It's sad how when I hear about guys like this I always think "I could've saved them, sat down and talked to him and shared perspectives on his work and showed him it wasn't all so serious" and then I realize wait no I can't I'm awkward as frick
5 months ago
Anonymous
You can’t really talk someone out of suicide anon. It’s inherently illogical to have a nice day, and is only done when the person who is doing it is in so much pain they can’t take living anymore. That being said I understand the sentiment.
5 months ago
Anonymous
It isnt illogical, Goethe explains it in The Sorrows of Young Werther.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>It’s inherently illogical to have a nice day
Even if you're about to be captured by some narcos intent on flaying you alive on camera?
5 months ago
Anonymous
The only person who made it to the 21st century to write things that I don't mind having them appear in my head periodically. I miss him greatly.
5 months ago
Anonymous
yeah, a lot.
5 months ago
Anonymous
No, irony poisoned dilettante
5 months ago
Anonymous
you don't know what dilettante means, embarrassing
5 months ago
Anonymous
He also does not understand irony or literature in the slightest and views the world through memes.
5 months ago
Anonymous
ironic...
5 months ago
Anonymous
Especially since the source of that irony comes from his being a dilettante.
5 months ago
Anonymous
He also does not understand irony or literature in the slightest and views the world through memes.
Not really. Irony is just something that people use as an excuse to conceal true motives towards actions
5 months ago
Anonymous
No, irony is a way to provide two or more perspectives at once, the literal and the implied which combined sometimes imply other perspectives or when in context leads the reader to other perspectives. Poor understanding of irony often reduces it too obfuscation but even in Broom of the System where he uses irony a good amount he is never that simplistic with it. Stick to Dick and Jane.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I could have saved him.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Honestly I think he went too far when he wrote the French guy shoving a sharpened pole up a moronic guys ass, the psychic weight of putting that imagery into the world must've been immense
5 months ago
Anonymous
he wasn't moronic, he just couldn't understand french. he sees the flaws in the other guy's (whatever his name is; bertraund or something like that) ideology and actions
5 months ago
Anonymous
wasn't it like a duo of guys and one of them was moronic
5 months ago
Anonymous
yeah they operated out of a video store, pulling petty anti-onan schemes. lucien (the putative moron) thought these schemes (as orchestrated by the literate betraund) were stupid wastes of time, but had trouble expressing his distate in phrases other than "va chier, putain" (or whatever the phrase is
5 months ago
Anonymous
French is a foul language
5 months ago
Anonymous
I tried to sit and read a few pages of infinite jest, maybe Im moronic but its somehow very uncomfortable and difficult, ill give it a another try.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The first chapter is way different from the rest of the book if that is what you read. +if you are worried about the amount of $20 words, once you know the dozen he likes to use you're good because he just repeats them a million times throughout the book
5 months ago
Anonymous
He has a very particular style but after a while you get used to it and it starts to flow better. It's like listening to someone speak in a weird accent for the first time.
The words themselves aren't overly complex it's just the overall way he writes and structures his sentences that feel really tense and uncomfortable when you're first exposed to it. This is probably one of the reasons people Infinite Jest grating but for me that was really fun. If nothing else there are very few books that left me feeling that way.
5 months ago
Anonymous
yeah for me its hard to keep track of what happens
5 months ago
Anonymous
I always thought he killed himself in his early 30s but he was actually like 50, nobody should not kill themselves by 50 so it’s okay really not a big deal
5 months ago
Anonymous
I'm trying some of his short stories. He really seems to like making them purposefully difficult, like by putting a story being recounted within a story being recounted, or bombarding you with corporate jargon, or doing whole paragraphs in brackets and brackets within brackets . But it's kind of funny and rewarding when you get used to it. I think I like him. Not sure if I'm ready for Infinite Jest though, I'm really shit with doorstoppers unless they're very straightforward.
5 months ago
Anonymous
What makes his short stories difficult are effortless in his longer works because he can take more time to ease you in and does not need to exploit fancy tricks to make it work in limited space.
Elkin's George Mills might be of interest fair amount of overlap with Wallace thematically and has and does some of the same sort of tricks as Wallace does with his short stories but is more restrained outside of a few pages in the first chapter which you will read many times. Only 500 pages and it goes fast other than a few times that he smacks you upside the head.
Actually those few pages might be in chapter two, been a couple years since I read it.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I wonder what he would've thought about covid. It accelerated the social isolation of society like nothing else before it.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>It accelerated the social isolation of society like nothing else before it.
It didn't, it just moved the isolation to being literal isolation instead of it being a function of the ways the interact with the world. He actually explored this a fair amount.
>‘It was on either Twilight Zone or Outer Limits— one of those. A claustrophobic guy who gets worse and worse until he’s so claustrophobic that he starts screaming and carrying on, and they trundle him off to a mental asylum, and in the asylum they put him in isolation in a straitjacket in a tiny little room with a drain in the floor, a room the size of a closet, which you can see would be the worst thing possible for a claustrophobic, but they explain to him through a slit in the door that it’s the rules and procedures, that if somebody’s screaming they have to be put in isolation. Hence, the guy’s damned, he’s in there for life—because as long as he’s screaming and trying to beat himself unconscious against the wall of the room, they’re going to keep him in that little room, and as long as he’s in that little room, he’s going to be screaming, because the whole problem is that he’s a claustrophobic. He’s a living example of how there has to be some slack or play in the rules and procedures for certain cases, or else sometimes there’s going to be some ridiculous foul-up and someone’s going to be in a living hell. The episode was even called “Rules and Procedures,” and none of us ever forgot it.’
5 months ago
Anonymous
The first time I went out for Christmas drinks with people from my new job, my boss, when we all several drinks in, turned to me and said 'I suppose you're quite into David Foster Wallace aren't you' before telling everyone about how much he'd enjoyed reading Consider the Lobster. I'd never once mentioned DFW to him or anyone else in the office. Wtf. And I am quite into David Foster Wallace.
5 months ago
Anonymous
People pick up language and ideas from what influences them and much of this just seeps out in conversation without you ever noticing. Your boss is lit and has better comprehension than most of the board. This is not a difficult trick, you just need to pay attention, people are constantly giving little hints to what they watch/read/listen to/etc. Or you sweat a great deal and your boss is a bit of an butthole after a couple drinks.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, once I read some common 'weird chick lit', the shibboleths became obvious.
5 months ago
Anonymous
drop some facts homie
5 months ago
Anonymous
Why read and therefore replicate the mental processes, dreams, ideas etc. of a depressive suicide case. As a wise man once said "there is nothing I respect more than happiness". Therefore I have no respect for such a person.
-ACK
It's sad how when I hear about guys like this I always think "I could've saved them, sat down and talked to him and shared perspectives on his work and showed him it wasn't all so serious" and then I realize wait no I can't I'm awkward as frick
You can’t really talk someone out of suicide anon. It’s inherently illogical to have a nice day, and is only done when the person who is doing it is in so much pain they can’t take living anymore. That being said I understand the sentiment.
It isnt illogical, Goethe explains it in The Sorrows of Young Werther.
>It’s inherently illogical to have a nice day
Even if you're about to be captured by some narcos intent on flaying you alive on camera?
The only person who made it to the 21st century to write things that I don't mind having them appear in my head periodically. I miss him greatly.
yeah, a lot.
No, irony poisoned dilettante
you don't know what dilettante means, embarrassing
He also does not understand irony or literature in the slightest and views the world through memes.
ironic...
Especially since the source of that irony comes from his being a dilettante.
Not really. Irony is just something that people use as an excuse to conceal true motives towards actions
No, irony is a way to provide two or more perspectives at once, the literal and the implied which combined sometimes imply other perspectives or when in context leads the reader to other perspectives. Poor understanding of irony often reduces it too obfuscation but even in Broom of the System where he uses irony a good amount he is never that simplistic with it. Stick to Dick and Jane.
I could have saved him.
Honestly I think he went too far when he wrote the French guy shoving a sharpened pole up a moronic guys ass, the psychic weight of putting that imagery into the world must've been immense
he wasn't moronic, he just couldn't understand french. he sees the flaws in the other guy's (whatever his name is; bertraund or something like that) ideology and actions
wasn't it like a duo of guys and one of them was moronic
yeah they operated out of a video store, pulling petty anti-onan schemes. lucien (the putative moron) thought these schemes (as orchestrated by the literate betraund) were stupid wastes of time, but had trouble expressing his distate in phrases other than "va chier, putain" (or whatever the phrase is
French is a foul language
I tried to sit and read a few pages of infinite jest, maybe Im moronic but its somehow very uncomfortable and difficult, ill give it a another try.
The first chapter is way different from the rest of the book if that is what you read. +if you are worried about the amount of $20 words, once you know the dozen he likes to use you're good because he just repeats them a million times throughout the book
He has a very particular style but after a while you get used to it and it starts to flow better. It's like listening to someone speak in a weird accent for the first time.
The words themselves aren't overly complex it's just the overall way he writes and structures his sentences that feel really tense and uncomfortable when you're first exposed to it. This is probably one of the reasons people Infinite Jest grating but for me that was really fun. If nothing else there are very few books that left me feeling that way.
yeah for me its hard to keep track of what happens
I always thought he killed himself in his early 30s but he was actually like 50, nobody should not kill themselves by 50 so it’s okay really not a big deal
I'm trying some of his short stories. He really seems to like making them purposefully difficult, like by putting a story being recounted within a story being recounted, or bombarding you with corporate jargon, or doing whole paragraphs in brackets and brackets within brackets . But it's kind of funny and rewarding when you get used to it. I think I like him. Not sure if I'm ready for Infinite Jest though, I'm really shit with doorstoppers unless they're very straightforward.
What makes his short stories difficult are effortless in his longer works because he can take more time to ease you in and does not need to exploit fancy tricks to make it work in limited space.
Elkin's George Mills might be of interest fair amount of overlap with Wallace thematically and has and does some of the same sort of tricks as Wallace does with his short stories but is more restrained outside of a few pages in the first chapter which you will read many times. Only 500 pages and it goes fast other than a few times that he smacks you upside the head.
Actually those few pages might be in chapter two, been a couple years since I read it.
I wonder what he would've thought about covid. It accelerated the social isolation of society like nothing else before it.
>It accelerated the social isolation of society like nothing else before it.
It didn't, it just moved the isolation to being literal isolation instead of it being a function of the ways the interact with the world. He actually explored this a fair amount.
>‘It was on either Twilight Zone or Outer Limits— one of those. A claustrophobic guy who gets worse and worse until he’s so claustrophobic that he starts screaming and carrying on, and they trundle him off to a mental asylum, and in the asylum they put him in isolation in a straitjacket in a tiny little room with a drain in the floor, a room the size of a closet, which you can see would be the worst thing possible for a claustrophobic, but they explain to him through a slit in the door that it’s the rules and procedures, that if somebody’s screaming they have to be put in isolation. Hence, the guy’s damned, he’s in there for life—because as long as he’s screaming and trying to beat himself unconscious against the wall of the room, they’re going to keep him in that little room, and as long as he’s in that little room, he’s going to be screaming, because the whole problem is that he’s a claustrophobic. He’s a living example of how there has to be some slack or play in the rules and procedures for certain cases, or else sometimes there’s going to be some ridiculous foul-up and someone’s going to be in a living hell. The episode was even called “Rules and Procedures,” and none of us ever forgot it.’
The first time I went out for Christmas drinks with people from my new job, my boss, when we all several drinks in, turned to me and said 'I suppose you're quite into David Foster Wallace aren't you' before telling everyone about how much he'd enjoyed reading Consider the Lobster. I'd never once mentioned DFW to him or anyone else in the office. Wtf. And I am quite into David Foster Wallace.
People pick up language and ideas from what influences them and much of this just seeps out in conversation without you ever noticing. Your boss is lit and has better comprehension than most of the board. This is not a difficult trick, you just need to pay attention, people are constantly giving little hints to what they watch/read/listen to/etc. Or you sweat a great deal and your boss is a bit of an butthole after a couple drinks.
Yeah, once I read some common 'weird chick lit', the shibboleths became obvious.
drop some facts homie
Why read and therefore replicate the mental processes, dreams, ideas etc. of a depressive suicide case. As a wise man once said "there is nothing I respect more than happiness". Therefore I have no respect for such a person.
I don't like anyone who kills themselves.