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Stop using big words.
Stop using big words
Colton Wood
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David James
I agree with his observations, but not with why those "puffed up" words shouldn't be used. For me the main problem isn't that it takes up more time. The issue's an aesthetic one and what those words imply about the person using them. In a way it's good that people use those words because they're like easily-readable signs hung around the necks of phonies, conformists, simpletons, or hucksters.
Jason Scott
how did he not get eternally shit on for this after writing something with the lexical fuckery of infinite jest?
Adam Ramirez
there's no lexical fuckery in ij, your just a brainlet
Carson Parker
>>For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant quality of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching.
>Gotta love the insertion of “per diem” in the first sentence. It’s almost like that hep cat is jivin’ my own groove, dig! (Speaking of reinforcement, perhaps Wallace would not have been so personally self-conscious if his own use of language were a bit less self-conscious and forced?) There’s nothing inherently wrong with using slang in otherwise erudite writing, but Wallace’s idiolect is so wooden, in the way so many Academics tend to be wooden, that there’s no real grace in the way he does so.
Eli Martin
This is peak hypocrisy, I still miss that nigga tho
Robert White
isn't this just a way to smugly 'out-do' people who try to 'out-do' those with smaller vocab?
Jaxon Perez
vanity of vanities, all is vanity
Adam Price
No, it isn't trying, it is outdoing them. In that particular way, at least, he is superior.
Brayden Campbell
Beckett had the same thing he called "the path of subtraction" - the simpler words the better
I think amateur writers like to hide behind these smart words because it makes them seem really smart for a dumb reader. If you look at whatever prose you consider to be sublime you will most likely notice that it it made up of very common and simple words - mark of a professional writer
Michael Sullivan
People who use the word 'critique' instead of 'criticise/criticism' annoy me. The latter words use more syllables but make you sound way less like pretentious marxist.
Austin Watson
David Foster Wallace was essentially a clout martyr.
Everyone is claiming this was a random suicide, but it's clear what was actually happening: his killers were driven to take his life solely for the sake of clout. They wanted infamy of their own and found it in hanging a 46-year old.
As David was taking his final breath, he was surrounded by Yea Forumsizens taking video and pictures of him. Why? For clout. No one was taking his pulse, no one was calling 911, everyone was standing around with their phones out as his body was clinging to life.
The moral lesson of David's life story should be a cautionary tale of the horrors of postmodern literature and how it's fucked our society beyond belief.
RIP DFW. See you in Heaven...
Oliver Brown
isn't a critique something that contains criticism?
Hunter Parker
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
A guy who wrote a giant ass turd of a book talking about puffed up.
>NO DISCERNIBLE SELF-AWARENESS
I am glad he killed himself.
Matthew Mitchell
Jeremiah Sullivan
this guy is mentally ill
John Lopez
A critique is a long, extended essay or work that discusses a certain topic. Critiques contain criticisms, but to call a criticism a critique is wrong.
Ryan Ward
He behaves like an actor
Aaron Roberts
hes a hypocrite which he finally realized prior to his suicide
Jaxon Murphy
no.
Henry Brown
Parker Long
takes all sorts
Carson Smith
>complains about puff words
>writes an 1100+ page stream of verbal diarrhea called Infinite Jest
This guy is a hypocritical hack. Why anyone validates him by wasting so much of their lives reading his overly long work instead of better authors is beyond me.
Ryan Myers
If i pull that bandana off, will he die?
John Evans
>If you look at whatever prose you consider to be sublime you will most likely notice that it it made up of very common and simple words - mark of a professional writer
pleb
Cameron Russell
Fucking bullshit. Melville and Nabokov are just a couple who have written "sublime" prose with more than "simple" words.
Julian Diaz
Why do some people call his work "bad faith" literature? Do they perceive him to be hypocritical or disingenuous?
Robert Baker
It is definitely not "sincere" like he claims of it. Making up fictional characters for ostensibly journalistic non-fiction pieces just so you can make some kind of political or rhetorical point is the height of insincerity.
Dylan Russell
Never read Infinite Jest. Is this how the book is written?
Justin Diaz
>Making up fictional characters for ostensibly journalistic non-fiction pieces just so you can make some kind of political or rhetorical point
Interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Which piece was this?
Noah Rivera
it's an essay in Consider the Lobster
Nathan Jenkins
All of them, I think his buddy Jonathan Franzen admitted this in an interview or article. Definitely the lobster piece, and the one about the cruise ship.
Austin Hughes
was he a bukowski fan posterior to his death?
Carson Gutierrez
Franzen told the public that DFW had a habit of inventing characters, events and lines for his non-fiction essays like A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again to fit a certain mold.
>"Wallace encounters pitch-perfect characters who speak comedically crystalline lines and place him in hilariously absurd situations...I used both stories [in teaching journalism] as examples of the inescapable temptation to shave, embellish, and invent narratives"
Austin Lewis
I know, but is Infinite Jest written in a similar manner?
Austin Collins
Carter Ross
So was he just a projecting hypocrite or what? Bloom is right about him.
Zachary Wright
somtiems i remembr dfw dead and i be cry
Matthew Davis
RIP David
trapped by his own accomplishments
Lucas Johnson
He is not saying don't use big words, he is say do not use more words than are necessary to get the idea across. Sometimes you need those big words, sometimes you even need the puff. like when writing dialog.
No.
Dominic Gray
Not a very strong critique.
Easton Nelson
those aren't synonyms you tard
Luke Russell
he didn't imply that they were
Jordan Reed
>the actor from stargate behaves like an actor
wooow
Joshua Anderson
Wallace isn't being a hypocrite here. You need the context of the video: Bryan Garner is the guy off-camera asking him the question. Garner is a lawyer who helps other lawyers achieve a plainspoken writing style. He's interviewing Wallace about writing, but they're not talking about how to be a prose artist. They're talking about how the average person can improve his writing, which means achieving a basic writing style that is organized, forceful, and clear. But the staid, plainspoken writing style is not Wallace's style. Neither is it Pynchon's or Joyce's or Nabokov's or McCarthy's. Choosing "before" instead of "prior to" is a simply principle that will help the amateur make himself understood; it's not a rule that writers who know what they're doing must be constrained by.
William Harris
based
Gavin Walker
Jace Long
>here is a condensed version of the spiel I’ve given in private conferences with certain black students
>[...] if you ever want those arguments to get listened to and taken seriously, you’re going to have to communicate them in SWE, because SWE is the dialect our nation uses to talk to itself. African-Americans who’ve become successful and important in US culture know this; that’s why King’s and X’s and Jackson’s speeches are in SWE, and why Morrison’s and Angelou’s and Baldwin’s and Wideman’s and Gates’s and West’s books are full of totally ass-kicking SWE
>full of totally ass-kicking SWE
Levi Russell
what is swe?
Sebastian Rogers
Standard Written English
Jonathan Scott
Please start a band called Clout Martyr