It's funny how when a true intellectual writes a novel, it doesn't need one single bit of obscurantism. It's funny how it doesn't use the references / depth as a passport to keep people out / "challenge them" (as DFW put it) but to add extra enjoyment to people who happen to have the knowledge, while doing nothing to deter more casual readers (similarly to The Simpsons, kek).
redditors and millennials like DFW books and referential humour because it makes them feel like they could come up with the same thing
its so easy for instance to reference something for a laugh rather than figure out an actual joke with a coherent punchline that is actually funny
contrast your example, the simpsons to a reddit show like rick and morty which is just references or a man burping a lot and acting silly
>>7789868
>implying art is exclusively for the observer
>>7789868
But Borges was a true intellectual and many of his stories only seemed obscurantist. He probably embedded philosophical concepts and erudite knowledge in his writing more fluidly than any writer before him, and was without doubt more graceful at it than sf writers.
simpsons references like ten unique things every episode
>>7789868
what did einstein say? if you can't explain it to a 5 year old, then it means you don't understand it well enough.
>>7789892
DESU, the problem is that it really CAN be explained to a five year old.
>"Daddy, why does James Joyce / DFW have a long boring sentence that is slightly incongruent with respect to the rest of the paragraph in terms of tone and / or vocabulary?"
>"Well Jimmy, he is simply referencing *obscure bit of Norse mythology / Shakespeare passage / Bible passage even though irl we're all liberal degenerates who laugh at religious people or look at the condescendingly like we do kids*! You see in the bit he's referencing, a woman picks up a cup. In his story, a woman doesn't pick up a cup. Don't you see what level of depth and complexity this brings?"
>".......Daddy, pass me the baseball!"
Now try to explain how Nabokov writes so well to a five year old. Try to explain how certain "talentless hacks" can repeatedly write "page turners" (i.e. enjoyable books)? 90000001 MFA students later, and nobody has any fucking clue. College professors can't describe it to college students, nvm adults to children.
I'm going to write a novel which is difficult so that the reader will feel silly trying to find any meaning in it. (I will tell the reader outright that there is no real meaning and it is nonsense. But it won't be.)
>>7789868
what's the point of reading a book if it's not even a little bit challenging? For the """""wisdom"""""? Baw. Watch a movie, listen to a TEDtalk, jesus.
>>7789967
What is Finnegans Lake?
>>7789878
>Rick and Morty
Sure is buzzword in here.
>>7789914
You're a reductionist idiot.
>>7790204
Obscurantist has arrived.
