The Utility of Irony

David Foster Wallace's opinions on Irony.

Basically he found that irony solves no problems and overall just bums people out.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4&t=332s
harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf
exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

forgot the link
youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4&t=332s

Surrealism, irony and pissing off marxists go hand in hand
Read about Dali sometime

How good is Infinite Jest? How easy is it to read compared to Atlas Shrugged for example?

DFW had a complicated relationship with the ironic mode - it was only later in his career that he started to distance himself from post-modernism... which of course also coincided with his suicide.

Fucking long and takes like 300 pages to get going. Lot of footnotes you're going to want to read. Worth reading at least once, can't say about rereading it as I never did.

I tried to read on of this guy's books after it was recommended to me by several people. He's basically a confusing windbag. I couldn't get anything meaningful out of it and gave up. I'd say Atlas Shrugged is a lot easy to read. Rand is a windbag too, but she writes in a simple style.

>Cognitive dissonance damage my incomplete ideology.

What a fag.

agreed I wouldn't waste my time with IJ (again). His nonfiction pieces are among the best, though - dude really was a genius in some respects.

It's not the easiest read but it's worth while.

It's not a terribly easy read, but I enjoyed the fuck out of it, meme or not. There's a lot going on and some parts you wonder what relevance it has to the bigger story. But there are some amazing setpieces and big payoffs. It's not for everybody but as soon as I finished it I literally went back to page 1 and started again. You may want to start with some of his lighter reading. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is an easy and fun read.

DFW yearned for sincerity and traditionalism, but knew to be taken seriously in the world of (((modern high art literature))) your work had to be steeped in irony, criticism, and modernity. Watch his interviews. He is terrified of not being taken seriously if he steps outside these culture-of-critique boundaries.

He earnestly tried to write a novel about the soul-destroying managerial state, and it drove him to take his own life.

I make it a point to not read things written by suicide corpses.

read some of his essays first

most of it will probably bore you to death but the parts that pay off are worth it

I think I can understand why, but if you have a good handle of yourself. Some of it can be very useful especially with the resurgence of post modernism due to the internet, and meme culture.

best book to read at 20 desu
makes you work hard to get through it
tells you that working just to impress and further your social standing is a trap

Unironically the best piece of fiction published
after 1990

Who is this Dali?

Enjoying it right now but it is a difficult read but its rewarding. Don't know about Atlas Shrugged, i've heard its a lolbertarian fever dream (im not 15 anymore so i've moved past that ideology), really two totally different works here.

I know it’s not his best work, but I really like “brief interviews...”

The only time I have ever been truly depressed was after reading his biography. It took me like 2 weeks to get back to normal.

Glad to see DFW getting some respect and recognition on here. In a what are you reading thread last week a group of anons and I had a good discussion on him.

I was watching DFW last night. Great minds think alike, or you're a stalker.

Confucius told us exactly that 2500 years ago and in one sentence. Book sounds like a waste of time.

well IJ is entertaining af

>those ETA winter scenes are the comfiest

That was one of the stupidest fucking videos I have ever watched.

The Don Gately scenes are the best, especially in the last couple hundred pages of the book. I liked Pemulis, though apparently DFW didn't intend him to be a very likeably character. He's just a Chad, but a clever one. Lots of great characters and scenes. I really could have done without that early section written in ebonics, though. It's clear that DFW never met a black person in his life and I don't think it really had much relevance other than introducing some minor characters that didn't show up until way later.

Surely it's worth spinning that message in a way that modern readers can relate to? Also, it's over 1000 pages of small text, obviously there's more to it than something that can be condensed into one sentence. Then again, if you don't go into it at least trying to enjoy it and get something out if it, you definitely won't

>listen to DFW interview
>interviewer asks tough question
>DFW starts to say something
>stops to consider his words
>quickly exhales through his nose
>shifts in his seat
>responds thoughtfully

Here's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". A good essay and decent taste of his writing style. If you don't like this, you probably wouldn't like most of IJ.

whoops forgot link

harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

Took his own life because he quit his anti-depressants cold turkey.

>Dali
n Communism surrealism encountered a discourse which questioned not only the practicability, but also the political legitimacy of its
mission to bring about fundamental transformation. Indeed here we
encounter the perennial paradox
between the role of the artist and that of the
revolutionary; the intellectual and the insurgent"

That's old hat, I'm innovating new posting styles right now.

I took a creative nonfiction course with David Wallace at Ponoma back in '94. We weren't allowed to show anyone our essays outside of the class for some reason. He seemed naturally intelligent, didnt need to look at any notes or textbooks or prepare for any lectures, he just knew his stuff and was super casual.

I saw him talking to a girl on campus one day. He uncharacteristically wore a Fila sweatsuit, the kind that looks like it's made from the same material as parachutes, and trainer sneakers with a matching bandana. That was his pussy hunt outfit apparently. Several times a week, same outfit, I'd see him hitting on women in it. I once saw him wearing it while carrying an identical outfit from the dry cleaners, he had like 4 sets of same Fila sweatsuit.

I asked him about it in class and he said we aren't allowed to discuss anything unrelated to class while inside class, the same way we can't show anyone outside of cass our essays. A student called out "but Dostoevsky isn't in this class and last week you talked about replicating his black tea obsession to test its affects on your own writing". Wallace stared blankly at the student with dead eyes for 30 seconds in dead silence then said "you just got knocked down a full letter grade. Any other smart asses? Didn't think so." and pushed up his glasses with his index finger.

I remember telling myself this guy will either be super successful or kill himself.

God I want this to be true.

kek

you sound like him, maybe throw another couple dictionary pages at your sentences and I'd be convinced. guess the course payed off

It's a /lit/ copypasta

Could you possibly share the sentence? I'm pretty interested now.

Am I missing out by not having any interaction with this man's work? Despite delving into philosophy and the occasional western classic, I'm not much of a /lit/ guy.

ahahahaha

Beautiful painting. Dropping in on this interesting thread

Worthless garbage, nothing he wrote is worth the time it takes to read it. Post modernist bullshit all around

>Post modernist bullshit all around

Who do you favor?

I'd say it's worth checking out. At first he comes across as a bit pretentious, but I think, as another poster mentioned earlier, he was terrified of not being taken seriously. I think he really was a good guy with a big heart who just couldn't take the existential dread. He's in this weird grey area between pop literature and serious literature, but I think for the most part it works really well, with occasional moment of genuine greatness and other moments of not-so-greatness. On the whole, Infinite Jest is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.

(you)

Don't spend it all in one go champ

I think the issue being communicated here was that irony is actually incomplete. Recognizing shortcomings is only half the battle.
It's good to be self critical as long as a person can get past it and grow.

>after 1990
DAS RITE

exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/

Discuss

I don't really get Cormac McCarthy I felt like I should have enjoyed this book but finishing it felt like a chore. I rarely felt that way with IJ. Also the gratuitous violence in IJ was way more fun.

>self-admitted pleb
Richard Poe's audiobook for BM is top tier, highly recommend it. It really is a book that gives you what you put into it. For me it was like a time machine, I actually felt the same feelings people in that same situation would have felt. It was all based on real events, pretty much every character was real, including the judge, who would be one of the most terrifying villains to ever be on screen if a film was ever made of it.

That's a lot of words.

Who?

This guys gets it. Blood Meridian might be one of the best books ever written. It took me a summer to get through, not because I didnt enjoy reading it, but because you really have to savor every page.

A few years later when I was a resident physician, I would make thick packets full of articles that I would distribute to my medicine team for their learning. On the title page I would always have a quote from blood meridian.

Very focused on the rehab plot line. Hard to say that the whole book (with political / family / tennis plot lines) was Calvinist propaganda wrapped in a postmodern wrapper.

>A few years later when I was a resident physician, I would make thick packets full of articles that I would distribute to my medicine team for their learning. On the title page I would always have a quote from blood meridian.
Haha, that's fucking great, man.

he is right about people need to be more genuine and less cynical

I'm only about 1/4 of the way in, but so far this writer seems to be both the very thing he's complaining about and disgustingly liberal. I can't say I disagree with him 100%, though.