100 pages in and nothing has happened, convince me to keep going

>he fell for the memes

Attached: 1450557227456.png (856x894, 1.03M)

>Find book boring = filtered

The abosolute state of lit

>muh boring

retard

Great point

It takes until like page 250 for you to have enough context to know what's going on, and by that point the earlier stuff starts to make sense and be good too.

That said, it's a book that's more about the world than about a page-turner story, so if that's what you want just give up now.

I read IJ when I was 26 and it was a page turner for me. I tried to read Brief Interviews recently as a 32 y/o and I couldn't get past the first few stories. It was just like, I don't care what this dude thinks anymore. Is there a certain age range you have to hit to enjoy DFW? Maybe recent events have something to do with it. His stuff seems trivial nowadays. He's not the only one.

I've heard its gets goods 125% in.

bloated gen x garbage boring af

to be fair, DFW is not a novelist in the classic sense. hes a writer, but not a true trained novelist in the same way someone like virginia woolf is (using her as an example because I dont even like her).
Hes really not prestigious and you probably just thought the book was boring cause it is unless you specifically relate to it.

>schizo ramblings of an over-educated autist to be the most thrilling thing in the world
sounds like my diary desu

>fantods
>annular
>kertwang
>plangent

Jokes aside I'm like 650 pages in, there's some awesome stuff in IJ but much of it is a fucking chore. Plus there's this weird inhuman quality to it that I can't quite put my finger on. DFW's nonfiction stuff was way better since it forced him to focus on what was actually happening in front of him.

Attached: Infinite J-ACK!.jpg (232x217, 20.08K)

it has evoked zero emotion in me

>Is there a certain age range you have to hit to enjoy DFW?
late teens to early/mid 20s when you're figuring the world out and trying to come up with new unique ideas on the human condition or whatever. also a belief that you're a little smarter than everyone else, which both grants an air of superiority but also guilt

>i didnt get filtered, i just dont understand it!

"nothing happens" is not only about action, you faggot

>abosolute

I won't. Read Ulysses instead.

I was impressed with Brief Interviews when I read it in college, yet I never read anything else by him. Except a few pages of The Pale King which is collecting dust somewhere behind me.

Prose, you failure... Enjoy...the...prose...

I write a lot like the dude in Infinite Jest when I over-edit my tangents and arrange them amongst other tangents, instead of editing them out and aiming for brevity

I've had people read my tangent sperg vomit and go "THIS IS AWESOME AND YOU NEED TO READ INFINITE JEST"

nah infinite jest sucks to read

post some

Yeah that's what's so weird about it. There are parts that reflect reality in really interesting ways, but on an emotional level it's completely inert. The characters don't feel like real people, they're just these wacky caricatures that are mildly amusing sometimes but never relatable. The imagery is good in its way, but it never feels properly immersive. Overall it feels like it's trying way too hard to be smart/interesting at the expense of everything else. Still gonna finish it but I'm not reading any more of DFW's fiction after this.

At least read Incarnations of Burned Children, it's only 2 pages long

Isn't annular a pretty common word?

genius.com/David-foster-wallace-incarnations-of-burned-children-annotated

The Pale King is worth a read, especially the 100+-page novella in the middle.

Yeah see
>college
I think this is kind of the upper limit for enjoying DFW. His essays are great but the long form creative stuff feels almost like reading a very precocious Yea Forums author. It appears to be very difficult for all contemporary authors to break this ceiling of banality that colors modernity and they frequently employ irony/sarcasm/tongue-in-cheekness (DFW being a prime culprit even if he harps on emotional realism). That's why Houellebecq is so liked on here: because he kind of does break through but to me it's just despair porn. Maybe that's all there is to really glean from the situation. I certainly hope not.

lol.

Wasted

The joke is on you

you're retarded.

I had actually started out with an effort post but length was quickly getting ridiculous, that user just spouted way to much non-sense to deal with in one post so I just gave the tl;dr version.

Kys

I'm going to read Submission soon. I liked the first chapter where he talks about knowing Huysmans through his work and feeling like a kindred spirit.

>that user spouted way to much non-sense
It's just my view of things, I'm not trying to argue a point.

Go ahead. I don't want to sour you on him because I myself really enjoyed reading Houellebecq and I think he's one of the most honest authors out there but I'm burnt out on him. Life's not all sunshine and rainbows but it's also not all burnt corpses of emotion. Idk I haven't read his newer stuff, maybe he lightens up with age but that sure as shit didn't appear to be his trajectory with the first several novels.

I get that and was not suggesting you were. But maybe we should explore this abit and see where it goes, can you give me an example of irony or sarcasm in IJ other than dialog?

Sure.
First off, stylistically, everything he writes is so completely supersaturated with irony and this postmodern devil-may-care attitude towards form that his point becomes diffracted into a realm of quirkiness and unreality as put so well. It makes for fun reading (for a limited time) but leaves you feeling hollow. Maybe that's the point, idk I'm not a fan of meta-lit like that.

You want actual content? Okay. Look at the Militant Grammarians. Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants. Mario. Even "Bimmy's" chapters seem like a caricature of what should be his most tragic and poignant character. There's plenty more to draw from as well but it's been years since I read it and I'm not going to beat a dead horse. And why would you exempt dialog from this critique? It's an important aspect of any story.

Dialog is exempt because the characters need to speak with their own voice, not the authors and in a novel which has the problems of irony/sarcasm being one of its themes the author can not really demonstrate why it is bad without having characters engage in that activity. And with that question you demonstrate a serious weakness in comprehension and context.
>Militant Grammarians. Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants. Mario. Even "Bimmy's" chapters
How are those ironic or sarcastic?

You should be able to give at least one concrete example if everything is completely supersaturated with it, not asking you to beat a dead horse, just give an example.

You're not actually supposed to read it.
Just put it on your shelf and tell people you read it.

but user, i rent my books from the library. and when i can't rent no more, i just download them to my laptop :^)

this desu

Attached: ij2.jpg (4624x2080, 3.28M)

Are all Wallace fans this retarded?

is there such a thing as being over-educated?

DFW

Brief Interviews was entertaining.

I read the whole thing, it doesn't get any better. Cringey to me, don't connect with it at all. Not worth the read

I can see people not loving Infinite Jest, but "nothing happening" is the most retarded thing people ever say about books/movies/whatever.

>The characters don't feel like real people, they're just these wacky caricatures that are mildly amusing sometimes but never relatable.
Really? For me it is the total opposite. The scene where MP tries to kill herself, the radio engineer alone on the roof, Hal in the cinema; just some scenes that come to mind that felt incredibly alive to me.

such a reddit reply