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/lit/ - Literature

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6692253 No.6692253 [Reply] [Original]

Is David Foster Wallace worth reading?

I tend to read classics and I've always been sort of embarrassed by the lack of contemporary or near contemporary authors on my bookshelf - at last count the only living authors I had represented were Gunter Grass, Marquez, and Alice Munro.

Recently I purchased Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and I finished Interviews quite quickly even though I found it to be absolutely horrible. The only story I liked was the one with the thirteen year old boy and the diving board, after that the collection went downhill fast. Even the stories where he keeps it relatively simple (such as the interviews themselves) were pretty awful; the narrators go on and on in this really affected dialogue which is nothing like how people speak in real life and also not interesting to read - I can accept unrealistic dialogue if it's at least fun to read. But beyond the boring "trying to shock me" interviews the actual experimental stories were straight up awful, the interview of himself was possibly the cringiest thing I've ever read, the tired expressions like "too much psychological shit to deal with" often had me rolling my eyes. Someone should resurrect DFW and tell him that repetitiveness is not the best way to write an interesting story as I was increasingly frustrated every time certain words and phrases were repeated over and over in some of the stories; "She (that is the depressed person), "his thingie", expressions like this repeated ad nauseam.

Worst of all of course were the instances when stories broke down into complete "pomo" preciousness, such as having a story break off by having its last chapter told in some sort of schema format or the story which was just definitions of words.

Is Infinite Jest worth reading when this was quite honestly just bad?

>> No.6692262

>>6692253
Infinite Jest doesn't usually get people in the middle. Either you love it or you hate it.
You should try Broom of the System. It's his first book and it's very good.

>> No.6692297

Brief Interviews is not that similar to IJ, but obviously there are some key traits that are present in all of his work. If you didn't enjoy his sense of humour, his attempts at subverting formal conventions and the sort of recursive psychological prospecting that he occupies himself with, then he may not be for you. The tone of the narrative voice is supposed to be amusing in most cases. If you were to give him another shot, I'd advise checking out his post-millennial work like Oblivion, The Pale King or Consider the Lobster, which is a little less "precious" and somewhat more traditionally literary.

>> No.6692301

>>6692297

What was supposed to be funny? The narrators swearing a bunch, or what?

>> No.6692330

>>6692301
The way he juxtaposes various dialects and registers against each other or employs them in apparently incongruous contexts. I know that Wallace has the reputation as the 'anti-irony' guy, but his work is actually laden with it, just of a gentler type than that of the predecessors he was protesting against.

>> No.6692338

>>6692253
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but gabo died over a year ago. You're down to two

>> No.6692343

>>6692338
Gunter Grass kicked the bucket a few months ago.

>> No.6692346

>>6692338

Actually Grass died a few weeks ago and Munro of course is on her last legs. Still I added Pynchon so that's something!

>> No.6692373

>>6692346

Wait, R.Crumb, Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom are still alive, I also have a few poetry anthologies with living poets.

>> No.6692383

>>6692373

Oh no wait.. Frye is dead.

>> No.6692462

>>6692253

>> No.6692487

>>6692253
You should read IJ. I don't think you'll get past the pleb filter a little ways in, though.

>> No.6692516

>>6692487

But I think plebs are the people who like DFW ;)

>> No.6692549

>>6692487
>>6692516
I think if you go around calling people plebs then you are have entirely missed the point of postmodern literature.

>> No.6692576

>>6692516
It can be a pleb-pass filter if you want

>> No.6693226

>>6692516
Says the pleb

>> No.6693238

>>6692253
wait, are you saying those are the only three living authors you've read at all?

>> No.6693266

>tfw I started IJ couple of weeks ago
g-guys please d-don't get me scared

>> No.6693446

>>6693238

Well I read lots of authors like Eoin Colfer and J.K Rowling, or R.A Salvatore when I was a kid, but yes since I started reading literature I've pretty much stuck to classics, I mean the vast majority of books written are by authors who are now dead so it's not that strange.

>> No.6693456

Is it just me who prefers his non-fiction?

Being sent to write about porn awards and lobster festivals made him reign in his self-indulgence a little

>> No.6693467

>>6693226

Is Harold Bloom also a pleb?

>> No.6693480

>>6693467
the biggest one out there

>> No.6693482

>>6693467
Worse, a charlatan.

>> No.6693489

>>6693480

Nah, he's definitely not. I haven't heard many favorable reviews of DFW on other literature forums I post on, guess everyone is plebs except the nineteen year olds on /lit/ huh?

>> No.6693494

>>6693489
>other literature forums I post on
Stop fooling yourself.
Also how about you read yourself for *once* instead of just asking your daddy chinese animu board? At least the supposedly non-pleb nineteen year olds read and lurk before posting

>> No.6693496

No.

Stick with Kafka, Beckett, and, if you must, Pynchon.

>> No.6693497

>>6693494

I did read DFW though, I'm asking if Infinite Jest is more of the same or if Interviews was just a bad example of his work. I see you're defensive and upset, it's okay to like David Foster Wallace anon, don't worry.

>> No.6693507

>>6693497
>defensive and upset
>like DFW
>all these implications
eh, it's more about silly threads being annoying than anything else, really.

>> No.6693513

>>6693507

Well you certainly came off as defensive and while you may not be upset it's funny to me that you're accusing me of

>implying

when your post was nothing but implications!

>stop fooling yourself
>how about you read for *once*

How do you know how much I read? Or

>> No.6693517

>>6693507

Also what exactly makes this a silly thread? I want additional information about a writer from a group of people who seem to have read said writer quite extensively. Perhaps your time and effort spent "fighting silly threads" might be better served in the dozens of John Green or /pol/ threads we get on /lit/.

>> No.6693518

>>6693517
>fighting
kek, I just give them the answers they deserve.
_______:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^)
And you're an absolute pleb if you think john green threads need fighting. =)

>> No.6693527

Why don't you try going to a book shop and just picking up something that takes your fancy? I know, I know. What if it's not brilliant? What if you're stuck with a book that isn't a... classic!

It's all very scary stuff and probably not worth it since your time is so very fucking precious.

>> No.6693550

>>6693467
Do you think Harold Bloom listened to the opinion of others instead of reading a work himself?

If you don't want to read Infinite Jest, that's fine. You don't have to. All I ask is that you don't shitpost about it in the future and pretend to know anything on the subject, like some people do on here.

Like I said before, you should read it. I still don't think you'll get past the "challenging part," that apparently a lot of people have issues understanding, early on.

I like both Bloom and DFW. Why should I care if they didn't like each other?

>> No.6693558

>>6692253
>reading literature made after 1850
Why would you do this, there's an inexhaustible wealth of Western European material and it's almost all better

>> No.6693559

>>6693550
>Do you think Harold Bloom listened to the opinion of others instead of reading a work himself?

Uh, yeah, that's basically all he does.

>> No.6693560

>>6693446

It would be interesting to see whether that's true about most novelists being dead. The novel as we know it is relatively modern (not to mention you had to be fairly rich to be a novelist in the past) and people live longer now. More novels are being published than ever before. Let's say the average writer lived till 80. Think of all the novelists born after 1935.

A lot of the writers you might think of as fairly modern such as Golding, Burgess, Salinger, Keroauc etc. were born between 1910-1920.

>> No.6693593

>>6693446
I only asked because I was gonna emphatically suggest Cormac McCarthy. I know its a cliche name to throw around, but out of all the modern "master works" I'd say you're going to find a whole bunch of stuff that is extremely different from what the classics generally offer in execution. You could say that writers like DFW and many classics share a verbosity and propensity for flowery language, but for me there is an ineffable quality to most classics that defies the sort of... I don't know what to call it... I'll say whimsy that seems to saturate many modern "genius" authors. Not that I fault them for that. But McCarthy is infinitely more in line with classics, I think, than someone like DFW.

Also I'm a big fat McCarthy fanboy so there's that.

>> No.6693682

>>6692253
IJ is much less experimental than Brief Interviews but if you didn't find "the depressed person" at all funny I doubt you'll find his voice in IJ humorous either. Loses most of its appeal if you can't laugh with and at the mock-genuine-mock-genuine tedium and pretentiousness.

>> No.6693794

>>6693560

Yes but I don't only read novels and nearly everyone born between 1910 and 1920 are now dead.

>>6693593

I mean when I say 'classic' I'm not excluding people like Joyce, Pessoa, Nabokov, John Kennedy Toole, Woolf, Solzhenitsyn, Eliot, Auden, Dickinson, etc; so when I say classic I don't mean really old. I love Calvino and Borges as well.

>> No.6693797

>>6693682

But why is "mock" tedium preferable? I mean if the story is tedious it's tedious right?

>> No.6693814

>>6693794
Yeah I'm thinking specifically living authors as a contrast. I'd say McCarthy is very different from most well known living authors

>> No.6693818

>>6693814

Well pretty much everyone from everywhere has recommended Blood Meridian but I've always resisted. I'm sure I'll read it eventually.

>> No.6693830

Infinite Jest is different from and better than Brief Interviews, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to someone who hated Brief Interviews so much. I probably wouldn't. It's a big investment for something you might hate and I'm sure you have many other authors and books you are more excited about reading.

>> No.6693847

>>6693682
I found the Depressed Person interminable and unfunny. With a very small handful of exceptions, I don't think DFW is a good short story writer.

I think he is a great essayist (I always recommend people start with A Supposedly Fun Thing) and a very good novelist as well.

>> No.6693866

>>6693797
Ironical kind of fun. Which would itself be ironical in light of DFW's supposed thing against unbound irony, if only it wasn't so obviously bogus.

>>6693847
>With a very small handful of exceptions, I don't think DFW is a good short story writer
Agreed

>> No.6693867

>>6693794

>everyone born between 1910 and 1920 are now dead.

True but the point is that everything that has been published since about the 50s could have a living author. People like Updike, Salinger and Vonnegut only died a few years ago. Since the novel as we know it is basically a 20th century artform - it's possibly not true that most novelists are dead.

>> No.6693905

>>6693867
>the novel as we know it is basically a 20th century artform

It's probably more of a 19th century artform, actually.

>> No.6694054

>>6693818
Blood Meridian is commonly considered his masterpiece. imo, NCFOM and Blood Meridian stare boldly into the face of the evil of man and challenge to the reader to still hope, but The Road will always be the most beautiful and moving of his works because it looks into the darkness and sees a light at the end of the tunnel.