[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 194 KB, 1600x1062, davidfosterwallace.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3066180 No.3066180[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

>In an interview with Wallace by Larry McCaffery in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993, Wallace described what he strives for and enjoys in writing (and other realms) as ''an experience of what I think Yeats called 'the click of a well-made box' something like that. The word I always think of it as is 'click.''' He says: ''It was real lucky that just when I stopped being able to get the click from math logic I started to be able to get it from fiction. The first fictional clicks I encountered were in Donald Barthelme's ''The Balloon'' and in parts of the first story I ever wrote...I don't know whether I have much natural talent going for me fiction-wise, but I know I can hear the click, when there's a click. In Don DeLillo's stuff, for example, almost line by line I can hear the click. It's maybe the only way to describe writers I love. I hear the click in most Nabokov. In Donne, Hopkins, Larkin. In Puig and Cortazar. Puig clicks like a fucking Geiger counter. And none of these people write prose as pretty as Updike, and yet I don't much hear the click in Updike.''

The fuck is he talking about?

>> No.3066198

When something just sounds right.
You'd know it if you stopped reading Game of Thrones and writing Cthulhu fanfic.

>> No.3066199

It is an obvious metaphor for the clicking sound produced by a firing hammer being pulled back from half-cocked to primed.

>> No.3066203
File: 13 KB, 359x278, belushi.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3066203

>>3066180

>mfw DFW is a fatty.

>> No.3066204

>>3066199

I once masturbated and came to that sound.

>> No.3066206

All he hears is creaking now, right guys? Right?

>> No.3066217

>>3066206
No man he's dead

>> No.3066223

>>3066217
From the rope, creak creak creak

>> No.3066227

>>3066180

>wtf is he talking about?

Why bookread of course. In fact IJ has great bookread.

>> No.3066229

>>3066227
Is bookread a Thing now?

>> No.3066428

>>3066180

he's talking about quality. the click is the signifier for quality. hes describing it like this because to specify exactly what he meant would probably be quite dry, and perhaps even more vague for all its trying than this

>> No.3066436

>>3066229
It's huge now dude.

>> No.3066445

>>3066227
>bookread
what is 'bookread' and why are you writing like that?

>> No.3066461

>>3066428
Why doesn't he just use the word 'good' and say 'I think Donne, Nabakov etc are good/Updike is not so good'.

>> No.3066467

>>3066461
Because there's something intangible about the books that he can't pick up on that makes him enjoy them and using the word good could obscure his intended meaning.

>> No.3066479

>>3066467
It's the same problem––dearth of specificity, except he's chosen to use a silly gimmicky word that suggests something without meaning anything.

>> No.3066489

I know this click.

>> No.3067499

If you don't get 'the click', you're not doing art properly.

>> No.3067508

I had a DFW question, and would rather not clog /lit/ with yet another such thread, so let me just ask it here:

How did he support himself before he wrote his Great Novel? Was he a successful writer prior to that?

>> No.3067510

>>3067508

He was a college professor, even after IJ's release, up until his death

>> No.3067524
File: 68 KB, 515x291, 1346550096211.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3067524

>not putting your penis in as many vaginas as possible

>> No.3067556

>>3066445
>what is 'bookread' and why are you writing like that?

It's a synonym of readable / readability. I guess

>> No.3067641

>>3067556

No. Bookread is a noun. Readable is an adjective.

>> No.3067743

Books that I enjoy: click

Books that I do not enjoy: no click

Thanks, DFW. Kill yourself. Click.