Its part of a compendium of novels deemed essential reading to becoming big brain westoid canon nerd by /lit/. However, since it comes from :amerikkka: Im worried that in the end its going to offer nothing of substance, liberal ideology, and snarky anti-populist messaging and I'm only going to realize this 75% through reading it and cry because im slow at literary analysis.
What if it was infinite vest and it was a huuuge jacket without sleeves
Infinite zest and it's a book about peeling the world's largest lemon
It's easily my favorite novel. I'd put DFW at a similar place as Mark Fisher: really brilliant at finding ways to detail the feeling of living in capitalist modernity, not so many answers on how to get out of it. There's a lot of absurdist plot points and long sections on tennis technique and lurid descriptions of drug addiction. Not a good read if those are topics you avoid. I think for a guy writing in 1996, he predicted perfectly what entertainment and the internet were going to become, and commented on how addicted to it we already were and were going to be. I think it holds up. But then again, I'm the kind of nerd that loves reading an overly detailed novel that's too long and mandates having a second bookmark to keep your place in the end notes. I like it's trick of forcing you to be aware at all times the medium through which you're engaging the text.
I’d put DFW at a similar place as Mark Fisher
This fucking sold it, gonna read it fr
It's...fine...it's just fine. It's a fun read but it's nothing you won't have read 5 times before if you're into high-concept SF-Fantasy. The plot is The King In Yellow.
I like a good footnote-crawl and complex plot as much as the next person, but more structured books like House of Leaves or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell do that better, and the rest is just the kind of semi-disconnected stunt writing that people like Joyce and Pynchon and even Banks in Use of Weapons did better.
semi-disconnected stunt writing that people like Joyce and Pynchon
i'm sad that Inherent Vice is the only Pynchon movie we ever got, but I guess all his other stuff is unadaptable.
I think adapting The Crying of Lot 49 wouldn't be particularly hard.
I reckon you could give Gravity's Rainbow a good hard try with some cuts, but the last third is so David Lynch it'd seem derivative.
I should read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell again! I'd totally forgotten it existed, so thanks for reminding me!
The plot is The King In Yellow.
havent read that classic yet so this will b interesting :bean:
i listened to it as an audiobook twice back in 2010-2012 (56 hours). It doesn't contain the footnotes, however the cited numbers come up in the audiobook. I read some of the footnotes, but not all of them. It's interesting.
Pros (imo)
Lots of cool worldbuilding that is hampered by DFW's gen X "apolitical" schtick. It shows a different neoliberal hellscape than the one we got. Like a 2010s America where 9/11 never happened. Wallace "predicts" things resembling instagram filters, smartphones, something resembling North American EU called "ONAN" where America, Mexico, and Canada become a neoliberal superstate. Canada and America are on the brink of war because of Quebecois separatists. There is an annexed region of canada that americans use to catapult their garbage into. New creatures evolve there. A germophobic lounge singer is elected president and invents a policy called "subsidized time" where corporations purchase the entire calendar year from the federal government and uses it to advertise in a quasi-Chinese-astrological way (Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, etc.). Part of the mystery of the book is solving what orders the years are in so you can figure out what happened when. Dates are presented as belonging to subsidized years, instead of being given numbers like 2011, etc.
Cons (imo) (general CW)
There are some trans characters who are presented in let's say a very dated way unfortunately. There's grotesquery that doesn't really serve the story. Flippant use of slurs, cheesy "written by a white guy" patois for working class black characters (Wardine Be Cry), descriptions of violence and sexual assault and rare diseases that get so gruesome without really moving the "plot" forward. There's no plot because it's purely literary.
some extra details.
I'd say there are two people who are close to approaching being the main character. Don Gately, and Hal Incandenza. Gately is a reformed drug addict and criminal in his 20s. Hal is a bourgeois tennis kid who is succumbing to drug addiction in his late teens. There are two main settings. ETA, a bourgeois tennis academy, and Ennet House Rehab, downhill from ETA. The stories of the bougie kids at the tennis academy is symbolically contrasted with the characters at the rehab center. There is overlap. There is a lot of focus on addiction. A psychological weapon that threatens to kill thousands of people is unleashed by the headmaster of ETA, a man who commits suicide by sticking his head in a microwave. The psychological weapon is a film so addictive, anyone who sees it cannot stop watching it. They neglect all bodily needs, etc until they die. The film is stored on a SD-like cartridge.
The psychological weapon is a film so addictive, anyone who sees it cannot stop watching it.
Avengers: Endgame
I really liked his thoughts on new sincerity but I've never been able to detect any of it in his writing
It's my favorite novel. Podcast Chris and his wife read it on a podcast if you'd rather that medium
an american pop star read a book??? The sun must be rising in the west and setting in the east smfh
It's a fucking mess. His editor mistook ADD ramblings for artistic vision and didn't bother doing their job. The footnotes' footnote's have footnotes. About the only thing it did of note, besides a few story within a story mechanics, was create a better platform for his 'This is water' speech. But overall it just isn't worth the time, and I think most people who claimed to have read it, didn't, or just skimmed it.
It’s a fucking mess.
The footnotes’ footnote’s have footnotes.
:miyazaki-laugh: signs of a must read 10/10 kino novel
Lol, I'm unfamiliar.
I did just realize there should have been another footnote mixed in there somewhere though. 😅
I liked it well enough. I loved reading his essay "E Unibus Pluram". Much shorter, too.
the book works better than it has any right to. It is genuinely interesting and absorbing and unique.
Eh if it isnt brainwormed and is genuinely entertaining I think ill give it a shot lol thanks for the rec.
lol whats the trope about are they usually annoying libertarian types who think their brains are huger and betterer than the sheeples?
