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Mr. Squishy posted:The other biography? There are two? Whoops, I dunno what the hell I was thinking of. Could have sworn there was another one, but it was the Max biography that I was talking about. It had some interesting stuff in it, but a lot of it just felt like really fluffed-up publication history, and having little to no firsthand correspondence with his family is a pretty big omission, though of course if they don't want to talk about it, then that's the best you're gonna get. At times it seemed like Max was falling into the same mythologizing of Wallace that happens pretty much every time someone writes about him, though to be fair he also manages to avoid painfully attempting to adopt his style, minus the footnotes.
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Jul 27, 2016 03:53
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It's a nonfiction book, they all have end notes.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:00
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Sir John Feelgood posted:It's a nonfiction book, they all have end notes. It was a bad joke. There are an absurd amount of articles / opinion pieces about Wallace that are just really, really obnoxious imitations of his style by people that don't really don't understand it on a mechanical level. I dunno, I'm probably overly harsh on the book just because DFW was one of the first authors I read that really challenged my notions of what fiction could do in terms of structure / style. Max isn't a bad biographer, but it just felt a little distant to me for some reason, like it was always at arm's length from the subject, if that makes sense. I guess I was probably always going to be a little disappointed by any DFW biography, though.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:54
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Oh, didn't realize you were kidding. Yeah, I've read those articles, they make me wince. I like the Max biography a lot, though. I don't know if it could've been done much better. Also, I think he did talk to Wallace's parents. Look on pages 3 to 4, for instance. After the block quotation of Wallace telling Lipsky that his dad read Moby-Dick to him and his sister, Max writes: "The memory is exaggerated—Wallace's father says he knew enough not to read Moby-Dick, certainly not its duller parts, to small children—but it captures well the relationships in the family as David saw them..." (It's funny. Max calling him out on his fib but then softening the blow.) If this dad quotation came from somewhere else, it would be in the Sources section, with all the letters and stuff he got from other books, but it's not. He says at the beginning of the Sources section that the quotations he got from interviews he did, those people are thanked in the Acknowledgments. In the Acknowledgments Max says that he "received welcome support also from Wallace's family, especially his sister, Amy..." (304). But he doesn't mention the parents by name, as he does for many other people, so I don't know how much he talked to them.
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Jul 27, 2016 13:33
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Still working on this when I get the time. Around 75% of the way through, so gonna tag stuff: The AFR have just found the copy of the samizdat at the Antitoi's place, which is also when you get the first hints (or outright statements) that Orin has the master copy and deliberately sent copies to the attache among others. Just one more layer in this goddamn thing I can't wait to unravel. One of the few things I knew going in was that JOI is a wraith and influences the story, but I don't yet know how aside from ghostly poo poo moving around at ETA and possibly the ball during Hal's match against Stice? So sorta scouring the pages for anything remotely spiritual right now. The only character right now who I really don't care about following is Poor Tony, although the purse-snatching scenes were well-written. I recall when I left him he was heading to the Antitoi's, so I don't know if he'll just get killed and never appear again. More than anything though I just wanna read the scene where Hal and Gately dig up JOI's head. We've been building up to it for so long and I feel like Hal and Gately meeting is gonna be an amazing moment. Hopefully something like this actually happens and I don't sound too summer child
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Aug 3, 2016 22:27
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We all wanted to be there but in the end it's more of a fever dream, my summer child
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Aug 3, 2016 22:38
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^^ ha I finished IJ at the beginning of the month. Have been obsessively reading whatever I can on it online as well as reading through this entire thread, which has been cool as it's led me to reread a few awesome sections like note 110. I was a little wary initially when I realised so many big scenes just weren't going to happen, but in the end there's more than enough for a satisfying conclusion outside of the text, and the image it ends on is beautiful. Even slightly removed from it I'm still bursting at the seams to discuss so many parts of it, from the meaning behind Joelle choosing to host such an oblique radio show to what a bizarre experience it was to read the wraith scene after our experience with JOI so far and having it be so odd and goofy with him doing really very little. Interested in why people think he chooses to reveal himself to Don, as well as why Lyle shows up at one point. Also re the whole Entertainment/DMZ thing, I'm interested in where there's any evidence in the text of JOI being the one to create DMZ. I mostly like Swartz's theory for the ending but am not sure about the idea where the Entertainment and DMZ were supposed to go together? If JOI meant for them both to work together why does he (potentially) dose Hal when he has no way of viewing the samizdat? Is Hal meant to have viewed it at some point in the missing year? asoasf. Now beginning to branch out with DFW. Had already read a bunch of Supposedly Fun Thing including E Unibus Pluram (which is pretty essential before reading IJ, in my opinion, and probably where I would usually introduce people to DFW), the Lynch essay, Michael Joyce, and the title essay. Started on Girl With Curious Hair next based on the love in here for Little Expressionless Animals, which I thought was fantastic. One part of it that I'm not sure was actually intended in the text is that I took Julie's brother's autism manifesting itself in an obsession with animals as a result of the same incident that left Julie herself so repelled by them, which made it even more heartbreaking. This has also gotten me more into fiction in general after kinda falling out of it since growing up. Grabbed The Crying of Lot 49, The Corrections, and a few other things. Hoping to be able to find more time for reading, even if I don't know that any other author is going to grab me and speak to me quite so much until I'm like a generation older. Also, just cause it has to be said - 8 years ago today  (at least when I started writing this post also in America still)
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Sep 13, 2016 00:20
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DMZ is described as a fungus growing on another fungus, no? Hal has a childhood memory (actually can't remember who had the perspective on this) where he'd eaten some orange(?) fungal thing he'd found in the basement of the Incandenza's Arizona home. Came out in the yard where Orin was playing and Avril was gardening and said "I ate this" holding it out for presentation. Boy it's been a long time since I've read this so I might be getting some of it wrong but it's supposed to match up with DMZ. And JOI had been making the samizdat in its many incarnations for the express purpose of getting a human reaction out of Hal who he viewed as a robot or something. Also, Little Expressionless Animals is tops.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:00
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Yeah, I'm down with all that. Just wondered if there was anything to indicate that JOI was the creator of DMZ outside of vague circumstantial evidence (the description of it as a mould that grows on other mould, the Madame Psychosis street name).
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Sep 13, 2016 17:10
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Wasn't chemistry (or similar) mentioned among JOI's list of pursuits between tennis and film? I vaguely remember it popping up somewhere. (There's a very strong chance I've invented that memory, but I'm sure there was some kind of reference to chemistry knowledge somewhere) Edit: nvm, searched some terms on the kindle version and JOI is not the original creator (DMZ was first created by the same chemist who created LSD). The madam psychosis street name is Boston-local and named after the radio show host. bicycle fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 21:56
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