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David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

newyorker.com

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Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#11

Post by lotw_dot_site »

Infinite Jest was largely a collection of various scenes, some of them recurring and some not.

Probably the main recurring scene involves an extended conversation between Remy Marathe and Hugh Steeply on a hilltop overlooking Tuscon. Marathe is a legless French Canadian agent of uncertain allegiance and Steeply is a US agent posing as a female reporter called Helen. Closely following the back-and-forth between the two allows the reader to put together major aspects of the grand narrative of the novel.

My favorite scene was a one-off involving the younger kids (pre-teens) at a tennis academy playing an extraordinarily convoluted and physically intense game called Eschaton (think Risk played with tennis gear). If any particular thing made the 1,000 page slog worthwhile, I would say it had to be that.

The footnotes alone could have made up an entire book.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#12

Post by zemvpferreira »

themisto wrote: post #2

I haven't read any books by David Foster Wallace, though every time he comes up I feel obliged to share a fantastic speech of his about finding joy in the monotony of life. I heard it years ago and it's always stuck with me. Video[1], transcript[2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI [2] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/this-is-water-by-david...

A great speech but this is the first I hear it interpreted as an ode to monotony. I've always thought of it as an essay on the value of questioning our default way of thinking in the day-to-day, on the implicit biases we carry with us into the world and how they can trap us in loneliness.

Not ashamed to say I've cried more than once listening to it. It's a lifesaver.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#13

Post by boucher »

rintakumpu wrote: post #9
npilk wrote: post #3

Though unfinished, I highly recommend the Pale King. It's not as consistently great as some of DFW's other works, but the highs are as high as anything else he wrote and IMO it's a little more accessible than Infinite Jest. (For a new reader, I would start with some of his essays, e.g. Consider the Lobster: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf )

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

I cannot imagine reading this book and skipping the footnotes.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#15

Post by havblue »

rintakumpu wrote: post #9
npilk wrote: post #3

Though unfinished, I highly recommend the Pale King. It's not as consistently great as some of DFW's other works, but the highs are as high as anything else he wrote and IMO it's a little more accessible than Infinite Jest. (For a new reader, I would start with some of his essays, e.g. Consider the Lobster: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf )

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

I think it helps to read summaries or explanations of infinite Jest and not just dig into it. Eventually you get a good mental picture of the entire timeline, the rough details of how the dystopia works and how the story is told in a loop.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#16

Post by rockostrich »

rintakumpu wrote: post #9
npilk wrote: post #3

Though unfinished, I highly recommend the Pale King. It's not as consistently great as some of DFW's other works, but the highs are as high as anything else he wrote and IMO it's a little more accessible than Infinite Jest. (For a new reader, I would start with some of his essays, e.g. Consider the Lobster: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf )

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

Yea, I don't really get the take that it's inaccessible. The footnotes are sometimes annoying, but usually they're hilarious.

I haven't read it in ~10 years but I think it's even more relevant, poignant, and hilarious today as it was then since we're just seeing more and more of his predictions about consumerism and self-image come to life.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#17

Post by platz »

> “Infinite Jest” transformed private torment into a vast metafictional diagnosis of our entertainment-bedizened cultural condition, and, weirdly, sounded the first notes of a quest for an irony-free sincerity that has become a ruling style of David’s generation and the ones that followed. - http://www.salon.com/2012/09/07/i_know_why_bret_easton_ellis...

> I sometimes wish Wallace had never written on irony or given that famous commencement address. Both are unfairly used as a stand-in for his entire ideology. He is in turn praised and totally dismissed by large groups of people who have no idea what his larger project as a writer really was. Also I'm pretty sure that he's made it abundantly clear that he never meant to say irony has no proper place in society, merely that it becomes a crutch and a shield for many who would rather not engage earnestly with the world. - https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/274v9c/what_han...

https://medium.com/@kunaljasty/a-lost-1996-interview-with-da...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/05/good-people

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#18

Post by rockostrich »

lotw_dot_site wrote: post #11

Infinite Jest was largely a collection of various scenes, some of them recurring and some not. Probably the main recurring scene involves an extended conversation between Remy Marathe and Hugh Steeply on a hilltop overlooking Tuscon. Marathe is a legless French Canadian agent of uncertain allegiance and Steeply is a US agent posing as a female reporter called Helen. Closely following the back-and-forth between the tw…

> Probably the main recurring scene involves an extended conversation between Remy Marathe and Hugh Steeply on a hilltop overlooking Tuscon.

The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, if you will.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#19

Post by iggldiggl »

lotw_dot_site wrote: post #11

Infinite Jest was largely a collection of various scenes, some of them recurring and some not. Probably the main recurring scene involves an extended conversation between Remy Marathe and Hugh Steeply on a hilltop overlooking Tuscon. Marathe is a legless French Canadian agent of uncertain allegiance and Steeply is a US agent posing as a female reporter called Helen. Closely following the back-and-forth between the tw…

> My favorite scene […] Eschaton […]

And a band that apparently has some David Foster Wallace fans amongst its members did a music video based on that chapter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni7T18UUBUI (The Decemberists - "Calamity Song")

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