If the social class of an author gives you difficulties, then by all means avoid DFW. If you don't particularly see any humor in postmodernism, ditto. There's plenty more to read.

I don't have the thread cred to contradict Mr. Arctos, but GwCH didn't end up the author's own favorite in particular; and i can't in good conscience recommend Pale King to anybody -- if depression is contagious, that book is a carrier. Easiest entry is indeed the nonfiction, A Supposedly Fun Thing... and especially Consider the Lobster; or, just plough into Infinite Jest with permission to skip bits that don't grab you.

It's certainly not the minor-epiphanies-of-ordinary-people thing that's been the fin-de-siecle approved choice, though.

Never be intimidated by post count. Yours was of unusually high quality.

Given the parameters presented, my recommendation was grounded in a sense that GwCH was more likely to find favor with Lucia than Oblivion. Reasonable people can,and will, disagree, and my guess is that Lucia just isn't a DFW person (though no doubt for better reasons than Ellis).

Apparently there's a new book about him out. I never read anything but some of his essays, but I heard about this new book on NPR (of course) and am interested to learn about him. I think we may share some experiences, except that he was brilliant.

Hah, if social class alone gave me difficulties I'd have some very empty bookshelves! Ditto postmodernism (almost every notable work of fiction published since WW2 has been described as 'postmodern' by someone).

On the one hand I'd like a good writer to get big hype and recognition in their time. On the other, I suspect DFW's ascent to the 'genius' category may have been driven as much by the need for someone to play that role as it was by what he produced. Those big novels, brand-bracketed with Pynchon and DeLillo... Looking at reviews of his short stories, though, he seems to have had an impressive talent that promised a lot. Going to check some of those out.

I’ve pretty much read all of his stuff. Infinite Jest is my Favourite Book of All Time. I can’t properly articulate why, however, as it excited some primordial lizard-like section of my brain. He writes about boredom really well (too well in large chunks of Pale King – I wouldn’t start there). But most of all, he’s hilarious, eliciting real coffee-out-the-nose/people-avoiding-you-on-the-bus laughter. His short stories could be exhilarating reads; they could also be a real slog. Ditto his journalism. For a singular piece of sustained brilliance, I’d read this. I don’t really know what postmodernism is, so I can’t tell you if he was a poster-boy for it or not.

Cheers, off to read that now.

(No-one really knows what postmodernism means.)

OK, five drab, mirthless pages in I've found a diverting observation:



I grew up in a broadly similar environment, so that's familiar ground to me. Jonathan Meades disposed of a similar point quickly in Double Dutch in the midst of a few score more provocative, funny, resonant ideas.

I will continue to haughtily ignore DFW's non-fiction, no one will be alarmed to learn.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


I think it means just that there are no more rules and there's no point in trying to discover what it all means because it doesn't all mean anything apart from the meaning we impart on it. Or something.

I'm currently working on a post-modern view of Christianity. Don't ask me about it. I just started this morning. Should take me another 50 years to be ready to present.

Bleeding heck, I don't envy you your work. What's that for?

There's a good review of the DFW biog up on The Quietus, if anyone's interested.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


That's a great piece. Thanks, LL.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


Just a hobby. Not my work.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


Yeah, really good.

It feels wrong, given that he's dead, and how he died, but I confess, this made me laugh:

"Traumatically pecked once, as a child, at the Champaign County Fair, I have a long-standing phobic thing about poultry."

Woody Allen might have written that, except it would have been a gag.

This seems oddly coy:

"A stallion is a male horse. We hunker down and have a look upward, and suddenly for the first time I understand a certain expression describing certain human males, an expression I'd heard but never quite understood till now."

Are you really not allowed to use the phrase "hung like a horse" explicitly in Harper's magazine? Or did DFW think this circumlocution sounded wittier? (It doesn't, for my money.) And, I mean, I know he's writing for an East Coast readership, but surely even the most sophisticated Manhattanites, who'd no more visit a farm than they'd, I dunno, drink percolator coffee, know what a stallion is. I know what a stallion is, and I'm from bloody London.

I'm currently working on a post-modern view of Christianity. Don't ask me about it. I just started this morning. Should take me another 50 years to be ready to present

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

That just about takes care of it I think.

Hah! Covering all eventualities, pure Derrida.

Or did DFW think this circumlocution sounded wittier?

That's my guess. Horses for courses, takes all sorts etc. but I think he's got a tin ear.

I read a review of the biography recently which pretty much said he seems to have come across as a not all that nice person. And apparently he had an obsession with having sex with as many women he met on book signing tours as possible.

I'd link to it, but I can't remember which site I read it on.

You know, Sam, we've got a presidential election going on here in America. And even though it's pretty late in the day, someone with your skills in unsourced slander could make a real difference to the right campaign, if you know what i mean and i think you do. So, c'mon up, we'll make you an offer.

Hahaha. Okay, you've prodded me into finding it. Easier than I thought, since I thought I'd wiped my internet history since reading it, and it turns out I hadn't - here it is on Slate.

Needless to say, it was the opening paragraph that got me...