/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11348173]

Infinite Jest is a really enjoyable book

[Anonymous No.11348203]

>>11348173
WOMP WOMP
so is Behead All Satans

[Anonymous No.11348301]

>>11348173
I’ve never read this book but why did you pick this specific excerpt

[Anonymous No.11348327]

>>11348173
infinite jest is written like garbage and if it was by any other author /lit/ would shit on it, it reads like half of the diary posts here

[Anonymous No.11348354]

>>11348327
but anon, it's meant to read like shit

[Anonymous No.11348355]

>>11348301
It's full of enjoyable little insights like this that aren't necessarily profound, but worth a reminder

[Anonymous No.11348360]

>>11348327
The way it's written is the only reason he was popular at all. It's the only value he has.

[Anonymous No.11348413]

>>11348354
lol yeah... so that still leaves us with shit.

[Anonymous No.11348425]

>>11348173
He's just another post-modernist asshole coward.

Escaping into endless self-pleasuring, distraction, and mental masturbation rather than confront the great challenges of the world like a man.

[Anonymous No.11348438]

>>11348413
Duchamp +10

[Anonymous No.11348483]

>>11348360
that's a fair critique, but could be said of a lot of literature, anon

[Anonymous No.11348496]

>>11348413
please do not insult duchamp by comparing him to mr fostie wallace

[Anonymous No.11348510]

>>>11348173 (OP) #
>He's just another post-modernist asshole coward.
>Escaping into endless self-pleasuring, distraction, and mental masturbation rather than confront the great challenges of the world like a man.

[Anonymous No.11348538]

>>11348496
lol. you're right. I sincerely apologize.

[Anonymous No.11348541]

>>11348425
I see a lot of people express a similar opinion and really have a hard time believing that they read the same book I did.

The entire plot of the book is that a brilliant and self-serving artist James Incandenza:
1) Genuinely acknowledged to be a true genius in multiple senses of the word
2) Creates a truly successful piece of art in every imaginable sense, only to realize it is not what the world needs.

Despite his pure genius and self-pleasuring and distraction, his entire family and professional life is a complete disaster, and through his self-serving he ruins the life of everyone around him.

The pure art here being the "mental masturbation" that encourages egoist consumption of meaningless art for art's sake- it is being explicitly condemned by the author.

Do people not read the book with Jim, Hal and Orin as the bad guys and with Mario and Marathe as the good guys? When read this way this book is one of the most deeply moral novels of the past 20 years but people shit on it as "just for prose's sake". What am I missing? Am I just being memed?

[Anonymous No.11348557]

>>11348510
You do realize DFW's whole goal was to try and transcend post-modernism right
Its not exactly a defense of his book, though

[Anonymous No.11348577]

>>11348541
>Jim, Hal and Orin as the bad guys and with Mario and Marathe as the good guys
Watching his interviews it's clear this was his intention all along. It was a big slap across the face for him to have his work considered primarily humorous. This is the big tragedy with Infinite Jest: that he unintentionally ended up glorifying the very thing he sought to condemn.

[Anonymous No.11348606]

>>11348541
In a world such as ours it's not enough to simply be against something; against for example "egoist consumption" or "art for art's sake" etc., and then spend time condemning that thing on moral terms. You must also be FOR something: for an ideal, or a direction to strive towards, to build your life around knowing that your struggle is improving the world. This ideal has to be concrete and real. Not utopian, vague, or abstract, because you must be able to objectively judge the degree to which the world moves toward that goal with your effort.

Without this, all you're doing is encouraging apathy, despair, and hopelessness. Apathy, despair, and hopelessness leads to more escapism-- consuming more and more art like Infinite Jest in an attempt to convince yourself that you're doing something about the world by being morally "aware" or "conscious" of a negative. But you're not getting anything done, because everyone already knows that the modern world is filled with empty consumerism, materialism, and spiritual depravity etc. The question is what is to be done about this problem. By reminding people of these things, especially in a morally charged way, without offering an ideal, or a solution to work towards, you are only deepening this sense of apathy and despair.

This becomes a vicious cycle where despair and hopelessness leads to more "moral" contemplation in art and literature, which in turn leads to further despair and hopelessness, until the psyche just can't take it anymore and the person kills himself. (like DFW).

[Anonymous No.11348612]

>>11348541

I didn't read it as having good or bad guys (except gately), but the rest of your post is spot on. One doesn't praise something in the mournful tone Wallace writes every passage in. There was something poetic about the sysyphean struggle of the AA types to escape the slavery of addiction in a world dominated by addictive consumption models and in which a form of media addiction exists that has no cure and may be obtained by accident and for which they are being explicitly targeted by QC nationalists. It might have something to do with the fact that Wallace himself attended AA and met genuine human beings in earnest about their efforts, in spite of all he knew to lie between them and their goals. He writes in part to dignify the struggle of the addict and demonstrates the stacked deck against them by means of exaggerated and obscene allegory.

[Anonymous No.11348630]

>>11348606
Are the likes of Lyle and Mario not enough for you?

"...And I like how the guru on the towel dispenser doesn't laugh at them, or even shake his head sagely on its big brown neck. He just smiles, hiding his tongue. He's like a baby. Everything he sees hits him and sinks without bubbles. He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me, one forehead at a time..."

And the dialogue between Hal and Mario that ends on 785, when Hal implores Mario:

"I think you just did it. What you should do. I think you just did."

Sometimes that's all you can do, is share our struggles. The fact that we can't hear this type of solution without lambasting it as "cringy" or saccharine is something concrete our culture can just as easily do away with.

It can be just as simple as that. Emotional suppression. Do away with it. This is a concrete thing which has improved my life in concrete ways for having read DFW's work.

[Anonymous No.11348644]

>>11348327
But the only reason anyone knows about dfw is because of ij.

[Anonymous No.11348701]

>>11348630
>Sometimes that's all you can do, is share our struggles.

you have the conventional view. but I completely disagree with it. there is much more that people can do--it's just that they've lost all conception of what can be done...it's completely outside their vision.

I won't tell you what can and should be "done" because I don't want to impose my ideology on you in this context. And in any rate it would likely just devolve into a bitter debate.

I'm glad reading IJ improved your life by reading it. I really am. But I seriously caution you:

a) I worry that your improvement will only be temporary. You haven't changed the material conditions under which you live--you've only reached a different mental state. This can certainly be helpful in many cases, but under the overwhelming conditions you're in, this is like shoveling sand against the tide. Soon you will lapse back into your prior state because the root of the problem has not been solved, and the root of the problem is enormous. The anxieties and frustrations of modern life will come frothing back to the surface and you'll look for another way to escape. Maybe by reading IJ again, or some other piece of art, or hobby or activity. And this process will repeat itself like a rollercoaster which is extremely unhealthy, ultimately unhappy, and certainly not normal to the human condition; and,

b) Though you may feel better, you still don't have a frame of reference. You don't know what the optimal level of living is because you've never experienced it. I certainly do think there is an optimal way of living for joy, fulfillment, dignity, tranquility etc., but I won't get into that because again I don't want to get into an ideological debate.
The only point is, if there is a much greater level of being far above the "improved" state that you've found yourself after absorbing IJ (or some other art or hobby etc.), your "improved" state may lower your incentive to strive toward the ultimate state. You will have in effect been lulled into complacency, or made comfortable, in conditions under which you absolutely should not be complacent or comfortable with.

[Anonymous No.11348734]

>>11348701
Well this is another thing that Wallace mentioned in interviews; that he's not necessarily anti-entertainment. In fact, the majority of people are just that--complacent. And if this society of consumers we've built is enough to satisfy a given person, all the more power to them. These people are probably the lucky ones.

Will you please share the "optimal level of living" you have in mind? I'm genuinely curious. I promise the conversation won't devolve.

[Anonymous No.11348741]

>>11348734
the wilderness.

[Anonymous No.11348746]

>>11348741
You've really done that? Like, camping?

[Anonymous No.11348752]

>>11348701
>>11348606
DFW was against the idea of simply pointing out a problem and doing nothing, that was the basis of all of his criticisms against postmodernism, and he discusses solutions a lot in his interviews

[Anonymous No.11348760]

>>11348746
not just camping. living with actual Hunter Gatherers.

[Anonymous No.11348771]

>>11348752
his "solutions" were naive and impractical. And deep down even his fans know this.

also, someone can criticize something all they want, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not themselves that thing.

[Anonymous No.11348778]

>>11348760
I'm glad you've found that. I'll keep that in mind as an option; who knows, maybe someday I'll be ready.

>>11348771
>also, someone can criticize something all they want, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not themselves that thing.
This totally applies to David Foster Wallace. And I enjoy his work all the more for it. It's cathartic to know I'm not the only one undergoing such a crisis in identity. Split down the middle in that same kind of way.

[Anonymous No.11348781]

I feel like making the effort to step into the zeitgeist of what made Infinite Jest what it is would make me a worse person.

[Anonymous No.11348786]

>>11348771
How many times are you going to change your argument? Jesus christ

[Anonymous No.11348795]

>>11348786
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.11348818]

>which like how many between newcomers do you suppose do
this is underrated. IJ is so damned comfy, but I hate that it subtly distills suicide thoughts into the reader's (or at least my) mind

>>11348541
you're right, anon. It only takes browsing a couple other threads to see people also shitting on GR, Ulysses, and any other book that's praised everywhere else by people who earnestly read them to realize that fuckers here aren't entirely to be trusted, and it's only worth browsing /lit/ for the occasional really well-done post.

[Anonymous No.11348880]

>>11348173

It's also disturbing how quintessentially Anglo it is. It's simply the removal of salience from otherwise standard Anglo prose. Pointless roundabout, whimsy windup, diarrhetic sprawl - it's so common in everything from Shakespeare to Moby Dick to Joyce to Stephen King that there's hardly anything else to it. Anglos seem incapable of serious writing unless it's about Jews.

[Anonymous No.11348890]

>>11348173
what happened to show dont tell ?

[Anonymous No.11348893]

>>11348880
interesting perspective

[Anonymous No.11348931]

>>11348890
This is a footnote of one endnote of the book's several hundred endnotes, the rhetorical purpose of which traditionally is to tell. He does however often subvert that tradition!