Is this the most bizarrely ironic thing to ever happen?
I find it quite bizarre Eisenberg gets work, ya.
A an amateur movie based on this movie would be the cherry on the icing on the cake that was the life of David Foster Wallace (TM)
What is up with his left arm? I can't discern where his hand beings.
>>7986457
You think it's bizarre that a guy with the last name "Eisenberg" gets work in Hollywood?
>>7986473
>I can't discern where his hand beings.
That's not the only thing I can't discern about this film
>>7986503
kek. Good point.
>>7986447
I though it was pretty funny how the movie was all about how an artist's work isn't necessarily reflective of their actual character and personality, and how DFW specifically really hated anyone getting any false impressions about him.
And then the movie turns him into this soft, overtly sentimental schmuck, even though he wasn't like that in real life. His family even objected to the movie, since they thought David would've never wanted to see himself capitalised on like this.
I liked the quotes
>it may be what in the old days was called a spiritual crisis or whatever. It's just the feeling as though the entire, every axiom of your life turned out to be false, and there was actually nothing, and you were nothing, and it was all a delusion. And that you were better than everyone else because you saw that it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you couldn't function.
Why is he so fat? I don't think DFW was that fat.
>>7987831
He was actually a fairly large guy, 6'2" and 200 lbs. Segel intentionally gained weight for the film.
>>7987859
>He was actually a fairly large guy,
>>7986705
David doesn't exist
>>7987859
For you
>>7986447
I'm in your position except I just finished Shipping Out. It's a pretty funny read, on the surface, but it's morbidly transfigured by DFW's suicide.
Every other page includes a note on self-elimination as a 'wry joke.' The ocean as a 'primordial stew of death and decay' is a running motif. The entire conceit of the piece is DFW-as-clever-neurotic 'seeing through' the corporate processes used to induce relaxation in cruisegoers.
DFW's go-to capsule synopsis of Jest called it an investigation into the purposes and limits of pleasure; its central device, a magical film that is so enjoyable it makes viewers want to do nothing else but watch the tape continuously.
It's stupid to try connecting authorial biographies to literary analysis and it's stupid to guess at contributing factors of a suicide. In the case of DFW it's incredibly difficult to respect these rules. The question animating his entire career was, 'why bother?'
In interviews, DFW comes off as maybe the gentlest author ever recorded. He's unfailingly patient, respectful, and soft-spoken. But in 'Shipping Out,' seated next to middle-aged, midwestern dining companions whom he professes to deeply like, he spends eight paragraphs deconstructing these peoples' foibles to hilarious effect.
Have you seen the Charlie Rose talk where DFW is seated opposite Franzen, his long-time friend and, at that time, much lesser rival? DFW is polite and deferential towards Rose. DFW cautiously qualifies his generalizations in case you think he's leaping to conclusions or putting words in your mouth. But then Franzen, his friend, says something pretty innocuous about literary fiction; that its fans are much less likely to spend time with lowbrow TV entertainment.
"So the only people who read serious fiction are people who don't watch TV?" Says DFW. He's looking directly down his nose at Franzen.
"No, no--...ah, thank you for drawing that out for me, Dave..."
"No, no. If I misheard, enlighten me," says DFW. There's no mistaking his tone for the quaint circumspection marking DFW's NPR appearances. He's telling Franzen to fuck right off.
I could keep going, but basically I agree with OP. I'll try DFW's fiction but I'd be shocked to discover he could render a character believable, broken, and also loveable. I think most of DFW's life was spent mistaking one cause of unhappiness for another and proving that hatred is a habit that you can conceal, but which is very hard to slow or break.
