4 ms·

This may be the most gen-x piece of writing ever. It reminds me of early Simpson's episodes. The juxtapositions of pointless and detailed erudition, obvious hu

This may be the most gen-x piece of writing ever. It reminds me of early Simpson's episodes. The juxtapositions of pointless and detailed erudition, obvious humor and subtle satire, and breaking the fourth-wall moral mirror. It's equal parts brilliant, snarky and trivial. I generally find DFW unbearably pretentious, but there is something sublime about an article like this getting published, with all of those footnotes, in a food magazine. Something about it reminds me of the performance art of Andy Kaufman. It's strange to me that I've heard of this essay probably hundreds of times yet this was the first time I actually read it.

getlawgdon 5y ago
Pretentious means to pretend to be someone/something one is not. DFW was definitely as brilliant as he "appeared to be". I won't get into details because it is very personal, but DFW did something staggeringly generous and selfless and thoughtful for a close friend of mine -- a friend who was also a complete stranger to DFW at the time. The pat "DWF/pretentious" critique which is heard from time to time seems to be to be pretty ignorant of what he wrote, why he wrote, and who he was. And that little insight I got of him gave me a deeper appreciation for what he published.
- lupire 5y ago
  "DWF/pretentious" is about people who brag about reading his work and how smart you have to be to understand it, not DFW himself.
- reggieband 5y ago
  I am not trying to speak ill of the dead. I am expressing my opinion on their work. The work of an artist is not immune to criticism because they were a nice person. I read Ian M. Banks for the first time recently. About halfway through "Player of Games" I realized what an enormous talent that man has for writing. It snuck up on me, it took me by surprise. I think of the Italian word Sprezzatura and the Wikipedia summary: "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". In my estimation Banks does this, he artfully conceals just how good he is at what he is doing. In contrast, when I read DFW I feel as if he is poking his talent into my face over and over again. Even in this essay, I feel an overbearing sense of how good it is. The DFW writing I am familiar with lacks the ease I appreciate. I prefer when artists downplay their ability and express it subtly. That doesn't mean that an artist must do this to be good writer or a good person. Some artists will stretch themselves to the very limit of their abilities in an attempt to express themselves in a way they find satisfying or meaningful. And if I find that tedious or unbearable to read then that doesn't necessarily make me ignorant.
  - snet0 5y ago
    Immodesty is not pretension.
cheese_goddess 5y ago
Well, the writing is awful -as expected from a professional writer with mainstream awards etc that are routinely handed out to people who just. can't. write. But do it anyway. At length. Great length. On and on. I mean the entire article could be reduced to one page, were it to be stripped of all the unberable snobbery and laughably superficial invocation of "scientific facts". As a piece of philosophical writing, it's complete shit. It puts forth its author's beliefs, straw-mans all the possible objections that the author has thought of and makes no effort to think of any ones the author doesn't have a good answer for. It makes it very obvious that the author thinks that he is one of the very few, chosen people, intellectually gifted enough to ponder these difficult, oh, difficult, questions so deeply. It makes it plain that everyone else is an idiot who doesn't know shit. The article preaches and moralises, and grandstands and my god, the voice, the smugness, the know-it-all-ness, the manic-depressive irony, the self-serving banality, is like listening to Ferris Buehler telling himself off for masturbating to his dad's porn. And you know what? It's fucking wrong to kill lobsters (and crabs) by boiling them alive. If there's any other way to do it, then there's a better way to do it. That is my deeply held belief. But by reading this article by someone so obviously so up themselves they see the light from the other side, for a moment I doubted my belief and started thinking that I may be wrong in my convictions. Not because the article gave me any new perspective on the subject. But because it made me think: "this idiot agrees with me. Why?".

getlawgdon 5y ago

Pretentious means to pretend to be someone/something one is not. DFW was definitely as brilliant as he "appeared to be". I won't get into details because it is very personal, but DFW did something staggeringly generous and selfless and thoughtful for a close friend of mine -- a friend who was also a complete stranger to DFW at the time. The pat "DWF/pretentious" critique which is heard from time to time seems to be to be pretty ignorant of what he wrote, why he wrote, and who he was. And that little insight I got of him gave me a deeper appreciation for what he published.

lupire 5y ago
"DWF/pretentious" is about people who brag about reading his work and how smart you have to be to understand it, not DFW himself.
reggieband 5y ago
I am not trying to speak ill of the dead. I am expressing my opinion on their work. The work of an artist is not immune to criticism because they were a nice person. I read Ian M. Banks for the first time recently. About halfway through "Player of Games" I realized what an enormous talent that man has for writing. It snuck up on me, it took me by surprise. I think of the Italian word Sprezzatura and the Wikipedia summary: "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it". In my estimation Banks does this, he artfully conceals just how good he is at what he is doing. In contrast, when I read DFW I feel as if he is poking his talent into my face over and over again. Even in this essay, I feel an overbearing sense of how good it is. The DFW writing I am familiar with lacks the ease I appreciate. I prefer when artists downplay their ability and express it subtly. That doesn't mean that an artist must do this to be good writer or a good person. Some artists will stretch themselves to the very limit of their abilities in an attempt to express themselves in a way they find satisfying or meaningful. And if I find that tedious or unbearable to read then that doesn't necessarily make me ignorant.
- snet0 5y ago
  Immodesty is not pretension.

cheese_goddess 5y ago

Well, the writing is awful -as expected from a professional writer with mainstream awards etc that are routinely handed out to people who just. can't. write. But do it anyway. At length. Great length. On and on. I mean the entire article could be reduced to one page, were it to be stripped of all the unberable snobbery and laughably superficial invocation of "scientific facts". As a piece of philosophical writing, it's complete shit. It puts forth its author's beliefs, straw-mans all the possible objections that the author has thought of and makes no effort to think of any ones the author doesn't have a good answer for. It makes it very obvious that the author thinks that he is one of the very few, chosen people, intellectually gifted enough to ponder these difficult, oh, difficult, questions so deeply. It makes it plain that everyone else is an idiot who doesn't know shit. The article preaches and moralises, and grandstands and my god, the voice, the smugness, the know-it-all-ness, the manic-depressive irony, the self-serving banality, is like listening to Ferris Buehler telling himself off for masturbating to his dad's porn. And you know what? It's fucking wrong to kill lobsters (and crabs) by boiling them alive. If there's any other way to do it, then there's a better way to do it. That is my deeply held belief. But by reading this article by someone so obviously so up themselves they see the light from the other side, for a moment I doubted my belief and started thinking that I may be wrong in my convictions. Not because the article gave me any new perspective on the subject. But because it made me think: "this idiot agrees with me. Why?".