I started reading this today and I binged the first 150 pages all in a day.
I FINALLY FUCKING GET IT. 5 years spent on /lit/ and I finally understand every single one of you going crazy about this book.
Infinite Jest is the greatest literary work since the beginning of humanity.
Ouch, the old edition.
>>7991673
It's 9/10 breddy gud.
>>7991683
lol this bear make me laugh
wait for it to start dragging. dude needed a better editor
3/10
>>7991680
The fuck? What do you mean?
The other day I bought the same edition as the one in the OP, because it's the most popular edition and everyone else on /lit/ seems to have it. Please, please, don't tell me that newer editions are somehow better, because I insisted on getting the 2006 edition.
>>7991700
A 20th Anniversary Edition just came out that corrects a number of errors and fixes some printing mishaps (check out p. 990 of your edition, e.g.)
>>7991708
What exactly is the difference? I just ordered the book, it's not here yet, so I can't check.
I didn't want any newer editions because DFW didn't approve of them.
>>7991688
lol same
>>7991708
It also has this stupid fucking shit
>>7991708
Nicely veiled "I made it to page 990 of Infinite Jest and by that point still even noticed printing errors!" post. Well done! :)
And I'm not being sarcastic, I tried reading it, but somewhere past the first half of the book I got distracted and so far never finished it. Should probably pick it back up...
>>7991717
The second half is the best part, you cucked your own life with laziness
>>7991708
https://imgur.com/a/ICLCG
Just checked. Seems like a bunch of meaningless shit.
>>7991717
The book goes to page 980 so 990 is actually one of the first end notes so your meme is wrong
>>7991717
990 is pretty early in the footnotes, pal.
>>7991716
You're spurning the definitive and authoritative edition of a great novel because the edges are deckled?
>>7991752
>definitive and authoritative edition
According to who?
>>7991712
>author didn't approve the edition
Don't read any Shakespeare, pal.
>>7991694
this
a few highlights like eschaton and clipperton aside, pages 300-600 are a fuckin bore
just pages and pages of political expoisiton and really boring routines, lots of shit that should have been better dispersed throughout.
>>7991762
do you guys think we force ourselves to think Infinite Jest was better than it was because we spent so much time on it and if we admit it wasn't good then we admit we wasted all that time
>>7991708
LOL so I wasn't missing any crucial additional endnotes after all. DFW's spergy narrative device was just bound to fuck at least a few things up.
>>7991757
False equivalence. If Shakespeare had lived to see the publication of his work, and approved of a certain edition of said publication, we would all have good reason to feel inclined to read that one too.
>>7991770
no, i think the book genuinely has some great writing, and it doesn't even take that long to read. last time i read it i was done in just over 2 weeks
>>7991673
>Infinite Jest is the greatest literary work since the beginning of humanity.
Surely, you jest.
>>7991773
Okay, but errors slip in even if the author's involved in the editing. There were errors in the 1996 hardcover that were fixed in the paperback. And there were errors in the 10th Anniversary edition that are fixed in the 20th. They're obvious errors, not creative scholarly editing. Just buy the damn new edition you stubborn bastard.
>>7991716
Deckled edges are great, fucking mong.
>>7991771
>DFW's spergy narrative device
Fuck you idiot
>>7991785
Is this you?
There's literally no rationalization for it other than being a special snowflake who wants other people to think that what they are reading is old and smart.
>>7991762
I did too until I read an essay about ekphrasis within IJ and not only did that make sense the whole theme of the book became clearer.
>>7991790
How dare you. That woman is unique, and beautiful, and you would be lukky if she even glanced at you.
>>7991800
I'd probably get a black eye from her stupid fucking alien ear thing swinging and hitting me in the face
>>7991673
>binged the first 150 pages all in a day.
How do you read so fucking fast, /lit/?
I can't go over 30 pages a day, irregardless of the book.
>>7991790
It has aesthetic value, philistine.
>>7991809
>irregardless
That's probably why.
>>7991809
>irregardless
Maybe he didnt go to work/school today?
>>7991810
>giving a shit
>>7991814
Rekt.
>>7991822
Why are Roman statues so fucking beautiful?
>>7991830
Back then, when you picked a hobby, that was all you had.
>>7991825
irregardless would be the opposite of regardless and if it is your post makes no sense.
>>7991790
To me they feel nice. they're not sharp so it has less of a "dry feel" no paper cuts. and its easier to turn the pages.
get fucked.
>>7991673
this book is unbearable. I can see how it would be huge among nerdy "superior intellect" fedora tipping teenage boys however.
>>7991836
>its easier to turn the pages.
Blatantly false
>>7991835
No, irregardless would be the same as regardless.
inflammable / flammable
press / depress
ravel / unravel
The list could go on.
you guys are complaining about deckled edges when the actual content of the book is boring af
>>7991785
Deckle edge is the enemy of all that is good and right.
- collects dust like a motherfucker
- more difficult to flip through
- looks like ass
Proceed to kill yourself and fuck the body.
>>7991822
Plebs would be the ones with no regard for aesthetics.
>>7991809
>I can't go over 30 pages a day
why do you post on /lit/ if you are functionally illiterate?
that's 1 book a week at very best
>>7991844
you're all fucking idiots.
It's not even a word. It doesn't make sense.
>>7991850
>looks like ass
Wrong, fucking pleb.
Form > function
>>7991859
hows that macbook workin for ya.
>>7991825
Webster:
>There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.
>Use regardless instead.
There
>>7991855
It became a word.
Language evolves over time, you dumb fucking nigger.
>>7991853
The only aesthetics necessary in literature is that contained in the written word itself.
Desiring your book to be all dazzled up and sexy looking either means a) you are a superficial faggot who doesn't really care about what is in the book, or b) you use "reading" as a blatant attempt to get other people's attention and condition their perception of you, in which case you are also a superficial faggot.
>>7991861
Macbooks look like trash, the brutalist design of thinkpads is superior.
>>7991867
>written word itself.
Only if you abstract the text into words floating around in your mind.
>>7991863
>It became a word.
hue hue hue hue
>Language evolves over time, you dumb fucking nigger.
Because fucking retards want it to be doesn't make it so. Next you're going to tell me that the definition of "irony" will change to include "coincidence" because faggot's like you are too dumb to say shit correctly.
>>7991883
People don't know how to use the word ironic.
Isn't that ironic?
No, it is not.
>>7991869
so you're saying that a utilitarian or cheap design actually looks better aesthetically.
So that function>form, just in a roundabout way.
>>7991893
unregarless of the ironic inclusion of irregardless as word, your not unbreaking the rules of the english landuage.
>>7991862
>>7991883
You know words change meaning through time, whatever people decide to use it for become its meaning doesn't matter what your autistic internet dictionary tells you.
Once upon a time "pretentious" meant "attempting to impress by putting on a greater air of """intellectuality"""" or sophistication than it actually possessed". But it's also used as a coded way of saying "this book is pretty shit", and has been used this way for a long time. When a word gets abused like this for so long, it loses its impact and meaning.
Words change meanings all the time and have done so a lot in the thousand or so years that English has existed. And in other languages as well.
>>7991894
Only in this case, my tastes are universally superior to everyone else's.
End of discussion, I'm closing this tab now.
5/7
>>7991938
Just admit you fucked up, you pretentious cock-monger.
>>7991938
>Once upon a time "pretentious" meant "attempting to impress by putting on a greater air of """intellectuality"""" or sophistication than it actually possessed". But it's also used as a coded way of saying "this book is pretty shit", and has been used this way for a long time.
How so? Most of the time that I've seen someone use the term "pretentious" it was used in the first way that you described. Never really seen it used as a coded way of saying "lol this book is shit". Can you give an example?
>>7991938
>attempting to impress by putting on a greater air of """intellectuality"""" or sophistication than it actually possessed"
>coded way of saying "this book is pretty shit"
It's not a coded way you dumb fuck it's called >implying
If a book is trying to be smarter than it is then it's annoying and fake. Pretentious works are though to be shit because of that. It's not changing the meaning at. fucking. all.
>>7991940
Christ you're a faggot. You're come back to read any replies so you'll see this.
>>7991883
someone hasn't studied semantics...
>It's another Infinite Jest thread and no one talks about the book.
>>7991958
not a whole lot to talk about
>>7991977
It has a great plot.
>>7991994
it's shit compared to evangelion
>>7992004
You've got to be kidding me.
>>7991673
>150 pages all in a day
Not possible.
>>7991938
>Once upon a time "pretentious" meant
>Once upon a time
It still means what it means. Idiots who are only concerned with signalling their opinions on whether something is good or bad use the word as a fancier replacement for "bad" regardless of whether the work is actually putting on airs or simply over the reader's head, which ironically is very pretentious since they're attempting to give their ignorant gut-reaction a veneer of legitimate criticism.
>>7993036
>>7991862
>>7991821
>>7991814
Getting worked up about incorrect usage of words is retarded given the subjectivity and impermanence of language, but let's works this out. One of the definitions of "irregardless" is "regardless," or "irrespective." Whether that's correct in your view is irrelevant, what's relevant is that people use the word like that. This is how language works.
Whether this is the first OED definition doesn't matter. English doesn't have a language academy; usage is the determining factor.
The most obnoxious thing about grammarians is that they don't realize that many of the rigid rules they subscribe to are entirely arbitrary. Or they themselves use words in ways that were once considered incorrect. I mean, does anyone literally use "decimate" to mean "kill 1 in 10" anymore?
>>7991708
What is this book about?
How is it
>go to bookshop
>see Homer
>think "start with the Greeks"
>hipster at the pay desk
>get embarrassed that I'm falling for the meme, he probably knows
Anyone experienced this?
>>7993111
No. A clerk tried to talk to me about Pynchon once when I bought a copy of Bleeding Edge. We had a nice chat about Lot 49 and V. until I asked if he'd read Mason and Dixon. When he said he had not, I scratched my head, looked mildly embarrassed on his behalf, and left with a roll of the eyes.
git gud
mo
>>7991770
maybe for some, but I genuinely connected with the writing and themes of that book at a meaningful level.
>>7991844
I'm done. English is stupid. Switching to Chinese.
>>7993126
I once purposefully asked a female clerk at the book store to help me find the section of the fiction area where I could find Pink-in.
>>7991912
It's as if your fingers were melting as you typed this.
>>7993044
Infinite Jest is a joke, but it isn't one that is intended at the reader's expense. It is the author's bitter view of himself and the small, shallow make-believe world in which he lived.
>>7991673
>HaHa! Got another One!
>>7991716
Absolutely disgusting
>>7991958
What makes you so surprised?
Neo-/lit/ is full of blithering retards who think vonnegut is good, unironically read stephen king/ harry potter, and keep a science fiction general thread up 24/7
>>7994466
I am now sure that 90% of the people who talk about Infinite Jest haven't even read the book.
>>7994469
Did you gather this from reading /lit/ threads in 2016?
There was a point in time where the book was actually discussed alongside the shitposting
>>7994480
/lit/ didn't change at all, it's still the same as it was in 2010 when I first started posting here.
>>7994488
that's a long time to be oblivious to the many changes this board has undergone.
>>7994488
neo-/lit/ is dumb enough to take preschool "philosophy" threads like "lol u can't disprove solipsism" seriously, of course people here are dumb enough to take someone like DFW seriously too.
I feel like even 10 months ago it wasn't like this. At least the Stirner and Derrida spam has dulled.
>>7991958
nobody has read it, that's why
>>7993111
Nah, bookstore clerks are too nice and are often complimenting if you actually pick up some decent classics.
I picked up Metamorphoses, some Houellebecq, Knausgaard's My Struggle, some Yukio Mishima and War & Peace and the guy behind the counter was just happy to see somebody buying something that wasn't YA genre fiction or board games and we had an enjoyable chat about what the books are like and some similar writers.
I kinda wish I knew people outside of /lit/ and outside of bookstores that read more frequently so I could have the same enthusiastic discussions with them.
>>7991844
"in" is regardless fucked in English because it's both a prefix denoting opposites and "in" as in inner, into
>press / depress
you're an idiot
>ravel / unravel
people are idiots
>>7991825
exactly the sort of person I'd expect to use "irregardless" desu
yes, it's ultimately arbitrary - so are all the other reasons why everybody laughs at you
>>7994568
suck my fucking dick you fucking retard
>>7994466
Tbh the anti-Vonnegut crowd is at least as annoying as the Vonnegut fanboys. And the former is certainly louder
>>7991762
False. I just hope to not have to wait too long before we get the original manuscript that was 400-500 pages longer.
>>7994469
That's probably the percentage among people who bitch about the book.
I started IJ at the begin in of February and I'm only like 300 pages in. Should I finish? Have I read enough that I can tell people that I've read it?
>>7994590
don't you mean irretard
is at that there book what was wrote by that bloke what killed hisself right?
>>7991808
>excuses for not having sex
man, that's rough
>>7991770
Don't fall for the meme.
DFW was good, possibly the best of his generation. The criticisms are all valid - he needed a better editor, he was spergy as fuck and went on camera too much because he deep down desperately craved the attention, his essays were better, etc., etc.
But he was definitely good.
>>7995303
>DFW was good, possibly the best of his generation
let's not get carried away...
>>7995685
Who would you say is better? Keep in mind, only writers who debuted around 1985 and are still going today. I know I don't read enough modern lit, but I genuinely wouldn't be able to say who comes close. DeLillo falls short, IMO, but you're free to debate me on that.
>>7991855
>english doesn't evolve over time
>>7995703
don delillo
roberto bolano
>>7991756
You didn't hear when DFW came back to life to bless the new book?
>>7991836
I get the dry feel, the pages seem more substantial to me, but that may just be that publishers that deckle make the pages thicker anyway
I saw Infinite Meme for $3 at my local shop. Is this too much to pay for it?
>>7995713
Neither are really of his generation, though, and neither can make me laugh like DFW can.
Read Infinite Jest many years ago and loved it, but as time went on and I read other books, I started to change my opinion. Several reasons:
1. The conclusion that "everyone has a deep inner-life" is neither an end-point nor especially deep revelation. Most literature takes this as a given.
2. DFW never overcame his influences (in the Bloomian sense). Most of the book is just an unoriginal re-write of the Brother's Karamazov.
3. Rereading Gravity's Rainbow, it made sense that Pynchon wrote the book like that out of necessity. I've not reread Infinite Jest, but I can't find any necessity in its structure. Likewise, while the footnotes make a point relevant to the work as a whole, the point doesn't seem especially good or necessary.
4. I've never met anyone who thinks IJ is the best work ever who has also versed themselves in the canon. Most people barely know the title as a reference to Hamlet and none seem ever to point out the obvious similarities to Brother's K. If the point of the book is that you have to work for enlightenment, IJ clearly failed since it became more of the same thing DFW criticized.
5. (just personal) IJ is like the Beatles -- even if I did the original work, the fans drive me the fuck away.
I'm still not certain in my assessment - I've not reread the book - but I'm pretty sure, funny and moving as it is, IJ is not a work of great literature.
Also, I've almost never seen a cogent defense or criticism of the book on this board. Hopefully someone will refute me.
>>7996339
>I've almost never seen a cogent defense or criticism of the book on this board
You must've missed all my "Wardine be cry"s and "and but so"s. The struggle goes on, I guess.
>>7996367
Fair enough. At any given time the catalog has about 6 posts about IJ, most of which I skip entirely.
>>7996339
Could you expand on this idea of allusions to Brothers Karamazov? Beyond that there are 3 Incandenza brothers (and their personalities don't really match those of Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha) I'm not sure I can see much of a link.
Also note that DFW never presents the mental POV of anyone who actually believes in God in the novel. Kind of a big difference from Bros K where being an atheist makes you edgy
>>7996693
It's been several years since I read either (and I've only read each once), so I couldn't speak in much detail, but the similarities seem obvious:
Father doesn't care at all about his sons;
Dmitri and Orin are both sensualists who run away from their father, largely owing to a dispute over a girl (Orin/James/PGOAT ; Dmitiri/Fyodor/Grushenka)
Hal and Ivan are both academically gifted and detached. Both estranged from and puzzled by their families. Both end up going insane. Both characters eventually develop affinities for their impossibly naive, impossibly good-hearted younger brother.
Mario and Alyosha are deeply righteous without pride or the academic agonizing of their middle brother (naively stupid but as such, holy).
Both novels revolve entirely around the relationship and reactions of the three sons to their sensualist, alcoholic, uncaring father.
IJ doesn't talk explicitly about God, but like Dostoyevsky, his works are all about the search for a higher moral principle upon which people can meaningfully interact. Search for genuine empathy.
There are also tons of minor details, most of which escape me. I do remember a short line in Brother's Karamazov about a character "terrorized by words whose meaning he didn't understand" - cf. Gately in the hospital thinking haunted by "wraiths" or something.
>>7996777
Thanks for your reply.
Mario is the middle brother, to start with, 2 years older than Hal. He does, though, come across as the sweetest and kindest of the three. And as he has to be cared for by the others (or else bullied, tripped, and pushed by Orin--poor Mario) I guess he could figuratively be the youngest.
The Grushenka/Ivan/Fyodor triangle does resemble the Joelle/Orin/Himself triangle. Good point.
JOI wasn't a sensualist. Don't think he ever fucked Joelle. Apparently he believed there was a finite number of erections available in life which made it hard (ha ha) to get hard.
I think JOI really did care about his sons, like remember his special willed Xmas gift of the head mounted camera to Mario. He was just so fucked up he couldn't communicate anything, to the point of believing his hyperverbal 10yo son was silent. (And then disguising himself as a professional conversationalist. Even deluded, Fyodor K would never have lifted a finger to help another human being.)
Thoughts?
>>7996104
Hell I paid $35
>>7996777
Gately didn't think he was haunted, Wraiths are real in IJ, and the book is Himself apologizing for the nuclear apocalypse
It's called infinite Jest because the book itself is a joke, the most meta of all jokes.
>>7996805
I guess I misremembered the birth order. But as you pointed out, Mario's dependence and his physical deformities make him figuratively the youngest. The relative ages seem less important than their mutual relations.
James isn't a sensualist like Fydor, but probably like Joyce's Bloom - primarily a voyeur, here obsessed with light as sensation. You might be right on this one, I'm really pretty hazy on James except that he was so into his lights and films that he hardly paid much attention to his sons. That said, the central theme in both novels is the inability of the children to really communicate with their father who remains wrapped up in his little world. As to his gift to Mario, I seem to remember (also hazily) Fyodor similarly displaying affection for Alyosha - self-interest in having a saint in the family or whatever the case may have been. Mario does make use of the camera, but it's the father who is obsessed with film.
Details aside, I'm not convinced that DFW really rose above his influences. Like Harold Bloom talking about Marlowe's influence overshadowing early Shakespeare until Shakespeare finally outdoes him with Iago, I'm not convinced DFW ever got to his Iago.
More important is that DFW failed to write a coherent whole. Of course IJ appeals to a generation engaged primarily with twitter and facebook, where the only link between two things is their arbitrary placement next to each other in a feed. More important than coherence is that DFW confesses "bravely" and exposes his own flaws to a massive audience. As a result, he ends up writing basically a journal. Joyce faced a similar problem with Ulysses - how not to write just trivial lists of things Bloom did -- and I think he successfully overcame it. DFW did not. As >>7991762 and others pointed out, you could excise a lot of the book without significantly altering it. Likewise the Pale King reads as almost complete despite having hardly been started (even better than IJ in my opinion, because he didn't really get to start his ludicrous Pynchon knock-off nonsense [the stupid Quebec shit in IJ])
Most great works are deeply personal. That's what Joyce is talking about with "throw them all in the work." But a truly great work of art is about the self as god and synthesizer, taking and creating a universe of seemingly disparate parts and unifying them into an integrated whole. I don't think DFW managed.
All that said, I might be wrong. I've intended to reread both. It's wrong to dismiss a work without really engaging with it.
>>7996902
Sure. I'm just talking about the scene where Gately suddenly starts thinking about a bunch of words whose meaning he doesn't know.
>>7996982
Nice! Thanks again for a quality post.
I 100% agree the Quebecois stuff is second-rate Pynchon imitation.
I would quibble with mainly just one thing in your post--the formal device in which "the only link between two things is their arbitrary placement next to each other" is in fact a characteristic element of high modernism! Think Joyce's Wandering Rocks, Picasso's abutted picture planes, 12-tone composers' bizarre shifts and transitions between idioms.
For me. the irritating thing about DFW is that he tends to shield his own text from criticism via internal strategies. And as a result it's not as interesting. The first example that comes to mind is that his explanation of the Mean Value Theorem is totally wrong--but possibly because Pemulis is stoned while he's explaining it.... and then it's like, who was wrong, DFW or Pemulis? There are tons of passages in IJ that might as well be faked, but we'd never know because it's all filtered through (inconsistent) viewpoint characters.
A good example:
"Avril couldn’t change diapers. She’d come to him in tears, he’d been seven, and explained, and apologized. She just couldn’t handle diapers. She just couldn’t deal with them. She’d sobbed and asked him to forgive her and to assure her that he understood it didn’t mean she didn’t love him to death or find him repellent."
The chilling word for me in this paragraph is that last "find".... Because... why wasn't it FOUND? And it's so crucial because Avril I, the prescriptive grammatist, would never ever err in a thing like this!!!! (And one would imagine that DFW would never err either...)
You could rewrite it like this to get rid of all ambiguity: "It didn't mean she didn't love him to death or that she found him repellent". But DFW and Avril did not put it that way and so the opened reading is the dark shiver: she loves her poor monstrous son and yet she DOES find him repellent..... oh God... and yet by this point in the text we are so used to characters using malapropisms in their speech, etc, that the explanation occurs: "Ok well... maybe this is just Mario remembering that, maybe HE got it confused; maybe Mario, sweetheart that he is, interprets the logically clear grammatical expression of loathing as an expression of love." But we cannot know. We can't know precisely because DFW isn't rigorous about this and so we can't draw a conclusion, just like we can't draw a conclusion about whether DFW was faking his math knowledge or whether he actually knew it all perfectly but distorted it for characterization. The superposition is less meaningful than either option. It's stupid. And that's my rant about IJ
>>7997056
It's important to distinguish apparently arbitrary placement from genuinely arbitrary placement. The Wandering Rocks episode is a good point, and one I need to think about, but I think it's essential that it falls between Stephen in the library, explaining the work of art as the deeply personal (Shakespeare as cuckold) while simultaneously wholly removed from the author, who functions as a disinterested God (earlier Stephen pointing out that Iago and "not" Shakepeare said 'put money in the purse,' raising the question of what did Shakespeare really say?) and the Sirens episode where all the assorted and seemingly unrelated sounds come together to form a symphony. Joyce seems to be making a point about the disconnection between these events being only apparent. The artist brings them together in an integral whole.
Same with the ranting whale chapters in Moby Dick, which seem neither here nor there, but in fact are essential to the work as a whole. Or the crazy flashback / flashforward, who-the-fuck-is-speaking structure of Gravity's Rainbow: seemingly arbitrary, but in fact essential to Pynchon's point about cause-and-effect in the world of probabilities. Even Catch-22 comes closer to integrity than IJ.
I can't come up with and haven't heard a coherent reason for the confusing structure of infinite jest; and while I can see the point of the footnotes, it hardly seems necessary. In the end, Infinite Jest reads like a series of confessional anecdotes about students at a tennis school and residents at AA. They're funny and often very moving anecdotes, but they don't have any essential relation to one-another. This is the same reason the Pale King worked - the final work didn't really matter. And all of that seems especially appealing to twitter users who consider "exposing themselves" on twitter in clever ways in order to get attention to be some sort of religious movement.
I can even see a relation to your point there about using technique to shield himself from genuine criticism. The whole work is just posturing, much like a twitter user.
tl;dr, Wallace fails the "integritas" portion of Joyce's definition of art.
>>7997056
Also, thank you for real replies. I can't speak much to Picasso or 12-tone composers, but the point about the Wandering Rocks is excellent and one I'll have to think more about.
Ya know, I don't think I would indict DFW that harshly.... There is another kind of integrity in his work, that is, the integrity to neither romanticize nor disparage people with big, bad psychological problems.
And also there is a weird, perhaps second-hand integrity I can't help but find in DFW: for the reader who doesn't give a fuck about math (because they stopped paying attention to math at age 12 because someone told them they "weren't a math person") even invoking the mean value theorem (or whatever fact-based infodump he attempts, however refracted and failed) is more of a concession to reality than one gets with many other contemporary novelists, a depressing number of whom seem also to have been assured they weren't "math people" either and therefore were given authoritative OK to completely check out on the logical rules that govern the universe.
DFW, if he doesn't truly understand it all, at least fronts like he does, and thereby puts many less rigorous others to shame for not even including the proper shadows of fact. (if that makes sense...)
I agree that IJ's structure is unnecessarily fucked up and was in the end an artistic failure. I truly wanted to read the scene of Hal, Gately, Joelle digging up Himself's head. Too bad DFW thought it would be clever to not show that part.
>>7997211
>wanting to read the scene of Hal, Gately, and Joelle digging up Himself's head
I am glad DFW did not do this. he was aware of his limits (sometimes) and probably knew he couldn't have pulled this off without being corny or—god forbid—insincere.
>>799721
Yeah I know there are politics that surround the question (do you satisfy your audience's expectations vs don't you) but if I read over a thousand pages and see that in the end, a scene is promised in the very first few pages isn't even included, I irrationally get infuriated. Like I wouldn't even care about the level of literary polish on it, please let me just understand what happened in your fictional world lol
>>7997211
I mean integrity in the sense that all the parts form an integral whole. Not in the market-place sense of "principled."
I probably do come across as exceptionally harsh. A reaction to his fawning fan-base more than anything. DFW had skill - the eschaton game and Gately's fight are tremendous - but he did not create "the greatest literary work since the beginning of humanity". He's proof more than skill with words separates Shakespeare from the average writer.
DFW ranks with Orwell, Heller, and (probably especially) Solzhenitsyn, all of whom are tremendous writers. But he does not rank among Shakespeare, Melville, Cervantes or Joyce.
>>7997267
We agree there. IJ is a top tier novel, well worth reading, but imo fails to close the deal.
>>7991869
>the brutalist design of thinkpads is superio
underrated
>>7997246
You lost me; what scene promised in the first few pages isn't included?
>>7991717
You're very obviously overcompensating.
>>7997211
The structure is not unnecessarily fucked. DFW stated in interviews it's structure is akin to a Sierpinski gasket.
>>7997608
God, the first chapter is so great; it's what makes IJ the book into IJ the movie, looping back on itself. It seems to argue pretty well against some of the conclusions others reach about the book--nuclear war, the gravedigging actually happening, &c. Not that these conclusions aren't intentionally pointed to. The book builds to what seems to be a lot of things about to happen, and then the final action only takes you back to the beginning. It's like the orchestral build in 'A Day in the Life' on endless repeat. The book is The Entertainment.
At one point the second time I read it, which was even more enjoyable than the first, I thought I could see someone just wanting to read this book over and over. That was DFW's stated intention; he didn't think anyone would get all of the things he loaded into it in one read, some so obliquely you only recognize them after having read it already And you notice he left plenty of breadcrumbs to support contradictory conclusions on a number of questions.
>>7995713
How the fuck is Bolano funny?
It's just the nonsensical ramblings of a pathetic heroine junkie and an alcoholic.
>>7996339
>in the Bloomian sense
What did he mean by this?
>>7996982
>Of course IJ appeals to a generation engaged primarily with twitter and facebook, where the only link between two things is their arbitrary placement next to each other in a feed
>>7997160
>In the end, Infinite Jest reads like a series of confessional anecdotes about students at a tennis school and residents at AA. They're funny and often very moving anecdotes, but they don't have any essential relation to one-another
This is some really good insight, and I'm saying this as a guy that loved the book. I see nothing wrong with having a bunch of stories thrown togheter though.
>>7996924
It's called Infinite Jest because it's some Shakespeare allusion which is some Ovid allusion or Dante or something like that.
It's a stupid fucking meta joke.
>>7998693
It's also the literally perfect description of The Entertainment.
>>7994103
fucking sperg
>not dating one of your cool female friends
>still trying pathetically to eke out social contact in public places
>>7994466
you're forgetting the bookshelf threads, the stirner threads, the dostoevsky threads, the new purchases threads, and the critique threads, but I suspect you contribute to those =^)
>>7994502
are you one of those bloom-parroters who thinks there's no discernible talent? because clearly you'd be wrong
>>7991717
Somewhere in the first half, like page 30 then I guess? Because that footnote is well before page 100
>>7998015
It's fucked if it being a Sierpinski gaskot doesn't achieve anything, and it doesn't
>>7991673
nicely done OP
Let's get back on topic.
So did Mario get the succ from Millicent Kent?
>>8000420
Nice spoilers, dipshit.
>>7993041
I think the Tentacruel sprite makes that post valid, though.
>>7991673
Dude this book is gay as fuck. How to people even put up with DFW's whiny-ass style?
>>8000721
you haven't even read it
>>7991716
I fuckin love that shit, don't be a nigger.
>>7991673
I've got 500 pages in but shit this is boring. What am I even supposed to be getting out of this? Does he really have anything to say?
Reading Infinite Jest when English isn't your first language is fucking dreadful.
>>7992915
buddy glass read 400k words a day in letters, the madman
>>7996339
>I can't find any necessity in its structure.
'anticonfluential', 'leads up to an inevitability it denies', 'periodic', etc.
>>7996924
i mean talk about pretentious
>>7991673
Its a piece of shit, I'm surprised you made it to pag 100
bluh its abad bok *troll face*
>>7995020
:^)
>>8001790
I understood was DFW was doing there when he included these themes, it's quite obvious that these are comments on IJ itself, but that sort of self-referentiality isn't particular new at that point. Just because you have invented a clever sounding word for 'my structure is all over the place' this doesn't somehow become a meaningful artistic statement or something. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed IJ, but I really dislike how much the book is trying to prove it's sophistication to the reader... which is closely interlinked with the kind of insufferable fans who 'buy into' this narrative of IJ as a masterpiece of vast complexity and DFW as an inscrutable genius (when it's really a good book that is a lot longer than it needed to be and a somewhat confused construction written by an intelligent, competent writer with a dictionary who desperately wanted to be a genius).
>>7991800
>has "cat" tattooed on her knuckles.
>has African-sized gauges.
Yeah. And the charm of her appearance has, at best, an eight year life span. Once she's in her early thirties, she's going to realize that she fucked up, just like everyone else too shortsighted to imagine themselves growing older while the temporary style of a decade is permanently inscribed all over them. This is why there are people who shit all over tattoos on this board.
>>8002095
>I shit on people with balls because I resent them as I'm a coward
