7 ms·

If anyone is daunted by Infinite Jest but undaunted by the fad of hating DFW, definitely start with his books of essays & journalism. IMO they're a lot more re

If anyone is daunted by Infinite Jest but undaunted by the fad of hating DFW, definitely start with his books of essays & journalism. IMO they're a lot more rewarding and enjoyable than his novels. I think E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction is essential reading. (PDF link: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf)

praneshp 9y ago
Also String Theory (which is a collection of essays about Tennis). Also, is there a fad of hating him? Do his books have controversial content (like Ayn Rand, for example, who divides people)?
- actuallyalys 9y ago
  If there's a fad, it's a small one. My sense is that people have been more critical than they were immediately after his death, but that's not really hating, just retrospection.
- sharkweek 9y ago
  It's people who look at a book that's 1100 pages long (1600 if you use standard font/page sizes), and call it pretentious. Is it? Sure, but that doesn't make it any less of an absolutely insane/enjoyable journey. There are parts of this novel that absolutely shook me (the parts on addiction/suicide, and the "that if..." part on the halfway home), while others had me in tears laughing (the parts on the insurance claim for the brick layer, the part about the camera phones, the "heart thief"... etc).
  - praneshp 9y ago
    Thanks for replying! After I asked here I googled around and saw DFW had some mental issues resulting in odd behavior. I then wondered if that is why there was a hating fad. About pages, one of my childhood experiences was a popular girl getting everyone to laugh when I checked out one of Asimov's foundation trilogy books from the school library. Unfortunately she and I are close friends today so there is no "what goes around comes around" story to report :)
  - mercer 9y ago
    God, I had to look up the quote I think you're referring to with 'that if' and now I want to read the book again even though it took me three years the first time around! Here's the full quote (or an entirely different, but equally great one: “If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...] That it is permissible to want [...] That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
- jerrylives 9y ago
  Infinite Jest is pushed in everyones face as an example of what a novel "should" be / best book ever written (yea right) and he has an evercrooning group of adorers who make Pynchon fans look reasonable and sane. Personally I find it him to be turgid and overwrought but I get why people enjoy him and come back. His essays are entertaining but I've never gleaned any great insight or inspiration from him.
tannhauser23 9y ago
Wait, what fad of hating him?
- Idontagree 9y ago
  He was like essential hip college freshman reading, which often comes with being hated for being popular, weird, abstract, etc. I havn't actually read the book, but I've certainly heard about it.
- jraines 9y ago
  Well, before my latest attempt to quit Twitter, it seemed like a widespread opinion among kool kids from both the left & right that liking DFW was middlebrow posing. Just my definitely skewed impression.
  - jackstraw- 9y ago
    Well, there was the movie about him that came out a year or two ago. I'm sure that contibuted to the spike, but honestly 95% of the people I've seen reading Infinite Jest in public are somewhere in the first 20 pages, and that's been the case since the mid 2000s. I don't think reading literary fiction to look cool is anything new. “Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”
- RUTHLESS_RUFUS 9y ago
  Apparently it's too soon for criticism? I'm not sure what fads have to do with it, other than fads being convenient to minimize or dismiss; this piece of elegant sandpaper is for example six years old: http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/ http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-...
- bri3d 9y ago
  Like any other subculture / virtue signal which gains in popularity, there's a strong group for DFW and a strong backlash against from both sides. One side rejects the signal due to its popularity ("only dilettante freshman losers love DFW, REAL enthusiasts love REAL lit") and the other rejects the signal due to its accessibility ("these hipsters think they're cool just because they've read something, anyone could buy the book and do that!"). We see it in programming, too - "only newbie idiots love Ruby, Rust 4ever" plus "this damn hipster Rust brigade is ruining programming, Java is still just fine!"
yarrel 9y ago
"Besides frequently losing itself in superfluous and wildly tangential flights of lexical diarrhea, the book suffers under the sheer burden of its incredible length." http://www.edrants.com/the-infinite-jest-review-that-dave-eggers-doesnt-want-you-to-read/ http://www.edrants.com/the-infinite-jest-review-that-dave-eg...
- thatcat 9y ago
  The depth of the tangents and jargon in IJ are an aesthetic DFW adopted to counter the clever minimalism so popular in commercial speech of the late 90s. He called it maximalism. The burden is to some extent intentionally constructed; the reader must flip back between 2 bookmarks to read it at all since there are over >10% of the 1000 pages are footnotes located at the end of the book. It seems to be a meta-satire of two voices always present in late 90s US anti-depressant ads and the fine print that was always read quickly at the end. This burden forces the reader to constantly consider the "fine print" reality of the authors voice behind the fictional nonlinear narrative he is presenting you through the voice of other characters. The form of the novel reflects the content of the message it presents, this is feature not a flaw. The paragraph after the one you quote reads... "if you can come to terms with his dense and labored style, the rewards are often tremendous. There’s no doubt that Wallace’s talent is immense and his imagination limitless. When he backs off and gives his narrative some breathing room, he emerges as a consistently innovative, sensitive and intelligent writer."

praneshp 9y ago

Also String Theory (which is a collection of essays about Tennis). Also, is there a fad of hating him? Do his books have controversial content (like Ayn Rand, for example, who divides people)?

actuallyalys 9y ago
If there's a fad, it's a small one. My sense is that people have been more critical than they were immediately after his death, but that's not really hating, just retrospection.
sharkweek 9y ago
It's people who look at a book that's 1100 pages long (1600 if you use standard font/page sizes), and call it pretentious. Is it? Sure, but that doesn't make it any less of an absolutely insane/enjoyable journey. There are parts of this novel that absolutely shook me (the parts on addiction/suicide, and the "that if..." part on the halfway home), while others had me in tears laughing (the parts on the insurance claim for the brick layer, the part about the camera phones, the "heart thief"... etc).
- praneshp 9y ago
  Thanks for replying! After I asked here I googled around and saw DFW had some mental issues resulting in odd behavior. I then wondered if that is why there was a hating fad. About pages, one of my childhood experiences was a popular girl getting everyone to laugh when I checked out one of Asimov's foundation trilogy books from the school library. Unfortunately she and I are close friends today so there is no "what goes around comes around" story to report :)
- mercer 9y ago
  God, I had to look up the quote I think you're referring to with 'that if' and now I want to read the book again even though it took me three years the first time around! Here's the full quote (or an entirely different, but equally great one: “If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...] That it is permissible to want [...] That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
jerrylives 9y ago
Infinite Jest is pushed in everyones face as an example of what a novel "should" be / best book ever written (yea right) and he has an evercrooning group of adorers who make Pynchon fans look reasonable and sane. Personally I find it him to be turgid and overwrought but I get why people enjoy him and come back. His essays are entertaining but I've never gleaned any great insight or inspiration from him.

tannhauser23 9y ago

Wait, what fad of hating him?

Idontagree 9y ago
He was like essential hip college freshman reading, which often comes with being hated for being popular, weird, abstract, etc. I havn't actually read the book, but I've certainly heard about it.
jraines 9y ago
Well, before my latest attempt to quit Twitter, it seemed like a widespread opinion among kool kids from both the left & right that liking DFW was middlebrow posing. Just my definitely skewed impression.
- jackstraw- 9y ago
  Well, there was the movie about him that came out a year or two ago. I'm sure that contibuted to the spike, but honestly 95% of the people I've seen reading Infinite Jest in public are somewhere in the first 20 pages, and that's been the case since the mid 2000s. I don't think reading literary fiction to look cool is anything new. “Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”
RUTHLESS_RUFUS 9y ago
Apparently it's too soon for criticism? I'm not sure what fads have to do with it, other than fads being convenient to minimize or dismiss; this piece of elegant sandpaper is for example six years old: http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/ http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-...
bri3d 9y ago
Like any other subculture / virtue signal which gains in popularity, there's a strong group for DFW and a strong backlash against from both sides. One side rejects the signal due to its popularity ("only dilettante freshman losers love DFW, REAL enthusiasts love REAL lit") and the other rejects the signal due to its accessibility ("these hipsters think they're cool just because they've read something, anyone could buy the book and do that!"). We see it in programming, too - "only newbie idiots love Ruby, Rust 4ever" plus "this damn hipster Rust brigade is ruining programming, Java is still just fine!"

yarrel 9y ago

"Besides frequently losing itself in superfluous and wildly tangential flights of lexical diarrhea, the book suffers under the sheer burden of its incredible length." http://www.edrants.com/the-infinite-jest-review-that-dave-eggers-doesnt-want-you-to-read/ http://www.edrants.com/the-infinite-jest-review-that-dave-eg...

thatcat 9y ago
The depth of the tangents and jargon in IJ are an aesthetic DFW adopted to counter the clever minimalism so popular in commercial speech of the late 90s. He called it maximalism. The burden is to some extent intentionally constructed; the reader must flip back between 2 bookmarks to read it at all since there are over >10% of the 1000 pages are footnotes located at the end of the book. It seems to be a meta-satire of two voices always present in late 90s US anti-depressant ads and the fine print that was always read quickly at the end. This burden forces the reader to constantly consider the "fine print" reality of the authors voice behind the fictional nonlinear narrative he is presenting you through the voice of other characters. The form of the novel reflects the content of the message it presents, this is feature not a flaw. The paragraph after the one you quote reads... "if you can come to terms with his dense and labored style, the rewards are often tremendous. There’s no doubt that Wallace’s talent is immense and his imagination limitless. When he backs off and gives his narrative some breathing room, he emerges as a consistently innovative, sensitive and intelligent writer."