Fine—dare I say, great—essayist.
Absolute dogshit novelist. Infinite Jest is such an overrated disappointment
Finedare I say, greatessayist. Absolute dogshit novelist. Infinite Jest is such an overrated disappointment
Fine—dare I say, great—essayist.
Absolute dogshit novelist. Infinite Jest is such an overrated disappointment
Congrats. Go read something else. I don't even know who this guy is, but what is complaining about him on IQfy going to solve?
David Foster Wallace
Are you even literate
True
Lmao
Nobody knows this motherfricker outside of IQfy or to be fair the US.
>B-BUT THE... LE PALE KING
Literally who?
Do you have any idea how many books there are?
hundreds?
Why?
I was through ~550 pages through IJ (with small font and margins, BTW) when I realize that nothing was happening, I didn't give a shit about the characters, I didn't see how the novel was going to come to a satisfying conclusion, and I was sick of the interminable paragraphs and the autistic footnote gimmick. Plus, DFW is a pseud when it comes to math.
Maybe Infinite Jest would've been good if it had an editor with some balls to actually cut text, but as is the novel fails.
For a novel that does autistic writing right, see Moby Dick
IJ is the same as his essays, just explores 100 different perspective instead of the me/them perspective of his essays. If you are crying about the math "error" in IJ that is the character's error and fairly important to understanding who Pemulis is and the perspective provided by his character. Learn to separate author from character.
Also, if that is your reasoning all you demonstrated was your lack of comprehension. You didn't actually say anything beyond "its shit because I didn't like it." Which is fine but makes you look like a moron.
600 pages were cut by his editor.
>that is the character's error and fairly important to understanding who Pemulis is and the perspective provided by his character
Pseud cope, the whole point of the math is to show how autistic the kids were about the nuke game. It's clear that DFW just superficially learned about things but never bothered to learn anything at a deep level
Also, boiling down my position to a "lack of comprehension" is a lack of comprehension on your part. And the editor cutting 600 pages just procides further credence that DFW doesn't know how to tell a tight story. IJ doesn't merit its length whatsover; it's just a symptom of authorial utism I'm afraid.
It's really not a cope, Pemulis is a dilettante, even the made up science of annulation he gets wrong and his tutoring of Hal is built off of his assumption that if he can not teach Hal calculus it is a failing on Hal's part, not his own. Most of the Pemulis parts are demonstrating that he is no where near as smart as he thinks.
IJ is not about telling a story, like I said it is the same as his essays just with more perspectives, IJ is about exploring a problem in its full depth which requires a great many perspectives. You are not making a good case for your comprehension.
Here is a fact: DFW wrote a math book that was universally hated by mathematicians to how incorrect it was (https://www.ams.org/notices/200406/rev-harris.pdf).
Now tell me what's more likely: (a) DFW fricked up the math like he's done before because he's a pseud; or (b) the overly-complcated mental gymastics you put forth that the frickup was intentional?
That is not a math book, it is a history book writen for humanities sorts, math was thrown in for those who want a challenge, this is explained in the intro and in the title. The book's errors are primarily because it lacked the specialty editing which a math book would get, a PhD going through it and a rigorous review process with many working through the book. Even proper math text books generally have errors in their first edition, most text books actually.
But on the topic of IJ, am I supposed to believe that just this once Pemulis was supposed to get it right? Through the whole novel Pemulis gets everything a little off but believes without doubt in his correctness (like you) for us to believe this one instance he gets it right is mental gymnastics, believing he got it wrong is just agreeing with the well defined precedent which carries through the entire novel.
How far are you going to go to prove your own lack of comprehension?
Infinite Jest is great, it's the short fiction that sucks
Good Old Neon is one of the best short stories ever written in English.
You can't like his essays and dislike his fiction.
I dont like his prose. It comes across as very un-artistic. He doesnt have a lot of emotion, interesting word choice/syntax or poetic flourish. When I read IJ I feel like I'm reading a bunch of doctor's notes or something. And maybe that is the point, but it doesn't make for very enjoyable reading to me.
Style in IJ evolves as you work through the novel, in the first handful of chapter narrator is almost clinical but that changes and by the end the narrator is almost unrecognizable through style.
I haven't read Infinite Jest but I have read a some essays and magazine stories he's written over the years. I agree that his writing feels too dry and emotionless at first but he has an uncanny ability of altering his style as the story goes on and looping things around in a very pleasant way.
There's a tennis article he wrote that's a perfect miniature example of this. It's very dry and analytical but the way it wraps up gave me a weird sense of relief and it made me retroactively enjoy the earlier boring parts. It stayed with me for this reason despite not giving a damn about tennis.
I legitimately can't tell if DFW is a hack or not. His writing gives me a deep feeling of catharsis in a way few other writers manage so I want to believe he's doing this on purpose to prove some kind of point. I just can't stand to read his writing back to back, it gets too grating. I need to take long breaks between them. I really should just read Infinite Jest already though.