This was really just not very good at all. Wow. Not even DFW

Read Oblivion instead.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is very hit-and-miss, definitely not as good as some of his other works.

i also like Infinite Jest, but didn't enjoy the Brief Interviews. i've read all his collections, but his short fiction isn't artful or genuine like the essays. i'd skip Wallace's short stories. i didn't like Girl With Curious Hair at all. bad-spirited parody and esoteric literary techniques.

the real gems of Wallace's contribution to literature are the essay collections.

I haven't read it, but the essays in Consider the Lobster were completely embarrassing.

>>8770165
In what way do you think they were embarrassing? Genuinely curious as they're genuinely considered good even for people who don't like DFW.

>>8770132
im agree

v hit or miss, oblivion was better

and IJ was too long

but the hits in this were p good. Some of my fave stuff by DFW is in here, so its at least worth a skim thru

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>>8770111
I picked up Girl with Curious Hair at a bookstore here thinking I just badmouth DFW too much and I was going to give it a shot and his prose is almost indistinguishable from some of his main influences like Stephen King. I bought Infinite Jest and tried it a few years ago and it was just absolute crap. I have never read a book in my life that "gets 'good'", everything from Paradise Lost, Satantango, Lolita, Gravity's Rainbow, Shakespeare. DFW gets some pass that on the 200 mark the unforgivably clunky prose and ham-handedly cobbled themes will eventually become interesting.

Why are you reading him, when there's not only a ton of great contemporary literature, but a ton of great world literature being written right now, and thousands of years of literature you haven't read yet? You could read Stephen King and watch movie-tier movies and get an almost identical experience, the main difference being that you won't be sent to the dictionary for words that describe a 9-sided dice or slog through a copy and pasted outdated '80s merck manual with technical drug terms.

>>8771345
*everything from... Shakespeare starts out good and reads well

what was going on in the end of the last brief interview, you know when the hideous man is asking the interviewer to 'ask me, go on, ask me, you chilly cunt'
what was he wanting to be asked?

I have only read IJ as far as his fiction goes (and one story, the diaper one) but I have read two collections of his essays and watched interviews with him a bunch, and I think DFW is at his best when he's writing non-fiction. I need to read more of his fiction, but this is the vibe I get from what I have read so far.

I'd suggest reading A Supposedly Fun Thing if you haven't read any of his essays; they are almost always entertaining save a few in Consider The Lobster.

>>8772201
anyone know?