Absolute non crap.

Infinite Jest is an awesome work of art in the way that a 8000 meter mountain is an awesome geographical feature. There's so much going on in there I couldn't even believe it even after I was finally finished reading it.

DD

ctrl-s wrote:Well, the essay on TV and American fiction and the one about the "Death of the Author" in A Supposedly Fun Thing... ARE both academic, though not unfun if you're at all interested in the subjects.

The first of these, on TV and American fiction, really lays alot of conceptual groundwork for Infinite Jest and is definately worth reading if you want more of an insight into that book.

For sometime I percieved, or intuited, a parallel or common essence between some of DFWs writing (esp infinite jest) and the music of Shellac. I can't really justify it though. Maybe it was just because I listened to one whilst reading the other.

he makes fiction seem like nonfiction. just finishing up the last story in 'oblivion' - such strange ideas presented in such a matter-of-fact way. so good. so, so good.

I have just finished reading Infinite Jest for the second time.

The first time was on and off for about 6 months. After finishing it the first time I started all over and read again it in a matter of weeks.

There few books that have made me grin with such incredulous glee as this one. It's rare that I feel that people are really missing out on something if they have not read a particular book, but this is one of them.
Get a bunch of the $10 ten year anniversary copies with DFW looking like planet of the apes on the back and give them to all of your "reading" friends!

With regards to the length: it does not "feel" long. It seems like it's just one of his short stories but with (lots) more words.

ctrl-s wrote:Brett Eugene Ralph: Oh, I'm sure. The larger point(s) contained in Tate's remark and Levine's possibly fictitious one were not lost on me, and seem entirely worthwhile as you've expanded on them. I just think that both anecdotes reek of stereotypical MFA-program-instructor ego-out-of-control assholishness, while the DFW thing may have been slightly assholish but at least was not public or cliched. There are ways and ways to administer needed smackdowns to writing students, as you obviously know.

I never encountered the bad MFA instructor behavior of this sort, but there were times when I wish I had. If you spend a few weeks in any creative writing class, you will come across some smarmy, arrogant (usually undergrad) student with a genuine belief that anything he dashes out in ten minutes contains a delicate but undeniable genius. (And at the risk of making a Yut-like strawman argument, I'll note that said student often has an affinity for Charles Bukowski.) Sometimes egos need to be forced back down to planet earth, if only to remind people that poems are the important object, and a cultivated "poet's" personality cannot compensate for lazy, overemotional, or sloppy writing.

John Berryman apparently had a knack for delivering harsh criticism without being a dick about it. Then again, Berryman also had a knack for getting his ass kicked by Phil Levine after hitting on Levine's girlfriend.

As far as Wallace goes, I've genuinely loved some of his essays, but I find his short stories enormously off-putting and have thus never attempted Infinite Jest.

logorrhea.

ctrl-s wrote:Michael Pemulis jumping up and down so hard that his hat bounces on his head a little bit!

When I read Infinite Jest, I thought it was weird that there was a character in it named Michael Pemulis.

Back in the 80's there was a spoken word/art guy in Phoenix named Dr. Michael Pemulis. He was part of a music & spoken word collective called Poet's Corner, who put out a record on the Placebo (JFA, Sun City Girls) label.

If you go here and scroll down to 1985, you'll see his name.

If I recall rightly, some of the book takes place in the Phoenix/Tempe area. The tennis guy's brother played for the Arizona Cardinals, or something.

Anyway- I'm on to you, foot-notes guy.

I read a lot of fiction manuscripts. The DFW devotees have the following in common:

-their stories are chock full of lush and serpentine prose: highly stylized, approaching virtuosic
-footnotes and semi-colons galore
-sporadic political rantings
-strictly interior conflicts (angsty juvenilia)
-snipes at other people in the workshop
-nu-metal lyrics
-NIN lyrics

DFW writing students, you are largely a ridiculous lot. Go read some Chekhov.

Hehe, I love Infinite Jest. I can't help it. And nobody ever gives it back to me when I borrow it out, so I keep having to buy new copies.

i recently read the short story collection Girl with Curious Hair which very good and completely defied my expectations...Infinite Jest is somewhere towards the end of my very long to-read queue but i'm looking forward to it immensely...based on the handful of stories i've read NOT CRAP at all...