Look, can we just put this book to rest? Or ban discussion of it? Both sides of the discussion are blatantly wrong. What I see most often is people claiming it to be terrible. Look, it's obviously not terrible. It's a decent work by a decent writer, and it is a good representative of postmodernism. It's not great, but it's certainly not terrible either. On the other side we have people who claim it as one of the best books of all time, which is also blatantly false. Can't we put it to rest with that?
![franzen-crjpg-783babc177f95e89[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dyARfU8.jpg "franzen-crjpg-783babc177f95e89[1].jpg")
>good representative of postmodernism
>>7492893
"Why are there so many tired discussions of IJ?" he says, opening up the same tired discussion.
Well meme'd sir
Why the fuck don't you have the 4chan app? In fact, why the fuck isn't your phone jail broken?
I don't understand the question.
>>7492893
Honestly IJ was WAYYYY too ambitious of a project for such a unhoned author. Something of that caliber in terms of artistic vision shouldn't of been written so early in his career; the result is a tomb of unpolished rambling that fools people into thinking it's good.
I will admit there are good bits scattered in there (he did have talent but like I said he didn't have any temperance) but I think in general it's an artistic failure that fools naive millenials.
You can also clearly see many raw influences on the text (Dosto, DeLillo, Pynchon) that he hasn't yet incorporated into his own style smoothly.
While we're at it we should ban all the meme books that people don't actually read, but pretend to have read to look intellectual. You know, the Greeks, Ulysses, that entire garbage.
>>7493244
I bet you're qualified to make such judgment anon, totally agree, I mean cmon, you've definitely read enough to call DFW and unhoned author with no temperance, should've actually said ''compared to me'' tbqh ;) ;)
>>7493244
Silly man, DFW never read any Pynchon. Not one word.
>>7493244
''IJ is an artistic failure'' - Anon, around 23 y/o, with zero published works to his name.
>>7493259
source
>>7493282
I don't have a source to quote you. I was being a bit facetious, but you can look up how much he tried to distance himself from Pynchon.
By the time Infinite Jest was published, the influence of Pynchon was quite obvious to anyone and everyone. Hell, there was a guy I talked to here yesterday who think DFW's Broom of the System is a plagiarism of Pynchon's TCoL49.
But Wallace always said Pynchon wasn't a big influence, that he didn't read Pynchon much, and he made a point in his letters to other writers to say how much he really wasn't into Pynchon.
However, one of Wallace's friends, who was around when he first read TCoL49, compared his obsession with it to, "the first time Bob Dylan heard Woodie Guthrie." Or something like that.
>>7493363
that's strange
https://youtu.be/mfjjSj9coA0?t=2683
>>7493387
at 44:41*
>>7493385
Whether you mentioned his other works is irrelevant, sorry
>>7493385
I see what you're trying to say and I agree and disagree. I agree that he wasn't ready and should have waited.
I disagree in that he was 34 when IJ was published and Pynchon was 36 when GR was published. He was trying to beat Pynchon.
>>7493387
I don't know what I was supposed to hear? He never mentioned Pynchon from what I listened to, he mentioned Salinger and they talked about Joyce and Kafka. Did I miss something?
In any case, that's an interview from 2004. This discussion was about Infinite Jest, published in 1996. At least until a few years after IJ was published he was trying to distance himself from Pynchon.
>>7493432
Not Pynchon in specific but just the "anxiety of influence" question and how he answers it. If someone brought up Pynchon to him right then how would he respond? (He also briefly mentions Pynchon earlier on when talking about post modernism, only saying his name)
>>7493387
no mention of pynchon
>>7493387
>DFW tries to make a point about his prose choices not working well when read aloud
>audience twists it into a cheap joke about long sentences
>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHABAZINGAZABOOPERZIMBABWEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
In this moment, I understand why he killed himself. Not due to any phoney career move, but because he was misunderstood by his own audience.
>>7493463
did you listen to the rest? He addresses the audience being stupid.
>>7493447
What are you trying to insinuate? He didn't mention Pynchon and no one brought him up. That's the point. He's always tried to distance himself from him despite.
Listen, Wallace thought he was better than Pynchon. I take that back (though I wouldn't doubt he believed it). A better word than better would probably be, Wallace thought he was different than Pynchon. He definitely didn't want to be compared to him. There's no question of that. He was afraid of him. At least, afraid of the comparison.
Wallace always wanted to lead the charge of the new movement against postmodernism, of which Pynchon is (arguable, I know) the figurehead of. At least, in literature.
And I agree with you and that guy Martin Eve, that IJ was a failed attempt. It went off the tracks.
>>7493471
It doesn't matter. He can correct them every time he gets the chance, but as long as their own internal default tendency is to misunderstand he can never ever win.
Meme author, meme suicide, meme cashing in by everyone who 'cherished' his memory not even 6months after he's in the ground.
Infinite Jest is a good meta title for his life.
It's a real shame, because it was a book I might've read, but the level of aids presented by all those who shill it endlessly is too much for my immune system to take.
>>7493539
you're gonna be the one missing out, so, heh.
>>7493539
I actually agree with this assessment. The problem is, we don't have a better "new" writer since. That's why it keeps getting shilled.
