5 ms·

I've yet to read any DFW books. I've heard much about him, and saw couple of his videos on youtube. Any recommendations on which books of his I should start off

by lprd 8y ago

I've yet to read any DFW books. I've heard much about him, and saw couple of his videos on youtube. Any recommendations on which books of his I should start off with?

tptacek 8y ago
Start with "Consider The Lobster".
throw_away2 8y ago
He can basically be broken down into his non-fiction collections, his short fiction collections and his novels. Personally, I would start with his non-fiction (Consider the lobster, supposedly fun thing). Then maybe some of his short fiction, like Brief Interviews, which can be a little more experimental, before tackling the novels.
- kristjansson 8y ago
  This has been my path through his work, and it's been pretty enjoyable to follow. The non-fiction is definitely the most accessible, and built my taste for his writing.
- throw_away2 8y ago
  This is perhaps my favorite non-fiction of his (which appears in Consider the Lobster): https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... It's a discussion of descriptivist vs prescriptivist grammar and led me to A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, which is a way more fascinating book than its title would imply.
yasp 8y ago
Infinite Jest, although it might take you a few tries to get through it. Part of the fun though.
- yarrel 8y ago
  I loathed "Infinite Jest" having got through it in one try. The advice I have since received is that I should have started with DFW's shorter pieces. I'm not going to now, but I do feel it's good advice given the love I've seen people who followed that route generally gain for his writing.
  - everybodyknows 8y ago
    As one who shares your reaction to IJ, I would mention that his journalism is very different read. The dozen or so I've got to ranged from good to brilliant.
  - euroclydon 8y ago
    Infinite Jest helped me discover my upper limit for bleakness. Turns out is 500-600 pages. I need someone to admire in a book. It’s a dangerous criteria — usually turns out to be some Pollyanna.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Re-posting a dead comment that I don't think should be dead. I totally disagree - I loved Infinite Jest when I read it a bunch of years ago, and think I still would now - but it's not an invalid perspective. It's true that the problems and angst of privileged largely vapid mostly young people are not as bad as those experienced by many (most?) people in the world. But Infinite Jest also captures a certain experience of life that rings true. That's what makes a novel great for me, regardless of how much I relate to the experiences of the characters. "Infinite Jest was infinitely boring, a lot of the "edginess" feels dated and the problems the characters deal with feel juvenile. Its also devoid of emotions that feels like the isolation of the American suburbs. I liked many hard to read books, Joyce for example, as well as postmodernism, but I can't recommend this collection of superficial rants and emotional sterility. Curiously, the people that liked this book had the same kind of emotional sterility I despise. Mostly, whiny, stuck up English majors from the suburbs. Often with few life experiences."
buzzdenver 8y ago
I'd start with "supposedly fun thing". Easy and short read, but enough to get a taste for him.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  Easy and short, and fun. Yet points the attentive reader straight at central moral failures of our era.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
In my opinion DFW is a much better essayist than novelist, so I'd recommend you start with his essays to see if you like him and then move on to his fiction if you feel like it. Many intelligent, well read people (including literature professors) dislike his fiction, so know that it's not just you if you don't enjoy it. Consider the Lobster is a good collection of essays to start with. The essay on Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoevsky is probably my favorite DFW essay.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  A New Yorker "Shouts and Murmurs" piece mentions Infinite Jest: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/what-i-have-in-common-with-trump https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/what-i-have-in... FWIW, I've only read the first 1/3 of IJ, and much of it is now burnt into my memory like the scars of a branding iron. Resolved to never pick up the book again.
  - codq 8y ago
    Even more recent and relevant: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/how-to-read-infinite-jest https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/how-to-read-in...
  - sanderjd 8y ago
    Personally, that is exactly what made me decide that I actually loved Infinite Jest. I was deeply unsure what I thought about it. But it was indelible, I found it popping back into my thoughts constantly over the next few months, even (or especially) while reading other, less memorable, novels. Still, many years later, there are a bunch of specific scenes and themes that I find myself thinking about. I particularly think its vision of addiction in a broad sense is spot on and was ahead of its time.
- maroonblazer 8y ago
  Agree, start with his essays. "Consider the Lobster" is great. The collection that hooked me is "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". That essay in particular he wrote for Harpers where they sent him on a 7-day cruise in the Caribbean. The title says it all. It's hilarious. Or there's this, which is free and also great. Wallace writing about talk radio. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/303812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/30...
vrm 8y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed... If you have any interest in tennis (or not, honestly), I'd say start here before buying another book. Read it as a kid and then had a magical revelation years later when I connected this piece to the man itself. If you like it, then hop onto the rest of his work from nonfiction to short-stories to IJ if you have a spare couple months.
kevstev 8y ago
DFW in my opinion can craft a sentence like no other author I have ever read- and that's not an overstatement, they are real works of art that may change how you view writing. Where I feel he falls down is telling a story. The longer he tries to string those sentences together into a coherent whole, the more things fall apart. None of his stories really end, they all have this sopranos-esque ending where it all just kind of ends suddenly and then you have to conclude for yourself what the actual ending was, and what the point of all this was. With that said, I feel his essays are great and enjoyable reads, his shorter stories are ok too, but then his longer fiction stuff... enjoy it for the sentences. You can find "Consider the Lobster" online very easily with a google search. If you enjoy that, you can google his name and find some other small works of his, but if you want to dive in and get a compilation/distillation of his major works, the David Foster Wallace Reader is something you should buy: https://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallace-Reader/dp/0316182400 https://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallace-Reader/dp/031618... Personally, I would read the non-fiction first, and then go back to the fiction stuff. Honestly, at $13 for the paperback, I'd say its a no-brainer to pick up if you have even a passing interest.
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
  I just read/skimmed consider the lobster, is it supposed to be exemplary? Maybe there's some irony that I'm not appreciating but I'm not impressed.
  - mturmon 8y ago
    It’s not him, it’s you.
  - kbob 8y ago
    I don't think you can skim DFW. Ne says as much in the linked interview: "I think the sort of work I do falls into an area of American fiction that, yes, that is accessible, but that is designed for people who really like to read and understand reading to be a discipline and to require a certain amount of work." I can't even skim that sentence.
    - 8y ago
50 8y ago
One of my favorites by him is a short story titled "Good Old Neon": http://sdavidmiller.com/octo/files/no_google2/GoodOldNeon.pdf http://sdavidmiller.com/octo/files/no_google2/GoodOldNeon.pd...
frozenport 8y ago
Infinite Jest was infinitely boring, a lot of the "edginess" feels dated and the problems the characters deal with feel juvenile. Its also devoid of emotions that feels like the isolation of the American suburbs. I liked many hard to read books, Joyce for example, as well as postmodernism, but I can't recommend this collection of superficial rants and emotional sterility. Curiously, the people that liked this book had the same kind of emotional sterility I despise. Mostly, whiny, stuck up English majors from the suburbs. Often with few life experiences.
icelancer 8y ago
The essays are a much better place to start. Pick up A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and read those, especially the last essay, which is what the book is named after. If you like that kind of thing, then the books might be for you. I love DFW's essays. I really cannot get into the books. I know a lot of people like this.
- icelancer 8y ago
  Arguably his best essay, however, is the one on Michael Joyce, The String Theory. Some people have judged it as one of the best essays / short stories of all-time. https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david-foster-wallace/ https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david... It is then remarkable that an author dared to write a follow-up to this iconic essay... and mostly succeeded. https://longreads.com/2017/01/17/michael-joyces-second-act/ https://longreads.com/2017/01/17/michael-joyces-second-act/
philwebster 8y ago
I'm excited to be the first comment to recommend The Broom of the System. I picked it off the library shelf because I knew of David Foster Wallace, but didn't think I had the stamina to go for Infinite Jest at the time. It's much, much shorter than Infinite Jest, and is a single story rather than a collection of essays (don't get me wrong, Consider the Lobster is also great). The humor is absurd, different than anything I'd read before, and it completely clicked with me, paving the way to the rest of his work. You should start here.
- minkzilla 8y ago
  The Broom of the System was the first DFW I read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending was a little lackluster, actually the overall story was a little lackluster; But the humor and characters make up for that. I smile every time I think about The Great Ohio Desert.
ex3xu 8y ago
I agree with the comments about his essays, like the tennis essay and the Consider the Lobster recommendation, and I'll add another piece of short fiction, Incarnations of Burned Children: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a500/incarnations-burned-children-david-foster-wallace-0900/ https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a500/incarnation...
- btown 8y ago
  Incarnations of Burned Children is horrifying. Which, I suppose, is the intent. But not for the faint of heart.
- mreid 8y ago
  A recommendation for IoBC should come with a strong warning. It is a extremely short piece but, word for word, one of the most hard-hitting and distressing things I’ve read. It’s a testament to DFW’s talents as a writer to get so much impact out of so few words but it’s an incredibly tough piece of writing to recommend. Especially if you have young children.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
His history of infinity, Everything and More.

by lprd 8y ago

I've yet to read any DFW books. I've heard much about him, and saw couple of his videos on youtube. Any recommendations on which books of his I should start off with?

tptacek 8y ago

Start with "Consider The Lobster".

throw_away2 8y ago

He can basically be broken down into his non-fiction collections, his short fiction collections and his novels. Personally, I would start with his non-fiction (Consider the lobster, supposedly fun thing). Then maybe some of his short fiction, like Brief Interviews, which can be a little more experimental, before tackling the novels.

kristjansson 8y ago
This has been my path through his work, and it's been pretty enjoyable to follow. The non-fiction is definitely the most accessible, and built my taste for his writing.
throw_away2 8y ago
This is perhaps my favorite non-fiction of his (which appears in Consider the Lobster): https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... It's a discussion of descriptivist vs prescriptivist grammar and led me to A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, which is a way more fascinating book than its title would imply.

yasp 8y ago

Infinite Jest, although it might take you a few tries to get through it. Part of the fun though.

yarrel 8y ago
I loathed "Infinite Jest" having got through it in one try. The advice I have since received is that I should have started with DFW's shorter pieces. I'm not going to now, but I do feel it's good advice given the love I've seen people who followed that route generally gain for his writing.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  As one who shares your reaction to IJ, I would mention that his journalism is very different read. The dozen or so I've got to ranged from good to brilliant.
- euroclydon 8y ago
  Infinite Jest helped me discover my upper limit for bleakness. Turns out is 500-600 pages. I need someone to admire in a book. It’s a dangerous criteria — usually turns out to be some Pollyanna.
sanderjd 8y ago
Re-posting a dead comment that I don't think should be dead. I totally disagree - I loved Infinite Jest when I read it a bunch of years ago, and think I still would now - but it's not an invalid perspective. It's true that the problems and angst of privileged largely vapid mostly young people are not as bad as those experienced by many (most?) people in the world. But Infinite Jest also captures a certain experience of life that rings true. That's what makes a novel great for me, regardless of how much I relate to the experiences of the characters. "Infinite Jest was infinitely boring, a lot of the "edginess" feels dated and the problems the characters deal with feel juvenile. Its also devoid of emotions that feels like the isolation of the American suburbs. I liked many hard to read books, Joyce for example, as well as postmodernism, but I can't recommend this collection of superficial rants and emotional sterility. Curiously, the people that liked this book had the same kind of emotional sterility I despise. Mostly, whiny, stuck up English majors from the suburbs. Often with few life experiences."

buzzdenver 8y ago

I'd start with "supposedly fun thing". Easy and short read, but enough to get a taste for him.

everybodyknows 8y ago
Easy and short, and fun. Yet points the attentive reader straight at central moral failures of our era.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

In my opinion DFW is a much better essayist than novelist, so I'd recommend you start with his essays to see if you like him and then move on to his fiction if you feel like it. Many intelligent, well read people (including literature professors) dislike his fiction, so know that it's not just you if you don't enjoy it. Consider the Lobster is a good collection of essays to start with. The essay on Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoevsky is probably my favorite DFW essay.

everybodyknows 8y ago
A New Yorker "Shouts and Murmurs" piece mentions Infinite Jest: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/what-i-have-in-common-with-trump https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/what-i-have-in... FWIW, I've only read the first 1/3 of IJ, and much of it is now burnt into my memory like the scars of a branding iron. Resolved to never pick up the book again.
- codq 8y ago
  Even more recent and relevant: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/how-to-read-infinite-jest https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/how-to-read-in...
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Personally, that is exactly what made me decide that I actually loved Infinite Jest. I was deeply unsure what I thought about it. But it was indelible, I found it popping back into my thoughts constantly over the next few months, even (or especially) while reading other, less memorable, novels. Still, many years later, there are a bunch of specific scenes and themes that I find myself thinking about. I particularly think its vision of addiction in a broad sense is spot on and was ahead of its time.
maroonblazer 8y ago
Agree, start with his essays. "Consider the Lobster" is great. The collection that hooked me is "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". That essay in particular he wrote for Harpers where they sent him on a 7-day cruise in the Caribbean. The title says it all. It's hilarious. Or there's this, which is free and also great. Wallace writing about talk radio. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/303812/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/30...

vrm 8y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed... If you have any interest in tennis (or not, honestly), I'd say start here before buying another book. Read it as a kid and then had a magical revelation years later when I connected this piece to the man itself. If you like it, then hop onto the rest of his work from nonfiction to short-stories to IJ if you have a spare couple months.

kevstev 8y ago

DFW in my opinion can craft a sentence like no other author I have ever read- and that's not an overstatement, they are real works of art that may change how you view writing. Where I feel he falls down is telling a story. The longer he tries to string those sentences together into a coherent whole, the more things fall apart. None of his stories really end, they all have this sopranos-esque ending where it all just kind of ends suddenly and then you have to conclude for yourself what the actual ending was, and what the point of all this was. With that said, I feel his essays are great and enjoyable reads, his shorter stories are ok too, but then his longer fiction stuff... enjoy it for the sentences. You can find "Consider the Lobster" online very easily with a google search. If you enjoy that, you can google his name and find some other small works of his, but if you want to dive in and get a compilation/distillation of his major works, the David Foster Wallace Reader is something you should buy: https://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallace-Reader/dp/0316182400 https://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallace-Reader/dp/031618... Personally, I would read the non-fiction first, and then go back to the fiction stuff. Honestly, at $13 for the paperback, I'd say its a no-brainer to pick up if you have even a passing interest.

KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
I just read/skimmed consider the lobster, is it supposed to be exemplary? Maybe there's some irony that I'm not appreciating but I'm not impressed.
- mturmon 8y ago
  It’s not him, it’s you.
- kbob 8y ago
  I don't think you can skim DFW. Ne says as much in the linked interview: "I think the sort of work I do falls into an area of American fiction that, yes, that is accessible, but that is designed for people who really like to read and understand reading to be a discipline and to require a certain amount of work." I can't even skim that sentence.
  - 8y ago

50 8y ago

One of my favorites by him is a short story titled "Good Old Neon": http://sdavidmiller.com/octo/files/no_google2/GoodOldNeon.pdf http://sdavidmiller.com/octo/files/no_google2/GoodOldNeon.pd...

frozenport 8y ago

Infinite Jest was infinitely boring, a lot of the "edginess" feels dated and the problems the characters deal with feel juvenile. Its also devoid of emotions that feels like the isolation of the American suburbs. I liked many hard to read books, Joyce for example, as well as postmodernism, but I can't recommend this collection of superficial rants and emotional sterility. Curiously, the people that liked this book had the same kind of emotional sterility I despise. Mostly, whiny, stuck up English majors from the suburbs. Often with few life experiences.

icelancer 8y ago

The essays are a much better place to start. Pick up A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and read those, especially the last essay, which is what the book is named after. If you like that kind of thing, then the books might be for you. I love DFW's essays. I really cannot get into the books. I know a lot of people like this.

icelancer 8y ago
Arguably his best essay, however, is the one on Michael Joyce, The String Theory. Some people have judged it as one of the best essays / short stories of all-time. https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david-foster-wallace/ https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david... It is then remarkable that an author dared to write a follow-up to this iconic essay... and mostly succeeded. https://longreads.com/2017/01/17/michael-joyces-second-act/ https://longreads.com/2017/01/17/michael-joyces-second-act/

philwebster 8y ago

I'm excited to be the first comment to recommend The Broom of the System. I picked it off the library shelf because I knew of David Foster Wallace, but didn't think I had the stamina to go for Infinite Jest at the time. It's much, much shorter than Infinite Jest, and is a single story rather than a collection of essays (don't get me wrong, Consider the Lobster is also great). The humor is absurd, different than anything I'd read before, and it completely clicked with me, paving the way to the rest of his work. You should start here.

minkzilla 8y ago
The Broom of the System was the first DFW I read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending was a little lackluster, actually the overall story was a little lackluster; But the humor and characters make up for that. I smile every time I think about The Great Ohio Desert.

ex3xu 8y ago

I agree with the comments about his essays, like the tennis essay and the Consider the Lobster recommendation, and I'll add another piece of short fiction, Incarnations of Burned Children: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a500/incarnations-burned-children-david-foster-wallace-0900/ https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a500/incarnation...

btown 8y ago
Incarnations of Burned Children is horrifying. Which, I suppose, is the intent. But not for the faint of heart.
mreid 8y ago
A recommendation for IoBC should come with a strong warning. It is a extremely short piece but, word for word, one of the most hard-hitting and distressing things I’ve read. It’s a testament to DFW’s talents as a writer to get so much impact out of so few words but it’s an incredibly tough piece of writing to recommend. Especially if you have young children.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

His history of infinity, Everything and More.