this is like a really shitty episode of the twilight zone
― thomp, Friday, 7 September 2012 00:04 (eleven years ago) link
<3 thomp
― we don't wanna miss a THING!!! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, 7 September 2012 01:54 (eleven years ago) link
Ellis certainly has literary aspirations, whether or not his books are good.
― Earth, Wind & Fire & Alabama (Eazy), Friday, 7 September 2012 04:27 (eleven years ago) link
hey guys who wants to read my MA essay on architectural postmodernity in American Psycho
― Blue Collar Retail Assistant (Dwight Yorke), Friday, 7 September 2012 13:51 (eleven years ago) link
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.”
― buzza, Friday, 7 September 2012 14:55 (eleven years ago) link
boys: still something of a shock
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 7 September 2012 14:57 (eleven years ago) link
the most disappointing part of that has to be 'his friend Jonathan Franzen' tho right?
― Lamp, Friday, 7 September 2012 15:00 (eleven years ago) link
hahaha exactly
― Mr. Que, Friday, 7 September 2012 15:04 (eleven years ago) link
his only purpose in life was “to put my penis in Jonathan Franzen as many as possible.”
― buzza, Friday, 7 September 2012 15:04 (eleven years ago) link
the smell of Jonathan Franzen in the air
― thomp, Friday, 7 September 2012 15:06 (eleven years ago) link
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 Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 7 September 2012 19:01 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 08:10 (eleven years ago) link
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. :/
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 08:18 (eleven years ago) link
― Lamp, Friday, September 7, 2012 10:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Mr. Que, Friday, September 7, 2012 10:04 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
<3
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 08:21 (eleven years ago) link
how excited must Franzen have been to share a quote that unflattering w/ a biographer
― manic pixie, mercy, yo chick she's so quirky (some dude), Saturday, 8 September 2012 11:12 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, rly
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 11:16 (eleven years ago) link
another reminder, if one were necessary, that the artist and the work may be closely connected, but are two entirely separate things
― Aimless, Saturday, 8 September 2012 14:40 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Aimless, Saturday, 8 September 2012 15:08 (eleven years ago) link
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
― manic pixie, mercy, yo chick she's so quirky (some dude), Saturday, 8 September 2012 15:10 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 16:03 (eleven years ago) link
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
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 16:10 (eleven years ago) link
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
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 16:11 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:40 (eleven years ago) link
The Loki of the literary world
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:42 (eleven years ago) link
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."
― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:50 (eleven years ago) link
^^^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
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:52 (eleven years ago) link
i don't care about the artist so much, i care about the work
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:53 (eleven years ago) link
my WOWs up there=can't believe Gerry Howard wrote such a silly article about those two
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
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
― Lamp, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
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
― thomp, Saturday, 8 September 2012 17:57 (eleven years ago) link
he is the table
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Saturday, 8 September 2012 18:20 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― This Whole Fridge Is Full Of (Old Lunch), Saturday, 8 September 2012 18:27 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― DARING PRINCESS (DJP), Saturday, 8 September 2012 18:30 (eleven years ago) link
sux 4 u
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 18:33 (eleven years ago) link
literally nothing about DFW says "borderline personality disorder"
― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, 8 September 2012 18:45 (eleven years ago) link
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."
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 19:01 (eleven years ago) link
gbx otm re dfw bpd
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Saturday, 8 September 2012 19:16 (eleven years ago) link
̅ \(o_º)/ ̅
Read the bio, & then look at the BPD criteria. I could well be wrong.
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 19:21 (eleven years ago) link
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
― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:05 (eleven years ago) link
dfw was p throughly diagnosed irl no
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:07 (eleven years ago) link
stop it--not tl at all, this is interesting stuff. he was diagnosed but i don't recall with what exactly
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:09 (eleven years ago) link
bi polar no
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:09 (eleven years ago) link
i think so? man googling this dude brings up lots of sad shit
― Mr. Que, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:12 (eleven years ago) link
"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'
― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:14 (eleven years ago) link
mdd afaik
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― iatee, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
ya it couldve been depression, i pulled that diagnosis from a v hazy iirc
― lag∞n, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:17 (eleven years ago) link
okay reading gbx's last post he basically says what i said
― iatee, Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:20 (eleven years ago) link
His diagnosis seems to have been atypical/treatment-resistant major depressive.disorder, along with the whole substance abuse/addiction situation. Acc. to Max he also self-diagnosed at one point at least as a sex addict, apparently in earnest.
― *sad hug eomticon* (Control Z), Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:21 (eleven years ago) link
iatee did you just ask if it's possible to be borderline borderline?
― manic pixie, mercy, yo chick she's so quirky (some dude), Saturday, 8 September 2012 20:22 (eleven years ago) link