/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11623908]

Is this the end? has he finally been exposed for a fraud?

>Readers of Wallace’s other works would probably do a double take here. David Wallace’s congratulating and self-congratulating gestures here match perfectly with the kind of self-reflexive manipulation Wallace has repeatedly railed against in “E Unibus Pluram” and other works. In the short story “Octet” from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, for instance, Wallace speaks of the type of real-world person who tries to manipulate you into liking him by making a big deal of how open and honest and unmanipulative he’s being all the time, a type who’s even more irritating than the sort of person who tries to manipulate you by just flat-out lying to you, since at least the latter isn’t constantly congratulating himself for not doing precisely what the self-congratulation itself ends up doing (125).

Viewed in this light, David Wallace becomes a narcissistic, self-absorbed narrator who performs concern and empathetic thoughtfulness as a means to court the reader’s favor and ultimately draw attention to himself. This again, seems to be a decidedly symptomatic gesture that recalls Sedgwick’s account of the paranoid critic who avoids bad surprises by anticipating them in advance: “Anything you can do (to me) I can do worse, and anything you can do (to me) I can do first – to myself “(131,). Thus, the real aim of David Wallace’s self-reflexive disclaimers is not so much to cater to the reader’s interest but to guard his narrative from potential future reproach.

[Anonymous No.11623912]

As long as his work is enjoyable, literally nobody cares.

[Anonymous No.11623924]

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is his magnum opus.

[Anonymous No.11623955]

Sure he intended to anticipate critics' responses, since this wasn't exactly just any amateur author, but does that make him a fraud?

Maybe, except of course not. In art you can be a fraud and it doesn't matter very much to what extent you were a fraud so long as your work has value of some sort.

I've bought two of his novels and I don't care even a little bit about his own personal transgressions because I've got my own to worry about. But his prose is good and his ideas are, to my uneducated eyes at least, at least somewhat notable.

Maybe I'm an awful person, which I am, but if I never read authors who were similarly awful people, I'd have never stumbled upon my own favorite authors. People aren't good people.

So who cares. The art is what matters, not the artist.

[Anonymous No.11623965]

>>11623912
But that's just the thing his work; is utterly juvenille and jejune!

[Anonymous No.11623977]

>>11623908
I use this technique on people in my life a lot then explain that I use this technique, but the very nature of it is irretrievable. I'm stuck in a cycle of selfishness despite any selfless deeds I attempt. send tweet

[Anonymous No.11624005]

>>11623908
>Is this the end?
No, the end was September 12, 2008
>has he finally been exposed for a fraud?
No. The conclusion that his narrative needed to be guarded from the future is patently obvious in interviews. Why does he wear a headband? To stop being so sweaty on camera. Why does he seem so skittish and make such strange faces we have made reaction images out of? Because he was extremely self conscious of how his words would be portrayed. Everything he wrote and published could be edited and refined, but during an interview you don't have that luxury. He was a man who like to anticipate the response of the public and act accordingly.

[Anonymous No.11624087]

>>11624005
>No, the end was September 12, 2008
*pause for dramatic effect