RWRP middle pickup question

[DrewPeterson7]

Fuckin Cliff Notes? Outstanding! Thank you.

I had wondered about the quote but never read the author. Wondering if I should.

I absolutely LOVE the novel, it's one of my absolute favorites... but it's also a behemoth, about 900 pages of story and maybe 150 pages of small-font footnotes at the back footnotes that range from the chemical name and a brief description of the street name of a subscription drug, on one hand (or, the sort-of-mistranslation of the Latin motto of the school that's in my signature), to stuff like three or four pages of dialogue between characters that actually contains a lot of material that advances the plot forward.

It's a lot. It's brilliant though, and if you do wade through the whole thing, re-read that first chapter when you're done because there's something that means nothing to you at the time but will blow your mind the second time through.

 

[Sky Blue Lou]

I absolutely LOVE the novel, it's one of my absolute favorites... but it's also a behemoth, about 900 pages of story and maybe 150 pages of small-font footnotes at the back footnotes that range from the chemical name and a brief description of the street name of a subscription drug, on one hand (or, the sort-of-mistranslation of the Latin motto of the school that's in my signature), to stuff like three or four pages of dialogue between characters that actually contains a lot of material that advances the plot forward.

It's a lot. It's brilliant though, and if you do wade through the whole thing, re-read that first chapter when you're done because there's something that means nothing to you at the time but will blow your mind the second time through.

Oh fuck. Well thanks. I guess...

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Oh fuck. Well thanks. I guess...

If you want something shorter in the same vein, grab Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49." Pynchon was pretty clearly an influence on Wallace, though they have their differences - Pynchon is more wild conspiracy theory with characters likely to break into song and dance at any point, and "Gravity's Rainbow" (which is brilliant, but of a length of Infinite Jest) feels like a WWII novel that drops acid about a third of the way through. Wallace, meanwhile, is sort of darker, more on the addiction side of druggier than the wild trip side, more forlorn but also deeply, deeply heartfelt and not afraid to be unabashedly earnest. He hung himself about 15 years ago, and when I heard the news I guess I wasn't very surprised, some of the suicides or attempted suicides in his writing felt awfully close to home. But, The Crying of Lot 49 gives you kind of that same surreal mindfuck feeling both share, in a tight hundred or so pages.

Otherwise, Wallace has some great nonfiction that's a little more accessible - "Consider the Lobster" is awesome, the title story is covering the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet Magazine's annual literary issue and gradually turns into a moral argument of "if lobsters can feel pain, and they certainly act like they do, is it morally responsible to eat them, if that involves boiling them alive," which is hilarious given the venue (his conclusion, for what it's worth, was "I'm honestly not sure... but they do taste awfully good dipped in butter," and there's a story in there, "Up Simba," of his time covering the McCain camp for Rolling Stone on what happened to be the fateful week where McCain went negative against Bush, after the Bush campaign launched a push poll asking respondents how they'd feel if they knew McCain had had a daughter out of wedlock with a black woman (McCain's adopted daughter is half black), and he felt like he had to hit back. It's probably the best political journalism from an unexpected source second only to Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear And Loathing On the Campaign Trail: '72" and his coverage of the McGovern campaign's convention floor coup.

 

[Sky Blue Lou]

Yeah I read Gravity's Rainbow years ago. Not impressed with Thomas "My what a large vocabulary I have" Pynchon. Thanks anyway

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Yeah I read Gravity's Rainbow years ago. Not impressed with Thomas "My what a large vocabulary I have" Pynchon. Thanks anyway

Yeah, David Foster Wallace is quite a bit WORSE than Pynchon in that respect. I'd pass. :lol:

 

[Sky Blue Lou]

Yeah, David Foster Wallace is quite a bit WORSE than Pynchon in that respect. I'd pass. :lol:

Thanks. I appreciate that.

I can read and I have what most would consider an extensive vocabulary but when I can't get through a page without having to look something up it gets tedious. I find it refreshing when I have to look a couple things up. I like learning new words, phrases and concepts. I do not like when an author shows off. Who the fuck do you think you're writing for?* You may have an earth-shattering new approach to some issue or concept but if only 5% of the public can understand it without research notes you are wasting yer time. IMO You won't be wasting mine.

*The answer to that of course is themselves.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Thanks. I appreciate that.

I can read and I have what most would consider an extensive vocabulary but when I can't get through a page without having to look something up it gets tedious. I find it refreshing when I have to look a couple things up. I like learning new words, phrases and concepts. I do not like when an author shows off. Who the fuck do you think you're writing for?* You may have an earth-shattering new approach to some issue or concept but if only 5% of the public can understand it without research notes you are wasting yer time. IMO You won't be wasting mine.

*The answer to that of course is themselves.

Infinite Jest is, in hindsight, more autobiographical than Wallace let on at the time (12-step programs feature heavily, but in the press tour he said he attended meetings in the Boston area for research purposes. It was only after his death it really became publicly known he himself had been in AA). One of the things I gleaned from his nonfiction, though - one of the main characters memorizes dictionaries for fun/for the approval of his mother, who whenever one of her children would commit some grammatical error would pretend to choke and suffocate until they caught and corrected their mistake. He reviewed a usage guide for some literary magazine and later reprinted it as part of "Consider the Lobster," and he alludes to his mother doing the same thing to him as a kid, while writing about the review, and discussing prescriptive vs descriptive grammar.

So, I'm going to assume the reading the dictionary cover to cover and memorizing it probably wasn't far from the truth either.