#1 04-25-2012 20:04:53
- mishmont
- Member
- From: Sams Valley Oregon
- Registered: 11-19-2006
- Posts: 5117
"Infinite Jest," please explain
Is it my imagination or is David Foster Wallace a synthesis of John Irving, Bukouski, and Lewis Caroll and one or more transporting chemicals?
His writing writing is a 10+, but WTF is he talking about?
Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action was long ago approved by God.
--- Ecclesiastes 9.7
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#2 04-25-2012 21:39:47
- John Hamler
- Member
- Registered: 07-07-2006
- Posts: 1399
Re: "Infinite Jest," please explain
Infinite Jest. Hmmm... Isn't that the book that-- Wait... Yep. That's the one chock-blocking my dilapidated '73 Dodge Dart from rolling into the preschool at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. 
No, seriously. I admire indulgent writing-writing more than I should (Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, The Stand, Atlas Shrugged And Said: Whaddaya Want From Me?...) but they're the kinds of books that they need to make a movie or mini-series about before I'll give them a go. If you know what I mean.
And please... If you DO know what I mean, wouldya let ME know?
Last edited by John Hamler (04-26-2012 00:54:34)
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#3 04-26-2012 03:36:40
- JElizabeth
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- From: Albany, NY
- Registered: 02-01-2011
- Posts: 1914
Re: "Infinite Jest," please explain
DFW was a gigantic blowhard. I tried to read that book and quit within the first 10 pages. Writing should both entertain and inform (imo), and it was too excruciating to justify me reading farther.
I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello
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#4 04-26-2012 14:10:00
- brosna11
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- From: YMCA
- Registered: 01-06-2007
- Posts: 4235
Re: "Infinite Jest," please explain
mishmont wrote:
Is it my imagination or is David Foster Wallace a synthesis of John Irving, Bukouski, and Lewis Caroll and one or more transporting chemicals?
His writing writing is a 10+, but WTF is he talking about?
Just a guess: I think he's talking about how commerce with all its little seductions--runs our lives. I'm still working on it. He's meticulous and objective, impersonal and intellectual as only an Amherst College grad can be. He's a philosopher. If anyone on this site could write as well as D.F.W. a Pulitzer would smack them on the head. Reading him is better than getting an MFA IMO. Carrying the book around is exercise.
Nadine
unhemmed as it is uneven
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