and definite bafflement ensues
― carne asada...in my vagina? (silby), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 03:06 (twelve years ago) link
logicomix is good, recommended to read. from a comix/graphic novel standpoint it's execution leaves a lot to be desired, but the subject matter is so interesting on its own (if you're into intro to set theory, i guess) that it's worth a look.
― Z S, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 03:09 (twelve years ago) link
IT IS EXECUTION
no, you're execution
the first google result for kronecker is his delta so eh. i don't know -- i wonder how many of the errors are outcomes of the book's conversational tone, & how many are ill-considered elisions, & how many are genuine boners. really i should just buy another copy, my friend who stole it has almost certainly lost it by now.
― thomp, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:25 (twelve years ago) link
it's a weird thing about him how popular he is amongst people who don't read, really
― thomp, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:27 (twelve years ago) link
the infinity book review in the notices of the ams was the first time i ever heard of DFW!
― caek, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 13:21 (twelve years ago) link
ij > oblivion > biwhm > gwch > tpk > bots
imo
lobster over fun thing, also imo
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 10:20 PM (Yesterday)
i agree with this exactly, except i'd take fun thing over lobster
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, 24 August 2011 18:14 (twelve years ago) link
actually i'm not sure where i'd place TPK... parts of it are just as good as anything else, its just obviously very unfinished.
― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Wednesday, 24 August 2011 18:53 (twelve years ago) link
"i am told the authors of logicomix are jerks"
I don't know about jerks, but papa-D once wrote a softcore novel about alan turing with nirvana and rage against the machine lyrics spruced throughout.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 19:15 (twelve years ago) link
I'm glad someone wrote a response: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omer-rosen/david-foster-wallace_b_968257.html
Although I don't know if Newton would dispute that the DFW tropes/tics/tricks in question were both intentional and effective. Seemed like she was more concerned with DFW's pervasive influence, and I don't think the issues she's concerned with (bad blogging etc) can really be laid at his feet.
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Thursday, 22 September 2011 16:23 (twelve years ago) link
The idea that a particular author, however widely read and admired, could be responsible for the stylistic ugliness of thousands of bloggers is nonsense. DFW's style was not hatched up parthenogenically, it's a style that pre-existed him in a million mouths and thousands of writings, but it was never so well-honed or controlled for artistic purposes before he made it so. It is no surprise that a gaggle of semi-talented bloggers would fail to rise to his level, but he bears no blame for that.
The only point of this idiotic controversy is to stir up a fuss and beg for attention. As criticism of DFW it is valueless.
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 September 2011 16:39 (twelve years ago) link
i was skimming that and i misread "free indirect discourse" as "free internet discourse"
wonder if i can use that somewhere
― thomp, Thursday, 22 September 2011 16:59 (twelve years ago) link
Free internet discourse always seems to have popup ads.
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:16 (twelve years ago) link
i was skimming this and then i saw this
Omer Rosen
Former derivatives banker, Freelance writer
and thought, wow they had to get some dude off the street to respond.
Reaching back, the psycho-kinetic redemption of rape victimhood in Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men became the grad-school Gossip Girl of John Krasinski's adaptation.
huh?
For example, to present Wallace as a 'stoned slacker' (to use Bill O'Reilly's terminology), at even the linguistic level, is a misreading.
why are we using Bill O'Reilly as an example of a dude who understands DFW?
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:31 (twelve years ago) link
or maybe i forgot all of Bill O'Reilly's contributions to the New York Review of Books--does someone have a link?
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:33 (twelve years ago) link
The overall point missing is how Wallace mastered the art of bridging academic sophistry with the innately human: e.g. combining a Wittgensteinian notion of addiction not existing beyond an addict's ability to articulate it with the more immediate philosophy of gotta-have-nonpresent-drugz-in-an-ever-fuckuppable-intensity.
He was, as appears to be the too-obvious definition that seems to cow reviewers by its obviousness, the true crafter of a postmodern 'sincerity' -- a seemingly impossible task in the wake of Pynchon and the psychosexual slapstick of characters like "Oedipa Maas" and "Tyrone Slothrop."
oh okay, so Pynchon wrote a bunch of psychosexual slapstick using characters with funny names and this caused every writer afterward to not be able to write sincere. Gotcha.
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:38 (twelve years ago) link
Granted, Rosen writes like crap and is not very cogent or incisive. (shrugs) The whole argument Newton started is stupid, so I suppose it acted a clarion call to others of the same quality of mind.
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:43 (twelve years ago) link
and yet her stupid argument was published in the New York Times and it took two dudes to write this for the Huffington Post.
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:45 (twelve years ago) link
The NYT is no pinnacle of intellectual excellence. For example, they also publish David Brooks and Tom Friedman.
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:49 (twelve years ago) link
i agree, both those dudes are odious, but that's guilt by association
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:50 (twelve years ago) link
I was under the impression you were casting a reflected glory on Newton's piece, by her association with the NYT. I was merely pointing out that the NYT's glory, such as it is, is not especially luminous.
I am willing to say her essay is not odious because of any association it may have with Brooks and Friedman, but it may be deemed so purely on merit.
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 September 2011 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
I went to his office hours the next afternoon. When I apologized for the typos, he pointed at me and said, “Never fail to proofread something you turn in to me,” to which I nodded as convincingly as I could. He worried that he hadn’t gotten through to me, and, confused, he asked, “I mean, did you cry?” “Yes.” “Good. I would’ve cried.”
http://nplusonemag.com/king-of-the-ghosts
― honest weights, square dealings (schlump), Sunday, 9 October 2011 16:36 (twelve years ago) link
i am still reading this but:it is hard to read one of these things, being at least a little conscious that it might be trampling into 'DFW STUDENT SPILLS BEANS' territory, without feeling a kneejerk probably unearned sensation of wanting to disagree with whatever the author's suggesting, on account of the article's poor etiquette.
the book/speech parts seem maybe ill-advised
― honest weights, square dealings (schlump), Sunday, 9 October 2011 17:18 (twelve years ago) link
tbf compared to what j. franzen got up to this week that's not really a thing
― thomp, Sunday, 9 October 2011 17:20 (twelve years ago) link
this feels unfairly brief, actually, because the guy is really engaging -- just that both in speculating on alternative courses of the guy's life & alternative endings for his novel he's obviously in a pretty weird area. some of the christian-stuff is interesting.
it does remind you of that idea of tutor-wallace raised by the student's marked-up essay paper, though, just a deeply responsible & engaged resource for young people.
― honest weights, square dealings (schlump), Sunday, 9 October 2011 17:27 (twelve years ago) link
& sure, xp, that seemed a weird thing to have been raised sorta unqualified
― honest weights, square dealings (schlump), Sunday, 9 October 2011 17:28 (twelve years ago) link
― thomp, Sunday, October 9, 2011 12:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark
??
― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Sunday, 9 October 2011 20:58 (twelve years ago) link
he made a fairly forced segue from something he was asked about at the new yorker festival to imply that wallace's non-fiction pieces were dubious, ethically, in that they fudged the lines between 'non-fiction': specific assertion being made-up dialogue in the cruise ship piece
it's not a big deal anywhere outside of tumblr, really; it's just another annoying public development in franzen's continuing relationship with his friend's corpse
― thomp, Sunday, 9 October 2011 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
ah ok
man i just read "this is water" again and maybe i am just a big ol baby but it sorta felt like church
― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Sunday, 9 October 2011 21:16 (twelve years ago) link
^ just read that this afternoon too (maybe to the end for the first time?). I miss DFW.
― ,(.__.)/ (silby), Sunday, 9 October 2011 21:37 (twelve years ago) link
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/jeffrey-eugenides-2011-10/index3.html
― hardcore oatmeal (Jordan), Tuesday, 11 October 2011 00:51 (twelve years ago) link
cool article
― calstars, Tuesday, 11 October 2011 01:32 (twelve years ago) link
Franzen's still a dick
http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonathan-franzen-said-about-david-foster-wallace#more
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 11 October 2011 21:47 (twelve years ago) link
eh he's telling tales out of school but i mean they were friends at the time it was being written so i take it he has some inside knowledge and doesn't think he's sharing some dark secret to discredit the guy -- it's not like i ever imagined dude recording/transcribing real conversations verbatim for most of his essays
― some dude, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 00:59 (twelve years ago) link
this is awesome.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Friday, 28 October 2011 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
I love him.
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
XD
― markers, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:06 (twelve years ago) link
my god i can't even begin to think what his more passive-aggressive moments are like
& so i'm about 250 pages into IJ after what seems like 3 weeks (!!!) and i love it to shit, but man is it laborious. i'm used to reading 1-3 books a week and having drawn all my attention this this is kinda excruciating, especially with the xtra-xtra-small font and the liberal paragraph breaks once every 43 pages. how long did it take other ilxians?
― kelpolaris, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:11 (twelve years ago) link
looking through the pages strongo just linked you should be grateful that the type in IJ isn't as ridiculoulsy tiny as his handwriting. he was a big guy, no? how could he even write that small?
― jed_, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:18 (twelve years ago) link
the skull and bones omg
― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:21 (twelve years ago) link
Took me 11 months. Finished it during a 7 hour bus ride.
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:24 (twelve years ago) link
over like a summer i think the 1st time i read it
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:25 (twelve years ago) link
I finished IJ in roughly six weeks, although I did not read every bit of the footnotes. I started it just before New Year's Day, so I had plenty of dark quite evening hours for reading. I finished it about a week into February.
― Aimless, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:30 (twelve years ago) link
<3 his american heritage ballot submissions. how does one get on the list?
― dayo, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour), Friday, October 28, 2011 8:21 PM (15 minutes ago)
^^^ seriously
― MODS DID 10/11 (k3vin k.), Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
gratified to know even DFW memorized vocabulary words. need to get my own list up and running.
― dayo, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:48 (twelve years ago) link
american heritage usage panel is mostly well-known writers and academics. they're listed at the front of the dictionary.
― circles, Saturday, 29 October 2011 00:53 (twelve years ago) link
everybody stop looking at that flickr account before you get to the autopsy report. ugh.
― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Saturday, 29 October 2011 01:04 (twelve years ago) link
cosign^^^
― elan, Saturday, 29 October 2011 01:07 (twelve years ago) link
IJ took me fur years to read. I gave up on it about three times, maybe four. Yet something made me go back each time. I'm glad I read it but four years is completely ridiculous for one book.
― tubby permacrocked whorefucker (Lostandfound), Saturday, 29 October 2011 01:43 (twelve years ago) link