DFW Debate

[Darcy]

At 3:38 PM -0500 14/12/98, Derek C. Maus wrote:

>> It seems so still upon re-reading.  You're offering opinions about a
>> writer whose latest, most ambitious fiction you haven't read.  It
>> doesn't seem asking too much (except to you, apparently) to expect one
>> to read an author's work before sending post after post filled with
>> one's opinion of him, particularly in discussion with people who have.
>
>Are you fucking blind or just not reading my posts? Let me put them in
>caps for you so that you can perhaps read them better...
>
>I HAVE READ DAVID FOSTER WALLACE'S WORK (see below)
>
>> A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
>> by David Foster Wallace
>> Paperback - 368 pages (February 1998)
>
>I AM NOT REFERRING SOLELY TO _INFINITE JEST_ IN MY OPINION OF HIS WRITING.
>
>Jesus H. Christ, I'm tired of this shit.
>
>Fine. You win. David Foster Wallace is the greatest writer since time
>began. _INFINTIE JEST_ is the single most intelligent novel that any
>specimen of life in the universe has created. MalignD is the most
>insightful and rational literary critic since time began. The P-List
>should be renamed the MalignD-List and we can all write posts for you to
>critique and set us straight in our stupidity.

Blimey, is it always like this here?  What is it about DFW that provokes
such vitriolic exchanges?

Like him or not, Wallace has become (with _Infinite Jest_ -- I won't even
try to defend _A Supposedly Fun Thing_ or _Broom of the System_) more than
a mere knock-off of Pynchon or DeLillo or anyone else.  He has his own
distinctive, original (and okay, annoying to some) voice, and his own
literary agenda, and dismissing him as a second-rate version of either
author is about as accurate as calling Nabokov a second-rate James Joyce.

- Darcy

------
dargue at istar.ca
Montreal, QC

"It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights
nowadays; for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists."

					- George Orwell, _Homage to Catalonia_