>dfw thinks the mean value theorum is complex math

>>8765589
Great thread

tss whys it mean does it have a bad tempa or somethin

the mean value theorem would be nothing without roll #notmytheorem

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>>8766450
rolle ffs

dfw was a brilliant writer but in terms of logical intelligence he was a fraud. knew how to talk in terms that sound fancy and mathematical when in reality he didnt know shit

>>8766461
A lot of "great" authors fit this profile. They surround themselves with people who actually know what they're talking about and mimic their language despite half-understanding it at best - or read many books by others who have done this. The list of renowned literary writers with a postgraduate education is depressingly short.

>>8766464
mmmmhm. interesting

>>8766471
(replying to myself)
this is why i cringe when i read people calling DFW a genius so much, in the end of the tour when lipsky goes on as if hes a transcendent human a la stephen hawking or whatever in the car. as if he's so fucking smart that he needs to moderate himself around normal people, give me a fucking break. presumably everyone on this board is around the upper intelligence level and some of my best friends are idiots and i get on with them just as much as anyone else.

if you read dfw's biography you realise that of course he was smart. However a lot of his supposed "extreme intelligence" is just down to his lets be honest narcissism and wanting to be seen as better than everyone else intellectually; so he just did hours upon hours of work to get the best grades and therefore be seen as some savant. even his supposed erudition everyone goes on about in infinite jest dfw in his later years, where presumably he became more mature, admitted a bit sheepishly that it was down to him sitting writing with books with knowledge on the subjects he supposedly had an inherent "encyclopedic knowledge" in sitting open on the table.

another hint towards this is the footnote where he clarifies that even though Hal is seen as a mega genius they don't take into account the hours and hours of work that he puts in, weirdly devoted to memorising the OED. as if any normal intelligent kid would do this, similar to dfw spending 5-11 in the library every day to add more substance to, probably, his ego and his image of himself as an extremely intelligent guy. i mean he even did his friends papers for them, and got slightly enraged when he got an A- as opposed to an A. and but of course it's extremely obvious that hal is just dfw wanting to write about himself, an enhanced version of himself that he probably wishes he was in some way.

>>8766481
oh god and theres also his essay on tennis when he goes on about his "weird proclivity for intuitive math" and a load of technical jargon that means absolutely fuck all, e.g like sin(h)/x with h being his opponents skill level and x being the wind velocity or something. embarrassing

>>8766483
never read dfw and never will so I had to look it up

>"Because the expansion of response-possibilities is quadratic, you are required to think n shots ahead, where n is a hyperbolic function limited by the sinh of opponent's talent and the cosh of the number of shots in the rally so far (roughly)."

topkek

>>8766507
jesus i read that a long time ago and had banished it. thats fucking bad.

>>8766507
I mean... that's not that bad.

>>8766481
The biography definitely shows he had feet of clay.

Don't underestimate how well people can perform when they are terrified, which was basically the position he put himself into.

I was also surprised at the extent to which IJ is basically autobiographical. If you were his mother and read that, what would you think?

>>8765589
>thinks
he's dead though

>>8766614
sorry i only read excerpts of the biography and not the entire thing, could you clarify what you mean by terrified? obviously im aware of his neurotic nature but im interested.

also why did he hate his mother so much? i mean as i said i only read bits which particularly appealed to me such as his school years, struggles with mental health and addiction so i dont know much about that.

>>8766626
He was kind of trapped in having to prove himself, not always making it, breaking down, and then the stakes just kept getting higher for his ego. I think a lot of his intelligence was desperation in a way. I mean, he isn't the easy going guy in his 'factual' essays, but he is very convincing in it.

It wasn't clear why he hated his mother, just that he blamed her somehow for his mental health problems.

Avril Incandenza is not exactly a disguised version of his Canadian Grammarian mother, really the villain of the whole book.

If there is a secret to IJ, its that he is all the main characters. He is obviously Hal, he's Gately (that was the bit that surprised me personally), he's Orin and he is James Incandenza as well.

This doesn't diminish it for me at all but you have to think that when he finished it, he realised he couldn't do it again, you can't write two autobiographical novels.

The Pale King has much better prose and so I think he did have more in him but, dunno, maybe he didn't believe it.

I think Oblivion is an amazing collection of stories btw, and I don't understand why /lit/ never, ever talks about it. For me it settles all doubts.

>>8766654
very interesting ty

>>8766483
shit, that's really embarrassing

>>8766654
> he's Gately (that was the bit that surprised me personally)
Gately is Wallace's mouthpiece for his opinions on addiction and recovery. Wallace quit his drug addiction, but not his narcissism which was his real problem, through therapy and he looks down on people that use Methodone or other physical treatments to cure their mental problems.


The chapter on the woman with "real depression" was especially disgusting, especially coming from a man who took anti-depressants for at least a decade for "insomnia". Is that why you killed yourself after you stopped taking them Davey? because of the insomnia?

>>8766598
He's literally just using random math functions to sound smart

>>8766654
Reading the book again, it's astoundlingly obvious that he would kill himself. He tried so hard to prove he was more intelligent than he was

>>8767849
no, it makes sense. Making you the one using random words, to make one not sound smart, making you not sound smart?