/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14483023]

>"The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal". To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows." - David Foster Wallace

Incredibly eloquent and amazingly beautiful.
This is a simply awesomely put quote.

[Anonymous No.14483179]

megan boyle

[Anonymous No.14483189]

>>14483023
gay
the only rebellion is indiscriminate violence

[Anonymous No.14483193]

Man I love that guy. and he's completely right.

[Anonymous No.14483211]

>>14483023
the most nauseatingly gen x thing i've ever read. it's not even that he's wrong. it's just so cloying and sappy. he make his own proposal sound so unappealing. the other problem -- is it possible, today, to be sincerely sincere, or is that another pretension? wallace himself straddles the line here... his whole image is manufactured. affected. his gay outfit, his absurdly self-conscious top ten list (featuring stephen king and thomas harris). the fact that he was so terrified of his own inauthenticity is what propelled his art, of course, so it would be moot to fault him for his own creative insecurities. the fact remains, however, that we cannot take him particularly seriously as an ideologue of sincerity, as a saint of authenticity, in much the same way that we cannot take hemingway to be a genuine paragon of manliness. both are frauds. pretenders. well, that doesn't take away from wallace's message of course. someone deeply wounded by irony is the most natural critic of it. but it does make the piousness a little annoying. convert zeal.

[Anonymous No.14483251]

>>14483189
Really? That seems like a very strange definition of rebellion. How so?

[Anonymous No.14483295]

>>14483023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4
fair quote, but the source of image is not good at explaining Wallace.
one good criticism is in the comment.
>Interesting presentation of some fairly complex stuff. But doesn't this video kind of miss Wallace's point about the ineffectiveness of irony? His main problem is not with irony/irreverence/self-referentiality itself but with the fact that where these were effective literary techniques in the 60s and 70s, by the 80s they had been completely co-opted by television and marketing strategies (also on television).
>isn't this just another example of exactly what he was originally arguing against: that television has the power to co-opt ways/modes of thinking/experiencing the world, where we always experience that world in absolute solitude, completely alone and by its mediation, always at a distance, never IN it.
>the soft irony and self-referentiality, are techniques used to draw the viewer towards a false sincerity which, in the end, just covers up the emptiness of our lives in world conditioned by total connectivity and total isolation.

I think irony is worn out, but his theory on lost sincerity has been revived much more vigorously with the meta of Reaction videos, Let's play videos, Terrace House-type shows.(similar show in Korea, I Live Alone, is the most popular show in all entertainment section)

[Anonymous No.14483309]

>>14483023
>>14483179
Delighted to see another Meghead spread the sincere news.

[Anonymous No.14483387]

Megan Boyle lives sincerely
Cutesy posting grins severely
Sockless slippers cavalierly
Semiyearly Meg austerely

[Anonymous No.14483416]

>>14483211
i've never met somebody who was serious about anything in my entire life

[Anonymous No.14483421]

>>14483416
Unironically read Liveblog by Megan Boyle

[Anonymous No.14483427]

>>14483211
good post

[Anonymous No.14483541]

>>14483023
Lol reading that aloud always makes my brapper cheeks perspire like a Muslima during a hymen check

[Anonymous No.14484748]

>>14483295
This Anon right here

[Anonymous No.14484766]

Memes aside, DFW is a based gen-x writer.

But jesus fucking christ he was so lost in his own world of sappy, antithetical bullshit.

[Anonymous No.14484767]

David "Counter-Culture" Wallace

[Anonymous No.14484828]

>>14483421
I’ve just read an excerpt on Amazon and I can’t see anything particularly amazing about it. It’s sincere, but in a way that is more just someone quite openly embarrassing themselves on the page - not in any interesting way like Wallace used to write about genuine concerns or psychoses he or America has - but more in the pissing yourself in public territory. I’ve seen more interesting Twitter accounts which are less insufferable. Does it get better?

[Anonymous No.14484970]

Authenticity and individuality are dumb narcissism. No such thing exists. Get over it. Wallace is a hack

[Anonymous No.14485130]

>>14483211
these are the insights i browse for

[Anonymous No.14485161]

>>14483295
God this video is Reddit as fuck

[Anonymous No.14485353]

>>14484828
There's hundreds of entries in Liveblog, and many are quite different from "lol pills" which I think it gets reduced to understandably. The parts I enjoyed most were the senses of optimism and determination found in the mornings, and also how Megan's evenings would sometimes resolve to wholly fix her life whatever the cost, at the start of the very next day, lists upon lists, relentless taskings, all spawned by that abiding dissatisfaction that only attacks the youthful who really shouldn't worry in such severe terms, but so many of them do, and Megan records this regrettable, cringy state of being young and dumb and hating it and trying to get out, or change things for the better, but always with her youthful energies and enticeability and her hot young friends always pulling her away from this noble quest same as if a flute tooting Hafez serpentined through your new restrictions upon the self and accepted from his parade of lace shrouded dancers the skins and jugs of wine that were festively dribbled and chugged and poured unceremoniously over your desire for improvement, sobriety, construction, pragmatism, a new better person, saying whatever Persian singsong came to mind, you could tell from his nonverbals that, maybe there was more to life than simply chaining the self but then, really, where do you go with it once you're so untethered? Megan walks right up to the pit swallowing our civilization and doesn't flinch.

[Anonymous No.14485540]

>>14485353
That last part is some nice prose, maybe YOU should write a book anon

[Anonymous No.14485695]

>>14484828
>It’s sincere, but in a way that is more just someone quite openly embarrassing themselves on the page
>the pissing yourself in public territory.

Yes, you get it.

[Anonymous No.14486223]

>>14483023
It's never been easier to make meaning than the present. As materialism grows, that which eschews it is suffused with disproportionate meaning. In a world increasingly dominated by "value" an act with motivations removed from creating value benefits from the inflated scarcity. It's banal, but these are banal times and the world, for all the explosion of information, is simpler for it. The equivalent of Voltaire rebelling against the church of his age. Such a revolution is bound to be banal because the actors on both sides are reduced to simple caricatures by the infinite distance between them. A clash of infinite difference is a clash of gods and mere humans pretending to stand in for divine forces will always lack sincerity playing the role.

[Anonymous No.14486271]

>>14483251
it's the opposite of what over 99.9999% of people want

[Anonymous No.14486290]

>>14483023
Cringe.

[Anonymous No.14486304]

>>14483023
Did dfw read hegel

[Anonymous No.14486318]

>>14483023
How do you kill yourself wen you have a wife/woman who loves you? Isn't that the endgame of life?

[Anonymous No.14486338]

>>14483251
It conforms to nothing and transgresses everything.

[Anonymous No.14486460]

>>14486318
Mary Karr's feet were pledged to another.

[Anonymous No.14486867]

>>14483179
Sincere on, Meghead

[Anonymous No.14487025]

>first chapter is actually the last !

What a hack

[Anonymous No.14487159]

>>14483211
Well put. Listening to any DFW interview reveals that he's a hypocrite or unable to live by his own values. He should've just read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance, told other people to read Self Reliance, then call it a day.

[Anonymous No.14487325]

>>14487159
Oh no, Anon? Not a hypocrite? You mean like a phony?

[Anonymous No.14487413]

>>14483189
extremely based
I have a deep, yet removed and unwilling appreciation for this.

[Anonymous No.14487433]

>>14483189
Discriminate violence is rebellious against indiscriminate violence which is rebellious against everything else, therefore the rebellion of the only rebellion is discriminate violence.

[Anonymous No.14487466]

>>14483211
He was too aware of his lack of self-awareness, he was disingenuous and wore a false humility due to his intellect. He played dumb to draw people in and then hated himself for having to do so. I'd say that's where his narrative voice really comes from. He'd say something authentic and then over-qualify those statements in a critical framework, thus nullifying the authenticity he longed for. What I think he's saying in this quote is that the next rebels won't be afraid of being perceived as naive, or too critical. An inner pull between the perception of being too academic, or naive is what pulled dfw apart in his writing. In a world of postmodern bubble ideologies spread across the internet the true risk of a writer is committing to a single one. In short, dfw is a hypocrite, but he never pretended paradox wasn't part of his view.

[Anonymous No.14487475]

>>14486318
If that were the end game wouldn't suicide be more appealing? Also, adultery wouldn't exist if that were the case. Your view of success is unbalanced imo anon.

[Anonymous No.14488552]

>>14483211
It doesn’t help much that DFW argues for sincerity in life when the only sincere acts he seems to have done involved brutality, egotistical mind games, and suicide. I feel sorry for Wallace, but his insincere “philosophy” of sincerity has done more harm than good.

Irony is a more sophisticated mode because it forces people to interpret literature, events, and other people on multiple levels, and wrestle and maybe live with the existence of paradox. Or at least duplicity. Too much irony can make people arrogant, but too much sincerity makes people 1-dimensional, reactionary, naïve, and dull. If not thugs.

[Anonymous No.14488573]

The most sincere people in the world are people with Down’s Syndrome. Suck on that, Shocktreatment Bandanna Boy.

[Anonymous No.14488760]

>Irony is a more sophisticated mode because it forces people to interpret literature, events, and other people on multiple levels, and wrestle and maybe live with the existence of paradox. Or at least duplicity.

You have not read infinite jest.

[Anonymous No.14488785]

>>14488552
In theory irony would make people more critical, but in reality people don't discern how they're ironic, they're so impulsively cynical that it muddles the meaning and worth of any piece of art. In other words, by trying to come off as cool and witty most people will disparage even what they have an earnest affinity towards. Irony isn't bad, it's discernment of what should be made fun of is the problem. A problem that within our culture of memes is rarely raised as a concern..

[Anonymous No.14489881]

>>14483023
Let’s argue that this is true, that the next gen. of rebels are effectively the opposite of our modernity, how on earth would these anti-rebels be “sincere” if they’re actively choosing to be a certain way? No one would take them serious like so many who claim sincerely but fail to be.

The next “rebels” will literally be reactionary political inbreds who can’t have a civil conversation alt-right v hard “progressive” left. In terms of lit, they will probably be “make it old” tards, rejecting all forms of modernity in favour of poetry a la homer and sprawling epics a la bible or dante.

(((((This is all if we keep society and we don’t bomb the shit out of each other)))))

[Anonymous No.14490560]

Blump

[Anonymous No.14490642]

>arguments against honesty
you've done it /lit/, this is the new peak of juvenile shit

[Anonymous No.14490680]

>>14483023
>a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law

and I clapped

[Anonymous No.14491135]

>>14490680
>"Sincerity vies in constant balance with irony. We are elements subsidiary to them."
Thus soothed Megan the Bard Enchantress

[Anonymous No.14491963]

>>14491135
Sincerity and irony oscillate to fill the insecurities in their union. Vulnerability cannot exist in the absence of fear.

-me

[Anonymous No.14492221]

>>14491963
>Vulnerability cannot exist in the absence if fear.
I can assure you that there are many a fool out there that are very vulnerable without them even being aware of it.

[Anonymous No.14492246]

>>14492221
perhaps threat/risk would've been a better words, I meant it as an axiom.

[Anonymous No.14492290]

>>14492221
Sincerity and irony oscillate to fill the insecurities in their union. Vulnerability cannot exist in the absence of peril.

The edited version

[Anonymous No.14492512]

>>14492290
I concur.

[Anonymous No.14492657]

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Self Reliance Self-Reliance Self Reliance Self-Reliance Self Reliance Self-Reliance Self Reliance Self-Reliance Self Reliance Self-Reliance Self Reliance

Stop glorifying basedboy faggots who kill themselves with easy methods. Stop glorifying some neurotic self-hating faggot who was unable to live by his own principles. Stop glorifying postmodernists. DFW was an ironic postmodernist regardless of how much he hated the idea of it.

[Anonymous No.14492749]

>>14483023
Sorry rag-head, but post-modern malaise has ruined lit as it has ruined society. The cure for this decadence is not a return to naivete, but blood in the streets. Only when there are stakes do we return to what is essential. Only when facing death will a good man be easy to find.

Those who do not care are those who should not be.

[Anonymous No.14492801]

>>14492749
literally lol.
>If I move everything to eschatological proportions I won't have to think critically about anything grey!

[Anonymous No.14492832]

>>14483023
The case for anime, in one paragraph.

[Anonymous No.14492907]

>>14483179
Where do I start with Megan?

[Anonymous No.14492943]

>>14483023
He's right that the next rebels will be post irony and post hip because that's already happened. He's wrong in his prescription of sincerity, and he's extremely wrong to flavor his idea with the idea that his class, or more likely he - david wallace himself - was the last rebel.

[Anonymous No.14493031]

>>14483023
Sincerity comes from a lack of information, you would have to only see the world in a one track kind of way where something means only what it means to you and your tribe but in the modern age, the internet age, it's impossible. It's not coming back.

It only worked in the past because people lived in tight knit communities with closed worldviews and beliefs. The flow of information was restricted, so you wouldn't one day wake up and think "oh that stuff I believed in since I was a child, it's all bullshit" so you would live your entire life believing in it.

[Anonymous No.14493118]

>>14493031
with the way recommended content and alorithms are going it's possible the internet will become more segmented; this would allow for closed, albeit scattered communities to form with esoteric beliefs and unique art to rise from these far corners. The key difference between these new works and past epics would be their fractured appeal, although, I still believe there are tenants of heroism and idealism that everyone wishes to see in stories. One of these that comes to mind is the idea of the hero taking up a cause that culturally isn't his own, because he believes it is righteous.

[Anonymous No.14493211]

>>14483023
did dfw predict based?

[Anonymous No.14493319]

>>14492907
Where Megan meets Goddess Earth

[Anonymous No.14493330]

>>14492749
>Only when facing death will a good man be easy to find.
I think someone took that
>“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
Quote too literally.

[Anonymous No.14493365]

>>14483023
>rebels
>caring what anyone thinks
this guy spent so much time in his own head it's no wonder he killed himself

[Anonymous No.14493411]

>>14493365
You have a pitifully misguided understanding of rebellion, and it's no surprise the entirety of his quote went completely over your head.

[Anonymous No.14493447]

>>14483023

if you are ironic, or feel like being ironic, then that's not an issue. forced authenticity doesn't make any sense

[Anonymous No.14493457]

>>14488785
Pretty much. To often I see people misconstruing mere observation with intent.

[Anonymous No.14493531]

>>14493365
Every generation of writers rebels against their time, yet follow the through-line of tradition. The aesthetic thoughts of the times change, but the deeper sentiments across the canon never do.

[Anonymous No.14493544]

>>14488785
based

[Anonymous No.14493619]

>>14489881
Based

[Anonymous No.14493625]

>>14492907

[Anonymous No.14493749]

After years of reading Wallace's work as well as everything I could get my hands on about him as a person, my take on this is the following. Wallace would have you believe that, in a world in which literature had devolved into a bunch of goofing off, he stood up bravely and championed sincerity, emotion, and human connection. It's a persuasive vision because who could be against that? Art should be serious and provoke emotion? That's a cause everybody can get behind. But when, exactly, did literature stop being about these things? If you think about it for two seconds, the answer is obviously never. The enemy is a complete fabrication. We're expected to believe that between the '60s and '90s, before Wallace blew the whistle, fiction writers had ceased trying to move their readers by writing about human beings dealing with "human troubles." It's absurd.

So what was Wallace's problem, really? The answer is that he was a huge sap and embarrassed about it. In interviews he would go on and on about his fear of sentimentality, in a way that might convince you he was aware of the trap and knew how to keep it at bay. But the more you read Wallace the more you realize he went on this way because sentimentality was a mode to which he felt himself powerfully drawn.

Look at Infinite Jest, which Wallace was in the middle of when he wrote the quoted essay. Beneath its postmodern presentation, it is hugely sentimental. You need go no further than Mario, the over-the-top grotesque brother with a heart of gold. Wallace spends pages describing how deformed and ugly he is, and how kind. He couldn't have gone sappier if he put a golden retriever in a wheelchair. Then you have all the Alcoholics Anonymous stories, in which Wallace simply piles horror upon horror in a "Feel, damn it!" sort of way, not to mention the scene in which the family patriarch gets down on one knee and explains to the eldest son why pornography is bad. You don't have to be in favor of drugs or porn to think this stuff is heavy-handed. I'm sure those who've read the book can think of countless other examples of its sentimentality.

Basically, Wallace was perpetually at war with his "inner sap" (as his wife called it). He knew if he indulged it he would be chastised ("quaint, naive, anachronistic"), so in this essay he recasts sentimentality as "emotion" and "single-entendre principles." Basically, preemptively, he was saying, "If you criticize my sentimentality, then you're anti-emotion!" If you want more proof of this, look to the Dostoevsky essay. Wallace wrote an encomium to Dostoevsky, calling him a model for contemporary writers. Dostoevsky isn't merely emotional. For all his genius, he is widely criticized for being over-the-top, sentimental, and melodramatic. Wallace wanted permission to be this way too.

[Anonymous No.14493859]

>>14493625
what's the big deal with Megan Boyle?

[Anonymous No.14493945]

>>14493749
I like this interpretation a lot. Wallace claimed the postmodernists replaced emotion in favor of ironic musings, when in fact they just weren't as sentimental as he wanted them to be. There was emotion in these works, but it was treated dryly, not dripping with the author's mawkishness. This sentimentality is what he called authenticity. Sentiment has a place in literature, but it shouldn't be considered the highest virtue. It's a tool, one that should be used to punctuate feelings in a scene, character, thought trains, irony, but never overshadow them. No one wants to read a self-pitying writer, one that makes his reader over-sympathize with the author through his characters, even those that deserve pity like Pessoa also garner respect through their resolve.

[Anonymous No.14494052]

>>14493859
she's middling attractive and has an online presence.

[Anonymous No.14494085]

>>14493859
the weebs of /lit/ needed a new mira gonzalez because they were bored so now we're stuck with megan boyle just because

[Anonymous No.14494088]

>>14493749
so basically he was a giant bitch afraid to write what he really wanted to? i've never read any of his stuff. it seems like it would be easy for normal people to fall into this trap, people who have social lives to maintain. i think the real issue here is name-fagging. all sentimentality is going to be cringe as fuck if you're putting your name on it in the age of the internet where anyone can find out everything about you. they didn't have that in the erly 20th century and earlier, so you read an authors work and you really didn't know much about him, but then TV/celebrity and eventually internet era came and everything became so depersonalized that you would just seem like a faggot for getting all emotional. the answer is anonymous publishing. it brings back that intimacy between author and reader.

[Anonymous No.14494090]

>>14494085
stfu mira

[Anonymous No.14494094]

>>14494088
anonymous publishing is gay

[Anonymous No.14494096]

>>14486318
This is the problem with incels, they put pussy on a pedestal. Having a gf won't fix your problems and magically make you happy, anon.

[Anonymous No.14494103]

>>14494090
no u
don't pretend you don't love me

[Anonymous No.14494107]

>>14494088
The multitude is cold and uncaring. The inner-self is is near antonym.

It's a shame the mob can now see everything, it makes people defensive. Writers nowadays should be like Pynchon and separate their real persona from their work as much as possible.

[Anonymous No.14494118]

>>14494094
>, he posted anonymously

[Anonymous No.14494158]

>>14494103

[Anonymous No.14494166]

>>14488760

I am currently reading infinite jest (600 pages in) and don't understand what you mean

[Anonymous No.14494328]

>>14494085
Megan Boyle has been very generous to this board. She posts OC often and on more than one occasion funposted her feet, which is currency around here.

[Anonymous No.14494412]

>>14483211
all poets, thinkers, writers and artists are ultimately in one way or another not what they pretend to be. We are all Madame Bovary, because it's in the very nature of idealism (in its broadest sense) to be distant from actual reality, and it's in the very nature of art to be a simulacrum of actual life. This doesn't mean, however, that the aesthetical/ethical (in my opinion there is no difference between the two in the domain of art) insights of artists ought to be discarded, in the same vein that hope has value however irrealistic the things we hope for. I do agree that wallace's way of putting it is kinda... meh, but its not an uncommon sentiment in late 20th century literature (but it's also present in some earlier writers like Kierkegaard). For example Sciascia, an italian writer and intellectual, often lamented that the intellectual life of his time was characterized by an uncritical and idiotic deepness-at-all-costs, that the common but positive sentiments of human life were seen with a kind of never said, but always implied suspicion. I do also think that this is one of the most important themes of our age, as internet humour has poisoned our minds with the inability to take ourselves fully seriously and has elevated smug navel gazing as the most correct way of living in the world.

[Anonymous No.14494508]

>>14494412
Does a painting contain all of a painter and the world he lived in? Is a single concerto, limited to a splinter of the emotional gradient a whole that represents the composer? So is art a simulacrum of life? Perhaps just a simulacrum of feeling.

Is Socrates not what he "pretended" to be? He only claimed himself a wise man because he pretended of himself nothing. To admit you know nothing is not pretense, but the acknowledgement that all men lack objectivity.

[Anonymous No.14494514]

>>14494508
Stephen Pinker is objective.

[Anonymous No.14494567]

>>14493859

[Anonymous No.14494568]

>>14494514
Humans are evolving animals just like any other, so any claim to human nature is situated on unstable ground. Stephen Pinker is a scientist of that very field. Ideas once filtered through language are intrinsically unique to humanity(for now) and therefore prone to subjectivity. Noumena is the only objective, and it is by axiom, unknowable.

Although, I see where you're coming from.

[Anonymous No.14494576]

>>14494090
Mira lives as a yiddy grunge cow but her childhood nutrition was exceptionally strong, reflected in her feets pleasing dimensions

[Anonymous No.14494583]

>>14494568
>>14494508
>>14494412

I'm really enjoying the varied interests of this thread.>>14494567
>>14494576
>>14494158

[Anonymous No.14494587]

>>14494583
Are you working on anything, Mrs. Gonzalez?

[Anonymous No.14494595]

>>14494583
Mira, I hope you feel better. I'm sending your kidneys healing cummies that were self-stimulated after a few minutes scrolling through your posted Twitter media.

[Anonymous No.14494790]

>>14494096
The absolute happiest times in my life have been when I've had a gf

[Anonymous No.14494816]

>>14494568
Good post. Couldn’t put it any better myself. This has been a primary critique of one against supposed primitivism and absolute objectivism.

[Anonymous No.14494938]

>>14483023
We already did this, this is how we got Disney owning everything and all art has to have an uplifting and PC message. Pass. Would rather have irony again.