david foster wallace: classic or dud

thankig u for that like, caek

y'all see this weirdnesss?
http://pooryorickentertainment.tumblr.com/
someone making posters for all of James O. Incandenza's movies. some are fun.

because the ending is near the beginning?

― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Monday, June 13, 2011 3:43 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i mean i know there's that thing, what is that even on page 28 or something? but that doesn't really do it for me.

there was actually another ref to that scene later in the book too that i hadn't noticed before.

i feel like the pale king works in a similar way ending-wise. everything is set in motion so that you can figure out, or at least easily imagine, how it all shakes out.

from the livejournal link above:

Or we may very well end up here with a form of fascism.

such eerie prescience regarding our new fasco-communistic overlords

i think he just had a real hatred -- okay, or "complex relationship" -- with endings. i can't think of a single story of his that ends in anything like a traditional fashion, and most of them are outright reader-expectation titty-twisters. there's sometimes (often?) a clue in the body of the text that tells you how things ended (or continued after the last page) but this goes right back to [SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT] [though "spoiling the ending" of a dfw story is kinda not the point/at all important] cutting the last sentence off mid-stream in "broom of the system," telling you what happened in "little expressionless animals" via fake newspaper clippings strewn early-on throughout the story while denying you the actual jeopardy showdown, "girl with curious hair" ending on "and this is what i did." it all kinda reached an outright cruel totally-fucking-with-you stage by the "oblivion" stories: "mr. squishy" is this incredibly dense thriller-like build-up to absolutely nothing, the completely unexpected mid-story shift in "the soul is not a smithy," "good old neon" seemingly leading to the great cosmic revelation of what happens when you die slam-cutting into the fact that this is all just dfw's own projection, "the suffering channel" again building through incredibly dense accumulation of fact into nothing except the clue of what happens to the characters after the last page is that for all their intense machinations they *all die in freaking 9/11*. obviously dude had all sorts of justifications for working this way, but sometimes i think he just had a real horror of wrapping things up because of the "everything is too complex to ever be 'wrapped up' in life" argument.

oh man, during that huge drinion/rand conversation setpiece near the end of 'the pale king' [SPOILERS ETC], i thought there were serious echoes of the last interview in BIwHM. except, where that chapter brought some measure of resolution (at least thematically, iirc), this time things get more and more intense to the point of one of the participants literally levitating off of his chair...only to slam into "so, that's how i met him."

haha yeah i remembered the "drinion levitates" thing from the d.t. max ny'er article and so the whole time i'm expecting some hilarious leonard stecyk style set-piece and then we get there and it's like "oh, well, yeah, of course it would just be one element in a data-flood."

and there's that telling note in pietsch's section in the back about how dfw intended (at least at some point) for the novel to be a series of setups, without anything actually happening (explicitly, anyway).

Maud Newton OTM

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

about what?

Of course, Wallace’s slangy approachability was part of his appeal, and these quirks are more than compensated for by his roving intelligence and the tireless force of his writing. The trouble is that his style is also, as Dyer says, “catching, highly infectious.” And if, even from Wallace, the aw-shucks, I-could-be-wrong-here, I’m-just-a-supersincere-regular-guy-who-happens-to-have-written-a-book-on-infinity approach grates, it is vastly more exasperating in the hands of lesser thinkers. In the Internet era, Wallace’s moves have been adopted and further slackerized by a legion of opinion-mongers who not only lack his quick mind but seem not to have mastered the idea that to make an argument, you must, amid all the tap-dancing and hedging, actually lodge an argument.

This, for starters.

i dug this, too

The “sort ofs” and “reallys” and “ums” and “you knows” that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon. We weren’t just mad, we were sort of enraged; no one was merely confused, but kind of totally mystified. That music blog we liked was really pretty much the only one that, um, you know, got it. Never before had “folks” been used so relentlessly and enthusiastically as a term of general address outside church suppers, chain restaurants and family reunions. It’s fascinating and dreadful in hindsight to realize how quickly these conventions took hold and how widely they spread. And! They have sort of mutated since to liberal and often sarcastic use of question marks? And exclamation points! “Oh, hi,” people say at the start of sentences on blogs, Twitter and Tumblr these days, both acknowledging and jokily feigning surprise at the presence of the readers who have turned up there.

and her conclusion is excellent

I’m increasingly drawn to directness, which precludes neither nuance nor irony. (For details, see the essays of Mark Twain, who believed that “plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”)

Qualifications are necessary sometimes. Anticipating and defusing opposing arguments has been a vital rhetorical strategy since at least the days of Aristotle. Satire and ridicule, when done well, are high art. But the idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it, straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward.

“I gotta tell you, I just think to look across the room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich, and complicated, and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not as good a writer. Because that means I’m going to be performing for a faceless audience, instead of trying to have a conversation with a person. […] It’s true that I want very much—I treasure my regular-guyness. I’ve started to think it’s my biggest asset as a writer. Is that I’m pretty much just like everybody else.”

from the Awl piece a few months ago

i think it's a misreading of dfw to say that his intent is to soothe and not provoke. he may not have been making "arguments" in the simple manner that she's talking about, but i think the goal was to spur the reader towards greater awareness (of thoughts, of ourselves, of other people), not to get the reader to like him (though that might be one step toward making his points, see also "entertainment").

she has an agreeable point or two, but it mostly reads like "blogger blogging about bloggers blogging."

xp

i only read the part excerpted by our man que but she seems to be indicting his influence and the laziness of his followers rather than dfw's style itself

The “sort ofs” and “reallys” and “ums” and “you knows” that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon. We weren’t just mad, we were sort of enraged; no one was merely confused, but kind of totally mystified. That music blog we liked was really pretty much the only one that, um, you know, got it. Never before had “folks” been used so relentlessly and enthusiastically as a term of general address outside church suppers, chain restaurants and family reunions. It’s fascinating and dreadful in hindsight to realize how quickly these conventions took hold and how widely they spread. And! They have sort of mutated since to liberal and often sarcastic use of question marks? And exclamation points! “Oh, hi,” people say at the start of sentences on blogs, Twitter and Tumblr these days, both acknowledging and jokily feigning surprise at the presence of the readers who have turned up there.

^agree strongly w/ this

i sort of feel like i--ha--see/read his style on blogs and stuff all the time. *shrugs*

but that could just be me, i guess?

i think her point that about that style in the hands of a lesser thinker being really grating is a valid one.

i sort of feel like i--ha--see/read his style on blogs and stuff all the time. *shrugs*

but that could just be me, i guess?

was this intenional?

intentional, rather.

i really liked what she said about online writing and tone.

yes, it was intentional

so many sad-looking 50-percent-off copies of tpk in borders right now.

seriously.

cool, Que, i'm slow sometimes.

did you read it strongo? I was not impressed. it kinda bummed me out.

it's fine if she wants to call out biters, but sentences like this make me think she's missing the point/wanting DFW essays to be something they're not:

At their worst these verbal tics make it impossible to evaluate his analysis; I’m constantly wishing he would either choose a more straightforward way to limit his contentions or fully commit to one of them.

i can tell you right now that dfw heavily influenced the style of my later collegiate papers, and not to great effect

yeah this guy caught for me like no writer had since wodehouse. really dangerous.

i do hate to see any surface DFW tics in anyone else's writing

SUBHEADINGS IN BOLD WITH LONGER AND MORE QUALIFIED NAMES THAN YOU'D EXPECT FROM SOMETHING AS SERIOUS AS A SUBHEADING

hahaha

but dfw bit this style himself, from that weird species, liberal young people

I have still never read David Foster Wallace

"yeah this guy caught for me like no writer had since wodehouse. really dangerous."

write for me wooster & jeeves adventure in wallace-style, please!

SUBHEADINGS IN BOLD WITH LONGER AND MORE QUALIFIED NAMES THAN YOU'D EXPECT FROM SOMETHING AS SERIOUS AS A SUBHEADING

lol, i haven't read the nyt piece yet so don't know if this is them or you, but otm. i just read the n+1 thing about mcsweeney's & the believer, which i could see as 'texts' for this. gonna read the piece before responding but i think how much we couch our language in mitigating/familiarising/disarming connective stuff is v interesting.

ps mr que, while we're all here, what bummed you out about tpk?, other than like it being often about things that would naturally bum one out.

am i the only person here who has never read his fiction? i've read, like, a tiny bit by picking up a book in a bookstore but that's more on the level of sentences than anything more substantial

i was bummed at how bad it was. one of the themes of the novel was boredom, and to that extent he presented situations of boredom (a long car ride, waiting in line in an office, a very very long conversation) in the novel. i would usually be on board with this sort of thing, and i was all set for DFW to render these situations in a very interesting style and manner, using that awesome tone of his, but all of these scenes fell flat for me, and they ended up being. . . well: boring. the whole novel was a giant turn off, which bummed me out because i really liked the excerpts that i read before it came out.

i loved it fwiw

(and obviously, the novel was unfinished, but it never gelled (jelled?) or cohered for me. not that i go to him for tight plots or anything, it read like a bunch of loose balls thrown up in the air, even more so than anything else i have read by him.)

no, that's cool, jordan, i really wanted to love it. i love love love infinite jest. his other stuff (except for some of the essays and a scattered story or two) less so.

i was bummed at how bad it was. one of the themes of the novel was boredom, and to that extent he presented situations of boredom (a long car ride, waiting in line in an office, a very very long conversation) in the novel. i would usually be on board with this sort of thing, and i was all set for DFW to render these situations in a very interesting style and manner, using that awesome tone of his, but all of these scenes fell flat for me, and they ended up being. . . well: boring.

should prob say i was basically the same re: not having read his fiction before this one, other than stray short stories and stuff, mainly having read the essays, so i haven't read IJ, etc. but one of the weird things about the book for me was the emphasis, from everything i read, about the novel's theme or one of its themes being boredom, which i think feels like a natural pairing with 'it's a novel about a tax office', & which i know he does - as overtly as he does anything - flag up as being a concern of the novel/its characters sometimes, towards the end. and yet it seems like the wrong lens to see the book through to me - i felt like all of those bits; people turning pages; a guy just trying to force his brain into inactive submission while it wanders to thoughts of his son, &c&c - were about complexity and multivalence and not, really, especially boredom. don't know how pedantic a 'clarification' this is because obv the material just didn't grab you as much as the other fiction. but i think the thing that kept me totally into it was how this stuff was rendered in an incredibly accurate, familiar, interesting way, by virtue of its kinda 'overload' quality that just reminded me of having a brain and trying to concentrate it.

the only part that felt at all unfinished to me was that elevator chapter, which i think got flagged up in the TPK thread, but i'm probably not the best gauge of this not having read the other stuff

still haven't read the nyt article but i am going to assume i just proved its hypothesis, colloquially speaking

SUBHEADINGS IN BOLD WITH LONGER AND MORE QUALIFIED NAMES THAN YOU'D EXPECT FROM SOMETHING AS SERIOUS AS A SUBHEADINGϕ

ϕI should point out here that, while long-winded and carefully hedged headings, sub- or just plain-, are considered "bad form" by professional and amateur stylists alike, it is sometimes necessary to establish for the reader that what follows, the discussion that has been announced, is going to be tricky and, well, thorough-goingly difficult to unpack.

<3 gbx

no schlump, that's a good clarification, just, yeah, i didn't "engage" with the fiction on any kind of "level."

no schlump, that's a good clarification, just, yeah, i didn't "engage" with the fiction on any kind of "level."

i totally finished this and was all NOW I MUST READ INFINITE JEST!, so strongly had i regularly connected with passages from tpk, and instead i am just really having to push myself to get through sabato's 140pp the tunnel & comparably slim volumes. just felt like - kinda not too tenuously tying in with the quote from the awl article upthread, about trying to feel other people + get their worlds - the little forays you got into peoples' minds were just so compelling. the final triumph of steyck, as a boy, and the panoramic shift to a soldier remembering that moment; or the sunlit space-between-the-two-people in the first lane dean chapter, all rich with every feeling that was in the air. aw damn yeah i don't know i just dug it, i'm curious to read IJ (at some point in the next 20 years) to see how that makes me feel about it, whether one preps, doesn't prep or unhelpfully prepares me for the other.