david foster wallace: classic or dud

god is this already so sad

ha, "this is" but w/e i guess that works too

am v much enjoying this
if it was here i would quote page references
some of the editorialising is a little ott
[repeats my joke, MAKES IT FUNNIER]

so how is this book?????

it's excellent. so far i'm around page 80, having skipped the "afterward" which was somewhere towards the beginning . . .

DFW, as always, is funny, incisive, and smartt. some of Lipsky's in-brackets asides are seriously grating though; occasionally, it feels like he's injecting himself into the book where it isn't really necessary at all

*smart

^ smh

also, if someone could start working on getting a volume of all of DFW's interviews published in full, unedited transcript form, that would be ace. thanks

bleh i think this is still a little too sad for me, but i bet its VG+

lipskys interjections are a little grating it's troo

i'm guessing in order to stretch out one magazine piece's worth of interviews into a whole book he had to interject a lot

not so much really - his part is mainly presented in sometimes overtruncated notes, it's mainly dfw soliloquying. there are some aggrevating cuts, like [dave and I discuss philip roth], but there's enough material (although the second time he grills for further tabloidy history information it's kinda annoying).

v v much enjoying this anyway, i feel invigorated reading it

i've only read DFWs non-fiction, but this book really makes me want to buy Infinite Jest. do y'all thing it makes sense to bypass Broom (for now) and just go right for IJ?

thing = think

yes

ok, thank you Que. i think i might pick up a copy later today or tomorrow

also, to anyone who is on the fence about picking up the Lipsky book, just buy it. i'm not done with it yet, but so far it's incredible

hey ksh have u read claire messud's the emperor's children????

never heard of her, Lamp. why?

lipskys interjections are a little grating it's troo

― GREAT JOB Mushroom head (gbx), Thursday, April 15, 2010 11:20 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^

ESCHATON LITE
April 3, 2010
Minneapolis

Israel w/noncombatant military advisor
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4051/4526019339_d002e86b97.jpg

Tel Aviv
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4003/4527016736_6d6ec82f13.jpg

Mrs. Otis P. Lord and dude
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4025/4527016352_4f1b65a7fc.jpg

Negotiations commence
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/4527015640_5c970ee4ba.jpg

Hal w/stand-in for Axford, Struck, and Troeltsch et al
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4526649508_2095bd6cf2.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithpille/tags/eschaton/

http://projects.metafilter.com/2455/A-playable-version-of-Eschaton

http://www.metafilter.com/89582/No-Computer-Carts-Required

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=356077521476

http://nowhereband.org/eschaton.html

No computer monitors, cafeteria carts, or propeller beanies were used. Verisimilitude fell short in several respects, but we tried to honor Eschaton's essence. Pemulis would've been aghast.

(although the second time he grills for further tabloidy history information it's kinda annoying)

yah i got up to this part last night & agree -- although interesting stuff does come out

my copy has dispatched! i was confident that amazon uk were going to do the thing they do where they say it is almost ready to dispatch for like a month and then say they never had a copy after all

i ordered my copy from amazon uk and got it last wkend :)

you can now listen to that commencement speech - http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/news/appearances/readings/kenyon-commencement-original-audio.html

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15156-6/fate-time-and-language

omg A++

so i finally read a supposedly fun thing

pretty effing awesome

not that yall didnt know that

pretty sure that if DFW had opted to see Jane 'Loose Women' McDonald on his cruise rather than only mention her in passing in a footnote he'd have enjoyed it a lot more.

the title essay of a supposedly fun thing... is a riot.

ya that's what i'm talking about

can't believe it's taken me this long

what a giant brain that man was

I think I read a supposedly fun thing a few months after returning from a 7 day cruise in the alaskas and the man was OTMFM to the power of OTMFM

the description of food

kind of wondering what the instructions he left re: publishing actually were, now

i mean, between that, the last novel, the 'this is water' thing, the lipsky book, there are more books "by" wallace out in the last two years than in any year he was alive and working

'any equivalent period', i guess, rather than 'any year'

yeah publishing this (it's a thesis from Amherst, i think) is tacky, i think

re: supposedly fun thing... the whole thing about the replacing of the used towels is hysterical.

any book cover with his picture on it is super tacky

the fact that it "reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace in his critique" makes it seem tackier even. Like, what are we getting? A 50 page DFW paper along with a bunch of other stuff, selling it all on the DFW name, or what? I'm sure it'll be interesting and all, but I'm 1. geeky and 2. prurient like that.

on the other hand, of course, i want to read it

i look forward to pedants treating it like the linguistics and math stuff though |:

Que's right, it is his Amherst philosophy thesis

also, I'd imagine if he'd had wanted it published, he would've probably had it published a long time ago

that being said, yeah, I'm buying it

so i finally read a supposedly fun thing

pretty effing awesome

not that yall didnt know that

meh, seemed like he stated the obvious while over-using lengthy footnotes gimmick

nicholson baker, on the other hand...

eh tbh for a guy by whom I thought I'd read anything (is that tortured and ungrammatical or just tortured) I am not too fussed about his (70 page, says the Amherst library catalogue - let's just go there and read it!) undergraduate thesis. Except that his other undergraduate thesis is The Broom of the System. And it sounds cool. So I'll read it anyway. But fuck.

although I'm gonna be really embarrassed if I get all celebrated and shit and someone releases my undergrad philosophy thesis. And I only wrote it two years ago.

also, I'd imagine if he'd had wanted it published, he would've probably had it published a long time ago

I don't know the details of this with an undergrad thesis at Amherst, but often these things are a matter of record -- they're, you know, official fulfillments of educational requirements, not strictly personal creative property.

Which can be creepy, because yeah, there's something weird about reading (and especially publishing) someone's "homework" just because of who they turned out to be. I mean, I think there's some value to this stuff within the field -- didn't parts of this get published in academic journals? And it's probably valuable to critics/biographers/close-readers who want to, say, dig into the philosophical stuff in Broom of the System. Which are decent reasons for preserving it, but ... giving it a cover like that and trying to suggest it as a piece of Wallaciana is worth a lot of eye-rolling.

god when im a famous legendary author i hope NO ONE reads my senior thesis

haha i was just thinking thank god i'll never be famous. maybe i can get my school to burn the copy they have...

forget the theses, worry about them publishing ilx threads

my thesis is a lot more embarrassing iirc

eh i have a lot of good jokes on ilx

haha xp