Where do I go from here?
>>7518514
To a good book, because this one certainly wasn't.
Lost in the Funhouse or Pale Fire
>>7518523
I enjoyed it, you just have to skip the parts where David Foster Wallace forgets you're there and starts masturbating. Otherwise he's very pleasant company.
>>7518655
Well the style is interesting (if you concede such banalization, I don't have time to expand on it now) but "muh sincerity" is bullshit - and the whole book is basically the same short story repeated 20 times.
Agreed with the posters above, I enjoyed his style, and he's not a bad writer, but most of the book came across as way too preachy. How do the rest of his writings compare in that regard?
>>7518663
is it?
>>7518523
Shit taste.
Book was incredible, even though a few of the weaker pieces were weaker.
Brief Interview #20? Church not Made with Hands? Fucking stupefying. The only pretentious piece in the book was maybe Octet, and even then he admits he's being pretentious in order to directly communicate with you, the reader, so you're on his level.
OP if you haven't read Oblivion I liked it even better than BI's, also I liked the Pale King better than IJ and I enjoyed Broom as well. His essays are decent fun.
>>7520289
>The only pretentious piece in the book was maybe Octet, and even then he admits he's being pretentious in order to directly communicate with you, the reader, so you're on his level.
That's the point of my critique.
Brief Interviews is self-defying. It's built on this idea of absolute sincerity, but the excess of this pretend sincerity is in itself a construction that problematizes it. Pieces like The Depressed Person and Adult World are so long and overdrawn that the point they are trying to make fizzles. On his Deathbed is very powerful, but still as overdrawn as the others. The Brief Interviews are literally the same point told twenty times in slightly different ways.
As I said the writing is notable, no denying that. But "muh literary genius" doesn't cut it.
>>7520289
Not OP, but I couldn't get through Church not made with hands. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood, but I just couldn't tell what was going on. I also wasn't a fan of Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko. it felt like an obnoxious barth parody that went on for way too long. Octet, interview 20 and the deathbed one were fantastic though, imo. The shorter stories were kind of hit or miss, but it since they were so short the failed experiments didn't bug me.
To Reddit
i enjoyed brief interviews, but i couldn't read it in one go. the more i read, the more obnoxious it felt. but whenever i stopped, when i went back to it after a week or two the next story was amazing.
>>7520289
Octet was maybe my favorite but like an anon ITT I couldn't for the life of me finish Church Not Made with Hands.
reckage
>>7518514
Outside. Feel the sunshine on your face, OP!
>>7518514
>steps
by jerzy kosinski
>>7521149
>>7521775
I should mention I studied the book in an American lit class this recent semester, so we really got into it. Once you've spent some time analysing all the pieces and having a prof go over some of the tougher ones like Church and Tri-Stan you come to realize they're actually among the best in the book, just highly dense and require time and a thinking cap
>>7523649
also wrote a 10 page essay on Church
I liked TPK and IJ, this book not so much.
What other DFW should I read?
