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/lit/ - Literature

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7057913 No.7057913 [Reply] [Original]

Hey /lit/, I'm interested in reading Infinite Jest but it's a long book so I wanted to be sure if it's worth the read and I'm the sort of person who refuses to not finish a book I've started. So I read Dan Schneider's review of it and he HATED, declaring it the worst science fiction novel ever written and perhaps the worst book ever written too. What are your thoughts on his review?
http://www.cosmoetica.com/b326-des266.htm

>> No.7057922

The ending is the best! Don't skip!!

>> No.7057924

>>7057913
>science fiction novel
Anyone who calls it scifi is pants-on-head retarded and should be ignored.

That being said, while I enjoyed it, I felt like it was ultimately a failure and fell short of what it was trying to achieve.

>> No.7057926

Here's an extract from the review:
>His book, only a decade old, is more outdated than many Golden and Silver Age sci fi books specifically because of his slang’s sounding as relevant as John Dryden’s courtly verse. Unlike Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, the slang is based in the then-contemporary world, which makes it seem so 1990s trying to seem cool, rather than timeless. Even his use of emails, with outdated isp formats, seems to belie his lack of creativity. Not that his relentlessly PoMo use of product brand names, bumper stickers, redaction marks, and lengthy digressions on things as pointless as Hawaii 5-0’s relevance versus Hills Street Blues’, does not already belie his creative bankruptcy, but it’s worth noting. Of course, nothing comes of his discourses- they’re tossed in like olives in a salad, so Wallace can preen his learnedness to you, and dropped just as quickly- a habit that he too often indulges- bringing up and dropping things.

>> No.7057937

>>7057924
How is it not scifi? And is it still worth a read?

Here's another extract:
>It’s not that Infinite Jest does not obey traditional norms, it’s just that it disobeys them poorly, and offers no alternatives of quality. Apologists will say that ‘Those who think it’s bad writing simply do not get it.’ Wrong, it’s gotten, very easily, and seen through quite well, as most poseur crap is. It’s just that what’s there is not worth the getting.

>> No.7057950

Last two:
>There are plenty of scenes, much banal conversation, poorly written, and gossipy, but nothing really occurs. The events move laterally, not forward, and chapter upon chapter reveals this stasis, as they all have the same name: Year Of The Depend Adult Undergarment. There are freaks of a sexual nature and others who simply obsess over things like spit. The ‘plot’ is simply the statement of the relationships, the presentation of what has been stated, explanations that state what has already been shown, and no real action. This alone does not make a book bad, but, as stated, there is no verbal wizardry to the language, nor is there any poesy nor insight.

>The rest of its predictive powers fall far short, as the film of Infinite Jest is bandied about on video cartridges, when DVDs were just a couple of years away. In that sense, Wallace again shows no ability to notice trends, nor that about him. And I wish the apologists he has would stop it. Just stop it. First off, none of them agrees with the other as to what his strengths are, and so the manifest conclusion is they’re all grasping at anything to try to sound hip and smart. Yet, repeatedly, phrases like ‘a powerful mind’, ‘immense creativity’ and the like pepper the apologists, and even detractors’ claims. This is very much like Dale Peck’s noted diss of Rick Moody’s novel The Black Veil, in a 2002 New Republic review, where he started off stating that Moody was the ‘worst writer of his generation’ only to ass-lickingly praise the tool as talented, etc. I shall not do so. I’ve read this book, and Wallace’s earlier Girl With Curious Hair. He has no writing talent. Even were he to go to a writing group full of great critics, he could not get it, and even if he could, he lacks the wordsmithing ability to execute the good suggestions he’d get. Pretentious posing does not equal intellect, and logorrhea is not depth, nor poesy. Writing that says the most with the least amount of words- whether in poetry or prose- is ninety-nine times out of a hundred the best writing. Even worse than his descriptive prose is his dialogue. Wallace has a tin ear for it. It’s almost as if he’s never listened to two semi-intelligent people talk. His characters all reveal themselves as morons with their own words. They do not grow, nor even attempt to- they simply rot, and make Holden Caulfield, from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye, seem dynamic by comparison. Wallace is worse than a hack, who merely writes dully- he has no writing ability, period. Worse, he has even less ambition, save to be called a ‘novelist’, lay airheaded coeds, and get drunk at parties. He does not even have any compelling reason to have written this book. One day he’ll grow up and wonder why he wasted his life in such pursuits.

>> No.7057974

I agree that the use of slang (using 'duBois' to refer to a joint made me cringe) takes a little away from the book reading it now, years after the fact, but to say that this renders the whole book meaningless is fucking retarded.

Anyways, it's not a science fiction book, so it's no surprise that it's a shitty science fiction book. Fuck man, War and Peace is a shitty science fiction book, too. Did this guy even read the fucking thing?

Is it the greatest book ever written? No. But it's still pretty damn good, and it's certainly far from being the worst ever written.

>> No.7057982

>>7057974
How do you respond to his other statements? Such as his criticism of DFW's prose and characters?

>> No.7057986

>>7057982
It's very typical, generic, workshop/MFA shit about how excess in prose is the devil. Whoever this guy is, he's a mouthbreathing douchebag who can't think for himself.

>> No.7057995

I hate how "you just don't get it" is a generic shitty comeback, but this guy seriously didn't get anything about the book's themes or what DFW was trying to accomplish.

>> No.7057999

>>7057986
Have you never heard of Dan Schneider? Besides, prose is VITAL to writing, and he made some good points against it in his full review (he singles out passages)
>>7057995
Did you read the full review?

>> No.7058005

>>7057982
>>7057974

I must confess that I didn't read the whole thing, because I stopped giving a shit very quickly.

All the chapters happen in the Year of the Depend... because that's when everything happens. It's part of the way the story is told that you don't know the exact chronology of the events, and because of this, it won't make sense until you finish the book and then re-read a few parts. This adds to the story. It doesn't detract.

Are there parts of it that I found excruciatingly hard to read? Yes. But there were other parts that had me laughing my ass off and yet other parts where stayed up late to keep reading. Is his prose pretentious? Yes, and he clearly just picked out a bunch of words that no one knows and then shoe-horned them in. And that's fine.

As far as characters are concerned, I completely disagree. The breadth of characters is formidable, and I love almost all of them.

>> No.7058013

>>7058005
Yet you still stopped giving a shit? Also, you didn't really make any good points in favour of the prose

>> No.7058026

>>7058013
Perhaps I should then clarify that while I'm not a huge fan of the prose (hence the whole it's really not the greatest book ever written part), I certainly don't think it's that awful. The ebonics sections are pretty tough, but there's all of 3 of them.

>> No.7058027

>>7058013
Also, I stopped giving a shit because calling it the worst science fiction book of all time and quite possibly the worst book ever is so much hyperbole that I thought I was reading the musings of a 7 year old.

>> No.7058032

>>7058027
Oh sorry I thought you meant you stopped giving a shit about the book

>> No.7058036

>>7058032
If your reading comprehension is that poor I don't trust anything you think about this book

>> No.7058040

>>7058032
Ah, of course. I worded that poorly.

>> No.7058041

>>7057913
I don't think Wallace was a very good writer, but this is a very good book.

>> No.7058065

Well, obviously you all disagree with the review. Is there a certain chapter or scene that you would recommend I read from the book to decide if it's for me or not? It's just that I have a lot of books I want to read and 1000 pages is very long so I don't want to read it unless I know I'll like it.
My favorite novel is The Brothers Karamazov by the way, so I'm certainly accustomed to wordiness and length

>> No.7058072

>>7057913
What is this book about?

I've never heard of it anywhere but here.

>> No.7058085

>>7058065

Just read the damn book. It's not a tv show, you can't just try a bit of it to see if you'll like it. It's a "difficult novel" so you'll have to grow into it. I say give it till 200 or so pages, and if you don't like it, just stop reading.

Though it seems like you're already ruined by this review because you seem to affected by it. Maybe you won't like it. Who cares. You can choose for yourself, you plebian.

>> No.7058094

>>7058085
Nah, it didn't ruin it for me, I just have a lot of respect for that critic so I wanted to know how you'd all respond. I know I should just give it a go, but I don't like not finishing a book I've started.
How emotional is the novel by the way? I know it's a weird thing to ask but I love book that I can get really emotional over, the last novel I read was Stoner and that made me pretty emotional, which I liked. So is this novel going to hit me hard in the feels or is it not that sort of book? If at the very least it'll give me some feels, then I'll give it a shot

>> No.7058100

>>7058072
Depression, addiction, loneliness, US-Canadian Relations, Quebec Separatism, tennis, and wheelchair assassins.

Honestly you have to just read the damn thing. It's hilarious and profound and /lit/ can only stop jizzing all over it long enough to pretend like they hate it.

>> No.7058108

>>7058100
Sounds alright then.

So sci-fi / humor / absurdism? Or is it actually not sci-fi?

>> No.7058116

>>7058108
Not like, world building fantasy sci-fi.
It's only set a little ways into the future.
So no flying cars or anything.

>> No.7058126

>>7058116
Hmm. That does sound like regular old fiction to me.

Then again, the last thing I read that was set in the near future was Flashback by Dan Simmons, so I suppose it would be nice to read something less... dystopian.

I have like 80% of The Fountainhead to get through though, so I don't think I'm going to be picking anything up too soon.

>> No.7058129

that Dan Schneider guy fuckin sucks, I remember spending a bunch of time on his website a while ago and concluding that he was a bitter, unfunny angry hack who is genuinely convinced his bad poems about White Castle make him the best living American poet

>> No.7058142

>>7058129
I find that he has a lot of integrity in comparison to most critics. He never backs down and he never states an opinion because he feels like he should, you can be certain that he's 100% genuine in his opinions, even if they are wrong. I got into him because of his film criticism which I think is mostly quite good, although he certainly lacks a lot of emotion and is more focused on what is good versus what is emotionally engaging

>> No.7058328

>>7058100
It's funny how when something does get talked about and becomes a meme, people then reject it due to it being a "meme"...

>> No.7058349

>>7057937
>Apologists will say that ‘Those who think it’s bad writing simply do not get it.’ Wrong, it’s gotten, very easily, and seen through quite well, as most poseur crap is. It’s just that what’s there is not worth the getting.
Regardless of wether he's right or wrong, it's funny how assblasted critics get about wallace. bloom's review was similarly spiteful. something about DFW really triggers patrician autismo

>> No.7058391
File: 78 KB, 1062x720, What-passes-for-hip-cynical-transcendence-of-sentiment..David-Foster-Wallace.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7058391

>>7057937
>How is it not scifi?
Well you can classify it as sci fi if you're really hellbent on doing so but there's really no point. It doesn't have the classic sci fi elements like space exploration, alien races, time travel, there's not a lot of science fiction (in the sense of concrete scientific speculation about the future) involved etc. It's just literary fiction with some minor sci fi elements. I'm not looking down on genre fiction, but this book just doesn't fit the genre and if you're a sci fi fan you might be disappointed.

>And is it still worth a read?
Personally I enjoyed the book but I think it has its flaws. Basically to me DFW is a writer with fantastic observational skills, he's good at describing scenery and extrapolating on certain quirks of individual characters, putting you in their shoes, making you feel the situation and describing things with nuance and great detail without getting boring. He's very po-mo in every regard. He has a firm grasp of what he thinks is wrong with todays world. That's his weakness as well, because it seems for all his critical thinking he couldn't make the jump and gather the confidence to really, firmly take a certain stance on things, he's always deconstructing something, sometimes brilliantly illuminating, sometimes just navel gazing, leading nowhere. You can feel crippling depression in every paragraph, sometimes close up and paralysing, sometimes just lurking in the distance, mental fog on the horizon of the scene. Even if he didnt want to be that person, he's very much a woe is me type guy and he sometimes fails to really keep his own thoughts and worldview seperate from that of his characters to a degree that it taints his works. Doesn't matter who he's describing there's always a hint of bandana and tennis shorts. He was a little too self-observant yet not quite self-aware enough, if that makes any sense.

That's how I perceive it anyways.

Anyways if you want to get into DFW i suggest you read some of his shorts, or maybe his essays, which some argue are the best part of his work.

>> No.7058423

It's probably the greatest contemporary novel

Going all out versus a work that is itself kind of powerful enough to make your thesis argumentum ad verecundiam is fashionable as hell

Literally 'look at how HIP AS FUCK I am, shitting on 750k people's favourite book, also one that's 10 times better than anything I will ever create myself!'

Typical hack move, typical hack 'criticism'.

>> No.7058444

>>7058423
What I didn't mention here, as back then I was only 20 verses into the review:

Holy crap, this guy language proves that his target audience consists entirely of teenagers and maybe manchildren. What an insufferable douche.

>> No.7058452

>>7058444
Care to single out anything in particular?
>>7058391
Right, thanks dude. I just did some reading of his essays and I've decided to read it. He sounds really interesting actually, and genuine, which is the point I guess

>> No.7058501

>>7058452
His blatant overuse of the words 'shit', 'sucks', other vernacular, is plain retarded

He criticizes Wallace's pomo elements cause pono is le evil xD(not to mention that Wallace uses them to mock PoMo, as he was against postmodern irony, to say the least, but apparently this silly critic never realized it, just like he missed the point of the book and many others), yet he spews swearwords to be a mega edgy postmodern critic. Horrible.

This entire fart analogy.. It smells of reddit trying to be lolsorandom, not actual criticism.

This review is triggering and cringeworthy as fuck.

>> No.7058512

>>7057913
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B1277-DES888.htm
BTFO

>> No.7058515

>>7057924
The central "plot point" relies on some retarded technology the emergence of which is unconceivable by today's standards, and which only a humanities poseur could have come up with.
That's rather traditionally considered a sci-fi element.

>> No.7058521

>>7058515
>what is hi-modern symbolism

>> No.7058592

>>7058515
that's like insisting on calling vinegar wine because it's made from grapes.

what's the point in insisting something belongs to a certain genre just because it has certain elements of said genre when it actually doesn't fit in at all?

do you honestly think IJ fits the sci fi genre? do you think readers of sci fi would generally enjoy IJ? do you think readers of IJ are generally fans of sci fi?

using genres to navigate the vast landscape of literature makes sense but this kind of super anal need to categorize everything based on pants on heads retarded criteria no less seems idiotic to me.

>> No.7058609

>>7058592
I'm not the guy you're responding to, but I just want to say that your post was well written, and I hope you have a nice day.

>> No.7058619

>>7058592
But vinegars made from grapes are called wine vinegars u dumb fag

>> No.7058636

>>7058609
thank u

>>7058619
yes, they're sometimes called wine vinegars, but never wine. because they aren't. they're vinegars. note how "wine" is used as to describe a specific quality of the vinegar rather than what it essentially is, much like IJ could be called lit fiction with sci fi elements, while it's hardly a sci fi novel in the established, widely accepted sense.

that's the last reply you get, i'm tired of this shit. have it your way

>> No.7058742

>>7058592
The post you quote doesn't call vinegar wine, it points out there's grape juice in it

tcis, there's grape juice in Infinite Jest

>> No.7058863

>>7058065
Negro, you're investing time in reading incredibly long reviews, extracting from them, now you're practically guiding /lit/ into forming you an opinion on the book, etc..

Seriously now, just get a copy and read it, skip this crap. if by page 200 you've found you dislike it, just drop it, and become one of the entitled scum that can claim "I can see through its bullshit, it's not worth it " and that'll be it.

0/10 troll made me rage

>> No.7058895

>>7058142
Never backing down means never changing his mind, which implies he doesn't grow.

>> No.7058920

Dirty Dan the Rough Rider Schnieder?