r/davidfosterwallace

The power of DFW’s writing and the pain he reveals as he describes the plight of “Poor Tony,” pages 302-303. I was compelled to reread what I had at first thought too intolerable to read the first time. First time to get this far in IJ. Just gotta take a breath to cool this level of involvement Wallace has summoned with these pages.

My main question is: is the book always going to be completely disorienting or am I eventually going to learn to “navigate” the book more?

Also is it the intended experience that I literally don’t know what’s going on? Not just that I don’t understand why orin is talking about why he is scared of cockroaches but sometimes i literally don’t understand what’s going on in a passage and it looks like word soup.

Any help would be appreciated

Hi,

I was wondering if there were any papers / resources / analysis' of Wallace's fiction in relation to OCD. I have OCD and I can't help but read works like The Pale King as directly representing obessesive layers of thought and spiralling optimisation.

I also wonder if anyone else believes that Wallace might have any experience with OCD (I read somewhere that Wallace spent 1 hour a day writing and 10 hours panicking and thinking about writing). I know it's wrong to armchair diagnose, but I would find comfort in anything related to OCD and his fiction.

Thanks.

I loved the book at 19 and have been rereading. The experience has been fascinating but not for the reasons intended by the author.

I find the hyper-analytical style and the obsession with living in the "right" or "correct" way to live to be signs of decline, both in culture and literature. Wallace deconstructs everything, from phone calls to consumerism, but never really ends up doing anything except more clearly seeing despair.

There is a certain desperation to find something to cling to throughout. It is a book of exhaustion. The novel presupposes that its audience is worn down and exhausted, and has no avenues left but to use their reason to find something to save them. But the emphasis on reason is itself a sign of decline, a culture that can't justify itself in any other way, so it has to use intellect to make a point. It does so with clever observations, or perhaps by writing a 1,000 page novel.

To be blunt, the novel is so trapped in addiction that all of the solutions it proposes or attempts to overcome it are just as bad.

Gately isn't a hero, he is a man who has decayed so much physiologically and psychologically that he is forced to surrender all of his potential and life energy merely to survive. There is not a single healthy character in the entire novel, just characters who have declined less than others. I don't think Wallace was capable of writing about health, only analyzing decadence.

Infinite Jest is what the title says it is: a grand joke. Late-stage capitalism has gotten us to the point where the hyper-intellectuals write hyper-intellectual books to tell us hyper-intellectualism is bad. Why should this be considered compelling or good or insightful?

IMO, it isn't compelling or good or insightful beyond being a sad mark of our modern world.

Thoughts??

Just finished reading Infinite Jest, and have been listening to a ton of Elliott Smith lately, and it's uncanny, how related these artists seem.

Obviously one's a maximalist and comes from an avant-garde literary tradition, whereas the other writes these Beatles-inspired pop songs, but then both write about addiction, family dysfunction, perfectionism, self-consciousness, alienation. There's a woundedness and also a self-lacerating irony. A song like 'Figure 8' -- Smith's cover of a Schoolhouse Rock song -- with its haunting instrumentation and imagery, its sadness, feels like something DFW would've enjoyed.

In his 1996 US Open article, David says "On the subway, a set of tough chicks in leather and fluorescent hair concur that even though Graf and Seles and THAT SPANISH WHAT'S-HER-FACE WITH THE HYMEN IN HER NAME...". I'm Spanish, and I've been trying to think of any female tennis player with that kind of sound in her name, and I don't know who he's referring to (maybe someone named Jimena, or surnamed Jiménez/Giménez?). Does anybody know who David's talking about? Thanks!

Hello! I'm asking this on behalf of someone else - he's read most or all of DFW's books, essays and interviews, so the answer to his q could be in any of the above. He tried asking various AIs but hilariously/pathetically they made up fake passages instead of saying they didn't know. I thought actual humans might know better. Anywhooo, his q -

There's a very brief passage, possibly in Infinite Jest, possibly in The Pale King, maybe elsewhere, where he describes how good it feels when you find a radio dj programming music that's on your same wavelength. (The word "wavelength" isn't actually used, I don't believe.) Any idea what/where this passage is?

I’m looking for writings or interviews from DFW about his time living in Urbana, Illinois. I frequent a park with tennis courts he used to play at and always think about Eschaton when I do and I drive by the elementary and high schools he went to all the time. I’d love to know more about specific places he went etc.

Hello party people,
Above is a really neat survey of the first manuscript of Infinite Jest by scholar and critic Steven Moore. I found it a while ago — I kind of forget how, probably a bit of aimless google searching — but as I was going through it again today, I realized that it probably never received wide discovery, at least not here.
I think there's some really interesting stuff in here, and it makes me wish that some version of the first manuscript was a bit more widely available. While there is technically no definitive evidence that any of this is legitimate, the excerpts are so familiar-sounding and appropriate that I would have a hard time believing that this is the work of an imitator.
Check it out! I'm interested to hear what sticks out to you fellas. The Moby Dick-esque intro is noteworthy, though maybe not necessarily good (I can see why they cut it). Enjoy! Big Chungus.

This has been a passion project of mine for two years, and I'm really happy to share the first part! I hope you enjoy, and you're able to catch some of the references!

I am now 250 pages in, and I have an obsession. But I have a couple of questions. What books to read after ^1. Further, what's the best way to watch his interviews ? I am going on a 4 hour road trip tomorrow and want to download some. Also, are there any other spoiler free YouTube videos?

Also, the book is slowly making sense. Should I reread it after a while or read 10 pages a day with other books ?

Thank you so much in advance

1.) I have Delillos falling man and I'm going to order Consider the lobster and white snow. I chose Delillo since DFW loved his works a lot. I also plan on getting the Pale king later

Looking at my notes after reading "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" by D.T. Max, I saw I had written down

"Brian Eno the big ship, UFOs, dinosaurs?

one of David's favorites"

I gave it a listen about a month ago, and I've listened to it everyday since; literally have *had* to listen to it at least once a day.

I think I may have it played at my funeral as I'm lowered into the ground.