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I know people get teased for admitting this, but DFW is the best stuff I've ever read. If anyone has suggestions along the same line I'd love to hear it.

by cnity 3y ago

davidthewatson 3y ago
Without getting into the personal history of DFW, I think it's OK to love the art but not the artist. I certainly like lots of music like that. Clearly, from the noise arising before and after the movie-depiction of "Although of course you end up becoming yourself", the life of the artist will be dissected in modern society no matter the consensus. I've read right on into Byung Chul Han a decade later which I find resplendent for exactly the opposite reasons: minimalist vs. maximalist expression. To me, DFW was fun reading since he used a sideways default mode in writing to demonstrate that the future held this sideways aspect at its core. He'd tease us with "are you going with me" as if that sideways writing was the tunnels at Shangri-La and DFW were Bill Moyers. Except the hard part is cookie crumbing your way back from that leaf node mentally. In other words, breadth-first-search is fine in brain-space but comes with high cognitive cost of losing yourself (in cognitive psychology function) or others (in social psychology function) or maybe that was the point of the art? I find the same effect in reading Byung Chul Han because his aphoristic style leaves my brain puzzling to remember the Greeks and assimilate that knowledge with the mental wormhole he's shoved me down - which is, perhaps ironically, exactly the same reason I love conversing with AI: I can't see it coming... giving the reading an epiphanous spiritual effect.
- cnity 3y ago
  Thank you. Oddly, I don't think the thing I get from his writing is the thing I'm _supposed_ to get. That is, the kind of tonal urgency he conveys, the sense that it is really important to get at the thing he is trying to drive at (sideways, as you put it), comes across more as an entertaining exhilaration for me, rather than something seriously important. I suspect DFW would disdain this take away from his writings and consider his books a failure for me.
dawsoneliasen 3y ago
Same here. The Master and Margarita kind of has a similar feel to infinite jest IMO. I love Borges for the mathematical-esque concepts and explorations, but it feels nothing like DFW.
aardvark179 3y ago
It all depends on what you like about Infinite Jest. The reason it is often mentioned in relation to Pynchon’s work is that they are books which pull in _everything_, or at least they do to a first approximation. If that’s what you like then I think books like The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk might be right up your street,l.
beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
You might like William Gaddis. The Recognitions and JR are dense and very complex novels with brilliant formal invention and prescient looks at finance, art, and skepticism bleeding into a postmodern mindset. The sheer amount of cultural references on even a single page in The Recognitions is astounding. He was a direct influence on DFW, Pynchon, and DeLillo.
jhbadger 3y ago
I think Gary Shteyngart (a Soviet emigre to America who has the perspective on both countries and can find eerie echoes to the dying days of the Soviet Union in his experiences in the modern US) has a similar style to DFW in many ways. I particularly recommend his Super Sad True Love Story set in the near future, as Infinite Jest was.

I know people get teased for admitting this, but DFW is the best stuff I've ever read. If anyone has suggestions along the same line I'd love to hear it.

by cnity 3y ago

I know people get teased for admitting this, but DFW is the best stuff I've ever read. If anyone has suggestions along the same line I'd love to hear it.

davidthewatson 3y ago

Without getting into the personal history of DFW, I think it's OK to love the art but not the artist. I certainly like lots of music like that. Clearly, from the noise arising before and after the movie-depiction of "Although of course you end up becoming yourself", the life of the artist will be dissected in modern society no matter the consensus. I've read right on into Byung Chul Han a decade later which I find resplendent for exactly the opposite reasons: minimalist vs. maximalist expression. To me, DFW was fun reading since he used a sideways default mode in writing to demonstrate that the future held this sideways aspect at its core. He'd tease us with "are you going with me" as if that sideways writing was the tunnels at Shangri-La and DFW were Bill Moyers. Except the hard part is cookie crumbing your way back from that leaf node mentally. In other words, breadth-first-search is fine in brain-space but comes with high cognitive cost of losing yourself (in cognitive psychology function) or others (in social psychology function) or maybe that was the point of the art? I find the same effect in reading Byung Chul Han because his aphoristic style leaves my brain puzzling to remember the Greeks and assimilate that knowledge with the mental wormhole he's shoved me down - which is, perhaps ironically, exactly the same reason I love conversing with AI: I can't see it coming... giving the reading an epiphanous spiritual effect.

cnity 3y ago
Thank you. Oddly, I don't think the thing I get from his writing is the thing I'm _supposed_ to get. That is, the kind of tonal urgency he conveys, the sense that it is really important to get at the thing he is trying to drive at (sideways, as you put it), comes across more as an entertaining exhilaration for me, rather than something seriously important. I suspect DFW would disdain this take away from his writings and consider his books a failure for me.

dawsoneliasen 3y ago

Same here. The Master and Margarita kind of has a similar feel to infinite jest IMO. I love Borges for the mathematical-esque concepts and explorations, but it feels nothing like DFW.

aardvark179 3y ago

It all depends on what you like about Infinite Jest. The reason it is often mentioned in relation to Pynchon’s work is that they are books which pull in _everything_, or at least they do to a first approximation. If that’s what you like then I think books like The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk might be right up your street,l.

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago

You might like William Gaddis. The Recognitions and JR are dense and very complex novels with brilliant formal invention and prescient looks at finance, art, and skepticism bleeding into a postmodern mindset. The sheer amount of cultural references on even a single page in The Recognitions is astounding. He was a direct influence on DFW, Pynchon, and DeLillo.

jhbadger 3y ago

I think Gary Shteyngart (a Soviet emigre to America who has the perspective on both countries and can find eerie echoes to the dying days of the Soviet Union in his experiences in the modern US) has a similar style to DFW in many ways. I particularly recommend his Super Sad True Love Story set in the near future, as Infinite Jest was.