finished this yesterday what now?

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green !YOUlQWt3s6 Wed Apr 29 17:52:32 2015 No.6473049 [Reply] [Original]

finished this yesterday
what now?

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 17:53:34 2015 No.6473057 John Barth

Anonymous Wed Apr 29 17:58:56 2015 No.6473078

I'm on pg. 105. Hoping to be done before the middle of May. Exams/the end of the semester will be the only reason it will take me so long.

Loving it so far. I've only read "Consider the Lobster" and "A Supposedly Fun Thing..."

Might move to "Oblivion" after I'm finished. Not sure yet.

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 18:01:24 2015 No.6473091 File: 419 KB, 655x464, dfw10.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6473049 shitposting

Anonymous Wed Apr 29 18:10:41 2015 No.6473136

>>6473049
>what now?
That's it OP, you're all done! Great job!
You can now answer thy summons to join the innumerable caravan, that moves to the pale realms of shade, where each shall take his/her chamber in the silent halls of death. Go thou not, OP, like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd by an unfaltering sincerity, approach thy grave, like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to comfy dreams.

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 18:12:56 2015 No.6473144 take sides on its quality and shitpost like there's no tomorrow really though, if you like it and you haven't read Gravity's Rainbow or Mason & Dixon, you should give those a try. DeLillo too

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 18:18:41 2015 No.6473176 >>6473078 >not reading IJ first, then moving onto his nonfiction I pity you.

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 18:45:38 2015 No.6473277 >>6473176 Why? A professor recommended I read his stuff in that order. I'm not disagreeing. Just curious. I get that some of the ideas from IJ are fleshed out in the NF stuff. Any other reasons?

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 19:19:46 2015 No.6473395 >>6473144 And once you turn 20 and stop being a teenager you can read good post-modern authors, like William H Gass.

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 19:21:03 2015 No.6473397 >>6473395 pynchon is better than gass tbh

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 19:21:31 2015 No.6473399 Kill yourself for wasting your time on a mediocre book.

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 19:23:20 2015 No.6473405 >>6473049 re-read the intro scenes

Anonymous Wed Apr 29 20:43:05 2015 No.6473781
File: 499 KB, 1410x2100, jest (1).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Reread, there is no point in reading IJ once. Here are similar books:

1. End Zone, The Names, Mao II-Don DeLillo
2. Cannery Row-John Steinbeck
3. Pale Fire and Pnin are BY FAR the most similar books to IJ. Compare the opening pages of Pnin to the first scene of Hal smoking pot (which is, in a way, the true beginning of IJ)
4. The Crying of Lot 49 and V.(more than Gravity's Rainbow imo, but GR has a few allusions in IJ)
5. The Brothers Karamazov
6. Old School-Tobias Wolff

that being said, can anybody tell me if Beckett was an influence on IJ?

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 21:38:00 2015 No.6474076 >>6473781 >Hal smoking pot (which is, in a way, the true beginning of IJ) Why do you say that?

>>	Anonymous Wed Apr 29 22:26:04 2015 No.6474306 >>6473399 I think he meant he finished reading it.

Anonymous Wed Apr 29 23:20:22 2015 No.6474532

>>6474076

It's the first official ETA section. Everything before it either features side characters or takes place during the past or future. The action of every storyline begins on the first few days of November: all major characters have introductory passages during Nov 1-4, but in some cases they are in radically different parts of the book. Orin, Steeply, two Ennet house addicts, Tony Krause, Rodney Tine, and most importantly Gately's stories begin on Nov 1st. Hal is introduced on Nov 2nd (smoking in basement, tennis dream, talking to Mario around midnight), and the rest of ETA is introduced on the 3rd. This means that everything taking place the same year (YDAU) but before Nov 1st is flashback and setup (including Marathe+Steeply, medical attache, some Inc family sections)

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 02:15:45 2015 No.6475201 >>6473136 I love IJ but this post is top drawer

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 04:04:49 2015 No.6475445 >>6473781 If I hated Pnin will I hate IJ?

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 04:09:18 2015 No.6475459 >>6475445 Sounds like you're pleb enough to really love IJ. Give it a go.

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 09:24:01 2015 No.6476055 >>6473781 >3. Pale Fire I liked it, but the format is very jarring and a lot of the Zembla parts get to be a chore to read. Nabokov did too good of a job at making the narrator come off as a blowhard.

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 11:44:02 2015 No.6476601 >>6476055 Yeah, I felt like I "got it" about two thirds in and couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Anonymous Thu Apr 30 12:14:21 2015 No.6476719

>>6476601
That's a mistake IMO. The ending (even though you know it, quite like IJ) is stunning. It's sort of like watching two planes flying towards each other, and you know they're going to collide. Even though you know roughly what's going to happen, you stick around to watch the sparks fly.

Anonymous Thu Apr 30 12:17:20 2015 No.6476732

>>6475445

not at all, but Wallace's style of writing is pretty similar. Example:

Pnin: "The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin. (...) Now a secret must be imparted. Professor Pnin was on the was on the wrong train."

IJ: "Here's Hal Incandenza, age seventeen, with his little brass one-hitter, getting covertly high in the Enfield Tennis Acadamy's underground Pump Room and exhaling palely into an industrial exhaust fan. Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he's attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high."

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 12:27:01 2015 No.6476777 >>6476719 I agree that it's worth it, but getting there is undeniably a slog.

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 12:51:48 2015 No.6476890 >>6473049 You're done with /lit/, move on to another board and master that one aswell

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 16:24:13 2015 No.6477519 >>6473049 Nuke head

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 16:32:46 2015 No.6477538 >>6473781 >GR has a few allusions in IJ How do you mean? DFW famously wouldn't even admit to having read Pynchon

>>	green !YOUlQWt3s6 Thu Apr 30 16:43:59 2015 No.6477571 >>6473136 I tried killing myself but it didn't work what now

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 16:50:25 2015 No.6477591 >>6477571 If at first you don't succeed... >>6477538 He lied.

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 16:57:41 2015 No.6477627 >>6477519 More like microwave it. Teehee

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 16:59:35 2015 No.6477637 >>6477591 >He lied. Of course, but so how was he going to allude to it in his book?

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 17:36:45 2015 No.6477734 >>6477637 very superficial allusions, mostly imagery

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 17:41:42 2015 No.6477751 You arrange your latest unfinished manuscript and then hang yourself

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 18:16:58 2015 No.6477888 >>6477751 kek

>>	Anonymous Thu Apr 30 18:45:02 2015 No.6477994 >>6477734 so I guess you're not going to give any examples

Anonymous Thu Apr 30 23:34:54 2015 No.6479017

>>6477994

“That thing in Infinite Jest where two representatives (Steeply and Marathe) of two countries are on a cliff-side and are making enormous shadows and playing with it — and there’s even the use of the word Brockengespenst, which comes out of Slothrop and Geli Tripping (from Gravity’s Rainbow) fucking on the Brockengespenst— that’s an outright allusion.” -DFW

Anonymous Fri May 1 12:10:30 2015 No.6480896
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What a coincidence, I finished it just yesterday.

Infinite Jest is probably the only book I'd recommend getting an e-reader like a Kindle for, because there are so many fucking endnotes and they're all mandatory reading, and if you read a physical copy you're probably gonna be really sick of using 2 (probably 3) bookmarks and flipping back and forth all the time. In ebook form, all the endnotes are nicely hyperlinked and you can jump b/w them and the main text without interrupting your reading flow. That said, I pirated the ebook, and I ended up enjoying it so much I'm probably going to buy a hardcover copy real soon.

The cats Fri May 1 12:17:15 2015 No.6480911

>>6480896
It's really not a big deal. I don't know why you would then go on to say you plan to buy an awkward and unmalleable hardcover that will seperate at the spine instantly if you think flipping some paper occaisionally is a momentous task. DFW is dead. Symbolically buying a cumbersome book you've no intention to ever read in homage to a suicide has to be some sort of height of retardation.

Anonymous Fri May 1 12:17:42 2015 No.6480914

>>6480896

nigga it's meant to be read physical on the first read because flipping through the notes and back to the text resembles 1) tennis match 2) sobriety and relapse. But on the second read I used my kindle for the ease of definitions and hyperlinks

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:19:46 2015 No.6480921 File: 596 KB, 984x705, 1430099204847.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6480914 >he actually found meaning in having to flip back and forth

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:21:44 2015 No.6480924 >>6480921 well the man himself said it had meaning relating to the addiction theme. It's no coincidence that the endnotes are bookended by definitions of drugs

Anonymous Fri May 1 12:24:44 2015 No.6480930

>>6480914
I'm reading it right now. I didn't do much "pre-reading." I vaguely knew the plot going into it. I love hearing little ideas like this. Another I heard recently was about the cover of the paperback representing a tennis ball against the sky (I guess this is also touched upon in the book at some point). It just didn't cross my mind. Maybe I'm retarded. Either way, thanks for the insight. I'll constantly think of a tennis ball bouncing across a court as I flip through the pages now.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:43:30 2015 No.6480976 >>6480914 >because flipping through the notes and back to the text resembles 1) tennis match 2) sobriety and relapse blue-curtains-core, man

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:50:21 2015 No.6480990 Underworld

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:51:37 2015 No.6480997 Time to buy duct tape. Not really though, just a jest.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:52:06 2015 No.6480999 >>6480976 >blue-curtains-core on sobriety, ye, regarding Tennis, Wallace said it himself

Anonymous Fri May 1 12:52:35 2015 No.6481000
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Official DFW reading order.
IJ -> Broom of the System -> Well Known Short Stories -> Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again -> Finish Short Stories -> Consider the Lobster -> Pale King

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 12:55:20 2015 No.6481007 >>6481000 Broom of the System is garbage m8. It's him doing a second-rate Pynchon impersonation.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:00:52 2015 No.6481023 >>6481007 He never read Pynchon, and it's a necessary to see how DFW grew as an author.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:04:05 2015 No.6481031 >>6481023 >it's a necessary to see how DFW grew as an author. Only if you've got far too much time on your hands. No-one gives a fuck, my man.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:05:04 2015 No.6481034 >>6481023 >He never read Pynchon dave aren't you supposed to be dead

Anonymous Fri May 1 13:05:50 2015 No.6481037

>>6481023
>He never read Pynchon
This is a blatant lie. Broom of the System is obviously cribbed from The Crying of Lot 49 (among others) and even if Pynchon's influence on DFW's work wasn't patently obvious (it is...it's like saying McCarthy never read Faulkner), Pynchon is such a figure of American literature that any serious American writer (particularly one of DFW's education) would have read.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:07:18 2015 No.6481040 File: 165 KB, 400x400, 1422339514600.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6481034 >>6481037 Lies perpetuated by the Franzen-Bloom Complex.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:09:55 2015 No.6481045 >>6481031 This post gave me the howling fantoids.

The cats Fri May 1 13:10:39 2015 No.6481047

>>6481023
IJ has -obvious- Pynchon inspirations from the narrative structure to the character introduction methods to the abbreviations. Nevermind it seems to be a spiritual successor to Vineland in some respects, despite DFWs ironic panning of said novel. Where did this whole "DFW never read Pynchon" bullshit even come from.

>After a few years of this, Wallace found himself with little desire to read fiction, much less to write it. When Pynchon's Vineland came out in 1990, he had to slog. "I get the strong sense he's spent 20 years smoking pot and watching TV," Wallace wrote to Jonathan Franzen in a typically witty letter, "though I tend to get paranoid about this point, for obvious reasons."

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:14:51 2015 No.6481054 >>6481047 Because DFW denied being inspired by or even reading Pynchon in Broom of the System's epilogue.

Anonymous Fri May 1 13:16:30 2015 No.6481057

>>6480999
>>6480976

Did you read the book? Spoilers for the guy who said he's reading it. At the beginning Gately is sober in Hal's memory. Last page is Gately's memory of relapse. The first chapter is actually the last. Upon finishing the story you are meant to flip between the 'first' and 'last' chapters just like the endnotes. Here you literally flip from one side of the novel to the other, from relapse to recovery. Then the endnotes are figuratively doing the same. The drugs that serve as the first and last endnotes are the drugs Gately is given in the hospital and the kind he was addicted to. The notes are meant to be a symbol of relapse and addiction.

Anonymous Fri May 1 13:17:23 2015 No.6481061

>>6481047
>I get the strong sense he's spent 20 years smoking pot and watching TV
Isn't that just the ultimate goal in life? To write fun books and in your spare time get high and watch Looney Tunes? Maybe if DFW just lightened up (or lighted up) a bit more he'd still be around.
>>6481054
Then he's a liar and didn't want people to know what a big fat phony he was.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:20:11 2015 No.6481068 File: 1.64 MB, 400x335, 1429832280245.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6481047 >"I get the strong sense he's spent 20 years smoking pot and watching TV," Wallace wrote to Jonathan Franzen in a typically witty letter, >witty

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:21:07 2015 No.6481072 >>6481047 So is Vineland good? The Pynchon I enjoy reading is when he's writng about times and events he experienced directly like CoL49, IV, V. ...Is Vineland worth a read even if its considered his worst?

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:22:19 2015 No.6481076 >>6481061 >Maybe if DFW just lightened up (or lighted up) a bit more he'd still be around. Perfect

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:24:54 2015 No.6481085 >>6481072 It's a good novel, not his worst. Don't listen to people here that have never read the book and keep parroting that it's his worst.

The cats Fri May 1 13:26:07 2015 No.6481090

>>6481072
Yeah it's a lot like IV or the Benny sections of V. It's not so much funny as it is cartoony, and it has a small cast and is far less erudite. It's anime tier actually, but in a good way. That could probably be said about any of his books but this is directly comparable.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:27:55 2015 No.6481098 >>6481072 Vineland is far better than anything DFW ever wrote. So, if you wasted your time reading DFW's stuff, yes, you could have done something better with that time.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:38:38 2015 No.6481123 >>6481054 >>6481054 >>6481068 It's a classical case of, as Borges liked to quote, "no one wants to owe anything to his contemporaries"

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 13:48:38 2015 No.6481170 >>6473049 Fucking hipster

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 14:04:14 2015 No.6481219 >>6475459 LOL

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 14:04:41 2015 No.6481224 >>6477538 He stated in an interview that he liked Pynchon "about 25 percent of the time".

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 14:17:38 2015 No.6481268 File: 80 KB, 392x574, 1413383671185.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6481224 >they're 75% too sour anyway

>>	Anonymous Fri May 1 15:08:49 2015 No.6481459 >>6481023 Recognizing growth of the author is completely non-required to appreciating a single work. It's only valuable if the author interests you, which is distinct interest in his book

Anonymous Fri May 1 16:54:33 2015 No.6481892

>>6481098
>Vineland is far better than anything DFW ever wrote. So, if you wasted your time reading DFW's stuff, yes, you could have done something better with that time.

Vineland is light Pynchon, great for beginners, but preferring it to IJ is certainly a matter of taste.

IJ is more overtly funny and entertaining than anything Pynchon ever wrote.

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/lit/ - Literature