Read the first 80 pages last night

The only confusing part was the chemistry.

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>>9143021
"I am smart"

Not especially, just long, and annoying in places.

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>>9143021
>here I am
>sitting and being smart
>I read this meme faster than you

wow

here i am
reading everything i can
online til 1am
pretending im an ubermensch

How did you get the impression that it was supposed to be difficult?

>>9143021
You're really smart Anon. What did DFW mean by the sentence "I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies?"

I've tried to tackle this divine work of art multiple times but have always been intellectually attenuated to a drooling imbecile by that opening line.

Cool to know there are people out there that can decipher this tome.

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>>9143021
>tfw you will never be as smart as OP
>tfw brainlet
It's not fair, brehs.

>>9143254
the narrator is hal, main character. he's at the university of arizona to be interviewed. The whole sentence is 'I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies" - sentence, sentience, "I am," "I think there I am" (Descartes) "I am in here" (the room, his body, his brain, consciousness) The first two words "I am" responding to the first two words of Hamlet "Who's there?" He's "seated" in a chair (presently seated, or is he saying somebody *sat* him down, forced him, evoking "please be seated,") you see we have a duality of meaning, ambiguity, the unattainability of certainty in language: shades of authority, power, he was probably told to sit in that chair (recalling "chairman of the board." power, hierarchy) by the three men in front of him - hint, hint - three, triangles, fractals, sierpinski gasket, three Deans (father, son, holy ghost = don, hal, joelle / divine comedy inferno, purgatorio, paradiso) The inferno is the halfway house (also dostoevsky's house of the dead), purgatorio is the tennis academy (back and forth, back and forth, forever - get it?), and paradiso is watching the film infinite jest - eternal pleasure, infinite jest, get it - the thing that ties all the storylines together, the God, of hte book, if you will. So Hal is "seated" (power dynamics) in a room "surrounded" (he's closed in, like a wild animal, not human, the subaltern, placed in a subordinate position to the three deans) by "heads and bodies" (think: heads of state, bodies of water - arizona, hot).

>>9143021
I found it very tough to read. The nonlinear storytelling and constant flipping to the back of the book are actively challenging, and Wallace's prose takes some getting used to. I would like to reread it someday soon, though.

>>9143021
Actually just finished this book last night and started it over. People with short attention spans and/or who don't relate to the theme of addiction may have a harder time with this but of course it's not a difficult book. It's just long, "maximist", and anything with a cult following seems to irritate some people.

>>9143303
fuck son, do some more.

>>9143318
>maximist
Dfw readers in a nutshell

>>9143021

>80 pages in

Looks like you've mastered this 1100 page novel and any and all of its nuance and complexity.

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>>9143303
Sick

I was about to buy this a while ago. Whats it about? Is it any good?

>>9143021
Tedious, pedantic, a waste of time, but not difficult.

>>9143555
it's a tragicomedy about addiction + a slapstick dystopian future. It's considered "difficult" (it's really not) because it has a nonlinear narrative and a lot of required footnotes. It's hilarious and very sad. Very very entertaining.

>>9143021
>80 pages
>couple of hours

topkek

>>9143021
it's difficulty is proportional to how much you know about the history of literature and philosophy. When I first read it as a raw pleb I thought the same as you. Several years later, with decent enough knowledge of lit, philosophy, and even math I appreciate his subtleties and wider project much more. Still 500 pages too long though

i got to about 80 pages in as well and gave up on that long endnote about the history of the wheelchair assassins.
do i have to read that now or can i come back to it when it's referenced again later

Everyone here is basically saying the same stuff --- it's not by any means very hard, just very long and purposely dense to force the reader to pay attention, and to itself be a meditation on the concept of attention.

>>9143632
That actually sounds about right, not only are the pages very large and the font pretty small, the writing itself is very dense --- not difficult, just very elaborate and detailed and almost autistic.

>>9143021
>Is this shit really suppposed to be difficult?
No, it's just long

>>9143266
reverse image search only takes me to 4chan archives and fake twitter profiles

who's this autistic qt?

>>9143021
It's no more difficult then game of thrones, or any other book with a big cast of characters and many subplots. In terms of prose, it's about averge difficulty. The only hard part were the ebonics chapters.

>>9143208
literally underrated a f

>>9143303
excellent analysis, v. accurate

>>9144344
the ubermensch part, while well in virtue, ends up being clumsy

>>9143303
You forgot to mention that 'heads and bodies' is clearly phallic symbolism. DFW wants us to understand the patriarchal power structure.

>>9143028
>Dingus Foster Walmart
Idk why I laughed so hard

>>9143303
>autism
kys

It's hard to keep up with all that's happening, and sometimes the language gets kinda obtuse, but it's not a boring book that doesn't gives two fucks about its reader like Joyce and his modernist friends.
Sometimes it gets a little hard for me because english is not my first language and he can start describing minutia that I wouldn't even realize I didn't know the vocabulary of, cuz maybe I don't even know it in my first language,

>>9143303
Anon pull this shit out of his "ass" meaning it's bullshit (as in complete dribble) making it an excellent shitpost with potential life of pasta (this entire board)

>>9143208
Love it. Glad I'm not the only one whot tought of the song while reading >>9143094

>>9143021
Pat yourself on the back my friend. You truly are the dankest memer here

>>9143571
This
B
H