[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]

2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

File: 46 KB, 480x640, david foster wallace.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

6430176

Anonymous Mon Apr 20 15:08:52 2015 No.6430176 [Reply] [Original]

>Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

>>

Anonymous Mon Apr 20 15:22:12 2015 No.6430231
File: 473 KB, 1035x897, linden-6.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

The issue is that subjects of irony, on a large scale, have stagnated. We are slaying holy cows five generations old. Anything satirical and topical is shot down as a hate crime. There is the easy, appealing role of the rebel waiting to be filled by today's youth, and all you have to do is shit on the ideals of the 1950's. People who truly stand up to the wrongs of society today are lashed out against, cast out or ignored and with the role of the politically correct rebel so prevalent, they don't find the support or morale to press on. They sink back into something easier.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 21:29:04 2015 No.6431643 bump

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:09:51 2015 No.6431896 I'd like to bump him, y'know what I'm saying

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:14:35 2015 No.6431922 File: 30 KB, 263x297, feel poe.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6430176 >There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:15:39 2015 No.6431926 Irony is a literary technique, often a very effective one, that's been around and has been used generously for millennia. I doubt it's just recently that it's started to get old

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:16:05 2015 No.6431929 He was posing for the pussy in that pic.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:19:26 2015 No.6431944 Did Wallace write this? I like it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:23:03 2015 No.6431961 >>6431944 It's from his collection of nonfiction, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

>>

Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:26:53 2015 No.6431977
File: 52 KB, 250x250, 84e.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

What is to be done /lit/? Are we better or worse than the philistines and the theorists? Is the flattening of the world inevitable? Will we just continue sitting here at our computers, shoveling around piles of shit and dreaming of an age we never knew?

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:43:12 2015 No.6432032 Irony is just the most passive aggressive form of criticism.

>>

Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:46:23 2015 No.6432050
File: 275 KB, 1468x2115, St._Uriel-_St_John’s_Church,_Boreham.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

The only escape from irony is religion. Nothing is ironic to the religious man, because even what seems to be irony actually becomes mystical with its countervailing meanings. Of course Wallace was too much of a plebby mainstream American to grasp this.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:48:42 2015 No.6432054 >>6432050 >all the smartest people in more recent modern history were irreligious (including your favourite authors if they are any good in the first place)

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 22:55:25 2015 No.6432085 >Irony bad! >Sincerity good! OK, maybe things looked different in 1990, but I think Wallace was overreaching in saying that irony had conquered US culture.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 23:22:11 2015 No.6432171 >>6432085 It's probably more the case now. New atheism is just a shitstorm of children ridiculing anything they don't like.

>>	Anonymous Mon Apr 20 23:39:22 2015 No.6432240 >>6432085 I also wonder if he ever considered that "new sincerity" could produce new illusions. I mean, /lit/ ridicules IJ on a scale that teeters between sincere and ironic. I think it's ignorant to think of irony as something recent, too.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 00:23:39 2015 No.6432413 dfw really let himself go

>>

Anonymous Tue Apr 21 10:55:55 2015 No.6433703

>>6432054
I think most of those authors appreciated religion as something they wish they had.

It takes a sort of nihilistic empathy to be a good writer, which sometimes makes you seem agnostic or areligious, but that sort of leap of faith passion is admirable, even if it leads to violence.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 11:07:25 2015 No.6433728 >There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage I want to read this guy

>>

Anonymous Tue Apr 21 11:10:19 2015 No.6433740

>>6430176

LOL, this reminds me of when I found SlutHate, which is like r9k but more redpill. Its philosophy towards life was really eye opening. They emphasise hugely the importance of looks in order to get women. They run tinder / dating website experiments which show that deformed / obese women get shitloads of attention. They use male model photos to show that good looking men can say any old shit and still have women giving out their numbers. My eyes were truly opened.

I realised that their philosophy was pure cynicism. But that's when I ran in to the same problem as DFW. If you believe in pure cynicism, then what? SlutHaters would post half-joking topics all the time about their theories on how to improve their chances of getting girls. e.g. "Low Inhibition theory: You need to be less inhibited to get girls." Maybe they were plausible or not, but all conjectures would eventually be crushed under the weight of "Looks-Money-Status is all that matters", the holy trinity of SlutHater philosophical thinking.

>>6432050 is right though. Stick your head in the sand with religion or you cannot know nuthin. Although a sluthater's job is easier than DFW's job of working out the meaning of everything, as a SlutHater can hope they get lucky.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 11:33:01 2015 No.6433835 >>6432240 New sincerity doesn't exist. Its just Tao faggot Lin shilling

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 12:03:59 2015 No.6433939 >>6433740 The real joke here is the male obsession with sex and the use of the ability to get it from women as a measure of self-worth.

>>

Anonymous Tue Apr 21 15:49:28 2015 No.6434811

>>6432240
Irony has taken on new meaning in our "post ironic" world. Irony has subverted itself. Its now a method of passive, lazy enjoyment. Look at lol. Now its lel, kek, jej, etc. Those are suppose to be ironic, malicious reactions to lol. But they aren't really used that way. When we say kek, we are laughing.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 15:55:14 2015 No.6434855 >>6434811 But "kek" really caught on in unironical use because it's catchy and phonetically appropriate. So does lel bring a bit of nuance, enriches the lolscape.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 15:57:28 2015 No.6434869 >>6433939 Sex is just as important for women as it is for men. The "sluthaters" exist because a sizeable portion of men don't have any outlet for their sex drives, unlike the vast majority of women who are able to get it whenever they want.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:00:41 2015 No.6434890 >>6434869 >The "sluthaters" exist because a blah blah bloo... No, 'sluthaters' exist because sluts are subhuman trash and human cum dumpsters. Facts are facts, bro.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:05:58 2015 No.6434922 >>6432050 don't you know he was a churchgoing man

>>

Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:12:31 2015 No.6434961 [DELETED]

[DELETED]

>>6433740
>people on Tinder use looks to chose partner
>people are seeking attractive people when they use an app designed to get you casual sex fast
>people on dating sites are often shallow and desperate

Truly important and eye opening insight.

Another bit of widsom for you: people define themselves by what they don't like ("-hate") when they can't do anything that matters to them and are at a loss to justify their existence in their own eyes.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:16:25 2015 No.6434981 >>6434890 false

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:28:47 2015 No.6435040 >>6434922 google 'Good Old Neon'. he tried a really strange form of protestantism.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 16:49:16 2015 No.6435142 >>6434811 >Not even a nod to the ever superior lyl I am loving every laugh at you right now.

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 18:06:17 2015 No.6435508 >>6434855 Lel caught on because of its similarity to 'le' imo

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 18:08:43 2015 No.6435526 >>6434811 >ironic, malicious reactions to lol not really, even lulz was just a phonetic variant

>>	Anonymous Tue Apr 21 18:12:09 2015 No.6435540 >>6435508 lel is tip-of-the-tongue, brings out more of a duck smile, really very different from lol's ass bray

>>

Anonymous Tue Apr 21 19:21:07 2015 No.6435895

>>6433740

It's not so much sticking your head in the sand as it is understanding that all are stuck in the sands of God's plan, and that our lives, by the virtue of their inevitable effect on others and their inevitable course, therein have meaning.

Also, the big G totally wants you to get pussy. Masturbation was so outlawed in ancient venice that the Doge told the whore to hang their breasts into the streets to both 'advertise their wares', and 'discourage sins of the flesh'.

Be baptized in the flesh.