Do you unironically think DFW was the best writer of the last forty some years? Because I do. A legitimate warrior-poet among the people.
I've read Reddit comments with more substance than DFW's vapid musings.
>>8177527
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9UPOxFhbc
>>8177527
I like DFW but his fanboys seriously overrate his significance. He is not even DeLillo-tier
No discernible talent
DFW should have written nothing but aphorisms. He was a dreadful "writer".
>Imagine if... you were in the mall, shopping, and... instead of making all of these judgments about the strangers there whom you don't know, you thought: each one of us is the protagonist of our own story. We are not statistics, we are not labels. We are all... individual people. And the world is vaster than you think.
Reddit comment or paraphrase of a famous, beloved commencement speech by DFW? Is there even a difference?
>>8178327
>...
>>8178327
>vaster
reddit comment.
DFW at least proofread "disis wata" before his delivering the speecg. that's the only discerning aspect tbhfam
>>8178327
I used to think that way, but then I actually started talking to people and they all turned out to be just as shallow and stupid as my prejudice guessed they were.
>>8177527
DFW was a triumph of marketing alone.
>>8178380
>>8178427
Yeah, that's just the type of shallow pretentious thoughts the masses have. Thank you for illustrating my point.
>>8177532
You have to go back
>>8178427
You know what he means though. Of course, it ends up being his fault, for giving up or for some other reason.
>>8178380
That's because you hang out with retards
>>8177527
No. He's not much better than Knausgård or Houellebecq. DeLillo is better than all of them.
>>8177527
He's probably one of the smartest, but I don't know if he's the best.
>>8178450
Uh, obviously I don't hang out with these people, fucking idiot
I haven't read his essays, but I got through IJ. I don't think it's aesthetic as most of the top-tier lit, but I feel like it was intentionally written in a way to capture the feel of the 90s and obsession with everything fast and entertaining.
I felt like DFW was on speed throughout his rants about tennis and lynch movies, and the reader was supposed to feel similar in these passages.
Yeah, you can say parts are vapid and empty but maybe that's the point....he did write 1100 pages with footnotes where he wanted the reader to obsess over seemingly meaningless passages of the book--something a child would do with the help of good old adderall.
>>8178465
DeLillo is so terribly boring though. His prose is so stiff and inaccessible. His subject matter is god-tier, but Jesus what terrible execution.
>>8180196
>His prose is so stiff and inaccessible.
>stiff
confirmed for never having read the names or great jones street
what a pleb
What's the name of the movie about him with Jason Segel and Jessie Eisenberg? I wanna rewatch it
>>8180211
the end of the tour
>>8180206
You're right, I haven't read those. I've only read Falling Man and I'm currently reading White Noise, although I'm having a hell of a time staying focused on it.
Yeah, nice buzzword. I'm not interested in whatever lonely elitist club you've subscribed yourself to. I read what I like.
>>8180189
I think he's better than anyone else who was just starting out at around the same time as him, meaning the very late 80s and early 90s, and probably better than any purely 21st Century authors so far. Pynchon, DeLilo and Gass are all better, but they all started out earlier.
>>8180234
just stop my man
>>8180234
no one is inviting you into any club, i'm just mocking you for dissing delillo's prose so liberally when the width of his range is obvious to anyone who's read more than one his books.
>>8178380
>used to think everyone else was retarded and felt great about it
>then I was amazed at the whole "everyone is an individual" thing
>next the "everyone is living the same story" story blew my tits off
>tfw now I'm just alone and mostly terrified of other people because we're all so shit at communicating with each other we could never really share our true feelings or lives so why bother
>>8180252
>>8180247
Just stop reading White Noise? Nah, I finish a book even if I don't like it. Usually I find some redeeming factor before I've gotten through it.
Why mock? That's not going to make me read more of him. And of course opinions are going to be expressed liberally. That's usually how it works. I'll add The Names and Great Jones Street, but they better be fucking good or I'm going to be pissed that I didn't waste my time reading some other shit.
>>8180288
That is, I'll add them to my reading list.
>>8180288
>That's not going to make me read more of him.
who am i, barnes and noble? it's not my problem.
>>8180279
>true feelings or lives
You sure are spooked. Nothing is hidden.
>>8180302
Go troll a board that is better suited to your elitist attitude. /a/ or /v/ should suffice, although if you're feeling particularly retarded (I see that you are) /b/'s door is always open.
>>8180309
>a board that is better suited to your elitist attitude
are you kidding me
do you know where you are
>>8180304
Maybe I am, I just see it as like I don't know how to talk to you, you don't know how to talk to me, we really can't know each other because it would take a literal lifetime to explain what we've been through, anything else is just mis-remembered summaries and pre-established narratives that we've rehearsed over and over to ourselves and eachother
>>8180309
Have you been on /b/ lately? It's 90% porn. Just teenagers whacking it all day.
>>8180340
>/b/ is their fap board of choice
plebs
What board to you go to beat it /lit/?
>>8180348
/d/, /aco/, and now that it exists, /trash/. I have a lot of repulsive fetishes.
I agree, Dallas/Ft. Worth is the best writer of the last fourty years.
>>8180288
Just stop as in you're embarrassing yourself, which you continue to do.
>>8177527
DFW was a good writer and a good voice for gen Xers and millennials--the 80s and 90s kids, latchkey kids raised on TV and the internet. Today's 20-40 somethings.
Reading DFW is irritating sometimes, not just because of his memes like "w/r/t" tete-a-tete, etc. but because his voice so often fluctuated between being a big smarty pants who wanted to show everyone how smart he was to being an accessible everyman Joe Schmoe guy. The latter voice often came off as very self-conscious and aware it was trying to be that way. It has been said that DFW was immensely concerned about people not understanding him or thinking he was pretentious, etc. And yet he so often was pretentious and smarter-than-thou.
In an interview he once railed against genteelisms like "prior to" (instead of "before") or "at this time" as being snobbish and unnecessary, and yet his own work was so often exceedingly maximalist and "puffed up." (you can find examples of the genteelisms he was talking about in his own work.
I don't think DFW will be widely read in 100 years or anything but he was an enormous talent and I'm sad he was an hero.
He is not the best writer of the last 40 some years, that would be Pynchon, imho, who's most widely regarded novel came out a little more than 40 years ago.
