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Feeling slightly ashamed that I haven't heard of him earlier, I have a question to the HN crowd: How did you hear of him before? It's a shame to hear of someon
by yan 18y ago
Feeling slightly ashamed that I haven't heard of him earlier, I have a question to the HN crowd: How did you hear of him before?
It's a shame to hear of someone people respect this much post-mortem. I wonder if you can infer a body of work that's important today and published recently from a group of similar-minded people like HN.
- unalone 18y agoI found him because I was looking for an author who wrote postmodern, like Pynchon does, but an author with less of the bullshit that I've always felt Pynchon surrounds himself with.
- delackner 18y agoI had the great luck to be given Infinite Jest by a friend who had read it, and I cannot praise it enough. It is by far the most amazing book I have ever read, achieving a clear and full vision into the world of its characters' internal thought processes to a degree I had not known was possible. After reading Infinite Jest, I have struggled to find any author to equal its vitality, and have been frequently disappointed by the flat hollow fakeness of most works I have read since it, by authors both new to me (Paul Auster) and old (William Gibson). His use of language has a kind of magical... it is hard to get exactly how he does it but his writing brings his characters alive. I am crushed and saddened by his death and the tragedy of its cause. Depression haunts the people in many of our lives. It is a terrible disease made worse by the mistaken notion that melancholy is somehow noble or simply a fact of creativity, an illness to be proud of. It is certainly not.