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The last I'll mention of Ellis in this thread: I really need to follow him on Twitter because he sounds hilarious. Now, back to reading DFW. Thanks, Slackerish, I missed that in the post above.
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Sep 7, 2012 14:22
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Do you guys think DFW's prediction has come to true about video calls or we aren't there yet?
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Sep 7, 2012 16:50
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Ulio posted:Do you guys think DFW's prediction has come to true about video calls or we aren't there yet? I think it's true enough that the technology to make video calls has existed for a while (see Skype for a recent example), but is underused because people have gotten used to not being seen during these types of conversations. As for the mask thing, I think that was more satire than a real prediction.
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Sep 7, 2012 17:03
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All this talk about Ellis criticizing DFW has me wondering if anyone else remembers that long blast at Wallace which ran in The Exiled a while back. That was a lot harsher than anything Ellis said.
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Sep 7, 2012 20:16
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Slate Action posted:I think it's true enough that the technology to make video calls has existed for a while (see Skype for a recent example), but is underused because people have gotten used to not being seen during these types of conversations. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/fashion/ready-for-my-video-chat-close-up.html Actually I think it was one of DFW's most accurate predictions.
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Sep 7, 2012 21:47
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barkingclam posted:All this talk about Ellis criticizing DFW has me wondering if anyone else remembers that long blast at Wallace which ran in The Exiled a while back. That was a lot harsher than anything Ellis said. And sometimes it reads like he's been challenged to write a takedown of an author he hasn't actually read. He paints Infinite Jest the way it's always parodied, as some opaque hipster book nobody can read. He goes on and on about hipsters and hipster irony. You read that right. He rails against hipster irony in a Wallace rant. Then he zeroes in on some pharmacological errors and ends with his own bad parody. It's sometimes funny but mostly just suspect and unfair. Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Sep 7, 2012 |
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Sep 7, 2012 22:17
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These so-called critiques are really lacklustre, and more often than not they just focus on a 'hipster' audience who just dig David Foster Wallace's attitude without reading/understanding his books. Every book has somebody out there who's claimed to have read it when they really haven't. Every author has those fans. Big deal.
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Sep 7, 2012 22:27
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That's another ironic thing about the anti-irony part. It's not a critique. It's a disingenuous slam.
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Sep 7, 2012 22:41
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Which sucks, as I would really like to read a well-thought and constructed critique of his works and ideas, which doesn't resort to 'he's the king of the hipsters he's so shallow and superficial blah blah blah'.
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Sep 7, 2012 22:54
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Convexed posted:Which sucks, as I would really like to read a well-thought and constructed critique of his works and ideas, which doesn't resort to 'he's the king of the hipsters he's so shallow and superficial blah blah blah'. If you have access to a database there's some good (and critical) criticism out there. I'll post a little more when I get home, but I remember one being titled "Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest" or something like that. It's certainly not a glowing endorsement.
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Sep 7, 2012 23:08
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Oh, that would be great.  I've searched on my university's e-journals but couldn't get access to much of the work written on David Foster Wallace. I'd be interested to read anything you can find though, glowing endorsements or not!
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Sep 7, 2012 23:17
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Ugh that Exiled Online piece is truly terrible on a bunch of levels. The author does seem to idolize drugs (esp. heroin) in the way that somebody who has never used heroin or seen first hand how destructive it can be would. Apparently any work that illuminates the dangers of (hard) drugs is "evangelical" at its core... umm what? Reading stuff like this makes me sad. Edit: calling Requiem for a Dream "propaganda" is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I can't even finish it. This is one of the most miserable things I've ever read on the internet, not to mention full of inaccuracies about drug use and street life. I stopped at the section where he is trying to prove he can write like Wallace by taking Dog the Bounty Hunter quotes and "Wallacizing them" but they're all just laughably bad ... what a loving joke. thathonkey fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Sep 8, 2012 |
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Sep 7, 2012 23:37
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Sir John Feelgood posted:I remember it. Here it is, if anyone's interested. It doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny. It's just a rant. The guy digs drugs so much he calls Infinite Jest propaganda. I haven't read all of this yet but it's purportedly by someone who was an editor for Penguin who knew both of them back in the day and why BEE is still carrying a torch for Wallace.
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Sep 8, 2012 02:23
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That was a good read, and it pretty much echoed my thoughts.quote:Me, I find Bret Ellis’ scalding, cynical, brittle, savagely unillusioned worldview curiously refreshing. He is the Loki or Trickster of the literary world (or maybe the Lou Reed), poking sharp sticks in our eyes and daring us to figure out if he could possibly mean that. Deal with it. In a culture that has the phrase “Good job!” on endless rotation, he dares to say, over and over, “You must be loving kidding me.” He’s incorrigible, he’s not a nice boy, he doesn’t care if you become a better person, he is not in any way seeking your approval. Good for him. Some brave college should ask him to do a commencement address. Do others think that Ellis is a cynic poking at a culture of optimism, or is he just acting butt-hurt over the recognition that Wallace has garnered over the past few years since his death?
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Sep 8, 2012 13:32
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The fact that his criticism is totally thoughtless and cruel makes me think that for him it isn't a professional or stylistic rivalry, but a really personal one. If he had any actual critiques of his work, he'd do well to show them, but instead it's just a useless ad hominem about the author and his readership. I do think there's a place for curmudgeons in this world, and DFW is of course not above critique, but I just think it's a little silly that people see Ellis' tweets and say "oh that's just Bret being Bret" like he's a crazy drunken uncle. He doesn't add anything to the conversation and I think it's worth calling Ellis out for being a piece of poo poo on this one. Also DFW displays more dynamism in one chapter of Infinite Jest than Ellis has over his whole career.
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Sep 8, 2012 17:44
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Yeah I don't think anyone is saying that DFW should be immune to critique, it is just really sad to see Bret Easton Ellis throwing a tantrum that you might expect to hear from a 12-year-old Youtube commenter... not from a professional, published author who fancies himself insightful. edit: on a lighter note, my copy of "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" just arrived in record time from Amazon! I want to start it, but I am also reading "The Pale King" for the first time right now and only about 1/2 way through. Not sure if I should attempt to read the two in conjunction... can anyone who has read both chime in on whether this is a bad idea? (Not because of spoilers necessarily, but now that I think about it that could be a concern) thathonkey fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 8, 2012 |
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Sep 8, 2012 20:11
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I completely understand that. He may offer something more substantial in future, but I don't know. I know it's a cop-out to say it's just 'Brett being Brett', but Twitter is well-known as a place to vent off steam through making irrational, thoughtless, petty comments. In particular, it's destroyed many a journalist's reputation. In retrospect, he should probably have been better venting his hatred anonymously on 4chan, or something.
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Sep 8, 2012 21:16
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thathonkey posted:Yeah I don't think anyone is saying that DFW should be immune to critique, it is just really sad to see Bret Easton Ellis throwing a tantrum that you might expect to hear from a 12-year-old Youtube commenter... not from a professional, published author who fancies himself insightful.
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Sep 8, 2012 21:40
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OK, since BEE has raised some interesting questions about what kinds of "criticism" (in the sense of both "negative feedback" and "thoughtful analysis") of Wallace's work are compelling and valid, I thought it might be worthwhile to talk about some more scholarly interpretations on Wallace's work. I've got something like ten articles sitting on my hard drive which I plan on summarizing, pointing out problems in the analysis, and then offering this up for some discussion. Why am I doing this? Because I love reading Wallace and I think his work stands up to this kind of scrutiny, and even benefits from it. I'm just starting a masters program in lit, and even though my only actual lit class this semester is miles away from Wallace (Chaucer), it still behooves me to read and break down scholarly work. I also like this thread and would like to contribute more to the discussion than I have so far. So, anyway, even though I've read most of Wallace's work and all of his fiction, some of it (including IJ, which most of the articles I have are about) are due for a rereading; take my opinions about these articles with a grain of salt. I'm working on a summary of "The Art's Heart's Purpose: Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest" by Mary K. Holland which I hope to be done with tomorrow. I'm going to try very hard to avoid cliched academese where I can, but some terms are unavoidable. I will not use spoiler tags for relevant plot details. So don't read these posts if you're worried about spoilers.
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Sep 8, 2012 23:56
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TFNC posted:I will not use spoiler tags for relevant plot details. So don't read these posts if you're worried about spoilers. Awesome yeah just ruin IJ for people who haven't read it yet because you're too lazy to take maybe 5 minutes at most to tag spoilers? Unless you have an incredibly good reason as to why you can't tag spoilers you're sounding awfully self-important.
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Sep 9, 2012 00:23
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Wait so what is even considered a 'spoiler' for infinite jest?
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Sep 9, 2012 01:04
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TFNC is proposing to approach the novel with deep critical analysis and reference to a range of critical positions. Such a post implies a familiarity with the novel. Using spoiler tags would probably cause the whole post to just be spoilered out. I think a firm, bold, warning at the top of each post is sufficient rather than clumsy spoiler tags.
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Sep 9, 2012 01:16
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I don't think this forum is so crowded that an Infinite Jest thread, where spoilers are freely discussed, would be inappropriate. Might even give some people the extra incentive to re-read.
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Sep 9, 2012 01:41
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inferis posted:Wait so what is even considered a 'spoiler' for infinite jest? JOI's ghost was moving the furniture/exercise equpiment around. Avril is quite promiscuous. Everything regarding the disposition of the samizdat. How in the gently caress was that giant glass tumbler Orin was trapped under not a fever dream? And DFW wouldn't admit to having read Pynchon!?!? Like that.
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Sep 9, 2012 03:12
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syscall girl posted:And DFW wouldn't admit to having read Pynchon!?!? You misread that, it was that you could barely get him to admit to having read Pynchon. Because he was cagey!
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Sep 9, 2012 03:28
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syscall girl posted:JOI's ghost was moving the furniture/exercise equpiment around. Avril is quite promiscuous. Everything regarding the disposition of the samizdat. How in the gently caress was that giant glass tumbler Orin was trapped under not a fever dream? And DFW wouldn't admit to having read Pynchon!?!? But most of that is open to interpretation and furthermore none of it has a surprise element that is crucial to the message of the book. This book isn't exactly fight club or citizen kane, maximalism is inherently unspoilable.
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Sep 9, 2012 03:32
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inferis posted:But most of that is open to interpretation and furthermore none of it has a surprise element that is crucial to the message of the book. This book isn't exactly fight club or citizen kane, maximalism is inherently unspoilable. I completely agree. I was reaching.
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Sep 9, 2012 03:50
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Are you pretending to pretend that's not a spoiler while its actually a spoiler. This is like Marathe levels of pretending.
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Sep 9, 2012 04:33
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Ulio posted:Are you pretending to pretend that's not a spoiler while its actually a spoiler.  Ortho Stice zones out and gets his forehead stuck to a freezing cold window. Shenanigans ensue. Feral infants actually exist inside the concavity/convexity and will wreck your poo poo. How do they exhume the mad stork and his entertainment in this type of environment?
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Sep 9, 2012 05:09
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Mr. Squishy posted:You misread that, it was that you could barely get him to admit to having read Pynchon. Because he was cagey! David Foster Wallace posted:Pynchon was important to me when I was in college. The first book that I wrote, Broom of the System, some reviewer for the New York Times said it was a rip-off of The Crying of Lot 49, like that I hadn't read yet. So I got all pissed, and then I went and read The Crying of Lot 49, and it was absolutely, incredibly good. He had read it before he started Broom. D.T. Max posted:When he returned to school, Wallace took his first creative-writing class, and began aggressively reading contemporary fiction. He was drawn to the postmodernists, whose affection for puzzles and mirrors-within-mirrors sensibility reflected his own enthusiasm for math and philosophy. Costello remembers, “Junior year, David and I were sitting around talking about magical realists—I think it was ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’—and someone said, ‘Pynchon’s much cooler.’ We said ‘Who?’ He threw a copy of ‘Lot 49’ at us. For Dave, that was like Bob Dylan finding Woody Guthrie.” Wallace also loved Don DeLillo’s “White Noise,” which came out when he was a senior. Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 05:12
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Are you suggesting we play Eschaton?
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Sep 9, 2012 05:20
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Slackerish posted:Awesome yeah just ruin IJ for people who haven't read it yet because you're too lazy to take maybe 5 minutes at most to tag spoilers? Unless you have an incredibly good reason as to why you can't tag spoilers you're sounding awfully self-important. Well, no, not exactly. I wanted to avoid spoiler tags so my posts wouldn't look all mushy, and I thought it would be alright for the reasons a few people mentioned: criticism assumes familiarity, IJ is tough to spoil anyway, and even what might be considered a spoiler doesn't really "spoil" the novel. I'm sorry if I sounded like a prick about it, but I'm glad I got some feedback about it before going ahead. mdemone posted:I don't think this forum is so crowded that an Infinite Jest thread, where spoilers are freely discussed, would be inappropriate. Might even give some people the extra incentive to re-read. You're probably right, but I'd rather keep it to this thread for a few reasons. First, I don't think it'll really generate enough to discussion (even by TBB standards) to justify it's own thread. Also, this is in response to something that popped up in this thread, and it just feels right to keep it in the Wallace thread. And I think the best reason is that a thread for academic analysis really belongs in SAL, where threads about literature tend to peter out pretty quickly. So what I'd like to do, then, is to keep it in this thread but treat spoiler-y things gingerly, leave them out if the summary can do without them. If they must be in, I'll use tags. How does that sound?
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Sep 9, 2012 06:38
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That's hilarious, but I assumed syscall girl was going off the Salon article which throws in "you could barely get him to admit he’d even read Pynchon". Also, while that behaviour seems... pathological more than anything else, that's the sort of opaqueness I want to see in an author.
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Sep 9, 2012 10:49
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Hard to believe it was only four years ago today that we got that terrible news. Feels like a lifetime ago now.
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Sep 12, 2012 15:32
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Holy poo poo. I'm a big morris fan, but i'd never heard this. haha. edit: 'do you ever go *ruffle* ohhh, lets not have a typeface'
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Sep 14, 2012 06:09
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This is probably not spoiler material but I'm going to tag it anyway since it is Pale King related and not everyone here has read it. I just got to the chapter with the line 'Every love story is a ghost story' - I figured that was a DFW line but I didn't know what book it was from. It makes sense at the title of the biography but I can't for the life of me figure out what it means in context with the chapter it appears in in TPK. It is the chapter preceding the one where he explains ghosts vs. phantoms with regard to IRS employees but I'm not sure if that it is a callback (or forward)? A little help?
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Sep 22, 2012 20:20
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I read Infinite Jest in jail and just got out a few days ago. I've been recommended to check out Gravity's Rainbow but from what I've seen on wikipedia it seems like it might be a bit over my head. Anything that might be on the same level as Infinite Jest would be appreciated! That said Infinite Jest is probably my favorite book. I was disappointed with the ending until I put everything together. So much of it was ridiculously sad, but other parts had me laughing so hard in my cell. The former aerobic video instructor that accidentally killed his wife with a gag gift had me in stitches. Why is Ellis talking poo poo about DFW? I read American Psycho right after that and it's probably my 2nd favorite book, makes me feel conflicted. (as a funny note: Every night I read 20 or so pages pages of American Psycho aloud to the cell when the TV got shut off, felons really could get into that book!)
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Sep 25, 2012 04:18
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Don't let the depth of Gravity's Rainbow intimidate you; a lot of it is meant to be picked up on rereads anyways, and it is a great book even if you miss most of it the first time. There is still a Pynchon thread lying around somewhere on here as well if you wanted to discuss it. You might also look into Don DeLillo's novels, and unfinished or not DFW's Pale King has some great moments too if you enjoyed Infinite Jest.
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Sep 25, 2012 14:19
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The Valuum posted:Why is Ellis talking poo poo about DFW? I read American Psycho right after that and it's probably my 2nd favorite book, makes me feel conflicted. As an author, Ellis has some interesting things to say. As a person, he's a sniping little douchebag without much human decency. I'm not going to compare it to IJ thematically, but Adam Levin's The Instructions is another maximalist/magic-realist meganovel with a big heart, and was very clearly influenced by DFW's style. I really dug it, as I've said before in this thread (since I have a feeling that other DFW readers might also enjoy it). Maybe read the first chapter in the bookstore next time you're there, see what you think.
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Sep 25, 2012 20:25
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mdemone posted:As an author, Ellis has some interesting things to say. As a person, he's a sniping little douchebag without much human decency. Heh, it seems like he could nail the lack of human empathy thing too good, probably from experience. In my head I really hoped he was like, the complete opposite of the characters he wrote about. It somewhat was plausible since he does make great themes of materialism and how vain people can be, I guess he can make the point and be like that too. I'll check out The Instructions. Small question, was the guy that had the passages in Infinite Jest where he referred to himself as "yrstruly" in the Ennet House?
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Sep 26, 2012 00:42
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