsewhere. Stuff concerning Hal and Kate Gompert and a hedonia.

>> No.5252159

>>5252143
*anhedonia

>> No.5252508
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5252508

>>5251422
>>5251431

>> No.5252533

>>5251689
>anyone who has had depression knows that it is a "black bile" that eats away at you slowly until you are hollow, making fire which is associated with passion an unfitting metaphor.
>can't distinguish between a metaphor and an analogy
>doesn't know that metaphors don't necessarily rely on fixed attributions
teepee kek