I-is this legit? Was he joking?
http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/david-foster-wallaces-surprising-list-of-his-10-favorite-books.html
He wasn't "joking." He genuinely loved The Screwtape Letters, liked some Stephen King, and taught Thomas Harris. He simply listed his favorite pop fiction rather than his favorite works of literature. Obviously, if you know anything about him, though, it was literature that was more important to him.
>>7707932
/thread
>>7707836
inb4 nabokov-dostoevsky
>>7707836
He can like stuff, you know. He's a writer. Not a /lit/cuck.
>>7707836
He's half joking. He was a fan of pleb lit and taught it in his classes, but they weren't really his favourites. Reminder that he made that list for some book compiling and tallying up the favourites of famous authors, and he probably knew that most lists would end up being pretty generic and I guess he wanted to be different.
Here's him being more sincere:
>Wallace was also known to name other books beyond these as his favorites. When Salon writer Laura Miller asked Wallace for the books that he most connected with, Wallace responded:
>OK. Historically the stuff that’s sort of rung my cherries: Socrates’ funeral oration, the poetry of John Donne, the poetry of Richard Crashaw, every once in a while Shakespeare, although not all that often, Keats’ shorter stuff, Schopenhauer, Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method, Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, although the translations are all terrible, William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hemingway—particularly the ital stuff in In Our Time, where you just go oomph!, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, A.S. Byatt, Cynthia Ozick—the stories, especially one called “Levitations,” about 25 percent of the time Pynchon. Donald Barthelme, especially a story called “The Balloon,” which is the first story I ever read that made me want to be a writer, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver’s best stuff — the really famous stuff. Steinbeck when he’s not beating his drum, 35 percent of Stephen Crane, Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby.
>And, my God, there’s poetry. Probably Phillip Larkin more than anyone else, Louise Glück, Auden.
>>7707836
>Tom Clancy
>>7708086
Sum of all Fears, Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games, and Without Remorse are pretty good books if you want some easy spy novels.
New Meme Book?
>>7708027
all of this
pay attention to things people
>>7708086
Tom Clancy had an obsession about nukes and commies that blossomed into really creative paranoid fantasies, he's pretty good.
also >tfw you will never get choked out by these thighs
>>7708141
>tfw you will never get choked out by these thighs
My African American!
>>7708027
>half joking
DFW's schtick is being sincere though
Honestly, who cares if he was serious or not? What if he did like those books? So what? Would it diminish what he did himself? Would you think less of him as an author?
>>7707836
Yes. Unlike /lit/, he mentioned books that he's actually read.
>>7708027
>tfw bought two of these books today
fuck yea I chose wisely
desu the screwtape letters is pretty good senpai
>>7708235
>DFW's schtick is being sincere though
lol you know IRL he wasn't a paragon of moral crusading for sincerety at all
Dfw confirmed JUVENILE author
>>7708027
it started so strong and then went full pleb around two lines in. baka.
>infinite jest is not in his top 10
what a fucking pleb
I'm reading the Ebonics chapter of IJ right now
What was he thinkig
>>7708809
Dunno man. That was hands down the worst part of the book.
Is The Stand worth reading? I hated the first 20 pages of The Long Walk and it felt like a waste of time, so I dropped it.
>>7707836
Yes he was joking, it was trick to fool you into thinking all your favourite authors aren't all super patrician genius ubermensch
But don't worry, they are
>>7708141
I don't want to be choked out by those thighs
>>7707836
S H I T T A S T E
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>>7708299
kek
