david foster wallace: classic or dud

I think back wistfully to a time when I enjoyed DFW and never saw/heard anyone talking about him outside of, like, newsgroups.

(Eternal thanks to erstwhile(?) ILXor D. Wolk for introducing me to the dude via his review of Supposedly Fun Thing... in CMJ.)

ellis has been like this all his life: 'american psycho' is basically one long troll of whoever's reading it.

judging from the first few paragraphs of that review dale peck is even dumber than that 'reader's manifesto' guy.

but b r myers is pretty cool and often right

I read a BEE book once and all I can remember is something something colombian foot soldiers

no wait that was jay mcierneyerrerer

sorry BEE I didn't mean to tarnish you by association

I almost took a McInerney book out of the library the other day but then I flipped it open to a random page and read a sentence and was permanently cured of the impulse to ever read anything of his ever again.

McInerney's pretty good at wine writing and Ellis is pretty good at tweeting.

Wallace is pretty good at jamming and Baker is pretty great at thinking as dramatic action.

pretty sure Ellis has never had a website like this dedicated to one of his novels, same goes for Dale Peck

http://infiniteatlas.com/

pretty sure Ellis has never had a website like this dedicated to one of his novels, same goes for Dale Peck

Degree of obsessive fan devotion is a 100% reliable sign of quality. See: the Grateful Dead, Amanda Palmer, Star Wars.

i'm just saying the guy has made a significant cultural impact.

Degree of obsessive fan devotion is a 100% reliable sign of quality.

Agree 100%, problem is, I think BEE wishes he had the impact DFW does

Um, Less Than Zero and American Psycho didn't have a cultural impact?

In May 2011, Peck's criticism of Jewish-American literature in which he claimed "(I)f I have to read another book about the Holocaust, I’ll kill a Jew myself" prompted a public outcry. His editors later removed the statement from his article.

they do a little bit, sure! not nearly the impact that DFW does--those tweets BEE made reek of desperation

and anyone who shits on the dead like that does not deserve to be taken seriously

ellis is soooo jelly of dfw's cult

I do not knwo who he is and I am not going to google it

bee is gross and sad. still like lunar park.

Um, Less Than Zero and American Psycho didn't have a cultural impact?

as literature they're toilet paper, plenty of crappy literature has had some impact just by virtue of being widely read. I haven't read IJ & probably never will but I like DFW's short work, he's capable of thinking a problem through. BEE wouldn't know what to do with an idea if one ever occurred to him.

wait ppl think Ellis is anything other than decent trash to read on airplanes?

Next poll: chuck palinuknuk vs David Mitchell

i didn't realise we had a whole other thread on this already, this happens when i take a day off ilx

wait i posted on this thread already

this is like a really shitty episode of the twilight zone

<3 thomp

Ellis certainly has literary aspirations, whether or not his books are good.

hey guys who wants to read my MA essay on architectural postmodernity in American Psycho

But it’s still something of a shock to see the extent to which Wallace—the perspiring, softly spoken and tortuously sincere figure of popular affection—could himself be a Hideous Man. Sure, his friend Jonathan Franzen felt compelled to point out that Wallace was never “Saint Dave,” but it’s another thing entirely to see him walking through the Amherst campus as an undergraduate, remarking on the springtime “smell of cunt in the air.” We later learn that Orin Incandenza’s penchant, in Infinite Jest, for seducing young mothers is in fact something he shared with his creator. We learn about DFW’s womanizing, about his book-tour fondness for “audience pussy,” and that he once wondered aloud to Franzen about whether his only purpose in life was “to put my penis in as many vaginas as possible.”

boys: still something of a shock

the most disappointing part of that has to be 'his friend Jonathan Franzen' tho right?

hahaha exactly

his only purpose in life was “to put my penis in Jonathan Franzen as many as possible.”

the smell of Jonathan Franzen in the air

kinda embarrassing to remember but i LOVED 'less than zero' when i was 18, and would probably still kind of dig it for nostalgic reasons. i didn't realize till a few years ago that it's a blatant ripoff of joan didion's 'play it as it lays,' right down to the use of portentously repeated phrases ('people are afraid to merge. to merge.').

the myth of foster wallace is p gross to me

*shifts gaze uncomfortably*

It seems like it was to him too in many ways, and became more so over time; iirc from the bio he called it "the statue." (Cf. the psychopharmacologist[?] in one of the footnotes to "Octet.") Yet of course this kind of mythologizing reads as entirely comprehensible and foreseeable and even forgivable if you take his thematic stuff about loneliness and isolation and the role of art in assuaging and overcoming it seriously, as it seems a lot of his readers have. I sure as fuck did.

I hadn't known that Wallace was as out-of-control addicted to ALL THE THINGS as he evidently was, nor the intensity of his personal brand of douchiness. It saddens me, though it rings entirely true and unsurprising. :/

the most disappointing part of that has to be 'his friend Jonathan Franzen' tho right?

― Lamp, Friday, September 7, 2012 10:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha exactly

― Mr. Que, Friday, September 7, 2012 10:04 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

how excited must Franzen have been to share a quote that unflattering w/ a biographer

yeah, rly

another reminder, if one were necessary, that the artist and the work may be closely connected, but are two entirely separate things

btw, wanting to put his penis in every possible vagina simply means that he was following in the wake of Genghis Khan, who appears to be a progenitor of several million modern descendants.

honestly if he was enjoying serious lit-groupie love that just means he wasn't as miserable about attaining the fame and success he'd pursued as he seemed to want people to believe, which is kinda nice imo

The serious lit-groupie love in itself doesn't seem to me to have been the issue, exactly. Hate to be that person, but I seriously wonder if dude was ever diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

lol u all really want to go down the rabbit hole http://www.salon.com/2012/09/07/i_know_why_bret_easton_ellis_hates_david_foster_wallace

Both went on to publish culture-shaking novels. “American Psycho,” a macabre put-on that amplified every cliché about yuppie scum to Grand Guignol volume, created a firestorm when the literal minded (of whom there are so many) failed to get the joke.

o rly

I truly believe that David was the finest writer of his generation, but his design for living seems to me naive and likely to collapse at the first impact of life’s implacable difficulties. It badly needed an injection of Montaigne or Marcus Aurelius.

WOW

Me, I find Bret Ellis’ scalding, cynical, brittle, savagely unillusioned worldview curiously refreshing. He is the Loki or Trickster of the literary world (or maybe the Lou Reed), poking sharp sticks in our eyes and daring us to figure out if he could possibly mean that.

Double WOW.

The Loki of the literary world

maybe I'm just too much of a DFW stan, but im having difficulty seeing how a savagely unillusioned worldview (wake up sheeple!) could be considered bracing nowadays. I get it, ppl are horrible, that is not interesting.

"could he possibly mean that?" = "oh no you DIDN'T... you just WENT THERE."