Is it worth a read?
Despite all the DFW memeposting that goes on here /lit/ never brings this book up.
if you like dfw already
i wouldn't go out of my way to read it if you don't
Personally I found it fucking intolerable. I liked Infinite Jest and I get that DFW has a stream of consciousness-y style sometimes but this read like a bad imitation of it by some girl on Tumblr.
>>7431176
Finished IJ a couple months ago and really enjoyed it. Knocked off a couple books from my backlog since then and wanna read more of his fiction.
Deciding between this or The Pale King but all I hear about TPK is that it feels so broken and unpolished (cause it is I guess)
>>7431190
his short stories are where his best work is tbqhfam
I think DFW himself has said that it's like "a very smart 15 year old wrote it" or something.
I liked it a lot when I read it in high school.
Just fucking read it.
>>7431207
What's the best collection? If Brief Interviews is anything like that fucking movie I'll stay clear.
>>7431342
Oblivion has the best stories (Good Old Neon, Mister Squishy, The Suffering Channel) but Brief Interviews is the most consistent and cohesive.
>>7431190
Read them eventually, but his essays and short stories are his best non-IJ work.
>>7431362
>best stories
>no forever overhead
fight me irl bruh
>>7431362
>didn't mention the soul is not a smithy
nigga what
>>7431190
Pale king is 100% worth it; even though it's unfinished, I found it more enjoyable than IJ. DESU, no other book has made me laugh as hard as PK. It would have been his greatest work, and it sucks that he never finished it.
>>7431190
whoever told you that is a moron. the pale king is full of unbridled splendor. easily Wallace's peak as a fiction writer.
I liked it but it SERIOUSLY begins to both drag on and fall off in quality the longer it goes on.
If it abruptly ended at the end of PART I it'd be pretty much perfect for what it is. Love everything leading up to there. What follows is nowhere near as good and it never completely ties up anyhow.
>tfw you will never be as cool as Stonecipher Lavache Beadsman
It's boring, mate. Just stick to Infinie d'Comedie
I'm reading TPK now and if he finished it I think it would've been his best work. Harold "Angry Old Jew" Bloom wouldn't be able to dispute DFW's talent if the work were finished.
is it true that it reads like a debate between Wittgenstein and Derrida or was that just something DFW made up to make it seem more intellectually legitimate?
I enjoyed it a lot. Felt like a more condensed version of IJ to me, similarly good, just not as much there, which is both good and bad. Honestly I think it's pretty important to do some outside research on the book. Wallace wrote it as an exploration on the differences between being a real person and being a character in a story- if there truly are any differences. This is most definitely in the text, but when I heard him say it in an interview while I was about half way through- the whole thing really clicked. Well worth the read, its a quick one because so much of it is dialogue.
