David Foster Wallace Thread

Good Old Neon is the only writing worthwhile reading by him.

Start with his more journalistic Essays, they are written in a very plain and easy style, then move on to his short prose, Brief Interviews and Oblivion are both great, then IJ, then whatever you like

I was just thinking about how I'd have someone start with DFW. I can only speak for his most known works, so I'll list what I think about those

I think >>9427807 is right.

Start with:
>A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
>Consider The Lobster
then go to
>Forever Over Ahead
>The Depressed Person
>Oblivion
>Brief Interviews
then finally
>Infinite Jest
>The Pale King

>>9427778
This. It's basically the one piece he went full retard and just inserted himself as the main character.

>>9427923
Sure, he's mostly right, but you don't need to read all of his essays, and you certainly don't need to read Brief Interviews or Oblivion before IJ.
I think reading E Unibus Plurum and a couple essays from ASFTIWNDA is enough to hop in IJ.
However if you do not like IJ, read all of Oblivion. It's very interesting to compare his work post IJ and pre IJ. There are very clear mood or tonal shifts when you read ASFTIWNDA and Consider the Lobster. The same kind you get when you read Brief Interviews and then Oblivion.

But really, despite what we all say, you can jump into IJ, there's a lot to like and you can always come back to it. Don't feel any need to read Broom - ever.

>>9427960
>the one piece

He inserted himself as the main character quite a bit, but I suppose someone who says things like "full retard" just "cba" to actually read anything.

>>9428001
>He inserted himself as the main character quite a bit

Obviously. But not to this degree. Everything just made sense after reading that, his whole persona, his suicide, the "this is water" speech, him going to tax accounting classes etc.

And it all blew under the radar with everyone focusing on the last bit when he's in heaven and "what did he really mean with time is not linear geee hmm".

I've read IJ, The Pale King, The Broom of the System, Oblivion and Consider the Lobster. Is there any other must reads? A Supposedly Fun Thing?

>>9428128
Ya. And Franzen's essay which gave DFW the nickname "Career Move".

>>9428178
I just tried reading Franzen's essay and I have the same problem with it that I did with Freedom, which is that there are too many characters and plot points in it that do not have to do with Franzen's much more talented dead friend. I have a private conviction that Franzen, and most fiction writers, are actually much more self-absorbed than DFW; he was just the only one to put his brain in a box and let everyone see the self-absorption along with all the opinions about broadcast television. Actually let me take that back.

>>9428128
Everything and More is actually pretty good as long as you skip section 6 (except for the IYI footnotes) once he starts having to put math in between all the stuff about why he wrote Infinite Jest.

>>9428677
>Everything and More is actually pretty good as long as you skip section 6
No, it's really not.

>>9428683
I'll bite. You didn't like it? Or have you been told not to like it or? I liked it cause he seemed to be having fun with some really really dull concepts.

>>9428688
>you'll bite
>have you been told not to like it
Holy shit lad. Do not talk to people like this.
Do you have any background at all in math, or did you just pick it up because it's a pop-math book by DFW? I guess it's fine to have fun and like it, but it's rife with error.

>>9428716
Sorry! What I meant to say was, is there a negative consensus about it? I haven't heard anyone talk about it at all, really, but I assumed it just bored people.

I thought some of the errors were deliberate. i.e. page 234 he finishes an (I think) fake topology proof with by invoking the E.V.T. (which he also gets weirdly wrong in IJ):

"the set of which it is the derived set has no limit point, and thus by the B.W.T. must be finite, and thus by the E.V.T. must take its own minimum value of 0 members." Which is, I have faith, a suicide joke that you can only get if your topology knowledge is good enough to know he's talking gibberish.

Elsewhere on the same page: "Cantor stressed... that the numbers in these various domains remained entirely independent of this geometric identification, and the isomorphism served, really, as an aid in thinking about the numbers themselves." i.e. he's using the math to talk about basically separate concepts. OR am I just covering for a man who couldn't even handle a BS in math???

>>9427960
NO

David Foster Wallace isn't Neon, you narcissistic fuck. Neon cannot write that well about himself, being a narcissist.

DFW is writing from a standpoint of contempt, if you can't see that, you're really immature. The narrator of the story is contemptible and DFW doesn't like him.

>>9428128
a supposedly fun thing is great. make sure to watch blue velvet and lost highways for the lynch essay.
>>9427766
i would suggest reading in this order
start with
watching
>blue velvet and lost highways
for the lynch essay in
>a supposedly fun thing
>the broom of the system
girl with curious hair can be read here if you want but it's not really that good.
then move on to
>infinite jest

(suggested break so you dont burn out)

>brief interviews with hideous men
i havent read
>oblivion
or the pale king yet but i thinks it's generally accepted that you read
>the pale king
last.

>>9428851
Lol _lol

>>9428851
No he's definitely Neon. Two words: mail fraud

no wait

self contempt

>>9427766
start and stop with the pale king

>>9428666
Franzen is a hack but at least his shitty longform journalism got me to read Robinson Crusoe

>>9427923
lol just read IJ. i went IJ>Broom>and currently almost done with Pale King then planning the collections.

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>>9427766

What was David's view on religion?

From my understanding he had an on and off relationship with christianity...

>>9427994
IJ is probably best read first just because it's the one book of his that's discussed the most. Though with how long it is, you could read some of his short stories and essays before you're done with it. I know Broom of the System gets shat on, but I found it more entertaining and less pretentious than IJ as a whole. To me, his best writing overall will always be in Brief Interviews which is the collection where I feel he hit the sweet spot between experimentation and properly employing his pedantic stylistic tendencies as a writer. Oblivion was a lot weaker as a whole even if there were a couple of memorable things about it.

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>>9427778
>tfw you've realized that narrating from the vantage point of having ended one's body is not a literary quirk and death is wholly tranformative given the right state of mind