/lit/ - Literature

>>12545441

I've read all three of DFW's novels and frankly prefer The Pale King to Infinite Jest. He matured a lot as a writer and a human being from 1996 to 2008. There are technical flourishes and thematic concepts in Infinite Jest that I really love, but I also find the novel extremely insufferable at times -- a tendency to induce eye-rolls once every few chapters. DFW, particularly early DFW, sabotages the otherwise brilliant aspects of his writing by being such an affected, self-important twat (this is most evident in Broom of the System and declines incrementally with each subsequent work). The Pale King is much more controlled in this regard. It best represents the "sincerity" he claimed to strive for yet somehow failed to consistently achieve in previous works.