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Did That on Television posted:I first heard about DFW from an article in the NY Times -- which can be found here -- discussing his penchant for philosophy. He had, in fact, been to Amherst College and submitted an Honours thesis for the department, titled "Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality," along with another thesis for the English department. The article mentions his literary pursuits and achievements only in passing, but that got me interested enough to read some of them... I love that article for the line about how he was smart enough to do "the math kind" of philosophy. Made me laugh. Shipping Out is pretty great, IMO, because of what I think you're referring to. The idea of coming to terms with the fact that he will always have this part of him that WANTS, which will never be satisfied and will never have enough, was put so eloquently that it really sold me on his writing (it was one of the first of his pieces that I read). Now I'm planning on reading IJ over the summer, looking forward to it!
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May 6, 2009 19:43
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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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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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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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EtaBetaPi posted:He is reading the book. He just isn't reading it YOUR way. Even attempting to read DFW is a step up from not reading it at all, which is what you'd suggest because he isn't reading it the right way. I couldn't agree more with your last statement, but that's why you have to read the book the way it's presented to you. If you try and impose your will on the book you're not really experiencing it, you're just picking and choosing what you like. If you have a little faith in the author/book, you'll have the experience that has earned that author/book so much praise. And for the record I took one English course for a gen ed in college.
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Oct 4, 2009 23:04
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I've been mentally comparing Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow the last couple of days, and while when I first finished IJ I claimed it was my favorite book of all time, since finishing it I think I'd rather reread GR if I was to pick either up again. The texture of the language and the overall goofiness make GR a winner in my book, plus it has the greatest ending I have ever read while IJ just kinda trails off in a way. They're both great books, and both of them stick with me and various scenes will pop into my head from time to time, but I almost feel like IJ was just treading water after the appearance of the wraith, which was my favorite scene in the book. Oh well, to each their own.
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Nov 8, 2009 17:02
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meanolmrcloud posted:Has this interview been posted? Just got around to watching this, thanks for posting it. Really incredible, I love the way DFW's mind works and his analysis of all of life's goings on. Edit: VVVVVVV Here ya go ArgaWarga fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jun 26, 2010 |
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Jun 25, 2010 06:17
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Plickmann posted:Sorry, I guess I totally missed out on this as well. Is this the general consensus, and if so, could someone expound a bit? I always thought it was buried in the Stork's head somehow, hence the need to go grave robbing at the beginning of the book.
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Aug 15, 2010 04:37
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If you read "A Supposedly Fun Thing" and left with the impression DFW was just looking down his nose at people, you missed something.Le Sean posted:After that first section, things were barren for a while. You have to admit,fancy vocab, describing things mathematically, and crunching thought into daisy-chains running multiple pages is a bit of a slough until you know you can trust what the writer is doing, really sort of see it. This is why, I think, most people recommend reading some non-fiction of his before tackling IJ. If I had to recommend one and only one essay to someone looking to read beforehand, I'd push for them to read "Host", because it's really easy to see that DFW is blatantly withholding information you need to make heads or tails of what's going on until a third of the way through the piece, things like abbreviations or industry speak or who in the hell a given person is. Once you accept that he just likes doing things that way, and yes he does have a plan in mind and yes he will eventually give you all the missing pieces, it's a lot easier to push through the first 300 pages of IJ to the point where things start making sense. Plus "Host" is just cool looking in Consider the Lobster. ArgaWarga fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Sep 2, 2010 |
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Sep 2, 2010 03:02
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Unless I'm misremembering I had always viewed Hal's bizarre behavior as more of a depression or existential crisis than him tripping. Other than his pot use, which DFW goes out of his way as describing as something secret which Hal likes having as a secret, Hal's drug use was always pretty social (again, unless I'm misremembering). So it seems odd to me that he'd be doing all these solo activities whilst tripping balls, and I just don't think it was a delayed effect of the DMZ which he presumably took in a scene outside of what the narrator relates to us. To be fair, I've never been really into drugs but did have a pretty lengthy existential crisis, so it very well may be that we read into it what we're each familiar with.
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May 11, 2011 22:48
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