Is it true? Is it true that there's some repressed alarm

Alienation

I'm alone

Im alone

I'm alone.

The scope of the world requires us to accept the world mostly as it is, even if the world is horribly, terribly fucked up in a hundred trillion ways. Mass media and globalization gave us the knowledge of others' suffering but no power to resolve it, and there's no turning back the clock on getting rid of that knowledge. Most choose to ignore it; some choose to weep; a few choose to do an unnoticed something to try and address it.

im alone

>>7838702
"we'll shove a boot up your ass
it's the american way"

Donalt Trump is a symptom
of a much deeper sickness.

Why didn't DFW mention capitalism at least once in IJ? It's a bit unsettling that he had no class awareness.

>>7838747
are you serious? because I will write a list if you are.

too tired for bait.
(nothing wrong with not getting any of the symbolisms of dfw tho)

>>7838747
he's american

>>7838727
Are you female?

>>7838755
A list of what? Yeah, I'm serious. Although I have to admit that I arrived at this conclusion somewhat hastily: I haven't read all of IJ, I simply searched it for "capitalism" and it came up empty. I've also read his non-fiction and interviews, and he didn't mention it there once, either. It seems like the issues he talks about, like over-consumption and corporatization exist outside of a more general system, or he just doesn't acknowledge it. It's weird.

>>7838762
i'm a concerned citizen.
a deeply troubled,
deeply concerned citizen.

>>7838768
>no class awareness
a list of examples that should prove that dfw knew that there are poor people and rich people (that hopefully does not spoil anything and was made from memory)
>the thing where only the poor kids put one sock & shoe after the other
>the scholarship of john wayne, who comes from a miners family
>the "wadine be cry" part
>the 10 y o kids that smoke crack in some alley
>etc
so dfw knew about classim. There are very few middleclass people in the book. Most people are either rich af (Hal/Orin) or poor af (Gately).
And that is no accident.

>no capitalism
the book is full of examples of hardcore capitalism going on
>statue of liberty with whopper in her hands
>year of -product-
>accounts of this one guy that did not invest in coca cola when he had the chanche
>etc

the point is, dfw made a world in which rich and poor are extremely divided and capitalism is roaring form every rooftop.
So why did he not write -capitalism- once?
because it is clear that it the system in operation.

the book is about choices, not about economics. The two main places, ETA and ennet house, are basically closed & moneyless systems.
Money is not a driving factor of the story, therefore there is no need to talk about it.
It also does not matter which class you belong to. There are upscale and poor people living in both ETA and Ennet house and they all have problems. But even though Don gately has like a fuckton of debt, this fact is only mentioned ONCE in the whole book.

tldnr: IJ is about choices and emotions and not about money. Both rich an poor people make choices and have emotions.

i hope that clears up what i was trying to convey, i am tired af and typing is hard. if you have questions/want to debate ill fix myself a coffee & some nicotine.

>>7838768
>this is how sjw/rbooks really 'read' literature; find reviews,analysis, next see if it fits your ideology or can be twisted to do so; if yes, it's great, if not:muh sonogy, "old white man",etc( if the author is non white (ie not north american or west european, non straight, not male) its great anyway, because 'cultural authenticity)'
5/10 bait, kek/10 lulz

>>7838702
i think that's a mixture of your isolation, lack of healthy relationships and possibly lack of accomplishment.
let's not shit ourselves the only world we really experience is our own. if you have nothing going on in your life and you want meaning to all the white-boy ennui you're feeling you start to look for problems externally when in reality you should just stop being a little bitch and try to fashion a life worth living for yourself.

>>7838808
Thanks, tired af anon.

>>7838747
I hope for your sake you didn't actually read the book, because if so this is the dumbest thing I have ever seen.

>>7838719
that's very good. address it.

>>7838808
Yeah, thanks again for the in-depth post, instead of calling me a faggot and moving on. I won't comment on the book itself further, for fear of triggering others, but I will clarify some things:
>>no capitalism
I didn't mean that it wasn't portrayed in the book. What I meant (and wondered about), is if he made the explicit connection between all those things (subsidized years, debt, poverty, etc) and capitalism. Because a lot of people talk about those as if they were separate issues, and not just symptoms of a bigger thing. That's the usual narrative in the media and pretty much every where else. It's hard to infer whether he writes about those problems as if they were inevitable and "human nature" or if he's critical of capitalism/neoliberalism, with awareness of the fact that it's not the only possible socio-economic system.

But yeah, that's probably not the point of the book at all, anyway.

>>7838830
Look, I'm not saying it's bad. And I know I should have read the book before making such claims, and I have said as much. It's just that it's something that has been on my mind for a while, and I didn't have the patience to wait until I finished the book, so I did a low-information conclusion, and admitted as much.

Also, you should stop clumping everyone into the SJW pile, just because they don't share your ideology. Especially if it's capitalism, then you're a reactionary.

WARDINE

>>7838707
AND I NEVEEEEEEEER
HAD NO ONE EVER

So does this book ever get good? I currently am reading it for a class and I'm on around page 100 or so, I think, and it is physically exhausting to read. Every so often there's a good phrase or passage but the whole book is dragged down by its formatting and unnecessarily loquacious descriptions and showy vocabulary. It comes off as incredibly forced and pretentious. It's like the Patient Zero of mediocre Brooklyn banal esthetic.

I can see that the book has some promise and that Wallace has some talent, but it's all wrapped up in frankly juvenile attempts to show off and it just makes it come off like some smug undergrad trying to impress his writing workshop.

Something I thought of just now: Does he use metric units of measurement so it's more confusing and obscure to US readers? I have a hard time working out the imperial units since they're so uncommon here, so I just usually skip them if they're not essential to the story. I'm guessing not a lot of people who read it can picture a 200 kilogram girl or a 3-meter tall man off the top of their head, can they?

File: jsqAUyT.png (860KB, 887x1097px) Image search: [Google]

860KB, 887x1097px

>>7840724
>
Also, you should stop clumping everyone into the SJW pile, just because they don't share your ideology. Especially if it's capitalism, then you're a reactionary.

>>7840919
For me I started really lovng it around p 200-300 or so (the middle third or so was my favorite part) because it's when the disparate characters et al start to come together and things begin to make more sense. Keep in mind also that DFW chose to reveal information in IJ in a "fractal" manner; little information at first, more later, still more later. It takes until later in the book to get a better picture of the world, the characters, background events, etc. I'd encourage you to stick with it but if you really dislike it there's no harm in quitting, it's a long ass book for someone who's not enjoying it to plod through.

>>7840919
I'm about 500 pages in and thinking about stopping. I sort of feel the same way; just don't feel like I'm getting much out of it.

>>7838762
dude you're not on /pol/

>>7840919
>>7841203

i am currrently on my 3rd reading of IJ and until now, it gets better everytime.
Also:
The beginning of the book is its end, so you should immediately start reading the first chapter after you finish the last one.

wallace said that he thinks that fiction should not be easy.
I am not a native speaker, but i made it through, so you should also be able to.

>it's a chapter written in ebonics
MY GOD, AGAIN! WHY? It's like the book is trying to be hard to read on purpose. What is even the point of this shit? I can't understand half of if, I have no idea who those people are, and why it has to be written like this. Fuck!

>>7840919
>It's like the Patient Zero of mediocre Brooklyn banal esthetic.
I love IJ, but I'll steal this line Anon.

>>7842697
try to read it out loud
it helps me when book is written in an accent

>>7840724
Being a reactionary is a good thing though. It's not a slur like "socialist" or "liberal"

>>7842697
This is the only part I skipped in the book. I genuinely felt embarrassed for Wallace there

B A N A L T R U T H
A
N
A
L

T
R
U
T
H

>>7842720
I guess I won't miss much if I skip over it, right? Because it's just a pain to read. It's the "It was yrstruly and C and Poor Tony that crewed that day and everything like that." one.

>>7838702
I think it's the loss of religion

>>7842735
>>7842720
It's really not worse than most of the other chapters in that book. It's just become socially uncomfortable in the past 2 decades to write something like that.