Has anyone read this? Was it really about IRS workers doing paperwork?

npr.org/2019/04/08/710363082/first-listen-bruce-hornsby-absolute-zero

scroll down to the song called White Noise

Read it twice. Probably my favorite book. The whole Chris Fogel sequence is probably the apex of what Wallace was doing with his work. Apparently Chris Fogel was also supposed to be the main character, who had a magical sequence of number which, once read in order, would give a person perfect concentration.
It's largely about attention span, concentration, the dread we find in boredom, and the virtue which could be found in focusing on something. Also, there's a lot about how we no longer have any civics in this country, and how that has been detrimental to us as a society. So those are probably the two huge themes.
But yes, it is basically a really long Mr Squishy. So if you don't like tons of details and different factions plotting against each other for almost meaningless rewards, then don't read it.

checked and wow

Party read it with Yea Forums in a thread plagued by tripfags. The anons upthread are right in that it's nowhere near finished. Better to think of it as five or six good quality stories/novellas linked by some half sketched filler material that might have been used as building blocks for an overarching plot.

These two bits are great. The problem is stuff like the trippy recollections of a barbecue section which is is just pointless without more context for it.

The first 250 pages or so are really good, but then I suspect he lost the thread. I disagree that it's not finished and posit that those anons missed what he is saying. The second half of the book is a not-so-subtle self-condemnation of his work as meaningless, pointless information, painful drudgery and quite literally actually shit. I perfectly understand why he killed himself now.

How can you lose thread if the format of the book wasn't even decided by you?

The book is great, really impressed me and the overall message about the necessity and virtue of boredom, i.e. as a personal sacrifice for something greater, is way more relevant to me at least than IJ and its precautionary morality, i.e. don't seek to be entertained too much lads. I love novels which find virtue, beauty etc in the mundane, understated, overlooked etc.

I find it very cute to imagine you, a white guy aged 18-24, sitting in his room feeling excited that some boomer-tier older musician has just released his new soft jazz album and doing research into what the lyrics are referencing. Cute :3

>t. some woman who "likes" everything she's ever read
tpk is shit and why he killed himself :P

These cucks had a reading group for it the month of March and dropped it like three weeks in.

It’s a good book if you’ve read DFW. I personally wouldn’t start with it but it’s got sections in it that I’d consider his best writing ever.

Well maybe they should have told that attention whoring tripfag to fuck off or just learned to appreciate the aesthetics of my extremely long stories.
>claims to like DFW
>can't appreciate the catharsis of finishing nate the snake or my immortal
[x] Doubt. The book "sucked canal water" anyway.

I'm 33, but the rest of your post is accurate

Attached: 1526503741969.jpg (399x322, 25K)

Yeah, read it. That was the setting, but it was more about boredom and its role in work.
Those were 2 of the best chapters in it, though.
I liked it, but the meta-storytelling elements didn't improve the work for me. That's more a difference in philosophy of art, though. I found it more a vollection of barely-linked short stories and novellas. The Fogle section and Lane Dean's stories (he needed a resolution, though) were my favorite parts.

same, it's my favorite book. If there was any English author I could write like, it would be DFW in this book