5 ms·

Some more modern fiction seems to be less about life and people and more about language and writing. Some works by David Foster Wallace come to mind. In that ca

by mtts 17y ago

Some more modern fiction seems to be less about life and people and more about language and writing. Some works by David Foster Wallace come to mind. In that case, the fiction works more like puzzles or brain teasers. Which we (as a culture, not we personally) don't read that stuff. I happen to like DFW, but I'll be the first to admit that it has little to offer beyond, as you put it, puzzles or brain teasers.

jamesbritt 17y ago
" I happen to like DFW, but I'll be the first to admit that it has little to offer beyond, as you put it, puzzles or brain teasers." The value in people like DFW may be like that of the Velvet Underground. They may have had a small audience, but they end up influencing the direction of the art form. (Brian Eno said that the VU may have only sold 10,000 albums, but everybody who bought one started a band.)
- mbrock 17y ago
  Wait, wait, what? This thread ... huh? It's weird to see someone you think of as writing in a genre that kind of combines Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Nabokov with an almost fanatic pleading for empathy and communion -- described as someone who writes puzzles and brain teasers! He wrote great stuff about addiction, entertainment, alienation, human communication, depression; stuff that to at least one withdrawn academic prone to sadness and anxiety was enormously powerful and redemptive and transformative. He was a cerebral guy, he studied formal logic and math; that doesn't make him nonhuman! Is language not a valid, "people" thing to write about? People do have "trouble communicating," people are affected by the culture of television, even "postmodernism" and "irony" and "solipsism" are relevant in a deep, basic human sense for lots of (confused, lost) people. (Granted, his nonfiction pieces are what I like best -- every essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing is gold -- still, Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Infinite Jest are powerful books, though sometimes tragic on many levels.)
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "It's weird to see someone you think of as writing in a genre that kind of combines Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Nabokov with an almost fanatic pleading for empathy and communion -- described as someone who writes puzzles and brain teasers!" I didn't mean to characterize all of DFW as obtuse metafiction. But there's stuff in, for example, the Oblivion story collection, that is just, um, quirky, stories that focus on playing with ideas of character and narrative.
    - mbrock 17y ago
      fair enough :)

by mtts 17y ago

jamesbritt 17y ago

" I happen to like DFW, but I'll be the first to admit that it has little to offer beyond, as you put it, puzzles or brain teasers." The value in people like DFW may be like that of the Velvet Underground. They may have had a small audience, but they end up influencing the direction of the art form. (Brian Eno said that the VU may have only sold 10,000 albums, but everybody who bought one started a band.)

mbrock 17y ago
Wait, wait, what? This thread ... huh? It's weird to see someone you think of as writing in a genre that kind of combines Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Nabokov with an almost fanatic pleading for empathy and communion -- described as someone who writes puzzles and brain teasers! He wrote great stuff about addiction, entertainment, alienation, human communication, depression; stuff that to at least one withdrawn academic prone to sadness and anxiety was enormously powerful and redemptive and transformative. He was a cerebral guy, he studied formal logic and math; that doesn't make him nonhuman! Is language not a valid, "people" thing to write about? People do have "trouble communicating," people are affected by the culture of television, even "postmodernism" and "irony" and "solipsism" are relevant in a deep, basic human sense for lots of (confused, lost) people. (Granted, his nonfiction pieces are what I like best -- every essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing is gold -- still, Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Infinite Jest are powerful books, though sometimes tragic on many levels.)
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "It's weird to see someone you think of as writing in a genre that kind of combines Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Nabokov with an almost fanatic pleading for empathy and communion -- described as someone who writes puzzles and brain teasers!" I didn't mean to characterize all of DFW as obtuse metafiction. But there's stuff in, for example, the Oblivion story collection, that is just, um, quirky, stories that focus on playing with ideas of character and narrative.
  - mbrock 17y ago
    fair enough :)