On David Foster Wallace

[nancylebov]

Having read this about the implications of popular and unpopular culture, I thought I'd ask....

[Poll #1508378]

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I've only ever heard of Infinite Jest but have so far resisted the endless peer pressure to read it. The kind of people who like that kind of thing seem to be into Pynchon and Eco, and I get the sense that Wallace is a lite-r version, which makes me strongly suspect I will hate him.

(I get their cultural references and that's nice, and I'm sure they're fun guys at parties, but out of the various books I've tried, only in Name of the Rose have I been able to give a damn about a character or plot of theirs.)

Also, hi!

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Heard of him. From the reviews, I could tell not my kind of thing.

[siderea]

I've never read him, but I've certainly heard of him. Big famous (recently) dead white male author.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

I picked up "a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" just for the title, and found it to be a interesting but not enthralling. I borrowed a coy of "consider the lobster" and had the same experience- very well written and the stories sounded good, but I lost interest before he ran out of words.

[andrewducker]

Seen Infinite Jest in shops. Never read it.

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

I've not read anything by him but I've heard of him. His name was already familar to me and then there was much written and broadcast about him when he died.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I have read the majority of his published works and enjoyed them only marginally, if at all. I find him pretentious and trying-way-too-hard. I am aware of his literary influence and import... and I hate that he has defined a literary voice and has influenced many writers producing fiction today. Blargh.

[inertiacrept.livejournal.com]

I thought about doing this myself and didn't mostly because I was too sleepy to code up a poll and less becauseiwasnt curious. If you really want to prove the sullen point, you'd do another one of these about the twilight books. I don't know if my poor, quantiably pretentious heart could take it but it'd still be interesting to know.

Oh, another point that I didn't make in my post on the subject: while iconsider dfw immensely important, he ain't exactly my favorite author and the question of whether he mightve been over canonized is a wholly legitimate one.

[avram]

Instantly recognized the name, haven't given any of his books a try yet.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

I haven't read his books -- they didn't really sound like my kind of thing, though I can't be sure -- but I knew him back when. We were classmates (Amherst College, 1985), and lived in the same floor of the same dorm senior year. If I had known he would become so famous, I would have asked for his autograph. 8-)