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thegloaming posted:I've never read any DFW (does that mean I'm not allowed to use his cool acronym?). Is Infinite Jest a good place to start? I really liked Gravity's Rainbow and I hear its comparable. Infinite Jest is the place to start. I was in your shoes at one point---my first exposure to DFW was Infinite Jest after reading a bunch of Pynchon and loving Gravity's Rainbow. Infinite Jest is an easier read in comparison to Gravity's Rainbow... it has the complexity and intelligence but a bit less hectic confusion. So long as you got off on the former two aspects of Gravity's Rainbow, you'll probably like Infinite Jest. There's no reason to start with The Broom of the System, though it's an enjoyable book. All of his collections are worth reading (though I won't touch that Everything and More book, for fear of what it might contain). But if you can handle Gravity's Rainbow, you won't need essays or short fiction to get lubed up for the main event. Also, it's like $12.
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May 7, 2009 01:53
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Imipolex G posted:Infinite Jest is the place to start. I was in your shoes at one point---my first exposure to DFW was Infinite Jest after reading a bunch of Pynchon and loving Gravity's Rainbow. Infinite Jest is an easier read in comparison to Gravity's Rainbow... it has the complexity and intelligence but a bit less hectic confusion. So long as you got off on the former two aspects of Gravity's Rainbow, you'll probably like Infinite Jest. I went ahead and ordered a copy on Amazon. Thanks for the advice!
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May 7, 2009 09:01
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In only 200 pages, Infinite Jest has shot up to one of my favorite all-time books. Jesus Christ DFW can write.
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May 7, 2009 12:11
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It amazes me how popular DFW is. I've never read a book of his because I can't find one less hat $18. He's the only author I've ever looked for in a library that has to be put on special reserve to get a copy of. With all the comparisons to James Joyce, you'd think only sadists would be reading him, like me... :-(
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May 7, 2009 14:01
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:It amazes me how popular DFW is. I've never read a book of his because I can't find one less hat $18. Infinite Jest is $12 in paperback on Amazon.com, chip chop! ($18 seems like a low price ceiling to set on books, though?)
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May 7, 2009 21:17
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feraltennisprodigy posted:Infinite Jest is $12 in paperback on Amazon.com, chip chop! WoG fucked around with this message at 14:49 on May 8, 2009 |
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May 7, 2009 21:30
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:It amazes me how popular DFW is. I've never read a book of his because I can't find one less hat $18. He's the only author I've ever looked for in a library that has to be put on special reserve to get a copy of. He is not really like Joyce, where do these comparisons come from?
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May 8, 2009 08:09
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gregarious Ted posted:He is not really like Joyce, where do these comparisons come from? I think they may mean in terms of intricacy of work. The first time I read Portrait of the Artist it meant using a guide/the internet to understand historical references and locations. Understanding Dedalus meant having some idea of Joyce as a human being. I don't think challenging is the right description, it's more like the depth means you'll be investing more time and energy into reading it and getting the complete experience.
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May 8, 2009 14:34
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I picked up a copy yesterday and am about 30 pages in. He's definitely his own beast, this Wallace man. I like it a lot, but from what I've read of him, it's so autobiographical. This makes DFW a weird, weird dude. His pot habits are crazy. I hope he never tried heroin if this is how he is on the weed..
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May 9, 2009 01:06
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While reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, I'm taking notes about what's happening where/when and where all of the actual interviews take place. Is this necessary, or are the same characters not used in multiple pieces?
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May 9, 2009 02:58
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Gay for Moleman posted:While reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, I'm taking notes about what's happening where/when and where all of the actual interviews take place. Is this necessary, or are the same characters not used in multiple pieces?
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May 10, 2009 21:44
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 Another marketing release about the sale of The Pale King's publishing rights: "This is why I work in publishing". Light on any real detail, though the video of DFW reading from the fair and cruise pieces is worth watching if you haven't seen it already. Got tired of trying to find them in local bookshops so I ordered Broom of the System, Girl With Curious Hair, and Carlisle's Elegant Complexity off Amazon yesterday. Hopefully they can piece together TPK's remnants easily enough to get a book out soon. Mario Incandenza fucked around with this message at 14:35 on May 11, 2009 |
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May 11, 2009 14:32
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I can't be the only one sick of the trend of anytime someone does an article about david foster wallace they have to do some parody of his style.
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May 11, 2009 23:40
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inferis posted:I can't be the only one sick of the trend of anytime someone does an article about david foster wallace they have to do some parody of his style. Nope. You're not the only one. Especially because it's rarely done well. They usually just use "big words" and run on sentences. Link Above posted:Full Disclosure: What follows is a highly subjective narrative based on my personal experience of being a 100% fan[1] of the above pictured writer who was known for his favouring of incredibly long sentences and footnotes but more importantly was inhabited by a crushing brilliance and infallible genius that allowed him to describe exactly what it feels like to be a live, thinking homosapien in this crazy modern world we call home. "...known for his favouring of incredibly long sentences..." "...inhabited by a crushing brilliance and infallible genius..." "...feels like to be a live, thinking homosapien in this crazy modern world we call home." Jesus. There's no shame in writing like this, but it's going to look silly if you ape a writer whose whole reputation was built on a foundation of rock-solid diction and grammar.
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May 12, 2009 01:13
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"Kiss me where it smells, she said, so I took her to Allston." This Infinite Jest index can be helpful for those who may have trouble juggling everything the first time around. A dictionary will also come in handy. http://russillosm.com/ijndx.html
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May 22, 2009 22:01
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Edged Hymn posted:In only 200 pages, Infinite Jest has shot up to one of my favorite all-time books. Jesus Christ DFW can write. Yeah this was how I felt about it too. I sadly learned about DFW and this book a month after his death, when I read an article in Time entitled "Death of a Genius." It's really sad that he's dead, I would've loved to keep reading him. After I finished "Infinite Jest" I picked up his short stories books "Brief Interviews..." and "Oblivion." I'll admit that "Brief Interviews..." was spotty. It had a lot of great stories but also some that just made me want shout "Okay! We get it! Please stop!" (for example, the short story "The Depressed Person.") However "Oblivion" is much more refined and I'd recommend that one over "Brief Interviews" if I had to choose just one of those particular two. Oh I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in this thread but a film version of "Brief Interviews..." was adapted and directed by John Krasinski, who's better known as "Jim" from "The Office." It's set to be released this year. Captain Pancakes fucked around with this message at 16:31 on May 23, 2009 |
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May 23, 2009 16:28
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Captain Pancakes posted:
I only discovered this when that actress necked herself this week. I guess I'll have to read Brief Interviews. The thing I find with his shorts (which is probably a symptom of the genre rather than Wallace himself) is that they are always so inconclusive. Not that it is a bad thing, but some times it would be nice to know what the hell is going on/what happens. Like for example the first story in Oblivion, about the chocolate bar testing thing. I was pretty distracted when I read it and probably should re-read it, but what was the point of the guy scaling the outside of the building?
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May 24, 2009 00:01
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There's an Infinite Jest group read this summer: http://www.infinitesummer.org/
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May 24, 2009 13:14
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If you have the option, I highly recommend reading "Infinite Jest" on a Kindle. It's lighter, it makes the footnotes less of a chore and the built-in dictionary is very handy; all and all a more enjoyable experience.
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May 25, 2009 05:40
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gregarious Ted posted:I only discovered this when that actress necked herself this week. I guess I'll have to read Brief Interviews. Wallace is my favorite writer and I've always had riffs with Mister Squishy. To me, it contradicts how a younger Wallace described "good fiction" and "good art." Whatever happened to the aspiration of reconciling what it is to be "a loving human being"?
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May 27, 2009 03:18
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I just came across this on The Onion; it's from February 2003, so some of you may have already read it. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27769
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Aug 8, 2009 22:09
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I'm about halfway through Brief Interviews and I'm not a fan. Is it safe to say his style just isn't for me or should I give something else a try?
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Aug 11, 2009 02:27
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Human Tornada posted:I'm about halfway through Brief Interviews and I'm not a fan. Is it safe to say his style just isn't for me or should I give something else a try? it's arguably his most difficult book. I'd start with one of his essay books, or IJ if you're feeling ballsy.
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Aug 11, 2009 03:23
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Human Tornada posted:I'm about halfway through Brief Interviews and I'm not a fan. Is it safe to say his style just isn't for me or should I give something else a try? His essays are generally thought of as the best way to develop a taste for DFW. Here: http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557 I recommend Shipping Out! in particular. While I'm at it we had an IJ thread going here, but it's slowed recently: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3158787
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Aug 11, 2009 04:11
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flyinsaucier posted:I just came across this on The Onion; it's from February 2003, so some of you may have already read it. long book is long
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Aug 11, 2009 04:30
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As much as I love DFW I sometimes find his shorts inconsistent. Some I wish were longer, or had a conclusion, and sometimes his experimentation can get in the way of the writing. But then there's moments like Girl with the Curious Hair where it all clicks and it's like how the gently caress did he come up with this. But if you stop concentrating for a second, it gets difficult. If I've got other poo poo on my mind, I find DFW isn't worth it because I miss too much poo poo and end up re-reading and still not taking it in. Someone was texting while I was reading today and I had to put the book down, the intermittent interruptions made it difficult.
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Aug 11, 2009 08:17
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Human Tornada posted:I'm about halfway through Brief Interviews and I'm not a fan. Is it safe to say his style just isn't for me or should I give something else a try? You've read the essay about the cruise and half of the essay about the state fair, right? If you didn't want to finish the essay about the fair, you may want to stop reading him. Almost everything he writes has repeating motifs (e.g humanity, sadness, a very self-conscious exploration of self-expression) (while everything he writes has a deeper level of perception than I am probably ever capable of). I feel like most of his stuff consists of the above mixed with varying levels of humor/post-modernism, and if you don't like the above essays or Brief Interviews, he may not be for you, given that the essays are the most humorous and the book is the most post-modern, thus spanning what I believe to be his spectrum of accessibility. (I think you should at least try IJ: read a section of IJ, then the corresponding section in my IJ guide book, continuing until you decide you don't like it).
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Aug 27, 2009 04:53
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I've read about 100 pages of Infinite Jest and I haven't really enjoyed it much. It's not really funny or interesting so far, and I haven't really gotten any insight from anything. So I don't know. I enjoyed the Gately and Erdedy parts. I'm reading the two essay books Consider The Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, I've enjoyed those a lot more. I find he is extremely good at mixing different types of essays/writing in a smooth way, the best example being maybe the Lynch essay which is part bio, part analysis, part set gossip, and goes off on many tangents. On the other hand, I do feel that sometimes he just endlessly describes things that aren't very interesting just for description's sake (the McCain essay in particular had a lot of 'filler' so to speak). His review-essays are more insightful. I feel like I would enjoy Infinite Jest but so far I just end up reading large parts and thinking "I could have gone without reading that".
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Sep 4, 2009 05:18
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Pedro De Heredia posted:On the other hand, I do feel that sometimes he just endlessly describes things that aren't very interesting just for description's sake (the McCain essay in particular had a lot of 'filler' so to speak). His review-essays are more insightful. Yeah, he mentioned in the Charlie Rose interview that he's quite bad at recognizing when he's made his point and should stop repeating it. The McCain piece is kind of confusing because he was basically prevented from doing the research he had intended to (McCain's staffers didn't give him much real access) and still managed to write twice as many words as Rolling Stone initially requested.
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Sep 4, 2009 09:11
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The first time I read IJ it didn't really click until I hit the section listing the many exotic facts to be acquired by spending a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility. I was pretty ambivalent about the book and then all of a sudden, it grabbed me by the throat and I emerged the other side in a daze, about a month later.
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Sep 4, 2009 11:16
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Pedro De Heredia posted:I've read about 100 pages of Infinite Jest and I haven't really enjoyed it much. It's not really funny or interesting so far, and I haven't really gotten any insight from anything. So I don't know. I enjoyed the Gately and Erdedy parts. You really need to get to about 2-300 pages in before you've gotten far enough in to know your bearings. Anything less and you don't really understand where a character belongs in the main narrative, any kind of purpose to what's happening. Still, I'm really surprised you don't think the scene where JOI dresses up as a professional conversationalist funny or the scene where Erdredy is anxious interesting. The Erdredy scene in particular was a favorite of mine, he does an incredible job portraying the kind of crippling anxiety Erdredy is living through.
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Sep 6, 2009 01:51
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So I only got around to seeing the new BIWHM trailer today. I'm cautiously optimistic. http://apple.com/trailers/independent/briefinterviewswithhideousmen/
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Sep 7, 2009 16:36
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atomicstack posted:So I only got around to seeing the new BIWHM trailer today. I'm cautiously optimistic. That looks pretty awesome, but I haven't read BIWHM yet. I need to add that book to my ever expanding reading list.
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Sep 8, 2009 00:31
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atomicstack posted:...
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Oct 3, 2009 03:22
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I am having a lot of difficulty reading Infinite Jest (page 80 or so). Most of the text I find to be absolutely stunning, in a really subversive way. The way he'll use "like" in a really ornate and complex sentence structure is a real mind-gently caress, and his general approach to life is completely bewildering. I really want to keep pushing on, but I find the endnotes to be completely intolerable. Am I hosed? I actually feel physical anxiety whenever I come upon a new superscript, and really get impatient when I have to turn to the end and read some nonsense about who-gives-a-gently caress. My friend told me that some of it will be appreciated later on (such as the filmography, bits like that), but am I completely hosed if I'm already this fed up with the endnotes? I think of myself as a pretty active and open-minded reader (ate the poo poo out of House of Leaves and I'm one of the only people I know how actually gave a poo poo enough to finish his follow-up), but for some reason I'm just having trouble latching on. I can't remember the last time I had such a love-hate relationship with a book.
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Oct 3, 2009 21:41
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Jewmanji posted:I am having a lot of difficulty reading Infinite Jest (page 80 or so). Most of the text I find to be absolutely stunning, in a really subversive way. The way he'll use "like" in a really ornate and complex sentence structure is a real mind-gently caress, and his general approach to life is completely bewildering. I really want to keep pushing on, but I find the endnotes to be completely intolerable. Am I hosed? I actually feel physical anxiety whenever I come upon a new superscript, and really get impatient when I have to turn to the end and read some nonsense about who-gives-a-gently caress. My friend told me that some of it will be appreciated later on (such as the filmography, bits like that), but am I completely hosed if I'm already this fed up with the endnotes? You can skip the end notes, but you're missing tons of plot exposition. My favorite section of the book (about the midnight train) is in the end notes.
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Oct 3, 2009 22:07
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EtaBetaPi posted:You can skip the end notes, but you're missing tons of plot exposition. My favorite section of the book (about the midnight train) is in the end notes. Uh no you can't. You might as well just skip large portions of the narrative ("The Gately sections are boring, and I'm not interested in AA, why don't I just skip those?" Because that's a HUGELY important part of the book!). Later on there are entire sections where the endnotes are by far more important/interesting than the main narrative. 80 pages in, you've hit, what, a dozen endnotes so far? Yes, several endnotes (particularly in the beginning) are dull little asides about drug chemistry and pharmaceutical companies. Remember, DFW wanted the endnotes to function as a sort of disruption of the narrative, like having another voice in your head. At 80 pages, you're still learning how the book works, you shouldn't really be "comfortable" until 2-300 pages in, like I said above. There are a couple of things you can do to build up your tolerance. First and foremost, use more than one bookmark, makes a world of difference. Secondly, try reading some of his non-fiction, it's generally his most approachable and he typically uses footnotes instead of endnotes, so it's a lot easier to read, but you get use to having a disruption to your main narrative.
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Oct 4, 2009 01:38
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ArgaWarga posted:At 80 pages, you're still learning how the book works, you shouldn't really be "comfortable" until 2-300 pages in, like I said above. This is very true, I'm about 250ish in and I'm comfortably settled now. I built myself up a bit though I suppose by reading Brief Interviews. Also, with regards to Jewmanji about House of Leaves, I feel completely different about the footnotes. I found the majority of the footnotes to be annoying (I didn't really dig Truant until about 1/2-3/4 in, and even then it was pretty lukewarm). I was able to slip into the rhythm of the endnotes in IJ rather easily.
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Oct 4, 2009 07:30
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ArgaWarga posted:Uh no you can't. You might as well just skip large portions of the narrative ("The Gately sections are boring, and I'm not interested in AA, why don't I just skip those?" Because that's a HUGELY important part of the book!). Later on there are entire sections where the endnotes are by far more important/interesting than the main narrative. Uh, yes you can, you're just getting an abbreviated version of the book. Some people read for pleasure, and as such ignore parts they find boring, no matter how important they may be to the larger narrative. Don't be an elitist like "my way is the only way to read it".
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Oct 4, 2009 14:01
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EtaBetaPi posted:Uh, yes you can, you're just getting an abbreviated version of the book. Some people read for pleasure, and as such ignore parts they find boring, no matter how important they may be to the larger narrative. Don't be an elitist like "my way is the only way to read it". "The pretentious illiterate, everyone" Seriously, you're reading literature, I don't think there's a "Treasury of Illustrated Classics" edition of Infinite Jest, you're getting defensive over trying to be ignorant. Please, please, don't tell everyone you know you finished these books when you turn the last page. "Oh, so how did you like Orin and Hal's phone conversations," "Oh, I totally skipped that TENTH of the book"
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