[a / b / c / d / e / f / g / gif / h / hr / k / m / o / p / s / t / u / v / vg / vm / vmg / vr / vrpg / vst / w / wg] [i / ic] [r9k / s4s / vip] [cm / hm / lgbt / y] [3 / aco / adv / an / bant / biz / cgl / ck / co / diy / fa / fit / gd / hc / his / int / jp / lit / mlp / mu / n / news / out / po / pol / pw / qst / sci / soc / sp / tg / toy / trv / tv / vp / vt / wsg / wsr / x / xs] [Settings] [Search] [Mobile] [Home]
Board
▼ Settings Mobile Home
/lit/ - Literature

Name
Spoiler?[]
Options
Comment
Verification
4chan Pass users can bypass this verification. [Learn More] [Login]
File[]
  • Please read the Rules and FAQ before posting.

08/21/20New boards added: /vrpg/, /vmg/, /vst/ and /vm/
05/04/17New trial board added: /bant/ - International/Random
10/04/16New board for 4chan Pass users: /vip/ - Very Important Posts
[Hide] [Show All]


[Advertise on 4chan]


File: IMG_1974.jpg (114 KB, 1024x682)
114 KB JPG
Was Infinite Jest a meme after all?
>>
>>25619363
yes dipshit
>>
THERE IS MORE
COMPLEXITY
ON ANY GIVEN
AISLE TEN
>>
>>25619385
Fuck you
>>
>>25619363
Elaborate
>>
File: infinite breast.png (2.22 MB, 1105x1423)
2.22 MB PNG
infinite breast
>>
File: imfinnajizz.jpg (127 KB, 700x1079)
127 KB JPG
>>25619363
There hasn't been another American novel since that's surpassed it. What a scathing indictment of American literary culture. And I think Infinite Jest is pretty good.
>>
Infinite Jest is the only book worth reading. It really has it all. Once it came to be, it invalidated all other literature, and entertainment. It is mankind's greatest achievement.
>>
>>25621261
>mankind's greatest achievement
what about the debut of the south korean/japanese girl group Illit?
>>
>>25619363
Idk I only read the first 3 chapters...

Probably good idk...

I'd have to fully read it.
>>
>>25619363
i read infinite jest this summer and to be honest i haven't been able to read any novel since that i like quite as much. when i started being an avid reader i would try to latch onto any masculine archetype but after reading dfw and discovering how all of his male characters are betas who get anxious after smoking too much weed and are addicted to porn/junk food i honestly don't think i've ever felt as personally seen when reading in general. how sad.
>>
>>25621270
Moka is still on hiatus so it's a rather incomplete achievement
>>
>>25621245
I wish they sold these as replacement slip covers so I could take it to the coffee shop that way.
>>
>>25621270
I thought you were gonna say AYCE KBBQ / hot pot
>>
>>25621270
You will never be a ragebaiter
>>
File: 5759089.jpg (16 KB, 264x400)
16 KB JPG
Roberto Bolaño — 2666: A vertiginous, multi-part epic that shares Infinite Jest’s moral urgency, dark subject matter, and massive structural ambition
Published posthumously in 2004, Roberto Bolaño’s sprawling, enigmatic epic is widely considered one of the most significant literary achievements of the 21st century.
>>
>>25619363
It was a jest.
>>
it's honestly good. it became a meme because of pretentious dickheads name dropping it, but it's an engrossing book examining the emptiness of modern life
>>
its not worth reading and has had no impact or influence on anything. I'm not joking.
>>
I always hear it's the worst of the Meme Trilogy, that both Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow are better.
>>
Brutally mogged by DeLilo.
>>
If I like Infinite Jest, what should I read next that's similar.
>>
This book changed my life. Honestly. DFW was the defining writer of this epoch
>>
File: smug.jpg (10 KB, 241x250)
10 KB JPG
>>25619363
No, it's the greatest American novel of all time.
>>
File: 1381617.jpg (437 KB, 1509x2000)
437 KB JPG
>>25619363
Yes. Tards wanted people to read three doorstopers

>>25623988
This >>25623626
And Schmidt's Bottom's Dream (It's a Shakespearian reference title too)
>>
>>25624040
The greatest American novels of all time.

Moby Dick
Invisible Man
And... I can name a dozen better than DFW
>>
>>25624060
>Invisible Man
H.G. Wells was British. Moby Dick was great, but I have no need for that much information about whales and whaling.
>>
File: infinite jetons.png (227 KB, 254x392)
227 KB PNG
>>25619363
for me, it's moving anywhere in the world I want
>>
>>25619363
Infinite Jeets: A Story of Canada
>>
>>25624063
Wells is The Invisible Man
Ellison's Invisible Man is 100% American
>>
>>25624063
>I have no need for that much information about whales and whaling.
this but the junior tennis and pharmaceuticals
>>
>>25619363
It's charismatic but incomplete. The fatal flaws of the author's personality are also the texts fatal flows. You can see the talent snuffed out through its own failures. By idolizing Infinite Jest, you're idolizing failure. It's a spectacle of a failure, like a fireworks show that all goes off at once, but it is a failure even if stupendous and entertaining and notable in some fashion.
>>
>>25624196
Wait is it incomplete or a failure?
>>
>>25621642
not that deep lil bro
>>
>>25624196
>i am a heckin MANAGER at mcdonalds iRL! this world famous author is clearly a "failure"
>>
I kind of dislike his prose, but he seems to have been capable of writing a better one when he really wanted to. And even if his prose is "unliterary" there is a value in it when he uses the same words the actual character narrating would use. he did well but like so many other modern writers serve as a noxious damaging example to aspire to.
>>
>>25623988
White Noise by Don Dellilo. Turns out he inspired DFW to some degree, earlier post-modern lit but similar vibes at points
>>
>>25624054
>Bottom's Dream
Like getting dicked down?

>>25625059
Will check it out
>>
>>25619363
The title tells you it's a joke
>>
File: dfw oblivion.jpg (42 KB, 666x1000)
42 KB JPG
>>25624196
while i wouldn't go so far as to call it a failure, i definitely agree that it is very rough around the edges. and there are some sections where it just feels like he's borrowing too much from delillo. i found the tennis sections to be the least interesting to be honest, and the whole eschaston scene was really just ripped off from end zone.

even though i don't think i like it as much as ij, i do think oblivion is his best work. it just feels tighter and more mature, and dfw was going at the modern emptiness theme in more angles rather than just focusing on addiction. if there's one dfw story i'd recommend someone to read, it's mister squishy. it is genuinely one of the most unsettling stories i have ever read. i have just started a career as a recent college grad and terry schmidt honestly scares me because of how easy it is to be that complacent in work and in life
>>
>>25625215
Working title was The Entertainment.
>>
>>25625645
A Failed Entertainment, actually
>>
File: IMG_3584.jpg (221 KB, 1125x2296)
221 KB JPG
Check out my lock screen
>>
Inman Square, too, is someplace Gately rarely goes anymore, because it's in Cambridge's Little Lisbon, heavily Portuguese, which means also Brazilians in the antiquated bellbottoms and flare-collared leisure suits they've never let go of, and where there are disco-ized Brazilians can cocaine and narcotics ever be far away. The district's Brazilians are another solid rationale for driving at excessive rates of speed, for Gately. Plus Gately's solidly pro-American, and north of Central Square's clot and snarl Prospect St.'s a copless straight shot through eerily alien lands: billboards in Spanish, plaster madonnas in fenced front yards, intricately latticed grape arbors looking seized and clutched at, now, by networks of finger-thick bare woody vines; ads for lottery tickets in what isn't quite Spanish, all the houses gray, more bright plastic madonnas in nunnish getups on peeling front porches, stores and bodegas and low-suspension cars triple-parked, an all-out full-cast creche-type scene hung from a second-floor balcony, clotheslines hanging between houses, gray houses in rows squished right up next to each other in long rows with tiny toy-strewn yards, and tall, the houses, like being squished in from either side distends them. A couple Canadian and Nuck-owned stores mashed in here and there, between the propinquous Spanish three-deckers, looking subjugated and exiled and etc. The street shitty with litter and holes. Indifferent drainage. Big-assed girls stuffed like stuffed sausage into cigarette jeans in always trios in the twilight with that weird blond-brown hair Portuguese girls dye their hair to. A store in good old English advertising Chickens Fresh Killed Daily. Ryle's Jazz Club's upscale pub-type bar, guys in tweed caps and briar pipes in mouths at angles taking all day on a pint of warm stout. Gately's always thought dark beer tasted like cork. An intriguing single-decker medical-looking bldg. with a sort of tympanum over the smoked-glass door with an ad that says COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF CONFIDENTIAL RECORDS that Gately's always wanted to poke the old head in and have a look at what on earth they might be up to in there. Little Portuguese markets with food in there you can't even tell what species it's from. Once at a Portuguese take-out at Inman Square's east end a coke-whore tried to get Gately to eat something that had tentacles. He had a sub instead.
>>
>>25624063
illiterate
>>
>>25626829
Yep. No discernible talent. White noise at length.
>>
>>25623662
Correct
>>
>>25626829
deep
>>
MR. P. TOM VEALS [A tiny little caucasoid Tootsie-Pop-stick-puppet body and
enormous face that's mostly front teeth and spectacles]: Yo.
>>
>>25626845
so he predicted the s oyjak? damn this book really was ahead of its time
>>
its like that specific brand of late 20th century early 21st post-techno post-cold war psychic rot. think foucault panopticon filtered through legacy vestigial wasp etiquette and old money codes, except you’re playing the part with zero capital because you've liquidated your entire existence into drugs. pure high-society dysmorphia while living like a total degenerate. bliss. great book. lots of autistic digressions that suck you in
>>
>>25625644
I wish he finished The Pale King.
I think oblivion has some of the most interesting framing and structure ive had the pleasure of reading
>>
>>25626829
I love how Gately is DFW's racist excuse
>>
>>25626829
BR BR BUNDA BUNDA
>>
>>25626829
My my, maybe Harold Bloom was right....
>>
So what is the Entertainment in your life? Mine is BBW pornography of course.
>>
>>25627327
RawlyRawls erotic art.
>>
>>25619363
Well I mean firstly the book is obviously finite.
>>
>>25626868
We could have just the Gately chapters and keep 90% of the worth of the book.
>>
>>25627327
Overwatch
>>
>>25627327
YouTube videos about geography
>>
infinite jest is a very popular meme rn just look at the catalog
>>
>>25627792
Any good recommendations (books or videos)
>>
>>25625864
I sometimes wonder how crucial is to get the graphic design of the cover right.

Yesterday I saw the Court of Thorns and Roses romantasyslop book at the airport and thought that the nice looking cover probably contributed to half of the sales of that shit.
>>
>>25628574
IJ without the blue sky cover sells 1/10 as many copies, regardless of DFW's protests to it
>>
File: dq1.png (2.79 MB, 962x1439)
2.79 MB PNG
>>25627327
Mostly gay erotica. Thinking about poor Tony
>>
>>25627327
4chan
>>
playin tennis wit the boys
>>
>>25623635
Is it really good? I’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow which was just nonsense, I read DeLillo’s Underworld which was almost entirely just nonsense apart from the beginning and the end so I’m really hesitant to read another post-modern work.
>>
>>25630742
Infinite Jest is far more accessible than Gravity's Rainbow
>>
>>25625644
Oblivion is such a brutal read thematically but I keep coming back. The only stories I don’t care for are the one with the spider guy and the burned child one. I’m probably just filtered by the first. Second is too intense for me (I have a child)
>>
>>25631237
fair those are the weakest in the collection imo, i also found the suffering channel to be a little too long. the others are amazing though, don't know which to pick as my favorite. the title story was like a cross between john cheever and david lynch, good stuff



[Advertise on 4chan]

Delete Post: [File Only] Style:
[Disable Mobile View / Use Desktop Site]

[Enable Mobile View / Use Mobile Site]

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective parties. Images uploaded are the responsibility of the Poster. Comments are owned by the Poster.