/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6283826]

>pg.71
Am I supposed to understand the basic setting of the novel by this point? I've been reading and looking up what the acronyms stood for (going with the flow essentially) but the whole o.n.a.n. superstate thing/subsidized time didn't make sense to me up until I read up about the book's setting and basic background in a wiki. I didn't even know it was set in a dystopian world until teleputers were mentioned. And the whole quebecois separatism situation (in regards to quebec being separated from o.n.a.n.) didn't make much sense to me up until I read tid bits from the wiki, even though quebecois characters were being mentioned multiple times.

It took me about an hour to get though like 8 pages because I was constantly looking up words and reading footnotes. Not much else is giving me trouble, and I'm actually enjoying the experience and will try my best to finish reading the book, but I feel as if I'm not truly grasping some of what I'm reading (even after looking up definitions, reading footnotes, etc.).

Am I an imbecile?

[Anonymous No.6283843]

I never read dfw end notes. Its more like little extras for people who think his writing is so stellar they just can't get enough.

[Anonymous No.6283889]

yeah, youre pretty dumb.
>>6283843
yeah youre not gonna understand some stuff...

[Anonymous No.6283893]

>>6283889
Probably, but so far it hasn't been a problem in anyway.

[Anonymous No.6283900]

>>6283893
How far in are you?

[Anonymous No.6283908]

>>6283826
It's poorly written.

[Anonymous No.6283926]

>>6283900
100 pages of the 1300 page eBook.

I keep stopping to read dfw non fiction which I enjoy more

[Anonymous No.6283930]

>>6283826
there are many different settings in the novel, i thought they were all pretty easy to grasp. the tennis academy and the ennet house (not sure that this comes in until well into the novel) are the big 2.

also overall i thought it was a relatively easy book to grasp. what's your education level, degree major if you had/have one? and do, did you you read much outside of novels?

[Anonymous No.6283931]

>>6283926
I read some of Brief Interviews and enjoyed what I read. Where should I start with his non-fic?

[Anonymous No.6283935]

>>6283931
Up simba from lobster. His essay about Dostoyevsky from same, definitely read the supposedly fun thing which is golden its so good.

[Anonymous No.6283939]

>>6283843
this had better be bait

[Anonymous No.6283954]

>>6283939
Not bait. I don't see why fiction needs end notes that are just elaborations on prose. Like, if these were sources, which end notes are actually for, I might see the point...

[Anonymous No.6283979]

>>6283930
I don't think I worded what I wanted to say properly. The settings are easy to grasp: ETA, Orin's "team house", the Brighton projects, Erdedy's place, the medical attaches house, the quebecois separatist's neo-georgian house, etc.. have all been mentioned so far. I just didn't understand o.n.a.n./subsidized time parts of the novel (the book most likely explains most of this later on, but I just couldn't immerse myself into book's world without knowing some of its history, y'know? I guess I got impatient.). I've had to look up a handful of words --some of which were synonyms of words I already knew-- but I find it to be a great learning experience, even if it's a bit tedious.

Just started my third year of uni (started at 17), did just enough to pass back in high school out of sheer laziness and unfamiliarity with some basics of the language (learned English at 12), and only got into literature during the second half of my first year. I've read a reasonable amount of books since then, both fiction and non-fiction. I am an idiot.

[Anonymous No.6283987]

>>6283954
There are important explanations and even conversations in the IJ Endnotes. They aren't just there to be there.

[Anonymous No.6283995]

>>6283987
Is it OK if I just read them all at once at the end like in an afterword?

[Anonymous No.6283998]

WARDINE BE CRY

[Anonymous No.6284015]

>>6283998
fuck, dude. Not even black slaves portrayed in films/tv talk as ridiculous as those characters did in the faux-ebonics chapters.

[Anonymous No.6284024]

>>6283995
I guess, but they're meant to be read as you're reading the corresponding chapter. They don't make much sense otherwise. Maybe read it once without the endnotes, then read it again with the endnotes.

[Anonymous No.6284039]

>>6284015

that's the joke, you morons

[Anonymous No.6284043]

>>6284039

>i was only pretending to be retarded

- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, pp. 1 - 1030

[Anonymous No.6284106]

>>6283979
I don't remember the weird years ever being explained, I had to google their order and write it on my footnote bookmark, which was a post-it.

[Anonymous No.6284131]

>>6283826
is this actuay what happens in the book?

[Anonymous No.6284189]

>One thought he seemed like he had Asperger’s syndrome and remembers him as theatrical in his isolation, taking up “some position from which the staff could view him, and from his small corner of the room stage he would pose as if in deep contemplation, or emotional pain or genius.”


>dfw you are literally a meme

[Anonymous No.6284204]

The plot is both fractured and expansive enough that you won't really grasp it all until a second read through, at which point it's VERY easy to understand. If I recall I had a similar sort of experience my first time through, but I just trucked through it.

[Anonymous No.6284221]

>>6283826
Pseudo-intellectuals will tell you this is 'deep' when it's actually trash. Take real literature like the Odyssey for example. Much better than DFW's trash and you don't need to read some bullshit pretentious footnotes every five seconds because 'le wacky and incoherent plot lulz xDD.' DFW killed himself because he hadn't any talent.

[Anonymous No.6284226]

>>6284221
At least it wasn't a fucking poem, the Greeks were a bunch of fags.

[Anonymous No.6284235]

What is DFW's best work, /lit/? My vote goes towards A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

[Anonymous No.6284238]

>>6284226
To my face say that,
You little fucking brat,
In real life not on the internet,
And you'll end up fucking dead I bet

[Anonymous No.6284271]

>>6283995
>>6284024
who is trolling whom here?