"I liked it." "...." "What?" "...."

this is a preconversion dfw novel. it's from when he was a smart aleck, before he became an AA member, before he believed in christ. as an object of scholarly study for husky bearded khaki-wearing grad students who lust for japanese girls, it is interesting, because wallace at the time was under the spell of a lot of "literary theory," which he would later rightly dismiss. later on he would call theory "a whole lot of obfuscation whose sole raison, it seems to me, is to make the humanities as inscrutable to outsiders as the sciences." he wouldnt visit europe until 2006, when his friend jonathan franzen dragged him there to see all the crumbling buildings.

>>8507511
Post feet.

>he didn't like the cabin in the woods story

>>8507541
Nah. It was actually a lot less pretentious than Infinite Jest or any of his more "sincere" books.

Actually my favourite DFW. very funny and with a beautiful ending

I never understood why it was a signed copy of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. There's no way DFW didn't know it was published posthumously because of his father, but yet there's no obvious symbolic meaning for it being this way within the context of the novel. Obviously this is one petty example, but it's indicative of the many times throughout the book there seem to be pointless and irrelevant little features that seem included solely to confuse since they don't appear to symbolic or thematic relevance, at least to me. Basically when there are many sections when I've no idea what he was trying to get at and I'm honestly not convinced he did either. I still liked it, though, just wanted to mention this grievance

Are there any footnotes in it?

i really want to read this actually. was debatnig picking it up when i was at the bookstore, full price. actually im going to order it now.

>>8510366
No.

>>8508807
It's a joke ya dip.

I don't really like any of DFW's fiction, especially the novels. Some of the short stories have interesting ideas, but I think they're just not as strong as his non-fiction. Anyone else feel the same way?

"Pynchon?"
"..."
"Who the fuck is Pynchon?"
"..."
"Get out of here before you get demapped Harold."