is the guy who knows everything about The Pale King and David

Yeah I'm here.
Just kidding I'm not him.

>>9980284
Haha, you fooled me.

>>9980274
I've read the whole collection a couple of times. I might be able to help you out. What do you want to know about that story in particular?

>>9981046
I guess I am having trouble connecting all of the thematic dots of the story. Right now they are kind of disparate strands that I can't quite put together. On one level the story is about not being mindful of the other, whether it be your neighbor or people who live on the other side of the planet. On another level the story is about art and how art is essentially about the 'shit' that the artist deals with as a human. On another level DFW is criticizing contemporary culture as being shit and a distraction. It gets kind of tricky though when I try to parse what he is saying about himself, if he is talking about himself at all. It would seem to me that he definitely is talking about himself and the duality of being the writer and the man behind the work. He is both Mr. Motlke and Skip, both the weak and passive artist who does his art to make the others around him happy and the pragmatic journalist who is searching for the upbeat angle and balancing the tension of working for a company who is superficial and propagates shit and doing real, honest work. (I'm not too fluent in theory or criticism so I'm not sure if this is at all off base or anything but I know DFW does take this type of theoretical problem seriously in his other writings yet I thought he claimed to have moved past that by the time he wrote Oblivion). I guess in an essay I would note the recurrence of the symbol of the twin. At one point the narrator says that Skip's challenge for the poo story is to find an upbeat angle in the suffering channel. Now I am also confused about what the suffering channel is metaphorically. It of course stands in as the type of 'shit' that DFW is indicting the culture for being so attracted to (and I guess also another point would be that there is something human about needing to see the pain of others that can't be found elsewhere now? I'm not too sure) but does it also represent DFW's work? or the work of the artist in general with respect to the suffering of life? Is the artist's job in other words trying to find the upbeat angle in life and is DFW by the end suggesting that this cannot be done? I guess this last question is the big one. However the last sentence of the story leaves me wondering whether he is 1. criticizing the self reflexiveness of metafiction (what happens when the artists looks at the mechanics of work) 2. a commentary on the American people watching endlessly the harmful products (shit) of their culture come back to bomb them or however this can be appropriately phrased or 3. is he talking about the uniqueness of human consciousness and how humans are really just the universe looking back in at itself, which in turn happens to be shit?


I only asked the Pale King guy because he mentioned infidelity in one of the PK threads and there are obviously themes of that in this story and DFW the author seems to figure prominently in this story too.

Bumping before I sleep

Nobody wants to discuss lits favorite author

no one wants to discuss literature w/ me?

>>9981347
Jesus, you've read into this story more than I have. You pretty much nailed all the key themes, but I think you're overlooking how significant the time setting is. The spectre of 9/11 hangs over everything that happens in the story. While these people run around tending to their insiginificant little tabloid, most of them will probably perish in the impending terrorist attack which is on some level a reaction to the very rampant consumerism Wallave inveighs against through the Moltke character. The final line, you rightly point out, is interesting, especially the part about 'amorphous light', because to me that recalls yet again the destruction and chaos at the WTC on Sep 11. Like you though, I can't quite put my whole finger on it, and that's in part why I love this story so much.