david foster wallace: classic or dud

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."

^^^agreed.

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

i don't care about the artist so much, i care about the work

my WOWs up there=can't believe Gerry Howard wrote such a silly article about those two

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.

that someone decided to write this and didnt immediately die of shame is more illuminating of the eternal darkness of the human soul than any stupid ellis book about killing prostitutes

every time i say i play pool in my head its going to be amazing like im playing pool in a leather jacket in new york with lou reed and a snake

he is the table

Hate to be that person, but I seriously wonder if dude was ever diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Naaahhh. Dude was way too empathetic and too easily able to put himself in other headspaces for that to be the case. I mean, I'm no clinician, but I've had enough intimate exposure to BPD cases to spot 'em a mile away.

and the old "people just like him to feel smart" canard -- you can just as easily throw that at ANY literary author, hell, at the entire idea of "literary authors."

Haha um, this is basically how I feel about "literary authors" and a large part of why I only read tacky sf/fantasy.

sux 4 u

literally nothing about DFW says "borderline personality disorder"

Well obviously I don't know, and I don't mean to speculate irresponsibly or to offend. Having just read the Max bio and gotten what I think is reasonably clear/reliable idea of how extremely fragile Wallace was in terms of baseline mental health a lot of the time, as well as having read a bunch of stuff about BPD recently-ish, it struck me that DFW might well have hit more than a few of the diagnostic criteria. BPD != evil, obv, more like "painfully fucked up in a way that's p difficult to fix."

gbx otm re dfw bpd

̅ \(o_º)/ ̅

Read the bio, & then look at the BPD criteria. I could well be wrong.

i'm familiar with the bpd criteria, and have just re-read them. i haven't read the bio. the problem with the bpd criteria is that, like a lot of dsm criteria, they read a little like horoscopes, and can be massaged over anyone's shoulders.

being "fragile" doesn't quite cut it. i've only seen borderlines (i'm using that as shorthand, not pejoratively) in inpatient settings, so maybe i'm biased to the margins, but i've rarely seen the kind of crippling insight that dfw seemed to have; most of them literally did not realize ~how~ their behavior was destructive. that isn't to say that bpd renders a person insensitive or anything, just that i think it might make writing lots of words and having lots of thoughts about being really considerate somewhat difficult, certainly as a profession. otoh maybe dfw was sublimating and writing was a way to redress his mistakes or something. personality disorders are...difficult, and getting a whiff of one from a bio is like diagnosing a heart attack when you see an old guy clutch his chest in a restaurant.

/tl;dr - i get a little invested when ppl bring up personality disorders

dfw was p throughly diagnosed irl no

/tl;dr - i get a little invested when ppl bring up personality disorders

stop it--not tl at all, this is interesting stuff. he was diagnosed but i don't recall with what exactly

bi polar no

i think so? man googling this dude brings up lots of sad shit

"most of them literally did not realize ~how~ their behavior was destructive."

i take this back. the difficulty was with understanding how they ended up doing what they did (getting blackout drunk when they were scolded at work, torching a friendship after a slight, etc), not with how it was harmful to them and others. some bpds get that, others don't. but, again, the trouble with personality/developmental disorders is that most ppl that have them ("have them") carry (or could carry) 4 or 5 other personality disorder diagnoses, and then your Venn diagram turns into big smudgy blob and fuck it i'm going home

xp i thought with major depression? i know he was on medication for a very long time, weaned off of it, changed his mind, went back on but found it ineffective, etc. never struck me as bipolar (i don't know of any manic episodes), but maybe. then again, i'm leery of most bipolar diagnoses since every kid that comes through the hospital with behavioral issues is on an anti-psychotic and i am like 'you have got to be kidding me'

mdd afaik

I don't know a lot about this kinda stuff, but do these diseases really have to fit in a certain box? like couldn't somebody be effectively 80% depressive 20% borderline or something.

ya it couldve been depression, i pulled that diagnosis from a v hazy iirc

okay reading gbx's last post he basically says what i said