Do you think a certain degree of Infinite Jest's integrity is lost in the fact that nowadays we have google and wikis at our fingertips to explain every little thing we don't grasp from the book. We can do a quick search of every obscure reference so it's like we don't have to really try anymore.
To try what? First, literature isn't a puzzle-game; and then none of these references even matter in the least anyway
no
/thread
Only autists look up every little thing.
Seriously, the only literally literary autist I've ever encountered loved Ulysses. Owned every single commentary and monograph on Joyce. Looked up every explanation of every weird little thing on databases.
Dude was a fucking nightmare to talk to and sacrificed so much room in his mind, room for big themes and interpretations, for useless little factoids.
>>7426696
Yes.
No.
>>7426717
Fuck no.
All that Ulysses commentary has let plenty of things through the cracks.
And w/r/t Endless Fun, there's no reason for all the stuff Career Move put in there—he isn't pointing you towards anything, there's no gold at the end of his references.
Contrast Le Merry Crackman whose references point to something. His references are symbols are metaphors. And I'm not talking about the Odyssey structure. Consider Dedalus's thinking about stereoscopy while he's walking on the beach. That's not an 'O look isn't that cool' reference.
A footnote w/the details about a drug?
>>7426771
IJ only references useless factoids...
Joyce scholarship is bullshit...COME AT ME BRAH
>>7426696
>We can do a quick search of every obscure reference so it's like we don't have to really try anymore.
There have always been various "companion" volumes to major literary works to explain things for you, not to mention many kinds of print encyclopedias.
The difference is that now the process is available cheaply to people who don't have access to a good library.
>>7426799
>>>/trash/
>>>/r/books
The communities there might be more suitable to your proclivities. :)
>>7426770
What does the beach thing signify
>>7426799
>useless
Oh boy here we go.
>>7426812
It's a reference worth tracking down. It exists outside all the bullshit chatter about Jimmy—'Ulysses starts with the letter S and ends with the letter S'—WOW. Or: 'Each main part starts w/the first letter of a main character's name! S(tately)tephen, M(r Leopold Bloom)olly, and P(reparatory)oldy!'—again, who gives a fuck?
Your brain takes two 2D images from yr retina and somehow gets them to pop into a pseudo 3D planetarium that it yr POV. Yr brain is wired w/an algorithm that automatically sorts the difference in overlap between 2 flat images from yr retina and gives them distance, what you perceive as distance.
Two flat things that overlap and eventually pop to give depth? Not really a stretch there, since Dedalus IS Joyce and these are Joyce's thoughts in a book that does exactly that.
>>7426863
Well... that proved nothing. What is a mind-opening thing that Endless Fun incorporates? An example?
http://www.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>7426696
Chaucer and Shakespeare walk into a bar. Chaucer orders a beer. Shakespeare hears indecipherable French nonsense and turns to the pretty girl at the tap. And this is how the greatest literary conversation of all time never happens.
They died and were born 120 years apart. I know. The point is what happened to "English" in the interval. It was short enough that grandparents could literally not understand, or be understood by, their grandkids.
Integrity lost? Whose? The text's? Or yours?
Hi N-P
>>7426897
Not mind-blowing but I mean, theres all the Hamlet parallels for one. Certainly more than useless factoids.
>>7427002
N-BM, I'm a huge fan... Can you elaborate?
Oh and can you sign this banana for me? —Uh just make it out to Harry Houdini...
>>7427085
That's retarded an uninteresting. What IS interesting is the Ulysses parallel: Hal : Dedalus & Gately : Bloom.
But Hal is really Dædalus's son, Icarus.
The whole novel is about escaping the awful labyrinth of life, transcending. 'If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, not a door.' Does Gately transcend the pain of his five-sensed cage?Yeah!
>>7427126
This is a SFW board.
>>7427131
Bums are safe.
>>7427133
prove it -_-
Try reading any literature without a reference point. It's pretty fucking impossible. For instance, if I didn't have the internet to look up terms used in 19th century England, I wouldn't be able to fully understand 19th century British literature.
>>7426696
The references don't matter, and you should get most of them on your own if you went to college.
DFW was a Pynchon meme-er and may have thrown some shade at Pynchon by having Orin (an odious character) make Pynchon references.
...And like that—He's gone.
>>7426696
There really wasn't anything in IJ you couldn't understand except exactly what happens towards the end. Everything else is completely explained within the book.
>>7426889
Dear god this picture gave me a bonre.
>>7430489
It made your dick beat hard?
>>7426811
What's a proclivity?
>>7431396
a tendency
>>7426799
>IJ only references useless factoids...
The uselessness is its use.
>>7431413
Consider the drug footnotes. Their function was to create an aura of intelligence, which in the 90s was absolutely effective. Now we yawn.
>is its use
Can you elaborate on that? Beyond college essay bullshitting, I mean. Wallace added things to his overlong book to show us 'HA LOOK HOW USELESS'?
