/lit/ - Literature

what would dfw think of AI, especially chatgpt?
https://voca.ro/1vZSuHeaKxsQ

>>18905953
I have an interesting idea for you guys. Everyone focuses on Infinite Jest's theme of addiction, but there's another big theme and that's the cult of competition. This is what really connects the obsessive athletes to all the rehab junkies in shambles. Otherwise the ETA stuff seems mostly unrelated other than Hal's descent since it hardly covers addiction.

DFW was critiquing America's libertarian "freedom and personal responsibility" religion. Can't handle all the freedom and you become a slave to your vices and your most base hedonistic impulses? Too bad so sad, freedom ain't free! He didn't name this critique all the way though, he was still nervous about it and wondered if it was a Literally Hitler way of thinking, so the book has ambivalent anxious conversations about this topic between Marathe and Steeply.

Don Gately, the hero who strives to overcome and destroy his narcotics addiction, has to go to AA and submit to a higher power, both the organization/community and GOD who is described as "miraculously keeping it all together." Oh no, Gately is an authoritarian personality! AA is a bunch of zealous fundies, that's so like restrictive maaaaan! There's a lot of junkies who think they can do it on their own and they end up dead. In this anti-individualism, it's a book that makes an extreme break from the American cowboy literary tradition.

The athletes, then, of course are the flipside of this. As a contrast to the desperately unhealthy junkies they are rising to the top of the system in terms of health and strength, real winners technically, but they are scared shitless of failure and falling into the void. There's one athlete who really emphasizes this tension by pointing a machine gun at his head and threatening to off himself if they don't let him win. Great part, always stuck with me. Gately's foil, Hal Incandenza, can't take the heat and pressure. As Gately struggles out of his vices with help from AA, and rises more and more, Hal is left all alone with no helping community or God, and descends into a full-on breakdown.

i thought so too as a young fella but when I re-read it 10 years later it didn't feel too long at all

>>17441622
>>17441990

>>17354428
why thank you

>>16536804
>Oh, that's a nice word there, thank you.
Wallace was absolutely seething inside.

How do you guys find The Broom of the System compared to the rest of his work?
I really enjoyed it, a lot more readable than IJ and more comedic than his short story stuff (not that it's hard)

How do we solve it /lit/? Specifically how do we remove the midwits here? I mean, you're probably a midwit right? Why don't you fucking leave /lit/ so i don't have to read your faux-philosophical deconstruction on imageboards ever again. or you asking /lit/ for basic life advice, why don't you just ask your dad? Or is your realationship with your dad to sour? Reading books isn't going to fill the void a good father figure would. Maybe instead of reading you dumb fuck you can mow the lawn or watch the voice with your dumb cunt mom. and you can talk about all the dumb cunt things like how JR is the greatest american novel ever written or about your sissification fetish. I just don't want it on MY board. If i see another "/lit/! Give me serious life adivce please" thread again i'm going to kill myself.

Any advice to how we solve this /lit/?

>>14548271
Turgid

>>13583027
i lost.

>tfw you finally realize the meaning of life is love

>>12751537
Tennis

>>12657110

>philosophically wrong
lol

>>12461781
>cook dinner and submit my writing to publications

No

> reader starts insulting the author

>>11739640
it's true

>>11732047

>>11550081
> I wonder if any of these stacies are secretly pious

Fucking got me

>>11521667

Every time I start a new book, on Goodreads I make sure to add the edition of the book with the most pages to my "currently reading" list.

When it's finished this allows me to inflate my reading stats so it seems I've read more pages than I actually have.

I also update my goodreads with short stories but each short story is added to my collection as an individual book so if I sit down and read 12 short stories in one day it looks like I've read 12 books in a day lol

>>11471539

>>11458402
<3