david foster wallace: classic or dud

Yeah...his later short fiction (particularly the longer pieces in Oblivion) could be kind of forbidding in its abandonment of most of the humor/broad characters/meta stuff that made Jest easier to swallow, a thick part-of-novel in that vein might be a really difficult read. There is something about the topic/theme of this book that I find pretty intriguing, though, so I'm still up for it.

i was totally anti-publishing this, totally on J0hn D.'s side theoretically and then I read the excerpt. . . holy shit, cannot wait until it comes out.

i've been reading supposedly fun thing... i think he's best when writing by tennis, by a huge margin. the first thing i ever read by dude was signifying rappers (sux), which i think turned me off of him for a long time.

agreed regarding Oblivion, too--a lot of those pieces (the title story especially) did not click for me the way the majority of Infinite Jest did

xpost uh, gonna have to completely disagree with you there, the best story in that book isn't about tennis, its about a cruise.

on Oblivion: yeah, I had the same problem with it, but I'm actually kinda eager to go back and give it another chance after having read everything else by him.

I really really loved the excerpts from The Pale King. I understand the qualms about post-mortem publishing, but sometimes people, particularly the extremely self-critical author-types, need a little push out the door from their loved ones, and the world is usually a better place because of it.

i havent finished the book yet dillweed! anyway i like him best talkin bout tennis, happy now

have you read his Federer piece from a few years ago? so great.

guys re: 'the qualms about post-mortem publishing', he left it out on his desk! all neatly in a pile! it's no like it's nabokov or something w a note saying 'PLS DESTROY'

yeah i know...i regret jump-starting that line of thinking before i got to the end of the article explaining that part.

ya that federer piece was just like... d-damn

yeah, i do love the federer piece.

and yes, i read that article, too, i know he wanted it to be published. i said the qualms thing more in response to the conversation that's been going on in this thread.

yeah but i mean his note might have specified what he wanted done with it--sounds like he wanted it published as is, i guess? it still feels weird i guess

Yeah...I imagine that since he left his wife a note, there's certain things he expressed to her that will never be made public, and we just have to assume that she's carrying out his wishes to the best of her abilities.

re-reading the federer piece these days breaks my heart a bit due to fed's continuous waffling against that other guy.

the excerpt from his new book does sound really good but on the other hand, i don't really have much to compare it to - it's the first piece of fiction by him I've ever read (read both a supposedly fun thing and consider the lobster). where should I start with his fiction - the short stories? Broom? IJ, even?

i would say IJ

The line about the guy footnoting his tattoo is cringeworthy.

seems pertinent to link to http://www.theknowe.net/dfwfiles/pdfs/Wallace-Good_People.pdf - earlier excerpt from the pale king.
this is interesting too (and i am consequently exploring tony hoagland)

the writing, or the fact that he footnoted his tattoo?

i would say IJ

thanks, that was my feeling too, but for my "gah, big book" reaction to it. I'm not so much intimidated by the length though so much as trying to find the time to really dig into it.

Jordan - both, I guess.

my feeling is that if you've read his non-fiction, and are interested in reading some of his previous fiction before The Pale King comes out, you really should just go ahead and invest your time into Infinite Jest, however long it takes...Broom and his short stories really just don't compare imo.

oh come on, the tattoo thing is awesome (would've been less awesome done by anyone else, though)

xkcd, say

now why'd you have to take it there

my feeling is that if you've read his non-fiction, and are interested in reading some of his previous fiction before The Pale King comes out, you really should just go ahead and invest your time into Infinite Jest, however long it takes...Broom and his short stories really just don't compare imo.

― blame it on the HOOS got you steenin' loose (some dude), Tuesday, March 10, 2009 6:35 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think some of his short story work is right up there with Infinite Jest, which i love, and a lot less scary to start.

though i would say that infinite jest, for how long it is in length and reputation, is a very very readable book.

yeah i dunno...i look at his short fiction as porridges each with its own specific fatal flaws, Curious Hair is too this, Brief Interviews is too that, etc. but IJ is, for all its imperfections and challenges, just right.

otm

yeah so otm. and it's really not that hard to read at all, i was expecting a lot worse bcz of its rep

IJ is super readable: for me it was one of those books where you have an early-ish slump and put it aside a bit, but when you pick it back up it catches like a fire and you can't stop reading (except for the bits where you stop to re-read something because it was great).

yeah, before i started reading it someone told me these two things, which i now repeat when i lend it to someone:

1) it doesn't really start picking up momentum until 2-300 pages in

2) it's very readable and entertaining on a page-to-page basis (ie not especially dense or difficult), there's just a lot of it.

i have to admit that i have zero interest in his fiction

I maintain that Girl with Curious Hair is his best collection of work, and better than IJ. But I read it first.

2) it's very readable and entertaining on a page-to-page basis (ie not especially dense or difficult), there's just a lot of it.

Yeah, this. I had to keep reassuring a few friends that I did, in fact, love the book, because I kept on complaining that I would never get through it. I think I loved just about every bit of it, it's just so goddamn long (it took me like two months!).

Is IJ anything like that excerpt from the book that's going to be published posthumously? Because I couldn't even read 10 pages of that let alone 1000 but I like really long novels.

Just started reading Infinite Jest so I can see what all of you are banging on about.

Girl With Curious Hair was what I started with and I loved it, so I'd say if Infinite Jest is too daunting I'd start there

NY'er article was great

many xposts

I tend not to have massive patience with long novels.

Is IJ anything like that excerpt from the book that's going to be published posthumously?

no, not really

weird:

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/dgoobl/05tiwlarge.jpg

i fall asleep whenever i try to read the gay chapter about television

ha ha--people always talk about how that's the essay that really lays out the DFW aesthetic and it puts me to sleep too

oh no is that what the commencement speech book is going to look like? yikes.

Yeah, apparently it's shipping. Approx. one (1) sentence per page.

was wondering how they were going to stretch it over 144 pages

: (

i was hoping it was so many pages because he had some really really longer form version of it.

yeah i was hoping it was just big type and big margins

13 months later, Infinte Jest has been put down. By the end it truly feels like it stopped a thousand pages short itself.

it does. i was surprised and at a loss when it stopped.

I felt that way the first time.

The second time, I cried.

Usually it goes the other way around, I realize.