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/lit/ - Literature

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2342315 No.2342315 [Reply] [Original]

I just started Infinite Jest.

What the fuck am I reading.

Should I really be paying attention to things like this:
'That your quote-unquote "complimentary" Dunlop widebody tennis racquets' super-secret-formulaic composition materials of high-modulus-graphite-reinforced polycarbonate polybutylene resin are organochemically identical I say again identical to the gyroscopic balance sensor and mise-en-scène appropriation card and priapistic-entertainment cartridge implanted in your very own towering father's anaplastic cerebrum after his cruel series of detoxifications and convolution-smoothings and gastrectomy and prostatectomy and pancreatectomy and phalluctomy...'

>> No.2342317

>>2342315
Yes.
Every single letter is important. It's like the Torah in that regard.

>> No.2342319

just throw the piece of shit in the garbage, and read superior sci-fi.

>> No.2342321

Nah, he just uses all those big words to sound smart. Check out thise article for the deets: http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

>> No.2342324

It goes with the character he's describing. Same principle of an author using the word "gigantic" instead of "big"

It's not like you're treading on never before seen land yet.

>> No.2342330

>>2342324
I understand the passage, this probably wasn't a great example. While I (believe) I understood the point of this particular segment, "1 APRIL — YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD" I feel as though I am constantly missing aspects.

>> No.2342337

>>2342330
It's a slow burn, a lot of details come up very slowly throughout the book and you'll understand more of it as you keep reading :)

>> No.2342338

>'That your quote-unquote "complimentary" Dunlop widebody tennis racquets' super-secret-formulaic composition materials of high-modulus-graphite-reinforced polycarbonate polybutylene resin are organochemically identical I say again identical to the gyroscopic balance sensor and mise-en-scène appropriation card and priapistic-entertainment cartridge implanted in your very own towering father's anaplastic cerebrum after his cruel series of detoxifications and convolution-smoothings and gastrectomy and prostatectomy and pancreatectomy and phalluctomy...'

Sounds a lot like the prose in The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed

>> No.2342339

>>2342321
hahaha

this author is a buttmad kike. Oh my gosh people point out the self-destructive behavior of drug use and hedonism? They MUST be trying to push christianity on me!

>> No.2342348

>>2342319
It really is a huge turd of a book.

Don't bother, OP. You won't be at all edified slogging all the way through this chest-high pool of excrement; I should know, I did it.

>> No.2342351

just read it twice. That passage gave me the tickles just re-reading it. It's just goofy and fun and meant to be read as pressured speech. It isn't really all that pretty, but it's awesome if you've read the book at least once and you get every single thing that's being referred to.

>> No.2342354

2deep4u

>> No.2342358

>>2342348
Fake Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ is wrong, OP.

>>2342315
Man up and read it.

>> No.2342359

Has /lit/ always hated DFW, or is this just something that happened after Harold Bloom said he sucked?

>> No.2342365

>>2342359
The twist is that /lit/ loves DFW

>> No.2342371

>>2342359
harold bloom only hates it because dfw makes fun of him in one of the footnotes

>> No.2342374

>>2342359
I read that Bloom quote about 'Infinite Jest' and shook my head. It's nonsense. He's just trying to be provocative and contrarian. "He can’t think, he can’t write. There’s no discernible talent." Accusing David Foster Wallace of not being able to think is like accusing Michael Jordan of not being able to play basketball. Just absurd on the face of it.

>> No.2342376

>>2342359
DFWalrus is pretentious, self-conscious, talentless, ostentatiously erudite, and his novels have boring, white, middle-class idiots doing boring things.

In short, "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
--Hermann Hesse

>> No.2342380

>>2342374
Um, yeah, no.

DFW wasn't some pinnacle of thought. Really horrible (inaccurate) analogy.

>> No.2342383

>>2342380
Read his essay on television. He elevates the discourse.

>> No.2342384

>>2342383
That essay was terrible

>> No.2342386

>>2342376
Critique of DFW as worthless middle-class white privilege angst is a revelation of that angst in the critic more than anything else. And continues the elitism rather than diminishing it in any way. Except it's all the more hypocritical as it tears itself apart while saying how much it doesn't think it exists. It's self-destruction under the guise of congeniality.

>> No.2342388

>>2342384
Why was it terrible?

>> No.2342390

>>2342386
I just pooped a little in my pants. Are you happy?

>> No.2342391

>>2342390
Confirmed for 15yo.

>> No.2342395

>>2342391
My little poop has nothing to do with my age and everything to do with the power and majesty of the post I was replying to. I mean, goddamn, that is a spellbinding, backbreaking shocker. Who wouldn't shit--just a little? The impact of his words just pushed it out of me.

>> No.2342396

>>2342395
Not what I meant.

>> No.2342400

>>2342376
way to fail on your quote interpretation n00b

>> No.2342402
File: 44 KB, 409x474, 1325261534469.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2342402

>>2342400

>> No.2342408

>>2342321
I can understand the rage when people you don't respect identify with something you don't like.

But most of his actual critique is "everything has already already been said." Then he complains DFW tries to say it strangely. Well, what is literature if not that?

Infinite Jest is basically word salad, and it's great word salad. It's only critics that want meat n' potatoes every goddamn night.

For the eXile, "meat n' potatoes" means a realistic drug novel. Every article I read over there either lauds a realistic drug novel or complains that a novel isn't a realistic drug novel.

>> No.2342420

>>2342408
>But most of his actual critique is "everything has already already been said." Then he complains DFW tries to say it strangely. Well, what is literature if not that?
Inasfar as I read it it his actual critique is :"x, y, z authors are badly rehashing christian themes and smuggling anti-drug ideology into contemporary literature. Furthermore, their writing is terrible, here are some examples of how their writing is terrible"

>> No.2342426

>>2342321
That website is shit. This small article on the reason why people should burn the Great Gatsby is fucking dense.
http://exiledonline.com/why-you-should-burn-your-copy-of-the-great-gatsby/

>> No.2342436

>>2342426
But I like all their
>HAVE YOU NO SHAME!
>DONATE NOW
banners.

>ANNOUNCEMENT: EXILED TO LAUNCH MEDIA TRANSPARENCY PROJECT — CONTRIBUTIONS AND LEAKS INVITED

>We're launching a new project: a no-holds barred campaign to identify and expose corrupt shills and corporate trolls among political journalists and bloggers in the US.

>> No.2342439

>>2342315
so it means the ghost of his father is controlling his tennis racket?

>> No.2342454

>>2342426
Given their political leanings, it's not too surprising they wouldn't like it, regardless of the book's supposed point or message

>> No.2342474

>>2342317

These are the words of our literary lord and savior who died on a cord for your reading sins.

>> No.2342497

>>2342376
>>2342376

Call DFW pretentious
>drop the phrase "ostentatiously erudite"

>> No.2342501

>>2342497
>disregards the Hesse quote

Stay clueless, /lit/

>> No.2342507

>>2342420
That wasn't the critique at all. The eXile found the Christian themes and anti-drug ideology ITSELF to be at issue.

The only reason they grudgingly "accept" Augustine's Christianity is because he was compulsively Christian, i.e. he believed in God and the absence of God and his writing motivated by that idea, not because The Confessions is a great book. Though I'm sure if eXile were actually reviewing The Confession they'd sneer at that creed in more detail instead of passing over it.

Here is a sentence I don't think anyone on that staff is capable of writing: "[Book] is one of the most interesting and enthralling achievements in prose literature, despite the author expressing ideas we don't agree with."