/lit/ - Literature

>>6779931

If it makes you feel any better, not much of any of this is really much of a spoiler, any more than me telling you the Sun is going to go down is going to 'spoil' the sunset. If you read some of this stuff and it helps you notice the significance of some things that, on first read, didn't seem important to me, then you come out ahead. It's not like someone telling you Bruce Willis is dead the whole time when you sit down to watch The 6th Sense.

Sorry to anyone who hasn't seen The 6th Sense.

But I don't post some of the things I want to share because I don't know how to do that black-box-over-text thing.

>>6767193

He's the most noble character in the book, IMO.

>>6756437
>Does TPK contain wraiths? Lyle also never leaves the weight room and again the one time he does he disappears immediately.

Well, there's a ghost, I guess, but the levitating guy isn't one.

It's possible that Lyle is intended to be understandable this way, as I think that DFW makes a lot of contradictory things arguable intentionally. But I don't think of Lyle as being a wraith.

>>6753180

There's a character in The Pale King who hovers and isn't a wraith, though.

Lyle seems corporeal enough to the folks he's interfacing with and licking.

>>6746891

Not objectively, but you are safely in the majority with your opinion.

>>6746538

I can understand how someone might prefer it. I personally preferred Against the Day to Gravity's Rainbow. Many people prefer Sandinista! to London Calling. Why consensus settles on one being a high point and the other lesser is hard to say and often disputable.

>>6746489

I think it's about as complete as it was ever going to be. Whether he achieved what he wanted to with it I don't know, whether making a study of boredom was worthy of his talents I reserve judgement--it's not the book I would have wanted him to write. But he does make boredom kind of fascinating and makes you consider how your own mind works.

BTW, I contacted Hachette to ask if there was anything brewing on releasing the full first manuscript version of Infinite Jest; they say that there is not. I do think this is an eventuality, though. like the O, Lost version of Look Homeward Angel. It could be that everyone in that camp is a little stung by the criticism they got for what many viewed (wrongly, I think) as 'cashing in' on TPK, as well as the (IMO) unseemly cashing in that the Rolling Stone reporter did on his tapes with the subsequent book and movie, although if I were him and I had a shoebox full of tapes worth a lot of money in the DFW trade I might not have acted much differently.

>>6746448

I would hesitate there is anything much along the lines of plot. It could have been cut into 70 individually-published pieces. Some of it was.

That's not to say it isn't definitely worth reading just for the writing. It's generally brilliant and occasionally transcendent.

>>6746223
>just about done IJ, and I'm pretty fatigued by Wallace's writing
>but I was wondering what people's thoughts were on Pale King and whether I should give that a go next?

Well, it's not as witty, certainly, and it coheres less. I would say it is to IJ as Against the Day is to GR.

>>6742373
>Is there any difference between the ones printed in 2008 to the most recent ones?

The ones printed in 2008 are a few years older.

The titles in the filmography are hilarious, though. Three Cheers for Cause and Effect?

Blood Nun get a full synopsis later in the book. Someone will eventually write the screenplay.

>>6699845

Very fun read. Moreso if you're as stoner, which I am not. Still fun though.

>>6695158
>Why the fuck did DFW write the chapter on Wardine? This is fucking annoying, not even the most uneducated, retarded black people talk like this.

It's kinda cringy. Later on he nails a different dialect at an AA meeting, but this one.. er...

I don't remember from my first reading, and I'm on pg 670 or so in my second one, but the only part of the Wardine segment that figures into anything else is the bad guy she describes is a dealer Poor Tony mentions later.

Anyone else see something I missed?

>>6688335
>Is Hal autistic?

The first scene doesn't make complete sense until you get to the end of the book. Chronologically it takes place after all of the book's events.

It will be worth it; disregard the sniffly bitchiness of people who never finished the book.

>>6692620
>Also, not sure exactly what Hal's interview with the conversationalist was all about... His own father was in disguise? I guess Hal is not a reliable narrator or something because he seems to be fucked up, but on paper he seems to be fairly cognizant.

He's pretty reliable. It was his dad in a fake mustache.

The Erdedy-waiting-for-the-pot-to-be-delivered sequence was so deadly accurate that it made my formerly-pot-obsessive skin crawl.

>>6686131

I read it. I didn't think it lived up to my expectations of it, to be honest.

'Adventures' is a stretch.

>>6684966

I think it's about as comprehensible as he intended to make it either way. He probably wrote it high.

>>6671351
>that's not what i said at all you illiterate cuck, there's no reason to read cat in the hat past early childhood just like there's no reason to read american "literature" once you've graduated

Where are you from?

>>6671303
>You're as dumb as he is, don't talk nonsense. Yes, the US is probably #1 (whatever the fuck that means in reference to modern nationalism regarding artistic production) only considering the last 50 or 60 years, but it still isn't on level with Britain, and probably still won't be 100 years from today. As for Russia, you and I both know the US has yet to produce a man of Tolstoy's elite caliber

Well, the question dates from the founding of the United States, which neatly severs England's greatest writers from consideration. Counting Britain's other countries is the only thing that keeps England in the conversation.

Tolstoy is great, but I don't think he's a better writer than Melville.

>>6671217
>Bachem is a virgin and a Dilettante. I suggest filtering him.

People who can't argue their perspective probably should, and you should be the first of them to do it.

>>6671201
>ah, a dropout then

Your guesses keep getting shittier.

>>6671152
>No.. French and Russian have been better.

Not really. Russia's literary standing has not been much contributed to in over 100 years, and for every great French writer, there are probably a half-dozen American ones.

This is certainly true of books as well.

>>6671151
>are you an undergraduate by any chance, newtrip?

No.

>>6671096
>dont waste your time on american "literature"

There is no nation on earth that half-approaches the greatness of American literature since its founding.