>"Mr. Difficult"

MFA programs were a mistake.

>>8348592
First post best post

>>8346972
I don't know. I read Freedom for the first time last week. I plowed through it in a few days and couldn't put it down but at the same time didn't enjoy any of it. Can someone explain this Franzenian discrepancy?

>>8348695
His career is a meme. He's lauded as some intellectual writer so when plebs read his easily-understood and non-threatening books they can feel good about themselves. He's the Christopher Nolan of literature.

>>8348695
I've always believed in reading widely at first and then slowly developing your taste through rigorous rereading and (re-)evaluation.
I'm not ashamed to say I was a pretentious prick when I was younger (16-22); it pushed me to do more, read more, read better. I was the guy who read (and name-dropped) Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Gaddis, Borges, Cortázar, Milton, Spenser, etc...in high school and early college.

>>8348695
He specifically aims to write what you could call "page-turners" which are fairly easy to digest and get through, but at the same time has delusions of being part of the "high-art literary tradition". You get the worst of both worlds with him because he doesn't really commit to either one.

>>8348742
>who is David Foster Wallace
>what is the new sincerity